Today was not my best day.  In fact, it was filled with FAIL after FAIL.  It started off promising enough.  I got NHL ready for school and myself ready for a day of training.  I dropped NHL off and began into work.  Halfway to work, I snapped out of “auto-pilot” mode realizing that I wasn’t going to my office today.  I was going to training!  And training was in the exact opposite direction.  Note: Face-palming while driving is *not* recommended.

After I got to training, things looked up.  I arrived on time and the training session was going well.  Then we broke for lunch and I went with my boss to a local sub place.  Exiting his car, I happened to look down at my two brown shoes.  My two MISMATCHED brown shoes.  I was mortified but resolved not to mention a word lest I suffer more embarrassment.  Instead, I went out of my way to (as subtly as possible) make sure both shoes weren’t in his field of vision at the same time.

At one point during the day, I had needed a password for a site.  Now, I usually carry around a USB flash drive with passwords and some other documents.  So I plugged that in and got my password.  After I arrived home, I realized that I couldn’t remember putting the flash drive away.  Yes, I had forgotten the drive at the training center.  I called and they were closed for the day.  I was able to reach my account representative who said he’d put it aside for me.

So, after all of that stress, I’m looking at the big To-Do list of things I should get done tonight and thinking “I *really* want to just veg out with some Kirby’s Epic Yarn until it’s time for bed.”  I think I’ll justify it by saying that any development work or housework I do tonight is potentially cursed.  Who knows?  I might delete the database instead of copying it or drop the dishes while trying to load the dishwasher.

Here’s hoping tomorrow is better.

Last night, I took a big photographical step.  For years, I’ve been interested in photography.  I had purchased a Panasonic digital camera that, while a Point & Shoot, could also be used in Manual mode similar to a DSLR.  I’ll admit that I relied on Automatic too much, but I had fun playing around with macro photography, different filters and other features.

Then, I went to BlogHer and got to try out someone’s DSLR.  We all know how that went.  I just had to have a DSLR, but money’s too tight to simply ditch my perfectly working Point & Shoot camera, right?  Well, about a week ago, I went to take some photos of the kids sleeping and noticed that the flash wasn’t firing.  Yes, my camera’s flash had up and died. The camera still took nice photos provided the lighting was good, but that just doesn’t cut it.  I take too many indoor, low light scenes to rely on a non-flash enabled camera.

So I looked around, asked some knowledgeable people I know, wavered back and forth, and finally took the plunge.  The Pentax K-x that I ordered from BeachCamera.com should arrive here within a week’s time.  Until then, I’m going to be refreshing my e-mail repeatedly looking for the "It’s Shipped, here’s the tracking number" e-mail.  After that, I’ll be refreshing the tracking website to see how close I am to being able to take photos with my new DSLR.

And what of my flash-dead Point and Shoot?  Don’t worry.  It’s not going to be simply tossed in the trash.  I have – oh god - a plan.  (Sorry.  Just had an 80′s "Perfect Strangers" flashback.)  I’m going to give that camera to NHL to use.  No, he won’t be able to use it whereever and whenever he wants, but I will allow him to use it to come with me on photographic journeys.  I’ll use it with him to teach him about cameras, how they work and how to take photos with them.  He is seven years old now and I think this is the perfect age for me to teach him about my obsession hobby.

Time for a serious blog post. For the last several months, B and I have been rather quiet about something that has been going on behind the scenes. What started with an innocent Tweet back to someone we didn’t know has now escalated into much, much more. I’ve become nauseous over this entire thing.

An individual believes that we are someone else, someone she knows. Thanks to this, she will not leave us alone. We have blocked her on Twitter and gone to other precautions to safeguard our family.

I can not go into a lot of specifics, but I wanted to let my readers, PR professionals, and companies that I have worked with know what is going on in general terms. Why now? Well, this individual has been threatening to contact you. Via blog contact forms and comments, along with other tactics, she has stated numerous times that she will be notifying you of our so-called "lying ways to get free items."

B and I have worked long and hard to build trusting relationships with everyone on our blogs and beyond. We hope that you will work with us while we try to get this matter taken care of.

Thank you for your support.

By now, the turkey has been gobbled and the stuffing has stuffed our bellies.  Different people like different foods on Thanksgiving, though.  For some, sweet potatoes are the ones to beat.  For others, cranberry sauce from the can is the item for which they ran.

In my case, I always love stuffing has been a favorite of mine for years.  Sweet potatoes casserole with melted marshmallows, however, are a close second.  They remind me of growing up and fighting with my mother annually about taking a piece solely to eat the marshmallow topping.  After years of insisting that I hated sweet potatoes, I tried them and found that I loved them!

Oh, and don’t worry.  The turkey in the photo wasn’t burnt, but smoked.  It was perfect inside and quite tasty.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: What is your favorite Thanksgiving food that you ate tonight?  Which food inspires the most Thanksgiving memories?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the McLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #65

Thanksgiving always brings back so many memories.  Refusing to eat the sweet potato casserole that my mother made every year because I insisted that I didn’t like it.  Until that one year that I ate it and realized that I loved it.  NHL’s first Thanksgiving when we went to my sister’s house and he fell asleep on the floor.  My sister’s dog (on the big side) walked over, sniffed him and then walked over him taking extreme care to not touch him at all despite her paws being right next to his face.  All the gatherings of family that didn’t see each other many times during the year.  Thanksgiving seems to be a time for everyone to slow down and enjoy time with our families.

I wish you and your family a very Happy Thanksgiving.

These arrived yesterday and will likely consume my weekend.  I’ve already played a bit of Kirby’s Epic Yarn and I’m hooked.  The others?  JSL and NHL are going to fight me for control of the Wii.  Meanwhile, B will silently shake her head.

When I reviewed Mater’s Tall Tales for the Wii, I mentioned that an NHL Video Review would be coming soon.  Saturday night, I let NHL start playing Mater’s Tall Tales while he reviewed it.  And so, without further ado, here is NHL’s video review:

Disclaimer: This review was part of a blog tour campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Disney Interactive Studios. I received the Cars Toon: Mater’s Tall Tales Wii game to facilitate my review.

Last night, I went to check on NHL and JSL.  They were sleeping just fine, except for the fact that they seemed to need some remedial lessons on the usage of pillows.  NHL had the pillow over his face.  JSL was using it for a leg rest, having turned nearly 180 degrees.  Naturally, I went to take a photo of them before fixing their sleeping positions.

See JSL in this photo?  Neither do I and no, I didn’t leave the lens cap on.  The camera was on, lens cap removed and flash all set to go off.  But the flash didn’t go off.  I was left with an all black photo.  I turned the camera off and on but that only seemed to make it work once before dying again.  I finally managed to snag these shots.

Thinking that perhaps the battery was low (even though the indicator said it was fully charged), I charged it overnight.  Trying it Thursday morning, though, showed that this wasn’t the problem.  I spent most of the day thinking that my trusty camera was dying.  I’ve been lusting after a DSLR for awhile now, but I never could justify spending the funds.

With my camera dying and B’s camera acting all funky (the battery indicator will say it needs new batteries when she’s just put a fresh set in), I’ve been thinking about camera lifespan.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: How long has your current digital camera lasted you?  How long have your previous digital cameras lasted?  Did they die on you or were they just replaced with a new model?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the McLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #64

“Did I ever tell you about the time I told Lightning about the time I was a Fire Truck?”

Mater’s Tall Tales was a series of short Disney/Pixar cartoons that showed Mater telling Lightning McQueen a (what else?) tall tale about his past.  Mater would be a bull(dozer) fighter or a drift racer in Tokyo or befriend a UFO.  Just when Lightning couldn’t believe any more or when Mater was backed into a corner of his own storytelling, Mater would pull Lightning into the story.  “Well, shoot.  You should know.  You was there too!”  Usually, this would result in the pressure being shifted to Lightning and Mater emerging victorious.  Flash back to Radiator Springs and Lightning would express disbelief with the whole tale.  Meanwhile, something would happen that would lead us viewers to wonder just how much of that tale was “tall” and how much was “truth.”

While these Tall Tales are entertaining, can you make a fun Wii game out of them?  Dadgum!  Of course, you can.  Each of Mater’s six tall tales is represented: Rescue Squad Mater, Mater The Greater, El Materdor, Unidentified Flying Mater, Tokyo Mater, and Monster Truck Mater.  (NOTE:  There are 3 more Tall Tales cartoons, but I believe these were released after the video game work was done.  Perhaps room for a Mater’s Tall Tales 2 for the Wii?)

Each tall tale includes 5 mini-games which are integrated into the story.  Games range from firing hubcaps at floating tires, to putting out fires, to racing up a tower in Tokyo, to dodging bulldozers.  Before each mini-game, a quick tutorial on how to play it appears.  The games fit in perfectly with the story and really make you feel like Mater’s included you in his tale.

With just this, Mater’s Tall Tales would be a pretty good game, but they upped the ante.  Depending on how well you do, you can earn a bronze, silver or gold trophy.  Earning a trophy, unlocks the game in Free Play and Playlist mode.  Free Play mode lets you choose a single mini-game to play while Playlist lets you choose a series of games from across all of Mater’s Tall Tales.

In addition, you earn money for completing games.  The better you do, the more money you earn.  Money can be used in your garage to buy cool add-ons for your car like spinning hubcaps a new paint job or a rear spoiler.  There are enough free items that you start with to nicely customize your car avatar, but you’ll quickly find yourself trying to earn a little more to buy that cool accessory or paint job.

Another cool feature are the collectibles.  Each game, besides having a goal, has a second goal that adds a collectable to the board in your garage.  These vary from doing very poorly (don’t get the flag in a bulldozer fighting game) to doing very well (don’t get hit at all by ninja car throwing stars) to the somewhat odd (knock over 5 cacti while fleeing from government cars after Mator’s UFO friend).  By and large, they aren’t hard to get, but they spur you on to play the games more and more.

As you earn more trophies and unlock more items, you can also unlock more cool license plates for your car.   While these don’t have any in-game use that I can tell, they are a nice touch.

Finally, there’s the multiplayer aspect.  Up to four players can play at once.  Players aren’t really ranked from first place to last place, but each player earns money/trophies depending on how they did.  Of course, the design of some games means that one player can only do well at the expense of the other players.  (The fan spotting game, for example, where the fastest one to spot the fan gets the points.)

NHL and I both loved playing this game.  Not a day has passed without at least one request from NHL to play Mater’s Tall Tales.  (An NHL video review will be coming soon.)  JSL even joined in on the fun.  Although he was a bit too young to play it properly (and too independent to allow me to help him), he still had a blast.  I would definitely recommend this game for anyone, but especially for anybody who is a fan of the Disney/Pixar movie Cars.

Anything you’d like to add, Mater?

“If I’m lyin’, I’m cryin’.”

Disclaimer: I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Disney Interactive Studios and received the Cars Toon: Mater’s Tall Tales Wii game to facilitate my review.  All of the opinions expressed above are my own.

This morning was stressful.  As in rip your hair out, go running down the street screaming, hide under your desk in the fetal position while sucking your thumb stressful.  I wrote out a whole post about one of the major causes of the stress, but then thought better of it.  It’s something personal that I’m not quite comfortable sharing completely just yet.  Needless to say, I’ve been on edge.

I guess not sleeping hasn’t helped either.  The past 3 nights I’ve gone to sleep at midnight or later only to get up at 6:30am the following morning.  I’m tired, but I just can’t seem to drag myself into bed earlier.  I feel like I need to do just one more thing before hitting the sheets.  At the same time, I feel like my To Do list is a giant treadmill.  Complete one item and another thing gets tossed on top.

I’ve been stress-eating again, too.  Being tired and stressed makes me feel hungry.  Feeling hungry makes me eat.  And eat.  And eat.  Then suddenly I feel sick to my stomach.  Yet, sitting behind a desk all day leaves me little other stress outlets.  Luckily, a few years back, I got a pedal exercise machine that fits under my desk.  (I think it’s this one, but that’s unavailable for purchase.)  I’ve taken to pedaling my stress away so I guess that’s healthy.  Just put all of my stress into my legs and pump those pedals until my muscles ache.

I think tonight I’ll try to get to sleep early (translation: about 10pm) and will try to calm down some more.  Stressing out about the situation isn’t making the situation any better.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some pedaling to do.