If I had a million roses

I'm not even going to touch the whole Valentine's thing. I'm not a fan at all, and haven't been for years. This does not mean that I do not like romance, far from it. This just means I don't like a particular day in February being the day that I'm supposed to pull out all the stops. I save that gameplan for birthdays. I am very good at making birthdays fun.

Not to mention that I like to inform myself about where things came from. Frankly, I don't understand why anyone would want to celebrate Valentine's day, once they knew where it came from. But I could be wrong. I am rather fallible, after all.

Not to mention that the women I currently have designs on (I love that phrase) are either too far away or too young or just not working out. As I am rather fond of saying, shit happens.

But I'm not here today to talk about my romantic life, or my history of romance or about the backrub I gave last night. I'm here to talk about a little toy my very dear friend and soon to be Canadian Citizen Wendy got me started on. When last I visited Canada, she introduced me to We Love Katamari on Playstation 2. I've played video games for a long time, friends and neighbors, ever since my dad brought home our Texas Instruments computer back when I was 8, I have had a computer in my home, for both work and play. I have not, however, ever owned a Nintendo, Playstation, even Atari 2600 until now. Mostly because I think the games are too complex, and when I'm trying to relax, I'd rather not have to rack my brain trying to do so. I'm also not one of those hyper-competitive, always playing the damn thing kind of guys. When I relax and enjoy a diversion, I'm doing just that. When summer finally arrives, I'll spend a lot less time on the PS2 and a lot more time on my bike. Anyways.

Enter the world of Katamari- possibly the silliest game I have ever seen. I bought the game, along with my first ever Playstation, back in December and started playing around with it, primarily just to pass time. The game is simple enough. You roll up objects. That's basically it, but check out this post on Joey's blog for a cool little comic about Katamari.

Eventually, I learned that there are goals and the like associated with the game, leading up to the ultimate challenge, rolling up 1,000,000 roses. Friday, after finally getting out of bed with the remnants of my hangover still fighting for attention (I have found Katamari to be an excellent way to kill off a hangover), I finally started the insane quest to roll up one million roses.

Yesterday, after a particularly unhappy day at work (I seem to be stringing those together lately), I got home, finished up pub quiz, and sat down to burn off some steam. When I saved my game last night, I had made it up to 78,076 roses. Only 921,924 to go.

What I like about this project of mine is it reminds me that I have other goals in life, and that I might want to get cracking on them. Time, after all, keeps on tickin'.