Yay a Post!
So I think we all know how exceptionally lame I am about updating LJ consistently. So I'll try to remedy that with an incredibly long rambling post about a variety of subjects.
Let's start with November. Yes, well, I once again I did NaNoWriMo - except this year I failed- Alas! I've won the last 2 years, so I don't feel that bad. Besides I got to 23K words, which is more than I had to start with. I was working on a new story instead of my UBERstoryline. This one was about Atlantis - or rather the islands and people that survived Atlantis sinking and the political power struggle there after and the reestablishment of the royalty. Main Char's name is Simon. I'll have to post some drawings to my site. The story needs a lot of editing, but I like the idea.
So, the reason why I didn't have time to write was because of our impending Crystal Ball - a wonderful yule ball sponsored by hp-ohio. I had costumes to make, art to do, random other preparations and such. But it was well worth it. The ball was great! The castle was beautiful! And I had an absolute blast! Sketch of Costumes before Sewing
Photo taken at Ball
Eh, not too shabby. I think I did pretty well getting them close to the "idea". The hat I ran out of time on, but my mom sent me the little cool hat I'm wearing that belonged to my Grandma. I think it turned out well.
So then, the next few weeks before Christmas must have been a break, huh? I wish. Work was quite busy. There were several boards coming up so most of the time I was working on prepping packages for that and getting inputs in for my opr and such. We also had a holiday party and a few luncheons - which were a lot of fun and gave me a reason to use up that left over gossamer from CB. Then I had to take Slightly down to the Mini dealership for his oil change and inspection. That was an ordeal cuz its far away, and I had to leave it over night and come back the next day. But he got all shiny ready for a long drive. Except for the tires were in the "omgdanger!!" zone. I figured I'll replace 'em in MN as soon as my mid month paycheck shows. So finally I managed to get everything into a mostly done/prepped state so I could leave. Worked a 12 hour day on the 14th and then came home a lovely meal prepared by the even lovelier Renee. We noshed and I packed and crashed.
Got up early and packed up the car and got out of town by 9am. The drive was pretty pleasant - sunny skies and clear roads. I was listening to Eragon on the way up - I wanted to read it before I went to the movie. Tho now I'm thinking I should have done the other way round because I was a bit disappointed in the movie. Anyway, so that made the drive go quickly. Got to my parents house around 9pm (phew, 11 hours, not too shabby.) Went out with Ma and Pa and Alea and Chris for a quick bite to eat and then to bed under about 4 inches of blankets and with a space heater about 2 inches from my face.
Saturday I went into Minneapolis with my Momma to pick up one of my grandmother's paintings from our old church since the congregation was dissolving. We stopped over to my other grandma's old house which my sister and brother in law are gutting and remodeling to resell. Got the grand tour of all the new wiring Chris has done and the other work in progress. (Pics) I think it's going to turn out well! I hope they're able to make a pretty good profit off it. It'll be a great little house soon as they're done. Mom and I stopped at the cemetery to see if they had put up the wreaths that she ordered for my grandparents. We took a few minutes to tidy up the site and talk. Headed home after that. I'm trying to remember what did that night... World of Warcraft? We did a big instance together (Dad, me, Alea and uncle Dave) butI can't remember which night it was. Played for like 4 hours. Me and dad next to each other on computers, me texting Alea in the game, and dad on a headset with Dave talking on teamspeak. It was silly, but lots of fun. Oh I went grocery shopping with Momma too, since there was no food in the house.
On Sunday we lazed around, did a bit of shopping with mom and dad around Maplewood mall area and headed home. I went to pick up Alea and we went to Grandma's apartment to spend the night. We got a pizza to cook up and watched "Too Many Christmas Trees" (an episode of the Avengers). Grandma headed to bed and Alea and I watched the Sound of Music (because you like, HAVE to at least once a year) and the end of Return of the King cuz it was on TV. The next morning we hung out for awhile and watched price is right. Tidied up her place a bit, did some dished and what not and then we headed out. Then we stopped at Rosedale mall to do a bit more xmas shopping and have lunch. Headed back to her place and made a ton of Spritz cookies with her cookie press. It was fun and we only ate the mutilated ones :) I got colored sugar all over their kitchen - causing Alea and Chris to mock my sugaring methods. I thought they were pretty. And very yummy. It was starting to get late so we called the parents and made them come over for dinner. Chris had put in a pork tenderloin to cook for about 24 hours with a nice bbq flavor. Whipped up some sides and we had a good meal. Then we watched some bizarre thing on animal planet about a lion who had adopted this baby gazelle thingy. It was strange. Dad kept foo foo'ing us watching a "show about a lion with a mental disorder."
Mom and Alea both took Tuesday off so we went shopping all together with Chris. Went over to Rockler, Sears and Mall of America. Kinda a lazy day after that, it was nice.
On Wednesday I went shopping by myself since everyone else was working. I ran around the Woodbury area so I could go to the World Market and get Angie some coffee. I had her name for the Chovan drawing. Found some yummy stuffs and some camping things for Alesha and Phil. Headed home and spent the evening with the folks.
Dad took Thursday off so we planned to do a little shopping since it was his and mom's 35th anniversary. First I went and had lunch with Nick and Granite City. That was good - gave us a chance to catch up a bit. Sounds like school is suiting him. I also had a million books to give back to him that I've been hording and still not getting to read. (Damn you Tamora Pierce and your Tortall books! It's all I can think about!) After lunch I struggled to get home as the weather was getting nasty with the raining, icing, snowing. Daddy and ran off to Mall of America to get some things for mom from Torrid. Then we went over to Grandma's again to hang out for a few minutes and make sure she was set with all she needed. Chatted for about a half hour or so and then we headed out so we could avoid traffic. When we got back I made plans to go shopping with Alesha since she was in town for the holidays. She came over and we gossiped and she got to visit with my folks. We headed over to Maplewood and busied ourselves there. Had a cup of "campfire mocha" that was basically a mocha with scorched marshmallows in it - very good :) And I get points for "branching out" of my normal mocha habit. After that we went back to my parents and talked for awhile longer. She headed home and I crashed.
Dad had Friday off too so we busied ourselves during the day by getting new tires for my car (see first paragraph where I noted the danger level the tread had gotten too, yeah...) and grocery shopping for Christmas Day dinner. We got some very yummy beef tenderloin from the butcher at Cub and a ton of other stuffs. I headed over to Alesha's and had dinner with her folks and Phil. Then the 3 of us headed over to Gretchen and Tony's for a little holiday party. It was a lot of fun, got to see a lot of folks I haven't talked to in a long time.
On Saturday I made plans with Amber, Chad, Neen and Libby for dinner. We went to Bonfire in Eagan. Libby and her man, Mohammad cancelled cuz Libby was feeling unwell. So the four of us had a good dinner and chatted a whole lot. We went back to Amber and Chad's cuz their place was like a block from the restaurant. Amber had lots of cool roller derby stuff to show us. She's a part of Delta Delta Di. I'm sorry I won't get to see her bout on the 30th. I think my folks are going tho. We headed to Throwbacks after that to meet up with my sister, Chris, Sarah, Grant, Kristie, and her bf. They were all chillin' in a corner booth when we got there. So we settled in, had a beer or two and listened to the band. It was good to sit and chat everyone up for awhile. Neen and Amber hadn't gotten to see Alea and Sarah in awhile so they all got to talk. I hadn't seen Kristie in quite awhile either. A few of Amber's Roller Derby pals showed up to, so we had a good bunch going. Some weird guy dressed in a half-assed Santa costume came around and passed out some crappy toys. Those paddles with the superball attached? Yeah, only they didn't work that great. Didn't stop any of us from trying tho. There was also a really well dressed Santa there who was rocking out on the dance floor and hitting up the bar most of the night. Headed home around 12 or 1ish I think. It was a fun night.
On Sunday we got some christmas stuff ready, did a bit of cleaning and I headed toward the airport to pick up Scott. However, he called to tell me they landed in Milwaukee to get gas (wtf??!!) and he was just about to take off from there. So I went over to Dave and Angie's early to hang out for about and hour. Sat and talked to them while they got the last minute things ready. Dave showed me his WoW characters and we chatted about the game for awhile. Everyone started arriving and bringing in presents. I took off for the airport again and waited for Scott. His plane finally got in and we headed back to Dave and Angie's just in time for dishing up plates of yummy food. Cheesy potatoes, meatballs, ham, lefsa... so good. After everyone was stuffed we started the gift exchange. The boys passed around gifts with a little help. Then we watched them tear into everything. After they were done, they ran off to play WoW - what have I gotten this family into?! Then we started going around the circle and opening things. I got lots of fun stuffs - Dave got me a bunch of really great sewing books I wanted, Mom and Dad got me a Club Dead track suit, PotC calendar, and an ergonomic computer chair, Alea and Chris got me a gift cert to Amazon, got a variety of lotions and bath stuffs from the Chovan girls, and Scott gave me a cute lil Academy teddy bear with a very sparklely necklace on it. I yipped and he put it on for me. Ver. Lovely. And he also got me the brit version of HBP. :) After presents we had pie and sat around chatting for quite awhile. Once everyone started falling asleep we got up and headed back to my parents home to sleep.
We woke up on Christmas Day and did a buncha cleaning and cooking prep. Got all spruced up and finished making dinner with my momma. Uncle Rich and Aunt Jane arrived with Grandma. Everyone chilled out having appetizers and wine for awhile. Mom and I got the table all set and called everyone in. We had a yummy dinner, I'm glad everything turned out good. We were using some recipes I found online - Beef Tenderloin with a roasted shallot, port and bacon sauce, green bean hotdish, and baked potatoes. After everyone had their fill we went back out into the living room and opened gifts. Janie got me some more sewing and costume books - woo! And a few other small things like lotions and a jewelry case. Chris prepared his chocolate torte dessert for everyone - omg sooo good... sooo very... very... dense... Once we recovered consciousness from the chocolate coma's we chatted more until Grandma was ready to head off. Said our goodbyes and headed out to the garage to play slot cars for awhile. Dad had the track in a high state of readiness and all heated. We had several races with the F1 cars - 4 on the track at once. He didn't have the lap counter up tho, so we ended up making the rule that the last car on the track was the winner. It was a lot of fun. Then we headed in to watch the rest of this bizarre sci fi channel movie called The Lost Room. After that it was sleepy time.
On Tuesday we had made plans with my aunt and uncle to go to the gun range. Got up and first had breakfast with Alesha and Phil and Alea and Chris at Baker Square. They were headed back to Red Wing for the rest of the week so we wanted to hang out once more. They headed off to go curling and we went home to get ready to go to the gun range. Met up with Rich and Jane there and had 7 of us on 3 lanes with 4 guns. Mostly shot my sister's Ladysmith. I liked hers a lot. Chris let me shoot his 9mm glock, and Rich gave me a turn with his revolver. Jane had a very similar gun to Alea's only with a different grip. We were there for a few hours at least. It was a lot of fun - of course, I killed off several more paper people to which I fear retribution from the Race of Paper. They may amass armies, I'm not sure, but I'm prepared. We headed home and had some leftovers for dinner... yummy beef... so good... then watched some Scrubs and Eddie Izzard.
I dragged Scott to Mall of America on Wednesday so he could be impressed by our many floors of shopping. We bummed around and walked around each floor. Libby and her man, Mo, meet up with us and we went into the Park in the center to ride some rides. Went on the flume ride, then on the swing axe thingy and then on the rollercoaster. So we got the chance to catch up a bit while in lines and such. We had to leave to catch dinner with Dad, Alea and Chris and meet up with mom to see a movie. We went to see Eragon, to which I was a bit disappointed. I mean, I know the story was heavily borrowed from other works, but at least it was somewhat clever and had a nice telling - the movie just went so quick you didn't form any attachment to the characters or felt like they built up any relationships between each other. Tho, the baby Sapheria was so cute, so I guess that helped. We headed home and said our good byes to Alea and Chris and went to bed.
Thursday started out pretty early, got up at about 5am to pack up the car and head to the airport. Scott's flight was at 7, but slightly delayed. Got him there a little after 6. The lines were pretty long, but with the delay he was ok. Had to say good bye, but tried not to be tearful. I made it to the car at least before being super sad. Then I headed over to Grandma's to say goodbye to her. Stayed for about a half hour and headed out. Got on the road finally out of Stillwater around 8:20. The drive was kinda hard. Grey day out and the book I was listening to - midnight in the garden of good and evil - although good wasn't super engaging and being sleepy I was having a hard time staying up. I stopped quite a bit, got lots of caffeine in me. The afternoon was much better and then when the story introduced a drag queen and a murder, it got much better. Made it back to Dayton around 9:30. Got attacked by kitties and had to feed them. Tried to unpack a bit, and crashed.
Work today consisted of checking a lot of email. It was just Theresa, Col R and myself in the office. The rest of the place was dead. Matt stopped by to lavish me with gifts befiting a "Captain Select" - a lovely knit head band and book from Beckie, and the WoW Dungeon companion (hehe) from him. Yay! It will go to good use. Maj G showed up to do a few things since he leaves for a deployment soon. He dropped off my HP books he had, got through GoF but hadn't started OotP. He didn't want to take the hardback into the dessert so he said he'd read it when he got back, but he's all excited now about the story. :) ha! Another joins the ranks of fans...
Anyway, now I'm home. I've managed to clean the living room and do a load of dishes. Not too much else. Put up some pictures, post on the hp-ohio forums and actually put something up here. I had wanted to go grocery shopping... I might still... we'll see how ambitious I get here in a few minutes. Chade is being very lovey and now both of them are fast asleep on the floor. Alright, if you've made it through this, then I thank you :) I'm sure that I will try to catch up on everyone's lives this weekend and make an effort to respond to everyone I haven't talked to in forever and a half. Tomorrow is hp-ohio's little luncheon down in the arena district so I'll be out and about there! See everyone who's coming tomorrow! Cheers!
Let's start with November. Yes, well, I once again I did NaNoWriMo - except this year I failed- Alas! I've won the last 2 years, so I don't feel that bad. Besides I got to 23K words, which is more than I had to start with. I was working on a new story instead of my UBERstoryline. This one was about Atlantis - or rather the islands and people that survived Atlantis sinking and the political power struggle there after and the reestablishment of the royalty. Main Char's name is Simon. I'll have to post some drawings to my site. The story needs a lot of editing, but I like the idea.
So, the reason why I didn't have time to write was because of our impending Crystal Ball - a wonderful yule ball sponsored by hp-ohio. I had costumes to make, art to do, random other preparations and such. But it was well worth it. The ball was great! The castle was beautiful! And I had an absolute blast! Sketch of Costumes before Sewing
Photo taken at Ball
Eh, not too shabby. I think I did pretty well getting them close to the "idea". The hat I ran out of time on, but my mom sent me the little cool hat I'm wearing that belonged to my Grandma. I think it turned out well.
So then, the next few weeks before Christmas must have been a break, huh? I wish. Work was quite busy. There were several boards coming up so most of the time I was working on prepping packages for that and getting inputs in for my opr and such. We also had a holiday party and a few luncheons - which were a lot of fun and gave me a reason to use up that left over gossamer from CB. Then I had to take Slightly down to the Mini dealership for his oil change and inspection. That was an ordeal cuz its far away, and I had to leave it over night and come back the next day. But he got all shiny ready for a long drive. Except for the tires were in the "omgdanger!!" zone. I figured I'll replace 'em in MN as soon as my mid month paycheck shows. So finally I managed to get everything into a mostly done/prepped state so I could leave. Worked a 12 hour day on the 14th and then came home a lovely meal prepared by the even lovelier Renee. We noshed and I packed and crashed.
Got up early and packed up the car and got out of town by 9am. The drive was pretty pleasant - sunny skies and clear roads. I was listening to Eragon on the way up - I wanted to read it before I went to the movie. Tho now I'm thinking I should have done the other way round because I was a bit disappointed in the movie. Anyway, so that made the drive go quickly. Got to my parents house around 9pm (phew, 11 hours, not too shabby.) Went out with Ma and Pa and Alea and Chris for a quick bite to eat and then to bed under about 4 inches of blankets and with a space heater about 2 inches from my face.
Saturday I went into Minneapolis with my Momma to pick up one of my grandmother's paintings from our old church since the congregation was dissolving. We stopped over to my other grandma's old house which my sister and brother in law are gutting and remodeling to resell. Got the grand tour of all the new wiring Chris has done and the other work in progress. (Pics) I think it's going to turn out well! I hope they're able to make a pretty good profit off it. It'll be a great little house soon as they're done. Mom and I stopped at the cemetery to see if they had put up the wreaths that she ordered for my grandparents. We took a few minutes to tidy up the site and talk. Headed home after that. I'm trying to remember what did that night... World of Warcraft? We did a big instance together (Dad, me, Alea and uncle Dave) butI can't remember which night it was. Played for like 4 hours. Me and dad next to each other on computers, me texting Alea in the game, and dad on a headset with Dave talking on teamspeak. It was silly, but lots of fun. Oh I went grocery shopping with Momma too, since there was no food in the house.
On Sunday we lazed around, did a bit of shopping with mom and dad around Maplewood mall area and headed home. I went to pick up Alea and we went to Grandma's apartment to spend the night. We got a pizza to cook up and watched "Too Many Christmas Trees" (an episode of the Avengers). Grandma headed to bed and Alea and I watched the Sound of Music (because you like, HAVE to at least once a year) and the end of Return of the King cuz it was on TV. The next morning we hung out for awhile and watched price is right. Tidied up her place a bit, did some dished and what not and then we headed out. Then we stopped at Rosedale mall to do a bit more xmas shopping and have lunch. Headed back to her place and made a ton of Spritz cookies with her cookie press. It was fun and we only ate the mutilated ones :) I got colored sugar all over their kitchen - causing Alea and Chris to mock my sugaring methods. I thought they were pretty. And very yummy. It was starting to get late so we called the parents and made them come over for dinner. Chris had put in a pork tenderloin to cook for about 24 hours with a nice bbq flavor. Whipped up some sides and we had a good meal. Then we watched some bizarre thing on animal planet about a lion who had adopted this baby gazelle thingy. It was strange. Dad kept foo foo'ing us watching a "show about a lion with a mental disorder."
Mom and Alea both took Tuesday off so we went shopping all together with Chris. Went over to Rockler, Sears and Mall of America. Kinda a lazy day after that, it was nice.
On Wednesday I went shopping by myself since everyone else was working. I ran around the Woodbury area so I could go to the World Market and get Angie some coffee. I had her name for the Chovan drawing. Found some yummy stuffs and some camping things for Alesha and Phil. Headed home and spent the evening with the folks.
Dad took Thursday off so we planned to do a little shopping since it was his and mom's 35th anniversary. First I went and had lunch with Nick and Granite City. That was good - gave us a chance to catch up a bit. Sounds like school is suiting him. I also had a million books to give back to him that I've been hording and still not getting to read. (Damn you Tamora Pierce and your Tortall books! It's all I can think about!) After lunch I struggled to get home as the weather was getting nasty with the raining, icing, snowing. Daddy and ran off to Mall of America to get some things for mom from Torrid. Then we went over to Grandma's again to hang out for a few minutes and make sure she was set with all she needed. Chatted for about a half hour or so and then we headed out so we could avoid traffic. When we got back I made plans to go shopping with Alesha since she was in town for the holidays. She came over and we gossiped and she got to visit with my folks. We headed over to Maplewood and busied ourselves there. Had a cup of "campfire mocha" that was basically a mocha with scorched marshmallows in it - very good :) And I get points for "branching out" of my normal mocha habit. After that we went back to my parents and talked for awhile longer. She headed home and I crashed.
Dad had Friday off too so we busied ourselves during the day by getting new tires for my car (see first paragraph where I noted the danger level the tread had gotten too, yeah...) and grocery shopping for Christmas Day dinner. We got some very yummy beef tenderloin from the butcher at Cub and a ton of other stuffs. I headed over to Alesha's and had dinner with her folks and Phil. Then the 3 of us headed over to Gretchen and Tony's for a little holiday party. It was a lot of fun, got to see a lot of folks I haven't talked to in a long time.
On Saturday I made plans with Amber, Chad, Neen and Libby for dinner. We went to Bonfire in Eagan. Libby and her man, Mohammad cancelled cuz Libby was feeling unwell. So the four of us had a good dinner and chatted a whole lot. We went back to Amber and Chad's cuz their place was like a block from the restaurant. Amber had lots of cool roller derby stuff to show us. She's a part of Delta Delta Di. I'm sorry I won't get to see her bout on the 30th. I think my folks are going tho. We headed to Throwbacks after that to meet up with my sister, Chris, Sarah, Grant, Kristie, and her bf. They were all chillin' in a corner booth when we got there. So we settled in, had a beer or two and listened to the band. It was good to sit and chat everyone up for awhile. Neen and Amber hadn't gotten to see Alea and Sarah in awhile so they all got to talk. I hadn't seen Kristie in quite awhile either. A few of Amber's Roller Derby pals showed up to, so we had a good bunch going. Some weird guy dressed in a half-assed Santa costume came around and passed out some crappy toys. Those paddles with the superball attached? Yeah, only they didn't work that great. Didn't stop any of us from trying tho. There was also a really well dressed Santa there who was rocking out on the dance floor and hitting up the bar most of the night. Headed home around 12 or 1ish I think. It was a fun night.
On Sunday we got some christmas stuff ready, did a bit of cleaning and I headed toward the airport to pick up Scott. However, he called to tell me they landed in Milwaukee to get gas (wtf??!!) and he was just about to take off from there. So I went over to Dave and Angie's early to hang out for about and hour. Sat and talked to them while they got the last minute things ready. Dave showed me his WoW characters and we chatted about the game for awhile. Everyone started arriving and bringing in presents. I took off for the airport again and waited for Scott. His plane finally got in and we headed back to Dave and Angie's just in time for dishing up plates of yummy food. Cheesy potatoes, meatballs, ham, lefsa... so good. After everyone was stuffed we started the gift exchange. The boys passed around gifts with a little help. Then we watched them tear into everything. After they were done, they ran off to play WoW - what have I gotten this family into?! Then we started going around the circle and opening things. I got lots of fun stuffs - Dave got me a bunch of really great sewing books I wanted, Mom and Dad got me a Club Dead track suit, PotC calendar, and an ergonomic computer chair, Alea and Chris got me a gift cert to Amazon, got a variety of lotions and bath stuffs from the Chovan girls, and Scott gave me a cute lil Academy teddy bear with a very sparklely necklace on it. I yipped and he put it on for me. Ver. Lovely. And he also got me the brit version of HBP. :) After presents we had pie and sat around chatting for quite awhile. Once everyone started falling asleep we got up and headed back to my parents home to sleep.
We woke up on Christmas Day and did a buncha cleaning and cooking prep. Got all spruced up and finished making dinner with my momma. Uncle Rich and Aunt Jane arrived with Grandma. Everyone chilled out having appetizers and wine for awhile. Mom and I got the table all set and called everyone in. We had a yummy dinner, I'm glad everything turned out good. We were using some recipes I found online - Beef Tenderloin with a roasted shallot, port and bacon sauce, green bean hotdish, and baked potatoes. After everyone had their fill we went back out into the living room and opened gifts. Janie got me some more sewing and costume books - woo! And a few other small things like lotions and a jewelry case. Chris prepared his chocolate torte dessert for everyone - omg sooo good... sooo very... very... dense... Once we recovered consciousness from the chocolate coma's we chatted more until Grandma was ready to head off. Said our goodbyes and headed out to the garage to play slot cars for awhile. Dad had the track in a high state of readiness and all heated. We had several races with the F1 cars - 4 on the track at once. He didn't have the lap counter up tho, so we ended up making the rule that the last car on the track was the winner. It was a lot of fun. Then we headed in to watch the rest of this bizarre sci fi channel movie called The Lost Room. After that it was sleepy time.
On Tuesday we had made plans with my aunt and uncle to go to the gun range. Got up and first had breakfast with Alesha and Phil and Alea and Chris at Baker Square. They were headed back to Red Wing for the rest of the week so we wanted to hang out once more. They headed off to go curling and we went home to get ready to go to the gun range. Met up with Rich and Jane there and had 7 of us on 3 lanes with 4 guns. Mostly shot my sister's Ladysmith. I liked hers a lot. Chris let me shoot his 9mm glock, and Rich gave me a turn with his revolver. Jane had a very similar gun to Alea's only with a different grip. We were there for a few hours at least. It was a lot of fun - of course, I killed off several more paper people to which I fear retribution from the Race of Paper. They may amass armies, I'm not sure, but I'm prepared. We headed home and had some leftovers for dinner... yummy beef... so good... then watched some Scrubs and Eddie Izzard.
I dragged Scott to Mall of America on Wednesday so he could be impressed by our many floors of shopping. We bummed around and walked around each floor. Libby and her man, Mo, meet up with us and we went into the Park in the center to ride some rides. Went on the flume ride, then on the swing axe thingy and then on the rollercoaster. So we got the chance to catch up a bit while in lines and such. We had to leave to catch dinner with Dad, Alea and Chris and meet up with mom to see a movie. We went to see Eragon, to which I was a bit disappointed. I mean, I know the story was heavily borrowed from other works, but at least it was somewhat clever and had a nice telling - the movie just went so quick you didn't form any attachment to the characters or felt like they built up any relationships between each other. Tho, the baby Sapheria was so cute, so I guess that helped. We headed home and said our good byes to Alea and Chris and went to bed.
Thursday started out pretty early, got up at about 5am to pack up the car and head to the airport. Scott's flight was at 7, but slightly delayed. Got him there a little after 6. The lines were pretty long, but with the delay he was ok. Had to say good bye, but tried not to be tearful. I made it to the car at least before being super sad. Then I headed over to Grandma's to say goodbye to her. Stayed for about a half hour and headed out. Got on the road finally out of Stillwater around 8:20. The drive was kinda hard. Grey day out and the book I was listening to - midnight in the garden of good and evil - although good wasn't super engaging and being sleepy I was having a hard time staying up. I stopped quite a bit, got lots of caffeine in me. The afternoon was much better and then when the story introduced a drag queen and a murder, it got much better. Made it back to Dayton around 9:30. Got attacked by kitties and had to feed them. Tried to unpack a bit, and crashed.
Work today consisted of checking a lot of email. It was just Theresa, Col R and myself in the office. The rest of the place was dead. Matt stopped by to lavish me with gifts befiting a "Captain Select" - a lovely knit head band and book from Beckie, and the WoW Dungeon companion (hehe) from him. Yay! It will go to good use. Maj G showed up to do a few things since he leaves for a deployment soon. He dropped off my HP books he had, got through GoF but hadn't started OotP. He didn't want to take the hardback into the dessert so he said he'd read it when he got back, but he's all excited now about the story. :) ha! Another joins the ranks of fans...
Anyway, now I'm home. I've managed to clean the living room and do a load of dishes. Not too much else. Put up some pictures, post on the hp-ohio forums and actually put something up here. I had wanted to go grocery shopping... I might still... we'll see how ambitious I get here in a few minutes. Chade is being very lovey and now both of them are fast asleep on the floor. Alright, if you've made it through this, then I thank you :) I'm sure that I will try to catch up on everyone's lives this weekend and make an effort to respond to everyone I haven't talked to in forever and a half. Tomorrow is hp-ohio's little luncheon down in the arena district so I'll be out and about there! See everyone who's coming tomorrow! Cheers!