Bunnyblog

Review and Giveaway - Palookie.com Blanket

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:16:44 -0400

Before we address the wonderful blanket that the kind folks at Palookie.com sent us, I’d like to congratulate the winner of our thinkgeek.com contest. Congratulations to Jacob Boss!

Sock Monkeys!

Marissa is a blanket fiend. She’s loved the relatively rough Ikea textiles, and there’s a blanket from her Nana that she adores too. She’s not shy about letting us know her dislikes as far as textures and sensations too, so there’s been a fair amount of fabrics that have been consigned to the closet, never to return.

Palookie.com sent Marissa and her brother a stroller blanket. I was concerned that she wouldn’t take to it very well, but she has! Marissa’s delicate with her things, the brother not so much. The blanket has held up to the assaults of both with not so much as a pulled thread. Durable stitching, quilted on one side, fleeced on the other, it’s a great blanket for her tumbleforms, her wheelchair, or her stroller.

What impressed me as a Father the most is the size. Most blankets we have to fold over and double or quadruple to fit in the stroller or wheelchair. One blanket, one layer. Much better for temperature control.

Basically what I’m saying is, good work, Palookie- keep it up! These blankets excel at not just strollers. It’s a great fit for her in many aspects. These pictures with Marissa don’t really do it justice. She likes wrapping her fingers around the silky edges for the texture and rubbing the sock monkeys on her face. From a sensory standpoint, it’s probably one of the best blankets she’s had.

Palookie loves you, our readers, too! They’ve generously offered a Paci Blankie to one of our readers. You get to pick the general classification- for a boy, girl, or neutral. This is what a Paci Blanket looks like.

Here’s how to enter. Choose one method, choose many. Some will only ever give you one entry, some can be done once per day. Only do what you’re comfortable with, and please be sure to complete all steps for your method!

Method One (one entry per vote and email combo per day)

You’re probably familiar with this one.

Step One:
Vote for Marissa’s Bunny on topbabyblogs.com by clicking here. No registration is required. If you don’t want to click on the text, the banner at the bottom of the page works too.
 Step Two:
On the landing page, be sure to get your vote counted by clicking on the “click here and your vote will be added” text.

Step Three:
Email Marissa and tell us you’ve done this.

Method Two (one entry total)

Step One:
Go to Palookie.com and tell us what you like about their products, or alternatively, which blanket you like the most!

Step Two
Be sure we know how to contact you. You don’t have to leave your email here, but do email it to Marissa and match it with the comment.

Method Three (one entry per tweet per day)

Follow us on Twitter, and tweet to your followers that we exist, and you’d like your followers to read us. A convenient shorturl for marissasbunny.com is http://alturl.com/xmkoc

Please include a hashtag. Include #marissasbunny to make it easier to find your tweet. Alternatively, if you don’t like hashtags, email Marissa and tell us your twitter name after you’ve tweeted about marissasbunny.com.

Method Four (one entry total)

Step One
Like Palookie.com on Facebook

Step Two
Send Marissa an Email to tell us you’ve done so!

Entry in the contest gives us permission to use whatever name you’ve provided us, whether it be your real name or your screen name for winner announcement purposes. Palookie.com has provided both the review product and the giveaway. We won’t harvest your email address, ever, or sell them, ever. Entries close on September 2nd at Noon eastern standard time. Winner takes all! Upon notification of a win by email or tweet, you’ll have 72 hours from the time the email or tweet was sent to respond to it with your mailing address.

Good luck, everybody!

Difficult to Write, Difficult to Hear

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:18:46 -0400

Nothing good happens after midnight- it was oft repeated in the military, and believe it. At 12:04 last night, Marissa broke the chain and had a fairly mundane tonic seizure. Mundane, of course, being relative. She hasn’t had one in a while, so the myoclonics afterward really disturbed her. She’s a bit twitchy today, but so far so good. We’ve restarted the clock. Now that the other shoe has dropped, maybe we can go another 100+ hours.

Time Warp!

Between an horrendous virtual meeting I’m attending, and a rather unpleasant conversation with a bunch of Doctors, I’ve lost my train of thought for this post. Jumping rapidly to the end of what I had planned for today, one of Marissa’s last PT appointments with our existing therapist was late yesterday.

Yes, it’s possible that Marissa isn’t that far away from self feeding! Of course, seizure freedom is fleeting, and we don’t even have it, but as always, I’ll take what little I have and can get.

On the back of Marissa’s hands are mango-peach puffs, from Target.

100 Plus Hours

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:40:01 -0400

Marissa’s still seizing, but it’s magnitudes milder than it’s been in a long time. We haven’t seen one of the potentially life-threatening tonic seizures in a very long time, though. She woke this morning, and I was pretty sure we were going to get one, but it was pretty apparent that she was fighting it off, and sure enough about 6 myoclonic jerks later she was done with the whole process. A bath and food called to her, probably not in that order if she had her druthers.

I wish I knew what the battle felt like in her head. Is it flashing and bright? Tickly sparks? Colors? There doesn’t appear to be any pain. How does she even fight them back? What do the meds feel like? Does she even experience her sensory input the way I do? Does she have any grip on language?

Lots of questions, very few answers. More now than we had before, but still.

Speaking of which, Marissa continues to confound the medical industry. The treatment seems to be working well, at a lower dose than predicted. We’re starting a keppra reduction as she was at about max dose for her weight, and the phenobarb wean has been accelerated slightly. I report to the doctors, and I hear the collective “huhwha?” exclamation of surprise when we discuss how well it’s going and what direction it’s taken. We still need all the tests, the EEG, the MRI, and more. I don’t think they want to schedule them until we hit some sort of steady state. When has Marissa ever had any sort of “normal?” I’ll do what I have to do, wait as long as I have to, but still...

Incidentally, good luck to Bertrand who’s at the Duke Medical Center getting a stem cell infusion!

Marissa the Junkie

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 12:30:43 -0400

Well, not really. Three days ago, we were down to four tonic seizures a day followed up by a series of myoclonic jerks. Then, like a switch after a med dose increase, we were down to one every 26 hours or so. Right now, it’s been 38 hours since the last tonic. We’re not expecting a miracle. I still think she’s got some subclinical seizure activity going on, but given her mood, I think it’s lessening.

It’s not useful going in for the tests until we’ve hit some sort of Marissa-specific target klonopin dose. We’ve got rules of engagement on the increase, so we don’t have to frantically call a doctor after each tonic over the weekend. We’re weaning the Phenobarbitol, and are almost done with that. The Keppra has been reduced, the Banzel is steady, and we’re coming up on the Klonopin. With the wean of the Phenobarb, she’s been more interactive and social. Adding the enhanced clarity of the Klonopin, and even given her junkie status, her personality is coming through stronger than it has in a while

I’ll take this schedule change. More on twitter as it happens, and here on the blog when I can update.

Review - Madden Football 2011 - xBox 360

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:21:01 -0400

First of all, thanks to site sponsor Goozex.com for providing the materials for the giveaway and review. If you’ve got a minute, go see what they have to offer. I’ve been a member for a long time, and I can’t recommend their service enough.

Huddle Up!
I pick up a football game every decade. The first football game I played was John Madden Football for the Apple IIe in it’s inaugural year. It was mostly forgettable, but follow-up editions for the Sega Genesis were pretty good. Skip forward about 10 years, and NFL2k1 was my go-to game whenever I wanted to get my virtual Football going in 2000. This year, I was provided Madden 2011 for the xBox 360 for review. I’ve shied away from most sports games on the consoles, primarily due to a personal bias that the games aren’t much different year to year. If I wait 10 years between purchases, then the differences are major indeed. So, this review is likely to be a bit different than most- where most reviews are angled toward the annual Madden purchaser or rabid Football fan, I am neither.

Season Staring Kickoff
I really wasn’t sure what to expect on booting the game, as it’s been a decade since I played any videogame football, and two since I played Madden. The traditional EA Sports intro played, I navigated the menus easily enough, and selected teams. Like always when I start playing a sports video game, I made sure I had the advantage over the computer- I picked the Saints, and let the CPU play the Redskins. Yes, I know I’m local to DC. No, I’m not a giant Skins fan- apologies to local readers. Anyway, given past history with initial football game plays, I also decided to drop the difficulty to “rookie”.

Bad choice. My first next-generation console Football game was a total crushing victory over the hapless skins (84-0) netting me 5 achievements worth 210 points. This didn’t seem right somehow. I quickly scanned the achievement totals available to me on the xBox dashboard which neatly segues me into my first complaint about the game. It’s not that the achievements are totally thoughtless or pushbutton- they are based on player performance, but it’s very easy to farm the achievements by disabling the offsides penalty, setting the difficulty to stupidly easy (like I did), or other such shenanigans. I predict that most of the achievements can be had in a decent weekend of play if you’re suitably motivated to configure the game just so. Only one achievement seems to take any time or real skill to accomplish.

So the second game, still Saints/Redskins, I played on Pro difficulty- the default. This was a much better experience- my players and the opposition had mass and impacts felt better. My previous supermen were lowered to mere mortals, and the game was the better for it. Where I was concerned about the fun-factor of the game during the first playthrough, this was banished for the second and subsequent games.

Nickel and Dime
If you’re familiar with Electronic Arts, they have a new program they call “Project Ten Dollar” (can I call this PTD going forward? thanks!) Basically, they’ve got a plan to bleed money out of the second-hand game industry as best as they can. Madden 11 comes with the PTD tax covered- there’s a code to enter online to enable play on the EA servers.

I see the issue. Sell the game once, get paid. When the game sells the second time, they don’t get paid. So, if you get a second hand Madden, and want to play online, you’ve got to dole out the points to do so. Furthermore, there’s genuine cheats to buy online. Generally speaking, I don’t care about this. Bigger guns, faster cars, and the like have been available on the xBox live marketplace basically since it’s inception for people to enhance their gaming experience. Where I put my foot down is this: I’m going to use some extra emphasis.

When you buy cheats on xBox live, you can use them against other human online opponents.

How is this a good idea for anybody but EA? Maybe it’s me, a relic of a bygone age in video gaming, but isn’t the online battlefield supposed to be ruled by skill, rather than your wallet? Sure, there’s always been griefers, there’s network shenanigans with routers that can be pulled, but sanctioned enhancements for pay? Cheat all you want against the computer, but this is out and out dirty.

Hut, Hut, Hike!
Is Madden 11 a good gameplay experience? To this casual football fan, overall, yes. It feels to me that other than the PTD the gameplay is solid. Hits feel visceral, weather effects are realistic and affect more than the visuals, the announcing while repetitive as all sports games are about as best as can be expected. I can pull off moves to shake off tacklers or blockers with little effort or combo memorization required, and as a pickup player, this is very satisfying. The (apparently new this year) auto-play caller only picked a grossly inappropriate play once, thus saving me the difficulty of analyzing each formation versus what I wanted to do. If you want to choose from the entire playbook, you can- I just don’t have the need to.

Two Minute Warning
So, the real question is at what price Madden? At what price do you break down and purchase the game? If you’re a Football fan, and I mean Fan with a capital F, go get it today. If you like football, and on any given Sunday you can take it or leave it, now would still be a good time to get it, but as we’re approaching AAA release season, you should consider the other releases you want also when shelling out your bucks. I fall under the second category- I do like football, but I’m not glued to the sofa for 6+ hours on Sunday. If there weren’t releases coming very, very soon crying my name extremely loudly, I’d purchase the game today at full retail price. Sadly, the PTD choices that EA made are a fairly compelling reason to purchase new.

For whatever the reason, the internet thinks that if something’s popular, it’s crap. The Madden series has taken a lot of heat for selling very, very well. There’s no shame in a good, popular game. Madden 11 is a good game.