Brief updates
- 14:35 Just got verbally approved for the house loan. Stomach doing acrobatics. #
- 21:04 @jephjacques The correct response to that is to blow him a kiss and say “thank you” in your best “Queer Eye” Carson Kressley voice. #
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Lots going on
Langley is closed for the day, which surprises me. There’s a dusting of snow outside, but it sure isn’t anything I couldn’t drive through. Perhaps the bridge-tunnels are unsafe. Our e-mail notification system is a tease, though: “Check Sunday at 7pm.” 7pm Sunday: “Not sure. Check Monday at 5am.” 5am Monday: “We’re definitely closed until Monday at noon. Check at 10am for more.” 10am Monday: “Yeah, okay, we’re closed.”
The upshot is that I have a day off, and for once Starr’s not working today either. We didn’t see much of each other this weekend, so this’ll be nice. We might hit the Y together and get some exercising in. The cats are thrilled to have us home, which means they are all over us every second. I’m thinking of getting some kitty restraints. (Cue Steve Martin’s “Cat Handcuffs” routine.)
I made my hotel reservations for Technicon this weekend. Went nuts and got a suite, since a suite at the Microtel costs less than a twin bed other places. My plan right now is to drive up Friday after work, chill Friday night, do the con and some local socializing, and drive home Monday. I often miss everyone up there. You guys need to all come down to MarsCon or NekoCon or something now so we can hang out.
Mom tried to move back into the house at Kentland this weekend. With reservations, I support this – her plan sounds workable, and she’s going to have outside help. But we learned that a pipe was broken, necessitating shutting off the water, and the gas was also shut off for some reason. I have to get her and Whitney together to get that fixed, as there’s not much I can do about it from here.
And speaking of houses… Starr’s parents have made us an offer to buy this house from them. Without going into details, it’s a deal we would be complete fools to pass up. We’ve agreed to their offer, and are setting up the money now. Nothing’s been signed yet, but it looks like we are going to be homeowners.
I’m going to own a house. A four-bedroom, 2.5 bath house in a nice neighborhood, with a garage, a swimming pool, a fireplace… and this from a guy who was amazed he could afford a three-bedroom apartment. I’m still a little dazed at the prospect… this is awesome. Starr’s right now looking at mortgage rates from her USAA membership, we might even get a good rate. Whoa. *deep breaths* Please send good thoughts my way if you can spare them. This means a lot to me!
Very happy news
I have pictures of a Nebula Award nominee in cat-alien makeup and Starfleet combat gear.
Heh heh heh. Congratulations, time_shark!
Brief updates
- 07:49 @starstryder That’s right! you need Katamari Damacy instead: tinyurl.com/iPrince #
- 07:51 Wow. Absolutely exhausted yesterday, nearly wrecked on the way home. Think I’m feeling better this morning. #
- 13:33 @queenofpith If a Richmond Dave & Busters installs the VWE MechWarrior simulation pods, I am so there! #
- 14:56 Job perk: had lengthy hallway discussion with boss this morning about Dollhouse, Dr. Who, and BSG. Local PBS may be showing 4th Doctor eps! #
- 17:30 Just watched Blizzard’s Uldar preview video. Holy smoke! For the first time ever, I’m really sorry that I’ve never done endgame raiding. #
- 18:42 OMG, this History Channel program on the secrets of the art on the dollar bill is complete bunk. #
- 19:42 Microsoft will ban you for XBox Live for being out as gay. Not that my money matters, but they won’t get a gaming dime from me now. #
- 20:55 This History Channel program on Atlantis is also bunk, but at least I expected that going in. #
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Ishtaria
According to Tolkien legend, the most skilled craftsman ever to live created the great Silmaril jewels using the radiance of the Two Trees which once lit the world. Almost immediately, of course, mortal and immortal began fighting for possession of them. In the epic wars that followed, two were lost, and the immortals placed the third in the sky: out of reach of the greedy, and a lasting beacon of hope to the good-hearted.
Wanna see it tonight? Go outside before the crescent Moon has set, and you’ll see an unusually bright Venus near the Moon and between it and the horizon. That’s the last legendary Silmaril.
(It’s also a stifling, baked world enveloped in poisonous acid fog, with no signs of life other than the corroding remmnants of a few robot landing probes from Earth. But that’s an entirely different realm of cool and interesting.)
Brief updates
- 06:25 Since I didn’t manage to see a single new movie in 2008, the Oscars piqued my interest not at all. #
- 09:15 Sewing machine FAIL. Got nice book, but was too busy with other errands this weekend to sit down and play with machine. Maybe later this wk. #
- 19:14 @fuzzface00 I found out about the anti-air flak in WoW the hard way myself! Thank goodness for mage Blink and Invisibility. #
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Error! Faulty! Analyse!
Dammit, IMAP is deleting messages off the server… possibly just the ones I move on the client using a rule, but that’s a lot of my messages. I guess I need to go back to POP and just deal with marking the same message as read repeatedly.
Ah, well. Learning experience.
Brief updates
- 12:00 Is Londo’s line “pecked to death by cats” or “nibbled to death by cats”? There’s been some debate about this. #
- 13:05 Google isn’t sure, but Twitter and Facebook say “nibbled.” Kind of a shame, I think “pecked to death by cats” is funnier. #
- 13:32 Converting my elfie mail access from POP to IMAP, since these days I read my mail from different clients at different times. Thanks John! #
- 14:22 @SJGames Every time I speak up and say, “Well, I’ll admit that I really really like *this* Microsoft product,” they cancel it. #
- 14:57 Dear universe: thank you for turning up these items for which I’ve been searching all these months. Would still prefer the item I need NOW. #
- 17:35 @fuzzface00 You’re executing Plan L: “I no longer know what the L I’m doing.” #
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Culinary kitbashing
The pichitas are a smash hit. I used sausage, Starr had octopus and aged gouda with hers, and they are utterly delicious. For me, the light sauce, cheese, sausage, and chicken with faint garlic balanced perfectly! Starr ate of hers until she didn’t have a square inch of room.
It was tricky having everything ready and cooked properly, but I think I pulled it off. I’ll be making that again!
Working the technology
I’m really losing patience with Facebook apps that lie to me in order to get themselves installed in my profile. I may never install another unless a user I know messages me directly to tell me how awesome an app is.
I’m refurbishing an iMac 400 DV to give to Jesse Braxton. It’s just gathering dust, and is only worth about $100 now; all she wants is an e-mail, web browsing, and music playing machine, so this ought to fit the bill nicely. The good news is that it will happily run OS X 10.4 Tiger; the bad news is that I cannibalized the memory and HD some time ago for other work, and Best Buy doesn’t seem to sell the necessary bits for nine-year-old Macs. The smallest Ultra ATA drive available at Best Buy is 160 gigabytes, which is large enough to throw the poor iMac disk controller into fits. I’ve secured a gig of memory, but I’ll need to dig a bit for an HD smaller than 128 GB.
Despite my hopes, yesterday was a big chore day, and today is looking similar. I really want to make time to sit down at that sewing machine, though; this is potentially an extremely useful skill that I’ve been putting off for decades. Assuming I have the chops to do it, I wish to wait no longer.
Cleaned out my wallet last night, adding business card contact info to my computer and phone, throwing away receipts, ditching a gas card I’d used up, etc. Somehow, I have four filled-out Hot Topic frequent buyer cards in my wallet. How a 40-year-old guy ended up with those, I don’t know, but it looks like I’ll have to head there sometime in the next weeks and find a t-shirt or something to use them on!
