This might sound like a stupid statement, but I like it when I truly enjoy something. It seems that most popular forms of entertainment are just passable. Movies, TV, games, books... the majority, for me, are good, but not really all that great. It makes me profoundly happy to come across something that just stands out. I know it sounds obvious, but there it is.

So, as the picture indicates, I successfully complete every song in Guitar Hero on Expert difficulty. I'm quite proud of myself. Especially considering how I felt when I was new to the game, watching Eryn power through "Bark at the Moon" on Expert, thinking to myself "There is no WAY I could do that." But hours of glorious practice and hard work, and I feel like I've accomplished something. Diana actually got into the game as well, and it was a lot of fun to watch her skills progress. She had pretty much dominated Easy and Medium, and was doing pretty well in the easy songs on Hard. And I'll tell you one thing: My respect for the dextrous skills of my boy Baditude has skyrocketed. Even though we've both completed the game, his high scores were consistently 1.5x or 2x mine. That guy is good. It was hard to say goodbye, but I returned the game to Eryn this weekend. Guitar Hero 2 comes out in November, so I might start saving my nickels and dimes. It seems silly to buy a PS2 just for one game, but maybe I can find a used one.

Speaking of having fun, as well as my boy Baditude, we've been having fun playing board games recently. There appear to be a number of really fun games that fell somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between party games (totally accessible to everyone) to role-playing games (only for the true geeks). The other night, after watching the Suns beat up on the Lakers, we played a rousing game of "Mall of Terror" (I think it's called). It involves players stuck in a shopping mall as zombies are invading. Every turn, zombies show up, people have to move around, and if there are more zombies than players, the players vote on who gets thrown to the zombies. We also recently played some Carcasonne, which I think would be fun in a group, as well as a two-player strategy war-game. All good times.

In other news, Diana and I went with our contractor (who, by the way, saw the guitars and said he played the game... we were BFF at that moment) and landscaper to go to a nursery and look at plants. It was surpisingly fun to walk around and pick out stuff that we liked. They are going to bring some samples by today, I think, and put 'em in various spots so we can see how we like things. There's something very appealing about picking stuff out and having someone else do all the legwork. Unfortunately it has certain drawbacks as well...

That's about all the news for now.