Remember: Mouse Trap

Mouse trap was always a pretty fun "game". Although I'm pretty sure I played the actual game only once. I don't even remember how it worked, you collected pieces of cheese as you went through the board and somehow you put all the gadgets on the board. And then the object was to get your own mouse caught in the trap? Anyway the game itself was kinda lame but damn was it fun to set up the whole chain reaction of junk. The swinging boot that kicked over a bucket and let a ball zig zag down that blue plank thing, the diver guy that would do a backflip into the pool thing, but he wouldn't quite flip far enough most of the time so you had to go back and reset everything before it. It was so hard to keep track of all the pieces, like 5 different sized balls and wierd structural pieces that when you are a kid you dont care about. And then when you lost one you had to try and find other things you could replace that part with. I'd wager to say that there is not one full set of mouse trap out there today. I mean unless they are making new ones or something which they could be. Either way I'd like to find a bunch of other people with old mouse trap games and see if between us we could assemble the entire thing. Oh Rube Goldberg machines.

Remember: Pogs

Oh pogs, what an amazingly simple yet somehow fun game. For those unfamiliar, pogs are these circular cardboard disks a little bigger than a silver dollar that had a picture on one side while the other side was white. For some reason 8-balls were quite popular. Any way, you and another person mix up your pogs and stack them up picture side down. Then you alternate taking your slammer, a thicker heavier plastic pog, and throwing it against the top of the stack in an attempt to flip the pogs. If you played for keeps, which if you didn’t would trigger comments like “you afraid” or “chicken?” or “what’s the matter? Mommy wont let you?”, whichever pogs you flipped you kept. This of course quickly led to them being banned in school which was kind of a bummer, but it was still a fun game.

The Burger

Last night I made a pair of the fattest burgers ever. I had made them once before, on the day I came up with the idea for the grease feast. The basic recipe for the burger is to take a beef pattie with pepper jack cheese and top it with a fried chicken breast with buffalo sauce. My oh my was it delicious, I meant to take a picture of it but when you finish constructing such a feast you dont exactly want to run around looking for a camera, you wanna chow down. And chow down I did.

Remember: Tamagotchi

So today I went to my old house to help my mom go through whatever stuff was deemed not important enough to move over to the new house, but seemingly too important to throw away while also staying not important enough that we would not need to go get it for about 4 years. Needless to say there was a bunch of stuff in my room that sent me on a trip down memory lane. So I shall reminisce about some of them here.

Remember Tamagotchis? Those little keychain pet things you had to take care of or they would die. Yes I had one. It was kinda fun trying to keep it alive for as long as possible and whatnot. I remember cleaning up its poop and stuff was annoying and the fact that you couldnt have one in school meant that for 9 months out of the year there was almost no way it could survive beyond a weekend, but it was more or less enjoyable sort of. Which got me to thinking, does anyone still have a working tamagotchi in the country or the world? Somebody has to have one alive somewhere. I can just picture some 40 year old japanese guy with a hello kitty backpack and a tamagotchi thats pushin 10 years old. And man does he love that thing. It has to have happened once right?

After looking at wikipedia to see if anyone has a live one or if it was even feasible I have now learned that they are still making the things! That is just beyond me.

Nightly Orioles Trivia

I've become quite annoyed that the Orioles have changed the format of the nightly trivia question. In the past the question would be shown in the second or third inning. An announcer might give a hint, maybe a "I'm pretty sure I know". Then a few innings later they would show the question again the announcers would chime in with their guesses and they'd show the answer.
NOW in the third inning they show the question followed by a two second pause after which Jim Palmer answers the question like that dee bag kid in class who has to make you feel like an idiot anytime he knows something you dont. Then they show the friggin' answer. If I wanted to listen to Jim Palmer spout random crap I wouldnt watch the games with the volume turned way down.
So to all the MASN executives who read my blog please give us at least a couple of outs to try and think of the answer to the trivia question. Thank you.

An approximation of where I've spent my life and what I did

Yes everything listed here is true although the exact percentages may not be correct but who's counting.

Canada- 0.04%
Niagra Falls- 100%
75%- Seeing the sights
25%- Gambling

United States- 99.96%

Colorado- 0.05%
33%- Seeing the sights
33%- Wandering the Denver airport
33%- Sleeping on the floors of junior colleges

New Mexico- 0.22%
99%- Camping, Hiking, Backpacking
1%- Eating at steakhouses

South Carolina- 0.04%
90%- Living on an aircraft carrier
10%- Exploring Fort Sumpter

New York- 0.1%
3%- Watching the Orioles beat the Yankees
20%- Wandering the streets of New York City
6%- Wandering the streets of Cooperstown
6%- Exploring the Baseball hall of fame
7%- Killing time in hotel rooms
10%- Riding in a car
5%- Riding the subway
34%- Sleeping
5%- Eatin' pizza
1%- Trying to find the correct Chinatown bus
1%- Playing putt-putt
1%- Eating at steakhouses

Pennsylvania- 0.1%
45%- Hershey Park
7%- Driving through it
40%- In Coopersburg for some reason
7%- Watching Maryland football beat the snot out of Temple in the rain
1%- Eatin' cheesesteaks

Virginia- 0.2%
38%- Hangin' out in Virginia beach
12%- Driving through it
2%- Watching a Norfolk Tides game
5%- Eating at Cracker Barrel
37%- Camping
3%- Moving my sister in at JMU
1%- Playing putt-putt
1%- Eating at steakhouses

North Carolina- 1.3%
1%- Watching Maryland football beat UNC in overtime
3%- Watching Maryland soccer play in the ACC tourney in Cary
1%- Watching Maryland soccer win a National Championship in Cary
2%- Packing/Unpacking the car
3%- Seeing the sights
33%- Sleeping (either in bunkbeds or on the floor)
18%- Loungin on the beach
25%- Doing lord knows what in the Outer Banks
6%- Playing wiffleball
2%- Watching the Outer Banks Daredevils
4%- Ridin' bikes
1%-Eating Carolina pork BBQ
1%- Playing putt-putt

Delaware-0.04%
4%- Getting Fishers popcorn
4%- Getting Candy Kitchen
0%- Paying Sales tax
12%- Waterslidin'
25%- Loungin' at the beach
8%- Hangin' around Bethany
4%- Hangin' around Rehobeth
31%- Sleeping in those two places
8%- Trying to find stuff for scavenger hunts
1%- Watching that soccer game where that girl took her shirt off, why this is such a distinct memory I do not know, its the moon landing of my puberty I guess
3%- Playing putt-putt

Maryland- 97.95%
10%- Being a baby
9%- Sitting in School
33%-Sleeping
2%- Going to Ocean City
2%- Going to Deep Creek
1%- Going to Orioles games
1%- Going to Frederick Keys games
1%- Going to Bowie Baysox games
1%- Going to Terps games
1%- Going to Other sporting events
18%- Eeking my way through college
19%- Being completely and entirely unproductive
1%- Playing putt-putt
1%- Eating at steakhouses