Flying Solo

The wife is traveling on business, hence the title of this post. Invariably, when this happens, one of the children pees all over the bathroom floor. Not sure what it is about the absence of a mother figure that makes this happen, but it's happened the last two times now, so I'm thinking the events are connected. Last time was a result of Ben not making it to the bathroom in time. Easy enough to clean up, what with the tile floor and all. This time, Abby was running around naked, waiting for her bath to be ready and decided that the bathroom didn't have enough water in it. She seemed pretty proud of herself so it was hard to be mad, but having one more task added to the list wasn't exactly what I was looking for. Ah, children, they sure do know how to make more work for you, don't they?

The era of the Wii has officially begun at our house as today I picked up my first Wii game, Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz. Granted, I don't have anything to play it on, and won't for several days, but when Gamestop calls to tell you that your game is in, it is in your interests to go and pick it up. They had a drawer filled with Wii offerings including Red Steel, Call of Duty 3 and Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam. To say that the drawer looked delectable would be an understatement. Before he could relinquish the title, the clerk had to call someone of authority to inquire as to which titles, 1st party or 3rd party he could sell. As Super Monkey Ball is 3rd party Nintendo was comfortable with letting the game out of it's steely grasp. Why this is an issue at all, given that the console, an integral part of the game playing experience, isn't out until Sunday is beyond me. I'm sure Nintendo is just looking out for our best interests and don't want us to mar the Zelda disc with copious amounts of drool.

I am happy to see that the initial Wii game reviews are, for the most part, positive, with folks saying that the control scheme works for both puzzle games such as the aforementioned Super Monkey Ball title, action games like Zelda and shooters like Call of Duty 3. The review I'm waiting for is Red Steel as I have more of an interest in the story of that game than I do reliving WWII yet again, however if COD3 is the only way I can get my shoot on until Metroid Prime 3, then so be it. I find it interesting that some reviews state that the controls are kind of wonky and then some say that the controls take some time getting used to and calibrating but once you do, it kicks ass and anyone who thinks that the controls are wonky haven't spent enough time with the game. I guess this is really going to be a case of personal preference, so I'll have to make sure I tread with caution as if I find I don't like the controls for a game, it's not like I can go and return it. Then again, there's always Costco.

I am currently watching "Hellboy: Sword of Storms" the latest Hellboy animated movie. It's quite good and is voiced by the actors and actresses from the movie, including Doug Jones who did Abe Sapien's body motions. Ron Perlman is his usual fantastic self and, at this point, any non-print Hellboy project without Perlman as Hellboy would be tantamount to blasphemy. The movie has a lot of cool Japanese imagery and mythology and, more importantly, big beasties getting the beatdown by Hellboy, something I felt the feature film lacked. They're currently in the midst of editing the next animated film "Hellboy: Blood and Iron" and Hellboy 2, the live action pic is a go, so fans of Big Red have a lot to look forward to.

Finally, without getting into too much detail, we found out today that our daughter does not have Cystic Fibrosis. As you can well imagine, this is a huge load off of our minds. Something still isn't right in the state of Denmark as she's not growing as much as she should be, but thankfully, the thing that's not making her grow enough isn't a disease that would cap her life span at 30. I am perfectly content to have my daughter grow up to be the world's smallest octogenarian, just as long as she grows up.