Tuesday, December 1, 2015

November 2015 Entry



November felt like a short month. Well, more like it felt it went by really fast. I remember a coworker and I saying how "it's already November" followed by "it's already mid-November," ha.

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- I had a quick bit of sickness that hit me (11.03). Took the day off from work to recover as not only did I have a fever, my back was hurting so much. It felt as bad as it did when I injured my back after going to Sky High Sports years ago. It was that debilitating. Ended up icing my back and wearing my back brace for the next couple days.  

- Best Buy occasionally gives out mysterious award certificates. For the second year in a row, mine was only for $5. So I decided to buy something I had in my crosshairs for a while, the Married With Children Complete Series DVD set (11.06.15). It's crazy going back and watching this show. I do remember a good chunk of it, but a lot of the first and second season was almost new to me. As of typing this, I am on season 5 and just finished disc 8 of 22.


- 107 Facts About Cowboy Bebop (posting because it's so cool)


- Got some new WWE merchandise thanks to deals. The only thing pictured is my New Day unicorn shirt. Forgot to take a picture when I got it, but I plan to wear it on a certain day.



- My ex had her baby shower in town (11.21). Got a little lost finding the place. It was definitely interesting reuniting with a few familiar faces (last time I saw one of them was when they just had a baby and now the baby is 7). I also got to meet some of her high school friends and her step son and step daughter for the first time. The step daughter is cute. She was very invested in one of the baby shower games in which the guests were given a pink clothes pin to wear. If they spoke one of the two words (pink, girl) and someone caught them then they would have to give them their clothes pin. The person with the most at the end of the party wins. She asked if she could add a word and I said it would be okay. I don't remember if the word was "her" or "baby," but I also helped her get some clothes pins by telling her to ask guests to read the rules out loud so they would automatically lose, ha. I was only able to stay for an hour (even showed up to work half an hour late). I made sure before I left to give the step daughter my pin by saying "I'm leaving now so make sure to take care of her" while pointing to my ex, ha. Other than that, it was good to see my friend being in such a happy mood as she is close to 7 months pregnant. Very happy for her.

- Survivor Series was an okay PPV (11.22). Owens VS Ambrose was really good. Paige VS Charlotte was probably my favorite match. And celebrating the 25th anniversary of The Undertaker debuting was good. The match was alright, but the entrance and his exit were very well done.



- Ordered the Arcana Artifact from Scam School (11.23). I thought I would spend a long time and give up in trying to open it. But working at an escape room made it hard to not get in through alternate means. I was able to get it open, but I don't know the meaning behind all the markings, patterns, and pictures all over the artifact. That I would like to know some day.


- Got a text on a Monday about doing karaoke that night (11.23). I was interested, but my friend at first said it would only be 3 of us. That seemed a bit weird to me. But he got back to me saying a bunch of others were coming and I was in.

I left after Paige VS Charlotte on RAW and got there around 9:30. While there weren't a lot of people there, it was still a fun house. Befriended new people, caught up with friends I had not seen in a while, and had a wonderful time singing my head off to almost every song that was chosen. It was a shame that I could only stay for an hour. Well...a little over an hour as the last few songs kept pulling me in to stay, ha. Good times.


- The reason I was only able to stay at karaoke for an hour was because I was asked to pick up and dog-sit Machete (11.23). The person Machete was left with was just going to leave her in the garage and the weather had been getting too cold. So I said I can take her for the weekdays and then bring her back on the weekend. Last time I saw Machete was when I went to San Antonio earlier this year.


- For those that don't know me well, I don't like Thanksgiving. For at least 5 year now, I have opted out of all family related Thanksgiving activities. Long story short, something bad always happened and I just avoid it altogether. For this Thanksgiving (11.26), I was actually under the weather. For the majority of the day, I slept just like Machete did.


Unfortunately, I did find out some sad news. Machete's younger sister, Linguini, passed away about 3 weeks ago. She got run over by a car. Ever since then, Machete has been really depressed and eating a lot. And things started to click in my head. Machete had gained a bit of weight from when I saw her earlier this year. Not only that, she had been really low on energy and would mostly lie down and sleep. She also was very clingy. Ever since finding out the news of Linguini's passing, I can see Machete's depression. It's a sad situation, but I took care of her as best as I could while I had her.

- I didn't go out to shop on Black Friday (11.27), but I did order stuff online. A total of 8 items (one free) and those consist of clothes, a movie, an eShop game, and a few amiibo. One of those items came in that Sunday (mail on Sundays?).

 

- Bayonetta: Bloody Fate was half off on Amazon and apparently I picked up the last copy. It was very well done. They stayed very faithful to the style, the action, the music (minus Fly Me To The Moon), and all the over-the-top Bayonetta is known for. They pretty much retold the story of the first Bayonetta game in 90 minutes. I enjoyed being in that crazy world again.

- Congratulations to my friend, the owner and lead chef of Bite Macarons, for launching bite CAKES (11.28). She always made great cakes. I knew she would eventually start selling them in her shop.

 
- My younger cousin got married (11.28). Asked for the day off way ahead of time to make sure I could attend. Tried to get a +1, but was unsuccessful. Anyways, I rode with my parents to the ceremony that was in a church maybe 10 minutes away from home. It was great seeing cousins I had not seen in a while there.

The ceremony was great. I couldn't help but smile seeing family members that were part of the ceremony walk the aisle. And I was tearing up almost immediately seeing my cousin walk the aisle. Of course she was crying and so was the groom. The ceremony was short, only half an hour. There was a lot of time for photos afterwards. My younger cousin and his girlfriend came to talk to me. I had not met her before, but knew of her since they had been dating for years now. Soon after, I ended up going back home to rest since the reception wasn't for another four hours.

The reception hall was fancy. Lots of waiters and waitresses walking around serving drinks and hors d'oeuvres. Then I started running into a bunch of people I had not seen in a long time. Two of them being younger cousins I used to take care of decades ago. Funny thing, we were all in the bathroom at the same time, but I didn't recognize them. To be fair, one looks very different now, ha. The three of us hung out with each other for the majority of the reception to catch up with others as well.

Also ran into the groom and spoke with him for the first time. Apparently my younger cousin he married has told stories about me, ha. That's cool. Hopefully this will be the start of seeing some of the family a bit more often.

Fun reception. Good food served. The band was really good (forgot to ask for the name or at least get a photo with the red-haired singer). There wasn't as much dancing as I would have hoped. Well, there was, but there were large lulls in between sets where only a few were on the floor. I got out a few times and got into and lead a few of the line dances that were done (and that I learned on the spot). Myself and another cousin participated in being a human pyramid for the groom (that was tough, but fun).

A lot of the family started to leave around 10-10:30. I made sure to go around to say bye to my cousins that were still there. So much has happened and we've all grown up and gone our separate ways (marriage, kids, work, life, etc) that occasions like this where we all have fun are needed. I also made sure to say bye to the groom even though he had been drinking a lot. And finally I said bye to my cousin. She was very thankful that I came and I told her how she had me tearing up at the ceremony. She started to tear up and we just embraced for a while. We grew up together and were really close. Like the rest, we went our separate ways, but there was no way I would miss her wedding. I'm very happy for her. Congratulations.


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- Started off the month by getting the Mii Fighter amiibo set (11.01). Just went to my nearby Toys R Us, saw they had 11 sets of them left, got mine, and went home. I'm glad they sold it as a set because if they sold them separately, I probably would not have bought them. amiibo count rose to 38.


- The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes (3DS) - Review

Bottom line, I liked playing the demo with my coworkers more than playing the game solo. I'll come back and play it again when the update comes December.

- The update for Super Mario Maker came out. I had not thought of a course theme immediately to make implementing some of the updates like checkpoints, but I eventually made one. I just thought of what was something I really liked this year. Ultimately thought of Bayley and Sasha Banks and thus came the course called Hug Like A Boss (11.10). I did edit it once after initially uploading it. Don't remember why, but it was just a small change.


As for the rest of Super Mario Maker, I have been playing it  to unlock more amiibo stuff whenever I get new ones, play and beat the special events, and check the records of my courses every Sunday.

- The first Nintendo Direct after Iwata's passing happened (11.12). It was amazing. So many things were talked about. I added quite a few games to my list of what I will buy. The next day I went to preorder two of them, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD and Mega Man Legacy Collection. Specifically got those two because of the Wolf Link amiibo and Gold Mega Man amiibo. Lucky I reserved Mega Man as my GameStop only had 3 spots to reserve the game. I was the second person to reserve it.

And to top off the end of a great Nintendo Direct, Cloud will be in Smash Bros. It was actually spoiled for me by a coworker (couldn't watch the video live since I was at work). Even though I knew about it, seeing the trailer was so good. Goosebumps.


- I had reserved Mewtwo and Tom Nook amiibo from Best Buy. Went to pick them up (11.13). It was my first time reserving something at Best Buy. It was fine. I just didn't like the huge sticker with my name they put on it. It's a good system, but the sticker was an eyesore. It came off easy at least. Next stop was GameStop to reserve the games I mentioned earlier. Even the worker there asked "which ones are you picking up" knowing that I was collecting amiibo. Had I known they would have been well stocked, I would have gone to them. He understood though. Better to have them than not. And these latest pick ups brought my amiibo total to 40. And here I was a year ago thinking I wouldn't buy more than a few, ha.


- Nintendo's Cyber Deals (11.26) was stacked with some good deals. Most of them I already had. While there were a few of them I wouldn't have minded buying, I didn't want to spend a lot considering I have a few games I have yet to beat. So I just bought 3D Sonic The Hedgehog. I had been curious about the 3D remakes of some of the Sega games (Sonic and Streets of Rage), but this was at a good cheap price.

https://www.facebook.com/WingedVoX/posts/915298651891469

- I had a Thanksgiving tradition of playing a Zelda game for the holiday.

Thanksgiving 2011 - Skyward Sword
Thanksgiving 2012 - Nintendo Land - The Legend of Zelda: Battle Quest 
Thanksgiving 2013 - A Link Between Worlds
Thanksgiving 2014 - Hyrule Warriors

Unfortunately, I didn't play a Zelda game this year. Sure, I can say I played/finished Tri Force Heroes in November at least, but I didn't actually play any games for Thanksgiving as I was sick. Although had Zelda Wii U or Twilight Princess HD came out, I would have tried to play it regardless of being sick.

- Typoman (Wii U) - Review

I was really looking forward to Typoman. That might be the reason I was a bit meh on it. I liked it, but I wish there was more to it.


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- Our first HER Halloween Contest concluded. I'll admit that I didn't think we would get any entries, but we got quite a few especially on Halloween night. Thank you to all that participated.


- It wasn't planned, but myself, Agent Blue, and Agent Gig all had on the colors of the Tri Force Heroes. We decided to take another commemorative photo as the Tri Force Agents (11.07). It happened again the week after. It hasn't happened a third week yet because we've all had schedule shifts in which we didn't close together. But soon.


- It's rare for it to happen, but it was all guys at HER (11.12). Not only was it sillier/stupider (ha), but we decided to capitalize on a not booked session by taking a photo together. We dubbed it the Hunks of HER. I asked the girls the next day if they wanted to do a Honeys of HER photo. They declined, ha.


- We now have leaderboards on our website (11.16). It will display the all time best team per room as well as the best team of the month.

http://www.houstonescaperoom.com/leaderboard/

- We had our monthly meeting the week Agent Raynor (formerly Ro) was in town (11.17). Not many of the Agents were able to attend unfortunately. We ended up playing Loaded Questions and it was rather fun.  

- Gave a shout out to my fellow Agents on Miiverse in Typoman (11.20).


- Agent M and I secretly devised a plan to surprise Agent Raynor at the meeting. We showed him the final version of a trailer I made for The Scarlet Scam. He very much approved of it and we're planning to do trailers for our other rooms as well. We officially released the trailer (11.20) for the HER community and let them know that the room will be ready December 1st. While we are working out final kinks, we had to make the date official just to stop holding it off. So expect to read about how the room is going in next month's entry. 


- And the last week of November was not busy for me at HER. I actually only worked 2 days (Tuesday, Wednesday). Then we were off for Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Then it was my cousin's wedding. And finally it was a normal day off.

- I did finally go back to work on a Monday, our closed day, to do filming for trailers for our rooms (11.30). It went rather well. Lasted a little longer than I estimated, but we got the majority of things done. We just couldn't do one voice over since neither of us could do a certain voice. Agent Mo was very cooperative and very helpful in helping with filming ideas since she is a videographer. Stay tuned for those trailers soon.  

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- Happy Birthday, BoA! (11.05)
https://www.instagram.com/p/9qp5P0n1IA/

Lookbook (MV short version)

NOWNESS Best of Asia 15th Anniversary

BoA - Kiss My Lips (Japanese MV short version)

- And that should be it. 2015 is almost over. November was an interesting month in all aspects. I'm sure I'll have quite a few things to talk about in December though.

Thank you for reading. Be healthy, be safe, be thankful, and be loved.


"Reprise the theme song and roll the credits."

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