Journal Entry

Meanwhile, our heroes....

Ugh. I thought I was two or three days late on posting. Maybe four. But no. It's worse than that.

I have a sore ankle tonight. That's why I'm not walking right now. Not sure how it happened, but I noticed it walking out to my car after work today.

Work? Work has been awful this week. I'm in all-day meetings all week. Monday I had free (no meetings, that is -- I still had to work a nine-hour day), and Friday I have free free. It's my RDO. It comes on the Friday before a Monday holiday, too, so I'm looking at a four-day weekend (Kris's dinnertime request notwithstanding).

Anyway. Last weekend was a lot of fun. I'm trying to remember back that far. I don't really know what happened last week. I finished reading Calvin and Hobbes, I know that for a fact. And then...I dunno, I had pretty short evenings. I don't remember if I was feeling tired, or if I was busy. Oh! I did play some WoW with Mom and Dad. Most of Tuesday night and most of Thursday, too.

Then Friday night I'd set aside to go help B-- drown his sorrows in some of his expensive whiskey, but he ended up taking a nap or something, so I watched some TV with T-- and then went over to D--'s to check out some cool new video game he'd gotten.

Then Saturday I helped T-- with some chores in the morning, then went over to K-- and N--'s for the afternoon while T-- took AB to one of her Saturday crops. I introduced K-- to my favorite new game, Overlord, and watched him play for five hours or so. It's that sort of a game. It's fun and funny. Apparently at some point it gets challenging, but I'm not really there yet. It's quite unique, though, and I enjoy that.

Then at 6:00 we headed to B-- and E--'s for their long-awaited housewarming party! It was worth the wait, too. I may have mentioned before, but they have done a TON of work on their house since they got it. N-- mentioned that she was jealous of it. I can't blame her. They've made a really cool home.

E-- decided to pick up some meat for the guys to grill (we made it a team effort, too, all four of us out on the patio giving B-- instructions). So we had hamburgers and hotdogs and chicken and all manner of grilled vegetables. There were also two cheesecakes courtesy N--, and chardonnay champagne to boot. We all had a really good time, got thoroughly smashed, and discussed very private matters in a public sort of way, into the wee hours of the morning.

Sunday, somehow, I made it to church. Got three pages of "Royal Holiday" written during the sermon, then picked up D-- for some lunch at Schlotzky's. He'd left his car at B--'s place (N-- drove us all home), so he needed a ride to pick it up. We took him to lunch, then came back to the house to pack up a few baby things that we're loaning to B-- and E--, and then we went over there (and, yeah, woke B-- up for our short visit). I introduced HIM to Overlord, too, and dropped off the stuff, and we chatted for a bit before he chased us out of his house so he could get back to sleep.

That evening, we met K-- and N-- for dinner at Casablanca American Grill, a new-ish restaurant here in town, and had some delicious dinner. I'd been meaning to take T-- on a date, and she picked the place. I had my filet mignon for the year, and it was well worth it. Yumm.

Afterward, we went to their place to watch some Psych, and then finally got home 9-ish. I don't remember if I walked or not. For most of the last week, I didn't.

Monday, I spent most of the day honing my programming skills. Specifically, I wrote a script to cheat at a really cheesy, free, multiplayer web-based flash game that I'd encountered while at work on the previous Friday. Over the weekend, K-- and I were discussing that "we" had figured out how to control HTML objects from within a Python script, and I was forced to point out that it was all him.

So I took some of his sample code on Monday, read through it and modified it until I understood what was going on, and used this cheesy little online game as a project to learn through. It's been a blazing success, too. I'm tearing up. I'm more excited about the skills I picked up, though. Web-manipulation through Python is terribly useful. If you can't immediately guess why, you'll probably just have to trust me on that.

Monday night, T-- didn't feel like cooking and I didn't feel like eating leftovers. I suggested P. F. Chang's. She went out and picked up a cheap but amazingly good pizza from Mazzio's for dinner. It was good. Sometime later, D-- and I went for a walk together.

Tuesday, yesterday, was my first all-day meeting. It was just awful. Basically, it has nothing to do with me, so I have to just sit in the meeting all day, nine hours straight (with a thirty-minute lunch break in the middle), and listen to engineers argue about things that aren't going to change. About a year from now I'll be responsible for maintaining the documentation that will be generated after this meeting is over, but I can tell you for a fact that almost nothing discussed in these meetings will have any impact on the product I receive. Ugh.

So, yeah, I didn't enjoy yesterday at work, or today, and I won't enjoy tomorrow. But I get Friday off. So that's good.

Yesterday I came home in a bad mood, and T-- asked me why, and I told her all about my meeting and then I felt a little better. Then I played with AB for a while, and she giggled for me (finally), and then I felt a little better. Then D-- came over and we finally had a leftovers night, finishing off some of the food in our fridge (which was way better than "leftovers night" makes it sound). D-- had hurt his knee somehow, so he skipped out on our walk, so I went to the office to pay our bills and play Overlord instead of going by myself.

Then today, well, same as yesterday at work, but about halfway through the day I decided what I wanted to do for dinner. We often get together with K-- and N-- (and usually D--, too) for Wednesday night dinners, because K-- and N-- go to the church right next to our house, so it's convenient. But, we have to find somewhere pretty quick and pretty close, because the earliest they can get over to this part of town is 5:45, and church is at 7:00. We've generally gone somewhere Mexican.

But, as I may have said more than once, I've been craving Changs for a week, so when I got out of meetings at 4:40 today I called everyone involved (including B-- and E--, but B--'s in Dallas for some reason, so couldn't make it), and told them instead of going to some Mexican place, they should head to my house. Then I went and picked up a bunch of Changs and brought it back to the house for everybody. The timing was almost perfect, and the food was SO good. Then I prevailed upon all to hang out at my place and watch a movie (Blades of Glory), which turned out to be hugely fun. We laughed and had a good time.

So...yeah, today has been a really good day. Really, all week I've managed to have good enough evenings to make up for just awful days. Tomorrow's looking encouraging, too, because there's a Cowboys/Vikings preseason game, and then no work to follow. If I can just make it through the day, I'll be in really good shape.

Anyway, sorry for the long silence. I hope everyone's doing well. I'm off to kill a few unicorns, and then I'm heading to bed.

Journal Entry

Same story as yesterday, really. Had a sore back, went to work, wrote a couple pages on "Royal Holiday" over lunch.

When I got home, I played with AB a bit until T-- made supper, and then I called my dad to see if he and Mom wanted some help in WoW. Turns out, they were both in the midst of a pretty busy evening, but he got free around 8:45, so I ran his character around Hellfire Plateau instead of going for my walk. In the process, I got his character caught up with Mom's, so they'll be able to play together more easily. So I consider that a good deed done.

While I was waiting for him to get available, though, I dug out an old, broken wireless keyboard, dismantled it (by which I mean, removed all the keys), cleaned it and all the keys (which were pretty filthy), and then reassembled it for AB to use as a toy. I did the numpad and some of the function keys by myself, and ended up popping a key off, hard, right into my eye. It hurt! So after that, T-- kindly volunteered to help out, probably mostly to keep an eye on me. Between us we were able to get the whole keyboard finished during an episode of Jim, though, so that was fun. AB loves it, too. She just bangs on it with both hands, as hard as she can. I don't think she quite gets human interface devices yet, but you're never too young to start learning. That's what I always say.

Anyway, that and then WoW, and now I've got to feed the cats, then I'm off to bed.

Poor Trish

Journal Entry

Is it really only Monday? Ugh. I've got get that best-seller sold.

Today went pretty well. I think I'm finally feeling better. I did have a sore back from scooping water yesterday, and we had several awful things come up at work, but they were just things, y'know? I got two pages written on "Royal Holiday" (that one's turning into a novella), and I read some Calvin and Hobbes, and by the time I got home I was able to forget work, so those are all good things.

T-- made chicken parmesan and spaghetti for dinner, which was delicious, and we played with AB some, and I played some Civ and put the door back up over the cabinet under the kitchen sink, and then we both read while eating ice cream, and then I headed over to D--'s for our walk.

Only, he didn't really feel like walking after going to the gym tonight, and it was muggy enough that I was easily convinced to skip most of my walk (I still had half a mile walk there and back again), and instead I watched him play Civ for half an hour. That was fun. He started a war and lost it, and his economy went to pot. Poor guy. "That's what you get for trying to play Civilization as the Native Americans," I told him (only with more racial slurs, probably). And then I went home.

An odd sort of day. I didn't really accomplish anything. But I'm feeling better, so that's got to be a good thing.

Off to bed.

Journal Entry

I don't know why I have so much trouble updating over the weekend. Maybe it feels like work, and I'm just convinced I shouldn't have to work on weekends (in spite of much evidence to the contrary). Anyway, here's the weekend's posts.

Friday, August 17th
Friday was my RDO. I planned to take full advantage of that (read: sleeping in), but somehow didn't. I stayed up late Thursday night (probably playing Civ, but I don't remember for sure), then woke up around 9:00 on Friday morning. So, yeah, technically I slept in (I normally wake up at 6:00 for work), but when I think "sleep in," I'm thinking noon. It's not a non-specific designation, as far as I'm concerned. It means "not waking up in the ante meridian," plain and simple.

Anyway, yeah, woke up at nine, and I was kinda thinking that if I helped T-- out with some housework on Friday, good karma would kick in and I wouldn't have to do any chores for the rest of the weekend. So I vacuumed the whole house before T-- got home from walking AB, and then I took out all the trash (including the diaper pail, so that actually counts). After that, I did nothing useful for the rest of the day, so karma didn't really take me all that seriously.

I'm really not sure what I did with my afternoon. I read some and did some stuff on the computer, and played with the baby and talked with T--, and the day just sort of melted away. It was a pleasant one, though. T-- made some really good sandwiches for lunch, and we already had plans in the works for pizza for dinner. She'd been seeing tantalizing ads on TV all week, so how could we resist?

So, when evening finally rolled around, we ordered some pizza from Pizza Hut and tried to watch a movie. The guy at Blockbuster really recommended I Think I Love My Wife as a hilarious comedy, but ten minutes in we decided to turn it off. It wasn't funny. Have you ever seen Bye Bye Love, with Paul Reiser? Yeah.

So we turned that off, and started Wild Hogs, and then heard back from B-- and E-- who we'd invited over (and who sounded like they were having a real hell of a day), and it turned out they could come over after all (yay!), and seconds after that phone call the XBox glitched (that's our story), and instead of resuming the movie where we were, we waited for B-- and E-- to get there and we started it over.

D-- saw it a long time before we did, and said it was mostly hilarious to middle-aged people. While we were watching it, about a third of the way in, B-- said, "So, this is basically City Slickers, no?" Basically, yes. It was good though. Easy fun. Easy laughs. We had a good time, and then we talked for a long time before they headed home. It was a fun night. I love it when those two can come over.

After that...well, I went to my office to play Civ, and T-- went to bed.

Saturday, August 18th
AB turned six months old. We didn't have a party or anything, but the fact got mentioned more than once this weekend, so I'll throw it in. A short paragraph doesn't really cost me anything.

Saturday morning I woke up je ne said quand, and pretty much immediately headed outside to mow. At that point, it was eight days since I'd mowed last, and such dry days that I was thinking I could probably skip it, but I had the whole day free so I might as well get it done. Ten minutes in, I felt a couple sprinkles and thought maybe I should quit. It didn't rain, though. It was brutally muggy, but it didn't rain. Not while I was mowing.

A little later, I got cleaned up and then when I came into the living room (10-ish), T-- suggested that we invite K-- and N-- over for lunch. That sounded fun, and we ended up eating with them around noon and socializing until two-ish, then they went home to take care of some stuff before coming back a little before five. I probably spent the whole afternoon on the computer, though I may have read some.

At some point in there it started raining, full-on storming, and I discovered it was a really good thing I'd mowed. I hear we got four inches of rain in just a few hours. No big deal, at least at the time, but it kept raining all evening and became a major storm sometime in the night.

The thing at five was one T-- has been planning for a little over a week. She invited all her girl friends to go out for the evening. I think only three were able to make it. N-- was one of them, and she dropped K-- off at my place to watch the second Cowboys preseason game while they were at the movie (they went to dinner, then shopped at the mall some, then went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix again). We had AB.

K-- brought some steaks with him, and the makings for Tattoo and Redbulls, so we had the stuffs for a party. We also had two hours until the game began, so I suggested watching the Chris Rock movie again in the hopes that it would turn out to be funny. It didn't. Bye Bye Love, seriously. It was brutal. It had a happy ending, eventually, but it was never anywhere close to a comedy.

Also, my nerves were worn a bit by AB, who skipped her 6:30 nap entirely, opting to spend that hour crying instead of sleeping, no matter what I did to calm her. She finally went down around 8:30, and that gave us a little under two hours to watch the game without her screaming.

Anyway, it was a good game (Cowboys are looking really good for this season -- I'm optimistic), and K-- and I had some time to talk, which was pretty cool. We also had an awful lot of salsa which went uneaten, because nobody came by with chips. But, then, that just means it's still available, and the invitation is an open one. I'm just saying, is all.

But, yeah, we played the last quarter at double-speed on the TiVo while the girls told us about their evening, and then K-- and N-- went home and, if I remember correctly, I went to my office to play Civ, and T-- went to bed.

Sunday, August 19th
I woke up this morning at 6:40 and 7:15 and 8:00 and 9:30, and since church is at 10:30 I finally got up around 9:45. We had some wild storms last night. I don't remember exactly when it was, but I remember lying in bed with the sheets up over my head, listening to the howling wind and just waiting for it to break out the windows. It never did, though, and by dawn the rain was mostly gone.

When we marched out to the car to head to church, I was just putting AB in her carseat in the back when T-- looked over the top of the Honda to our stupid old Saturn and said, "Oh, shoot!" The windows were cracked, to relieve a bit of the brutal heat we'd had for the least three weeks or so, and when we looked inside the car it had several inches of standing water in the floorboards. Yuck.

There was nothing for it at the time, though. We went to church, and K-- and N-- didn't make it (N-- had a headache), so we just went home for lunch which left us with a weirdly-early afternoon. We almost always go to lunch with them on Sundays, so we ate some chicken and veggies that T-- cooked up, and found ourselves home and fed more than an hour earlier than usual. It threw us both off our games.

I decided to spend the hour fixing a drip in our guest bathtub, and spent an hour and a half trying to get the cold water knob removed. I never managed it, either. I know how to remove a cold water knob from a bathtub faucet, this one just didn't work right. I researched it on the internet. I called my parents. I banged on it with a hammer and pried at it with a crowbar. It just wouldn't come off. So I gave up, put everything back together as it had been, turned the water back on (slow drip and all), and put all my stuff away, and chalked the whole thing up as two hours wasted.

Sometime in there, T-- took our shopvac out and completely cleaned out the water in the Saturn, and even vacuumed the Honda just for cleanliness. Jeez. It looks really nice now, though.

Around 6:00 we went over to K-- and N--'s for pizza and Psych, which was a ton of fun. While I was there, I missed a call from D-- on his way home from Wichita, so after we got home (and T-- and I each had a bowl of ice cream and we watched another episode of Psych together), I got back in touch with D-- and we went for a walk.

I keep trying to think of a non-gay way to say, "we went to D--'s apartment and had a bottle of wine and talked." Turns out, there's not one. But we did that (and nothing else), and it was a lot of fun. Then I came home, drank a cold glass of water, and wrote an ass-long blog post. And now, exhausted, I'm going to bed.

Watch Stranger than Fiction, if you haven't. Read The Three Musketeers and all of Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber if you haven't. You'll be glad you did. I'm going to bed.

(237.0)

Journal Entry

Today was unlike yesterday. I made it in to work on time, spent the day working on profitable things (albeit work-related), and then went home.

I stopped by B-- and E--'s on the way home to pick up AB, because T-- was working in Tulsa. I got to chat with them for a while, which is always fun (even if B--'s still reporting sad tidings from work). After that, I met D--, K-- and N-- at Taco Cabana for dinner. It was fun, in a social sort of way. AB got hold of a cup of queso and spilled it all over my jeans, but whatcha gonna do? She's just a little baby.

I did get a couple pictures uploaded to my MySpace at work. I also got several pages typed up for "Royal Holiday," although I didn't compose anything new. I think I've got it written up to the part where it gets interesting, though, so if I ever get started on it, I'll probably go right through to the end.

After dinner, I got some fajitas to go and took them home to T--, who was happier to see her baby than the delicious fajitas I brought. Fair enough, I guess. She ate while we watched some Jim, and then I took care of some business on the computer and read some Anansi Boys while waiting for D-- to show up. We went for a walk just now, and had some good talks. We'll have to see if anything comes of it.

Maybe I'm ready to start reading again. Harry Potter hit the spot, and now I've picked up one that's been on my recommended reading list for two years (and when the book is given to you as a gift, along with the recommendation, that's some pressure right there), and I'm really enjoying that one. So we'll see.

Back to that again. I don't really trust myself to follow through on things. It'd be fair to say I don't really decide what I'll do. I'm just like a character in one of my stories. I've developed an interesting personality (you know, from my point of view), and then I just put myself in situations and watch to see what happens....

That's a really admirable ability in a created character. Not so much in a human being. Alas.

Journal Entry

Woke up late this morning, and the whole day went that way. I've felt like I was running behind ever since I got up.

I spent most of the day at work wrestling with silly little thing. N-- got us some tickets to an OU game through her work, so that should be fun. Then I met T-- for lunch at Rib Crib.

When I got home, I played with AB for a while, which was a lot of fun. I also flipped through one of my old scribblebooks, and picked out a dozen old pencil drawings I did that I'd like to preserve. I'm going to try to figure out how to work our scanner, then see how much time I want to waste in Photoshop trying to make them look right. Given my proficiency with the graphic arts, that'll probably end up being a lot of time, and they still won't look right. Alas.

My favorite of all my drawings is, "My First Mob Hit." If I can just get a good scan of that one, I'll be satisfied. I have a couple others that some friends have complimented, but that's the only one that holds dear meaning, close to my heart. Well...that, and the one with the coring knife chopping off some dude's thumb....

Oh, and the Heroes of Might and Magic-style beholder preaching at Levy Church of Christ. That one makes me giggle.

Anyway, had some dinner, ran to Blockbuster (Wild Hogs and Chris Rock's I Think I Love My Wife, which I've heard is really good), and then spent some time watching According to Jim. I'm probably going to go read, now, and skip my walk. So what! I can skip my walk if I want to. Okay, fine, I'll walk! 'Night.