Just had a weird phone call with my mother about video games. The rabbi at her synagogue gave a sermon about them yesterday. He mostly talked about Grand Theft Auto, and said that the games shouldn't be forbidden, since that just makes them more attractive, but that they should be regarded as some Yiddish word that I just forgot, which pretty much means, "so far beneath you that it's not even worth discussing."

She wanted to know what sorts of video games I played now, and what I played when I was a kid. I informed her that now, my usual games are Super Mario Galaxy and Dance Dance Revolution, neither of which involve violence or prostitutes. When I was a teenager, I did play Wolfenstein 3D, and I described that game to her. The violence seemed to disturb her, but the fact that it was violence against Nazis seemed to make it a little better. Also, no prostitutes. Also, I think she's about to have a Talk with my dad about why he let me buy that game in the first place. (I'm sure he doesn't remember why -- it was about 15 years ago.)

I don't know, Hil. Dance Dance Revolution, nah I got nothing. The violence level in the video games bothers me personally so I don't play them. It just isn't my idea of fun to shoot people, but the boys play a number of them. I didn't let them buy GTA or most of the MA rated games. I'm just a big old square. They get plenty of bloodthirsty action in WoW and other games. Without a doubt they play all of them at various friend's houses, but at least they know my feelings on the subject. Mom = killjoy.

Yeah, some of the violent ones are really icky. DW plays Resident Evil - I totally don't have the stomach for it. Give me Mario! Though I do have a game called Bully that is totally not for kids but fun for me!

I don't like the overt violent ones. I say it that way, because I play Civilization, where my general strategy is to crush all the other civilizations before I send my spaceship to Alpha Centauri. Sometimes, I go the diplomatic route by building the United Nations and being uber fertile and the cultural heavyweight, so I always have majority vote. Eventually, I win because I'm so overwhelmingly patronizing nice to everyone. Depends on the mood I'm in.

I could tell that the "those games are beneath you" concept appealed to my mom. A pretty frequent refrain in my childhood was "we don't do that." If I used a swear word, the response from her was "We don't use that word." Table manners were taught with things like "We don't talk with our mouths full" or "We don't read at the table." With the clear implication that there might be some other, low-class people who did that stuff, but we didn't. (Which kind of backfired on her when I was about seven, and we were in a store around Christmas time, and a clerk finished up the sale and said, "Merry Christmas." I replied, in that exact some tone, "We don't celebrate Christmas. Happy Chanukah.")

Morning/timelies everyone. I woke up with an incredibly stuffed up nose and sore throat. Again. The doctor had given me an antibiotic prescription last week just in case, and I've been avoiding filling it because I don't want to take unnecessary antibiotics, but I'm seriously considering filling it at this point since this ick will not die. It's possible this is an infection, isn't it? I'm wondering if the pneumona earlier this year has just shot my immune system to hell, because this is ridiculous.

Kristin, have they determined if it is strep or not? I remember that it was going to take some time to get the test results back, but I didn't recall if that had happened yet or not.

They never called, which means it came back negative.

And the airhead of the week award goes to... ME

This morning, I'm sitting here thinking, "Boy, it's unnaturally cold in the house."

Nate, who is impervious to cold, even said, "Mom, it's kind of cold."

I just figured it'd gotten colder than expected last night and I didn't have the heat turned up quite enough.

Um... no. The thermostat wasn't on at all. When the air conditioning guys were here on Friday, they must have tripped the breakers for both units and forgotten to flip one of them back.

Only took me two days to figure it out.

Can you call someone before getting antib's? Antibiotics target different kind of infections, and if they gave you a scrip in case it was strep, then it may not help with what you have.

Signed, had to take two different courses of antibiotics for ears AND sinuses last year.