A Modicum of Miscellania
I think I've finally realized why it's better if I blog on an almost-daily basis: sometimes, it doesn't seem like anything exciting ever happens, and just when I feel I settled into such a groove, I am cursed with an overabundance of events worth relating here. Such a problem has emerged in the last few days: after my little heart scare, I became so overwhelmed with things happening that I never settled down to blog, and now I fear I have no direction or organizational tack save for chronological description. Which Faulkner always thought was boring as hell. (Granted, I'm not Faulkner's biggest fan, but the dude wrote much better than I ever will.)
But since chronological seems to be the most effective coverage technique, I might as well go for it. (That, and the blaring of What Not to Wear on the TV at my back is pretty disorienting and not conducive to truly creative discourse [granted, further, I'm not doing much to help my own cause, as the arrival of four new CDs from Amazon has put me on an iTunes-ripping binge {I've gotten through Tool's 10,000 Days and, as I've been wont to do with alarming frequency lately, I can't stop listening to "The Pot"}]).*
Firstly, let's go back to the health stuff. Since telling of my alarming attack last week -- coupled with the fact that, though I didn't tell all that many people, I've been receiving a huge number of messages and notes asking how I've been -- I should alleviate all concerns by saying that I've been feeling much better as of late. After my little freak-out Wednesday, the little flutter I'd spoken of vaguely has only returned once, and not nearly with the intensity which it had displayed previously. I will be having a 24-hour Holter monitor placed on me on Wednesday, and while I obviously don't want to see anything happen anymore, part of me hopes to at least get some kind of flutter on Wednesday so that this can be effectively diagnosed and treated. Fingers crossed.
By the way, thanks so much for all the well-wishes, particularly from those anonymous folks who read but don't comment on these posts. I know you are actually out there, and I appreciate your concern.
After muscling my way through the rest of the week -- which was relatively easy, considering I needed to get through only my teaching classes and a fabulous seminar, "Reinventing the 19th Century," taught by a brilliant professor who just happens to be a fellow Princetonian -- my weekend was built around relaxation. It wasn't as easy as I'd hoped, but a few well-mixed martinis on Friday night sure did the trick.
That wasn't the only event of note on Friday, though. Danielle, in her infinite wisdom, had selected a birthday gift for me that, in her estimation, would be far more useful if received on Friday instead of Sunday. I was able to deduce that this would clearly be something that would occupy a weekend's worth of leisure time -- i.e. a new Wii game -- and when I removed the aluminum foil she'd used to wrap it (so ingenious, and so very cute), my gift revealed itself to be Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. As one of the two games I'd been secretly hoping for (the other being Madden '08), I was thrilled and set right to it.
I will admit, though, that the promise of a Metroid gaming experience sent my ever-nostalgic mind flittering back to the early '90s: the old days, the formative days of my video gaming life. I never owned the original Metroid (though a neighbor did) and my desire to fill in that gap saw my Wiimote beckoning for the Virtual Console, where I discovered the original NES game available for download. I quickly snatched it and set to work on reliving the glory days of my not-so-glorious youth.
What a rush of ripe élan! Though I'd only played the game maybe an hour or so in my life prior to this, the experience was refreshing, reminding me of why I had been such an avid gamer as a kid. This wasn't about graphics or plot development or cinematic cut-scenes (or, at times, about play control...) but about the challenge, which made the whole thing so much fun. There's no help, no guides, no clues or directions: just an open game world and an invitation to explore. It got so disorienting I needed to actually make myself a map as I went along -- how deliciously old-school!
Friday and Saturday were wrapped up greatly in my Metroidian endeavors, at least until my brother and mother arrived for their expected weekend stay. There was little eventfulness to speak of: we ran some errands and got some needed stuffs on a dime that wasn't mine or Danielle's, ate dinner at Applebee's, made some purchases of an alcoholic variety, and brought said beverages back to the apartment for an evening of watching college football. The Penn State/Notre Dame game ended much to my delight. The Virginia Tech/LSU game... Well, let's just say it devolved into my brother playing The Legend of Zelda on the Virtual Console and a rather unhappy Danielle in the morning.
I was pretty unhappy on Sunday morning too, but not for the same reasons. The booze had had an unexpected and undesired effect (as it was the first time I'd actually gotten drunk in quite some time) and waking up on 8:00am on a Sunday is never a good thing. I received cheerful birthday wishes, after which we headed out in search of a delicious breakfast. Turns out, though, that many of the approximately 110,000 people who had descended upon State College for the game also decided to grab breakfast before hitting the road: all three Waffle Shop -- not, ever, on God's green Earth, to be confused with Waffle House -- locations were packed to the gills, and we settled for a brief wait at The Diner on College Ave.
The family left shortly after breakfast, which left Danielle and I to ourselves for the remaining 14 hours of my birthday. They were uneventful, to say the least, and I liked it that way. I didn't do a goddamn thing, and loved every minute of it. We sat around, listened to some music, and read, and I sat stifling comments as Danielle engaged in her first attempt at a quest on Twilight Princess. (Thus far, she's proven herself to be a decently competent swordswoman, though her expeditiousness leaves a lot to be desired. At the rate she's going, I'd estimate her game will take her at least 100 hours to complete.) We completed the evening with a delicious (and excessively filling) dinner at The Olive Garden, then returned to the apartment for a brief marathon of Clean House before deciding to bring my restful day of nothing to an end.
As for the present day, I quickly completed my teaching and returned home, where I've been tackling my own actual modicum of marginalia, using the early part of the afternoon to take care of some of the silly little chores I'd been meaning to do but have been putting off.
Like cleaning up the kitchen table and living room.
And ripping my CDs into iTunes.
And writing a blog entry.
Done, done. On to the next one.
------------------------
* By the way, in the interest of full disclosure, I've been trying to emphasize substance over style with my students this week. And while a sentence with three sets of nested brackets may seem to be nothing more than an acute case of stylistic narcissism, I say thusly in my defense: fuck it. It seemed cool at the time, still does.
But since chronological seems to be the most effective coverage technique, I might as well go for it. (That, and the blaring of What Not to Wear on the TV at my back is pretty disorienting and not conducive to truly creative discourse [granted, further, I'm not doing much to help my own cause, as the arrival of four new CDs from Amazon has put me on an iTunes-ripping binge {I've gotten through Tool's 10,000 Days and, as I've been wont to do with alarming frequency lately, I can't stop listening to "The Pot"}]).*
Firstly, let's go back to the health stuff. Since telling of my alarming attack last week -- coupled with the fact that, though I didn't tell all that many people, I've been receiving a huge number of messages and notes asking how I've been -- I should alleviate all concerns by saying that I've been feeling much better as of late. After my little freak-out Wednesday, the little flutter I'd spoken of vaguely has only returned once, and not nearly with the intensity which it had displayed previously. I will be having a 24-hour Holter monitor placed on me on Wednesday, and while I obviously don't want to see anything happen anymore, part of me hopes to at least get some kind of flutter on Wednesday so that this can be effectively diagnosed and treated. Fingers crossed.
By the way, thanks so much for all the well-wishes, particularly from those anonymous folks who read but
After muscling my way through the rest of the week -- which was relatively easy, considering I needed to get through only my teaching classes and a fabulous seminar, "Reinventing the 19th Century," taught by a brilliant professor who just happens to be a fellow Princetonian -- my weekend was built around relaxation. It wasn't as easy as I'd hoped, but a few well-mixed martinis on Friday night sure did the trick.
That wasn't the only event of note on Friday, though. Danielle, in her infinite wisdom, had selected a birthday gift for me that, in her estimation, would be far more useful if received on Friday instead of Sunday. I was able to deduce that this would clearly be something that would occupy a weekend's worth of leisure time -- i.e. a new Wii game -- and when I removed the aluminum foil she'd used to wrap it (so ingenious, and so very cute), my gift revealed itself to be Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. As one of the two games I'd been secretly hoping for (the other being Madden '08), I was thrilled and set right to it.
I will admit, though, that the promise of a Metroid gaming experience sent my ever-nostalgic mind flittering back to the early '90s: the old days, the formative days of my video gaming life. I never owned the original Metroid (though a neighbor did) and my desire to fill in that gap saw my Wiimote beckoning for the Virtual Console, where I discovered the original NES game available for download. I quickly snatched it and set to work on reliving the glory days of my not-so-glorious youth.
What a rush of ripe élan! Though I'd only played the game maybe an hour or so in my life prior to this, the experience was refreshing, reminding me of why I had been such an avid gamer as a kid. This wasn't about graphics or plot development or cinematic cut-scenes (or, at times, about play control...) but about the challenge, which made the whole thing so much fun. There's no help, no guides, no clues or directions: just an open game world and an invitation to explore. It got so disorienting I needed to actually make myself a map as I went along -- how deliciously old-school!
Friday and Saturday were wrapped up greatly in my Metroidian endeavors, at least until my brother and mother arrived for their expected weekend stay. There was little eventfulness to speak of: we ran some errands and got some needed stuffs on a dime that wasn't mine or Danielle's, ate dinner at Applebee's, made some purchases of an alcoholic variety, and brought said beverages back to the apartment for an evening of watching college football. The Penn State/Notre Dame game ended much to my delight. The Virginia Tech/LSU game... Well, let's just say it devolved into my brother playing The Legend of Zelda on the Virtual Console and a rather unhappy Danielle in the morning.
I was pretty unhappy on Sunday morning too, but not for the same reasons. The booze had had an unexpected and undesired effect (as it was the first time I'd actually gotten drunk in quite some time) and waking up on 8:00am on a Sunday is never a good thing. I received cheerful birthday wishes, after which we headed out in search of a delicious breakfast. Turns out, though, that many of the approximately 110,000 people who had descended upon State College for the game also decided to grab breakfast before hitting the road: all three Waffle Shop -- not, ever, on God's green Earth, to be confused with Waffle House -- locations were packed to the gills, and we settled for a brief wait at The Diner on College Ave.
The family left shortly after breakfast, which left Danielle and I to ourselves for the remaining 14 hours of my birthday. They were uneventful, to say the least, and I liked it that way. I didn't do a goddamn thing, and loved every minute of it. We sat around, listened to some music, and read, and I sat stifling comments as Danielle engaged in her first attempt at a quest on Twilight Princess. (Thus far, she's proven herself to be a decently competent swordswoman, though her expeditiousness leaves a lot to be desired. At the rate she's going, I'd estimate her game will take her at least 100 hours to complete.) We completed the evening with a delicious (and excessively filling) dinner at The Olive Garden, then returned to the apartment for a brief marathon of Clean House before deciding to bring my restful day of nothing to an end.
As for the present day, I quickly completed my teaching and returned home, where I've been tackling my own actual modicum of marginalia, using the early part of the afternoon to take care of some of the silly little chores I'd been meaning to do but have been putting off.
Like cleaning up the kitchen table and living room.
And ripping my CDs into iTunes.
And writing a blog entry.
Done, done. On to the next one.
------------------------
* By the way, in the interest of full disclosure, I've been trying to emphasize substance over style with my students this week. And while a sentence with three sets of nested brackets may seem to be nothing more than an acute case of stylistic narcissism, I say thusly in my defense: fuck it. It seemed cool at the time, still does.
posted by Dave at 9/10/2007 02:29:00 PM
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