Update

Well, it seems my luck in the Magic league has run out--I've been stuck at 3½ points for the last two weeks. Either I make a silly mistake in the last game of a match which makes me lose, or I just get a bad draw. It also doesn't help that I didn't play against a lot of people for most of the last couple weeks. But I'll do better this week--I hope.

I started working on a pair of scissors on the forge the Saturday after my last post. I was right about the hammer and gloves thing, plus the metal kept sliding out of the pliers I was using to hold it. But, with help from Gene and Andy (another Havenite), I got a good part of the way through the project. The unfinished scissors are even now sitting on my shelf in the Haven's back room.

I found last time that the weight of the hammer, plus the thickness of the handle, the vibrations from hitting the metal, and the extra bulk of the poorly-fit gloves made my hand cramp up extremely fast. I can't stop the vibrations, and may not be able to find a lighter hammer which will actually work, but I do have a plan to (hopefully) help with the other two problems. Before I do more work on the forge, I'm going to buy my own gloves (so that they'll fit), and a hammer. I will cut a portion of the handle off from around it, so that there's less to get my hand around when I'm swinging it.

I've missed my allergy shots the last couple times--last week, I simply forgot to take the exit onto 15-North before I passed it on my way home, and didn't feel like fighting through traffic to get back to the exit, much less to the allergist's office. Yesterday, I stayed home because of stomach issues, and had an appointment at my regular doctor's office at 4pm. I'll go next week though.

The mortgage loan approval process is slightly frustrating. We managed to get all of the information that the Wells Fargo people asked for together, and Anna faxed it to them. Only, it got faxed to a machine which was on the fritz, so they're missing pages. They figured out which pages it was, and Anna sent them along. Now, they're asking for paperwork that we're all pretty sure was already sent to them. I hope this process doesn't go on too much longer.

I can now officially say that I have seen every single episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender. The last "book" especially was totally awesome! The last (four-part) episode was mind boggling, and the perfect ending. I also bought the DVDs. I didn't know until I saw the listing on Amazon that Avatar had been nominated for an Emmy. It wasn't surprising though--the show rocks!

I wish . . .

. . . there was a bathroom at the Haven.

I went there last night to hang out, and stayed until closing time, playing Vampire: The Masquerade. That was fun, even though I was kind of clueless. The last time (which was also the first time) I'd played was back in high school, when Kelly E. and Chris M. invited me over to Kelly's house to join their game. We got through character creation and half of a session before my dad called and said it was time for me to go home. So I really didn't have much experience with the game last night.

One of the other players has been playing the game for years and years though, so she helped me some by making her character ask my character for help contacting the primogen.

I had "purchased" a snack with my Haven store credit around 7:30 or 8, because I was starting to get a bit woozy. By 8:30, I seriously had to pee. Earlier in the day, I had been talking to one of my co-workers who is also a member at the Haven, and he told me that there was no bathroom, to which I replied that I usually didn't have a problem with that.

It seems I jinxed myself. By closing time (10pm) I could barely hold it. I walked the three blocks back to my car as steadily yet quickly as I dared, drove home as quick as I could safely, then got inside, only to find that the toilet in the half-bath wasn't working properly (the flusher wasn't flushing--I'll have to see if I can fix that when I get home today). So I went up to my bathroom on the third floor.

After that was taken care of, I surfed the 'net for an hour or so, looking for blank character sheets to copy my character information on. I found the first page in a PDF, plus two different character generators for keeping track on a computer while playing. I also looked up the core rulebook online, and found new & used copies at Amazon for $7-10 plus shipping. I might get a copy later, and that will definitely help me be less clueless while playing.

Tonight is lab night for my astronomy class, so I probably will be home by 9pm at the latest--labs are easy.

Buy my books!

So, I went to Wonder Book and Video to sell the 206 books I wanted to get rid of. The buyer guy wanted to give me $10 for the lot! Grrr. Considering I had done my research to find out the lowest used book price for each title, this irked me.

I had gone to Amazon and looked at the used book listings for each title--for each one, I checked the lowest price (not including the ones selling for only $0.01) for the condition my book was in. I added all of those prices up, and got a little over $360, which was only about $51 more than my original estimate for all 206 books.

Since Wonder Book was only going to give me 1/36 of the money my books were worth, I decided to sell my books online at iOffer. So, if you want to see what books I'm selling (and maybe even buy some), just go to the top link at the right of my blog.

Amazon Kindle

One of my bosses bought an Amazon Kindle. I had never even heard of them until last week, and even then I didn't know what it was until Gabe (the guy I share my office with) was setting up the one my boss bought. Turns out, they're back-ordered until like, February right now.

I got to hold Willem's (my boss) Kindle for a little bit, check out the features and stuff. It's pretty nice, and the screen doesn't strain your eyes. But the cost! Oh, my goodness, the cost!

Just the reader itself is $400! Then, you have to pay about $10 for every book you put on the Kindle from the Kindle store. You'd think, if they were making you pay so much just for the technology, they'd at least let you pick out 20 (better 100) books from the Kindle store for free! Not to mention, regular e-books usually don't cost more than 1/5th of that!

Some people have figured out how to put other e-books and PDF files onto their Kindles, and you can e-mail text files to the Kindle too, but still.

I do like the fact that you can get magazine and newspaper subscriptions on the Kindle though--not that I actually subscribe to anything except the TVGuide. I don't subscribe, because that means I have to take time out of reading books and fanfic to read the magazine/newspaper/whatever. And some months/days/weeks, I just don't want to put the book down, or I just want to get through the fanfic, y'know? But if I had a Kindle, they'd all be on the same thing, and I could just switch between them if one couldn't hold my interest for long.

Overall, the Kindle is awesome, but I will have to wait until the price--both for the reader itself, and for the content--comes down to my price range.