And so the marathon continues...

Yet again, I wound up playing "Resident Evil 5" just about the entire day. Today, however, was a major stepping stone. One of my good friends and I A-ranked every stage in the Mercenaries mode together, after a bit of work, planning and cooperation. We're really good at the game, apparently, given that we're 2 of the highest ranked American players thus far. The Japanese players and the developers are of course much better, but the Japanese players have had the game for an entire extra week over us and the developers are obviously going to completely dominate their own game. The developers scores HAVE been dominated for the most part by a few Japanese players, though. At any rate, that was a huge step, so I'm free to do anything I can in the realm of "Resident Evil 5" now because everything's unlocked for play. The only real step I have left is to collect a small handful of treasures, buy two more weapons and collect every emblem. After that, I just have to finish gathering money and exchange points to max everything out and buy the remaining bonus items. I have all of the high-end speedrun equipment already, so everything else is just for fun, completion and achievements. The last thing I'll do is Professional mode, but that's going to be a bitch and a half.

Not much has happened today, but a few things stick out that I need to get off my chest.

First: A friend of mine is now leaving Maryland to go back to West Virginia/Pennsylvania for school. She'll be back for visits, but she's more or less gone. I rarely see her or even speak to her very often as is, but it saddens me that it's going to be a long time before I'll see her again. We had plans to hang out soon, but those are obviously going out the window because she wont be here. I hope that everything works out for her, though.

Second: My Australian ex-girlfriend is now blocked in every way that she has to contact me, aside from e-mail, but I doubt she'll go far enough to send me an e-mail as is. She may have forgotten the address, even. To elaborate, she's taking advantage of my time and emotions. There's a degree of emotional attachment to her that I can't seem to shake off, but I could easily walk away and completely recover within' a few weeks for the most part. Anyhow, part of the reason that I'm up so late at night is because of her. I would typically only stay awake until 3:00AM or maybe as late as 4:00AM, but I've been going to bed much, much later in order to make a bit more time for her, as well as uninterrupted time with "Resident Evil 5", which I'll probably play a good bit less at this point. Despite this fact and even though I do everything I can to keep up a good conversation without any sort of flaws or disputes, she just ignores my efforts and emotions. She treats me like a pet, in a sense and I told her all about it. I sent her around 12 paragraphs of shit, which I know that she'll read and then she'll somehow find a way to blame it on me in her own mind, but I'll get over it. That part of my life has to come to a close. I need to end the stories of my past before I can really start living a happy life into the future.

Third: My other ex-girlfriend was completely blown off by me today, but it was unintentional. I honestly feel bad about it because we were talking and apparently I even missed a call from her all because I got sidetracked and started playing "Resident Evil 5" with my buddy all day. That was my own fault because I could have easily told her that I wanted to go, said goodbye properly, etc., but instead, when she messaged me, I just said "Sorry, I'm playing RE5 with a friend. lol." and that was it. She didn't say anything after that and I know how she gets. She's probably angry at me. I'll apologize and make things right, but it was my own fault. I really should have said something before I just took off and started playing. I admit it. She doesn't have access to this blog, but she'll get the apology when I talk to her next.

Finally: My brother in-law and my sister are in talks about making trades with me, while Mom is in the process of being an absolute bitch to me, as usual. I'm going to vent about my Mom before I go on with the possible trades, though.

Generally, I make my own food with whatever we have laying around the house, just like everyone else. The only meal that we usually don't make ourselves is dinner, which Mom usually prepares or orders. She's not a good cook by any means, although she can make a few decent meals, but she's supposed to take care of dinner. That's what she does. That's not the point of this, though, so to move onwards and closer to the point, she's always yelling at me and trying to blame me for eating random food. First of all, I've cut back on food a whole lot and I rarely eat more than half of my daily recommended intake of calories as is. Second, she buys food so that everyone in this house has food to eat. The problem with this is that she seriously only buys enough food for 2-3 people, not the 8(+1 when my youngest niece is here) people who live here. Not only that, but she yells at me for eating late at night and acts like the time of day should impact what I eat, regardless of my sleeping schedule. She acts like she's some skinny woman who has all of the fitness advice in the world, when I'm the one who actually had a personal trainer for about 6 months a long while back. I know what to do to lose weight, how to eat right and how to prepare myself mentally for the challenges that lay ahead. She knows nothing about this shit aside from dumb shit they put into her head on television with shows like Oprah. None of that shit is real. Just because I eat at 4AM, that doesn't mean my body is going to be impacted any differently by the food I eat. My current sleeping schedule means that 4AM or so is my actual dinner time and she doesn't care. She yells at me if I eat more than 1 meal, basically and acts like I shouldn't eat anything at all. She picks at me for everything, even right down to how loud I sometimes breathe, which is caused by my fucking permanently damaged respiratory system and Asthma. Anyway, the point is, she always yells at me and assumes that I cooked food and today in particular, it happened to be a bag of Ore Ida (or however it's spelled) french fries, which I didn't even touch today. She insisted that I made it and denied that I was telling the truth. It pisses me the fuck off when she does this because when it comes to anything at all, I'm immediately the person she accuses. There are times when those small accusations are just enough to push me over that edge because of what else is going on in my life. Right now, this is close to being one of those times, thanks to all of these stupid problems with friends and ex-girlfriends. I feel like I should jam a knife through my chest and just let myself die, I swear...

So anyway, my sister wants my original modified DreamCast console, all of the stuff I have for it and my original PlayStation game collection. She's offering $150, roughly. I could get a new PSP out of that, a few new games, put it towards a new Wii or whatever else I felt like doing. In truth, though, I'm still not so sure if I want to do that. It's a fair trade, all things considered, but I just don't know. I feel the same way about the other potential trade, which involves my brother in-law's desperate want to own a PlayStation 3 for the sake of pure HDMI top-notch Blu-Ray capabilities. He could go out and buy one for $300-400, depending on if it's used or not, but he'd rather buy mine from me because he knows I'd cut him a deal and I also don't use it very often. Plus, I could still use it to review games even if he got it from me. He wouldn't use it enough to justify owning it, though and he also probably can't really afford it. On top of that, despite how bitchy my Mom is, she has some sort of god complex and is always grinding me about how she'll never do anything for me again if I trade or sell my PlayStation 3, even if I get equal value o rhigher for what she bought me. It was a Christmas gift and as far as everyone else is concerned, myself, my friends and my family included, it shouldn't matter what I do with it, so long as I'm not ripping myself off and so long as I get something I'll actually enjoy out of it. I'd feel bad trading it to my brother in-law, but if he does it, this is what he's proposed: A new limited edition red Xbox 360 Elite console, which includes a unique "Resident Evil 5" premium theme excluse to the limited edition console, the full retail case, manual and game (Resident Evil 5), a free download code for the Xbox Live Arcade $15 game "Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix", a red wireless controller, a black headset, an ethernet cable, a 120GB elite hard drive, component/AV HD cables, an HDMI cable and more importantly: the new "Jasper" build. "Jasper" is essentially the final version of the Xbox 360 console, which has more or less eliminated the main causes of overheating, overconsumption of electrical power and the infamous "Red Ring Of Death". My current Xbox 360 is a 20GB launch day model with no more warranty, no HDMI port and a high chance for a "Red Ring Of Death". I don't use my PlayStation 3 at all, I could use the bigger hard drive and I'd love a new warranty + the limited edition console model, among other things. I can also trade the sealed game for something else I want, seeing as it's a brand new $60 MSRP retail game; a highly saught-after one, at that. I'm very tempted and very interested in both trades and I think that I'm willing to do them both, ultimately, but I'll have to confirm it all, talk to everyone involved, which includes easing Mom into it and figure out my plan for my current Xbox 360 console. I could easily trade it off for a new Wii and softmod it or even mod this Xbox 360, but there are many options. I'm interested in a nice iPod Touch, too, so perhaps that's what I'll go for. I'm not so sure just yet, but these trades hold many possibilities for me.

My goodness, that was a lot of shit to cover a few very basic issues. Still, it feels great to get it all off my chest. Thanks for reading! Take care!

-SM