Nine Hundred and Ninety-Eight

This is my 998th blog post on The Fall of James.

Wow.

I asked Julie to guess the total number of posts on The Fall of James. She said, "200."

Julie is bad at math guessing. (And I'm bad at grammar.)

I started this blog on Sunday, July 27, 2007. I'm surprised it has lasted this long. I'm surprised that I've posted nearly a thousand times. I'm glad it's still going. I originally started The Fall of James thinking that it would be a useful digital scrapbook and that it would keep interested friends and family up to date on our increasingly busy lives. Just five short years ago, things were very different in our life. Julie and I had only been married a couple of years. We had one, JUST ONE, kid. We both worked. We lived in a little house in the purgatory between Dayton and Cincinnati otherwise known as Franklin, Ohio. We had dogs. We owned breakable stuff. We slept.

A lot has happened in the last five years.

Which, of course, is why I started this blog. My first blog post:

My wife, Julie, and I found out a couple of months ago that we are (she is) pregnant with twins. God willing, they will be arriving some time this fall, shortly after our first son turns two. Which should be right around the time we're moving out of our current house and moving into the house we just started building. (Well, we're not actually building it ourselves. That's what we're paying other people to do. On top of becoming a parent of multiples and building a house, I've also decided to run my first half-marathon this fall. I'm 20 pounds overweight and haven't done any vigorous exercise for a few years, so I'm sure I can get in race shape in a few weeks.

It was only five years ago, but it feels like decades. Since that original post we built two houses, sold one, lived with my in-laws for a year, found new homes for our dogs, got pregnant four times, had a miscarriage, had twins, had two more singleton kids, we watched Bring It On too many times, I ran a half marathon, I quit my job, I became a stay-at-home parent, we took the kids to Florida, Vegas and Seattle, we took the kids on the Appalachian Trail, various kids started school, gymnastics, soccer, basketball, baseball and tennis, we went to funerals and weddings, we welcomed new relatives into the world, I learned to cook, Julie learned to be a programmer, an accountant and a financial analyst, we stayed up late and got up early, we cried, we laughed...

We laughed a lot. How couldn't we?

Wow. In retrospect, things seem pretty boring these days.

So five years and a thousand posts seems like a milestone of some sort. Who knows if this will last through another thousand posts, but I should probably think of something to mark the occasion. I'll get back to you on that. Maybe this weekend I'll take a trip down memory lane and find some of my favorite posts of the last five years and share them with you -- I always love going back through my blog. That was kinda the point all along...

They're So Talented

Know Your Roots - Retro Atari Gaming

There was a growing level of excitement as I unpacked this exotic gaming system from the plain cardboard box in which it has been stored since I bought it on eBay over a decade ago. Every few years I break it out as novelty entertainment during a party or gathering. Usually within a day or two it goes back into hibernation in the closet. This was the first time, however, that I was resurrecting the Atari 2600 purely for the kids enjoyment. Jameson was particularly intrigued by the idea that this system was the great, great, great grandfather of our Wii and PS3.

His enthusiasm was building as he poured over our catalog of games, each with a more magnificently illustrated label than the last. The game titles foretold of epic adventures to be had with names like Space Invaders, Missile Command and Air Sea Battle. He seemed appalled that I had withheld such an amazing collection of electronic entertainment from him up until now.

And then we put in Pac-Man. The disappointment was instant and absolute.

Let's try another one. Lame. And another. Lamer. And another. Barely playable. And another, and another, and another.

These are boring! The control doesn't work right! It's not like in the picture!

It looked like my attempt to bridge the generational video game gap was going to be a failure.

But then we tried Pac-Man again. The old man showed him a thing or two. Things started to be less about the graphics and sound and more about the challenge. The same thing for Space Invaders. Before long, that familiar look of concentration and determination had emerged on Jameson's face as he racked up points on Asteroids.

It's true -- much like storytelling in movies -- gameplay transcends technology.

So now we have a house full of Atari gamers. The most popular games so far are Ms. Pac-Man, Asteroids, Grand Prix, Berserk and Space Invaders.

The best quotes so far:

"Is there a hard drive in here?"

"How do you pause?"

"Why are the controllers so hard to push?"

"Can player two just hop in and hop out like in LEGO Star Wars?"

"Are these the only video games you could play when you were a kid?"

"Can I save my game?"

On a side note, let me just say it was refreshing to set up a piece of technology that required only three steps: 1) connect a single cable from the Atari to the TV, 2) connect the Atari power supply, 3) tune the TV to channel 3.  That was it -- Special Agent Oso could have done it. No digital audio cables. No networking. No sensor bars. No account creation. No set up and option screens. Apple only wishes their products "just worked" like this.

Sexy Time!

When you have four kids, making plans for Halloween partying can be a last minute undertaking. As with most aspects of our social life, it's all dependent on the babysitting situation. This weekend, Julie's parents came through for us and we got to attend a real live Halloween party. (Thank you!) Of course, we didn't cement our plans until the last minute and that made for some rushed costume plans. Like the night before Halloween rushed. The end result was Julie as some sort of white trash housewife with a big plastic wig that made her look like she was out of the Simpsons. My limited costume choices led to the merging of a Borat wig and mustache with an "ancient warrior" get up. I was "Boratacus." I think maybe I looked more like a 1st century Rick James. Whatever. I'll plan ahead next year. For those of you not in the know, the orange costume that my brother Kip is sporting below is DJ Lance Rock, from Yo Gabba Gabba! See the origin of DJ Lance here. (By the way, I'd rather go to this than a Wiggles concert any day.)

The party was great. Lots of great food and lots of alcohol. Both of which I had too much. Especially the alcohol. Let's just say it was a bumpy ride home. And let's just say that moving my sister into her new apartment this morning was the last thing I wanted to be doing. I am officially way too old for things like beer pong, jello shots and ice luges. I was officially too old for those things years ago, but I had to check one more time, just in case. Yes, way too old.

By the way, the ice luges weren't just your run of the mill blocks of ice. They were, um, shaped. Like things. I'm definitely, definitely too old for this.

Warning, the following pictures may offend some clergymen, Republicans and kindergarten teachers.