I don't FEEL tardy.

Well, it's been a month or so since I touched base with my loyal readership :P

So what's been goin' on? Well, in a nutshell, not much. Things are going quite well. Almost too well.

To be completely honest, things have never been better... and I'm feeling a bit antsy about it.

I'm feeling quite thankful for my current station in life, and I don't want to take it for granted, as things can change in a heartbeat.

That is all.

Perhaps I'll become a feared furnace fighter?

I officially hit my mid-30's (34) in less than 3 weeks, ie: Old Man. I'm having a tough time with it.

Other than that, all is going really well.

Job is good, family is good, house is good, and dog is good (when she's not stealing food). Can't wait for Christmas.

Sorry about the boring blog post, but I had to post something to avoid 'blog neglect guilt'.

Tally-ho!

Quest Line Status: Completed!

Yeah, you read that right. As I sit here with a belly full of Frankenberry (and some BooBerry).

I feel so victorious.

We went over the border to Niagara Falls NY last night. After getting slightly lost due to our very WRONG map, we finally made our way to a Target store, where some generous online fellow cereal nuts directed me to. I was looking forward to my first visit to Target, as I'm a big fan of Kristen Wiig's 'Target Lady' skit on SNL. Unfortunately, when we got to the oh so tiny cereal aisle, my Monster Cereal was nowhere to be found. Another unfortunate thing... the guy working in the aisle was very smart and personable, and not at all like Wiig's Target Lady. Double let down. Oh well. Julie (my wife) did find me a cool "no whining!' coffee mug that I'm sipping from as I type this. "Fer a DOLLER!" (said in Wiig's Target Lady voice).

There was a Tops next door (where I found the Count Chocula last time).

Upon entering the cereal aisle, what do I find but a giant pile of Count Chocula. Hmmm, good, but not good enough.
So I and my 3 kids circle the store a bit, as I've heard that Frankenberry often doesn't associate with the cereal aisle, but demands his own display during the Halloween season. What do we again find in the Halloween section, but another huge display of the Count. Then a light bulb goes on in my head to start digging. BAMM, I find it! One lone box of Frankenberry! We are victorious... mostly. My goal was to find enough to last me a solid few months, but this will do.

With my two Monster Cereal boxes in hand (I grabbed a Count Chocula box... just 'cause) I go to the checkout.

I decided not to give up on my 6 box goal and off we go to the Super Wal-Mart that the guy at Target told us about. Skunked! Nadda boxes there (although Julie excitedly grabbed a few boxes of Chex for her Christmas Nuts'N'Bolts mix).

So we decide to head home. At least I have one box of Frank to satisfy until next weekend when we try again.

Then we see a small grocery store across the parking lot for Wal-Mart call Wegmans.

Upon arriving at the cereal aisle, we see a small crowd has formed at the end of the aisle. I instinctively know what the fuss is all about (so does my daughter as she breaks into a run).
When I catch up to her I can see stacks and stacks of purple and blue boxes.... Frankenberry and BooBerry.

Eureka! I felt like diving into the display.

I grab 5 boxes of Frank, and 2 of BooBerry, and head to the checkout.

Victorious.

Now what am I supposed to obsess about?

My Quest is turning into a Quest Line.

So, I consider myself to be somewhat of a breakfast cereal aficionado.

I've tried many cereals. I've even formed a cereal club in my late teens (where hazing new members included eating a bowl full of soggy grape nuts that have been sitting in luke warm milk for a half an hour). We were even fortunate enough to have a member from Japan who wrangled some interesting cereal from his homeland. But I digress. It was essentially a geeky cereal/videogame orgy. And it was fantastic. Many different sugary cereals flowed freely into my bowl on those occasions, the best our grocery stores would offer, but one cereal... the KING of sugery cereals in my opinion, was missing... FRANKENBERRY.

I've had a small part of my brain power(maybe 2%) silently thinking about Frankenberry cereal for about 20 years now (since about my last bowl of it). Suddenly, for some reason, about a month ago my desire for Frankenberry Cereal has nearly overtaken me. Likely due to the fact that I discovered they still make the bloody stuff around Halloween in the US. I live in Canada, and we for some reason, haven't had it here in an eternity (likely due to stricter FDA regs perhaps. see: http://www.blogadilla.com/2007/07/13/urban-non-legends-frankenberry-stool/).

I found a pack of 12 boxes on amazon.com, but when I tried to buy the stuff, they refused to ship it to my country. I found it on another website (http://www.crossroads-market.com/hard-to-find-grocer/Franken-Berry-Cereal-96-oz/productinfo/HFCE103/) but the shipping cost was MORE than the product itself.

So I decided to take my kids on a quest. I read that the SuperWal-Marts in the US often carry it. Upon looking on Google Earth, we discovered we have a Super Wal-Mart just across the border from us. Early Saturday morning, we finally set out on what was to be a quick trip into cereal cornucopia.

So we got across the border, drove for awhile, got lost on a toll highway, paid twice due to going up the road, and coming back, and finally made it to a regular sized Wal-Mart (which Google Earth claimed was a Super Center). Upon entering, we discovered that of course they had no Frankenberry. So we chanced it and went across the parking lot to the local grocery store called 'Tops'. There we found our old friend, Count Chocula. I was pretty excited, as this was a sign that I was close (I thought). I bought a box, just in case we didn't find that strawberry flavoured bastard (my booby prize I guess), and set out for the second Wal-Mart (I planned a back up just in case). This one turned out to actually be a Super Center, so I was pumped. Upon arriving at the huge cereal aisle, I discovered... NO FRANKENBERRY. Not even Count Chocula. I asked the gentleman stocking shelves if they ever carried it. He said "oh yeah, all year, we ran out about a month ago and we aren't expecting any more". My heart sank.

Funny aside, at the checkout counter at the Mega-Wal-Mart, the cashier, who was an elderly lady, asked me if I found everything I was looking for. I said 'naw' (in that 'Ralphie' voice before he discovers his BB gun behind the desk). She pry's out of me what I didn't find and sympathetically recounts here own quest for ABC cereal (I think she meant Alphabits?) and how she said she bought 5 boxes. Anyways, it was nice she understood.

I went back to Tops and bought another box of Count Chocula (I have 3 kids... and I'd like to get more than 2 bowls to myself).

On our journey back,here are some things that happened:
Family got hungry,
Went to Wendy's,
Left Wendy's due to the horrible hygene on of the cashier,
Went to McDonalds,
Paid less than $10 to feed the family (less strict FDA regs FTW?)
Drove through the slums.
Drove through a 4 way intersection where ALL the lights were GREEN (as in everybody was going... it was nuts)
Got stuck at the border due to a parade RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE BORDER! What the...!

Anyhow, we made it home, and Count Chocula tastes great... but my quest goes on.

Don't want to clean the fishtank!

I think I've discussed already how I've been hired at an outfit across the country. So now we're in the throws of packing/moving etc.

I don't really have too much to say, but am compelled to write something since I haven't written anything in a few weeks.

I will say this. The big job for me today is to clean the fishtank. I hate poop. I hate fish poop the most. Everybody in the house 'BLEEUUCK!'

Where the flip have you been?!

I get like this some times. I get into a transitory phase in my life and I tend to not tell the internets what's goin' on. Hope I didn't freak anyone out.

Biggest news, I got a job at a company I am totally pumped about! These peeps make great games, and from the limited time I've spent amongst their people, have a fantastic corporate culture (a byproduct of course, of having great people around).
They want me to start on the 13th of July which to me looks feasible.

So it looks like I'll be moving the Family across the country ASAP. Fun fun. I think we're gonna drive. I've never driven across Canada before. Should be an adventure.

What's been a real benchmark lately is the fact that a few weeks ago, we had a massive gathering at my current abode to say goodbye to some good friends of our who've since relocated themselves across the country. It was pretty surreal. The core of the group was a small group of about 5 or 6 of us from about 15 years ago who were very close. Since then, we've all gone our own ways and gotten ourselves married, had children, and basically grown up (for the most part). We've all kept in touch to varying degrees, but never have we gathered together at one place with all of our families. A great time was had by all (I think there was upwards of 40 of us at one point, judging by how many burgers we had consumed). People came from Ft St John, Victoria, Nelson (where we all met 15ish years ago) and Edmonton. What a great thing to have happened before we make such a big move.

So we've concerned ourselves with packing since then.

Video games I've been playing:
Battlefield Hereos (beta :D... it's awesome trust me)
World of Warcraft (I'm subbed until 2010, so I really don't feel any urgency to play, but it's paid for, so I go in to check it out every now and then).
Star Wars Galaxies (I hate what this game has become, but they just gave me a free month of game time, so I log in to see how it's doing... can't wait for BioWare's SW TOR)
Americas Army 3 (downloaded it cause it's free... so full of bugs it's INSANE! They laid off the entire dev team the day after it was released. When I play it, I can smell the beaurocratic BS that was pooped all over the poor devs... good luck gang. I may actually blog about this subject again soon, as I do have some rather strong opinions on the subject)

Is there hope for print media?

Awhile back, my favorite magazine of all time, EGM Magazine (Electronic Gaming Monthly), went belly up. Readership was way down siting the internet as it's main cause of death.
I was actually a bit saddened by this as EGM was the first game magazine to travel to Japan and get the scoop on new games/gear long before Nintendo and Sega wanted us to know about this stuff. I of course, hadn't purchased a copy of EGM in about 7 years due to the fact that it was pretty much all fullpage ads plus one long childish article by Seanbaby which annoyed the hell out of me. So they canned it.

Well, now it's been repurchased by the original owner/founder, and it looks like it's gonna make a comeback. We'll all have to wait and see if it returns to it's roots of gaming journalistic integrity, or if Seanbaby is once again invited to the party.

The question of course still remains. Can print media (at least in a demographic so jacked-in as gamers) compete with the internet?

Well, my opinion is, it can, but only if people don't have iPhones that they use to surf the internet on the crapper.