mood: 
sleepy
music: baby monitor
Once again, I've got 2 weeks of stuff to discuss in a single entry. You
know what would be a better idea? Posting daily! Seriously, it would be
great! Each evening, I could write about what happened on that very day while it was still fresh in my memory! Better yet, since not all that
much happens to me on any given day, I would have plenty of time to
ramble on and on about it in a humorous fashion! Well, I'm not sure
whether I could do the humorous bit, but I am pretty confident that I
could handle rambling.
Before that, however, here's a Reader's Digest Condensed Version of the last 2 weeks.
Wednesday, November 14: Normally this would be Funshop night. Actually, it was Funshop night. However, Lando was sick with a cold, so it was Funshop night without us, and without us, does it really count? I suspect the
Funshop staff just canceled the evening when they realized that we
weren't there.
Thursday, November 15: Nothing happened on
this day. It might as well have not existed. Now that I look at my
calendar, I see that there's a blank hole where that date should be. I
apparently was abducted by aliens and had unspeakable yet completely
forgettable things done to me on that day, because I remember nothing
about it. Odd.
Wait! I just remembered what we did! First, we
worked on cleaning up the house in preparation for a visit by Dad &
Pat. Then, since we had the floor relatively cleared of cars, pillows,
swords, games, stuffed animals, bowling pins, more cars, trains, more
stuffed animals, magazines, newspapers, unidentifiable snacks, and so
forth, I suggested that we take that opportunity to put up the
Christmas tree. Not decorate it; just put it up, to claim the space. So
we did that, violating our sacred vows never to put up Christmas stuff
before Thanksgiving. Oh, the shame!
Friday, November 16: Our cat Marta went to the vet again for her weekly CBC blood test. She had her second chemo treatment for liver cancer on a week earlier, so they wanted to check her blood. As expected, the chemo treatment had
caused her white blood cell count to drop, leaving her susceptible to
infection, so they gave Dawn some antibiotics. Well, they didn't give Dawn the antibiotics; they gave Dawn the antibiotics. To give to the cat! Understand? Well then you figure out how to phrase that sentence if you're so smart!
Saturday, November 17: Dad & Pat arrived from Texas to visit for a bit. Every year Pat goes home to Murphysboro to do the Thanksgiving thing with her kids, so the weekend before they came up to visit us. The good part was that we
got to visit with Dad & Pat, who we don't get to see very often,
given that San Benito, Texas is over 1300 miles away. The bad part was
that this was the same weekend as Crystal Ball, so Dawn & I had to
miss that.
"Hey, Wally! What is Crystal Ball?" Glad you asked! Crystal Ball is an annual event held by the Barony of Shattered Crystal. ("Hey, Wally! What is the Barony of Shattered Crystal?" It's the Belleville, Illinois branch of the SCA, the Society for Creative Anachronism. "Hey, Wally! What is the Society for Creative Whatchamacallit?" It's an international group of people that recreate the Middle Ages, sort of like Renaissance festivals do, but with everyone participating. Are you
done asking questions yet? "Yeah, I think so." Good. Now, where was I?)
Crystal Ball features an entire day of dance classes, with something like 10
different classrooms being used concurrently, so that you have a wide
selection of dances to learn. After spending the day learning dances,
there is a feast in the evening, followed by the actual ball itself,
which runs way, way, way past midnight, typically ending sometime around 3 in the morning.
If you enjoy Medieval dancing (which Dawn & I do), then I've not heard
of a better event, certainly not within easy driving distance.
Of course, with a nearly-3-year-old, things get a bit more complicated. If
we had gone, we probably would have had to come up with some sort of
babysitting arrangement, either leaving him with someone here, or going
with someone who could take turns keeping him entertained. By next
year, when he's a nearly-4-year-old, we might be able to just tell him,
"Stay here, play quietly, and don't chop off anything that can't be
easily reattached." We'll see.
Also, there would normally be a meetup of the Springfield Area Freethinkers on that day, but (1) they were going to Chicago's Field Museum to see the Charles Darwin exhibit; and (2) we weren't. Why does everything seem to happen at the same time?
Sunday, November 18: When Dad & Pat show up in mid-November, we always drag them to the Festival of Trees, a fund-raiser for the Memorial Medical Center Foundation. ("Hey, Wally! What's the Memorial Medical Center Foundation?" I've no
idea. All I know is they charge us $4 to look at their Christmas trees.
Presumably they're doing something useful, or at least legal, with the
money.) I'm still posting photos from the event, but here's one of
Lando with Little Cindy Lou Who:
And here's Dad & Pat checking out the gingerbread houses:
Monday, November 19: Another alien abduction. My mind is a blank.
Tuesday, November 20: My original plan for this day was to attend the monthly Liberty Brew & View, where we would be watching Harlan County USA.
It's a documentary about a coal miners' strike in Kentucky in 1973.
Will Reynolds said it was his favorite documentary, but for some
mysterious reason I just wasn't that interested.
Okay, I just remembered part of the reason for my relative lack of interest. I also remembered what I was doing Monday evening.
I decided to play a video game.
More specifically, I hadn't played any sort of D&D-style computer
role-playing game for quite a few years, so I decided to pull one out
and play for a bit.
First, I dug out the disks for Baldur's Gate II
and installed it. Copyright date: 2000. I can safely say that my
computer far surpassed all of the recommended specs for the game.
Actually, the game hadn't heard of a CPU faster than 600MHz and didn't
trust a screen resolution greater than 800x600. Support for 1024x768
was considered experimental, and support for 1680x1050 was unheard of.
After playing Baldur's Gate II for a little bit, I decided to abandon that and instead play Neverwinter Nights.
Copyright date: 2002. Again, I can safely say that my computer far
surpasses all of the recommended specs for that game. However, it was a
very significant advance over
Baldur's Gate II, at least in terms of the graphics. It even supported
1680x1050 screen resolution! So I buried myself deep into Neverwinter
for a bit (instead of posting something on my blog, I might add).
Now I'm curious as to what the state of the art is in D&D-style
computer role-playing games these days. I might even go buy a game that
strains the ability of my computer to run it. (Say, copyright date
2006.) However, I think I still have quite a few hours of enjoyment
left in Neverwinter Nights before I think about spending more money.
Besides, given how long I go between gaming sessions, it might be years before I finish the game!
Wednesday, November 21: Normally, this would be Funshop night. However, because the next day was Thanksgiving, there was no Funshop scheduled. Or perhaps they just didn't want to face the disappointment of us not showing up again. When we go for a week or two without attending Funshop, then when we finally
make it, Lando stays very
focused on getting in as much playtime as possible! Tomorrow is Funshop
night again, so this will be the first time he's been back in 3 weeks.
I expect we'll be scrambling all over that room to keep up with him!
Thursday, November 22:
Happy Thanksgiving! Naturally, I had the day off. We had made plans to
have Thanksgiving dinner with GM & Rosie on Saturday, so we didn't
do anything special on Thanksgiving itself. However, partly because of
Lando's recent interest in football and partly because watching
football is a traditional Thanksgiving day activity, Dawn suggested
that we do so. Of course, by the time we remembered this, it was
Thursday evening, so we almost missed it! Anyway, I turned on the TV to
watch a football game -- just 2 weeks after having watched the Colts
play the Chargers in the first football game I had watched in years --
and found myself watching the Colts play the Falcons.
Have you
ever had the experience of watching a single episode of some TV show,
and then years later turning on the TV and finding yourself watching
that exact same episode again? That's sort of what this felt like. And
like before, Lando stayed interested for about one quarter -- throwing
himself to the ground on every play. After that, he was ready to do
something else, but I had to watch the other three quarters to find out
who won!
Friday, November 23:
Being a lazy, good for nothing state government employee, I had the
Friday after Thanksgiving off. (I read that New Jersey's governor
decided to end the practice of making the day after Thanksgiving a
state holiday. Since Thanksgiving, for some strange reason, always
falls on a Thursday, nobody
wants to go to work on the Friday after. Even those who do go to work
won't feel much motivation to get anything accomplished. You can argue
that they shouldn't feel that way, but you'd be arguing against human
nature.)
Marta went to the vet for another CBC.
That evening we went to the Festival of Trees again, this time with Eric,
Patty, Sarah, and Rose. Our primary reason for going a second time was
to watch the St. Andrew's Society of Central Illinois
perform. Bagpipes, drums, Celtic dancers -- what's not to like?
Actually, although Lando loves all of those things, he was a bit
overwhelmed by the loudness of it all. Drums and bagpipes indoors, even in as large a building as the Orr Building, are very loud!
They take new dancers as young as 3, so perhaps someday Lando will give it a
shot. Virtually all of the dancers are girls, so this would be a great way to meet women!
Saturday, November 24:
We had our Thanksgiving dinner with GM & Rosie. I had turkey,
dressing, gravy, etc. Dawn, being vegetarian, stuck to mashed potatoes,
peas, sweet potatoes, etc. Lando, being 2, stuck to being picky about
his food.
One thing we didn't do was attend Chambanacon,
a little annual science fiction convention. It began in
Champaign-Urbana (aka "Chambana", thus the name), being held in the
Chancellor Hotel every year on the weekend after Thanksgiving. I would
go most years, partly to attend the convention, but also to a large
extent just as an excuse to revisit the UIUC campus (where I went to
school) and the college town area.
However, a few years ago due
to increasing rates being charged by the Chancellor Hotel, Chambanacon
moved -- to Springfield. Umm... What? Well, that made it much more
convenient for me to attend, but it also removed one of the main reasons
for me to attend. Even before that, I think that over years the
Chambanacon staff had grown a bit lazy, not doing anything to attract
new people to convention and pretty much just coasting. As a result,
Chambanacon had shrunk -- and aged. It lacked the energy that it had
had at one time. True, they advertise it as a "relaxicon", but frankly
I can relax much more cheaply at home.
This year, for whatever
reason, Chambanacon returned to Champaign-Urbana, although this time to
a different hotel ("The Historic Lincoln"). Perhaps we'll try it again
next year and see whether it has begun to bounce back. Actually, I
think I'd rather try one of the other science fiction conventions that
are within a reasonable distance. We'll see.
Sunday, November 25:
I don't remember much about what we did during the day, but that
evening, right after Dawn gave Marta her antibiotic, Marta vomited up
the pill in a pool of blood. This is not something that you want to
see. We debated whether we should call the animal hospital that night,
but we decided there probably wasn't really anything to be done until
morning.
Monday, November 26:
Dawn called the vet at 7:30 AM and told them that Marta had vomited
blood the night before. They told her to bring Marta right in, so I
stayed home with Lando while Dawn to Marta to the vet. They kept her
there until 5:00 that evening, giving her fluids and so forth.
Apparently the problem was the antibiotic, which really
disagreed with Marta. The good news is that there is an alternative
that doesn't involve shoving a pill down her throat twice a day. The
bad news is that the alternative involves giving her a shot. Us. Giving
her a shot. Correction: Dawn giving her a shot. I'll hold Marta, but sticking her with a needle? *shudder*
Despite all of the drama with the blood-vomiting cat, we did something fun that
day: We went on a date! Yes! For probably the second time in 3 years,
Dawn and I actually went to a movie! In a theater!
It was amazing! It was expensive! $9 for a ticket?! Yikes! I had thought $7.50
was pricey! Well, $18 for tickets, plus $19 for food, making a total of
$37 for this date. And we didn't even go out to dinner! Oh well, it was
fun anyway.
We went to see Enchanted,
which I would probably give 4 stars out of 5, while Dawn would probably
give it 5 stars. It had quite a few funny bits, but I had hoped they
would do a little bit more with the "fish out of water" theme than they
did. It was still a good movie, though.
And it was a date! Lando
stayed with GM & Rosie, who kept him well entertained until we
returned. Actually, from the way Rosie tells it, Lando pretty much
played quietly until Dawn & I showed up, at which point he reverted
to his normal hyperactive self. *sigh*
Tuesday, November 27:
Dawn took Marta to the vet again, because they wanted to monitor her
again for the day. They'll want to do the same tomorrow. Marta is really getting tired of us stuffing her in the cat carrier.
This evening I attended my first regular meeting of the Sangamon Valley Group, the local group of the Sierra Club.
We had attended the potluck cookout in October (when Lando fell and got
an enormous bump on his head, prompting an emergency room visit), but
we hadn't attended a normal meeting before. GM had said that he was
also going to be attending for the first time, but didn't show up. I
don't know if something came up or if he just forgot about it. I did
see a few people I knew -- Will Reynolds, of course, but also Larry
Trutter (who I know from my Amiga and BBS days, as well as from REALL and the Springfield Area Freethinkers) and Chris Pearson (who I know just as an acquaintance from my work with GIS and ILGISA).
The evening's presentation by Bob Barewin was about going on Sierra Club
trips, particularly service trips, where you go somewhere to work on
building, repairing, or in some way improving a park. The specific
example covered was a service trip to Canyonlands last spring, where
they worked on surveying and documenting the Anasazi
petroglyphs. It sounded quite interesting, although it would be a few
years before we could go with Lando. He'd probably have to be a
teenager before they would allow him to participate in something like
that. We would like to go on some sort of a less ambitious camping trip
in the next year or two, though.
Wednesday, November 28: Hey! We're caught up to the present! And it's way past my bedtime! I think I'll post this and turn in. Good night!
energetic
relaxed
confused
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