Despite seeing Christmas decorations showing up at my local Lowes store, Halloween is a month away. It's Noah's favorite holiday, as he loves dressing up...and the free candy is a big bonus as well. Last year he went as several characters, one of which, as you can see in this picture, is Mario. The costume is the same one you see being sold just about everywhere today. The only original thing from the costume was his basket. Although you can't tell from the picture, but there's a Starman on the front of the basket that my wife made with some yellow foam fabric. The basket itself was one that was in the shape of Spiderman's head, but she used that fabric to cover it up and place the Starman in front. So the question was asked of what he wanted to go as this year. And his response was Luigi. Should we just buy the same type of costume again? I wanted to do something different, as in, buy some actual clothes, i.e. jean overalls, long sleeve shirt, white gloves, make look more organic at least instead of that all-in-one catsuit type of costume that are usually made. I haven't started out on looking for these items yet, but I'll be sure to show the final result if I do find the items I'm looking for.

See that picture? It's supposed to have the number 49 in it. I say 'supposed to', because I can't see it. Yes, I'm color blind. It's a funny thing to have, as I see the world just a little differently than others. At a stop light, the green light appears a greyish-white. When playing Uno, the red and green colored cards will look identical. And if some T-shirt has some brilliantly colored design on front, it could look dull and bland or really awful to me. It does have some disadvantages and I've never heard of any advantages in being color blind, except maybe you can really say that graphics don't matter, because it'll look crappy with all of the dull colors you see (ok, bad example). But overall, it's nothing to get upset about, really only hampers the little things, and is nothing to fret over, except...


It can have a frustrating effect when playing certain video games. Take for instance Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo for the PS1. Years ago, I was looking forward to this as something both the wife and I can play together. When we started playing against each other, she was wiping the floor with me, as she kept beating me over and over again with ease. She then wondered why I was placing these red gems with the green ones? I asked, "Wait, that's green?" Next match, same question from her, but now questioning the greens and yellows together. My response? "I thought that was yellow!" Game was unplayable for me, unless I changed the tint of the television set to where it made the four colors more distinguishable to me, but at the same time, it made the presentation of the game in general, butt-ugly.

Then there are other action/platformer type of games, where everything is fine, until I come up to some sort puzzle that is color based. If it has any combination of red/green/yellow or blue/purple involved, then I'm screwed. Before, I have to get someone, like my wife, to tell me what this color is and that and try to move forward. Thankfully, it hasn't dampened my enjoyment on playing video games throughout the years and it's just something that comes around rarely, if at all.

Noah doesn't seem to be inflicted by it...so far, which is a good thing, cause if that one time that I get stuck due to color ever arises, I know he's right there, watching me play, and will be able to help me out with correct color identification.

Toys, toys, toys. Who doesn't love toys? Seeing some of the toys that are made today, really makes me envious in that, "Man I wish I had that as a kid," type of feelings. But there's still some things that today's toys cannot match in awesomeness in regards to what I played with and seen in my youth. But one of the things that I didn't get to mess around with are video game themed toys. The only thing that came close to that to which I owned were the board game versions of Donkey Kong, Ms. Pac-Man and the best one of the bunch, Pac-Man. Now, there's tons of stuff out there, which are mostly in toy figure form, but that was better than nothing back then.

This past year, while out Christmas shopping for our nephews and nieces, my son had spotted something in the remote control car section at the toy department at Target. "Dada, come check this out!" I went over and saw on the shelf, miniature remote controlled Mario Karts. I couldn't believe how small these things were. Of course he wanted them right then and there, but I told him to wait until it's Christmas, while at the same time, making a mental note of possible things to get him for Christmas or what to recommend to relatives if they ask what he wants for Christmas. So he got three of them, Mario from us, Wario from my parents and Bowser from my wife's parents.

So how great is it? Eh...it's alright, but these things have some issues. First off, the rubber tires in the front always comes off. Why the front tires are not secured on there, like the back tires, I have no idea. Second, the range to how far the kart can go from you is limited, very limited. In the picture, you see the white square remote, which is also small itself. You have to keep pointing it to the kart in order for it to move. And if you're thinking of racing the kart from one end of the house to the other, well do your best impression of the Hunchback of Notre Dame and hunch over, keep pointing the remote to the kart and walk behind it in order for it to keep it moving.

But still, it's pretty neat to mess around with. We would create our own race course with Legos or Lincoln Logs and have some live action Mario Kart racing in Noah's room. No throwing shells or drifting, but with some ramps for jumps, its all good.

There was always that one arguement that folks (parents usually) have against video games. "Video games makes you fat and lazy from sitting around all day and eating junk food. Go outside and play!!!" My parents always gave me this lip service when I was young. Thankfully I don't have this problem with the little guy, as you can see from the video below.



This is the way he plays games, always. He'll go into his room, play for a while, then an hour later, he'll come out, dripping in sweat as if he ran a marathon. Being that he's currently growing up on the Wii, the motion controls kind of got him that way, even when he's playing Super Smash Bros. Melee with a Gamecube controller. Sometimes when he's watching me play and I'm in an agressive situation, he'll start jumping around like that as well. The guy is going to have some strong legs.