Yesterday found me and the family over at the parents house. I'm bugging my Dad to borrow the truck again, I found an ass-load of rot in some of my raised garden beds and thus need to get landscape timbers to fix them. Mr. B was "playing" golf, i.e. he was flailing a putter at a golf ball on the driveway (no too dissimilar from me, but I at least contain my flailing to the driving range or course), while Miss L was busy spewing on the wife. Seriously, I have no idea how the girl is gaining weight, she blows chunks every time she eats. When I say, "blows chunks" I mean it. She doesn't do a little spit up. Miss L would give Linda Blair a run for her money (no head spinning, thankfully).

After discussing the finer points of gardening with my Dad (he was pushing more plants on me and telling me of his next beer money making scheme), we head inside. What do we find there? A Nintendo Wii! I want to know what happened to my parents! These are the same people who steadfastly refused to buy a minivan while my sister and I were growing up.

I could have used one of those while growing up. I was always tall, six foot by the sixth grade, and thus would have my knees in my Mother's back while on car trips. We're not just talking about the quick jaunts to family close by. We went to Maine every summer for a long weekend, six to seven hours each way (Massachusetts is a very long state, you might not think so looking at a map, but just drive it one time, from east to west, or west to east.). That is not to forget the trips from NJ to south Fla. to see my Father's family in Ft Lauderdale. Those trips were multiple days and we logged over 24 hours in a car. So yes a minivan would have been nice. For the record, they have a minivan now. So they can drive their friends around.

Now, they by a video game console. I could never get them to buy one while I was growing up. Hell, I wasn't even allowed to buy one with my own money. This is not to say that I had to go without gaming as a child, we had a TI 99 4/A and an Apple IIe. Neither was really known for its gaming abilities, but it took the edge off, I suppose. (Kind of like self abuse takes the edge off, yep you don't ache anymore but it's not very satisfying either.) Of course, we had to play an "educational" game first, before we could play a fun game.

Oh well, at least they have one now (for their grandkids). I took out my frustrations on my Dad playing Wii tennis. I beat him three games to none and he only score one point (or 15 taking into consideration how scoring in tennis is done).