Age of Empires Collector's Edition, Overlord

My son loves to browse Gamspot and read video game reviews. I have Age of Empires from back-in-the-day, and loaded it - he really enjoys it. So I ordered the Collector's pack to get the Rise of Rome expansion and AOE II with expansion too.

He also seemed very interested in Overlord. He's quite fond of RPGs, and the thought of being in charge of the dungeon and killing adventurers, instead of a hero trying to raid it, tickled him. So I ordered that too.

MP3 Player, Folding Wheelbarrow

My wife's birthday is only a few short days away. She recently started walking for exercise. We have an iPod, an old one and pretty large compared to what they sell today, so I ordered her a smaller MP3 player. I happen to hate iTunes and all Apple's propriety crap, so I went with Sansa generic MP3 player, small, light and with a built in clip.

She also does a lot of yard work. After carting 11 40-pound bags of dirt from the driveway to the backyard, I got the fantastic idea of a folding wheelbarrow.

Happy Birthday!

Vitamin C, Vitamins A & D, Essential Fatty Acids

My wife was diagnosed with Hashimoto's Disease and is looking at taking a hormone replacement for her malfunctioning thyroid. We did a bunch of research onine and found some recommended supplement regimens for augmenting thyroid function:

Policosanol, Chromemate, Slo-Niacin

Despite a lifelong commitment to fitness and working out and a healthy diet I've been doomed by my genes. My cholesteral came in at a whopping 238 and my HDL (the good stuff) was 21. This puts my ratio at over 11, which means I'm in the almost 3x more likely to have a heart attack category. Not good!

My family doc wanted to put me on Lipitor, since there's not much else I can do in terms of diet and exercise to bring it down, but Lipitor is some pretty heavy duty stuff. Before I start taking a medication I theoretically would have to take every day for the rest of my life, I've got to explore all the possibilities.

One of the protocols I read about was the Policosanol, Chromemate, Slo-Niacin, and Vitamin C. I figure it's worth giving a shot.

Before bed take:

• 200mcg of chromium polynicotinate (not "picolinate"), which is niacin-bound GTF chromium
• 500mg of slow-release niacin (nicotinic acid) under the brand name "Slo-Niacin"
• 23mg of policosanol
• 2,000mg of Vitamin C

Up waking take:

• 500mg of slow-release niacin
• 2,000mg of Vitamin C
• 200mcg chromium polynicotinate

I'll update here after I've tried this for 30 days. FYI, I already take 4,800 mg of fish oil and a multivitamin daily.

I'm also documenting my cholesterol experiment on my blog.

Sony MSMT8G/NK 8GB Memory Stick PRO Duo (Mark2) Media

My daughter was pretty hot for the PSP when is first came out. She wanted one bad enough to front half the cost from her birthday money and savings, which at the time amouted to about $125. She played it quite a bit for a while, but I don't think it's seen the outside of its case in the last two years.

I happen to like the PSP - it's a pretty nifty gadget. Built in Wi-Fi, web browser, will play MP3s and videos (once you convert them to MP4s, and there are plenty of free apps to do that). When she dragged it out for our recent garage sale I said hey, hey, hey, I'll buy that. $100 later, it's mine.

It's a 1001 model, 1st gen, and I see them going as "collector's items" for between $100 - $200 on eBay. She offered to just let me have it, but what the heck, she needs the money. I like the heft of it. It makes the PSP Go look like a Nintendo Gameboy.

It had a 1 gig card already, but I wanted to put more movies on it, as it's work pretty well as a portable video player. I wanted a larger card to put more movies on, so....

Bucky Shades Sleep Mask

I don't recall the specific geneis of the the orignal purchase, but my wife has been using these Bucky Sleep masks for years now. She needs one about every 2 years or so as they get somewhat compressed and floppy. They come in a bunch of colors - I ordered the lavender this time

Me? I just put a pillow over my head.

Sim City 4 and Roller Coaster Tycoon 3

My son been playing way to much Unreal Tournament (the original from 1999) and Neverwinter Nights. I wanted him to get into some more thoughtful games. I loaded up Age of Empires (the orginal) but he doens't quite get it yet.

We go Sim City for his Nintendo DS and he seems to like it well enough. IMO it's a pretty poor implementation of the computer version though, so I figured why not get him the real thing?

And he's been a big roller coaster fan since out last trip to Busch Gardens, to I tacked Roller Coaster Tycoon on there too.