Journal Entry: August 27, 2008

Big news, I guess, is the car. I talked with my dad last night about his experiences with such problems, and he recommended I take it in to a tire shop. He said if it was an alignment problem or a damaged strut (which it turned out to be), tire shops due those jobs in such high volume that normal mechanics can't compete. And if it was something more serious, the tire shop would readily refer me.

As I said, though, it turned out to be a bent strut -- as well as severe alignment problems from the impact. It's going to run me about $300, which is a kick in the pants, but it's about as good as I could have hoped for as of the moment I felt the lady slam into the passenger side of my car. So I'm considering myself fortunate, paying the bill, and going on with my life.

After work yesterday I went for a haircut, then Dad called me on my drive home from there. I got off the phone with him right around the time AB showed up in the living room dressed as a dragon (as you may have read about elsewhere), which was pretty damn adorable.

Then D-- came over and we spent an hour or so scrolling through the songs in Rock Band's Music Store. The vast majority of them run $2 a song, and once you've got them downloaded you can play them in the game -- not just in free play type things, but also in the Set Lists you set up to progress through the game, so it makes a pleasant break from the game's initial set of songs, which you find yourself playing over and over and over again.

I found "Still Alive" with GlaDOS available as a free download, and that just made my night (although I think K-- is the only one I know who would understand why, and that fact saddens me deeply). Then, as I said, D-- and T-- and I went through all the songs in the list, and picked out the Must Haves and the Pretty Goods and passed on all the That Sounds Exactly Like Twisted Sister But Not Quite As Goods.

The Must Haves alone came out to about $60 worth. I'd sent D-- an email yesterday saying, "This game is going to get expensive." That was in reference to the drum throne (stool) and drum pad silencers that I had found, not to mention the $300 replacement drum kit. Adding in downloadable content just makes it worse.

We'll probably grab a bunch of those pretty soon, though. Because, as I said, the core songs get old pretty quick, and it turns out there's some pretty nice material available for purchase. D-- sent me the setlist for Rock Band 2, though, and it just blows the first one away. It's got a heavy Classic Rock bent, whereas the first is much more Punk and Metal.

Anyway, the plan was to do our music selection while AB was awake, then break out the instruments once she went down, but the first part of that ended up taking nearly an hour longer than we'd intended. That was okay, though -- we just added an hour to our evening. We ended up playing until 11:00, but we got our band a private jet and a sound guy, so that's pretty cool. T-- also finally tried playing guitar, and in spite of a rocky start she improved rapidly, and actually had a lot more fun than she thought she would.

Then there was Aerosmith, but we will not talk of it.

This morning I had PT at 8:00, and T-- took the car up to the tire place while I was there, and then I picked her up afterward and dropped her at home before I headed to work. That's my day.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.