House with trees and a big gorilla

My last post was September 14th - it's been a while indeed. Many things have happened since the last time I wrote anything for the public, but I'm starting this post without a real subject in mind, I'll just free write and see what happens.

The biggest thing that has happened recently is the sale of my first house, and the purchase of a new house. The wife and I have been passively looking at houses for about three years, so when it was time to pull the trigger, we were ready mentally and financially. The funny thing about people's reaction to the news of "my house is on the market" is that generally people would say - where are you moving to? That is the whole point I guess, what are you stepping up to, but my attitude was and still is - it is all about selling. Making a purchase is easy as long as you have money, and/or credit. So, we went into the process of looking for houses with the emphasis on selling and we'll buy something when we have cash in hand or a solid deal with a real date. Too many stories over the last five years from people saying they got stuck paying two mortgages with a story of how they did it to themselves with blame going somewhere other than to themselves. Always something I knew to avoid, so we did. The sale of the house whet well due to our stellar agent, and the purchase process was par for the course I guess. Nothing too exciting, so I'm skipping that part.

The second biggest thing recently happening is the purchase of a 60-in-1 arcade game. I started looking for an upright classic arcade game a few months ago with the new room a larger house would offer. I wanted to buy a Tron, Dig Dug, or Donkey Kong machine. Tron machines are all too expensive because of the new Tron movie set release later this year. Dig Dug machines were hard to locate on eBay and Craigslist, and Donkey Kong machines were generally pretty expensive. I feel I got lucky when I found a very local seller that had a machine with a 60-in-1 card featuring all classic games, most of which I had heard of. I did the research and found that these "new" cards were the real deal and they used the original ROM sets so the games were the exact same code with the only difference I could notice being in the sound quality in some games. Games features off the top of my head: Pac Man, Ms Pac Man, Qix, Dig Dug, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, Donkey Kong 3, Space Invaders, Galaga, Galaxian, Mr. Do, Mr. Do's Castle... It is a lot of classic games in one machine and I can say that two months later I'm still very happy with the purchase.

The third item to report is the property we purchased contains many trees, and loads of leaves. I got my Stihl chainsaw repaired and have put it to use removing four dead trees. I have also used the sweet Subaru for some tree removal with 80' of steel 3/8" aircraft cable - see video, it's only 37 seconds. Here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP8mwJS-SQQ

Lastly, I've got this idea in my head that since I've always liked playing Donkey Kong, maybe I am good enough to be in the top 100 payers in the world?? This all came about after watching the movie King of Kong. I have been playing a lot over the last two months with a emphasis on getting better rather than just having fun. Some days I've done poorly, while others I'm just "on". This evening I have the house to myself and sat down and played two games back to back both scoring over 50k per game. Checking the scoreboard at Twin Galaxies.com shows that a score over 50k is between 69th and 70th place. So, I am in the top 100 if I can record my score and submit it. Now to try to get in the top 50 list - 121,800 points. My high score currently is around 84k.

I'm probably better with a chain saw than those top 50 players.