• Woke up at 7:00 a.m. to get to the Methodist church in downtown Ann Arbor for an 8:15 rehearsal. They were performing the first part of Handel's Messiah and they hired me to beef up the otherwise paltry tenor section. We did two services, at 9:30 and 11:15.
• Sprinted to my car and zoomed to my ward out in Ypsilanti, arriving five minutes before the meeting started at 1:00. It was the ward Christmas program, which got dropped in my lap even though I'm not the ward choir director, so I had to conduct two choir pieces for the first time, plus sing a solo number that I hadn't looked at until the day before (I guess I can't blame the Sunday time crunch for that little detail). For all its thrown-togetherness, the program came off quite well.
• Ran home at 4:30 to prepare foodstuffs for the ward mingle. The monthly mingle is under my committee's jurisdiction, so I arrived a little before 6:00 to help set up. The mingle started at 6:30 and I had my first meal of the day. The clean-up after the mingle lingered on until about 8:45.
At some point during the mingle, my foot was like, "Hey Brian, remember how I'm still broken? I've decided that I am done for the day." When I got home at the end of the day I just collapsed and needed to relax. One of the things that helps me relax the most is Mario 2, so I popped in the game and hit record on the VCR. Despite my fatigue, I (wait for it.... this is pretty much the whole reason why I wrote this post...) finally beat Mario 2 in UNDER 30 MINUTES! The 30 minute mark has been my white whale, and I finally harpooned it (sorry, lame metaphor). My previous world record time was 31:40, but I have now slashed it down to 29:54.
Speaking of world records, in November I mailed in another DVD with world record attempts for two other games, Maniac Mansion and A Boy and His Blob, to be evaluated by the game referee. Last week I got this email reply from him:
Brian,Sigh. This isn't the first time I've had problems with my record verification. However, it was nice to hear him gush about my Maniac Mansion run. I guess I'll have to re-record a few of the records, which is a pity because I don't know if I have another 8:00 minute complete run of A Boy and His Blob in me. But for now if you go to the video game world record site and search for my name, you'll get the following list:
I unfortunately have bad news. While your awesome Inaugural WR run for Maniac Mansion was fine [slight retweak in time but no biggie, my fault for poor wording] and I might add, quite awesome! [Never seen that twist with the film before] Unfortunately your Boy & His Blob runs started with the title screen and showed no bootup of the console or any dead air. As a result, they can regretfully not be verified, and to this, I apologize.
You probably started reading this post thinking that there would be some kind of lesson or moral to it all. I'm sorry if that is the case - I got nothin'. If you can think of a moral to the story (besides the obvious one: Brian is a big nerd), feel free to comment below.
Merry moralizing to all, and to all a good night.
5 comments:
You can borrow one of my morals if you'd like:
And then I learned that it's okay to speak up and be myself.
And then I conquered my fear of roller coasters
But throwing away my t-shirts would be like throwing away my memories.
Giant pine cones can kill.
Okay, on second thought, maybe that won't work. Sorry. I tried.
Brian, I love it! Though that post did take a turn. Sundays exhaust me too, I need to work on resting too (and probably Nintendo too!)
A Boy and His Blob. Wow, does that bring back memories. I really need to come and hang out with you just to play that game again. And to see YOU again!!
Man, Brian, you ARE a nerd! I love it, though! If there's ever an awards ceremony, can I be your date? I've always wanted to go to a video gamer awards ceremony. Well, that's not actually true, but I want to now!
Have you seen King of Kong yet? I think you would enjoy it http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/king_of_kong/
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