Monthly Archives: January 2019

Comic Book, Photo-A-Day, Video Game

The Hang Out Spot

The New Hang Out Spot
Photo-A-Day 2.0 – #00002

About a week before Christmas I picked up an XBox One S with some Christmas money and gift card money from Best Buy. I got the gift cards from some campaigns that I did for Best buy and I also made some money selling some LEGO sets to Bricks and Minifigs. I picked up and XBox because I am now writing for The Toy Insider Parent Panel as their video game parent. I write articles about all things video games. However, I only had Nintendo consoles and have not been able to get to the Playstation and XBox Side of things yet. Well, eventually I’ll pick up a Playstation but for now it is Nintendo and XBox at the house.

I signed up for the free trials of a couple of the services for XBox including XBox Game Pass and XBox Live Gold. Two separate services that give you access to many games and also have yearly fees. They each have benefits to them and so I may continue the services. I’ve already downloaded a few of the free games that you get to choose from each month with Game Pass. I also bought q couple of games on discount and one was an Arcade game from way back that I was thrilled to see. This was Marvel vs. Capcom 3. This is a fighting game. Players would stand next to each other and play on the same machine trying to best each other in combat that was fueled by many of the amazing moves from Comic books like Wolverine’s Berserker Barrage.

Over the Christmas break I downloaded the game and had let Andrew play some games on the XBox including Rocket League which is a game where you play a form of soccer with tricked out cars. It was a lot of fun and got him used to the controller. Then we played Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and he loved it. It is a fighting game but the violence is all very comic book stuff with no blood or gore, no matter how many times Wolverine slices into someone. Andrew played a bit with me and then Eva came home from a day with a friend. Andrew immediately wanted to play his sister in the game. She played and was excited to keep playing. My office is becoming the hangout spot for us to play some video games together. I couldn’t be happier.

Family, Photo-A-Day

By The Small Trees

By the small trees
Photo-A-Day 2.0 – #00001

When a child is born in my extended family they receive a small Christmas tree. This was not a thing when I was a child but it is now that I have kids. Eva and Andrew have had their trees since they were born but it wasn’t until last year that I took a photo of them by their small trees in a deliberate way. I wanted to mark the passage of time and see how they grew in relation to their small trees. Will either of them be tall enough to be in line with their angels. Who knows. It is the passage of time that I wonder about.

We’re here in 2019 and this holiday season has been a very good one to us. It has been great to have everyone home and to do so many fun things together. What I’ve realized is that I have not been as good at being our family historian as I should have been ever since the end of my Photo-A-Day project last April. I got away from writing about simple day to day things and time with the family in favor of a lot of sponsored toy reviews. Don’t get me wrong, I love those. We have a lot of fun making them but they aren’t something that I’ll want to look back upon and reflect upon. So, our actual family adventures took a back seat for a while and I am trying to change that.

So, quietly and deliberately I am rebooting my Photo-A-Day project. Same rules as I had for 14 years prior. I have to take the photo that day, but I do not need to necessarily post it that day. I’m trying to be much more organized with them, too. So we will see how it all goes. Please come along for the adventure.