Grand

Last month, Jeff and I went on a trip...just the two of us to the beach to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. (Yay us!)  Our daughter was home from college for the summer so we didn't even have to worry about getting someone to come over and care for the pets.

We had a great time and were much relaxed when we got home.

However.

When we backed in and raised the garage and started to go in the door, there was a sticky note from our child.  Here it is:

You know, it's funny how many scenarios can race through your mind in just SECONDS when you read something like that.  Here were some thoughts that flashed through my brain:

1. She broke the entire bottle of that expensive bourbon that I have up in the liquor cabinet (just moving stuff around up there, I'm sure) and was running late and left it for us to clean up.  I'm going to kill her.

2. She DRANK that expensive bottle of bourbon, realized that she'd be in trouble and then broke the bottle so that she could SAY that she was just moving it around, left the mess so that we would SEE the broken bottle, never suspect that she drank something that she KNEW I brought all the way back from Kentucky and was saving for something special and even though she's apparently an evil genius I'M GOING TO FREAKING KILL HER.

3. One (or more) of the animals vomited and she pretended that she was in a hurry and didn't have time to clean it up because she HATES cleaning up things like that, as if I don't and I cannot believe she'd just leave a mess like that to clean up when she KNOWS we'd be tired from driving all day...and okay, if my bourbon is still in the liquor cabinet, this isn't so bad but still, really?

4. I hope she didn't set anything on fire...but then, what's that got to do with watching my step?

 

All of that in the 1.5 seconds it took to turn the doorknob.  I KNOW Jeff was thinking along the same lines, because we groaned in unison as we stepped through the door and.....

 

Nothing.

 

No bourbon fumes in the air...no APPARENT puke or other pet effluent (there are worse things to "watch your step" about than a hair ball...and had she left something that horrible for me to potentially step in, I would have had to hunt her down, make her clean it up and then kill her).

 

Jeff: "Why are we watching our step?"

 

Me: "I don't know."

 

"Meep."

 

Together: "What the..."

 

"MEEEEEEP!"

 

 

Now, in the past, I MAY have upon occasion threatened Mileena's life a bit if she brought anotherdamnanimalintothishouse.

 

However.

 

That was when she lived here 24/7/365.  Now?  She's only home 'til the end of July...then it's back to college where I've already paid the pet deposit for her to take one of her other beasts with her.

So this:

 

is my very first grand-kitten.  I don't have to train her. I don't have to clean up after her. I don't have to do nothin' but cuddle and love her and then bid her adieu in just another few weeks.

 

Of course, we may have to have Mileena bring her to her "grandparents" when she comes to visit.

 

Since she made her meeping little appearance, Jeff has really come to love her.

 

Daisy seems to love her.

 

Our Golden Retriever, Simba loves her.

Libby, the chaweenie?  Not so much.

 

So everyone...introducing:

 

Nalla.

 

"It's exhausting being this cute. Oh. And Roll Tide."

When Pigs Fly

I have to admit that I was pretty slow to come to support gay marriage.  I've always believed that some people are born gay...but 15 years ago I would have said that I didn't understand why civil unions couldn't be sufficient to protect things like property rights and power of attorney and all of the legal things that needed protecting.

What has changed my mind about the right for gay people to marry hasn't been the changes that have been made to the laws of this country.  I began changing my mind about this issue as I began witnessing real people in real marriages (even if they weren't legal).  I'd like to introduce you to a couple of couples who were fundamental in changing my beliefs.

First up:

On the left is Don, on the right is Dustin.  I went to high school and graduated with Dustin (back then, we all called him Dusty).  I have forever loved Dusty.  I have ALWAYS known he was gay.  Well, let me caveat here for a minute.  When we all got together for our ten year reunion, Dusty was telling us all about how the things he and "Dawn" had been doing. "Dawn and I went on vacation here." "Dawn just loves that restaurant." "I am so glad that Dawn got these shoes for me." "Dawn and I just love living in Atlanta." "I sure wish "Dawn" could have come with me." And I thought to myself, "Hmpf...I always thought Dusty was gay.  But he seems just so happy with this "Dawn", Whaddyaknow?"
Then a year or two after the reunion a bunch of us classmates just met up with our spouses at informal gathering.  That's when Dusty introduced us to "Dawn"...aaannnd, it turns out that Dusty's Southern accent is just a tich thicker than most and that "Dawn" is how "Don" is pronounced in Dusty-speak.
Anyway, it was at this gathering that I had my first real epiphany.  The conversation went something like this:

Dustin: And then I came into the dining room and right there on the table written in the half inch of dust was, "Hi! I'm Dusty! And Dusty should dust me!"

Don: It was funny, and it was you who forgot to dust the table.

Dustin: It was NOT funny. And honestly, it would have taken you, what? 25 seconds more to just dust the table instead of leaving it like that?

Don: Yeah, well, I cleaned out the birds' cages, you know.

And so on...

And I thought to myself, "Holy crap! These two are so married."

In the ensuing years, I have watched Don and Dustin as they loved and supported each other through good times like vacations and holidays and graduations (Dustin went back to school and got his nursing degree! He rocks!) and bad times, like when Dustin dealt with the long illness and eventual death of his mother.  Don was a rock for him during the whole time Dustin's mom fought cancer...he was there with him supporting him during the funeral.
You really can't be around those two and not KNOW that they belong together.

Also?  I stay in contact with Dustin mostly through Facebook.  I have seen him ask for prayer for himself and for others in need.  I have seen him rejoice and give thanks to God.  I have seen him offer up prayers for others.  He is a kind, loving person...as is Don.

Here's the other couple that has really impacted me:

 

 

This is Cyndi and Lea.  Lea also went to my high school, but was a couple of years older than me.  I was friends with her sister, Lisa, who graduated the same year I did.  I knew Lea, but not well...just in passing.  However, when Facebook really became a thing, we became Facebook friends.

She posted pictures of their wedding (I think in 2009ish?):

 

 

And their wedding photos have always been some of my all-time favorites.  EVERYONE in them looks happy and like they are having fun.  Lea and Cyndi are obviously blissfully, happily in love.

 

And you know what else I love about being Facebook friends with Lea?  How often she posts about the church sermon she heard on Sunday, how often she is praying for this person or that...I've never met Cyndi, but I know that Lea posts frequently how blessed she is to have her in her life helping her get through the thick and thin.

Just last month, she posted a photograph of their son, Dakota getting baptized...with comments about how proud she and Cyn were of him.

 

 

So, here's what I think.  These guys?  They represent what marriage is about a whole lot better than many, many heterosexual couples.  Dustin and Don have been together 25 years.  And now that they can legally marry?  They will be doing that in a couple of weeks.  I think it's unbelievably touching that they have been together for a quarter of a century and still want to marry each other.

 

As for Lea and Cyndi...they are raising their children in a God-loving Christian home.  They attend church regularly, they participate in a good many charitable functions.  (They also ride Harleys which I think is completely bad-ass.)

Neither of these couples are a threat to "the family."  And I can see why a sterile "civil union" is not enough.

 

When the SCOTUS decision was made yesterday, I found out about it from Dustin's Facebook post...where he announced that he and Don would be getting married when Don got back from a trip.  He said that they would be "hollering "it's my wedding day, it's my wedding day" in their best Boudreaux voices!!!

 

I knew immediately what I wanted to get them for their wedding.  Boudreaux reminded me of Bordeaux, and my friend Janet Prosser who owns a wine store had introduced me to the perfect Bordeaux for my two little ole gettin' married Boudreauxs:

 

When I ran down to her store to get it, she had one bottle left...when I told her what it was for, she went ahead and gussied it up in wedding ribbon for me.

 

The loose translation of "Saint Glinglin" is "When Pigs Fly".  The literal translation is "Probably never."

I know that's when a lot of folks thought that legalized gay marriage would happen.

I think it's an appropriate wine to celebrate that it finally happened. (It's also very tasty)

 

P.S. I know what is in Leviticus and Romans.  So, I do realize what the Bible says. But to quote my beloved Granny regarding the Bible, "Honey, obey the words in red. Take the rest into consideration."

2015 was no 1994

I am not a gamer.   Let me put that right out there.  I have occasionally played video games (love the Lego series!) but I have no real passion for them.  However, I am married to a gamer and I do have a passion for him; so I do play infrequently, just so I can enjoy something he enjoys.

My husband, Jeff has played video games since the 70's when the Atari 2600 first landed into his hot little hands, and he has never looked back.  I was given full disclosure before I married him that he was a gamer...that he'd always been a gamer...that he'd always be a gamer until the day they pried the holographing transmorgaphying controller module out of his cold, dead hands (hopefully around the year 2070 or so).

I didn't mind.  Every man is going to have a hobby.  Could be fishing, could be hunting, could be golfing...whatever.  It's gonna be something that takes up a certain amount of time and money, but they need it to keep them on an even keel.

I figured that video gaming would be more expensive than some hobbies...but less expensive than most (no bass boat needed).  And even if he spent a lot of time doing it, he was just down the hall in his man cave and not out in the middle of a lake.

Jeff and I got married in 1990.  It was a busy year. Getting our first real jobs, getting married, getting our first home up and running.  Somehow, some way...Jeff missed the fact that Nintendo was having their World Championship tournament.  There were 30 cities where you could qualify for the event, that was held over a single weekend.  One of the cities was an hour and a half away from our house.  Jeff was just sick.

He said at that point that he'd never, ever again miss anything like that.

Now children, please let me explain.  In the1990's, the internet was a wee, little baby thing.  In 1993, only 1% of the world's two-way communication took place there.  And that was mostly military and some banking (remember Hackers? That was 1995).  We old-timers had to get our information in print...monthly gaming magazines or via phone. (as in, a telephone...usually one mounted on the wall with a long cord that would stretch into the living room).  Nintendo had a TIP HOTLINE that you could call.  It was called the Nintendo Power Line and when you called, it hooked you up with a game counselor (a live human being) to help you if you needed hints and tips about a certain game.

One glorious day, Jeff read about this:

This list was just the beginning...They added LOTS of additional locations.  We had the time of our lives that summer.  Jeff would call the Power Line frequently to see what cities had been added, we'd sit down with our Rand McNally Atlas:

(This is what we used instead of Google Maps) and we'd decide where we would go in the coming weeks.  The events themselves were awesome.
Nintendo would roll in to the site:

This trailer would then set up with all of its pomp and circumstance:

At the ends of the trailer were the qualifying stations.  This is where you could put up a score for the "finals".  Generally, the event lasted all weekend.  On Sunday, the four high scores would compete and the winner had a trip to the finals in San Diego.  Besides this prize, there was swag aplenty...if you won your "heat"...during the qualifying, (you went up four at a time, if you won out of that set of four), you got a t-shirt like the one you see in the picture above.  You got a black Nintendo hat for playing a qualifying round...there were also magnets for just folks who wandered up.

(Me with a free hat. Could not really tell you why the only picture I could find of myself during the ENTIRE. DAMN. SUMMER. was posing with Ronald McDonald, but there we are. Do you love my ginormous glasses?  What do you love more? The glasses or my jorts?  Myself, I'd kick kittens to have those skinny, tanned legs back.)

Along with all of this neat stuff, we met people.  We met folks that were like us, trying to win at an event for a crack at the finals in San Diego.  Jeff's best buddy, Brad, started going to events too.  We met people who had already won their trip but were hitting regionals to practice for the finals because the game being wasn't available to the public. It wasn't even a video cartridge, it was an eprom  (eprom = erasable programmable read-only memory...another "thing gone by").  We swapped phone numbers and addresses.  We started looking forward to seeing these folks at the different events.  We got to hear stories of other competitors from some of the people who's travels took them to other locations. (We heard about the Jersey gang long before we met them).

Then, Jeff won his regional in Shelby, North Carolina.  We were going to San Diego!  The pressure was off for us, but we still went so he could practice.  We also wanted to be there to root for people that we'd come to know and love.  We had made some really close friends.

And we had a chance for Jeff to win the big prize!  The grand prize was either a Ford Mustang or $25,000.  We were talking about starting a family...$25k would buy lots of Huggies.  And, being 1 in 132, that was better odds than any lottery.  In fact, I think that's how Jeff talked me in to suppressing my rampaging maternal hormones until Powerfest was over.

Let me state this clearly, in case you didn't get that.  This thing, this Nintendo Powerfest 1994 was so big, and was so important that I delayed PROCREATION for it.

The regional competitions wound down and we were set to wait it out for the finals, which happened in November of 1994.  We kept in contact with some of the folks that we'd gotten really close to during the interim as we waited out the weeks to the big event.

It. Was. Fantastic.

We went to Sea World.  We had a party in the San Diego Zoo Tree House...AFTER HOURS!  We had the whole thing to ourselves.  We met even more people that we became friends with.  We created memories and relationships that would last our lifetimes:

Jeff in his lucky shirt with Georgia (she came and stayed the weekend with us back in 2012) and Scott (aka, Beavis...still in contact with that guy via Facebook.  He's now a very handsome (and I'm betting some day famous) actor in New York

Mike Iarossi...THE 1994 GRAND CHAMPION, Billy Chappell (still in contact with...and he's visited our home several times...he still calls us to let us know when he changes jobs or his wife has a baby), James Coker (also visited us over the years) and for the life of me, a guy whose name I can't remember

Jeff didn't win the Championship...so we never had to have that conversation about how many diapers $25k would buy vs. how cool he'd look in a Mustang, but we had the time of our lives.  Except we all thought this would happen again.

Maybe they'd make it like the Olympics...every four years.

We got back home from California and settled into our new, non-Powerfest routine.

Jeff kept in contact with a lot of folks for awhile and even sent out a newsletter to the Powerfest brethren who had given us their addresses.






This is "The Binder" It holds all of the addresses, phone numbers, letters, postcards, copies of the Newsletter, etc. from Powerfest.  That's my toe in the bottom right corner.

I got pregnant a few months later...we had our daughter...we even named her after a video game character.  Time went on and we didn't hear anything about another Nintendo competition...world championship or powerfest or otherwise.

We got busy with our lives and raising our daughter.  We bought a bigger house.  We acquired many pets.  Life rocked on.




Behold, the result when nerds mate.

Funny thing, our daughter always loved video games...must be in her blood.  She really didn't fit the mold of what your typically think of as a video gamer...cheerleader in high school...sorority chick in college.  But she has played her whole entire life.  At the University of Alabama, she'd have half a fraternity over at her dorm just so she could kick their butt at Mario Party. 

I used to think of how absolutely cool it would be if Nintendo ever had ANYTHING like Powerfest again.  I know that Jeff and our daughter would have had a blast.  And what a story!  She is who she is BECAUSE of Powerfest.  We had her when we did because we were chasing the Powerfest events all over kingdom come.

And then, last month we heard that Nintendo was having a World Championship!  Holy freaking Moly!  We were SO excited. Mileena (I told you...straight outta Mortal Kombat) was home from college for the summer and everything.  This is what we had been waiting for!

Sadly, the whole dang thing fell short.

The only way to qualify was to participate and win at one of eight Best Buys. The "Southeast" location?  Was in Miami.  Not even kidding.  The other locations were just as inaccessible from Alabama.

Then there was the competition itself...the game was going to be on the Gameboy 3DS...Ultimate NES Remix.  Again, I am no gamer...but Jeff bought a 3DS and the game and gave it a whirl.  He really wanted this to be something...but he said that the randomness of the game put the risk too much on luck.  Besides, the events were all far away, there would only be one winner per site, and (we were told....seems like there was some dispute later) only one shot at a score.

Frankly, the whole thing looks like it was slapped together over a weekend employee retreat and then someone's assistant was told to make it happen with little or no flash to bang time.

I've been in contact with a lot of the old '94 crowd...I've read a lot about the whole event (it took place this past weekend) from video game bloggers...and the resounding cry I've heard has been one of disappointment.

I think that Nintendo missed a golden opportunity to bring a life-altering event (that's not even an exaggeration, as I hoped I've shown) to a whole new generation.  As it is, I don't think they made any new fans...and I know they disappointed their old ones.