ert - Giggaheim - Mobile Geek News and Podcast

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The Beach

Wednesday I opened at work for a change! The weather had finally cleared up some for great late afternoon beach trips. I prefer to go to the beach in the morning and leave around noon, or I enjoy going late afternoon for the sunset. I am fair skinned, and although I use 10,000 spf and reapply constantly, I am still afraid to burn. This means, for those of you not living in Florida, one does not want to be out in the sun in the middle of the day for fun. I digress… Pete is used to me closing, so I thought about sneaking off to my happy place. He would be distracted by COMIC BOOK DAY! You know, the best day of the week for a comic book geek. Oh, that rhymed! However, he tells me Tuesday, he’ll only be getting two books. What a terrible COMIC BOOK DAY it will be, alas. At this point, I’m still thinking about the sand, the water, the relaxation. But, I’ve already closed twice this week. It would, in essence, feel like I am closing again. I wouldn’t be doing my wifely duty (ha ha) of fixing dinner. Fine. You win, crappy COMIC BOOK DAY. I stayed at work a little later, called Pete when I left the building, and asked him if he wanted to meet up for dinner. (Wifely duty, my ass.) ”Sure.” He says. ”Like a date?” He says with laughter. ”Sure.” I say. ”How about some sushi?” I say, looking in the direction of the beach. Pete asks if I’m still going to the beach, I say “Nah.” He tells me COMIC BOOK DAY is actually great today. What!? It was supposed to be craptastic!? I was going to stay home, because I was told it was going to be craptastic. You mean, I actually could’ve left work early? I could’ve changed into my bathing suit? I could’ve swam around in the Gulf waters? I could’ve relaxed in my beach chair, sifting through sand, looking for sharks teeth, watching the sunset? Such is life, with a comic book geek. COMIC BOOK DAY is never what it seems. Days it’s supposed to be awesome, it isn’t. Days it should be awful, it isn’t. You just never know about COMIC BOOK DAY. However, we enjoyed each others company while chomping away on raw fish, cooked fish and even some lightly seared sirloin, all wrapped in sea weed and rice. YUM! And, I knew, I was going to the beach the next morning anyway! Oh, because of the holiday on Monday, COMIC BOOK DAY will be Thursday next week, not Wednesday. Plan accordingly.

September 3, 2010 Tags: beach, comic book day, Florida, Living with a geek, sushi
Category: Living With A Geek No Comments

What’s a Riff Track?

I think this blog is paying off! When I got home from work today, Pete said the XBox was mine this evening! Woo-hoo! After an awesome dinner at The Olympia this evening, we came home and I popped in COD: Modern Warfare 2! I accomplished a few more achievements, but finally called it quits when I couldn’t defend my post. So. Very. Aggravating. Pete was typing away at his comic book reviews for the week, while listening to “Dexter” (and my killing and/or being killed.) I feel much better now. I think I can go to work tomorrow and not want to grab jerk customers by their hair and bash their heads into the counter. Well, maybe.

Pete has been listening to something called “riffs” lately. He explained it as MST3K, but with modern movies. He is so into it right now, but I’m not sure if it audio and video. The whole movie is done this way, or what, but I am intrigued. I’m sure I will learn more about “riffs” tomorrow, before, during or after, we record our weekly podcast. As I learn more, I will inform you, my faithful followers… all two of you!

August 27, 2010 Tags: Dexter, modern warfare 2, Riff Track, xbox 360
Category: Living With A Geek 1 Comment

Living With a Geek – Goblet of Fire

I have the feeling I’m living in “The Twilight Zone”. Every evening this week, I have come home to find Pete playing “Halo” on Xbox Live. The past few nights, I have wanted to shoot people. Rather than take my frustrations out on actual people, I’d rather line up my sights on some video game baddies. But, alas, I find myself exploring music on “Youtube”.

My nephew, Craig, has offered to let me borrow one of (yes, that is one of) his Xbox 360 consoles. His only stipulation, I have to go to visit him, and go to Islands of Adventure. He’s been itching to wander around the new Harry Potter area. Oh darn. I guess if I must endure, I will make the effort. We did get a sneak peak when we were last there a few months ago. It looked stunning from the outside! You see, Pete read all the books. I have no interest in reading the books, but I have enjoyed the movies. He tells a great story of when he was up late reading “The Goblet of Fire” one night. There was an abandoned house down the road from us, when we lived in Lakeland. I hated that eyesore. Homeless people would occasionally make camp inside its awful walls. When he got to the part of “He who should not be named” coming to life, he noticed a glow outside. The crap shack was going up in flames! Pete woke me to tell, because he knew how happy that would make me! That’s love! Thankfully, nobody was injured and the volunteer fire department contained the blaze. But, honestly, I was so happy to see it burn to the ground. To this day, it is just an empty lot.

Hopefully, I will be able to take some stress out on some baddies tomorrow after dinner! “COD: Modern Warfare 2” is a wonderful thing, after a long day at work! Pete, hand over the controller, and nobody will get hurt. Well, except for the baddies in the video game. They won’t see me coming!

August 26, 2010 Tags: Goblet of Fire, Living with a geek, modern warfare 2, Twilight Zone, xbox 360
Category: Living With A Geek No Comments

Living with a Geek by Ert

Night Calls

So, I trudge into the house after working 9 AM to 9 PM to find Pete watching a movie he downloaded from Netflix on the Xbox 360. I also hear the hum of the dishwasher! YAY! This is quite a task on a Wednesday, because Wednesday isn’t just “hump day” my dear friends. Wednesday is COMIC BOOK DAY! This is the best day of the week, to comic book geeks worldwide. I usually find Pete in the corner of the living room, where the lighting is best, with the Xbox 360 tuned to Last.fm and reading to his heart’s content. After I get changed into my jammies, and check the world of Facebook, I sit down in front of the TV with Pete. We are now watching “Creature Comforts”. If you have not heard of this show, find it and watch it! I believe it was originally on BBC, but made its way to the U.S. of A. where it lived a short life. The show uses claymation characters voiced by random people being interviewed. About thirty minutes later, Pete’s cell phone rings loudly. It is my nephew wanting to kill some creatures on Halo. We finish an episode of “Creature Comforts” and Pete logs in. I enjoy my uninterrupted computer time, so I don’t mind. Also, I am really happy that my nephew and Pete get along so well. I’m sure they have a love/hate relationship at times, don’t we all, but they have become so close over the last few years. I’m really thankful they can keep each company, through the miracle of Xbox Live, especially when I work these crazy retail hours.

August 25, 2010 Tags: Living with a geek
Category: Living With A Geek No Comments

Living with a Geek by Ert

I have decided, after much deliberation and hounding from Pete, that I must start a blog about my day-to-day life with a geek. I grew up watching anything my dad or brother watched, such as “Dr. Who”, the original “Star Trek” series, “Battlestar Galactica”, of course “Star Wars” and just about anything sci-fi. Although, I did read the G.I. Joe comic book series, I didn’t consider myself a comic book geek. Frankly, I didn’t even know that was a term given to people who read comic books. Pete, on the other hand, played D & D, Magic the Gathering, read fantasy books, and the graphic novels his sister would lend him. He hated to read, but his mother insisted on reading in her house. For every hour you read, you were allowed to watch an hour of television. Therefore, Pete didn’t watch a whole lot of TV! The television was always on in our house, but I loved to read, so my parents didn’t seem to mind me watching shows throughout the day and night.

When Pete and I first met, I had no idea the obsession he would acquire with comic books. We met on our first day of graduate assistant orientation at Kent State University. We were both music performance majors, which immediately labels us geeks! However, as it turns out, he was into watching movies as much as I was. Pete had quite the movie video collection, and conveniently lived across the street from a great movie rental store. He introduced me to the Batman animated cartoons with Mark Hamill’s Joker voiceover, the animated “Spawn” movie and many other delights! During this time, he was too busy to play “Magic the Gathering”, but did play video games. He loved to play “Twisted Metal” (I have no idea which one) and “Abe’s Odyssey”. When he acquired a computer, his gaming also picked up some speed. He got back into “Doom”, “GTA: 2”, “World of Warcraft”, and a good friend introduced us to “Diablo”. This was the beginning of, not the end, but of his love of computers. Pete began to harness his graphic designing abilities. I think his first start was designing his recital posters. That was it… He was hooked. Thank goodness! Music performance didn’t turn out to be such a lucrative career choice, for either of us!

We’ve been through ten years of gaming consoles, computers, and boxes upon boxes of comic books. (Er, I mean, graphic novels.) During this time, we’ve evolved from PC to Mac, Playstation to XBOX360, VHS tapes to Blu-Ray, and CD’s to iPod. I hope you enjoy our journey!