My mother woke me up yesterday morning to tell me about the Shuttle Columbia. I then proceeded to vegetate upon my couch (I'd stayed up LATE the night before) for the next five hours or so watching MSNBC and CNN. I listened for the first half hour or so, and then just left it on to have noise while I cross stitched. I mean, how many times can you hear different analysts say the same thing? I was mainly waiting for the President's comments and the press conference that NASA held at 3:30pm; the rest was just filler. At one point, I did switch to CNN from MSNBC because MSNBC put on a female anchor, and I'd much rather listen to a male voice drone on in the background than a female one. I think it's all those years of being forced to watch ABC's Nightly News with Peter Jennings every night as a child.

But I guess it hit me the hardest when they showed images of having found an astronaut's helmet, and it lay there on the ground, charred... and empty. I still try not to think about that image, in the same way that I can't stomach watching the planes slam into the World Trade Centers.

I also think the lowest depths of hell are reserved for those who try to make money off disasters. I read in the newspaper this morning that there were dozens of auctions for Columbia material, mostly pre-launch, on eBay. Some of it was going for $250. They need to be put with the child molesters, the rapists, and the torturers. Good Lord, people, have some decency and respect!!

Anyhow, enough of my ranting.

Tonight Kurt and I decided to go out on the town and go to an arcade. The boy is addicted to video games, which is another reason that we don't buy a new game system, like a PS2 or an xBox. We'd always fight each other over it! So we went to this place downtown for the first time (and probably the last!) to see what it's like. They had a good mix of old games and new games, and Kurt and I were all over the old games. I played me some Arkanoid and some Ms. Pacman, and Kurt got attached to Dr. Do's Castle and Off Road. Hey, they're only twenty-five cent games!! We did spend a little money on the expensive games, like Hydro-Thunder (I won one, he won one) and air hockey (he kicked my butt!).

But I really got attached to Karnov tonight. I was trying to explain it to Kurt once, and I don't think I knew it well enough after not playing it for fifteen years or so to be able to describe it so he knew what I was talking about. So I got really excited when I found it in the arcade. I threw probably about $1.50 in the machine; your character dies as soon as something bad touches him: no second chance! See, when I was little my mother worked in a bar, mostly as a bartender, and she'd had to take us to work each day with her one summer. The man who came to empty the arcade games of their quarters we called Mr. Quarters, and he was really nice to my sister and me and would set up about twenty credits on each day to help keep us busy. I played a lot of Karnov when I was little. That, and Pin-Bot. Kurt calls me his Pinball Wizard. :o)

"He's the pinball wizard, there has to be a trick. The pinball wizard's got such a supple wrist!!"