Phil & Ryan's Excellent Adventure

Nerd Alert:
This entry is me boasting about my nerdiness. So if nerds, geeks, dorks, dweebs, twerps or goobs make you uncomfortable, it's probably best you stop reading this, for own safety and to salvage what self-respect I have.
Generally, my weekends are pretty uneventful, save for the occasional weekend when the girlfriend comes down from Dallas. I spend my Saturdays and Sundays sleeping in, ordering fast food, watching movies, going to Sea World and perfecting laziness to an art form.
This particular weekend was a bit different. It took me and my buddy Ryan on a wonderful journey that any nerd, and other thesaurus related terms mentioned above, would appreciate.
Saturday, I casually woke up around 10AM, after a hard night of playing video games. The current games I'm addicted to: Indiana Jones Lego: The Original Adventures and Metal Gear Solid 4: Sons of the Patriots. After styling my infamous hair and dressing to the nines in my baggy shorts and wrinkled shirt, I decided to run a few errands.
Spontaneity is a rare form for me, but I suddenly got the urge to visit Sea World. I have a season pass so it's no biggie. Got myself a drink, saw the sharks, the penguins and a dolphin or two. There may have been an man dressed as a penguin... but I can't remember because I was swept up in all the excitement. During my time at Sea World, my buddy Ryan gave me a call.
His baby mama went to the river and he had nothing to do.
I drove over and we played video games for a bit then got to talking about how we would spend our day.

I have a Sega Genesis, it's an old school gaming system from the late 80's to the early 90's. When I was in Dallas to see Shannon, I found an old game that I loved to play, NBA Jam and picked it up.
So while Ryan and I were brainstorming, I got the idea to go old school video game shopping. We decided to hit up local pawn shops. Store after store, we had no success. On our way to yet another pawn shop I decided to check the white pages on my phone and began calling all the game stores that I did not recognize.
I called one and the owner told me "We are unlike any other store in the world."
Naturally, I was intrigued. "Go on," I told him.
They are a retro gaming, arcade, card game and Role-Playing Game center. Just the night before they had received a massive shipment of old retro games. Jackpot!
When we arrived we were greeted my a man named Cliff. We were shown back to the dozen or so boxes that Cliff had not had a chance to look through since the man who sold them to him dropped them off.
Ryan and I took it upon ourselves to go through the boxes and began putting items in sections. NES with NES, SNES with SNES, Sega to Sega, Atari to Atari, the list went on and so did the hours.

(NES)

(SNES)

(Sega)

(Atari)

An undetermined amount of time later, we had gone through every box and even set aside stuff for ourselves. I got a wireless controller port for the NES controllers, Link 1 and 2 in the original gold cartridges with a few other things.
Their gaming guru, the man who fixes and cleans all the retro stuff that comes in, just happened to pop in. The man with the gut and the Aussie accent spent the next stretch of undetermined amount of time telling us about the history of video games.

Fun Fact:
Did you know that Nintendo originally was designing a CD based gaming system to compete with the Sega Saturn. Nintendo was working with Sony on developing this system when they screwed Sony over and the deal ended. Sony sat back and decided they had all this hardware, why not add a few more things and create their own system. Thus Nintendo's folly led to the birth of the Playstation.

We slowly worked our way to the door after making our purchase, and getting a few items for free, since they had free labor from us arranging all the items from the many boxes.
During the Aussie's incoherent babbling, we did hear him mention a retro gaming store in New Braunfels that was an impressive sight. It was about 10PM at this point, the D-Pad in NB was open until Midnight. We looked at each other and yelled "Road Trip!" The rest of the journey was in silence because Ryan then yelled "Jinx."
After getting lost, then having to call and find directions because they weren't were Google said they were, thanks for that, we found our way to D-Pad.
Inside, it was like a mini-mecca for those who love retro games. Walls of Sega, NES, SNES, Saturn and the like. We perused and gawked I think I loitered for a while in the corner. I decided to buy a few games, for the NES (which I don't have) and for the Sega (I do)
We drove home and I played my newly purchased Sega games. Since I have been on a retro kick. I went a bought an original Nintendo. I didn't work so I took it back and had Shannon buy me a system that plays both NES and SNES games. She's bringing it down this weekend. I'm excited.
There is the full-extent. I hope you aren't blind due to the severity. It was a fun day. Now I'm going to go home and play "Zombies Ate my Neighbors."

Awkward Scenario: Episode 1

This blog will deal with an awkward scenario I encountered a week ago. I debated about whether or not to blog about this, but I was given the OK by a certain middle party.
I was in Dallas over June 6th - 8th, visiting friends and family. This particular event happened Saturday night.
Shannon, the girlfriend, and I went out to a bar called Cape Buffalo. There we met her parents to celebrate their mutual friend, Jennifer's, birthday.
To begin with, I asked Shannon all day, What time does it start?"
She kept shrugging off the question, saying "We'll get there when we get there."
We settle down to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. About an hour into the flick, we get a call from Shannon's mother Cathee asking where we were.
The party started at 8PM and it was currently, 9:45PM. Shannon's parents had already been there for over an hour. The birthday girl was turning 30, so I guess she decided her friends couldn't stay out as late and started the party 8PM instead of 11PMish.
We rush to the bar where everyone has already been drinking. Jennifer is trashed and spouts profanity at me, a person she just met.

I couldn't tell if she was an angry drunk or just plain drunk. I talked with one man who works for Texas schools. He travels from district to district checking up on them. He was really boring.
I talked to Greg, Shannon's step-father, about Horse Racing, because Big Brown just had a disappointing loss.
To be honest, I don't know a thing about horse racing. Here's what I do know:
Horses race each other around a track. The small people that ride them around this track are called Jockies. They wear brightly colored outfits so people can tell them apart from all the other little people. Spectators bet money on this sport. One of the horses is named Big Brown.
That is the extent of my horse racing knowledge, but Greg had a few drinks before I got there and I was able to fool him about what I did not know.
From there Shannon's parents, Shannon and I all drove to a place where everyone knows their name, The Apple...

It's a small dive tucked away in between a restaurant and a gas station.
Now all this is leading up to the awkward scenario.
After a few drinks at the Apple, Greg settles into his chair with an unknown liquored drink. He leans forward staring at me from across the table and in his low guttural voice asked a question that completely blindsided me, "When are you going to make an honest woman out of my daughter?"
Considering Shannon is not caring child nor will she, unless we decide to make that life long commitment called marriage, this question came as quite a shock.
He continued, "You two have been dating almost seven months, don't you think it's about time you settle down?"
Now, seven month to me, is almost like a grace period. I get to know you, you get to know me. That is nowhere near my safe zone, of the "marriage talk." For me that's a minimum of two years.
"When we are both ready," was my reply.
"Because I have eight shotguns." He said taking a swig of his drink.


How on earth do you respond to that? Is he serious? Or is this his attempt at a joke? So, I responded with the only words that came to mind, "I have nine bulletproof vests."

This made him smile and the two ladies laugh nervously. The whole time, they are looking as red as the fruit in the bar's title.

He pressed again and this time I decided to answer truthfully.
"We both have goals we would like to accomplish before settling down. The final decision will be mine and Shannon's. Neither of us are ready just yet. When and if we are, we will go from there, but ultimately the decision should be hers and mine. There is no reason to rush into anything."
About that time, Cathee decided that was enough probing of their daughter's boyfriend. Luckily my name was called for karaoke a short time later, and I was able to escape from such an awkward scenario. Honestly, I didn't know how to respond, so I flew by the seat of my pants. Wrong or right, can't change it now.