Flashing Back

Last night I was out boozing it up with some friends.  The funny thing about going out to a bar in Vegas is that gambling is so integrated with our lifestyles that the bars are loaded with Video Poker machines so that you can piss away money while you drink.

That got me to thinking about shortly after the online poker boom where you could play online slots for real money as well.  And, it didn't stop there, it was Black Jack, Pai Gow, Roulette, Craps and just about anything else you really wanted to do.

I remember going over to the dark side a few times and transferring money from one of the random poker sites to their casino/sportsbook so that I could play some of the games which almost always ended up being craps.  I kept searching, like countless before and after me, for some sort of system to beat the craps game because I just loved playing so much.  Playing at a casino can get to be pretty expensive though especially now that the cheapest game is a $5 table unless you are willing to drive way out of your way and head down to Jokers Wild or somewhere else.  How I do miss those dollar craps tables at Nevada Palace before they tore it down and put the NEW Cannery up in it's place.

I never found the magic formula but the game also never lost its luster for me.  I've had sessions where I've won over a grand and I've had sessions where I lost so quick I had to stop and ponder if my chips had even touched the felt.  Yet time and time again when I'm walking through a casino (by myself or in the company of others) I find myself looking at every craps table and game that I walk by.  I find myself listening for the sweet sweet sounds of an active table on a hot roll.  Winner Winner Chicken Dinner.

I've done well at avoiding this addiction of mine over the last few years and I only play occasionally, usually when friends are in town visiting and I'm pretending it's the old days and I'm just another tourist.

Maybe I should just pull all of my money out of my accounts, quit my job and focus on beating craps.  It would be an amazing life for a week or two and I'd have a lot of fun stories to tell.
It all ends the same though.

Seven Out

600

Welcome to post 600 - in here you will find nothing special.  I just felt obligated to point out that I have published 600 bastard posts and y'all have read most of them.

Any other bloggers out there tell me what is so special about March?  Does anyone else have the same noticeable increase in traffic during this month?
March and April of 2012 were my biggest months at the time.  Then in 2013 it happened again where I had a spike during March and it continued during April.

As I sit here in 2014 March is currently less than 100 hits away from being my best month ever and I know it's not because I constantly churn out posts that you all are clamoring to read.  For the most part all of my new posts get about the same amount of views so I realize it's just the scandalous fun posts of the past that are getting all of the hits when people are trying to search for ways to inflate their penis or looking for chicks in Yoga Pants.
I just don't get why March (and assuming April) seem to have more of these people than the other months.

Honestly I shouldn't care because it's all about the small, loyal few who keep coming back for the newest babble that I have pushed to the world.

Today is March 25th and exactly one month from today at this very hour I will be enjoying my reception.  Shaking babies and kissing hands and thanking everyone for enjoying this feast which I have paid for and hoping everyone leaves soon so I can get to the baby making.
The past year has gone by pretty damned fast.  Honestly it feels like it was just a week ago that I was telling myself that there was still 100 days till I was married and I needed to hit up the exercise and cut back on the snacks.  70 days later I pretty much weigh exactly the same but I'm happy and I'm about to marry the love of my life and that is all that matters.

Life really doesn't get much better than this.
Though, in less than 2 months you'll finally get to stop reading about me and this whole nuptial thing and I'll have it all in my rear view mirror and move on to posting things that are more interesting.  Hopefully playing poker again and doing other fun degenerate things.
Oh the glory days - how I miss thee.

The Road Behind

It's very rare that any stranger's passing has an effect on me but today my heart was heavy as I learned of the passing of Dave Brockie, frontman of GWAR who performed under the alias of Oderus Urungus.

I've been religiously listening to GWAR (and all their side projects) since 8th grade when the girl I was dating suggested I check them out.  That album was Scumdogs of the Universe and I've been in love with the group ever since.

I'm happy that I got to see them live but am sad that it will never happen again and that I'll never be able to attend the GWAR-B-QUE.
But, death happens and life goes on.  It's all in how you are remembered and Brockie was be remembered as one of my favorite vocalists and lyricists.

There was never a band quite like GWAR before and there shall never be another.  It's rare to be unique.

Soccer Dad

Just some pictures of the other days Soccer practice.
This is their first year in Soccer and they still have a lot of learning to do but they are having fun with practice.
On Saturday they have their first game and while I do understand that they won't play much because there are kids who have been on the team for more years and who are a lot better the coach said that they would try to work them all into the games for a little bit.

So, some random pictures from practice.

The Stick of Truth

Just taking a small break from playing The Stick of Truth and realizing that unless I type up a few useless posts (we can argue that most of my posts are useless) I won't hit 200k views and 600 posts at the same time.

I haven't let Cartman out of the box yet

I don't know if anyone else has played it yet, but I'm really enjoying this South Park game.  It is a classic turn based RPG (JRPG) made by the same team that brought you Fallout: New Vegas and written by the South Park writers/creators.  This game is pretty much 100% fan service and is amazingly awesome.  I'm assuming by the time I am done I'll have run into every South Park character that has existed.  I've beaten up a homeless guy (that got stronger after taking a drink) and I'm fighting other kids.  I've run into Al Gore and am on the hunt for the ManBearPig and I'm also currently (trying) to recruit people into my LARP D&D game being run by Cartman.  Currently Butters is on my team and I'm supposed to be recruiting Tweak, Token and someone else but I keep getting distracted by everything else.
I just took out the mongolians in an epic battle that started with me beating their children up and then having to beat Genghis Khan and his entire horde which got me a summon from the guy that runs City Wok.

Oh dear is this game just so much fun.
The only negative is that it is South Park and it is rude, crude and vulgar which means that I can only play it when I have free time with no children around.  This means that I don't get a lot of alone time to play the game and it will probably drag out and take longer to beat than I would like because of that.
When the kid is awake it's currently Final Fantasy XIII or Tales of Symphonia Chronicles for now - though neither of those two has held my interest yet so I could just go into Dead Space or Dante's Inferno for Trophy Clean up.

The Walking Dead

With my love of all things Zombies I have been a huge The Walking Dead fan since I discovered it (better late than never).  One of my goals is to own every issue of the comic produced (which will take a lot of patience and waiting for good prices) but until then I'm willing to accept trades and omnibuses.

Today was a pretty big milestone for me as I pulled in Issue #1, autographed and graded.

Maybe the only thing that will be able to top this is a copy of New Mutants 98 when I finally get one.

Yoga Pants are a Gift

I'm dangerously close to having 600 posts and 200,000 hits on the blog.
With that in mind I thought I'd accelerate it with some more yoga pants.
Specifically for anger.

You are welcome

Hawaii

So, it's officially official that we will be headed to Hawaii for our Honeymoon.
Originally we wanted to head there but it looked like there were going to be too many issues getting all of our ducks in a row to do it but I finally figured everything out.

I'm quite excited about this as is the future Mrs Grrouch!
We will end up being out there for about a week total and I'm really looking forward to just relaxing and enjoying the beaches and scenery.  We haven't made any real plans for tours or anything of the nature as I think we are really going to play it by ear and just do what we want when we want.  Maybe we'll ear mark a few things for a repeat trip so that one can be planned out with things that we wanted to do but didn't get around to.

We are currently at 44 days until the big day and over the last few I have been eating more fruits and vegetables as my snacks and started cutting back on the garbage that I have been putting into my system over the last few months.  I'm also eating a lot more turkey and chicken to get my protein fix.

Pretty much all I came here to say was that we are going to Hawaii, so with that enjoy the rest of your day!

Forty Nine

We have started to get our R.S.V.P cards back from a few people, though most of the people whom I sent out invitations to openly just told me "I'm not sending this back because you bloody well know I'm going to be there."

R.S.V.P. always reminds me of this song by one of my favorite groups during my high school years.

I had one invitation get returned to me because the person gave me the wrong address. A case of fat fingers on the phone which is even more amusing because you can see the text that you just sent and it still didn't register to you as being wrong.  But whatever, technology forces us into more errors.  I'll just re-send it and make add a snarky letter to boot.

30 seconds ago I sneezed (beginning a sentence without spelling out a number looks horribly wrong but I'm not going to fix/change it) and the only reason that I'm bringing this up is because I went to wipe off my computer screen from the few pieces of spittle that hit it and upon doing it my screen reminded me that it is a touch screen and made everything REALLY BLOODY HUGE.  Now I'm having issues getting it back to where it was and nothing looks right.

I've received my Grand Wizard Edition of South Park: The Stick of Truth and this will be the next game I play and beat.  It appears as though I've mentally given up on Final Fantasy XIII currently as I haven't expressed any desire to get back to it.  I enjoyed the few hours I played but I only appear to have a couple hour tolerance for playing.  After a couple of hours I find myself wanting to quit and do something else where as games like Borderlands and Diablo I find myself playing for 8 hours and not wanting to quit.

Today is my day off from work and I was wanting to sink my teeth into the game for a few hours before having to take my kid to school but he decided it was more important to get into a fight yesterday and get RPC'd instead.  So now we have a PTC with the assistant principal at 10 am instead.

And speaking of irritating things, it appears as though my body has finally decided to get sick after everyone around me was coming down with something over the last few months.  Mine appears to have stopped at a bit of a sore throat so It's not too bad when others were having to call out of work for a few days at a time because things were violently coming out of both ends.

Two nights ago I started to get my love into Game of Thrones.  We are half way through season 1 and she is enjoying it (except it's a bit more brutal than she would like and she reacts adversely when they kill off animals) so I'm happy to have a show, finally, that we both really enjoy.  I suspect by the end of March we will have gone through all 3 seasons that I have on Blue Ray.  Then it's on to playing catch-up with The Walking Dead for me and I'm going to try to get her into that one as well but I do not have high expectations.

Come 9 am I have to make a phone call and hopefully by the end of next week I will have all of our honeymoon plans booked. Quite excited.  With under 50 days to go things are moving along nicely.

Toodlz my friends

Fifty Two days remain

Everything is going full force at this point.  All the last minute prep is making itself known. Just today, in fact, she had a trial run for her hair and make-up with some people whom she is considering.  From what I am told the hair looked great but "they don't know how to put make-up on brown people."

So, 50% of the way home in that category is my guess.

My tux is being prepped and hopefully everyone else has gotten their measurements by this point.  I'm looking to drop 10 more pounds before I have to go back in for the final alterations.  My weight loss has been stuck for the last few months but I'm pretty comfortable where I'm at.

I had a great idea for the honeymoon, but it kind of fizzled out like a bad far.  I did not pounce on the opportunity quickly enough but more will pop up.  Worst case scenario we are taking a small one to California to spend some time away from everyone and some time on the beaches before our true honeymoon happens a bit later this year or early next year or in a decade or two, you know the routine.

I've started to think more and more about work and my future.  I'm pretty sure that this probably should have come about before my 12th year but in all honesty it didn't matter too much when I was single and not planning a family.  Now that all of that is in the plans I'd like to focus more and move up and to do that I need to position myself where I think I will have the best opportunity.  I'd really like to only spend one more year at the most as a Department Manager before I can get into a salaried position so with that in mind I have a whole lot to think about.

I have an interview at a different store on Thursday to run a completely different set of departments than I have now that will pose all kinds of new challenges for me.  I also have strong loyalties to my current store as I really like a lot of the people and the customer base.  Both stores and positions have their advantages and disadvantages.  Leaving where I currently am for a lateral position is a really tough decision that I didn't take lightly but it's one I ultimately decided to attempt because it would allow me to spend more time with my family.  It's bloody difficult working retail and trying to maintain a home life sometimes.

Let the good times roll and now I'm off to continue working on my last Diablo 3 achievement which is still probably 15 hours away lol.  I can't wait to put this game behind me for a while and start working on a few others.