Happy 2K4, folkses.
I hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year's Eve. As for me, I spent the evening doing the most exciting things possible. My girlfriend and I had been invited to a party or two, but neither one of us were really feeling so much like being around a bunch of people we didn't know, so we opted to spend a nice quiet evening indoors. So here's the rundown on the top things that I did to ring in 2004:
1. Finished a Where's Waldo jigsaw puzzle. This is no ordinary puzzle. This is the Land of Waldos puzzle, which features about 2,000 of the little striped hiker buggers doing all sorts of crazy nonsense. I grabbed the puzzle from my mom's house on Christmas and used it to kill time over the weekend, and finally finished it at about 11:20 PM, December 31, 2003. It was like some grand accomplishment if you look at it that way. I wish I had a better picture of the puzzle to show you the sheer magnitude of it, but just try to imagine that all of the Waldos are about 1.5 to 2.5 inches tall in the finished puzzle. Remember when you used to play Tetris all the time how those stupid polygons burned themselves on to your retinas? Well imagine that, but with nerdy little red, white, 
and blue outdoorsmen being the images that haunted you. I swear, the next brown-haired skinny kid I see with glasses and a toboggan had better watch out, because I might snap. Once you've finished the puzzle, you're supposed to find the Waldo with one shoe missing, then find his shoe. Screw that. I already found Waldo at Dragon*Con earlier this year.
2. Watched some Adult Swim on Cartoon Network. Last year I was less of a nerd, and taped the Adult Swim marathon while I went out to a party. This year, I stayed in and watched it. Or, at least, the first hour and a half, until they started showing the most overrated show that everyone thinks is underrated, The Family Guy. No thanks. That's why I did this:
3. Played Yoshi's Island on my Super Nintendo. Yes, you read that correctly. I realize that the rest of the world is investing assloads of money into their X-Boxes, PS2s, and GameCubes, but I'm still rockin' my small menagerie of classic Nintendo consoles: The NES, SNES, and N64. Screw disc games, give me a clunky old cartridge any day. Besides, I don't play enough video games to really justify investing any more money into anything else, so these systems are fine. I recently broke out one of my favorite side-scrollers from the SNES, Yoshi's Island, and have been working on it a few levels at a time. I should have it beat again in a couple weeks.
All the while, I was drinking spiked eggnog until I went to bed at the late, late hour of 2 AM. The girlfriend didn't make it nearly that far -- a couple sips of her beverage and she was out just minutes after the new year hit. Oh well. The new year should bring some good stuff for MCFTR, though, so make sure you check back often.