I've got a Golden Ticket!

Yesterday, we had dinner with our friends Ben and Rebecca. After dinner, we went back to Ben's house to play with his Wii. Now, I had planned on getting one of these things for Mike for his birthday, but to be truthful, I was kinda dubious about it. I was afraid I wouldn't see him for a month if I got one! After playing with it last night though, I was totally convinced. So, this morning we set out to buy one.

The previous day, I had been to Best Buy and I had actually asked if it was still insane to get a Wii, and the guy there told me that you still had to try to get one, but there weren't people lined up outside the door. Well, this morning we got there at 11 (they had just opened), and there was a huge line at the door! There must have been a hundred people in line at the customer service desk to get a Wii. We got in line, but weren't hopeful. This one guy in line told us that he had managed to get one at an EB Games at the corner of Harvard and Beacon St. We thought, hey why not, and so we headed over there. Going into Allston and Brookline is not one of my favorite things to do because it can be insane to park over there. We managed to find a parking spot behind the Trader Joe's. and we went to the game store. (It was a Game Stop, not an EB Games).

In the Game Stop, there was a line to the counter, and so we weren't hopeful. We stood in this line for like 20 minutes, without moving, but it was just because this one guy at the front of the line was having trouble with his credit card, and wasn't willing to give up trying to get the Wii. The dude behind the counter brought out like 3 of them, but there were four people in front of us, so I was worried! When we got up there, I asked if he had another one, and then he went back in the back and brought out three more! There was one for us, and one for the woman behind us who had been after one since Christmas, and the people behind her! Hurray!

Food for Thought

Mike bought me a Roomba for Christmas. I was afraid to turn it on for a little while, because we have lots of cords running everywhere, and I felt like there was too much crap on the floor to use the Roomba. This is ridicules, since it IS a vacuum cleaner. So finally, I got enough oomph together to pick up enough of the stuff on the floor to turn it on. The little Roomba had a rough maiden voyage. It got caught under our bed a couple of times and I had to fish it out. It will pick up electric cords and pull them, which means it needs supervision, so I am not ready to use the auto-scheduler feature. It also doesn't like coins or bottle caps. Those get caught behind its brushes before they make it to the dustbin. Overall, it did a good job. I ran it again when I thought the floors were still pretty clean, but it filled its little dustbin right up, so I was pleased.

At work yesterday, we did this "FOCUS" Franklin Covey training. It was nominally a time management and productivity session, but in the middle there, they were asking you to think pretty deeply about your core values and life goals. I am still working on this. They also talk about making room for your "big rocks". They illustrate this with a little video they show where the dude in charge fills a big bowl full of fish gravel, and then points to a big pile of big rocks and asks a woman to fit them in. She starts wiggling them around in the gravel, and gets a few of them in, but she is running out of room. Then, the dude gives her an empty bowl and asks if she would like to try a different way. Of course, she puts the big rocks in first and then dumps the gravel on top. The rocks, big and small, are like your goals and tasks. The moral of the story is to consciously decide what tasks and goals are most important to you and schedule those things first, before letting all the other crap fill in. This all sounds good, I think. They gave us a free planner, but boy is it a monster.

We are going up to Castleton tomorrow to talk about the details of the reception and the menu.