Hope everyone had a good holiday. I know mine was a good one, as there are a number of things I'm particularly thankful for. My wife and I opted to spend part of the holiday weekend up North, and visited my family for the for time in a while. It was great to see them, especially my grandmothers. While we were up there I decided to look around for a little something from the past, and sadly, I found that you can't go home again.

I wanted to find my GameCube, as I had boxed it up and left it behind there ever since I got the Wii. I didn't need it really, I just like to know where my things are, you know? Because, well, things go missing. And unfortunately, that's just the case here, as no one had any idea where the Cube was. I fear that it is gone. This isn't the first time something like this has happened though. Below, you will find the brief, tragic history of my old video game systems.

We received our NES as a gift from one of our neighbors, as they were upgrading to an SNES, and didn't see a need to own two consoles. We played the heck out of that thing. As any NES owner will attest though, that thing sucked up so much dust that it became hit or miss as to whether or not it would turn on. We finally upgraded to an N64 (we missed out on the SNES generation; incredible, I know), and set the NES aside without a second thought. It was stored in the basement, and forgotten. Eventually I went away to school. I'm pretty sure that the system met its end when my parents' basement flooded one summer. I never got any closure.

We received one of the old school grey, bulky Game Boys from my uncle when he upgraded to a Game Boy Pocket (detecting a pattern here?). It was the most incredible thing ever. I played that thing constantly, and remain convinced to this day that those awful graphics were the catalyst for my terrible eyesight. My dad noticed that we played it a lot too. On one particular occasion, he felt it was getting in the way of our chores, and so he grounded us from it for a week, hiding it from us. After a week had passed, we went to him to get it back. He claimed that he had no idea what we were talking about. We never found out if he was serious or not, but he claimed he had forgotten where he had hid it.

Years later, we found the poor thing on a shelf in the garage. By then the battery case had rusted out entirely, rendering it unplayable. For sentimental reasons, I've held on to that old shell.

During the period of the missing Game Boy, we eventually had to concede that it was lost. I broke down and bought a Game Boy Color to take its place. As you might expect, played that thing all the time. And then one day, it too went missing. During those days, my mom hired a maid to clean the house, as she was too busy to do it herself. She or I suspected the maid might have taken the Game Boy Color (and subsequently, the copy of Metroid II plugged into it). Many, many years went by before I finally replaced those items, finding a copy of Metroid II in a used game store, and buying lunch for a friend in exchange for his Game Boys Color and Pocket (a steal if you ask me!).

And now, the GameCube. I fear a pox is upon all of my belongings that remain in my parents' home. Unfortunately, I don't have room for all of my old things here in our apartment, thus they remain behind. Hopefully, that will change soon; When our lease is up in the spring we are planning to move into a bigger place, where I might finally be able to bring down many of my old possessions. I've got a new job now (one of those things I'm thankful for), and finally we can afford more space...which finally allows us to start a family of our own. :)