5 Million Happy Post Thread Part 2

[boffo]

Today's EB deal is Star Wars The Force Unleashed for $19.99. I would consider it if it was selling for $10 like most of the past games have but I think $20 is too much for me to just go ahead and make an impulse buy.

[rounds1]

Yeah, I'd get that for $10, but not $20. Seems like a decent enough game, though.

[boffo]

Tomorrow is supposed to be Tom Clancy's End War for $10. I remember the trailer videos made the game look interesting but I don't think I was able to make it through the whole demo. Maybe I'll give the demo another try but it seems unlikely that I'll be getting the game.

[rounds1]

Isn't that an RTS or something? Got decent reviews I think.

[boffo]

Something like that. It's the one that allows you to control most of the game using voice commands, which if I recall correctly was considered to be the best part of the game.

[boffo]

Here we go with a likely wall of text story time.

This tale begins a few days ago when my wife saw pictures of the new snow leopard babies at the Toronto Zoo. She usually doesn't require much incentive to want to go to the zoo, however seeing these pictures meant she had to go this weekend. Since she has Saturday off work, which doesn't happen often I figured we might as well make a weekend out of it. The zoo is only an hour to and hour and a half away but it's been a few months since we have gone away alone together and we just got a $124 GST rebate cheque in the mail, so we might as well let the government pay for most of it.

And then my mom called last night. Apparently she is moving out of her apartment and decided she wants to move the bigger stuff this weekend and wanted me to help. She doesn't have to be moved out until the end of the month but I guess she wants to do it in stages or something. I said sorry, we have plans for this weekend and can't help. She asked if we could change our plans to a different weekend. I said no because we are planning to meet a friend on the way home on Sunday night and she has proven to be really hard to set up a "date" with. My mom asked what time we were meeting her. I said at night sometime. She said she'll be moving at about 11AM so I should have ample time to do both. I said we'll be at the zoo all day Sunday, like I already told you. She continued to try and get me to reschedule our plans to the point of my wife going to the zoo alone and me going to help her move. I once again kept saying no until she finally gave up and said that maybe she'll just move in a couple weeks instead, presumably in an effort to make me feel bad.

The important part of the story is that this is the same mother of mine that was unable to help us move two years ago because she had a hair appointment scheduled for that day which left me and my wife to move all of our possessions alone together, which literally took the whole day and nearly killed us. So while I may be an awful son, for some reason I don't feel the least bit bad for saying no.

[rounds1]

Oh, boffo - you just recanted nearly every interaction I have with my own family.

They don't care if I'm in the emergency room - everything they want comes first. Families are crazy.

[boffo]

As far as I can recall this has been the 1st time she has seemingly expected me to help her with something. Unfortunately for her it's also one of the first times she has called to try and set up plans less than two or three weeks in advance and it happened to be on one of the very few weekends where we made plans for ourselves to do something. Plus the whole hair appointment thing from two years ago kind of works against her as well. Maybe I can finally quit holding a grudge for that one.

[rounds1]

Yeah, this is kind of her repayment for the hair thing. Maybe she just thought you were lying or something and tried to break you down into giving in and helping her.

[boffo]

She shouldn't even really need my help. Apparently my brother said he would help, so that's two of them. I would hope that her boyfriend is helping her since it's his house she's moving into, although I got the feeling that he's doing other stuff since Sunday is usually his "family day". He should be forced into helping and that would make 3. I think all she has is a couch, a futon, a bed, a couple chairs, a kitchen table, a TV, and maybe a couple dressers. She expected it to only take a couple hours. A far cry from what we had to go through.