Wii-tastic

Ben and I are the proud new owners of a Nintendo Wii. It came to us on Sunday, from (where else, but our favorite store) Target. It is a beautiful thing. If you have never played the Wii, please come over to our house immediately and try ours.

Here's what you need to know to understand how awesome it is. I have never in my life owned a video game system. As kids my sister and I were never allowed to have one, and we didn't particularly want one either. I remember one Christmas our neighbor got a new Nintendo 64, and so from time to time we would play with him, but it never tickled our fancy. Ben was also never a big gamer... B.W. (before Wii) all he owned was an original Playstation on which he played CoolBoarders 2.

Video games always seemed, to me, to be so solitary and exclusive. Going to someone's house who had a system usually meant I ended up sitting on the arm of the couch watching in boredom as a bunch of boys played Madden.

Then, one fateful day, I was at my friend Rachael's house and people were playing the Wii. It struck me as a very social game - people were taking turns playing one another in Bowling or Tennis, and others who weren't playing were enjoying just watching. Rather than taking away from the human interaction at the party, it was encouraging it! Not only that, but unlike other video games where for hours on end one sits slack-jawed staring at the TV moving only one's thumbs, the Wii had you on your feet, swinging your arms in tennis or baseball or, in what was seriously an aerobic workout, boxing! Plus, no previous skill required. Unlike even basic old games like Mario Brothers, in which I was seriously out-played by even young children, the Wii was highly non-threatening to a non-gamer like myself.

I knew instantly that the Wii could very well be the first video game system that I could see myself having. And thus began our hunt to find one - even though they came out before Christmas, they are still in hot demand. Ben got ours on Sunday at about noon - and it was the last one in a shipment of 12 that had come in that very morning!

We hooked it up and each created our Mii - the little person who represents you in all your games. And then we started playing. And it was as delightful as I had hoped. I sustained my first Wii-injury when, in a lunging backhand during Tennis, I stepped backward and banged my ankle into the couch. I discovered I am rather good at Bowling, and not so good at Baseball.

So the Wii is on at the James household, and you are all invited to come play with us! Wheeee! (Or should I say, "Wiiiiiii!")

A Sad Thing

I saw a very sad thing today and I just need to write it down.

I was driving to work and going behind a slow old man driver. I was getting annoyed and thinking of how I was already late for work. Then the car in front of me swerved into the other lane to avoid something in the road. All I could see was that it was some sort of roadkill. "Gross," I thought, and followed suit in driving around it.

As I passed it I saw what it was - a tiny baby deer, young enough to still be covered with white spots on its back. It had obviously suffered a very recent death, no doubt at the hands of someone like me driving 55 mph down the curvy back road.

It just made me think about how normally dead animals in the road are either so mangled that they are unrecognizable or are so common that the sight of it doesn't bother you anymore. A dead possum or dead squirrel won't ellicit much more than an "ew" from me. But for some reason to see the little baby deer's body in the road just made me sad enough to cry. Which I did. For about the next two miles. I cried for that baby deer even though I know there are thousands of deers and that what I saw is not that uncommon. I cried for that baby deer even though I know deer aren't exactly the brainiest of animals and that the baby's mom was probably over it already. I cried for that baby deer even though I know the real world isn't like Bambi.

And even though I know that animals don't "go to heaven" in the sense of humans I prayed that God had been there and comforted it upon its death. I prayed that as a part of creation which God made to glorify Himself, the baby deer and its life mattered to God and that perhaps that baby, and animals of all kinds, will be present in eternity. I don't know if that is true, but what I know of God's character makes me believe that it is.

This is the second entry in my series entitled "Driving: It's Just Not That Hard." Today I will be covering the very challenging topic of MERGING.

Merging generally refers to a situation in which one lane of the road is ending, forcing cars in that lane to get over into another lane which is still open:

As you can see in the above diagram, an accident will happen unless one of these vehicles moves. Every day on my way to work I watch as morons... er, I mean "driving-challenged" people float from the on-ramp into traffic with nary a glance as to the cars forced to jerk violently out of their way to avoid being sideswiped.

Please read this carefully: THE PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY OF MERGING SAFELY RESTS UPON THE MERGER, NOT THE OTHER CARS! It is your job to take the initiative to use your blinker, to slow down or speed up depending on the other vehicles around you, etc. It is NOT enough to doodle your way into traffic, expecting that other cars will part like the Red Sea in order to make room for you. It is also NOT acceptable to merely follow the right-hand white line as it guides you merrily into another lane.

Is it nice if other cars let you over? Yes. Should they make every effort to give merging traffic room to merge? Absolutely. Is it your God-given right to plow into their lane simply because you waited too long and ran out of room? HECK-to-the-NO.

All this talk brings me to another point involving merging, and pardon me if I seem fussy but this one is just completely dumb and dangerous to boot. When you are nearing a construction area and you see one of those ENORMOUS FLASHING SIGNS that says "RIGHT LANE ENDS 500 feet" here's an idea: get over NOW! Nothing makes me wish I was allowed to ram other cars off the road than when a blithering idiot comes barrelling down the ending lane attempting to swoop in and merge at the last possible second. I will never, ever, ever, ever, EVER let you over. If I see you coming in my rear-view mirror, I will in fact drift over to take up both lanes thus preventing you from going any further.

There is a verse in the Bible that says, "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." This is a beautiful verse about God's creation is enough to make humans understand and see that God exists.

I feel similarly about merging. "For since the construction workers and road designers put up signs - bright yellow and orange and sometimes flashing - and these can be seen by your own eyes and comprehended by your brain to mean that you must take some kind of action about merging, you are without excuse in taking said action as quickly and safely as possible.

The only thing someone who is a bad driver could possibly say is that "they didn't see _____" or "they didn't notice ______." There is a fancy phrase for that called "not paying attention," and from what I understand it doesn't hold up so well under a court of law.

Who the heck is Lindsay Wagner?

So this summer, in the absence of our favorite tv series LOST, The Office, and others, Ben and I are enjoying delightful reruns. For me, X-Files. For him, Wonder Years. Our TiVo records both of these shows in the wee hours of the weekday mornings, and if you have ever watched something that is on at 2 am, you are familiar with the commericals for the Sleep Number Bed. And the spokesperson for this delightful product? It's "Actress Lindsay Wagner." And if you have seen this commercial, you probably asked yourself the same question we did, after the 15th time around... "Who the heck is Lindsay Wagner?"

Ben was content just to stop fast-forwarding through the commericals long enough to hear his favorite part, when Lindsay tells him how he can get "a more recooperative sleep." I finally broke down and came upstairs to my computer, where I looked up Lindsay in the Wikipedia of the entertainment world, good ole' IMDB.com.

I was pleased to find that not only was she a real actress, but an Emmy-winning one at that. She was famous in the 70s/80s for being on The Six Million Dollar Man, and then starring in her own spinoff, The Bionic Woman. Since then it has been pretty much downhill, but it seems like this Sleep Number thing is a sweet deal. I mean, sometimes it is the only commercial I see during an entire hour of X-Files. A little Mulder, a little Lindsay Wagner. A little Scully, a little more Lindsay. A little truth-chasing, a little chat with Linz. It's kind of comforting, in a way.

PS - In case you were wondering, her sleep number is 36. Like I said, I have seen this commercial a LOT.

You know what I love? When you go swimming, and you get water in your ears, and you can hear it in there for hours, making a sort of crunchy shifting sound, and then you come home and lay down and all the sudden the water frees itself from your eardrum and the little droplet that trickles out of your ear is all hot from being inside your head.* And you are like, "Ah, I can hear again!" There is something really satisfying about that warm little bit of water coming out of your ear, like when you pop your finger really loudly or successfully scratch an itchy spot on your back or lay down after a long day and feel your spine stretching and relaxing.

*Footnote: Today I went swimming at our office pool party and this happened and it was like every day of my childhood summers all over again.