Arcade Rituals

You would think, based on all the time I spend playing video games, that I might enjoy bringing my children to an arcade for a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon. But you would be wrong. I hated arcades as a kid (I made an exception a few times to play the Ninja Turtles arcade game back in the day) and I still hate them now. But the boys had fun, and they earned enough tickets to bring home a stuffed, blue monkey and a deck of Red Socks cards. Wow!

Catching Up

We’re finally catching up on some work outside the house. The house is surrounded by raised flower beds, and we desperately needed to replace the mulch last year. Of course, last year we got a little sidetracked by the arrival of the children.

So this summer, the flower beds looked really awful. Without enough (any?) mulch, the weeds were starting to take over. We were nearly at the point where I was only going to come and go under cover of darkness!

But … landscapers to the rescue! I was afraid to get a quote, because I didn’t think we’d be able to afford to hire someone to take care of it. When I finally did get one, it was a lot less than I had expected. I accepted the quote, and two days later a team of gardeners was outside my house, fixing everything.

It’s all done now, and it looks great. Remind me never to let it get so out of hand again!

No Visitors!

My nephew was supposed to come play today, but he’s feeling sick. My sons will be disappointed, but on the bright side, I did clean up!

Some 3DSatisfaction

If you say that headline out loud, it sounds like dissatisfaction, right? Oh well, I tried.

A few months ago, I tried out a 3DS in a store. Took me a minute to get my eyes to adjust, but then it was amazing. New, different, and very appealing. I made my husband give it a try, too.

“Does this mean we need to get one?” he asked.

“No, not yet,” I replied. “I’ll wait until a few months from now when there are some games I want.”

So now it’s a few months later, and there still aren’t any games I want. I went over to Gamespot this morning to look at the available games, and this is what I saw:

Three of the ten best rated games are NINTENDOGS?!

So it’s not exactly surprising to see that Nintendo’s investors aren’t happy, is it?

I was burned on a console once before. I bought a PSP at launch, and was extremely disappointed when no games came out. Sure, six years later, it’s an all right handheld, and I can download old PSOne games, but it took an awfully long time to get there. After that, I decided not to buy consoles at launch anymore. I’ll wait until there’s a large enough library of games that I won’t feel conned if the library doesn’t expand.

Open Letter to Scott Brown

Sent this letter to our illustrious (cough, cough) senator today:

Senator Brown, I can’t begin to express how disappointed I am that you couldn’t be bothered to participate in the Massachusetts delegation’s “It Gets Better” video. The idea that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth ought not to kill themselves seems like something of universal appeal.

But then I did some research, and saw that not a single Republican elected official has appeared in an It Gets Better video. I thought you promised us that you would make decisions for yourself, but here you are, walking in lockstep with your party.

Massachusetts is better than this, Senator. You ought to be better than this. Stop playing politics. Start using your position of tremendous influence to make a difference in the lives of our young people.

You’re hoping to be re-elected, aren’t you? Represent the people of Massachusetts instead of the people of Minnesota’s sixth district!

Sad News

A couple of days ago, on of my five-year-old’s preschool classmates passed away. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor about four months ago. He attends a pretty small preschool, so this little girl was someone he knew fairly well.

I didn’t know the little girl — she was five, too — or her parents, but I used to see her at school pickup every day, while waiting in the car line. She always had a huge smile, and bounced around in her brightly colored rubber boots on snowy and wet days.

The first thing I did after learning about her death — well, after I went upstairs, closed the bedroom door and sobbed — was look for some resources about talking to children about death. With a little more information, I went to pick up my son from summer camp.

We went for a little walk, sat on a park bench, and talked a little about his friend. He knew that she was very, very sick, but he doesn’t really connect being sick with dying. He doesn’t have much of a sense of what death means.

Our conversation went much as I expected, from knowing my son and reading about how children process this information. In the last couple of days, he has asked a few questions that absolutely break my heart, like, “But Kara and Leah are best friends. Who will be Kara’s best friend at school now?”

In the first thirty-three years of my life, I have been fortunate never to know a child who died. This summer, we have known two — my son’s classmate, and also the daughter of my husband’s boss.

I really hope I can go at least another thirty years before I know another.

Entertainment To Do List

I’ve got a serious entertainment backlog right now.

Xbox 360: Bastion

Playstation 3: InFamous

PC: Finished all 5 episodes of Back to the Future, always playing World of Warcraft.

TV: I’m watching Drop Dead Diva. Shh, don’t tell anyone.

Netflix: Season 2 of True Blood

Books: A Clash of Kings

The World is Upside Down

Day is night! Black is white! My three-year-old just told me, as he was finishing lunch, that he needs to take a rest today. So we walked upstairs, he climbed into bed, and now he’s taking a nap for the first time in a few months. And with that, I’ve been afforded a great opportunity to write my first blog post.

Here, I plan to write about the intersection of the three biggest areas of my life: being a parent, being a married gay man, and being a big old geek. Sometimes it feels like they don’t intersect at all — my husband and I are the first parents among our gay male friends, and when I’m at one of my sons’ events, I often feel shockingly suburban, shockingly mainstream, and completely assimilated. And when I feel assimilated, I think, “BORG!”