June 28th, 2006 09:50 hours CST
Currently listening to: "Konetic" by Hammock
Getting married in: 20 days
Feeling: sore throat. tired.

Well, things were going great. I hit the gym 5 days one week. Took walks on the weekend. Then Tuesday morning I went to the gym before work and felt totally run down the rest of the day. Ended up with a fever by the time I got home. Strep throat. Had to miss 3 days of work and I haven't been able to go to the gym since. I have a super annoying sore throat right now. Feels viral, so I can't do jack shit about it until it goes away. Why do I get piggy-backed illnesses? Drives me crazy. I'm not gonna drop 10 pounds by the wedding like I'd hoped. (;_;)

I started playing Astropop on the XBL Arcade. I have 3 of the 4 characters unlocked but on ALL of them, I'm getting absolutely shafted on Level 16. It's so unfair. While I was lying on the couch with strep, I ventured out to get antibiotics and I also stopped by EB to pick up Condemned:: Criminal Origins. I played the demo that I downloaded and instantly loved it. Fantastic game. Exactly what I needed to play while I was sick at home.

June 8th, 2006 10:43 hours CST
Currently listening to: "Trip Sky" by Supercar
Getting married in: 41 days
Feeling: good

Pretty good weekend. Rode with Chris and his moped pals for a while on Saturday. Ordered the reception invitations and bought materials for the save-the-date cards. Hopefully I'll get those out this weekend. Not much else going on besides finishing immigration forms and going to the gym every day. I'm going to try to walk a couple miles on the weekends since I can't get to the gym on those days. I talked with Hope about doing an Atkin's diet, but screw that. I just went to the grocery and restocked on cereal and got stuff to make curry. I need my carbs, damnit.

June 2nd, 2006 09:04 hours CST
Currently listening to: "Rainbow Rain" by Supercar
Getting married in: 48 days
Feeling: good

Saw the new X-Men movie on Friday night with Arlo, DJ, Keith and Seals. It was FANTASTIC. I have no idea why people are giving it such mediocre reviews! We had a blast. It was fun, it was dark, the new mutants were great and when the mutants start wailing on each other, I wanted to jump out of my seat and scream "yeah!". Kelsey Grammer as Hank McCoy/Beast is one of the best parts of the movie. I seriously want to shake his hand for playing that role. It was so fun to see him in the makeup and then watch him kick so much ass. The deaths were pretty surprising, although I had already guessed what would happen to Cyclops. Too bad, really because I thought James Marsden was great as Scott Summers and he was underused.

Loaded the Vespa onto my truck early the next morning and drove down to my parents for the weekend. Despite the horrible heat and humidity, I had a great time riding around town. Hills! Chicago doesn't have hills! I finally got to ride around campus and it was too much fun.

Hung out with my good friend Flip that night. Hadn't seen him in a while and we got to catch up and went to see X-Men 3. He liked it as much as I did. We hit a few bars afterwards and managed to offend our waitress at Steak N Shake by talking about Tourettes Syndrome really loudly.

I brought the 360 with me so I could hook it up to my parents HDTV. I have to say, while I was enjoying playing things in widescreen, I wasn't floored by the clarity. Yes, it DOES look noticeably better, but my Sony Wega at home also does a good job, even though it's not high definition. I think I finally burned myself out on Gauntlet. The fact that you can give yourself extra health by simply mashing the Y button is great, but man, that game does get dull after a while. I played a few more demos of Xbox Live Arcade games since I couldn't download the full versions as I wasn't connect to Live down there. I really like Outpost Kaloki X. I haven't played a building sim in a long time and this one is the kind I like. The last one I may have played was Afterlife by Lucasarts. THAT was a fun sim.

I just realized yesterday that the Live Arcade now has Uno. Fucking UNO!!!! That's awesome. I downloaded it as soon as I got home yesterday and played for a few hours. I really missed that game. You develop rivalries with the other players as soon as they fuck you over by skipping you, smacking you with 2 cards or even worse, smacking you with 4 cards. I'll probably play some online this weekend. I tried getting my webcam to work, but the 360 didn't seem to want to deal with it.

To continue with my gaming theme, Airiel is playing at Gameworks tonight in Woodfield. Not sure if we're getting paid or what, but it's a good chance for the under-age kids to finally see us play. Video games + Airiel + Friday night = why the hell not?