Notival

Back from Maryland. Got back in Friday afternoon. Took a much earlier flight than for which I was originally scheduled since we finished class on Friday at about 11 am. All in all, it was a good trip. I think the singular best part may have been dinner on Thursday though. Me and three others from the class went to find a place to eat and found that there was a BDs Mongolian Grill in the area. So that is where we went. Ninsi and I used to eat at BDs all the time here in Dallas until they closed down and completely moved out of Texas. They haven't come back yet, and it still doesn't make sense to me why. BDs is way better than any other mongolian place we have tried.

We also almost got a new dog this weekend. Or rather, Ninsi almost got a new dog. But we didnt. Not yet anyway.

It is the time of year to start planning for next year's lawn. I mentioned to Ninsi that I was considering taking the tiller to the entire back yard, and I think she probably believes me somewhat crazy now. Maybe I will do it, maybe I wont.

There is serious talk now of restarting the largely defunct Warhammer 40k campaign. It has been entombed for a few years now. A new map is really all we need. That, and some of the new rules. Then we'll be set.

Outside of that, it's the normal daily grind. Probably going to visit a buddy in the hospital on Friday maybe. Then watching the game on Saturday. I reckon I could either play 40k on Sunday, or get some serious tilling done. I'll have to debate those options...

So for those of you that know Khuul, he had a fist sized tumor removed from his colon yesterday. They also took out his spleen for good measure, while they were in there. Coming soon: chemotherapy. For someone my age, too many of my friends have had cancer. I think one is two many, but the number is now more than one, and we're mid thirties. We're about twenty solid years ahead of the curve. Go us. Bleh.

In other news, Ninsi is going to a country bar tonight with her trainees from work. I suspect she would enjoy it more if they were trannies. I'll abstain from the country bar. Instead, I'll lay around the house. Maybe fix a martini and paint the bedroom. No, the other bedroom.

Odds of a third dog being introduced to the household this weekend? Approaching unity.
Odds of that dog weighing a tenth of what either are current dogs weight? Let's just hope they dont think the new dog is lunch.

When I started working at my current company just over a year ago, they gave me a laptop and said they were in the process of replacing all the company laptops so I should expect mine to be replaced soon.

Soon is obviously a relative term. I got the new one today. And it is quite a serious upgrade over what I had before. It completely blows away the desktop at home. It's meant for business users, but with the 4G of memory, I think it will easily handle most of the games out today.

And really, isnt that what we want from our laptop? I dont run that many applications on it, most things are done on the web. But I do play games now and again. And this sleek, black baby will serve them up right. And the dvd burner was a nice, if unnecessary, addition.

Ninsi and I went to visit Khuul last night in the hospital. He is doing better. He'll be doing very well once the pain subsides.

After the visit, we went to Main Event to meet with her work peeps. Dinner, drinks, and games on the company dollar is not a bad way to spend the evening. It was a bit late though when we finally did get home.

One of the founding members of Slippery Weasel is in town for a couple more weeks. Should manage to have dinner next weekend or so. That's the plan anyway. The plan for this weekend involves me driving to McAlester to hang out with the Squid. Probably see a movie. If there is any movies out that she wants to see. If I have spare time, I'll probably use it to transfer stuff from the old laptop to the new. And Im sure my mom will require me to do some fixin' to her computer. My main objective on that end will be to set it up so that I can remotely access it. That should cut down on frustrating phone calls when something isnt working.

In other news, the Yankees lost in the first round. Im mostly indifferent to that.

Mail-In rebates suck. A lot of things offer them, but very few people actually use them. The companies that offer them count on most people not using the rebates. And if you do mail them in, filling out the paperwork for it is generally a hassle, and too easy to mess up so that the rebate is refused.

Kudos to Staples then, for making it easy. I bought Quicken 2008 today and it comes with a $20 mail-in rebate. On one of the three receipts I got, though, is an address for submitting it online. It is a Staples address and it took about three minutes to fill out online and they will invoice Quicken for me. It could not have been much easier. I'll know if 4-6 weeks if it actually worked.

Of course, they didnt have what I actually went to the store to get, so they kinda lose points there.

Spent the weekend in OK with the Squid. I also hooked up a wireless router to my mom's internet connection. That allowed the Squid to goof around online via the laptop I'd brought. I think it helped her from being to terribly, awfully, teenagerly bored.

Not much else went on. Went to visit my dad and he took us for a quick ride in his new Mustang. 500 HP is a whole lotta power. The tire marks on the highway from the burn out were a forty odd feet long I think.

Ninsa stayed home and cleaned the house, mostly. Now I need to get out and mow the yard. Moreso because it is raining today and last night, so the grass will grow. It may be the last time I mow it for a couple months though. Tis the season of things not growing any more.

Ninsi was just telling me that there is a load talking Brit in her office today. And she finds it difficult to argue with their pronunciation of 'again.' Outside of the accents, Brits and Americans just say some things differently. Most notably, I think, a whole class of words that start with 'H.'

Some words are really just more fun than others. On the radio today, someone used the phrase "snot-knocker." That's a good word. It's up there with "slump-buster" and "turd-floater" and the new one I heard today "suckitoria", which is the plural form of "suckitorium." For more information on that one, go here.

My dad was always fond of calling us 'hon-yockers.' It is what it is.

A couple months ago, Ninsi, the Squid, and I went on an Alaska cruise. We flew Delta from DFW, to Salt Lake City, then on to Seattle. However, when we got to SLC, they asked for volunteers to give up seats. We did so gladly, as we weren't really in a hurry. In return, they flew us on to Seattle first thing the next day, and gave us each a voucher worth $400 on a Delta flight.

Unfortunately, flying Delta out of Dallas is not generally the easiest, nor most economic thing to do. You almost inevitably have to lay-over somewhere. Generally Atlanta or SLC. We do sometimes fly to Atlanta, and then the vouchers would have been great. Except that we weren't planning to make that trip until after they expired in August of '08. So, we tried to sell them at 75% face value. Making a posting on Craigslist here did little good. When I posted on the Atlanta Craigslist, we got a lot of responses. Most of them were willing to give only half the value. But we finally found two people that bought them for our asking price. Which leaves us with enough money for me to book a flight from DFW on American to London next month to spend a weekend with Ninsi and Monketo and his wife.

I look at it as a free trip to London. It's not exactly that, but close enough.

Oh yeah, everybody panic.

Went to the doctor this morning. Everything is still pretty much status quo. My blood levels are where they should be. They have been where we want them since I stopped listening to him.

It has been about five months now since the whole blood clot thing began. The doctor said that I should stay on the meds until the end of November, and then stop it for at least two weeks. At the end of the two weeks, my blood will be normal, and we will run the full gamut of blood tests again to see if there are any abnormalities.

So, after that, I can either stop the meds completely, or stay on them chronically. I am expecting the doc to recommend that I stay on them. We'll see how that plays out come December. I will probably also get a second opinion at that point as well.

My back is in some pain today.

Sometimes, when Ninsi and I are messing with each other (namely, when Im tickling her) the dogs will get agitated because the humans are fighting. Or something. Luna just barks. Barley has taken to being a more active participant and started nipping the knees of one of us.

Last night, we tried to determine if he was going after Ninsi in particular all the time, or just whichever human seemed to *not* need help. So I let Ninsi 'get' me, and Barley started yipping and then scratching. He scratched my back real good.

Enough that I had Ninsi pour some hydrogen peroxide on it. It looked better this morning. All of the small welts were gone. But I still have four or five good scratches. And I can feel a couple of them constantly. It's not pain, but that dull stinging that lets you know it is there all the time.

Stupid dog.

Dreams can be very scary.
Last night, I don't know why, but I dreamed that I was talking to George Bush. Yes, our current President. I forget exactly how we wound up in the same room together. I think I was taking something there, or delivering something, but we started talking. And I get trying real hard not to get pissed off at him and just go off. But he wanted to know what I thought about everything, and I started telling him about everything he was doing wrong, and some of the things he should start doing while he still had time. He was not really listening though. And I was still getting pissed off in the dream. We walked around a lot in the dream. But he still could not see what he was doing wrong.

It was nice when I finally managed to wake up.

I planted some tomatoes early this year on the patio. Planted them in an upside down garden, along with some peppers and other spices. When I put them in the dirt, the weather was perfect, and had been for a couple weeks. Everything started growing nicely.

Then, unexpectedly, we got a couple days of cold temperatures. It frosted. Then it started raining, and we did not see the sun for a month. This pretty much killed the tomatoes. At one point, there was a ferocious wind storm that ripped one of the plants out of the dirt and sent it flying into the backyard. I was mostly annoyed because that particular plant was the one that had actually already started to sprout fruit.

I gave up on the tomatoes.

Last week, when I was mowing the yard, I noticed a plant under the steps of the deck. It looked like a tomato plant. It smelled like a tomato plant. And sure enough, it had a tomato growing on it. It was a couple feet tall under the deck. So, either the plant that blew off took root, (not likely) or the fruit it had on it took to seed (thats my guess). I had tomatoes after all! It was just going to take another week or two to ripen.

This week, it turned cold. Last night, it frosted.

Im giving up on the tomatoes.

Halloween party = done. I can shave again. Huzzah.

I went to Kentucky Fried Chicken today for lunch. That's KFC for the younger folk out there. I had not been for a couple months, and the first thing I noticed was the new menu. Occasionally, places have to change their menu. Items, prices, etc. If they remodel, they will change the whole menu display. No problem, and this KFC had actually undergone a remodel in the last year. So, today, I was a little surprised to find that they had done away with their old menu boards completely. Now, instead of pictures and prices, they have flat panel displays that serve as menus.

The displays are the same size as the old menus, but now they have graphics and crap. And Im sure it makes it a lot easier to change out the items. I have no problems with places moving to menu displays like this. It makes a lot of sense, really. I just never thought of KFC, this one in particular especially, as being on the vanguard of fast-food tech.

I mean, they dont even have pepper in the store. At all. Seriously, no pepper.

It's Wednesday. And it is Halloween day.
Could Halloween seriously fall on a worse day that Wednesday? No, it could not.

We did have a pot-luck lunch at the office today, and Ninsi joined me for that. A couple of the other folk brought their kids. Ninsi brought me chocolate covered pecans. She's coo like that. Technically, they are Chocolate Pecan Caramel Clusters, of the Mountain Man variety. Because, you know, Im Grizzly Adams and shit.

Christmas crap should start appearing in the stores now that Halloween is over. I wish they'd wait til December. Too much, too soon.

Holidays are a pain in my ass, and they make me cranky.