Tara and video games ruled V and my weekend. I learned of a new Xbox 360 game a few days ago, an Animal Crossing-esque challenge of raising piñatas in your garden aptly titled Viva Piñata. Naturally her curiosity was piqued, so on Saturday after dinner at Harry's Hofbrau we popped into Gamestop at Sequoia Station to inquire. Turns out they'd sold their last copy a scant half hour earlier. I then asked about the availability of Rainbow Six: Vegas, which i was informed wasn't out until November 30. The friendly clerk then commented how nice it was to field questions that didn't involve the Playstation 3 or the Wii, the latter of which was slated for release Sunday morning. We hightailed it over to Best Buy before closing, and were amazed to find a small collection of tents and sleeping bags containing Nintendo diehards awaiting the next morning's Wii launch. We ventured inside, and were able to wrangle a salesperson away from a few Nintendo fanboys long enough to learn BB was also sold out of Viva Piñata. Dammit. On our way out, i commented that we should try one of Brian Posehn's jokes.

Being a nerd, i know how to make other nerds mad, and that's getting their obsession wrong. The thing they've wasted their lives obsessing over. So these guys are there for the Star Wars movie, and i swear i did this, i drove by and i went "Star Trek sucks! Picard's a fag! Beam me up, Scottie!" And i swear one of the nerds looked a lot like me, but fatter, he went to the curb and went "It's Star Wars! Get it right! It's George Lucas's vision!" And i'm sitting in my car going "Ha ha, nerds!" And i've got a stack of comic books in the passenger seat, and the X-Files season 5 DVD. "Those guys are nerds, but i'm going home to see what Scully and Mulder got into this season!"

I was very tempted to do the same here, substituting "Atari sucks!" for the Posehn exclamation. That had Veronica in stitches. Despite my curiosity over how that would rile up the Nintendo disciples, we didn't go through with our plan. Subsequent trips to Toys R' Us and Target had similar results in terms of Viva Piñata availability and anxious Wii customers. V was therefore forced to postpone her piñata gardening until the morrow, when we secured a copy at a Toys R' Us in Redwood City.

The last song on (former?) Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker's new solo album is 34 minutes long. I'm two minutes in now and am genuinely freaked out that there's more than a half hour of this left.

Tara had a weekend about town, going to the dog park on both Saturday and Sunday and also getting a walk in a park near Hillsdale Mall on Sunday afternoon. She loves riding in the car and integrates well with Veronica and my jaunts around the peninsula. We were witness to some drama at the dog park on Saturday afternoon. We had noticed a guy bring in his pomeranian, principally because he was wearing jeans and a blazer and was looking decidedly metrosexual at the jeans-and-sweats-dominated dog park. A half hour or so after he arrived, his dog was the victim of a fight in which a horde of small dogs descended upon her, apparently after an initial attack by a Jack Russell terrier. The owner of the terrier waded in and literally threw his dog away from the fray, an act i found a bit disconcerting. The metrosexual pomeranian owner (someone whom Veronica referred to as "thin Ted", to my chagrin) picked up his dog and headed for the exit. As he was leaving, he apparently said something to the terrier owner along the lines of "you should get your dog trained before you bring it to the dog park". The fuse was lit, and the scene devolved until the two dog owners were shouting obscenities at each other. I would tend to side with thin Ted, as the other guy was bizarrely hostile, self-righteous, and argumentative. I was amused by thin Ted's parting shot ... as he was leaving, the terrier owner was reprimanding his dog in the park for some other offense, shouting "Carl! Carl! CARL!". Thin Ted drove off mocking this, with a perfectly delivered "Carrrrrl! CCCCAAAARRL!".

Phew ... Jarvis's last track is a four minute song, 28 minutes of silence, and a two minute hidden song. Thank god.

I'm looking forward to that lovely Thursday holiday celebrating gluttony, which will be celebrated at my parents' house in Fremont with my sisters and aunt. My pregnant sis Em is in town from Dallas, and will be having a girls-evening-out with Hilary, Veronica, and mom at a spa in Palo Alto on Friday. That'll give me a chance to work off Thursday's turkey and stuffing with a hard day of Gears of War, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, and the slightly more physical Guitar Hero II. Then Saturday i fly off to Chicago for my first taste of the RSNA mega-conference. It's the largest medical meeting in the world, with over 70,000 attendees annually. McCormick Place in Chicago is the only venue large enough to hold it, so it's always held there the week after Thanksgiving. The meeting will be an interesting affair, balanced between science and networking. I submitted an entry for RSNA's "25 top research questions for radiology" contest, which was selected. So i get an extra ribbon to wear on my conference badge, and will attend the awards ceremony on Sunday afternoon. I'll also be attending the RSNA Molecular Imaging Committee meeting, a chance to touch base with former mentor Ralph Weissleder. Finally, i'm also very keen to spend some time with old friend Bill W, now a resident of Naperville outside Chicago. We're planning a dinner at his house on Sunday, hopefully accompanied by a showing of that day's top-of-the-table encounter between Chelsea and Manchester United.