Okay, this sounds stupid.  Wow, you're a parent and you're tired?  Join the club.  The surprise here isn't that I'm tired, it's that it's a different type of tired.  This isn't hangover tired, or no sleep tired, or I just ran a marathon tired, it's something completely different.  And here I am lucky; my son sleeps a pretty normal schedule, maybe wakes up once in the night, takes naps, and I get 7 or 8 hours of sleep a night, sometimes 9.  It's like a winning the Kiddo lottery!  But I'm still tired.  Taking care of someone wears you out and I do the least amount parenting work here.  Thanks Wifey.  But yeah, it's a different kind of tired, like a combo of sleeplessness and being stretched too thin.

Alright, this isn't completely true but it is fairly accurate.  I don't know how so many people get away with ripping each other off but it happens abundantly in the baby music world.  My favorite example is "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and the "Alphabet Song".  Go ahead, sing them back to back.  You'll warm up to the light going off in your head.  How did I never realize this before?

Do yourself and anyone who will buy your kid toys, don't, just don't.  My Son has a lot of toys, too much.  And he favors none of them.  If we take one away, he shrugs and picks up another one.  And get this, his favorite things to play with are empty water bottles.  He'll double fist those things and have a blast.  Of course, some toys are good, especially if they make noise, sing songs or are constructive to learning in any way.  And my Son's second favorite toy?  The tubs we put his toys in!  Yeah, save yourself some money.

The other day I dropped like $40 to buy some Star Wars shirts for my Son.  At the time it seemed cool to get them and they were supposed to be on sale and they weren't but we got them anyways.  Now I just think what a waste.  The kid doesn't even know what Star Wars is(although, he really gets into Lego Star Wars episodes)  And this goes for the rest of his wardrobe.  We have so many clothes he never even wore, that just got put into storage.  Crazy!  Sure, we received a lot of gifts but most of it was unnecessary.  Don't buy the expensive stuff.  Plain Jane colors are just fine and cool sayings are great if you aren't paying any extra money for it.  Save some money and keep it simple.  You really only need about 9 outfits for each age range.  And make sure the seasons match up.  A 12 mos heavy jacket isn't really necessary if your child turns 1 during the summer.

I'm surprised my kid is smart?  This sounds kind of demeaning of me and my Wife, right?  Well, it's not really.  It's just you can get so amazed when your child does something smart.  Like turning the T.V. off when you're trying to watch your movie instead of his cartoon.  Or when he is stacking boxes to get to the top of the table.  Or when he learns to pull the lint trap out of the dryer, just to get to the lint he likes to eat when no one is looking????  I mean, you expect your kids to learn new tricks as they get older.  What I didn't expect is that it would seem so amazing to me.  I little girl in the waiting room just taught him how to point by showing him.  And wow, now he's giving us kisses on request and then clapping with us when it happens?  Blows my mind.

The kid blows my mind.  I can't wait for the next surprise.

The next game in the series was World at War and it was somehow better.  I didn't mind the older guns.  The maps were intoxicating.  The feel was great and the aesthetics were a big draw for me.  And there was intense strategy in the game, but it still had the big battles of Modern Warfare.  I still consider it the best game in the series.  Don't forget, it was the start of Zombies!

Anyways, before this starts to be a history lesson on Call of Duty, let me just say that this is where it all started to go downhill.  Don't get me wrong, Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops were still really good games, but they weren't near the quality of the previous 2.  And things were changing.  The gameplay started to feel like a game, not a combat experience.  Team strategy kind of flew out the window and run and gun skill came to the forefront.  And the technology kind of took over and also had a hand in the devaluing of strategy.  Some of the maps were still pretty cool and also a lot of the custom options were fun but the game itself sort of lost it's soul.

And with every new chapter in the series, the social aspect got smaller and smaller.  It's to the point nowadays, where I'm the only player in a room with a mic.  My friends have stopped playing.  The friends I made in the early days stopped playing.  Who exactly is playing anyways?  I am.  Because I'm addicted.  I keep dropping $100 a year for a piece of junk that doesn't do it for me anymore.  I'm getting some seriously watered down scotch for a lot more money, just because I can't stop drinking scotch.(Well, who would want to do that?)

Now, here comes Infinite Warfare.  I watched the trailer and it looks absolutely dreadful.  The fact that the video is the 2nd most disliked video in youtube history should tell you something about it.  But hey, it's coming with Modern Warfare remastered!  YES!  All of a sudden I'm excited.  I've been joking with all of my friends that no one is going to play the new game, they're just going to run straight to Modern Warfare; that's what I was planning on doing.  But now I'm seeing all these articles coming out of E3 that the new game is going to be a 'boots on the ground' reclamation project.  That the game is supposed to regenerate the feel of the earlier games and also movies like "Blackhawk Down" and "Saving Private Ryan".  And even though it's going to be in space, you're going to get a more in the trenches experience.  There is, of course, new tech and flying spaceships but no more exo suits and boost jumping.  No more Halo rip offs?  A lot of my opinion will be based on the online play and then I will decide if I wasted $100 or not.  So, yeah, I'm buying it.  But I'm hoping that I'm not going to be just playing Modern Warfare.

A big part of me is hoping they bring the real Call of Duty back.

Movieless and toyless, I would spend as much time as I could with friends who had the movie and the toys.  I loved Star Wars.  All of my quarters went to playing the Star Wars video game.  And when the Empire Strikes Back came out, I begged my Dad to take me.  My Mom thought I was a bit young at 5 but Dad sort of took me anyways.  It was amazing!  My dreams were vivid Star Wars fantasies.  Star Wars taught me that there were other worlds out there to explore, imaginary and real.  And it taught me to create.  I didn't have the toys to play with at home.  So, what did I do?  I created and built my own worlds.  Lego and Construx made it easy to make up my own dimension.  Star Wars planted the seeds early in my life that would lead to a passion for seeking out adventure and mayhem in other worlds, through movies, books and even my own imagination.  Every day became a day to create and do something new.

Star Wars was the stepping stone to everything else:  fantasy, sci-fi, comics, literature.  Without Star Wars, would I know who Drizzt DoUrden was?  Or Indiana Jones?  Or Bilbo Baggins?  Sydney Carton?  Who would Joss Whedon become?  Would there be no Firefly?  Star Wars inspired so many to create so much more.  Even if I had opened my eyes up to new worlds, would there be the same amount of worlds to explore, if Star Wars had not inspired others?

So, on this May the Fourth, I have to say thank you Star Wars for teaching me to dream and create, and to open my heart and mind to new possibilities.  And indeed, May the Fourth be with you!