United Press: grind has changes in fortune (3,3,5)

Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.
-- Yoda, Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
Neva discovered a new wrinkle in the fabric of our unusual audio/video home network.

She increasingly has been playing video games, having finished Super Mario Sunshine, and Dora and the Purple Planet and has intermittent interest in each of the Paper Mario and Super Smash Bros. Melee and of course Mario Kart. I understand that yesterday while I was running on the treadmill and seeing the 24 season 2 finale, she was playing some Dora, and came upstairs holding the wireless Wavebird controller to encourage Hugh to come down and see something that she was up to. The game was on the main floor TV as well, and she pointed the controller at the TV. Cheryl was in the process of explaining that the controller wouldn't work in our family room when Neva pushed a button and made Dora jump. Apparently the 900MHz signal is sufficent to penetrate our floorboards and reach the Gamecube console in the basement.

Admittedly, some of the games Neva plays, and some she more watches me play. Lately, she has rekindled an interest in Pikmin, so we spent a little time yesterday afternoon playing that on the big TV. After the kids went to bed, Cheryl encouraged me to start in on my parents' birthday present to me: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. She likes to follow the story, and we are mostly caught up on our current TV and and she can knit alongside me playing. There have already been more "upstairs" video games today.

I have long held that were I to ever own a dog, I would want to name it "Liam Neeson", so that I could say things like "Cheryl's out for a walk with Liam Neeson" or "Liam Neeson pooped on the floor again, so we stuck his nose in it" or "We have to get one of those satellite dishes to go around Liam Neeson's head and keep him from licking his balls". The Zelda series of games usually lets the player enter a name, but this time, it asked me to name my horse as well. Since there was only space for eight characters, I named the horse "LiamNisn", and my character has already been admonished by story characters for being too rough on LiamNisn and at one point, someone gave LiamNisn the day off.

Of course I didn't realise that LiamNisn was a girl horse. I could have been writing for Barnyard.