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Tuesday, October 23rd
Tuesday night was the next-to-last class in our wedding seminar. D– wasn’t available to babysit AB, so we had more work than usual as we got her ready to take with us, but we were still only a few minutes late to class (and not the last ones to arrive). Class went pretty well, and afterward we talked K– and N– into coming home with us to watch Heroes. That was fun. K– also checked on my progress on Portal, which I finished later that night. Very fun game.

Wednesday, October 24th
Last night, D– came over for dinner, and then K– and N– showed up to carpool with us over to B– and E–‘s. The guys went over there to hang out, and the girls went over there to see the baby. It worked out for everybody.

We had a pretty good time, talking and catching up (and me drinking all of B–‘s OJ and vodka), and it was nearly 9:00 by the time we got home. At that point, T– did some painting and I read up on CGI and Python web tools while we watched a couple old episodes of Jim. Then it was bed time.

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Wednesday, October 17th
Last Wednesday I got sick.

Well, on my drive home from work, I got a call from K– asking if I could help him try something out on D–‘s 360 (which was temporarily sheltering at my house) when I got home. I did, and the long and the short of it is that he and I spent all evening playing Halo 3 over the network. That was a lot of fun.

Meanwhile, the minute I walked in the door T– asked if she could just order pizza for dinner, and I met that suggestion with enthusiastic agreement, but as the night wore on she kept second-guessing herself and thinking something else might be tastier than pizza. I never disagreed, and in the end she so-kindly offered to go pick up some Braums for us both, and left me home with a sleeping AB, which also let me keep killing alien scum with K–.

She brought me a burger deal and a medium chocolate malt, and it was all (of course) delicious. She stole some of my fries, but by the time I was done I didn’t much mind because I could tell I’d had way too much malt, anyway. I felt over full, and kinda queasy, and that didn’t go away as T– and I watched Heroes (or something of the sort). I stretched out on the floor, and as soon as the show was over, I went to bed.

Thursday, October 18th
That’s weird, see, because it was relatively early and I didn’t have to be up on time Thursday, because I had a doctor’s appointment. Still, I felt sick, so I went to bed early assuming it would pass and I’d feel fine by the time I woke up. Somehow, though, I didn’t. I woke up feeling worse than I had the night before. I was queasy, and my stomach hurt.

I got dressed around 8:30, and headed up to my doctor’s office at 9:30. The appointment was just a follow-up to my annual exam that I got a month ago. He wanted to discuss my labs (fantastic), and see how the blood pressure medication was going (really good). It was definitely a positive review, but while I was there I mentioned the nausea and he noticed (and commented) that I was feverish, so he went ahead and prescribed a nausea medication for me, along with my BP refills.

The day just got worse from there. I spent the next eight hours in bed or in the bathroom. Around 6:30 I finally felt up to going out in the living room to lie on the couch for a couple hours, and I watched some of our Thursday night sitcoms with T–, then went back to bed by 9:30.

Friday, October 19th
Friday, I was back at work. I still felt a little off, but nothing like Thursday had been. I made it through the day at work, then went home to watch some TV with T–. I also did some of my homework for the week, and I worked on some music stuff on my computer while T– was pushing AB in the backyard. Just a general sort of busy afternoon/evening, while we waited for T–‘s parents to show up.

D– and K– and N– went out to Kang’s for sushi and karaoke for the night. They wanted me to come along. I kinda wish I could have, because I like spending time with all three of those people, but I don’t like doing either of those other two things, so it wasn’t too bad. We talked with T–‘s parents for a couple hours, then everyone went to bed.

Oh! I also got a new game running sometime in there, and started playing Portal. It’s awesome. I highly recommend it.

Saturday, October 20th
Saturday was supposed to be a Fall Festival at the park across the street from our house, and T– had big plans for it, but when we finally got everyone ready to go and drove over there, we saw the sign indicating that the Festival was, in fact, next weekend. No good. So we went garage saling instead. We ended up splitting up, and John and I went down to the south end of town to check out a hobby shop while T– and her mom went to the mall to buy some shoes.

Just as we got to the hobby shop, I got a call from Dad about his writing project. He’d hit his first big speedbump, and he was worrying about the implications of it. Luckily, the only reason he’s hitting it now (instead of this time next month) is because I’d predicted that sort of thing could happen, and I set him an assignment to help him track it down now. That worked out even better than I expected.

Anyway, we talked for over half an hour, about writing and the writing process and what to expect. I loved that. I’m really excited about next month, and all the opportunities it implies, for connecting with Dad and Heather, on things we haven’t really had in common in the past.

More than that, I’m excited about Dad and Heather and Gwyn all finally getting their novels finished. That is going to be awesome.

After the call, though, we headed back to the house to pick up D–, and took him with us over to K– and N–‘s to watch the OU game. It was a tense one, but we pulled it off. I don’t need that level of drama, though. Ugh.

After that, we came back home and had enchiladas for supper, and then watched Evan Almighty. Frankly, better than I thought it would be. I think I said the same thing about Bruce Almighty, now that I think about it. Same reaction, really.

Sunday, October 21st
On Sunday, after church we went to Texas Roadhouse, because T–‘s parents wanted to take me out for a birthday lunch. It was delicious, nevermind them making me get up on a saddle on a sawhorse so they could shout “Yeehaw” by way of “Happy Birthday.” Forget about that. It was nothing. The steak…the steak was amazing.

Then I went over to K– and N–‘s a little late in the afternoon (after seeing off T–‘s parents), to watch the Cowboys game. Not quite as bad as the OU game, but not a lot better, either. It was fun getting to see Adrian Peterson on the field, but when we got a real lead on the Vikings they had to pull him (for reasons made clear in an article I read last week), and then we just cleaned up. I’m not a fan of the trailing-for-the-whole-first-half strategy, even if we are usually pretty good about winning-out-in-the-fourth.

Anyway, we won, and T– came over and K– bought us some always-excellent barbecue from Steve’s Rib, and you just can’t beat an evening like that. T– and I went home and talked about doing our homework, and watched some TV instead.

Monday, October 22nd
Yesterday was back to work, and my big deal for the day was coming up with a plan to restart the Remnant project as a web game. B– made the mistake of asking me about that project, and I talked at him for like two hours. But, yeah, if you’re interested feel free to ask. For now, suffice it to say that you can expect me to spend a lot of time in the near future complaining about having too many projects to work on. The Shepherd and Oberon’s Dreams were already going to make that happen, but adding in a Sims version of an MMO that’s web-playable isn’t going to help the situation any.

I got home from work, checked the mail, sat down on the couch, and then B– called and asked if we could come over. T– was jumping up and down, she was so excited about the opportunity. So we went over to their place last night (they just got rid of the in-laws yesterday afternoon), and spent some time with the new parents giving our advice and (as aforementioned) regaling half of them on the nuances of a web interface for a highly-automated role-playing game.

We also had pizza, and ostensibly watched MNF, although we really only saw the kickoff. We had a great time, though. It was nice to get the invite, and great to see them.

Afterward, we came home and talked about doing our homework, but watched some TV instead.

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Meanwhile, our heroes….

Ugh. I thought I was two or three days late on posting. Maybe four. But no. It’s worse than that.

I have a sore ankle tonight. That’s why I’m not walking right now. Not sure how it happened, but I noticed it walking out to my car after work today.

Work? Work has been awful this week. I’m in all-day meetings all week. Monday I had free (no meetings, that is — I still had to work a nine-hour day), and Friday I have free free. It’s my RDO. It comes on the Friday before a Monday holiday, too, so I’m looking at a four-day weekend (Kris’s dinnertime request notwithstanding).

Anyway. Last weekend was a lot of fun. I’m trying to remember back that far. I don’t really know what happened last week. I finished reading Calvin and Hobbes, I know that for a fact. And then…I dunno, I had pretty short evenings. I don’t remember if I was feeling tired, or if I was busy. Oh! I did play some WoW with Mom and Dad. Most of Tuesday night and most of Thursday, too.

Then Friday night I’d set aside to go help B– drown his sorrows in some of his expensive whiskey, but he ended up taking a nap or something, so I watched some TV with T– and then went over to D–‘s to check out some cool new video game he’d gotten.

Then Saturday I helped T– with some chores in the morning, then went over to K– and N–‘s for the afternoon while T– took AB to one of her Saturday crops. I introduced K– to my favorite new game, Overlord, and watched him play for five hours or so. It’s that sort of a game. It’s fun and funny. Apparently at some point it gets challenging, but I’m not really there yet. It’s quite unique, though, and I enjoy that.

Then at 6:00 we headed to B– and E–‘s for their long-awaited housewarming party! It was worth the wait, too. I may have mentioned before, but they have done a TON of work on their house since they got it. N– mentioned that she was jealous of it. I can’t blame her. They’ve made a really cool home.

E– decided to pick up some meat for the guys to grill (we made it a team effort, too, all four of us out on the patio giving B– instructions). So we had hamburgers and hotdogs and chicken and all manner of grilled vegetables. There were also two cheesecakes courtesy N–, and chardonnay champagne to boot. We all had a really good time, got thoroughly smashed, and discussed very private matters in a public sort of way, into the wee hours of the morning.

Sunday, somehow, I made it to church. Got three pages of “Royal Holiday” written during the sermon, then picked up D– for some lunch at Schlotzky’s. He’d left his car at B–‘s place (N– drove us all home), so he needed a ride to pick it up. We took him to lunch, then came back to the house to pack up a few baby things that we’re loaning to B– and E–, and then we went over there (and, yeah, woke B– up for our short visit). I introduced HIM to Overlord, too, and dropped off the stuff, and we chatted for a bit before he chased us out of his house so he could get back to sleep.

That evening, we met K– and N– for dinner at Casablanca American Grill, a new-ish restaurant here in town, and had some delicious dinner. I’d been meaning to take T– on a date, and she picked the place. I had my filet mignon for the year, and it was well worth it. Yumm.

Afterward, we went to their place to watch some Psych, and then finally got home 9-ish. I don’t remember if I walked or not. For most of the last week, I didn’t.

Monday, I spent most of the day honing my programming skills. Specifically, I wrote a script to cheat at a really cheesy, free, multiplayer web-based flash game that I’d encountered while at work on the previous Friday. Over the weekend, K– and I were discussing that “we” had figured out how to control HTML objects from within a Python script, and I was forced to point out that it was all him.

So I took some of his sample code on Monday, read through it and modified it until I understood what was going on, and used this cheesy little online game as a project to learn through. It’s been a blazing success, too. I’m tearing up. I’m more excited about the skills I picked up, though. Web-manipulation through Python is terribly useful. If you can’t immediately guess why, you’ll probably just have to trust me on that.

Monday night, T– didn’t feel like cooking and I didn’t feel like eating leftovers. I suggested P. F. Chang’s. She went out and picked up a cheap but amazingly good pizza from Mazzio’s for dinner. It was good. Sometime later, D– and I went for a walk together.

Tuesday, yesterday, was my first all-day meeting. It was just awful. Basically, it has nothing to do with me, so I have to just sit in the meeting all day, nine hours straight (with a thirty-minute lunch break in the middle), and listen to engineers argue about things that aren’t going to change. About a year from now I’ll be responsible for maintaining the documentation that will be generated after this meeting is over, but I can tell you for a fact that almost nothing discussed in these meetings will have any impact on the product I receive. Ugh.

So, yeah, I didn’t enjoy yesterday at work, or today, and I won’t enjoy tomorrow. But I get Friday off. So that’s good.

Yesterday I came home in a bad mood, and T– asked me why, and I told her all about my meeting and then I felt a little better. Then I played with AB for a while, and she giggled for me (finally), and then I felt a little better. Then D– came over and we finally had a leftovers night, finishing off some of the food in our fridge (which was way better than “leftovers night” makes it sound). D– had hurt his knee somehow, so he skipped out on our walk, so I went to the office to pay our bills and play Overlord instead of going by myself.

Then today, well, same as yesterday at work, but about halfway through the day I decided what I wanted to do for dinner. We often get together with K– and N– (and usually D–, too) for Wednesday night dinners, because K– and N– go to the church right next to our house, so it’s convenient. But, we have to find somewhere pretty quick and pretty close, because the earliest they can get over to this part of town is 5:45, and church is at 7:00. We’ve generally gone somewhere Mexican.

But, as I may have said more than once, I’ve been craving Changs for a week, so when I got out of meetings at 4:40 today I called everyone involved (including B– and E–, but B–‘s in Dallas for some reason, so couldn’t make it), and told them instead of going to some Mexican place, they should head to my house. Then I went and picked up a bunch of Changs and brought it back to the house for everybody. The timing was almost perfect, and the food was SO good. Then I prevailed upon all to hang out at my place and watch a movie (Blades of Glory), which turned out to be hugely fun. We laughed and had a good time.

So…yeah, today has been a really good day. Really, all week I’ve managed to have good enough evenings to make up for just awful days. Tomorrow’s looking encouraging, too, because there’s a Cowboys/Vikings preseason game, and then no work to follow. If I can just make it through the day, I’ll be in really good shape.

Anyway, sorry for the long silence. I hope everyone’s doing well. I’m off to kill a few unicorns, and then I’m heading to bed.