Sunday evening I finally saw my first episode of Dexter. Now, I'm usually open to watching a new show. How can you not be intrigued by a premise of "America's favorite serial killer"? The pull of the show is that the main character is a cop and a serial killer who kills "bad" serial killers. So, you're supposed to like him, right? However, I have to say that I was generally disappointed with the entire show. I didn't even like the main character. I'm open to the possibility that I caught a bad episode, but the show just left me with a bad feeling. I kept waiting for the "funny" moment to cut through the awkwardness of the show, but it never came.

I'm not sure how early the episode was in the season, but I'm guessing it was from the first season. The story line for the episode revolved around an ice truck killer whose victims would end up in frozen pieces. My first assumption was that Dexter would catch the killer, make him understand how much of a horrible person he is and then get rid of him, like the "good" serial killer the commercials made me want to believe. However, he didn't catch anyone. In fact, when presented with an opportunity to stop someone from doing something evil, he just stood there. There was this scene with a woman who is "sort of" his girlfriend. He has an opportunity to help her, but he just stands there with this look on his face like he's trying to make a decision about what to do till it's too late. He even has a shovel! The scene sets you up to think he's going to hit him with the shovel for stealing his girlfriend's car, but he just watches him drive away.

Then, the episode returned to his past to reveal his first victim who was a nurse slowly killing her patients with overdoses of morphine. She was going to kill Dexter's dad, but his dad told Dexter to stop her from hurting him and her other patients. Apparently that was enough to set him off and turn him into a killer. So, his solution is to wrap her living room in saran wrap, awkwardly wrestle her to the floor, then saran wrap her, naked, to a table and force her to discuss her personal photo albums and a few other things before he finally kills her. The nurse wasn't exactly in the best of shape and my only thought was "oh for the love of god, get her off my TV screen." While there's no question that she was a bad person, I wasn't convinced that she necessarily deserved to be emotionally tortured then killed. Adding to the uncomfortable feeling of the scene was the fact that the director led the you to believe that you were going to actually have to watch Dexter murder her. Fortunately, they cut away before you could see anything. Well, besides most of her unclothed body (minus the two most personal parts covered with saran wrap). I was relieved when that scene was over. I'd be glad to never see something like that again. They don't make eye bleach, but I could use some.

The show was just uncomfortable, awkward and icky overall. I really wish I could un-see the saran wrapped nurse.. I also didn't like the main character because I was unable to find a large enough redeeming quality offset whole awkward "serial killer" thing.

It seems like some days the public as a whole decides that their mission for the day is to be as obnoxious as possible which typically involves getting in the way of everyone nearby. Well, today was one of those days. For those of you who don't talk to me about video games, you probably don't know that I've been waiting for Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates to come out for a couple years now. Yes, years. It's been on my Christmas list (yes, I still make them even though I'm 23 now) for the last two years and each year my parents have said "We wanted to get you this game, but we can't find it. Are you sure it's out?" After finally playing through the entirety of the original Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles for the GameCube (thanks Jim!), I couldn't wait for the sequel to come out.

Well, after a long waiting period and too many release date changes that always moved the release date back, the official release date is today! John and I went to Nebraska Furniture Mart to pick up copies of the games. I found the copy of Smash Brothers okay, but we couldn't seem to find Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, the game I was most excited about. I found a sales person and asked where the copies of the game were located (assuming that since it's the release date, that means it will be in stores on this date). He looked up the inventory and told me that the games had shipped today, but they wouldn't have any copies till Thursday or Friday.

To all of the brilliant marketing people, I have a request. When you publish a freaking release date, how about you give the public the actual date when they can expect to have the game in their hands? Would that really be so hard to do?

Okay, so I couldn't get my video game. I was planning on buying Smash Brothers anyway, so I went to check out. Failure at every single open check-out lane. The first lane apparently didn't have the correct change, so the guy was asking the 2nd lane for change. However, the 2nd lane had multiple people in line, and didn't want to give change until they were done with all of their customers (of which there were three). The third lane only had two people in it and they were checking out with one item. The fourth lane apparently knew the customers and had no interest in doing any more work until they were done with their conversation. At first I got in the first lane, but when the change problem came, up, I went over to the third lane, assuming that it wouldn't be that difficult to check out with one item. However, after letting the cashier scan the item, tell them the total, handing over their credit card and signing the receipt, THEN the customer decides to complain that the price of their ONE item isn't what it said on the shelf. You would think that if you only have one freaking item you'd notice that the total doesn't sound reasonable and say something before handing over your credit card or at least notice the total on the receipt before signing the thing. Anyway, after more wasted time, the guy needing change had finally gotten his change and his line was empty so I checked out there. The people in lane four were still talking when I left and the cashier and security person were trying to figure out what to do with the people in the 3rd lane who'd already signed the receipt. The 2nd lane was checking out it's last customer in line after taking a break to provide change for the first lane. Regardless, it all too longer than it needed to and I wasn't satisfied because I didn't get the game I actually went to the store to buy.

I'm looking forward to getting out of the store after the combined annoyances. As John and I are walking towards the doors out, we ended up behind a woman who decided the perfect spot to stop and examine her receipt is directly in front of the door to get out. One second, she's walking, the next second she's just standing there causing congestion. The people next to us almost ran into her.

So we finally escape Nebraska Furniture Mart and we're heading to get food. I want Chipotle and John wants Runza, so we're trying to get to Chipotle because it's closest but we run into even more morons. There's a long line of cars trying to get into the poorly designed parking lot, causing a small traffic jam in the street outside the little strip mall. The way that the parking lot is set up is there is one row, barely wide enough for two cars with parking spots on either side. Adding to the mix is that on one side the parking ends so that cars can essentially do a U-turn to go through the Starbucks drive-thru. So, there isn't much room. And who's at the front of the line? Some lady who has decided that now is the perfect time to back her SUV into a parking spot after making a four-point turn. John is finally able to pull into the parking lot and we see a spot, but the giant extended-cab truck in front of us decides that they want to back into their parking spot too. We wait five minutes for him to get his truck turned around and by some miracle, the spot is still there. I ran inside and go my burrito.

We managed to make it to Runza without any significant problems. Then back to my apartment. Unfortunately, John had to go back into work to do an upgrade so I didn't have a friend to play Smash Brothers with. After he'd finished the upgrade, he got online to talk.

John: how is smash brothers?
me: haven't opened it
John: sad
wait
if there can be cool beans
there can be sad beans
so my reply is actually "sad beans"
the beans are very sad because you haven't played yet.
do you want the beans to be sad?

So, after too much ranting, the moron count for today is: hmm...we'll say 100 for the marketers who don't give you an actual release date (but that's probably low), five for the people in the various check-out lanes, one for the lady stopping in front of the doorway, two for the people backing into the parking spots, and I suppose one for me making the beans sad by not opening a brand new video game until a day after I bought it. So, that brings the total to 109. That's a lot of morons.

Before my post about sad beans had been published, I changed my away message on my chat client to read "Do you want the beans to be sad?" Well, thanks to Meagan's curiosity and google searching, here are what sad beans look like:

Last night I cooked two new things. John thought the presentation of the plate was so pretty, I just had to take a picture to commemorate the occasion. Honestly, I just dished it up like I normally would, it just happened to look like that. I personally don't think it looks very pretty, just colorful. I don't do the whole "plating" thing. It's a waste of time and effort because you're just going to eat it anyway and the plate will be a mess when you're done. Regardless, here's dinner from last night:

I've been trying to find more vegetables to make and add more main dishes without pasta (or cream cheese) to the list of things I make. So, last night's dinner was meatballs with sauce. The meatballs had egg, oatmeal, hamburger, and spices in them (thanks Aunt Karen for the recipe). The sauce was mostly ketchup (Heinz only!), some brown sugar and a couple spices. They were very good and very moist. The broccoli, I boiled, then made the topping with cream cheese, a ranch packet and some milk, then topped with cheddar cheese. It was good, but a little rich. Maybe a little less ranch mix on top would have been better. Then I just made garlic bread with some Brummel & Brown (yogurt butter), and garlic powder.

I didn't exactly succeed in removing the cream cheese from the dinner. But I can pretend it's healthy because it has broccoli in it.

So I've managed to become addicted to this Facebook game called Packrat. The cards are so cute and I can't help but wonder if the next pack might have something I need in it or more credits I can spend. The game is generally simple. You want to collect all the sets of cards available. You can have up to 15 cards in your pack and then once you have a set of 5 or more of either the same card or different cards from the same set, you can vault them. You get points for vaulting things, stealing things and making things. You can make things by getting the right combination of three cards and then combining them to make a new, single card. Besides the general appeal of the cuteness of the cards and the fact that it's a collecting game (which is why I always liked games like Animal Crossing), how can you not be entertained by friends you can steal from with names like Shakirat, Rat Cassidy, Ratty Crocker, Captain Ratbeard, and Rattori Hanzo.

When I get home from work, I plop down in front of the computer and start clicking away, hoping to complete more sets. Each set has a theme. One of the sets I've completed is below. Obviously I like it because it's got a penguin. But I do think the abominable snowman is cute. The nice thing is that if you have a cute card, you can open it in a "bigger" version to see the detail on the card. And they keep adding more cards, because the team that created the application is a team of designers.

If anyone decides they want to play, let me know and I'll send you an invitation. I get more credits I can spend if you accept. ;-)

Besides the game being fun, I've found that they're also entertaining when the application is down. Over the weekend, the servers were down for an upgrade and they put up a notice saying they'd be back soon. I have to say it's one of the more entertaining upgrade notices. Ha! Gathering cheese...so cute!

All in all, a good (and addicting!) game. But I have to get back to clicking. I need more credits!

I've been playing plenty of FFCC: Ring of Fates. The game is awesome! My only complaint is that it's not as long as the original GameCube version. However, the graphics are really sweet and the game has the same feel as the original. I've heard that you can play through it again twice more and you get two more areas to explore, so that will be cool. John and I haven't done a lot of multi-player stuff yet, but I'm sure we will after we finish the story. Anyway, to give you a hint of how shiny it is, take a look at this:

That's the intro video that plays every time you load the game (yes you can skip it). The game-play doesn't look quite as good as that, but it's close enough to make me happy. The story is great and the characters are amusing. The fact that the game is cooperative is a huge plus for me. I like playing through a game with someone. Now I have to wait for the Wii game to come out. Sadly the release date is still TBA. Even the release on this game was pushed back several times. Oh well. This one was worth waiting for, so hopefully the next one will be too.

But, for anyone who's considering buying a DS, I'd highly recommend one (or two so you can play with a friend). They just came out with a cool blue/black combination similar to my red one. They're much less expensive than the consoles and the games are typically less expensive as well. So far I have played and would recommend:

• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates (obviously)


• Mario Kart (A classic. This one is download and play, but the full experience is better if you both have the game.)


• Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Great Zelda game! I've heard it's similar to the Super Nintendo one.)


• Animal Crossing: Wild World (A collector's dream, plus it's so cute!)


• New Super Mario (Miss the original Nintendo stuff? You'll like this.)


• Rocket Slime (Those slimes are so cute and the story is pretty entertaining.)


• Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time (A good RPG, but the last boss battle is annoying.)

I bought a new shirt last week. I wasn't planning on buying the shirt, but one of my friends sent me a link to this web site saying I should order the shirt. After seeing the design, I couldn't really help myself. Besides, there was the added bonus that he was already ordering stuff, so I only had to pay $1 for shipping. Here's the shirt design:

One of the most amusing parts of the shirt is right below the tag. I didn't realize that threadless.com did this, but it would be really cool (if I were more artistically inclined) to have one of your designs printed because they tell you who designed the shirt, what edition the print is and the title of your design. Plus, it has more penguins on it, so how could you not like that? Also, I ordered a large. The baby-t's can run a bit small at times so I played it safe. I wasn't anticipating the tag to say "girly large." Generally amusing.

I found a few other shirts (Arctic Spa and Penguins on Holiday) I liked on the site, but sadly they don't have my size right now. If enough people request a re-print, they will make them available again (hint, hint).