PixlBit

I've hiked some of those trails in Phoenix. South Mountain Park is really nice, and they had info panels about the more common desert plants, which I really liked.

No, didn't know about the diet. Congrats on the first 9 pounds! I need to lose about 20, I've been a wicked slug this summer, with the humidity. Tomorrow is supposed to be cool and dry, so my plan is to get up early and take a nice, easy run with Beau and get back on the Couch to 5K plan again. That's what I say now. We'll see what happens when the alarm goes off at 5:30 tomorrow morning.

Luckily for me, I can usually wait to buy games until they go on sale or I can find them used. This month, I was very bad and bought two new games. But II understand your dilemma.

I have Yakuza 3 for the PS3. I started it, and then decided to track down the first two games and play them first. And obviously, that didn't happen. Have fun with Yakuza!

Pretty much, lol.

Hope you did a lot of leveling up. Just got my ass handed to me by the monster in the desert.

I'm spoiled for choice in the buy local end of things here. Books, movies, music, and games, I have local indie stores for all of them that beat anything big box or online. And the market I work at in the winter and where I've done my grocery shopping for years is also a locally-owned independent grocery store. The best things about buying local are that you know the money stays in the community and supports real people. Not to mention havng a personal relationship with the employees.

I will try and update you as much as I can with DQ XI. I'm really liking it, it's like DQ VIII and DQ IX had a really beautiful, talented love child together. I have a couple of minor quibbles with it, but they are very minor. As a matter of fact, as soon as I finish typing this, I'm going to throw a frozen pizza in the oven and get back to it.

Over the years, I have worked a variety of crappy off-season jobs to make ends meet. We do what we need to do.

And your photography is wonderful.

That travel pack thing looks awesome. Might have to find something like that for myself for my yearly trip to Maryland.

I have encountered that pump's twin sibling. And of course I was running late for work that day!

I downloaded Lego Clone Wars, but haven't played it yet. Too much other stuff going on at the moment. I still have two unfinished 360 games to play (Tales of Vesperia and Arkham City) and I was bad and bought and started playing DQ XI. And then Shadow of the Tomb Raider comes out in a week.

They also repair pretty much every console ever made. It cost me $15 to havr the thumb sticks replaced on a PS4 controller (the cat chewed the rubber off). And they're going to fix my 3DS analog stick, too (rubber fell apart on that, too) for $10.

I went in because neither of my PS4 controllers were charging. Was going to buy a new controller, but Tony, the owner, stopped me and said "you just bought that controller a couple of months ago! (actually, it was over a year ago) Lets try a new charging cable first before you spend the money on a new controller." And lo and behold! It was indeed the charging cable. So I paid $9 with tax instead of whatever the amount for a new controller plus tax woud have been.