Honea Express

Archive for the ‘games’ Category

Disclaimer: I really feel like I’ve been phoning it in lately. If it wasn’t for the occasional injury to my children there wouldn’t be any reason to stop by at all.

It’s not that I don’t care, far from it. It’s not even that I’m burnt out. I’m just freaking tired. Blogging for 12 hours a day takes a lot out of a guy.

I decided to do something different tonight. When I was in college we had these exercises where you had to write a story in five minutes, strictly stream of conscience. I did that tonight, basically because I wanted to post but didn’t know what I wanted to post about so I just started typing. It felt good, even if it doesn’t read that way. I just wrote the silly crap that came out of me in roughly five minutes and hit save. Then I came back and threw this damn disclaimer on it so you wouldn’t know think I was losing my mind. Alright, enough, with all apologies, here’s me in a five minute nutshell:

You know that moment when you can’t find whatever it is that you JUST HAD seconds ago and you start to curse a little and maybe fling your arms around and then you realize the item is in your other hand? I do that shit all the time. It’s actually starting to become a problem. I don’t think I want the neighbors to see me standing in the yard at 4 in the afternoon in my pajamas and a jacket with no shirt on scooping up dog crap and yelling to the heavens that my damn shovel disappeared when it is clearly sticking upright in the ground about two inches from my face. Again. It’s starting to get old.

But it happens. It happens so I go inside and peak through the curtains, which aren’t really curtains as my wife has yet, 4 years later, decided on a proper window treatment, but are actually two summers worth of cat hair trapped in the cobwebs that I don’t want to clean because at least now I know where the damn spiders are. In the meantime they’re curtains and I peak through them, trying not to sneeze at the cat dander against my face and trying not to puke at the beads made of fly carcass against my fingers. I peak through and I watch the neighbors to make sure they aren’t moving my shovel and trying to fuck with me. They’re not. This time.

This is normal right? I fear that my Stay-At-Home-Dadness is becoming borderline shut-in. How long do I have to stay in before some charity starts bringing me trays of food in a truck? How the hell do these charities find shut-ins if no one ever sees them?

These are the things I wonder at night while Love loves me. The puppy has taken to sleeping with me. On me would be more accurate. If she had her little puppy breath any closer to my face I’d be waking up with a dog in my mouth. I can’t even fall asleep with her so close to me, it makes me uncomfortable. She claws and nips and digs to the point that I think her real goal is to be inside me- in a Han Solo has a lightsaber sort of way. It ain’t that cold. She just wants a big Whit coat, all 101 pounds of it, give or take eighty-ish. I’m afraid to go to bed because little Cruella De Vil might freaking cut me and have me skinned by morning.

I think I’ll turn the heat up tonight. The spiders like it hot.

The good folks at Hopscotch Technology contacted me about testing out a new product called Bob. As you know, I am a whore for free stuff, so I said Sure!

They sent it quickly via UPS, who in turn delivered it quickly to the front porch of my neighbor- my neighbor that had moved. The box sat there for a week before I went to scavenge investigate.

I have it now, so let me tell you about it.

Bob is a little device that you can plug a television or computer or video game into that will then regulate the time that item is in use. You can set up 6 different users and tell Bob when they can watch TV or play the video game and so on. When that time is up, the game is over. Bob turns it off.

You can set up times that the TV can’t be watched. You can assign a set amount of time per day or week that something can be used. It’s pretty cool. In fact it was voted the ‘Invention of the Year’ by the Davinci Institute, it says so right on the box.

Each user gets a PIN number to access their time on the alloted whatever. This allows the kids to feel like they have some say in the matter, which as we all know, they don’t. When the time is about to elapse a countdown appears to alert the viewer. This then causes screams from said viewer about not wanting the TV to turn off. Unfortunately there is not a volume control on Bob or the soon to be ex-viewer.

Bob’s motto is Less TV = More Childhood. I can get behind that.

The downside, for me anyway, is that I need my kids to watch an unhealthy amount of television so I can get my work done. When Bob turns it off I am then forced to improvise and interact with them. This means I have to work late into the night and can’t watch Heroes until midnight on the DVR. I make sacrifices.

Bob claims to work on any electronic device, which for me means hours of mischief and fun. I have big plans to regulate the use of the toaster and set my wife’s hairdryer to be blocked before 8am. I like to think outside the box, or Bob as the case may be.

Would you like a Bob of your very own? Hopscotch has agreed to provide one (that’s a $90 retail value!) to the reader of my choice. Since there are two of you I must admit I’m torn. This is where the contest comes into play. Leave a comment with the reason you should be the proud owner of Bob, and the best one, as judged by me, (send bribes directly to email) will win! Easy-peasy!

*Contest ends Friday!