It would be really neat if . . .

. . . there were an RPG for Pern, don't you think?

End thought.

On with the updates:

Kayla and I didn't actually get to see the new Batman movie the day after my last post, but we did see it eventually. It was awesome. Of course, with my little knowledge of the Batman universe, I was kind of spoiled--I just knew that Gordon couldn't really be dead, 'cause he had to become Commissioner first.

Heath Ledger was awesome as the Joker; if I didn't know it was him, I wouldn't have recognized him--his voice was completely different from usual, and the makeup was (necessarily) heavy, of course.

A few Sundays ago (I don't remember exactly how many), Anna found O'Malley (one of her orange tabby cats) on the staircase, struggling to breathe. She rushed him to the animal hospital, where they found that he had fluid in his lungs.

There were four things that could have caused that, and various solutions to those problems which could have been implemented. But each solution had its down-side, and none of them would have guaranteed that he wouldn't have fluid in his lungs later on, so he had to be put down. He was five years old.

Anna was devastated. We had a little funeral for him out back that same night, and Anna painted a cinder block brick with his name on it for a headstone.

A few days later, someone stole the power adapter for the camper. I came home from work that Wednesday (or maybe it was Thursday?) to find that there was no power going to my TV, my alarm clock, my VCR/DVD-R, or my computer. I tried resetting the breakers both in the house and in the camper, but nothing worked. So I looked at where the extension cord got plugged into the camper, and there was a piece missing, which allowed the extension cord to have the camper plugged into it. It still hasn't been found.

So, the day after that, Anna and Kayla cleaned out Anna's old room (Kayla had already moved out of it into Kimba's old room, since she moved into a house downtown), and I slept in the empty room on Anna's "nook" pillows for a night with a few "essentials." The day after that, Jason got his room cleaned, and moved into the empty room. That Saturday, I was able to move
all of my stuff into Jason's old room, and slept on Anna's pillows until last weekend, when I setup my old daybed.

After Anna gets married in February, I'm going to move all of my stuff (except the daybed and my books) into my old room (currently Anna's), and we're going to use the room I'm currently in as a guest room which will double as my library.

Or that's the plan, anyway.

A few days after I moved into the house, Tim (Anna's fiancé) got a new puppy. She's a shepherd mix, and he named her Brian, after the dog from Family Guy. She's so tiny, and cute--too bad she'll have to grow up and get all annoyingly big and everything.

Yesterday, Anna, Kayla and I went shopping for various things, including lingerie and new pillows for me and groceries for all three of us. We also picked up the dress I bought at RennFest a few years back, since we're going there tomorrow--both Anna and I have Labor Day off, and Kayla has agreed to come, as long as we don't make her wear any garb. I said that was okay, as long as she at least tried Anna's dresses on yesterday and looked in a mirror; she did, and then promptly took them off and got in her regular clothes again.

My Friday night D&D game is no more. Actually it was technically a "new to RPGs" game, so since at least two of us had gotten GM memberships at the Haven, we don't really need "instruction" anymore--not for playing, anyway. Instead, Gene started up a new game, based in the World of Darkness. He's doing a GMs-only, mostly one-on-one Changeling game.

Pretty much, the concept is, he'll work with each of us players individually on certain days of the week (my day's going to be Friday), and we'll have to post on the message boards within 48 hours about what our character did during the latest session. We'll also be able to have one-on-one sessions with the other players, I'm thinking as well. The world itself seems interesting, and I'm looking forward to playing it. I created my character two nights ago, but I forgot to give her a name.

My D&D 4.0 character went into the "Old Characters" section of my RPG player's binder. I've also got a GM binder for my Serenity game, as well as for a series I'm writing for the Buffy RPG.

Sooooo Tired

Saturday evening, I got to Mom & Dad's around five. Mom, Dad and Jason were in Illinois for the weekend (visiting Aunt Julie, Uncle David and Matthew) so it was just me, Kimba, Anna and Kayla. We bummed around for a while, watching this really long count-down on VH1 about 100 teen stars, only for Anna and Kimba to gripe when Molly Ringwald turned out to be number one.

Around 8 or 9, some of Kimba's friends (and Camille) started showing up. There were 9-10 people in the living room once they all got there. We watched Shooter on the projector and screen, and had a couple of frozen pizzas.

After the movie, we played Scene It! twice, with three people to a team (four on one team, once the last person showed up in the middle of the first game). My team didn't win either game. Oh well.

Everybody left around 2am, then the four of us girls got ready for bed. Anna and I watched Danny Phantom, then Anna put in an episode of Family Guy and fell asleep. I made it through the episode awake, then stopped the disc and turned off the TV thinking I was going to go to sleep too. That was around 3:45 or so.

I ended up tossing and turning, unable to get to sleep for a while. The last time I looked at the clock, it was 5am.

Yesterday, I woke up at around noon and had a bowl of cereal. Then Anna, Kayla and I watched the first episode of Angel season 5. Kimba kept calling Anna downstairs in the middle of it though, so Anna wanted to find a way to watch it downstairs on the projector despite the light of day. She ended up covering the windows with her comforter and blanket, then turning off or dimming most of the lights.

We didn't watch anymore Angel though. Kimba decided to stay downstairs too, since we were all down there. Her original plan was to go upstairs to her room while we were in Anna's room, but since we were going to be downstairs anyway, she stayed.

Kimba doesn't care for Angel or Buffy--anything Whedon-esque, really. So, we watched the movie that Kimba bought yesterday while getting ingredients for dinner: Nancy Drew. That was a cute movie.

After that movie, we made dinner and ate it. We had chicken, broccoli, cheese, scalloped potatoes, and fruit salad. It was extremely yummy . . . and extremely filling. I wanted more, but I would have exploded if I'd actually eaten more.

After dinner, we cleaned up the mess, and cleaned Oreo's (my brother's hamster) cage. Anna found a way to hook up Kayla's Play Station 2 to the projector (and the speakers) using Jason's stereo, and we played Sing Star until a little past midnight, when we got ready to go to sleep.

The rodent got put back into her nice, clean cage, and everybody went to their respective rooms (I went to Anna's) to sleep. Anna and I watched another Danny Phantom; it was one I'd already seen before at least twice . . . the one with the nerd in the locker who tries to take over Danny's life. Then she fell asleep during Family Guy again, and this time I feel asleep pretty soon after the episode was over. That was around 1:30, I think.

I woke up this morning, got dressed, had breakfast, and came to work.

Man, I hate Mondays.

Satellites and Museums and Concerts, Oh My!

Friday night, I stayed home, because my visiting teachers were coming that evening, and because I was expecting the DirecTV guy on Saturday. Sister W. gave me cookies with M&M's and chocolate chips in them--yum! On the way home from work, I had stopped at Blockbuster, because I wanted to see if they had any copies of the one movie made that was based on Northanger Abbey, but they didn't. So I looked at the pre-viewed movies instead, and bought Becoming Jane and Driving Lessons.

Saturday morning, at about 10, I got a call from the DirecTV guy. At first, he said that he wasn't going to be able to do anything because of the gusts of wind making it unsafe for him to climb on the roof with the ladder. Then, when I said we already had a dish set up, he said something about a smart box, and that he'd be there after he'd finished the four appointments he had in front of mine, and that he would call me back when he was on his way over.

The original appointment was for between 12 and 5 pm, so I figured I would hold off on taking a shower until 5, so as not to be caught in the shower when he called. I didn't get a call until almost exactly 5pm. He got there at about a quarter after, and then looked at the box which sends the cable to the rooms in the house.

Turns out, the sub-contractor who originally installed the dish didn't put down two cables like he was supposed to--only one. The one cable goes to the main hookup, and then the other one gets splitters on it to go to the other rooms with receivers.

But, since the wind was gusting at unpredictable moments that day, the DirecTV guy couldn't get up on the roof and add the second cable on Saturday. He said that the earliest he could reschedule would be for March 10th, but that the sub-contractor may have an earlier appointment open. Since it's the sub-contractor's fault, I won't have to pay for him to come out and do what he was supposed to do in the first place.

Around 6pm, the receptionist from the sub-contractor called (the DirecTV guy called the sub-contractor from his truck while he was parked outside the house), and set up an appointment for this coming Thursday (March 6th) between 4pm and 8pm. I figure, as long as he gets there after five, and before 7:30, I'll have no trouble getting to class on time. I want to be there myself, so that the guy can explain things coherently, and I won't get confused when I try to ask Jen and Amit what went on with it.

So, I have to go almost another full week until I can get regular TV in my room (as opposed to movies and serieses on DVD). Hopefully, there won't be any wind gusts on Thursday evening.

Anyway, after I got the call from the sub-contractor, I packed up to go to Mom & Dad's house for the weekend (or what was left of it, anyway).

I got to the house, and hung out with Anna for a while. We watched some TV, then got ready to sleep. I realized then that, in my hurry to pack and leave my house, I had not packed a single shirt! Sure, I had jeans, socks, and all of the other accoutrements for staying the night someplace, but I had no clean shirts with me. So I borrowed a shirt from Anna to sleep in, and took a shower. We watched a little more TV, then went to sleep after that.

Yesterday morning, Anna's alarm woke us up at 8:30, because Anna's art class was having a field trip, and she invited me as a guest. I borrowed another shirt while Anna showered.

We got to FCC around 9:45, and waited a while until the teachers, other students, and the bus came. We watched the first half of Driving Lessons on Anna's laptop on the way to the capital.

Once we were in D.C. (around 11am), we stopped at the National Gallery of Art and got off the bus. Anna and I looked around there for a few hours (had lunch in the underground concourse between the buildings), then sat outside on the main steps for about half an hour until the bus came back at 2.

The next stop was the Kennedy Center, where we saw the National Symphony Orchestra perform Peter and the Wolf. That was fun.

Once the concert was done, we went back to the school and took Anna's car back home. Both of us had headaches, and Anna suspects that it was because we were up on the highest tier of the concert hall--the view was great, but they don't call them the "nosebleed seats" for nothing.

A little while after we got home, dinner was ready, so we ate. Kayla got home a little later, while we were finishing Driving Lessons. So, we decided to watch a few cartoons (an episode of Danny Phantom, and all the rest of the episodes of Family Guy that were on Anna's TiVo) before it was Jason's bed time.

Next, we watched a couple episodes each of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: The Series. Between the second episode of Buffy and the second episode of Angel, Anna was kind of freaking out because her headache had been getting worse all evening, and she couldn't find her headache medicine. She can't use regular over-the-counter stuff, so she has a special prescription.

After about 10 minutes, she found it, and all was well, so we watched the second episode of Angel. It was the one with the zombie police men.

By that time, it was about 1am, so Anna, Kayla and I talked for about an hour and then went to sleep.