Since one common thing around CAG is toilet humor, I figured I'd share this. It made me chuckle a bit. Walked into a stall in the ladies room at a restaurant yesterday and as I locked the door, saw this sign:



Then, I looked at the toilet:


I couldn't help but wonder if that trash can had toilet paper in it that would normally go in the toilet...

I used the next stall over, it didn't have any signs on it about putting paper in it. Alas, where would photos like this be without camera phones?

I love leftovers, and I love pasta. I work fairly long hours and when I'm not at work, there's a good chance I'm at the gym. Needless to say, having food that's easy to reheat and filling is a must for me. I make baked pasta dishes fairly often, then, as they meet my requirements. Tonight, though, I tried something new with the baked pasta, and the results were phenomenal. I figured I'd share my normal baked pasta recipe and also the one I made tonight (which I'll be making again!). These are great if you need to feed a crowd or if you're trying to cook for a few night's worth of food.

Generic Pasta Bake
Ingredients
1 lb. pasta such as penne, elbows, or fusili
1 24-26 oz. jar of sauce (the large size of Barilla, Prego, Classico, or whatever you like)
1 jar of water
2 cups of shredded cheese (Italian Mix or Mozarella)

Directions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In 9"x13" pan, combine UNCOOKED pasta, jar of sauce, and...

So I beat Psaro, yay.

My final party and levels were:
Heroine, Level 40
Kiryl, Level 41
Ragnar, Level 42
Maya, Level 40
Time: 35:58

So, I guess, now the question is do I move onto "Chapter 6," the bonus dungeon, or do I just move over to ChronoTrigger? The temptation to move beyond DQ IV is huge, but at the same time, I'm a bit of a completionist..

Plus, looking at the release schedule for the new year, I don't want to be trying to finish ChronoTrigger when other things come out that I'll want to play. Any thoughts from the CAG community?

Had hand surgery Friday. Can't hold my controllers, so it seems like a good time to work through some more of DQ IV. I'm about 25 hours in, next is to get the Zenithian armor. Hopefully, it won't be too hard to play one-handed. I'm enjoying DQ IV, but I want to move on and play ChronoTrigger, which I never played on the SNES or PS.

JRPG's are good for the gimpy.

I was trying to get rid of some of the things in my pantry and in my fridge earlier this week, and came across a chili recipe that sounded tasty. Unfortunately, I didn't have all of the ingredients it called for per se (I was missing some basic things like onion and garlic, for shame!), so I modified it a little bit. The original recipe I adapted this from is here (without the topping thingie). This turned out really tasty. This is how I made it:

Ingredients
~1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 lb ground turkey (I used Kosher turkey, but I bet it'd be fine with chicken or ground beef)
~1.5 tsp garlic powder (would have used chopped/minced garlic if I had any on hand)
~1.5 tsp onion powder
2 leeks, chopped (didn't have any onion, maybe 1 chopped?)
~20 baby carrots, chopped (I would've used one carrot if I had it)
~6 drops of Habanero pepper sauce (or use 1 jalapeno, with or without seeds, chopped)
salt...

Today's the big day, the day I move into my first house! Yay for no more renting from crooked property managers.

Anyway, I'm going to be internet-less at home until the 19th, so see y'all in a little more than a week.

I never got around to playing the original Viva Pinata for 360. Should I go out and pick up the original ($20 at most) or buy the new an improved version for $40? I do enjoy Pokemon games and got waaaaaaaay addicted to Animal Crossing DS when it came out, so I think it'd be up my alley, but I figure I'll ask the pros who know the game better than I do.

I'm in the process of buying a house. If all goes as planned, I'll be settling next week, and moving in as soon as possible thereafter (my lease on my apartment is up soon). As such, I've been working on packing up all my junk. Work's been keeping me crazy busy, too, which has left me with less time for everything, packing and gaming included.

In an effort to get as much packed in the little free time I've had, I went on a frenzy this weekend. In the packing, I boxed up my both my Wii and my PS3. Though I love Boom Blox, and I'm looking forward to downloading the VC (or is it WiiWare) Mario RPG, I figured that I could go without the Wii for awhile. The same went for the PS3. I haven't been playing much on it lately, and what I do want to play is only available on the PSN Store, which doesn't accept my credit card (that should be an advantage of moving out of my apartment and into a house). Mostly, my PS3's been a DVD/Blu-Ray player for the last few weeks, so I figured...

I know what you're thinking: "Really, she is going to write about a boss-battle from Final Fantasy IV for her first-ever CAG blog entry?" The short answer is, "yep."

I'm fairly atypical of most of the CAG's in that 1) I'm a girl and 2) I like JRPG's. The original Final Fantasy is part of what really drew me into gaming, that and the original Legend of Zelda. As a gamer, I'm more into the RPG's than the shooters, more into the platformers than the real-time tactical games, and generally, still a Final Fantasy junkie. Which is what's brought me back to Final Fantasy IV, now in the 3rd iteration I've played.

I know that the US version for the SNES (Final Fantasy II) was considered significantly dumbed down compared to the Japanese version, but beating and completing the game was for a long time one of the jewels of my gaming crown. It sat right up there with beating Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (the first game I can remember where having...