If you had asked me two months ago if I would ever have an iPad, I would have laughed.  I already had an iPod Touch for two years and could not understand why anyone would want an oversized iPod.  Well, my wife ended up getting a fantastic price on one from someone at my office.  I was so blown away by all it was capable of, I ended up getting one for myself two weeks later.

Now, two months later, I am hooked.  I absolutely love the iPad. It is not just a large iPod, as I had thought.  The apps look gorgeous on the screen and are developed to take into account the screen size.  I am able to do so much more than I was with the iPod.  Other than for work, I am rarely on my computer anymore.  Does it replace my computer?  No.  But it certainly covers a lot of the same areas and can even go beyond what I do with my personal laptop.

Spiritually - It has allowed me to go deeper in my Bible studies with a split screen for a commentary.  Clicking on words, I can perform a lookup in a Bible dictionary.

Photography - I am able to download photos from my camera.  No more need to take my laptop on trips to handle downloading my day's worth of photos.

Music - I can keep all of my sheets of music stored on the iPad.  I can create worship sets for the week and can even annotate my music with markups.  There is almost no need for printed sheets.  There are some really great apps to write music as well.  I can now grab the iPad and get a musical phrase recorded or come up with an electronic jam sequence.

Over the weekend I finally saw the new "Tron: Legacy"...twice.  I enjoyed it so much, I took my younger daughter with me the 2nd time.  One night later, she went again.  This time with my wife.  I'm hoping to see it one more time before it leaves our theater.  The music, the visuals, the sound.  I absolutely loved the movie and came back with my first real 'movie experience' in years.  It's one of those movies I'll remember when I saw it in the theater.

I've been a fan of Tron ever since the original was released.  It really made an impact on me at the time.  It was such a great idea and concept.  A world inside a computer or video game.  I also pumped many quarters into the arcade game.  Over the years, it had become a fading memory.  Though a memory I would reference every so often.

In 2002, I bought my first DVD.  It was the 20th Anniversary of Tron.  My wife was like, "I"ve never even heard you mention this movie before.  That's what you want to buy?"

In 2003, my hopes were raised as the PC game "Tron 2.0" was released.  I swooped it up and really enjoyed it.  The beginning of the game was frustrating and hard, but once I worked through that, the game ended up being a really exciting time.  I still have fond memories of many of the levels and puzzles.

The following year (2004) I bought "TRON 2.0: Killer App" for the Gameboy Advance.  I enjoyed it, but the shining part were the minigames and port of the Tron arcade game.

With the end of year sales and Christmas, I don't know about you, but we ended up with a few new games.  Rather than going through each game and trying to play all of them at once, I took a different approach.  I decided to take it easy and get to know one or two games at a time.  It's helped me to really enjoy and savor each game, rather than moving quickly on to the next one.

Between Black Friday and Christmas, we got five games.  We did not start playing anything until Christmas, though.  I've been concentrating on "Mario Kart Wii" and "Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip (Wii)" and having a great time.  Both of these games have been superb and very enjoyable.  Mario Kart has been fun for our whole family and we often play it together.  "Shaun White" has mainly been single player gaming, but my daughter and I just started playing the multiplayer part of the game.  Both of us have been having lots of fun with it.  The controls are really well done and the game itself is quite enjoyable.

I recently popped in "Toy Story Mania (Wii)".  Reviews have been mixed, and rightly so.  The interface is rather confusing and what they call 'Story Mode' is not a story and also contains a few rather weak mini-games.  Initial impressions were...confused.  But after further play, and moving into the more open parts of the game, you realize those weak mini-games are rare and most of the mini-games are full of fun and charm.  It's a great family game as you play against each other and compete for high scores.

Still left to play is "NBA Jam (Wii)" and "Kid Adventures: Sky Captain (Wii)".  Not sure when I'll get to those, but in the meantime, I am very happy with the first three purchases.