This is my story.

Last week at my new job they had the annual Employee Appreciation picnic. Free food, music, games, and such. I almost won a $50 pre-paid credit card in a 'name that tune' type contest. I was tied with another woman and we each needed one point. The winning song for her was "500 Miles" by The Proclaimers, and I was just a split second slower in raising my hand than she was.

Also, they had an arcade tent with several free arcade games and 4 Nintendo Wiis. With the Nintendo Wiis in addition to just playing for fun, they were having a contest. The people with the highest scores on Guitar Hero III, Wii Bowling, Mario Kart, and the lowest score on Wii Golf all would win a Nintendo Wii. I tried Wii Bowling and sucked pretty hardcore. So I thought, what the hell? I'll give Guitar Hero a shot. I'm okay at Guitar Hero. I'm halfway through the Hard level here at home. For the contest you played on Medium and you could choose your own song. I played "Bulls On Parade" by Rage Against the Machine and got over 140,000 points, which got me the high score for the contest at that point. Honestly, I figured since the picnic went from 11:00 a.m. until 12 midnight (for the night shifts) someone would surely knock me off the top. I played at 12 noon. Well, I was wrong. I won a Nintendo Wii! I rock!

Downside is that I already own one. Well, I don't know if you could consider it a downside, but it would probably be a much more satisfying win if I didn't own one already. Anyhoo, I'll try selling it. I figure I could probably get around $200 for it. I'm pretty sure it's just the basic console, although it might include Wii Sports.

I'm just all bouncy because this is the biggest prize I've ever won.

In other less exciting work news, I posted a payment today for one of the local sportscasters, and last week I posted one for a player on the St. Louis Blues.

Wiiiiiiiiiiii!

Katie has her music playing on shuffle on her computer right now, and a song came on.

Me: (after a couple seconds of the song) Why do you have Sonic the Hedgehog music on your computer?
Her: Because it's part of the Super Smash Brothers Brawl (video game on the Wii, in case you don't know) soundtrack that I downloaded.
Me: Oh. [pause] Actually it's kind of scary that I knew that was Sonic the Hedgehog music after only a couple seconds.
Her: Yeah, it was.

I played a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog when all my family had was the Sega Genesis and Game Gear. :op

The NES system I gave Katie for her birthday turned out not to work. Got the flashy screen when we turned it on. I had forgotten that the ebayer I bought it from listed it as is and hadn't tested it. Yet we were not thwarted. Katie tinkered with it and discovered that a couple pins on the 72-pin connector were bent or loose. A common problem with the NES but easily fixable. Just buy a new connector and put it in. The new connector arrived today and Katie is now playing Super Mario Bros. 3. Yay for retro games!

On the politics side, Blago is out. By unanimous vote, he was impeached and barred from holding public office ever again. Good for that. Kind of like Dubya's re-election, I was left scratching my head when Blago was elected for a 2nd term. I very rarely vote Republican, but had there not been a Green Party candidate in that election, I would've voted for the Republican to avoid voting for Blagojevich. Now he's left facing federal corruption charges.

Dear Fellow Residents of Illinois,

Next time, could we please elect someone who isn't part of the whole Chicago good ol' boys group? The person can be from Chicago, but it'd be really nice if our next elected governor wasn't, you know, CORRUPT. If we keep this up, they're going to have to build a special former governors wing in the state prison.

So yeah, let's try to do better next time.

Love,
Me

Played Sims for a bit. I think I might create a new family. I dunno. The thing I like most about Sims is making the family and designing and decorating the house. I can take or leave the gameplay, partly because it can get kind of tedious keeping the damn people happy enough to do stuff and progress anywhere in life. I've been trying to hook Tara and Willow up forever, but they never have time to socialize with each other. Tara really, really likes Willow, but Willow hasn't been around enough to start liking Tara. They're not even friends yet. They just live together. Ha.

But yeah, the whole design thing. That's why I never actually played City of Heroes. I just kept making heroes, and then when I renewed my subscription after City of Villains came out, I made a bunch of villains. They have about 10 servers and you can have 8 to 10 heroes and villains on each, so you can end up spending a lot of time making heroes...or villains. I did make a couple that got deleted for copyright infringement. Heh. One of them was a female version of Indiana Jones. Not like I didn't expect it. I never played with her, but she was fun to make.

I find it interesting that I listed my Willow/Tara autographed action figures on eBay twice and nobody even met the reserve either time, but I listed them on the local Craigslist last night and sold them tonight for the Buy It Now price, which was twice the reserve. The guy said his girlfriend is a huge Buffy fan. So yay for me making a $100 and having them go to a Buffy fan. I'm sad to see them go, but at least I still have my two personally autographed Tara figures...and my autographed Chance poster...and my autographed Chance DVD...and my personally autographed copy of the Once More With Feeling soundtrack...and my autographed Ghosts of Albion books. Heh. No, I'm not an Amber Benson fan. Not at all. She's got a children's book in the works, and I pre-ordered her book, Death's Daughter, which is due out in March. :o) Whee!

Job interview tomorrow. It's with St. Louis Parking. They run most of the parking garages and valet parking services in downtown St. Louis. It would be highly ironic if the job benefits didn't include free parking. Anyway, wish me luck and send good vibes and all that crap. They requested salary requirements be submitted with resume and they still contacted me for an interview. So I know I would at least get paid my minimum. Good on that. Here's hoping the job search ends here.