We have a Stromahnn’s outlet a few blocks down the road from us, and when they have Monk’s raisin bread in stock, we pick up a loaf. It is so very delicious toasted with a little bit of butter. It also is really good for a toasted peanut butter and jelly sandwich or for peanut butter toast. I just wish that the loaves were bigger, since the loaf always seems to go so fast. :)

Homestar Runner is a really crazy flash cartoon series. I’ve been watching it for years now. The Strong Bad emails are definitely the funniest part of the website, where the mexican luchadore character Strong Bad responds to e-mails from viewers. A lot of funny running gags are created from these emails, including my favorite character Homsar. Homsar was created from the mispelling of Homestar in one of the e-mails, and was meant to be a one-time character. He was said to be killed off in the e-mail, but it was revealed later that he was only hurt from the incident.

It’s a good thing too, since Homsar is one of the funniest parts of Homestar Runner. He pops up often in weird places, often as easter eggs that can be found by clicking on a specific part in a cartoon. He is an odd character that violates the laws of physics to humorous effects, including hovering in the air and making multiple copies of himself.

After the Strong Bad e-mails, my second favorite cartoon series on the site is the Halloween cartoons. Each halloween a new cartoon is made, and each of the characters are shown in some very funny outfits based on often obscure characters from pop culture in the past. My favorite so far is when Homestar dressed up as The Greatest American Hero and sings “Believe it or not, I’m walkin’ around, I never thought I could trick or tre-e-eat.” That cracks me up every time I see it. :)

I used to hate drinking water when I was a little girl. I would rather have a flavored soda or juice. Tastes change a lot as you get older, and I’m finding that there is very little that I don’t like anymore. I am trying to stay away from sodas (though I still enjoy the crisp taste of a lemon-lime soda every now and then), and I’m trying to drink less concentrated juice.

I have been trying to drink 8 glasses of water a day, and now I’m finding that I actually enjoy the taste of water. We installed a water filter on our tap at home, and it really makes a difference in the taste. I used to think that water was tasteless, but after drinking more of it, I discovered that it really does have a nice taste after all. It’s much like how I cut out adding sugar and salt to my food, and have discovered that without the additional seasonings, the food actually tastes better on it’s own. I was just so used to sugared beverages that water was bland in comparison. Now the sugared beverages often taste too sweet to me, and I often water them down a bit.

Italian sausage smells so great when it is cooking on the grill. Whenever I go to festivals or fairs, I often just enjoy the aromas coming from the vendors’ carts. Of course, the best thing is that the sausage tastes just as good as it smells. I love italian sausage on a toasted roll with a little bit of peppers and onions. We went to an italian festival last year. We each got an italian sausage, a cannoli, and we shared a lemon italian ice. It was my first time going to a festival like that, and I can’t wait to go back this year. It rained last time, so we couldn’t get to all the vendor’s carts. Hopefully this year we can spend more time there. :)

Ah, Cheeseburgers on the grill. This brings back fond memories from when I was a little girl. My dad built a long porch that went from the front of the house to along the side of the house. We spent a lot of our time in the summer on the side porch at the picnic table with our extended family (my mom, my sister, my dad, and myself, and my grandparents and grandmother on my dad’s side) having grilled cheeseburgers and (my grandfather’s favorite) hot dogs and eating jell-o and devilled eggs. My grandfather would bring his special meat sauce for his hotdogs and my grandmother would bring a Jell-o dessert with fruit and whipped cream inside and fruit and whipped cream on the top as well. My grandmothers always had huge smiles on their faces, and my dad was happily grilling the meat on his Weber grill (he wouldn’t do with anything less). When we were done eating, my sister and I would dive into the pool, and the adults would talk on the porch or on lawn chairs on the patio.

My mom and I still grill cheeseburgers sometimes on my dad’s Weber grill, but most of my extended family has passed away now, with only my mom, myself, and my sister left. Our picnics aren’t the same without them, but they do bring back fond memories of our grand picnics when I was younger.

Sliders went through a lot of changes in it’s fourth season. Wade and Remmy were kidnapped between seasons three and four, with Wade being sent to a Kromagg breeding camp forcing her to give birth to hybrid Kromagg-human babies. Rembrant undergoes a huge personality change as a result of this, as he blames himself for not being able to protect Wade, and vows to get Wade back and to get revenge on the Kromaggs.

On Earth prime, someone who claims to be Quinn’s mother tells Quinn that he is not really from Earth prime, and that he was sent away from his real dimension to protect him from the Kromaggs. He also is told that he has a brother, who was sent to another dimension from his own. His brother was sent to an Earth that does not have modern luxuries, much like our Earth’s Amish communities.

The loss of the professor really shows here, as he was often the voice of reason, and would have been very leery of Quinn’s brother, since Quinn found out the information about his brother and his parents at a Kromagg prison camp, and as Rembrant mentioned the Kromaggs can make humans see and hear what they want them to after the Kromaggs impersonated Remmy’s father in a previous episode.

I personally did not mind the changes, as the stories were still good. Quinn’s brother actually brought a lot to the show I thought, since he was very naive, and had a charm to him much like the character Brendan Fraser played in Blast From the Past.

When I was a little girl, my Uncle Ron would bring over Nintendo games for our family to try. The two I remember him bringing over the most were The Legend of Zelda and Bomberman. My mom was completely taken over by Bombermania. She became the bombermom. :)

While my sister and I were asleep, mom would be up all night playing the game. She would get to level 50, turn Bomberman into a human, and then do it all over again. I don’t know how many times she would beat the game in a row before she would finally get to bed, but often she only got 2 or 3 hours of sleep before she had to go in for work due to her Nintendo addiction.

I played Bomberman a lot too, but I never really got the fever like my mom did. I only beat the first game a few times. The original NES Bomberman was fun, but Super Bomberman for the SNES added a lot to the game that made it even more addicting. I played this again for the first time in a long time the other day, and it was weird after being so used to the SNES game. The board scrolled, there were no bombs for kicking, bombs killed the baddies in the blocks without the need for red bombs, and every single bad guy could be killed with only one blast. Still, the formula that makes Bomberman fun was still there, and most of the powerups besides those I mentioned before were here even in Bomberman’s first outing.

This game still is fun, but when my mom or I feel like a game of Bomberman, we’ll reach for Super Bomberman now.

I remember when I was a little girl, and my parents stopped into Radio Shack. They had the Day of the Tentacle demo playing on the computer. I just sat there, amazed at the beautiful animation playing before me. I never imagined that computers could possibly pull off such a feat. The characters moved so smooth. DOTT looked like a cartoon rather than a computer program. And the music was so wonderful, and was so zany that it fit the animation so perfectly. The sound effects were also wonderfully cartoony, and really added to the atmosphere.

I just had to have it, but since the computer was still a family computer, we ended up getting MS-DOS 6.0 instead. It wasn’t until years later that I finally was able to play Day of the Tentacle, and I wasn’t disappointed in the least. I was a huge fan of Maniac Mansion, spending a lot of time on it on the Nintendo Entertainment System when it first came out. Day of the Tentacle surprised me by taking everything I knew and throwing it on it’s head. The Edisons were still recognizably themselves, but many years had passed since the first adventure, and the characters had changed believably with time.

Weird Ed was so scarred by the whole ordeal that he spent years in therapy. He’s no longer a commando-entusiast, but now he collects stamps in order to remain at peace. The mansion has been turned into a hotel in order to make money to take care of the family as well as fund Dr. Fred’s experiments. As a result, Nurse Edna no longer throws non-family members into the dungeon, but she still keeps a keen eye on the mansion through security cameras.

Day of the Tentacle introduced me to a concept that I know vastly prefer over straight sequels. It’s the same game world, but other than sharing the characters of the Edisons and the nerd from the first game, Bernard, it’s a wildly different game.

You still control three characters: Bernard, a roadie named Hoagie, and a medical student named Laverne. But, as the game unfolds, the reasoning for controlling three characters becomes much more important. Where in the first game, the characters were used to get other people out of the dungeon, and use their unique abilities to solve different puzzles and see different endings, here the ability to use three different characters was of complete importance. Each of the three characters end up in different time periods. Bernard is in the present, Hoagie is in the past, and Laverne is in the future. You can share inanimate objects between time frames as long as they fit in the time machine. This brought a big feeling of exploration that is seldom felt in adventure games. The mansion was there to explore in three different time periods, and doing things in any of those time periods could cause things to change for future periods. It was a wonderful scenario that I’d love to see explored again in another adventure game.

I absolutely love Old Country Buffet’s chocolate milk. Whenever I eat there, I always have several glasses. It’s so rich and creamy, and it has a wonderful chocolate flavor. I often drink Hershey’s chocolate syrup in milk at home, but nothing beats OCB’s chocolate milk. I don’t often go to buffets, as I don’t usually eat a lot so I have to be really hungry to go to a buffet so it will be worth the price. So, when I do get to drink Old Country Buffet’s chocolate milk, it’s a real treat. :)

The Beast with a Billion Backs is pure Futurama. It has everything that the show is known for, and with it comes a cliche from the show that I was hoping would not make it in any new Futurama after The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings. Futurama has always been a show with depth, which is one of the main reasons I love it so much. Unlike most animated shows, the characters have evolved over time, and not just for the sake of gags (though Zoidberg’s lack of money certainly falls in this category). The characters have actually matured over time. Amy is not the clumsy air-head she once was since she found real love with Kif. Zoidberg has more confidence now that he has been with a group of friends for such a long time. Bender truly cares for his human friends, though he doesn’t often admit it openly. Fry isn’t quite as fool hearty as he once was, and Leela is more open with her emotions.

However, the show always had a tendency to move Leela and Fry together and then pull them apart. The resetting of characters to step one is a cartoon cliche that I wish Futurama wouldn’t use. It’s usually Leela that pulls them apart since she doesn’t want to move the relationship forward usually due to Fry being too immature, despite Fry showing signs of maturity and dedication to Leela on many occassions. Here, it’s Fry who pulls the relationship apart, seemingly out of nowhere with a new girlfriend. Sure, it made for some funny jokes with Bender, but it seemed out of character for Fry, especially after The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings and Bender’s Big Score.

But, that nitpick aside, The Beast With a Billion Backs was still a great movie. It opens where the last film left off, and from there the plot somehow becomes even weirder than the last movie. The main plot is really weird, a little gross, but still entertaining. Bender’s subplot was great, but it seemed to taper off at the end. I did notice that all of Bender’s plot wasn’t resolved towards the end of the movie, so I hope that the next movie deals with the result of Bender’s actions towards the people of Earth.