“Am I Being Mocked Somehow?”
Willow is not sure about this whole “cat video game” thing; no sir, no sir. (I beat the chase scene this time, since I had a clear head, then I saved because I didn’t want to keep going until Maya got home.)
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!
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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Training, sir!
Bad news: we all have to take Office 2007 and MS Vista training; it’s not optional, even for Mac me. Good news: The company will reimburse tuition for any Microsoft certifications to which this training leads. Methinks I’d be a complete fool not to take advantage of this – extra certifications can’t hurt, right?
At the moment, Starr and I share the house with four cats, two of ours and two from her family that are on extended ‘boarding’ with us. We must put in a fair amount of effort to keep up with demands for food and clean litter! As a result, though, I woke up this morning with one cat sleeping on my lap, another nestled tight against my left hip, and a third tucked under my right armpit. It seems I make an excellent cat pillow.
Tonight, Starr works late, and my chore list includes laundry, cooking, and cleaning; our Shadowrun group meets again Monday, and I don’t intend to spend the weekend picking up. I need to chill, and take care of some happier business.
Bowling for Dilithium
I don’t even know who won the Super Bowl. As the “Mythbusters” marathon unreeled in the background, I spent the day doing laundry and dishes, finding our digital camera which has been lost for three months, and making a little box for the new kitten’s food bowl. The box has an opening through which only she should be able to fit, therefore keeping the other cats from stealing her kitten food. Older cats seem to love kitten food.
Anyway, the Internet’s allowed me to catch up on some of the Super Bowl movie trailers. J.J. Abrams has done me a favor, I think; it’s finally gotten through my head that this is not the Star Trek I grew up on, and that I need to stop worrying and just go along for the ride, or not. Right now, I’m still on the side of giving it a shot – if nothing else, it’s audacious, and the franchise needs “audacious” badly. Besides, I’m a bit impressed with their method of crowbarring this story into 40 years of canon whether it ought to fit or not.
Plus, Enterprise appears to have a LOT of firepower these days. In that one half-second clip, she seems to be absolutely dumping phasers and photorps on whatever’s upset her. Battletech players, remember the “alpha strike”? “Screw the heat, screw the ammo, fire everything!!!”
Having said that: the Ninth Doctor as the arms-dealing mastermind behind Cobra is awesome, but I already miss his mask. And the Baroness’ bodysuit. Also, Land of the Lost didn’t look too bad, once we take out the bits with 20-century junk lying around. And the bits with Will Ferrell. Oh, wait…
Endlessly Mining for Fish
This morning Chesapeake got its first real frost of the season. Combine that with a very light fog, and the drive to work was just generally washed out a bit. Just a little bit dim and faint, as though the world was fading in around me and had gotten stuck at 98% complete.
On the other hand, at least I got to make the entire drive with the sun up. This has nothing to do yet with the longer days, but with the fact that the new kitten fall asleep on my chest this morning as I read the night’s email. I can’t blame it on the kitten – she weighs substantially less than a pound – but she was certainly a contributing factor.
Did you know you can program your computer to play World of Warcraft for you while you’re not there? Pretty pointless of course, and Blizzard and the rest of we players would like it to stop because it messes up questing and the economy, but it can be done. I decry the practice – decry, decry – but the one place I’d consider it is the Fishing hobby.
You can level up your character’s Cooking skill by standing in front of a stove for a few minutes with all those critter parts you’ve been collecting while you killed everything. You can do the same for your First Aid skill by spending five minutes making bandages from all the cloth the bad guys dropped. But leveling up Fishing takes hours and hours and hours and hours of staring at the little float on your fishing line. The higher Fishing level you reach, the larger number of hours you’ll be spending for the next 25-point gain.
WoW fishing is fairly useful in the game, and I wish I had a higher level in it, but this is just too much realism for me.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I will repeat that using the autoplay programs will get a player banned from the game, and myself I agree with Blizzard’s reasoning on the matter. On top of all that, it’s also lame. You don’t want to be lame, do you?
