You would think that, since video games are supposed to entertain you, they would relieve stress, rather than causing more of it. But I've certainly had my share of worries due to the games that I've played.

Every day, I check up on my Animal Crossing: Wild World to see if it has rained in the game. (If you've been keeping track, there is a previous post of mine which speaks of this, so bear with me if you've already heard of it.) Over the years I have cultivated a grand garden of flowers in my town, which I am very proud of it. And as I always tend to get too attached to things, even those that may seem trivial, I can't part with it, not after I've spent so much time and effort keeping the flowers alive. I've grown tired of having to take care of them, day in and day out (the ones that are brown and dying must be watered, so that the next day they will be healthy again).

I have already let go of Nintendogs. That was a bit easier because the worst that could happen would be the dog running away (they don't die, nor do they ever mature. Rather unrealistic). The dog would surely come back after a while. In this case I would not lose my house or anything like that, so I wasn't particularly concerned.

Eventually I expect I'll abandon Animal Crossing completely, either because it falls off my list of priorities or I finally come to terms with loss. But even though I already know what will happen, I can't help but be saddened by the future.

During my 6th grade year, I went to a makeshift YMCA daycare after school, located in a place called the Multi-Use room where school announcements and assemblies take place, since I wasn't trusted to walk home by myself and my parents wouldn't be able to pick me up until 5 pm, sometimes 6, in most cases. I would finish whatever homework I could (we could use the school library if we needed textbooks). At first, in the beginning of the year, I might sometimes run around backstage and play hide and seek, but after a while we were told not to go backstage anymore, so that put an end to it. We also played some games, like Apples to Apples. It can be quite fun if you have enough people. (Unfortunately you need four people to play it properly, and in my family there are only three if my mom would actually agree to play. So I never get the chance to play it.) But as the year wore on, one of the two people in charge of this YMCA would bring in his Nintendo Gamecube more frequently, and we would play Mario Kart Double Dash or Super Smash Bros. Melee or this X-Men game. I did have a good time playing the video games, although it meant I was that much more impatient for them when I wasn't playing.

I did hear some exciting news recently. There's a new kind of Nintendo DS coming out - it's called the 3DS, and so the graphics will be quite nice. There are games on the way, too, like Nintendogs + Cats. Because of the camera built into the 3DS, the dog will actually be able to recognize your face. And there's also a new Animal Crossing that looks nice. The characters you can make are now taller and thinner (I was never too fond of the chibi-ish, short people). I'd really like to try these games out, so I guess I'm going to have to get a 3DS. But this also makes me wonder if I'll even have the time to play them.

What really spurred me on to write this post was the problems I was having with my Sims 3 today. I was notified that there was a game update available for the Sims 3 World Adventures (an expansion pack I had purchased), so I decided to update it. After that I figured I should try to play the game. But then I was told that my expansion was not compatible with my base game. I waited for it to update, but it didn't do anything. Eventually I started rooting around online to see what I could find. It seems that other people were having the same problem, too. I finally figured out that I ought to download a patch to my Sims 3 game, which fixed the game launcher, so I should be able to play now (it has finally stopped telling me my game is incompatible and everything is showing up as usual). I was really worried there thinking I might have to uninstall everything (although I was prepared for this, and backed up my files on my external hard drive). I'm so glad that it's been fixed now.

Labels: 3ds, animal crossing, apples to apples, backstage, games, garden, memories, nintendo ds, nintendogs, patch, pride, problem, routine, sims 3, stress, wild world, YMCA

Not that long ago, I learned that there was a Municipal Rose Garden in San Jose, and that there was no tickets needed to get in - it's free! I decided that I had to pay it a visit, and so on Memorial Day, after visiting my mom's friends, we drove on over to the garden.

This garden must've been around for quite a while. There are little signs on the ground that tell you when a certain kind of rose was planted. There are roses that have been around since 1980, for instance. And there are also new ones planted in this very year, 2010.

The way the garden is designed is like a circle, with a fountain in the middle of the garden. There are roses of all sorts, small ones that don't look that much like roses, and a kind of rose where many red ones grow together. And there's a funny kind - I think it was called Oranges and Lemons? - Click here for a picture.

After we left the garden, I felt rather sleepy. Somehow the fragrance of the roses made me feel tired. Or maybe it's something else. I've been sleeping oddly lately. We got some blinds installed to help keep the room dark in the mornings so that my brain would not realize that it was daytime and that would help me sleep in on the weekends. Over the weekend I would stay awake thinking during the night, then eventually fall asleep, only to wake up early in the morning, and then fall asleep again for a while. I don't think I was getting very much sleep. Or I was just sleeping fitfully. I really have no idea.

Speaking of sleep, I recently watched a movie called Paprika. It's about dreams and how someone has stolen a DC Mini, a device which allows you to see people's dreams and even enter them. It was a rather disturbing movie, but the ideas of it are interesting. I wonder what it would be like to see into people's dreams. I think such things are under development already.

My dad says that you can see roses several times a year because they "get confused and end up blooming in the winter". But I don't think that the roses are confused. I believe that it is their gift to us. To give us a little beauty in a world that is often ugly.

Labels: age, beauty, blinds, confusing, dreams, flowers, free, garden, memorial day, mistakes, movie, oranges and lemons, paprika, rose, san jose municipal rose garden, sleep, variety

Usually you probably hear the term "Live, laugh, love" instead of "Fight, love, live." Filoli Website

But that was the phrase popular at this place I visited recently, called Filoli. It's a California estate built in...the 1900's, I think...by a family, the Bourns. They were trying to get away from San Francisco (where they had previously lived) because a great earthquake and fire had ravaged much of the city, so those people with enough $$$ started building homes in the countryside. It took from 1915-1917 to build the house, which was modeled to look like an estate in Ireland, and also like the architecture of England, both of which Mr. Bourn (at least, I think it was him) was inspired by.

Anyhow, back to the phrase. The name Filoli was very puzzling to the Bourns' friends, since they didn't know what it meant. They thought it was an Italian name. (Yeah, right. The Bourns weren't from Italy.) Actually, he just took the first two letters of each part of his motto, which happened to be "Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life." If you ask me, that wasn't very creative, but oh well. At least he didn't just call it Bourn. (Notice a lot of people name their companies and other things after themselves...Like HP, otherwise known as Hewlett-Packard.)

The main reason my family went to Filoli was because of the gardens. They were really something. There were many, many gardens, and so if you come at different times of year (By the way, Filoli is open from mid-February to October) you might be able to see different flowers. When we went, it was tulip season, which delighted me to no end. (I have this strange fascination with tulips...) If you hurry you might be able to get there before all the tulips start to die. Some of them already lost their petals, like the ones at my house (it's really quite sad, but my dad still thinks they look pretty, even dead). They come in various colors like white, light pink, dark pinkish/red, dark purple, light purple, and even yellow with red parts. Too bad the roses haven't bloomed yet. The ones at my house have started to. I suppose that Filoli just follows a different seasonal pattern from my neighborhood.

Keep in mind that Filoli does charge admission. I was unhappy to hear that since I always want to get in free, but of course they need to make money to keep the place running. (My mom says that a museum in Las Vegas closed down since they had no budget. I wonder what kind of stuff they had - slot machines? Elvis Presley portraits?)

Still, it's a nice place. The house where the Bourns (and later the Roths, who moved in later) used to live has 43 rooms and 17 chimneys, according to one of those retired people tour guides (no offense to them, but they look rather...old, since they have white hair and all). I don't know why you would need so many chimneys. There must be a lot of fireplaces in the house or something. I only have one fireplace and we don't even use it. The house has a bunch of old-looking furniture and portraits. It looks kind of like the Hearst Castle, or a more modern looking version of those European palaces. Outside there's a small rectangular pond, and even a swimming pool. (Wow, I guess people liked swimming pools even back then. It was pretty big and clean, but I hear sometimes people fall into the pool, particularly little kids who just run around in circles. Personally I like the pools at Hearst Castle better since they have interesting designs.)

I wouldn't really want to live there, though. Instead, I'd rather live at this house I just saw today. It was an open house (you know, for sale so you can look inside if you're a buyer). It looked like an adobe house, sort of. It was only one story but there were many rooms. The furniture was very beautiful and the master bedroom had a little room connected to it where you can look outside (great view, the Stevens Creek is right there, and maybe you could spy on your neighbors :o). If you wanted you could set up your computer in that room so you would kind of feel like your were outside even though you were inside. Seeing as I am an indoor person, but like to have a view, that would be cool for me.

Labels: backyard, bourns, fight love live, filoli, flowers, garden, house, money, name, open house, phrase, san francisco, swimming pool

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