Got a few things to catch up on here. First of all, I recently received two great gifts from my wife. First was a Tom Brady Patriots jersey she gave me for Father's Day. Here's Shannon and I showing it off:

Next came our 20th Anniversary, which we celebrated last Wednesday. I gave her an Irish Claddagh ring with a sapphire:

And she gave me an awesome official Red Sox jacket, just like the players and managers wear. Here I am showing it off with my daughter Darrah:

So, last week turned out very nice indeed! On a side note I noticed Gamespot gave me a new emblem for Top 100 Community Reviewers:

"Those who rank amongst this hallowed 100 greatly benefit those searching for critical information about games. These individuals' thoughtful, analytical reviews tend to be much more detailed and sophisticated than most of the so-called professional game reviews you could find elsewhere. Sure enough, the top 100 tend to be prolific writers and avid game players."

Sounds nice. I have been doing a fair amount of reviews and if I got this emblem based on your recommendations then I thank you all!

I'm a bit late in posting this blog thanks to some trouble I had with photoshop, but better late than never! A week ago last Saturday my friend Jude, known to many of you as Lightfellower from the RPG Temple, was down here in Florida checking out the sites before he made his trip back to Edmonton and then finally back home to Singapore. My family and I had the pleasure of getting together with Jude and spending an afternoon with him. That's my son Dylan (Nelo100) on the left, and yes, he's already taller than me Anyways, despite the 90+ temperatures we had a great time! Jude is a very polite, thoughtful and intelligent young man who has a great future - reminds me of myself 23 years ago, where did I go wrong My 12 and 8 year old daughters really took to Uncle Jude and were feeling pretty low when we took him to the bus terminal (he headed for Miami the next day) but now we have a reason to visit Singapore!

Last weekend I finally got the HDTV. Ended up going for the big one that all of us can enjoy for movies as well as gaming. It's a 50" plasma with 15,000 contrast. It's an Insignia, which is made by LG. I know, it's not on the level of Sony but I did a lot of research and just about every customer was very happy with this TV, which I got on sale for $1,100. And I must say I'm quite pleased as well. I did get the 4 year extended warranty just to be safe I tell ya, this digital camera cannot do justice as to just how good the image really is. I'm amazed at my games for the 360. Playing Mass Effect and Gears of War, wow! I'm clearly seeing enemies in the distance that just used to be blobs on my SDTV. Of course that's my version of Shepard from Mass Effect, about as close as I can get it to look like me Also picked up an "upconverter" DVD player which is a huge improvement over a regular DVD player for the HDTV. And Dylan just got his copy of DMC 4, so now he can play it in all its glory. Basically need to go back and replay all of my games for the 360 now. Hope everyone has a great weekend, you can imagine where I'll be spending my free time for the next couple of days!

OK, I was tagged by my good friends xwest06 and phoenyx9 so here we go, but I'm telling you - these are deep dark secrets so horrible, so terrifying, so disgusting that you'll probably go mad! You've been warned!

1. I'm of Irish, Scottish and Welsh decent - hence the name Celtic

2. My wife Shannon and I use to see each other literally every summer of our lives growing up. Our parents use to rent a cabin at the same lake in Maine at the same time every summer and we were playmates from the beginning. When we were older we went a few years w/o seeing each other but back in the summer of 87 we both happened to be there and the first thing I noticed was "Shannon's all grown up!" We were engaged about a month later and then married in June of 88. Now we're approaching our 20th anniversary! Isn't that just the sweetest thing you've ever heard?

3. I grew up in Newport, RI. If you're a fan of Family Guy then you'll know that's where Peter Griffin's in-laws live. It's true that Newport has many mansions, yachts and rich people. I sold my mansion 13 years ago and sailed my yacht down to Florida, where I now live. OK, part of this is not true, I'll let you try to figure out which part

4. My father was a tank commander in WWII. He first served as a volunteer with the British in North Africa under General Montgomery, then later in the war fought in Germany under General Patton, and spoke with Patton many times.

5. Have spent most of my career as an accountant but I did try my hand in retail for awhile and was an assistant manager at a Wal-Mart store. I can't recommend that to anyone that wants to have a life outside of their job.

Well that's it. Hopefully everyone that read this survived, but I did give a warning

Oh, almost forgot - I'm tagging my son Nelo100 - you're way overdue for a blog so get cracking!

Been over four months since my last blog so I guess it's time. Actually haven't had anything really interesting to talk about lately. Life's been good if not terribly exciting, just staying busy with the wife and kids. One thing that may interest some of you is that I'm saving my money and will combine it with some of my incoming tax $ to eventually invest in a HDTV either this Spring or early Summer. Right now kind of going back and forth on whether to spend all of the $ to get one in the 40" + range to set up in the living room, or to get a smaller one I could set up in the den. That way I'd move the 360 out of the living room (which would make my wife happy) and hook it up with the PC to a smaller HDTV, plus that would leave me $ to get a PS3 so I'd have a Blu-Ray player (not to mention being able to play MGS4). Of course the downer is then we wouldn't have a big screen to enjoy movies on in the living room, just the old 32" SDTV. Well, I've got some time to think about it. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated by HDTV owners as to what HDTVs you recommend for gaming in particular. Keep in mind I"ll be in the $1,000 range.

Now last but not least yesterday I accomplished something here on Gamespot I've been wanting to do for a long time. Finally started a Union for Red Sox fans. I know most of my friends here don't care about baseball but I want to give a special thanks to phoenyx9 and Swimmerking33 for being charter members and helping me get this started. Of course if there's anyone reading this that is a Red Sox fan or just a baseball fan you are more than welcome to check it out and see if you'd like to join. Here's a link - Red Sox Nation

OK, FINALLY got hooked up to DSL yesterday! Was looking forward to checking out XBox Live last night. Was really overtired because of staying up late Saturday and Sunday night to watch my beloved Red Sox win the World Series so my plan was to mess around a bit with Live before getting to bed at a decent time. Of course things never quite seem to work out the way we expect. On my way home from work I picked up my son Dylan (known to some of you as Nelo100) from school because he was at a Halloween party with his anime club. When I picked him up he was clutching his left wrist. Turns out he had a bad fall right before I got there. By the time we got home his wrist had a huge lump and was looking pretty bad so he and I went to the emergency room while Shannon stayed home with the girls. Turns out he did fracture his wrist bone so now he's in a cast but he's doing good - I don't think he minds getting a couple days off from school! Anyways it ended up being after 9 by the time we got home and now I'm really overtired so I just spenta short time on Live to check it out before going to bed. I did download the trailer for Devil May Cry 4 - man that looks sweet! Also downloaded the demo for Eternal Sonata but haven't looked at it yet. So, any of you that have Xbox Live I'm still going with celtic1962 on there. I haven't even looked at how you get people on your friend list but feel free to invite me or send me your names and I'll invite you if that's how it works.