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I honestly cannot remember when the toilet started running, but as of late it had become more than a drip or trickle. It had gotten so bad that we’d get up in the middle of the night to shut the bathroom door AND our bedroom door just to muffle the noise.

3 weeks ago I bought a “replace-everything” toilet flushing kit. Unknown to me at the time, I didn’t need to replace “everything” per-se, the bolts holding the tank to the bowl could have been saved. Regardless, since I had all new parts I spent Saturday morning fixing the toilet. After living with the a running water noise for so long, the lack of it is deafening. But it also feels like a bad itch has finally been scratched.

In other news, I have switched jobs once again. This time, though, I think I’ve hit on something good. I made the career switch to consulting vs permanent employment. I’m still salaried through a consulting firm, but now get to enjoy the luxury of zero emotional attachment to the work. I still really enjoy working with the technology and working on solving complex problems. With consulting comes the automatic respect and expectations of a job well done. I don’t feel like a drone so much.

The downside, working at a large corporate healthcare client has seriously cut into my online social life. No longer am I able to ping anyone via instant messaging. If I try to access any sort of IM on my work computer I’m kindly reminded via the proxy server that I am violating corporate policy and if I continue attempt to access IM it will be reported to my manager. Yet-another-reason I’m glad I’m not an employee.

Riles birthday party is fast approaching. With it comes the release of Guitar Hero III for the Wii. If I’m not reading about GH3, I’m telling Courtney about it. While Riley’s birthday party will be fun, I will also be enjoying a few competitive “battle of the bands” round against Drew and Chad.

In our on-going effort to prepare the house for selling I decided to rid myself of all my gaming consoles except for my Wii. I traded it all in and got a decent chunk of change for everything, enough to buy a new game or two.

With the extra money burning a hole in my pocket I decided to pick up Wii Play. I was a little more than disappointed with it. Wii Play plays more like a game demo than an actual full fledged game. It’s a collection of 9 simple to play games - ping pong, skeet shooting, cow riding, and pool just to name a few. None of the games have any depth to them at all. Single player ping pong requires the player to “volley” the ball back to the computer. That’s it, there is no game. Just volley the ball back as much as possible. While skeet shooting has more of a competition feel than ping pong, it still falls very short of fun. In skeet shooting you are quickly hustled through 5 rounds of shooting. First you shoot at balloons, followed by targets, then clay pigeons, cans, and lastly aliens. It’s funny for a few minutes but quickly loses it’s appeal when you realize that regardless of how lousy you are at shooting, you will always and only go through these 5 rounds.

This brings me to my actual point about the Wii. Nintendo and their developers need to start cashing in on this thing. Demand is still soaring high but there’s a glut of games out there. Of the 15-20 games available very few are worth spending $50. I hope they get their act together otherwise the Wii will end up just like every other console I’ve had.

After a tiring workout over lunch yesterday I returned to my desk at work to find a half eaten cookie next to my mouse. Odd, I thought. I peered around my cube discovered my desk had been ransacked. My papers had all been moved around, my stapler had been moved from the LEFT side of my desk to the RIGHT side. Something was up.

That’s when I noticed a trail of tiny Post-Its leading out of cube, down the hallway. I poked my head up to see if anyone else had noticed this. I quickly followed the trail down the hall to the coat closet where the paper trail ended. I took a deep breath and opened the doors. A pair of white eyes peered back at me. “GO NOW!” came a voice. “Who? Who are you?” I questioned. “There is no time!” He shouted, “You must make the voyage now!”

Unfortunately this mysterious voice had caught me at a bad time.

“Where must I go?”

“You know what you must seek. You know your destination. You must hurry!” Riddles, I had no time for riddles.

“But I am working right now. I can’t just LEAVE.” I told him.

“You must send someone then, you have no time!”

I heeded the strange man’s advice. I called my wife and informed her of the strange situation.

She said to me, “If this is about the Wii I want no part.” I told her for the sake of our child this must done now. Luckily she had needed a few things at the store anyways and could swing by to see if the strange little voice was correct, that I might finally get my Wii.

For the sake of my life and humanity as a whole Courtney was able to find the holy grail. When I returned home last night I had finally gotten my Wii. Courtney had endured hours of torturous screeching from the man-child Riles while fending off the oogles of nerds. I owe her a debt of gratitude for her conquest.

The short version of the Wii struggle is: I still don’t have one. There’s no need for me to bore you with the details. Let me just say that it’s been a very frustrating hunt this weekend.

Wednesday night I thought it would be great to wash Dottie’s dog bed. Over the past week she’s had some “issues” that had left her bed a little worse for wear. Her bed is so big, though, that it cannot all fit in the washer at once. I got a great idea to take the polyfill out of the bed and wash it separately from the cover.

An hour after the washer began I came down to a smoke filled laundry room. It seems that I had filled the washer too high with the polyfill and burnt out the washer engine. Wednesday night we went washer shopping.

This capped off a week (a short week nonetheless) of situations where Courtney had suggested that I not do what I was about to do. It started on Sunday when I was about to give Dottie some ibuprofen for her hip. Court said, “Are you sure that she is supposed to have that?” “Why not?” I said. One trip to the vet and $350 later I discovered Courtney was right, dogs aren’t supposed to have ibuprofen.

The ibuprofen caused Dottie to start having bladder and kidney problems. These problems caused her bed to be soaked in leaked pee. The soaked bed was the reason I was trying to wash the polyfill. Court asked me before I started dismantling Dottie’s bed so I could wash it, “Are you sure you should wash polyfill in the washer?” “Why not?” I said. One trip to the appliance store and $450 later I discovered Courtney was right.

So I vowed after this weekend to listen to Courtney more. She seems to have some good ideas, or at least cheaper ideas than I have.

Yesterday the Nintendo Wii was released. I had hoped I would be able to waltz into the local Target and swipe one up. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

I started my half-hearted attempt at procuring a Wii about a month and a half ago, on the pre-order day at Gamestop. I ran into a Gamestop at 7pm, and asked “Am I too late for the Wii pre-order?!” I was greeted by curious looks by the pimply-faced employees. I was told “Yeah, uh, about 10 HOURS too late!” Their suggestion (and this is a direct quote), “Maybe if you had a time machine you could get one.” Followed by the most helpful advice yet, “Or you could go back even farther and get one when it was called the ‘Revolution’”

Fast forward to Sunday morning. Rumors abounded all week about a decent stockpile of Wiis at most retail outlets. I wasn’t about to waste too much of my life on being one of the first with a Wii but I figured it would be nice if I could get one. At 7am I handed a screaming baby back to Courtney, bundled up and headed over to my local Target.

There was a very decent sized line in front of Target. Unexpectedly to me, there was even a few tents. With coffee in hand I joined the end of the line. Not wanted to get my expectations too high I asked the guy in front of me if the person count was above 20. “Yep,” he told me. Crap, I knew my chances were quite dire. My Target only had 24 of them.

5 minutes later a Target employee came out and handed out tickets to the lucky few and I was not one of them. The last guy to receive one had been out in the cold since midnight. So I didn’t feel so bad about not getting a ticket. At least I slept in a warm bed.

Not content with my efforts I wandered over to the local SuperTarget in hopes of striking it rich a little later in the day. As I was walking towards the electronics department with Riles (yes, I take my children on my crazed tech hunts) I heard a gaggle of employees have the following conversation:

EMPLOYEE 1: “What are they all doing?”

EMPLOYEE 2: “They probably looked it up on a site somewhere.”

EMPLOYEE 1: “Well, someone should tell them”

EMPLOYEE 2: “Yeah, I know”

EMPLOYEE 1: “We don’t have anymore”

After that exchange I figured my chances were slim. I was correct. I had struck out again on my hunt for a Wii.

Today, Monday, I am Wii-less. I don’t plan to stay this way for long. My hunt continues.