Recent photos: kids being adorable and a tea table

I promised my wonderful mother-in-law that I would talk about the boys more often around here. I cannot disappoint her! The results would be devastating. So, to appease all the masses interested in seeing the kids, I felt the need to highlight a couple of recent photos here.

Here’s a great shot the wife took of the boys sleeping IN OUR BED. They have a habit of crawling into our bed during the night (something we’re trying to break them of, preferably through the breaking of the habit and not their bones). In any case, this photo is a good example of the child defense mechanism of increased adorablocity (not a word! Don’t look it up!) in full effect.

Awesome photo I took last night of the boys playing Mario Kart Wii. It isn’t awesome because of its quality, but rather because of how great it makes me feel to see my boys enjoying video games. The youngest (on the right) doesn’t actually play, but loves to sit and hold his own controller while big brother drifts the corners. See how he has his little toddler legs crossed? There is nothing cuter in the world. NOTHING. More Mario Kart photos here.

And last, but most certainly not least, my wife’s wonderful table decoration at the local church Ladies’ Tea last month. The weekend then was cold and miserable, so her idea was to create a festive, bright table that was full of sunshine and warmth. Each place setting held a placard that contained some random quote about summer. It was a fantastic idea, and I think she pulled it off masterfully. Check out more of her table photos here, including better shots of the centerpiece that was filled with colorful mandarin oranges and lemons.

More photos of all sorts of things on our Flickr photostream.

New Flash drawing: Green Monster

As part of my new draw and/or write every day, I’ve created this green monster. I started off simple, but then kept adding layers and lighter shades of green, and I couldn’t stop. I think there’s about 7 different green hues on that monstrosity (appropriate term!), but I like how it turned out. I might keep this big lug in the back of my head for a while and try out various stances and poses with him in the future.

More images in the backlog of my ComicSpace.

I demand creativity from myself

It’s an adage as old as the practice of writing itself: if you want to be a good writer, you have to write every day. The same advice works for artists. I want to be a good writer. I also would love to be a good artist/designer. Let’s face it, I just want to be good at creating.

I haven’t written anything since November.

I doodle only once in a great while.

Every now and then, I change the header banner here on the site.

I’m not demanding enough out of myself.

So, from this moment on (until the day I finally give up on the idea) I’m demanding more from me. More writing. More drawing. More creativity. I’m not looking for a spark. I’m not looking for a new life. I’m just looking for more ideas.

Every day I will either write something (more than likely something to be posted on Ficlets or Protagonize) or I will draw something (and post it to ComicSpace). Because I want to create.

I demand creativity from myself. And damn it, I’m going to get it.

Wow – traffic skyrockets due to incessant blathering

So, evidently my post on the potential Wii RPGs of 2008 is number 1 on Google in searches for “wii rpgs“. What does this mean? My traffic has been steadily increasing over the past month to the point where I’m about to break my previous attendance record. Pretty phenomenal for a silly little personal blog where I just rattle on nonsensically about Nintendo, web 2.0, social software, family, and literature. I’m starting to understand why some people try to “game” Google to get better pageranking for certain search terms. It’s pretty cool to see such a simple, innocuous post become such a traffic magnet for the site. I’m looking forward to seeing what I write in the future that could become the next content boom for me. Will it be Nintendo-related? Who knows?

Ah, who are we kidding; of course it will!

PlayIt, ReviewIt is LIVE!

I guess Siraris is ready to let the proverbial cat out of the proverbial bag with the official launch of his brainchild, PlayItReviewIt. I’ve got a handful of Wii game reviews out there, one of which is currently a front-page “featured review”, so I got that going for me, which is nice. I guess this means I can put the PlayItReviewIt link back in the “Find Me Online” sidebar.

So, congratulations, Siraris! Here’s hoping you don’t regret launching such an excellent site.

Rearrangementations

It was spring cleaning today on the Nerdflood blog. I moved a lot of stuff around on the sidebars because I wasn’t liking the arrangement. There was more stuff I wanted to add, and things that needed removing. I cleaned up my “Find Me Online” list to only show places where I actually currently tend to hang out. Twitter is definitely the top spot these days, replacing any forums I used to frequent. I hardly visit Facebook anymore, for obvious reasons. I added an “Upcoming Movies” section to display my nerd cred, and a “Reading List” to cement it. And, just because I know there’s a generous person out there somewhere that will someday visit my blog, I’ve also added my Amazon.com wish list.

The left-hand side is just the various blog stuff: calendar of posts, archive, categories, etc. Below my usual shared items feed I’ve added an RSS stream of tweets from the #dmtweetup crew, ’cause they’re good people. Er, “tweeple”.

But what’s really amazing is that after using this WP theme for over a year, I’m still not ready to get rid of it yet. That’s surprising – I’m usually bored with any theme within a couple of months.

Of course, now that I say that, I’ll probably change it this weekend.

Mario Kart Wii: pre-ordered

There are two things I never do:

  1. I never shop at GameStop
  2. I never pre-order games.

Today, I did both of those things. I feel a little ashamed of this fact, which is probably why I feel the need to confess my sin openly.

The gist of it is that GameStop has a marginally good deal going on for Mario Kart Wii. Trade in two Wii games from their list, and you can get Mario Kart Wii for just $10. We had in our possession two Wii games on their list that were – for lack of a better term: crap. We had Cars: Mater-National, which my son loved to play, and Mario & Sonic Special Olympics (yeah, I went there), which Amanda and I attempted to play once, and never touched again. My son had no issue with giving up Cars since we were getting – in his words – a better game in the process. I like how he thinks.

Trade in two worthless games in order to get one that we will love and cherish? Yeah, I think I’m okay with that. The deal essentially portioned out a $20 trade-in value to each game, which is generous considering their substandard quality. I think we came out ahead, which, in dealing with GameStop, is generally how I like things to turn out.

I’ll pick up the game Monday over lunch. Monday night, we race.

Mommy is the best (of course)

I love to mention how amazing my wife is in all appropriate regards, and this situation is no different. She called me earlier today to say that son number 2 (who barely slept at all last night due to a hacking, barking cough) was obviously sick. More than likely some respiratory flu of some sort. Tired and listless, he vegged out on the couch all morning, coughing, fever, aches, and sore throat – not a happy camper.

The wife then called much later and informed me that the boy hadn’t drank anything since first thing in the morning. According to the hospital nurse hotline, at 12 hours with no fluids, children 2 and under are considered technically dehydrated and need to be brought into the emergency room. So, we desperately needed to get him to drink something. Unfortunately, he wasn’t having any of it. Yikes.

She sounded a bit panicked when she talked to me. I was little help at work, and even less of a help due to a mountain of responsibilities that I needed to accomplish in a relatively short span of time. But the wife was patient and she persisted.

I took off early and came home to help out. But I didn’t really need to. Sometime after I got home, she got the brilliant idea to host a miniature tea party in the living room. Complete with the entire play tea set, juice, and crackers, she and the sickly one sat down and poured each other drinks. Within a few minutes, he was happily chugging away, smiling, and quickly after that, began to feel rejuvenated. And we relaxed. A bit. We’re still watching him like a hawk. We’re not out of the woods, but at least now we can see the clearing.

It’s situations like this that remind me why she is the amazing mother, who is great at caring and doting and comforting; and I am the poor, hapless father, who has funny voices and lets the kids play video games.

All us boys are lucky ones indeed.