You Snooze You Lose, I Have Snost and Lost

Song of the Hour: I Hear the Bells by Mike Doughty, assorted Okkervil River.

Due to a recently reborn spades addiction, I have been unavailable for comment. If you would like to wave at me, I can generally be found at pogo.com nilling some poor unsuspecting Canadian retiree to death. I have a problem. It's not gambling, but you do win lottery prizes and of course there's your all important ranking system. Who needs to research grad schools or study for the GRE? There hands to be played, dammit, and if i don't play them, who will?

It's nostalgic, really. Spades, and Suzie's porch are forever linked. Gin and Kool-aid (what was wrong with us?), and the meth lab next door (what was wrong with everybody?). I've spent more time chatting with online spades partners than I have the people around me. I can only hope I grow bored with it soon.

I bowled a 125 today. Which isn't stellar by any means, but it's my best since class started. I've found bowling to be as much a lesson in anatomy as in physics. By pulling different muscles everyday, I get to learn about muscle groupings and the length and breadth of each. This is high quality, hands on education that I couldn't have come by at an earlier age. Thirty is still young, but bowling didn't feel like this at twenty, that's for damn sure.

Wow. I seriously have nothing exciting to report. It's all spades and bowling alleys and Joss. And Star Trek TNG. We're on season 3 now, and I feel this bizarre mingling of guilt and pleasure as Joss gets more and more interested in it. I subjected him to Harry Potter, LOTR, Star Wars, X-Men and now Star Trek with equal dedication. It's as though I'm going out of my way to shape a bona fide geek, such as I am. I even got him to watch the D&D cartoon that I watched growing up. Should I feel guilty? You can't force someone to like something. As much as my parents tried to force me to like more "normal" things, the influence of wanting to please them only went so far. I think Joss genuinely likes the sci-fi/fantasy stuff I throw at him... I hope so at least. I hope he isn't just trying to please me. Last night he was very insistent that we watch the next episode, and completely without prodding. He obviously doesn't get all the science jargon, of which there is a copious amount if you've never watched the show, but he wants to watch it anyway. I don't know, should I feel guilty? I guess he'll grow out of it soon if he's only doing it for my sake. I stopped watching all the sports/wrestling crap that my dad and brother watched when I was about his age. It wasn't worth it anymore.

I also spend about 7 hours a week playing Joss' new favorite video game, Jak III. It's like this weird cross between Road Warrior and Sonic the Hedgehog where you're fighting a losing war against an army of powerful machines fueled by "dark ego" and you have a series of missions to accomplish that are fairly difficult. I've never been so interested in the actual story of a video game before. It's kind of dark at times, you're wondering through a town and there are raids by the enemy and your character mumbles "we've already lost this war"  when the battles are over, even though you won. I was skeptical at first that Joss would, I don't know, "get it"-- but one of the allies says some really harsh things about "acceptable losses" that has spawned some interesting conversations between us. Insights into human nature come from the strangest corners I guess. Regardless, it's something fun to do together. And since Joss is doing his "end of grade" testing all week, he doesn't have any homework.
let's see how this "no child left behind" thing goes.

Alrighty. Time for one more spades tournament before I meet the jossling's bus.
I really, really hope I get bored with this cards thing soon. It's worse than The Sims.

love.