In the middle of a nice long weekend, I’ve turned off the Yankees game – not a happy camper tonight – and have been going through some backed up DVR recordings… time for a mini-recap.

Mountains! I’m surrounded by mountains! Yes, I know this shouldn’t come as a surprise – look at a map, dur! – but on Friday… it was the first time all of the mountains have been visible at once. Fog, mist, clouds… usually one or two of the ranges are obscured… I’ve seen a lot of Rainier lately, since it’s in a direct line of my route to work… and the Cascades are sometimes visible from my bedroom… but jeesh. 90+ degree weather and a sunny day and bam: there were mountains everywhere. OK, so fine. You don’t care. Shup.

Also popped over the bridge to spend a few hours in downtown Seattle. It occurred to me over the past week that I hadn’t really been down there since I lived in downtown… and that was almost a year ago. Picked up some dried cherries and some sausage from Uli’s… also saw a dog with a tag that read “Treat Whore”. Almost shot coffee out m’nose when I saw that.

Northeast Hat Trick: one from Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, and Tully’s… all before noon. w00t.

Xbox 360… Yep, I put down a deposit on one. It was retailing at ebGames for $499… ph34r! Will I pay $499 for it? Probably not. The good news is twofold: I can get my money back at any time for any reason and ebGames admits that they have no pricing on it yet, so they picked this number out of the air. Also, when I plunked down $50 for it, they told me that they only had six more slots available for pre-order. Six more. No specific ship date yet. No specific pricing yet. And yet, they’re nearly sold out of pre-orders. Jeesh.

Speaking of XBox, I was eyeballing the Logitech Wireless Xbox controllers… they look spiffy. And while one is $50, they have rebates in some type of purchase package thingy. The problem with them is that of Xbox Live. Now, I’ll admit that I never expected to talk to people I play games against. I openly mocked the whole microphone thing. Then I got my ass kicked multiple times in the online games I tried out… why? I couldn’t talk to my teammates. In Halo 1 [for the PC] you could type out messages – I never thought I’d miss that if it wasn’t offered… and that’s the interesting thing about the Logitech controllers: they don’t support sound. If you want wireless controllers and support for a headset, you need to also buy the Logitech Wireless headset for Xbox Live. And that’s another $80. $130… for controllers… that’s almost another Xbox. Thanks. I like wires now.

While there I noticed they had a user copy of EA’s MVP Baseball for the PSP… saved $5, yay! But… well. I dunno. It’s starting to grow on me, but it reminds me of a classic mobile software package: someone took an existing title and shoehorned it to fit a device. It looks good – no denying that – but the game play is sorta forced. They make you use the analog stick, yet for menu navigation, you have to use the D-pad. I’ll never understand that… main console games used to do that all the time, but it’s gotten better: most games let you navigate with either D-pad or analog stick, but ah.

Did anyone else notice that Circuit City has regular CD’s on sale for $9.99 today and tomorrow? It felt so retro to buy CD’s in a store, but at $10, it’s a deal… cheaper than iTunes and frankly, I’d rather have the original and rip them for my iPod than buy the music online. If I buy it online I gotta burn it – more money, for the media – and because I want them in MP3 format, I gotta rip’m anyway… feh. $10 is about what CD’s should cost these days.

I also lost my bookmark! I’ve been reading The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for forever and a day… granted it’s all 5 books and a short story, but still – been stuck with it for a while. It’s a hardcover with a built-in bookmark, so I didn’t need my old one… I’ve been using the same MTA MetroCard (from 2003) for the last two years. I’m sure it’s still in the book that I was reading before The Guide, but I have no idea what that was: too many books at once.

Speaking of the Guide, I wandered in to see it over the weekend… it was just starting when I passed by the theatre, sooooo… I nodded off during a small part of it – too much sun, I think – but overall it worked and worked well. Even Marvin, who I was like “aw man, he looks like ass”, was a great fit, once it was moving around the scenes. I also like the way the Heart of Gold travelled – a much better visual than anything I would have thought of. They also took information from all of the six books and wove it into the main store – kills any shot of a movie sequel, but it also made for a tighter screenplay.

And, look at that. HBO made Empire Falls into a movie. I read back when it first popped out on paperback, years ago. Thought it was OK… I dunno if it was worthy of the awards that it earned, but it was a good story.

It’ll make for a nice break from the Xbox and PSP, at any rate.