R. I. P. Oreo

Today, Oreo, my brother's panda hamster, died. She's had a tumor of some sort in her leg area for months, and there just hasn't been money available to take her to the vet and find out what it was. At first, they thought she'd just been stung by a wasp or something, but it didn't go away, and eventually got so big she couldn't even crawl through the tunnel off-shoots on her cage.

As I type this, Jason and the others have found a box to put her in, and they're working on getting her in there; they'll probably bury her out back next to O'Malley.

On a not-so-morbid note: Kayla's uncle Stephen (or Steven) has left the house to go back to her other uncle, Peter's, house until New Year's, when he and his mother (Kayla's maternal grandmother) will be going back home to Alabama.

Yesterday, I took Anna to Miyako for a late lunch/early dinner. It was yummy. Anna got the steak and shrimp combo, and I got the steak and chicken combo. We both also got fried rice. I love the soup and salad they serve before the hibachi chef comes out too--Anna gave me her mushrooms from the soup, but even just the broth is to die for.

In the next week or so, I'm going to take Kimba to Outback one evening, and Kayla to Ruby Tuesday.

What spurred this whole "Take each family member to a nice restaurant" thing? Mostly, I was craving a bloomin' onion, but I didn't want to take all of them to Outback, since I also wanted to go to places like Ruby Tuesday, Miyako and Brewer's Alley. So I decided that this month, I'm going to take Kimba, Anna and Kayla for individual meals, and then next month (or next month, going into the month after) I'll take Dad, Mom and Jason. I haven't decided yet whether to take Mom and Dad at the same time, or individually like everybody else though.

Anyway, after our lunch/dinner, Anna and I walked around the mall (we'd gone to the Miyako at FSK instead of Patrick Street, since Kayla, Jason and Stephen asked us to drop them off at the good theater on our way to the restaurant) and I got my shoes for her wedding. We also stopped by the calendar kiosk outside of Barnes & Noble, since I needed a 2009 calendar to keep track of things at work, and I decided to get a calendar for everyone else too. I bought one called "Solitudes" for work, which is basically scenery--pretty, but not distracting.

I got Anna a Crossword-a-Day tear-off desk calendar, and Jason got a Fold-a-Day paper airplane calendar. Kimba was given an Audrey Hepburn theme, Mom got Magic Eye, and Kayla got Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I also got two other calendars: M.C. Escher and Dragons. I gave Stephen a choice as to which one he wanted; he chose the Escher calendar, so I gave the dragons to Dad.

I read What Would MacGyver Do? yesterday--it was hilarious, ingenious, and a quick read. One of the people who contributed a story to it actually wrote the book I'm currently reading: The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible--as Literally as Possible.

In the story, he wrote about his first book, The Know-It-All, a memoir about reading the Encyclopedia Britannica from A-Z, and how he was petrified of being quizzed at signings. So, he tried to cram-study for weeks, but then realized that he could "MacGyver" a solution--if he didn't know the exact answer to a specific question, he'd give an answer that was related to the subject, but interesting enough so that the questioner didn't realize he hadn't answerd their original question. I've gotten through Month Two of his book, and it's fascinating so far--funny at times, serious and introspective in others.

When I first heard of the book, I thought I'd hate it, then Gene told me a bit about it, and it sounded at least fun. Now I'm reading it, and it's so much more than that--the guy really is at least trying to live a better life by following the Bible. He hasn't changed much yet, but he's already noticed some changes he's had that are more than the obvious physical ones. Like he's noticed that he (or rather, his biblical alter-ego "Jacob") is more careful about what he says, and is somewhat repulsed by certain things he wouldn't have thought twice about before.

He doesn't see "Jacob" as himself yet, but I think his two "personalities" might merge by the end of the year. Not sure yet if I'm going to read another month's worth tonight or not, but I'll definitely pick it up again tomorrow. I want to finish at least this book, if not this one and the Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Composition by 11:59:59 p.m. on New Year's Eve.

Ahhhhhh

Yesterday, I got my birthday present to myself--an hour-long full-body massage from the FMH Wellness Center in the FSK mall. Oh man, was that a great idea!

I'd've gotten it on my birthday (since I've taken off work that day), but the massage therapist I usually go to isn't working that day. She's all booked up for the Saturday after, and isn't working the Saturday before either, so I went yesterday instead. I should've done it months ago--the tension headaches were coming more frequently, and it sucked. Today, there's a little tension, but not so much that I feel a headache anywhere near coming on. I feel sooooo much better.

I need to go to my storage unit today and search for my bundle of index cards. I've looked through all of the bins in the camper here, but I can't find them, so I think I packed them with the stuff I don't need from day to day. Maybe I'll grab MacGyver season one while I'm there, so that Jason can watch the whole thing from the beginning--he's been watching season two, since that was the season I was on when I moved--I'd already packed up season one.

The day of my birthday, I'm going to wake up late (I'm thinking 9 or 9:30 will be good, 10 or so, if I can stay comfortably asleep that long), then go to the Haven until about 4-ish before I come home and have dinner with my family. Which reminds me, I have to choose my birthday dinner food!

The group of people playing in my Serenity game has decided that we'll be playing the day before my birthday, instead of the day after, since one of them (the guy playing the captain of the ship) won't be there on the 24th. I'm hoping Heather can come with me that evening and see the coolness that is the Haven. Or at least that she can come with me on one of the few evenings she's here before that, since she'll be leaving the day of my birthday and might be too tired the night before to come hang out. Either way, it'll be good to see Heather again. (Hi, chica!)

Anyway, I'm going to read some more before I head over to the storage facility for those index cards (the gate to access the units is open until 10pm, 7 days a week)--I need them to prepare for the Serenity game, since I'm so disorganized and didn't even know how much until I ran the first session (the very first session of the very first RPG I'd ever run, and I hadn't even played this particular system before either) and had to stop frequently just to check rules or find my place in the story line again.

I got a tip from Brian (the guy playing the captain) about using index cards for NPC stuff, and I might also use index cards to take notes on the storyline itself, instead of just reading straight from the story, since I accidentally printed four PDF pages per each 8-1/2 x 11-inch sheet of paper, and the print is tiny. I can read it, but it takes a minute to find where I am again. I don't want to waste more ink and paper though, so I'm not going to re-print it. Index card notes should work just as well.

It's a good thing my Serenity GM screen came in the mail this weekend, or else I'd have to look for rules such as weapon damage and armor stuff during game play again. And since my rulebook is a first-printing, it doesn't have an index, so I pretty much have to remember which chapter and/or section the rule is in, or be screwed (in which case, I just make up a new rule based on my somewhat spotty memory of the actual rule, which is bad).

Minor Tribulations and Old Teachers

Not much has happened since my last entry. I've got a crick in my neck that prevents me from turning my head all the way to the left when I should be able to. I first noticed it yesterday, and I thought I'd be able to sleep it away, but that didn't quite work.

I'm just too tense--I want to go to the FMH Wellness Center in the FSK mall (I haven't been since November), but I can't afford it right now. Maybe I'll put that on my birthday list for this year--as many hour-long massages as people will give me.

I e-mailed my old AP Literature & Composition teacher from high school today. This one thing I learned in that class kept bugging me, because I'd forgotten part of it, but I'd still want to know the part I'd forgotten every once in a while, and whenever I tried to remember, I could only remember that one little bit. So, I decided to go to the source, and asked Mr. P. what the answer was.

He was pretty ecstatic in his reply, that I'd even remembered taking the class, much less anything I learned from it.

I did a little reading out on the deck this evening. I could only concentrate on the book long enough to get through the chapter of Goblet of Fire where Harry finally hears the clue from the egg, gets stuck in the trick stair, and lends the fake Moody the Marauder's Map. When I was about halfway through the chapter, my neighbors came out to have dinner on the back deck, and they were pretty loud, so I couldn't keep my mind on the book after that.

Now, I'm doing my laundry and trying to find something else to occupy my mind besides dubbing movies (minus commercials) from DVD to VHS and back. I don't think I'd be able to do all that running up and down the stairs from my room to the laundry today--I'm still sore from doing it last week!