Important things first: I’ve finished finding all of the hidden packages on the first island in Grand Theft Auto 3 and now I’ve made it to the second island. I’ve been doing mostly taxi missions to get to know the place, but I’ve done a couple of regular missions, too. The place is huge! I had enough trouble getting to know Portland and now Staunton Island is here. My work is cut out for me.

Thank goodness for GameFAQs.

Got a link today to probably the scariest thing in the world - US Attorney General Ashcroft singing a “patriotic hymn” of his own concoction. Give me a frickin’ break.

I’m trying to find a decent stuffed Domokun doll. A guy at www.domo-kun.de has some links to online stores, but they’re always out of the one I want - if you squeeze the doll, his arms flap. If anyone out there knows where to get one of these in the US, leave a comment. Thanks.

The Blazers sucked hard last night. Really hard. They started the game out with a 25 point lead and then came back to lose the game. How do you lose the game with such a lead? Ah, let me enlighten and amaze you.

See, it’s really a strategy for them. They start out strong in the first half of the game and come out with a huge lead. This is, I’m sure, an attempt to demoralize and degrade the opposing team in an effort to make the opposition weak. And, for the most part, it works. The opposing team doesn’t come on too strong in the first half of the game.

But then - and here’s where the plot really twists - the Blazers notice that they’ve got a huge lead on the other team and they decide to take the rest of the game off. As in, “send in the clowns, ‘cuz we’re going home” style. And when the ref calls them on something, by all means, bitch out the ref so you can pull the technical foul.

So, 100-103, the Blazers lost. Not a big surprise.

The food in the box that Jenn and I were in was good, though, and since the Blazers scored 100 points, we all got free Chalupas, which pretty much just made my night.

Then Jenn had to go let out her parents’ dogs because her parents are on vacation, so I got a little late night Grand Theft Auto in. Found all but three of the hidden packages on the first island, but I know where they are, so I’m good to go. Buffy is a rerun tonight, so I hear a little package-searching in my future. Or maybe we’ll watch an episode from the first season, since Jenn hasn’t seen all of those.

This weekend was sort of a whirlwind of events - lots of stuff happened, nothing too spectacular in-and-of-itself, but all of it added up to one thing: busy.

Friday night the Winter Hawks kicked ass in game one of the playoffs against Seattle. It was good to see them win, and I had faith they’d waste Seattle in the first four games (it’s a best-of-seven series).

Saturday night, not so good. One of our players got suspended because he checked a Seattle guy and the Seattle guy got hurt pretty bad. I don’t think it was entirely our guy’s fault, but they have to suspend anyone involved in accidents like that. Anyway, that was sort of foreshadowing for the rest of the evening.

The ref was way too sympathetic towards the “poor Seattle players.” If we checked someone, we got called for interference. If they checked us, we got called for roughing. The linesmen even called offsides incorrectly. How you can mess that one up, I couldn’t tell you. Everything basically just worked in favor of Seattle, and they trounced us, 6 - 2. Granted, they did deserve a couple of the goals they got. But not all of them. I think we got screwed.

During the day on Saturday was chore day - did some laundry, vaccuuming, etc. Played a good share of Grand Theft Auto, which I now have to admit is a full addiction. It’s actually sort of nice - it’s been so long since a game has sucked me in like that, I feel a sense of relief that people can still design innovative and fun games. I had lost faith there for a second.

I also went shopping on Saturday at the local Tower Records and picked up my copy of Tom Jones’s Reload. I’m groovin’ to it right now. If you ain’t got it, get it. My hunger for Tom is finally sated. At least, for now.

Sunday I fixed my Dual 1215S turntable. Mostly. I had one, but something came disconnected underneath and required a new part. Well, I couldn’t find the part anywhere, but I did find someone selling a functional version on a mailing list. So I bought that one for $55 (cheap compared to buying a new turntable) and planned on cannibalizing it to fix the one I already had. Why not just go with the functional version and trash the broken one? Except for the one piece on the broken one, the rest of the turntable is in mint condition, like it’s new out of the box. The functional one I just bought is well loved and there are some pieces rusting on it, some pieces not in the best of shape, but, yeah, it’s functional.

Anyway, I got the new one in the mail, flipped both turntables over, and started to take the broken piece off the old turntable when I realized that Dual redesigned the stupid part sometime in the manufacturing process and, while I have in my possession two turntables of identical make and model, the one stupid part that I need is not the same. Everything else on it is absolutely identical. That just figures, doesn’t it? So I ended up swapping as much as I could without disassembling the whole turntable - The functional turntable now has a nice case on it and a nice stylus, but the rest of it is the well-loved, slightly rusting turntable I just bought; the non-functional one is still non-functional.

Since my dad and I figured that the non-functional one was basically lost anyway, Dad’s going to take the part and try to re-solder it back together in a roundabout fashion. If it works, we’ll have two working turntables. If not, no harm, no foul.

Sunday night I went to a party for Jenn’s aunt-who-isn’t-really-an-aunt-but-just-a-long-time-family-friend. If that confuses you, don’t worry. I’m in the same boat. You should see Christmas around their place - everyone’s a cousin. If you don’t know what relation someone is to someone else, they’re cousins. I still don’t even know all of their names; every time I go over there it’s a different 50 cousins.

It was a surprise party for Jenn’s aunt’s birthday. We got there at 5:00p, when the aunt was supposed to arrive.

At 6:30p the aunt finally showed up. She was happy that everyone was able to make it, but I was pretty much ready to go by that time. If you’ve ever had to wait an hour and a half to surprise a person you really don’t know, you’ll know what I mean. There was a lot of television watching going on. I think maybe someone needs to smack the person who was driving the aunt around and was supposed to be there at 5:00p. Or at least buy them a watch.

Oh, well. Chillin’ with Jenn’s parents isn’t as bad as all that. It was more the “hurry up and wait” state of things that got to me than anything. Besides, Jenn’s dad lets me wear his fez. Aw, yeah.

More irritation for my Jenn:

I found that on GameFAQs they have quite a robust selection of Grand Theft Auto 3 game guides. The cool thing is, there’s a great set of maps showing you where all the hidden packages are. (If you haven’t played the game, that may not make sense - there are all these little packages hidden around the city and if you pick up enough of them you get more weapons and stuff.)

I have a decent map to them in a recent issue of PlayStation Magazine (yes, I’m a subscriber - you should be, too), but while the general locations are shown, a description isn’t present. Trust me - you need a description. If you’re wandering around and can’t find the package, it’s probably because you have to jump your car off some ramp and land on the roof of a building, then get out and run across a couple of other rooftops and drop down into some totally inaccessible place in order to get it.

Anyway, I’ve got like 27 of the 33 packages on the first island but before I move on to the second island, I wanna get all the packages. This will make it so much easier.

Oh, and I’ll be at the Portland Trailblazers game tonight against the Memphis Grizzlies. Whoever they are. Got box seats courtesy of the ol’ employer. Can’t complain about that, right? Hey, maybe I’ll get a free Chalupa out of the deal.

“…you don’t have to be cool to rule my world…”

If you’re looking for the song “Kiss” - check these albums out.

The Very Best of Prince	The Best of Tom Jones

I am a happy camper.

During lunch I went to Turn Around Sound, a local new and used CD store (that is, local to my place of employment) and found me a copy of The Best of Tom Jones. Which, of course, contains his cover of Prince’s song, Kiss. Oooooh, yeeeeeah.

I have issued a fair warning to all relevant individuals in my department (i.e., those adjoining my cubicle) that there is about to be some serious Tom Jones action going on here and that they should watch for flying panties lest they be pelted to death.

Tom is now crooning away. I am stoked. Of course, I’ll still have to venture forth this weekend to find the Reload album, but for now, I’m good to go.