For Hyrule

Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria

Hi gang.

Some time ago I mentioned that I was taking another EF group to France, Germany and the Alps in March.

Remember that?  Well, I'd been thinking about it more and more, and honestly - I wasn't as excited about the trip as I probably should've been.  I mean, yes, I really wanted to see Neuschwanstein Castle (however the hell you spell that), but that was about it.  Half the tour was in Paris, and I really, really despise the French.

EF Tours

So, after talking it over with the Mrs., I decided to hand over my Group Leader duties to one of the teachers that was going to be chaperoning on the tour and bow out of the tour.  This freed up a chaperone spot for another teacher - the same one that had gotten sick a year earlier and had given me Group Leader duties for the Italy trip.  It was my way of paying her back, I guess.  Plus, this way, I can now start planning for next year's epic 2015 trip. . . which I'm really looking forward to (more to come on that later.)

. . .so long as it's not France.  F*** the French.

Anyway, since I was no long going to Europe in March, I decided to treat myself to an irresponsible purchase.  The timing was perfect, too.  Recently, our Nintendo Wii had stopped playing certain games.  At first, it was just dual-layered discs like Super Mario Smash Bros Brawl. and The Last Story. . . but then nearly every other disc wouldn't play on the system:

The Screen of Death.

As it turns out, the lasers in Wii consoles that read the game discs burn out after five or six years.  This makes total sense, as we were one of the early Wii users, buying our system back in November of 2007.  So now, as it were, it was time to replace the system.

But how?

I had two choices:  I could either a.) buy a refurbished Wii system, at a tune of about $100, or b.) spend $300 and upgrade to the dismal-selling Wii U.

These guys always make me cringe.

I put weeks and weeks of research into this decision.  I spoke with relatives, friends and coworkers, I sought counsel from nerds in video games stores, and I stared at websites for hours and hours.  In the end, I realized that the overall consensus made sense:  it would be better to upgrade to a better system, that was backwards compatible (it would play all of our old games), had better graphics and gameplay, would allow us to play our games much longer than buying another old Wii system, and give us a ton of new features and games to utilize.

The problem was, however, tracking down the one I wanted.

Nintendo dropped the ball releasing this system.  It had nearly a two-year drop on the PS4 and X-Box1, but the chimps in its marketing department barely sold the damn thing, and it remains one of Nintendo's worst console releases to date.  This fortunately forced the unit drop in price to $250 for the Basic 8gb console and $300 for the Deluxe 32gb console.

Legend of Zelda Deluxe 32gb Wii U Bundle

In addition, there were two 'bundle' options for the 32gb release - a Super Mario Bros. bundle (that came with included a Super Mario Bros. game and a limited edition GamePad controller) and a Legend of Zelda bundle (that came with an HD re-release of LOZ Windwaker and a limited edition GamePad controller.)  You could find the Mario one practically everywhere, but the damn Zelda one - the one I was after - was ridiculously overpriced on Amazon  (my go-to shopping site) and unavailable in major retailers.

So I decided to play the Waiting Game.

Showing how WindWaker looks on either gaming console. . .

After a few weeks of prowling around online and poking my head into stores, I was finally able to reserve a Zelda Bundle Wii U at a local GameStop.  Yesterday on my way home from work I swung in and, for $300, upgraded my nerd gear:

BAM

Last night I spent a couple hours hooking the damn thing up, installing all the software, registering a user account, and updating all the data that was needed in order to operate the system.

Wii U GamePad

This console is much more complicated than the original, but as long as you're not completely technologically retarded you can manage it.  The system basically uses a tablet (called a GamePad, mentioned earlier) as the main controller.

The tablet's screen serves as a secondary screen while playing a game on one's TV (most commonly employed as a map screen, item screen, etc.)  However - and this was a selling point for me - if you're in the middle of playing a game and someone (say, your wife or children) want to watch something on the TV, at the press of a button you can transfer your game onto the GamePad wirelessly and continue playing as if you were on a handheld device.

The GamePad itself - and this feature especially - is practically worth the $300 in my opinion.

This process was a pain in the ass. . .

Anyway, after work tonight I decided I'd undertake the long, pain-in-the-ass process of trans-ferring all my old virtual games (old school NES and SNES games you can download to play on the Wii), save data, Miis (the animated characters you design on the Wii in order to play certain games), and other data from my original Wii system to my new Wii U system.  This process took hours, and you can tell the geniuses at Nintendo hadn't thought this through initially - this was definitely an "oh shit" afterthought on their part.

Basically the process involved installing software from the Wii U on an SD card, installing software on the old Wii, reinserting the SD card into the Wii, transferring all the old data onto the SD card, removing the SD card and inserting it into the Wii U, and offloading all the data into the new system.  If it sounds easy enough, it's because I'm omitting, like, a billion little steps that were written by jargon-freaks.

Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD

Anyway, long story short, everything's up and running and the console was by far the best purchase I've made in a long, long time.  True, it doesn't have a lot of third party titles out yet, but, as an original Nintendo fan from way back, I'm not buying a Nintendo to play EA Sports games - I'm buying a Nintendo to play my favorite franchise, the Legend of Zelda, as well as other old favorites like Mario, Metroid, etc. etc. etc.

Alayna fell sick yesterday with whatever the hell Abby had last week (it was only a matter of time), so Kris took yesterday off and took her into the doctor, etc.  Today, I took the day off, and fortunately Alayna just wanted to sit around watching movies in our bedroom. . .

. . .which of course freed up Yours Truly to do the one thing he'd been looking forward to doing for a long, long time.

Saving Hyrule from the forces of evil.

- Brian

A Very Long Martin Luther Krang Weekend

Wakka wakka wakka.

Happy Martin Luther Krang Day, America.

Folks, you can't complain with a three-day weekend.  And you definitely can't complain with a four-day weekend.

From a project I had to grade on Friday. . .

No school today, seeing how it's a holiday and everything, and I didn't really have to work last Friday since it was the end of the second quarter on Thursday and we get a Teacher Work Day the day after (and honestly, Teacher Work Day is really just 'Teacher Hang Out Day' - I go in and hang out in my buddy's classroom with a few other teachers and play Nintendo, work on my iTunes library, etc.)

I'm a hard worker, I know.

On top of that, Abby caught a stomach virus, or the flu, or SARS, or something along those lines last Wednesday.  Kris took that day off to take her into the doctor's and let her rest up at home.  The next day, Thursday, I took off of work. . . bring my total number of days off this weekend to FIVE.

I'm not complaining.  At.  All.

So how'd I end up spending my ridiculously-long weekend off of work?

Observe:

Watson shreds another toy.  This dog's a machine.

Miller Lite - my watered-down beer of choice - re-released their original can design recently.  I'm a sucker for all things vintage.

Who knows.

The girls set up a Vet Clinc.  Alayna performs what I can only assume is some pretty groundbreaking medical techniques, while Abby - and her pets - wait in 'the Waiting Room.'

Abby and I constructed a fort so she could have a sanctuary for book-reading and whatever else while she was feeling like crap. . .

Once Abby was on the mend we took the kids out for some food McDonald's.  I've been overly-obnoxious lately with playing around with my new phone's camera settings. . .

Kris loves taking the kids out to eat.

We found this in Alayna's backpack.  I would've rather found cigarettes.

Playing princesses with Abby - these are the ones she said I could play be.  Notice something a little off-setting about this?

Watson's new favorite hangout spot in the house:  the window in my Study. . .

It has been cold as shit here the last couple weeks, but this weekend it sort of heated up a little. . . so we seized on the opportunity to get the kids outside and let them burn off some steam.

The girls got some pink Razor Scooters from Dad and Cindy for Christmas, and the weather has been so cold down here lately that the girls haven't wanted to take them out that much.  With a warm front coming in, however, the kids were eager to try them out. . .

Alayna is the more reluctant of the two to hop on a scooter - Abby's pretty fearless.

One of our neighbors apparently owns a G.I. Joe vehicle.

Swingers

The playground at Ginger Mill Park has had some work done to it recently, so it's not so much of a death trap anymore, but it still looks like a hobo's butthole. . .

- Brian

Hoth

I'm sure the majority of the continental United States will despise me for saying this, but I'm going to say it anyway:

Tom Terry. Just in case you were curious.

 Florida sure has been cold these last few days.

Seriously.  I'm no Chief Meteorologist Tom Terry or anything, but I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to be this cold in the sub-tropics.  Call me crazy.  It has been consistently dipping below freezing these last few nights, and, to me, that's just plain balderdash.

Apparently there's this Polar Vortex thing to blame.  Again, having no background in weatherology, I'm not about to start describing this bizarre phenomenon for you - I highly suggest you research yourself on a credible website somewhere if you're that interested in it.  Here's a picture, though, for you lazy people out there:

The land-wiener poking out from underneath Blizzard Rape 2014?  That's where I live.

Looks like pure crap, right?  Sure it does.  I can't imagine it's very fun to live in North Dakota right now.

Don't care.

With all this snow and crappy weather across the country, I've been trying to avoid social media lately.  Whenever I log into Facebook my feed (or wall, or whatever the hell it's called now - I'm a little behind on the times) is nothing but people posting screenshots of their AccuWeather apps from their smartphones, gripes about how many inches of snow is in their driveway, and school cancellations that don't affect me in the slightest.

My school?  Yeah, we didn't get a snow day.  So screw you, Midwest.

I didn't move down here for this. . .

When it's this cold out, all a Floridian can do is stay indoors.  Walking the dog requires socks and shoes, and I'm not cool with that (I'm a flip-flop sorta gentleman, myself) - I don't like putting on layers unless I'm venturing out into snow.  Palm trees and winter jackets don't equate in my book, so anytime I'm forced to bundle up while mowing the lawn, I get sort of - well - pissed.

That means that, outside of work and school, the Houghs are more or less shut-ins.  Family time consists of huddling together for warmth, sleeping inside the guts of taun-tauns, and otherwise complaining about the 50-degree weather.  The upside to this cold snap is that takes place during the greatest time of the year:  Imperial Stout Season.

This is what God probably drinks.

One of my favorites. . .

Granted, one can find imperial stouts anytime throughout the year, but the seasonal imperial stouts come out in the winter months, when the cold weather requires one's beer to warm their insides with black-tar booze.

Chocolate stouts, coffee stouts, spiced stouts - all thick as sludge and strong as Zeus' man-parts.  Imperial stouts are my favorite style of beer, and I try to take advantage of these crappy winter months and stock up on the Nectar of the Gods while I can. . . 'cause eventually winter fades into over-rated Spring and all the run-of-the-mill IPAs start rolling out.  Which, to me, all tastes the same after awhile.

Do to the routine schedule and crappy weather lately, not much has happened around here. . . but here's a couple pics for you anyway ('cause I'm nice):

While the men of the house seize some siestas, the girls roast real marshmallows over a fake campfire (in reality, this doesn't work - don't waste your time, folks.) 

Our kids are easily entertained.

After years of storing it in its case in the closet, I finally hung up my Michael Kelly F-Style Mandolin over my turntable.  I positioned it off-center as I want to eventually pick up a requinto guitar to hang alongside it. . .

Introducing the girls to Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind - one of my favorite movies and definitely one of the best animated movies ever made.  I just picked it up on Blu Ray and the kids were into it (at least for the first half of the movie. . . they have short attention spans.)

Reading Frozen books in bed.  Alayna can easily read the Step-Into-Reading Level 2 books, so we'll have to push her up to the Level 3 books soon.  Abby enjoys flipping along to the book-on-CD  books (we used to use cassettes back in the day, but hey. . . whatever.)  Frozen, by the way, is to little girls what crack is to the mayor of Toronto.

Watson, in his natural state.

Anyway, while the cold wind bloweth, and the black stouts floweth, we Houghs will continue to soldier on through the perilous mid-30s lows/high-50s highs days with the resilience and determination that one has come to expect from our family name.

The holidays are over, the adventures overseas have come to a close, and everyone's going back to work and school and subsequently freezing their pants off.

Let's do this, winter.

- Brian

Cowabunga.