This is month-old news to my fellow superhero fanboys. But for all you boring people out there, here’s the news: Captain America is back.

Just as I predicted: I told you so.

Bullgrit

Sunday, Calfgrit8 challenged me to a game of Pokemon. We played and Calfgrit4 watched. I won, as usual. This was the first Pokemon I’ve played with him in several weeks.

Then last night, Calfgrit4 challenged me to a game of Pokemon. Now, CG4 has only the barest understanding of the game — he doesn’t know any of the rules, he only knows how the game looks when played. But he was giving me the smack talk for 20 minutes before we actually played.

“You’re going down!” he told me.

“My deck is going to beat you up,” he threatened.

He’s learned this kind of talk from his big brother. I don’t know where CG8 got this smack-attitude from — probably some of his friends at school. (I don’t talk game trash to my boys, like that. Not yet, anyway. When they get 12 years old, yeah, maybe I’ll give them some smack.)

A few days ago, CG8 and CG4 were playing a ball game in the backyard. CG8 gave the old “You’re going down!” smack, giving CG4 a thumbs-down salute at the same time. CG4, not one to back down from anything, shouted back, “I’m going up!” and gave a thumbs-up salute.

My Dialga Pokemon deck has become the terror of the house. Dialga has sort of become my signature Pokemon, and they know that’s the only card in my collection that I won’t trade. My Dialga has become their white whale.

So last night while we were playing, Calfgrit8 had to take over for Calfgrit4 because little brother just didn’t know what to do. But CG4 hung close and cheered his big brother on and gave me the trash talk. He considered himself playing by proxy. I was winning 5 to 1 (6 points wins), but then CG8 managed to defeat my Dialga. They both cheered and high fived each other. “In your face,” one of them shouted at me.

I got a good laugh out of it all, but I reminded them about good sportsmanship. They tried to reign it in, but their triumph was just too much to contain. They actually danced around the kitchen table for a minute. They had finally managed to beat down my great hero, and they wanted a parade like VE day.

And to make it even more exciting, they poisoned and confused my Level X Dialga with some basic green Pokemon I had never seen them play with before — Koffeen or something like that. They found that beyond awesome, “We beat Dialga Level X with a little Koffeen! Ha ha!”

I turned around and won the game 6 to 2, but it didn’t matter. They had beat Dialga, and that meant Daddy was bested, regardless of the actual game score.

CG4 told me with righteous certainty, “Now you’ll have to trade your Dialga to me.”

I didn’t respond to the demand right then, but he’s going to be sorely disappointed when I tell him that beating my Dialga in one game does not entitle him to taking my favorite card as a trophy.

Bullgrit

Calfgrit4 got it by a basketball thrown 30 feet by a teenager. He laughed it off and went on playing.

The boys had a friend over for a couple hours this weekend. They ran and screamed through the house, but when I herded them out to the backyard, they sat around “bored.”

We’ve been contacting local moving companies to compare prices and quality for our pending move out of our current house.

Cowgrit has been working with a interior designer to pick out flooring, cabinets, paint, and such for our new house. There are three meetings in total to finalize all the decisions. This is far, far more complicated than either of us expected it to be.

The boys planned and set up a surprise birthday greeting and “party” for when I got home from work Friday evening. They hung up banners and streamers, and then they and Cowgrit hid behind furniture until I came in and looked around. “Surprise!” they all shouted and threw confetti up into the air. We had dinner and cake.

Holy crap! I’m forty-freakin’-two years old, now! How the hell did this happen?

My gamer group has started a new game campaign: Battletech, in the 3025-3050 era. We’re playing a medium mech lance of mercenaries. It’s a fun game, but good lord it’s taking forever to play out the battles.

I got to watch part of a Scrubs marathon this weekend. I saw three episodes back to back while Calfgrit4 napped Sunday afternoon, and I laughed my ass off. God, I love that show.

And some other stuff happened.

I decided that I really miss writing my blog. It’s often a lot of fun.

I found out that sometimes I really like not writing my blog. Skipping the stress of posting every day is a relief.

Bullgrit

Holy crap! I announce a break in my writing, here, and suddenly my daily visitors double in number?! No shit! If I had known to expect this, I’d have announced a hiatus a year ago. And then every few weeks there after.

What the hell? I get more visitors when I don’t write anything.

Bullgrit