Springing

A few days ago my wife and I pulled in our driveway and lo and behold, what should we see poking up from the ground just to the west of our garage but scores of little yellow daffodils! Or, at least, that's what I think they are. The dude who used to live in this house was a professional landscaper, so there's a lot of cool plants around the yard, but this was the first really unexpected blooming we have seen. Each day it seems like the clusters of yellow flowers grow a little bit more, and today we noticed some more plants joining their ranks near the southern edge of the little alcove. Not sure if the latter are going to result in any blooming action, but it's cool to see the new life of spring showing up around here. Yesterday we did some more pruning on our Crepe Myrtle bushes in the back yard too, and I took an electric hedge trimmer to one of the bushes out front, which now makes it look like the fauna equivalent of Kid 'n Play. So between the yard work and the mid-60s to low-70s weather this week and last, I'd say Oklahoma is a pretty cool place to live. :)

Tonight I'm planning on watching the Academy Awards for the first time ever, and to be honest I'm kind of excited about it. Ever since starting Walking Taco last June I have tried to pay a little more attention to not just movies, but the connections between movies, filmmakers, producers, writers, cultural phenomenæ represented in moving pictures. I guess the Academy Awards are one way for me to experience the metaculture (is that even a word?) of the movie scene, but we'll find out tonight. One of our writers, MJV, is doing a liveblog of the event so I'm looking forward to that too. My wife told me about a site that offers free liveblog services and integrates with Wordpress, so hopefully things should go off relatively pain-free tonight. But I guess we'll find out in an hour or so...

Since getting my Xbox and a subscription to Xbox Live (thanks to my in-laws!) I have enjoyed playing games online but have mostly restricted my online play to me-vs-everyone, or in gaming parlance, free-for-all deathmatches. See, I'm a decent gamer but there's an entire culture of online gaming that I don't really understand because I'm new to it. A lot of online games have team options, but I was always a little wary of playing on a team, due in no small part to my general lack of skill when compared to most online gamers. I figured a team deathmatch would be an exercise in personal futility, but a few nights ago one of my friends showed me that such games are, in fact, quite the contrary. We spent an hour and a half playing Call of Duty 4 in various team deathmatch games, and it was really really fun. The thing is, people of all skill levels play these games--some good, some not so good. And as long as you're not being a jerk like targeting your own team members or just standing around, people are pretty cool. You might not be the best person on the team, but if you're at least trying, the other players will respect you for it. So basically I have just begun experiencing an entirely new layer to online gaming on Xbox Live. And it is most certainly awesome. :)

Ok, time to shut this down and find something for dinner...