Wow, there really isn't anything to say this week. Let's just go over a few random things...
The basement people are starting work in the basement on Monday. I am pretty sure we told them we didn't want them around until Tuesday, and even at that, we're not going to be ready for them unless we rush around moving furniture this weekend. This is going to be a pain, considering the other events that are already planned, for instance...
Brigham and Trish are bringing Kiria over on Sunday. Anyone remember the Bentley's from Random Enterprises? Yeah, well, Berta works with Brigham (at the same company, not necessarily on a daily basis), and we normally see each other at the Christmas party, but we got their late or something this past year, and so we didn't get to make the usual suggestion that "we should get together sometime". Strangely, not mentioning getting together has worked out more in favor of getting together this year than it has in previous years.
So we're hoping that Kiria and Abby get along, and that we can come up with something interesting to do besides tour them around the disarrayed house, which they have never seen. Berta said something about tacos. This sounds like a good idea. Everyone likes tacos. Except vegetarians. Maybe we should enlist them to help move furniture. Then that would get done.
Saturday night, I have my weekly D&D game. Dave is going to run our regular characters through something trivial on the side. So I'll be playing Thomas the paladin. Yay. Bask in my joy. Not. For some reason, I'm just not feeling the fun in anything these days. Maybe I need some vitamins or a nice jog or something. That probably couldn't hurt.
Anyway, last week was Bob's week to run the Jen week, and we played the Rokugan. I'm not thrilled with Rokugan, but I guess it's what we've got. After all of the preaching of "we should all get together and make characters that get along", we all went and did our own things. Way to go.
Saturday, tomorrow, morning, Berta has some scrapbooking thing to attend. She has taken some pictures of Abby at school, and better drop them off at a photo place to print them before she has nothing to take to this party for use in making scrap books. If Berta wants this as an outlet for creativity, that's fine, but I'm not entusiastic for having albums of stuff around the house that nobody ever looks at. No, strike that. Only relatives that are never around and want to waste time looking at photos rather than being with us ever want to look at those photos.
Tonight is the outing for Adam's birthday. I must admit I just don't feel like going out. On the other hand, I would otherwise be at home moving furniture. Our dinner reservations are at a place that I don't know the location of (I made the reservation, so this is pretty strange), but the food seems reasonably priced on their web menu. Chinese. Dave said Adam has been there before, and I guess he likes it.
I think I've been eating too much at lunch since I haven't been particularly hungry for dinner all week. Gotta lay off the donuts. Seriously.
Abby's going to stay over Mom's tonight, which will be interesting. I suppose that there might be movie time suggested for this evening, which is fine, but this has several things going against it:
- It's out in King of Prussia, so the later we stay, the even later we get home, and who knows when the snow they called for today might actually arrive.
- Out dinner reservations are for 7, so any movie we see will probably start showing late.
- No movie worth seeing is currently being played. Maybe there's something I don't know about. Maybe next month.
I'm getting tired of looking at Field Trip at work. It's a nice project, but I have not peer review. It's kind of disturbing to work on something exclusively - Exclusively. I'm the only one writing it. I'm the only one consuming it. If the typical product lifecycle happens, the product will be completed, features will be offered by salespeople that existed on spec but not after design (as a result of cutting featuers to make deadline), and I'll be left to frantically code features in to meet the spectre of demand. Cough. Cough.
Other things on my mind at the moment:
- Spend more time with Abby. Hopefully the spring (which starts tomorrow, officially) actuall starts showing itself. This snow and cold stuff sucks.
- Abby and I need to get over our illnesses. I've had this cough all week, and she's had hers for longer, it seems. Warm weather (again) and getting outside would probably do us both much good.
- Reserving time with GCI. I fear that if I keep submitting Mom's requests, our first year of reservation fee will go down the drain with thirty denied requests. I've already cleared a trip to the Poconos this summer with Berta, in hopes of using my telescope. We can drive up, set up, and come home at will, and only use two star credits. I wonder if other people might like to go with us.
- Getting Field Trip done would be nice. I would like to have time to include some of the features that we had originally spec'ed, like the forum and gradebook. That would rock.
- Sacrificing virgins to keep our house from requiring any more contractors, or at least forcing them to yield to our will/schedule. Nuff said.
- Random text generators. You know, I've been stewing on this for a while, and I'm really intersted in trying to rewrite my BNF engine with some actual language guidelines. Something like rmutt, but with parameter procedures and objects with qualities. I'll have to write out the language spec before I begin this time.
- Telescopy is cool. I got my new eyepieces and lens in the mail from the Discovery Store. Using Berta's Discovery Passport bucks, I got the three of them for only $9 shipping. I got an 18mm, a 5mm, and a 2x Barlow. Now all I need is a compass/level, and a solar filter, and a new focusing mechanism... Sigh.
- Speaking of telescopes, I'm going to try to enroll in an Astronomy class at WCU this summer. There is a lab that takes place in the planetarium. That'll be sweet. The professor gets good ratings at RateMyProfessors, too, so that might be a good thing.
- Pepsi bottles look so much larger than Coke bottles, even though they both hold 20oz. Why is that?
- A device that would allow us to stream video around the house would be very cool. Why can't anyone create a Linux box that connects to systems via Samba, so that you don't need to run proprietary media server software? Can it be so hard to configure? And why can't I hook the DishPVR 721 to the network to pull the videos off of there?
- My next phone (in 2-3 years?) will have a camera, PalmOS 5+, and Bluetooth, assuming Palm lives that long. It will also probably not be a flip-phone, like the one I have now, just because that's what I predict will have the features, not that this is my preference.
- I'm not allocating enough of my time to school. I really want to do well, but I'm probably not going to do well in this managment class if I don't devote a little more time to it. Passing would be nice. Getting an "A" would be better. I'm not really worried about Philosophy because I enjoy that class. Weird, huh?
- My nation state, Abertica, is not doing well economically. I wish that the system would send more directly economic issues my way so that I might fix the income tax rate, which is currently 18%. It seems that every time I implement a decision on an issue, my taxes shoot up. How is that fair? It would be nice if the game explained how my decision caused te tax hike.
Oh, and one more thing...
There has been a new guest in our house over the past week. Berta noticed him when we were moving things around in the basement for the last time the basement guy showed up. Our guest skittered out of the Bilco doors into the back yard.
She set out some glue traps with the intent of getting the mouse stuck and either starving him to death or suffocating him in glue. A day went by with no effect, and Berta loaded each trap with a tasty graham cracker of death. When the mouse finally caught himself on one of the little pads of glue (the one I selected as most likely for him not to touch) trying to obscond with the cracker, he managed only to catch his back feet. So he was scraping the bottom of the trap around the basement floor for a little while.
Berta suggested that I do away with the mouse/trap, since I am the man and this is my duty. Very rarely am I tasked to do "man things" around the house in a maintenence capacity. Anyway, waiting for the mouse to suffocate on glue (which he didn't seem to into, either) or die of starvation didn't seem like the prudent thing to do with my time, so I knocked him on the head with a pipe wrench and wrapped his carcass in newspaper for deposit in the trash. A job well done!
All of this writing has failed to improve my mood, but has kept me busy for 10 minutes. Woo, yeah!
Have a great weekend, if you don't hear from me, although I may wish to rant after each passing second this weekend.
