120 Stars!

It still bums me out that you don't get to ride Yoshi at the end.

My main motivation in writing this post is to brag that I beat Mario 64 for the first time with all 120 stars. Even the first time I played through it in 1996 my brother Seth and I traded off on the same save--each getting different ones.

Thankfully games today have better cameras and controls. Allison can attest to the fact that I threw the controller more than once. I can't count how many times the camera decided do an up close zoom of a wall instead of my jump or how many times Mario decided to run off the edge for whatever reason.

Luckily more has happened in my life besides twenty-year-old games.

I don't have any pictures from Halloween but it was the same costume. I fulfilled my usual role of handing out candy while the kids are out with their parents. I always try to play up some character for the task and this year was no different. I spooked up my outfit a little by closing my cloak, and popping up the hood. Furthermore I started walking with a limp and used my best psychotic villain voice. As the kids walked up I would either be standing at the open door with my back turned or I would jump out at them just as they were about to knock on the glass storm door.

There were several times I had to break character as small children's eyes went wide with fear but for the most part the kids played along. The best time by far was when a young teenager came to the door and as I came out at him he visibly jumped. This caused even the stoic father of my cousin to laugh.

Some other things:

Old Bones had a fantastic makeup job by Ariel Stardust.

My family, Sarah, and I attended the Salt Lake showing of Deep Love. It was a fantastic folk/rock opera written by some of Allison's friends in Rexburg. It was full of passion, betrayal, and superb singing; if you're in the area next Halloween I highly recommend you go see it.

Sarah gifted me several swatches of fabric of which I was able to make a few more bow-ties. The picture above only has them partially finished but I have since completed all of them (making more than one sewing mistakes in the process). Sewing is a lot of fun and hopefully I'll be able to branch out into other patterns soon.

At the planetarium. Space is so cool!