mellicious | Entries tagged with columbine

Rob's birthday is tomorrow, so we went out for a celebratory seafood dinner. (I had chicken, actually, but Rob had shrimp.) Rob got a new DVD player - it's to go with the 2nd TV in the bedroom - and several DVDs that he picked out. Also we spent the night at the Hilton in Houston for the race last weekend and we traditionally consider that part of his birthday present, because it's always right around the time of his birthday and it makes race day much more convenient for him.

When we bought the DVD player at Sam's yesterday I also bought a huge bag of mixed caladiums - 50 or 60 bulbs, I think. I got out on the back porch and stuck about half of them into various pots out there. They may not all come up but it doesn't really matter. I've had good luck with caladiums in the past, so hopefully a lot of them will come up, at least, and I will have plenty of color out there all summer. I have more pots on the front porch so I will probably plant a bunch more out there.

columbina may kill me - I finished another GuildWars campaign tonight. Nightfall, this time. I wouldn't have thought of trying it except that he and I were experimenting around with Gate of Madness earlier today. We didn't get close to finishing, so tonight when somebody in the guild started looking for people to do GoM with them, I went. I figured that even if this group didn't finish, it would be good to see how people handled the part that Col and I wiped on. And I did see that - and we finished the mission and then some of us went on and did the final mission too, Abaddon's Gate. As is the pattern with the other ones I've finished, the last mission was pretty easy. It's always the 2nd-to-last mission that's a booger - then the final mission is pretty much you battle the Big Bad and you're done. I was kind of laughing because Abaddon is this gigantic thing (although you only see his head and hands) and I was thinking that this has been my weekend for gigantic monsters. First there was Cloverfield, and then the Torchwood episode that was on last night involved another gigantic incarnation of Abaddon, coincidentally, stomping all over London - or Cardiff? I dunno - like Godzilla. They're everywhere!

(Col, I will tell you more about GoM later. I suspect that it is doable with heroes & henches, except that I'm not so sure about how to handle Shiro, in that case.)

This is pretty accurate, I think.
( meme )

I've been unnaturally silent, haven't I?

There's a whole entry by

columbina that's pretty much All About Me, anyway! Or more correctly, it's about the two of us and how we interface in game situations. (Interestingly, I proceeded to melt down rather spectacularly last night. But I recovered and life - and gaming - went on.)

I have spent the last two weekends playing GuildWars pretty extensively. The first weekend was the Sneak Preview and I took Rima the Elementalist and played mostly with her. I got her most of the way through the Norn series of quests. I took some of the other characters into the beginning of the new game (which is called Eye of the North, or GW:EN - it's also an in-joke, because Gwen is also the name of a character who's been around in GuildWars from the very beginning), but nobody else went far into it. Then this Friday (the 31st) was the go-live date and so Col and I played all weekend, with his main character Kaeleen and my dervish Sharzad, mostly because Sharzad was the one who was in the right place to join up with Kaeleen at the time we started playing. (And leading indirectly to the problems described in Col's entry.) Despite the occasional clashes and fits of temper on both sides, we enjoyed it. It's not an easy game and it's not meant to be. But it's fun. It has some great bits of comedy in it, too. In-jokes, Monty Python jokes, Pinky and the Brain jokes, you name it.

Other than that, well, life goes on as normal. The top floor of my mother's house is empty except for some furniture. (I am keeping some of this furniture but at some point fairly soon, I'm going to have to figure out how I'm disposing of the stuff that nobody else wants.) We have finally got the last piece of her investments transferred over, which is something I was beginning to think was never going to happen. Now - there is always a catch - I have to decide how to invest it. I think I am over-thinking the investment question, and that in turn is sort of immobilizing me. It's an important decision, yes, but it's not a life-and-death decision. I need to relax about it, a bit.

Oh, I don't think I ever said here that we booked a trip to Las Vegas at Christmas. This will be our long-delayed 20th anniversary trip. We are leaving Christmas night - so we won't have to miss the family celebration - and staying 3 nights, I think it is. That's as long as I could persuade Rob to stay. It's long enough, especially since we're not coming back until really late Friday so we essentially have that whole day to fool around in Vegas, too. I booked us at Treasure Island but I might possibly change that if I find a good deal somewhere else. I had it in mind to stay somewhere that's sort of in the middle of the Strip, though. Years ago when I came the first time we stayed at the north end (at the Riviera), and a few years ago with the TUS group we stayed at the very south end (the Luxor). So the middle is the part I've never really explored. (Rob has no opinion on this, since he's never been before. His only opinions so far are that five days is too long, and that he wants to see topless girls. Men.)

I slept until my alarm went off at 7 this morning, which has become unusual lately. Of course, since I'm technically supposed to be at work at 7:30 these days, I really ought to be setting it a bit earlier than that anyway! In any case, the extra sleep was nice, and I imagine next week when

columbinastarts the new job, we will quit playing AutoAssault quite as late and that will help me get to bed a little earlier.

We are (probably needless to say) having a lot of fun with AutoAssault. It's really different from GuildWars - it's a bit more violent, in that well, you run over people from time to time, and there is blood, but it's still not violent on the scale of something like Grand Theft Auto (which I don't approve of, at all, actually - at least, certainly not for kids). GuildWars has no blood even when you kill things - it's a pretty PG-rated game, on the whole. Anyway, my 14-day trial on AA is running out, and in any case, had a level-20 cap on it which I have now run into with one of my characters, so I went ahead and paid this morning. AutoAssault has 3 races in its little postapocalyptic world - humans, mutants, and "biomeks" - which are sort of like cyborgs, human-machine hybrid-y things. The three races don't interact at all until way up in the game (and then they fight, not cooperate), so humans can only play with humans, and so forth. I made one of each race, but it's the mutants - green skin, glowy eyes & all - that Col & I have been playing a lot, and which got to level 20 the other night. Col had played in the beta, and had reactivated his human char from the beta recently and she is really high up there level-wise, so we are not playing our humans together, like we are with the mutants and (occasionally) the biomeks. I have played enough when Col is not around, though, that my human (who's a "commando" - like a warrior) would have run into the level cap with the trial fairly soon, too.

Oh, I had my evaluation yesterday, and it was good, and I got a small raise. We talked about me taking on more responsibility, too, which hopefully will eventually lead to a bigger raise.

Still no word on the court date, dammit. (I'm tempted to call and yell at the lawyer about it, but I don't think it'd do any good. The Harris County Probate Court moves in its own time.)

Not-completely-random linkage:
MSNBC: Guild Wars: an experiment that worked
Reuters: Many Americans see no point to the internet

Well, lunch with the

columbina family went off as planned. We met at the original Cadillac Bar, which is a mexican restaurant that's right on I-10 so was right on their way through Houston. (It is a Landry's restaurant now, but Landry's had the sense not to change it much from the way it was, thankfully.) It was very nice to see both of them. I hope it's not another two years before we get to do it again.

I was running early, for once in my life, so I dropped my car off at the dealer on the way up - they may be expensive, but at least they give you a rental car in the bargain. And unfortunately it's still there - I mostly needed the inspection done, but I also have had problems with the air conditioning not working properly and so I asked them to check it, and apparently that's the sticking point. I hope it's nothing too horribly expensive. (Probably a vain hope. Sigh.)

Meanwhile, after lunch and before I gave up on getting my car back today, I went shopping. I pretty much bought my summer wardrobe. Five pairs of pants and probably as many shirts. Maybe more. I bought so much stuff I lost count! (Also, some really adorable earrings, which were on sale. I am back on an earring kick lately.)

(Oh, and I got an e-mail from Col saying they made it to Austin okay. Which was nice to hear, because I worry. I am getting to be an old mother hen, I swear.)

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: home

I talked to

columbina last night; he & Debby were supposed to be in Louisiana but they were in NYC instead. Weather problems, he said. So that trip is off to a roaring start. Think good thoughts for them as they ought to be in the air right now; they were supposed to be flying out at 8am.

Apparently this does not affect our planned lunch tomorrow unless further things go wrong, since they still have to be in Austin for the wedding at the appointed time. (I have never remembered to ask, but I assume the wedding is sometime on Saturday.) So I'll report back on that.

The weekend went by really, really fast. It's not fair.

It doesn't seem like I did that much. I went over to Mom's Saturday and we ate Mexican food and I finished my quilt top (at long last) - and I spent an hour or more mucking around on their computer, like it seems like I always end up doing. (I will refrain from speculating about just why there is always something wrong with that computer.) Yesterday we went back up to Clear Lake and ate at Jason's Deli and went to see Brokeback Mountain. Jason's Deli was packed and I had a good time watching people. (Rob had his back to the room, so he just got to listen to me mock people's clothes.) I liked the movie too, although probably not as much as I liked Capote. Although that didn't stop me from crying a lot, just the same.

After saying I was tired of playing Dofus, I proceeded to spend the remaining piece of the weekend playing it anyway. I battled more rats and did quests and so forth. Somehow that game is very time-consuming.

Diary-X lost all their data, I hear - well, I guess I won't be updating over there any more. (Even if he gets it back. That's just ridiculous.)

Warning to

columbina: If some sort of (possibly mildly obnoxious) Valentine's thing turns up on your LJ tomorrow, it's probably my fault. I don't exactly remember too much about it, but whatever it was, I thought it was really funny about 3am the other night. (I'm pretty sure it's not hearts and flowers or anything like that, though.)

I gotta quit staying up so late.

We spent most of yesterday celebrating Rob's birthday, even though his birthday was actually Saturday. My mother had decreed that I would just go over to her house Saturday like normal, and we would celebrate on Sunday, and since she's sickly she mostly gets her way about these things. Rob didn't seem to care anyway - he went off to the gun range to try out his new Winchester 1894. Mom and I went out to lunch at a Mexican restaurant, which seemed like old times, a little bit. It's the first time she & I had been out to lunch since before her biopsy at the beginning of December.

Yesterday we met my mother and Art at Casey's, which is a nice-but-not-ridiculously-expensive seafood restaurant (actually it's ajacent to and owned by the same family as the very-much-ridiculously-expensive one both of us used to work at - it's where we met) and they bought us lunch. (I had chicken. Rob had a gigantic grilled seafood platter.) So that was nice. Then after they had left, we decided to go up to Fry's and let Rob pick out a couple of movies for his birthday. Technically, staying in the fancy hotel in Houston last week was his main birthday present. But I usually get him some more stuff anyway. I had bought a couple of little things but I felt like he was getting shafted a little bit. So, movies. We ended up spending a hundred freaking dollars, of course. That place is a black pit that sucks in your money! He got several movies, though, and the new version of Combat Flight Simulator, which he had never gotten, and I got a couple of small things myself, so I guess that wasn't bad for all of that.

What I got was a quilting magazine and year-before-last's copy of The Unofficial Guide to Las Vegas (hey, it was on sale), because somewhere in my head I want to go back to Vegas again. I've been sort of halfway keeping an eye out for cheap tickets to Vegas for a while now. Really, if we go, it ought to be later this year rather than earlier, though.

Anyway, I had a Foley's gift card (from my dad) that I never had used, so while we were up that way we went and I bought a couple of pairs of shoes (a pair of black Naturalizer loafers and a pair of clunky brown Clark's). I needed them.

I spent most of the rest of the day playing Dofus - and quizzing

columbina about what the heck I was supposed to be doing, because I was sort of lost. I think I'm starting to get the hang of it a little bit, though. I also seem to be hooked. I stayed up until midnight collecting arachnee legs for my next quest. Damn these addicting games!!

Holidailies is all done now, so I can go back to posting over here. (Well, technically, it's not done 'til midnight tonight, but I've done my part - I've posted my entry for today and I've done the amount of reading I'm supposed to do. I might go back and read a few more entries tonight if it looks like there's some that needs doing...)

I just got the funniest IM from

columbina while I was off wandering around that ends with:

[15:10] have a lovely weekend.
[15:10] i recommend
[15:10] BEER

(I assume he won't mind me posting that!)

I was off in somebody else's office doing some housecleaning, to be specific. This person has been here for many years, and sort of suddenly got better things to do and left. (There's a long story there but I won't go into it.) Anyway, she left a HUGE mess behind - years and years of documents and files and notebooks and other odd junk. (Also, some personal things such as a PalmPilot and a scale, of all things, but she did send somebody to pick that stuff up.) So I get the fun task of figuring out how much of this is definitely trash, and how much definitely needs to be kept, and what's left over that somebody else needs to take a look at. Part of this job is actually fun, btw, I'm not entirely being sarcastic there. There are some odd things, and some really old things (meaning mid-1990s, which is ancient as far as financial information is concerned, especially), buried in all the crap. It's like a treasure hunt!

Plus, having to climb around and clear off her shelves meant I got to wear jeans today. Always a bonus.

Seems like I had something really interesting I was going to write about earlier, only now I have no clue whatsoever what it was. Hell.

So I'm just going to write randomly instead. Let's see. I seem to have spent a good bit of the day gossiping with Columbine, and then chatting in the afternoon. In between I went to lunch and scheduled some meetings and rescheduled some more meetings, because that seems to be all that I do these days, work-wise. I am not kidding, I have scheduled some 100 meetings in the last 6 weeks or so and I bet close to 50% of them have been rescheduled at least once. Some more than once.

I may go up to Detroit to see Karen at some point in the next couple of months. It's under discussion, anyway. This has become a yearly event (although she has always come to see me up to now). Rob said it was ok "if you have the money" - I think that means he wants me to pay cash, which I probably am not going to do but I'll tell him that later. If I find a good rate I am not waiting until I find the cash. I will make sure I pay extra on the Visa to make up for it, though!

(Does that make me a horrible wife? Oh, well.)

It has gotten really freaking cold the last couple of days! Usually in late March here on the balmy Gulf Coast, you've pretty much given up on carrying a coat, even a light one. Not the last couple of days. I wore my heavy wool coat today, even to lunch. (I am not going to tell you how cold it actually was, however, because you people who had snow last week will stone me or something. I guess you can look it up on the Weather Channel if you are really determined to know!)

The dinner with my father went fine, except that I had to literally pluck the check out of his hand when we got up. (It was supposed to be his birthday dinner, that was the whole rationale in the beginning, although it's been postponed enough times that I'm not really surprised he forgot!)

(There are an awful lot of parentheses in this entry, but y'all are just going to have to live with it.)

Special to

columbina: Quit playing World of Warcraft and post something!

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Entries tagged with columbine

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