An end to an era? Nah, just making room for more era.

YOU: So Curtis.. what did you do on your last day of 30?

ME: Well, I was cleaning my office and trimming down the library of computer games. I threw out a spindle of 150 disks and an ungodly amount of jewel cases. I would say I just trimmed out something like 50 games from my collection.

YOU: What?!!?! That's a lot! Why did you just throw them away? Couldn't you donate them or something?

ME: Well.. trust me.. no one would have wanted those and a lot of them had missing disks or CD keys or were just plain illegalz. I kept all the good ones, don't worry.

It was amazing how much wasted space there was even in the "new" packaging introduced about 10 years ago using smaller boxes. I also realized that a few years ago the gaming industry made a second switch. Instead of small cardboard boxes about the size of a hardcover book with CD jewel cases and manuals inside they switched to small plastic boxes that were the actual jewel cases. No taking out the essentials and throwing away the packaging there. With some of them you can remove the CD and manual and put the CD in a paper sleeve or something but most of them have the CD key to the game printed an the giant plastic case. LAME.
In the end my video game library has been reduced from its previous volume of 1 medium sized box, 1 stuffed cd booklet that has traveled to way too many LAN parties, and a GIANT spindle that used to house 150 or so blank CDs (no, they didn't all get burned into games). The collection is now compressed to 1 small box.
I also found a few audio books I thought I had lost. Looking back I wish I had taken a picture of it, but its probably best not to have photo evidence of the nerdery.

Fooootbaaall

We went to the Cardinals-Chargers preseason game last night. It was awesome. This is the last round of preseason games which can only mean one thing. FOOTBALL IS HERE!
Everything suddenly seems right with the world again.
Oh.. and the seats in the season ticket pack are AWESOME!

the post where I complain about nothing some more.

Ok.. so I admit that I am a little old to care so much about summer vacations but I really look forward to them. I think the reason for this is mostly because I still get them... sort of.
The temporary relief from the set of self induced stresses and deadlines and workload goes a long way to maintaining my sanity. Grad school is annoyingly time consuming, especially when you choose to drag it out for twice as long by doing it part time. In an effort to compensate I tried the summer session. I thought it would also be a good sounding board to see if I could increase the workload during the normal semesters. I can't. I did fine with the double time pace over the summer and plan to utilize future summer sessions but it was only 8 weeks long (seriously?). I know if I tried to maintain that same pace for a full semester something inside of me would burst like an over carbonated Dr. Pepper left sitting in the car in a Phoenix parking lot during the summer.
I will resume my normal pace of classes after my lavishly lengthy 26 days of no scholastic obligations. Its not much of a summer break, but its mine and I am going to relish it all the same.

In the not school parts of my: life Max is friggin' huge. He has gone from almost too small to easily hold to "holy crap, is that the same kid". He has definitely caught up on the weight charts and hitting all of his milestones in stride (well.. really more like a flail than a stride.) He has discovered the joys of making noises and babbles constantly. We have taken him to a few social events and this kid is definitely a flirt. We have been able to determine he has a thing for blonds and glasses.

Its not over?

Holy cow what a grueling week. I can't believe its not over. I hope this isn't the new standard. Its enough to make a guy pack up his family and move to a deserted island. Although now that I think about it a desserted island would be more delicious.