Pictures...

Hi, everyone! I'm actually halfway regularly posting for once. Imagine that. I don't have a whole lot of time, so I just decided to post a few pictures of Karissa, who, by the way is growing like a weed! She weighs something in the vicinity of 9 1/2 pounds, probably on the high side of that by now. She's a chunky little girl!

Here she is with her proud Mommy....

And acquainting herself with two of Daddy's favorite pastimes- guitars...

And motorcycles! Isn't that cool!

My Latest Gaming Experience

Hi again, everyone! This has got to be a record for me-two posts in less than a week. As I hinted in my previous posts, I have been playing a different video game lately, and I planned to post about it. I actually finished it earlier this week, but I guess I'll post about it anyway.

Luigi's mansion was one of the launch titles for the Gamecube when it first came out. The story revolves around Luigi, the brother of the famous Mario from many other Nintendo games. Luigi has made appearances in a number of other games, but this is the first time he's been the star. It's a 3D Action/Adventure game and has a quite interesting plot.

The story begins when Luigi receives a letter informing him that he's won a contest in which the grand prize is a mansion. Luigi doesn't remember entering a contest, but excitedly sends word to Mario, telling him to meet Luigi at the mansion. Luigi arrives himself, only to discover that the mansion is haunted by hordes of ghosts. To make matters even worse, it appears that Mario has arrived first and was kidnapped by the ghosts. As it turns out, the whole thing is a trap set up by a group of "Boos", which are comical ghost enemies of Mario in previous games, to be rid of the Mario brothers once and for all.

Upon checking out the mansion, Luigi encounters a strange little scientist, Professor E. Gadd, who has been working for quite some time to eradicate the ghosts. He enlists Luigi's help to do just that, as well as rescue Mario.

Professor Gadd outfits Luigi with a couple of his own inventions to help in the quest. The Poltergust 3000, a modified vacuum cleaner to suck up the ghosts, and a Gameboy Horror to serve as a map and to help locate the ghosts.

You basically explore the mansion in search of the ghosts, stun them with your flashlight, and then suck them up with the Poltergust 3000. There are 3 types of ghosts. The Boos, Gallery ghosts, which usually give you keys to different parts of the mansion when captured, and other random troublemaking ghosts.

It really makes for a fun, interesting game, though it's not really very long. It's also probably the only E-rated game that involves hunting ghosts. True to Nintendo's reputation, it's a lighthearted, cute, comical game, not at all scary or creepy, like the type of horror game that you would expect to involve ghost hunting.

Luigi cautiously approaches the mansion...

And makes the acquaintance of Professor E. Gadd.

Luigi valiantly vacuums up a boo...

And is scared out of his mind by a gallery ghost.

Our New Tricycle Motor

Hi everyone! (all three of you) As many of you know, on Friday, April 21, at 10:53 AM, we took delivery of our brand new, fully customized, genetically coengineered tricycle motor. It weighed 8 lb., 1oz. upon arrival, and measured 20 inches in length. Upon arrival, it was discovered to be female in gender, and was christened Karissa Ann Martin prior to receiving her first visitors. (If you look at the comments on "Poll Time", you'll notice that Greg and Beth did an excellent job of predicting some of the specs, including the first initial. Maybe they had inside info that we didn't?)

Anyway, here is the first picture that we emailed out to family and a few friends.

And here I am with the not quite brand-new anymore motor on an excursion outside.

Hopefully y'all three of you will enjoy these pics. Stay tuned for more posts about the tricycle motor and other assorted things.

Sorry I'm Late...

Whoops! You're absolutely right, Greg, it HAS been awhile since I've posted. (see comment on the last post) My humble apologies to all three of my rabid readers who have endured the profound agony of not hearing from me for so long. I will offer one rather lame excuse, though. It's hard enough just surfing the net holding a sometimes fussy baby, much less update a blog. (that'll work for the last couple of weeks, anyway)

Well, quite a lot has been going on around here. I'm playing a different video game. I've been able to ride my motorcycle a little. I've worked on a couple of guitars. I've attended childbirth classes. And, as many of you know, I managed to get a whole 7 or 8 hours of sleep over a 3-day period to welcome the arrival of our brand new, custom designed, genetically co-engineered tricycle motor.

All that has been occupying my time over the last month or so. I finally have some pictures ready to upload, and now that I'm finally getting a pretty good amount of sleep at night (most of the time, anyway), I'll try to post a little more often.

Stay tuned for a couple of imminent posts on some of the topics listed above......