A Sad Day Indeed

Two Days ago, the unthinkable happened. My Xbox 360 decided it wanted to take a holiday for the holidays. Heidi and I have guests arriving for the weekend, and we were going to be throwing down on some video games. In anticipation, I went to Blockbuster and rented Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I’d seen some adds and had been hearing the hype, so I wanted to check it out. After popping it in for all of about 3 minutes, I was going through the training section and my system froze. It was odd, but I just turned off the machine and powered back up. It went to just about the same spot and froze again. This time, when I powered back up, I had three red lights shining back at me.

This didn’t feel so much like a disappointment, but more like I had a loved one taken away from me. Perhaps really not that drastic, but my gut dropped. I take good care of my stuff, and kept it in a well ventilated area, but my launch time 360 finally bit the bullet. Dealing with the problem wasn’t too bad, I called Microsoft, and they are sending a package aka “The Coffin” to send it in for repairs and they will cover the costs of repair and shipping. I am however going to be without my primary means of entertaining myself for probably about a month or so. I have other game systems however, but really it’s not quite the same. It’s kind of like, you’ve been dating the head of the Cheerleading squad for a couple of years, and then she breaks up with you for some guy in his Sophomore year in college studying the metaphysics of plutonium’s affect on tumors in lab rats. Then after she breaks up with you, you have to go back to the girl with the last eye from the glee club that you had said a few nasty things about when you started getting busy with the popular girl.

So instead of fragging noobs in Halo3, and pulling a laserflip to frontside crooks over the gap and dropping in on the hubba in “Skate”, I’ll be rolling balls made of paperclips and kitty cats in Katamari Demacy, and getting some kills in on Black, but still there’s that empty feeling of not playing online with the headset. Not only that, I just ordered 2 games that are coming from Amazon.com and they’ll just have to sit and wait for me. The last 2 mornings have been strange.

I’m a creature of habit. If things aren’t going in order, I tend to forget things and have a strange feeling of emptiness about me when my routine is bothered. Sometimes I may forget to take medicine, sometimes I may skip taking out the recycling. Little things, but enough to know that something’s not right. It’s going to be a long hard road until my system comes back from repair, but I hope it flies by and I’ll be back to my old habits when it comes back and I won’t have to dread the ring of red.

It seems strange to have something so trivial taken away from me. What’s next? No flashy sneakers? No juvenile hip hop? No pizza? Dark days are ahead, and I hope that’s the end of my troubles for awhile.

Until next time, happy gaming?