I am back

Things have been busy since I last posted. Thanks for those of you who have kept checking faithfully. I appreciate those of you who were concerned for my well being and even checked in. It's hard to get time with my own computer these days. As I talked about before, my kids have turned into video game junkies and we are constantly battling to claim the right to the computer. With three kids, (Four if you count the senior video game junkie), each with an hour of allotted time, I don't see my computer until the evening and then, the garble that is my brain, cannot be deciphered into a coherent blog. My friend Jodie has kept up, everyday, with her blog. But she is amazing and I am...well I'm just Jenn.



The video game phenomenon that has entered my home is surprising. I don't think I was much into such things as a kid. We did have Atari and that was cool. I do remember spending some time in front of my favorite game "KABOOM" that required great skill and speed. This game, for those of you who have never heard of it, consisted of three barrels of water stacked on top of each other. From the top of the screen a bad guy of sorts dropped lit bombs over a wall. The object was to catch the bombs before they fell to the ground. Each level got faster and faster. If you dropped a bomb then you lost a barrel of water until you had only one to catch the fast falling bombs. I really loved this game and if I can be so bold as to claim that I was actually the best at this game in my family. I should probably qualify it with JRS was not yet walking when I mastered this game, but the best is the best...and that was me. I also remember how cool we thought the game "PONG" was, and how, even my parents, were very into "BEZERK" and "SPACE INVADERS." I do remember how cool it was when PAC-MAN came out. It was a game that one could only play in the arcade, so when it became available to play in your home, things began to get interesting for video game fans across the country. My parents even used to play Atari with our neighbors. That was annoying, because, what were we supposed to do when the grown ups were the ones playing with our toys? ASTROIDS was another that provided hours of entertainment. The graphics of this game were so simple compared to what we see today. The wedge shaped gun in the middle that moved in a circle, at your control, to shoot white or purple blobs that may or may not have been shaped like rocks. There were also the white dots in the back ground that gave the illusion of being in outer space. It was simple, but I thought it was cool!!



Then came the day that my dad brought home an IBM PC jr with a dot matrix printer that was the size of the desk by itself. It had the real floppy floppies and was run using DOS. I remember learning how to program just a little. For example, I would program it for each family member's name. As soon as one entered their name I had it set to give a specific message to each. At one point when dad would enter "John," I would have the computer respond with, "Hey John, I heard your head is so oily you can drill an oil well on it." Nice huh? I bet more parents wish they could have had such a charming child. I was about 12-13 so I can blame it on adolescence. I learned how to type on this computer using a game called Mastertype. The words were in all four corners of the screen inside space ships that were coming toward the center. The goal was to type the word before it blew up your mother ship. It was very fun and I am the typist I am today because of it. The coolest game on the IBM was KINGS QUEST I. To this day, I would love the opportunity to play these games again. I think they have gone as high as KINGS QUEST V. These were fun games. You had to find things, solve puzzles and keep the prince alive until the quest had been completed. I had hours of fun on this game.

Did I say I wasn't into video games when I was a kid? How soon we forget!!