Sheep Guarding Llama

Since I put in such an effort to work through KOTOR (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) yesterday I felt that I had a good chance of completing it today.   I decided that today was a holiday and that that was what I was going to do.

I woke up this morning with some serious shoulder pain.  My idea of exercising while playing KOTOR seems to have backfired.  Although obviously it is doing some good.  My back left shoulder blade is in terrible pain and for about ten hours I had regular spasms from it.

I played KOTOR pretty much the entire day.  Everything was quite around the house. No one needed me.  Pretty much no emails or anything today.  It was pretty much like a quiet weekend day with me hiding and playing KOTOR… except it is Monday.

I have now been home for over two straight weeks.  That is so weird.  I have lost any sense of time passing that I used to have.  It is a really good thing that I am blogging regularly now or I would have no way to determine when one day led to another.  Blogging is great for giving you a more concrete sense of time.

I ended up having to play solidly until three in the morning, but I did it.  I finally completed KOTOR.  That is a monumental game, to be sure.  The environment is not that large but the game really takes a long time.  It was great, though, I really loved it.  A classic and the plot twists towards the end are very good.  The game really does keep you on your toes.  But it was not too hard.  While I died sometimes and had to go back, I did not get stuck in situations where I felt that I just could not move forward and was mad at the game for a lack of balance.  It was exceptionally well balanced and fun to play the whole way through.  It was also nice to have an RPG that really did not have any scary parts.  I hate that every RPG feels like they have to throw that kind of stuff in for no reason.  I think that a lot of people would be happy to skip the gore and scary stuff.  The games tell better stories, most of the time, without all of that.

I am very glad that I put in the time to complete that game.  I started playing KOTOR while we still lived in Texas and made it most of the way through it and I did not get around to picking it back up until yesterday.  Now it is done and I am free to move on to something else.  I highly recommend KOTOR.  I am trying to talk Dominica into playing it.  I think that she would really enjoy it.

It turns out that I got called by work today to discuss the current situation and while the call happened in the middle of the afternoon the voicemail didn’t come through until 10PM.  Very frustrating.  I can only imagine that it is because of the continuous Internet problems that we have been having here.  Since the mobile phones only work over the Internet in the house, if the Internet is not solid a call or a voicemail might not come through.  So I will have to call them back in the morning.  That sucks since basically all I am doing is sitting around waiting for them to call, and I missed it when it finally happened.  At least it was a nice day regardless of that.

Less than two weeks to go until the family is back.  Art and Danielle are coming down on Thursday.  I am not sure completely what the plan is but they will be here all day.  Danielle is going into the city, I think that Art and I are staying at the house.

It is Sunday.  I slept in a bit this morning which makes sense since I wasn’t in bed until around four.  But I didn’t not sleep nearly as late as you might think that I would have given that fact.  I was up around nine or so.

I decided that today was primarily going to be a relaxing day and I have been wanting to finish up some video games that I have been playing so I took the time to focus on playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (known at KOTOR) to see how far that I could get.  I was already somewhere between sixty and eighty percent through the game, I would say.  This is a game that I played primarily while in Texas!  That really shows how long I go between chances to really play video games for myself.  I really like KOTOR, I just rarely have time to actually play it.  So I am making time now.

I did pretty little today.  Did not leave the house.  I am very glad that I went out yesterday, that worked well.  I got people time and recharged a bit.

I figured out that I can exercise, if I plan well, while playing KOTOR, by having my weights next to me so that I can use them while the game is loading or a long dialogue is going on.  Very efficient.

I ended up playing until early in the morning and there is still a ton of this game left.  I believe that I have more than a hundred hours of gameplay in this game so far.  It is anything but a short game.

I must have been quite tired.  Or my body just knew that it was going to be Saturday.  I was asleep long before two last night but I did not wake up until eleven thirty this morning!  That is incredibly late for me.  Just a few weeks ago I was still waking up at six in the morning without needing an alarm to be set.  It is amazing how quickly my body fluctuates sleeping times.

Being home and working on my desktop all of this time has really highlighted to me that I truly do need a new desktop.  Mine still works fine but when this is what I am using, for everything, all day, every day – it is just too slow.  I do a lot when I have the time and have three browsers running plus lots of little apps.  Those browser eat a ton of memory and I need to be able to switch between things really quickly.  Waiting for the system is bogging me down a lot.  And that’s before mentioning the video games which I cannot play because there is no way that this ancient desktop could handle them.  I have lots of games for the girls which will play just fine and some older ones for me but most of the newer games, even rather old ones, that I have been storing up are just waiting until I have a good, new computer to play them on.  I am really looking forward to the Bioshock series, replaying Fable Anniversary, the newer Assassin’s Creed titles, Skyrim and, coming soon, Dragon Age Inquisition.  I really want to play these but they all just have to wait.

I did a little work today and then around four made plans with Rob and Abby to meet up with them downtown for dinner and drinks.  So I showered, got dressed, drove down to Croton-Harmon and caught the train to Grand Central.  It was about seven thirty when I got into GCT.  I caught the 6 down to Canal and walked to Baxter where I met them at a little whiskey bar on a side street.  Abby’s friend Annie from Boise was there as well.  We hung out there for just a little bit.  The bar had a big whiskey and beer menu and, of all things, had Rochester’s own Genesee Cream Ale.  So I just had to get one of those.  Not something you normally see in the big city.  Had to do it and believe it or not, I have never actually had a Genesee Cream Ale before!  It was actually pretty good.  I will get that again.

From there we tried to get to a famous Japanese restaurant but traffic was terrible so we ended up snacking at a taco stand and then eventually making it back to the Japanese restaurant much later and eating there.  Really amazing food, the whole place was really impressive.  Dinner was awesome.

From there we found an awesome little speakeasy hidden in Chinatown.  You had to go into a rather nondescript door, up some stairs to a hard to find Japanese restaurant.  Then you go through part of the restaurant and push open an unmarked door into a completely different cocktail bar.  It was a little weird but the place was amazing.  The cocktail selection was truly impressive.  I got the Charlie Brown which was bourbon, peanut butter, milk and I think bitters or something with fresh ground nutmeg on top.  It was awesome.

I could not stay late tonight, I had to catch the train back to Croton as I did not have my CPAP with me.  What a pain that thing is.  It really makes spontaneity very hard.  I managed to make it back to Grand Central from Astor Place on the 6 just in time to walk right on to the next to last train north, the local to Croton.  So it was around two thirty that I got to the car and drove back.  I stopped at the Westchester Diner on the way back and grabbed some late night food so that I would not need to deal with food tomorrow as there really is nothing in the house and got home around three thirty to get into bed.

Madeline’s marching band won their competition today and are now going on to the state competition in two weeks.  Dominica asked if she could change her flights so that she and the girls could stay down there for that.  It is going to be pretty awful going this long without seeing the girls but this is a really big deal and they are already down there.  The state competition is only every two years so it is that much more of a big deal.  I had been invited to go to Dublin that week so figured it was meant to be.  So Dominica and the girls are going to stay in Texas and the plan is that I am going to head over to Ireland during that time.

I have been alone at home long enough that it is getting pretty lonely being here.  But at least SGL is starting to get caught up.  I have made quite good progress on that in just one day.  It will get much harder, though, as the updates get older and older since I need to do them stretching way back to the very beginning of September.

I did not leave the house at all yesterday or today.  There really is no need, without anyone else being in the house, to do anything but stay camped out in the bedroom where the computer is or to venture down to the kitchen.  The rest of the house really only exists as storage or for other people.  I have been saying for a long time that I could make do living in a hotel room, like I used to, if it were just me.  When I am alone it is like I don’t “own stuff” anymore.  Funny how your patterns change so dramatically just from the family being away for a few days.  It also makes sense as I have the house all closed off and the heat off.  So the whole house is only holding around sixty degrees but the bedroom stays warmer since I am in here, the computer and monitors are on and when I take a shower that warms up the room (since we have a master suite) so there is a wall of cold air whenever I leave the room.

I got some more writing done today and I watched the last half of Event Horizon and I watched all of Cary Grant in His Girl Friday which we have on DVD so I watched that during a period when our Internet was being flaky.  I watched the first half of The Ex which was not good enough to entice me to finish it in one sitting.

I’m giving myself a refresher on Ruby on Rails.  So I spent an hour or two working on that today.

Really very little to say about my day.  Pretty boring.  There was a great Steam sale today and I picked up the Saints Row collection (which does not include the original which is exclusively for the XBOX 360.)  So I now have all of two through four.  I had three previously.  I am only marginally interested in the earlier two but they are supposed to be pretty decent.  But the fourth one is supposed to be great.  I got the first two so that I would have the back story before playing the last one.

Dominica was home with the three little kids all day then, this evening, she went with everyone to the Gator’s football game so that they could watch Madeline play in the band.

I did not stay up super late tonight, I was in bed by one thirty.  Trying to keep my schedule somewhat normal.  With nothing happening during the day and no one around to regulate my schedule over this length of time it could skew off pretty significantly if I allowed it to.  This is the longest that I have been alone without having to go into an office or work normal hours since, probably, somewhere around the early half of 2004.

Today is my first full day at home alone.  I am enjoying the quiet still today but that is not going to last for much longer.  By tomorrow I am very likely to be very lonely.  This morning was just fine, though.  I relaxed for a bit and then got to work in the late morning and ended up having a very productive day.  I managed to get a lot of writing done and turned in three, yes, three new articles today.  That was awesome.  I feel very good about that.

The day actually flew by.  There was a ton of activity today on MangoLassi and I was able to participate a lot there.  I did not have a chance to get on Spiceworks until late in the day but was very busy there by the end of the day as well.

This evening, early on but after it was already dark out, I heard the doorbell ring and I ran down to answer it.  No one was there but I found a little box of candy waiting for me there with a note.  I had been “Ghosted” which was very cute.  I had to hang a sign on my front door to let people know that I had been hit and now I have to deliver some candy to people tomorrow.  Have to figure that one out.  It is a nice idea, though, I really like it.  Sometime later in the evening I saw a parent and child, dressed up as ghosts, running through a yard.  Very cute.

I managed to make it the entire day without watching any television or shows whatsoever.  This is not a huge surprise, I often do not watch anything when no one is home with me but I did not do so well at that yesterday.  Today not one thing.  I really never left the bedroom all day.  I was down in the kitchen making tea and at one point, a sandwich, but that was really about it.  I did a tiny bit of cleaning today but was pretty much just at my desk the entire day.

The house got quite cold today.  Without the family here generating heat, and with very few electronics turned on, the house really cools down.  It is very funny how noticeable it is when it is just me in the house.  I generate so much less heat that Dominica and the girls do.  All three of them are so much warmer than me, Dominica especially.  I can always tell when she is in the room because she raises the temperature of the room around her so much.  My natural body temperature is relatively low and when I am here alone all there is is my desktop.  I leave on very few lights and there is no extra laptops running or televisions running or appliances running.  The house just cools right now in no time.

I ended up working until four in the morning.  There is no need for me to do anything else.  I don’t need to be on a set schedule in any way.  I have not gotten any new news about anything, no contact today.  All has been silent.  So that implies that I will not be hearing anything tomorrow either.  At least I get to sleep in.

I have decided that SGL is so far behind that I simply have to start posting again as things happen and do my best to backfill and just make do.  If I do not get back into the regular swing of posting every day it just is not going to happen and having this time at home to work on things like writing on a continuous basis is the best chance that I am going to have, probably for years, to be able to really get on top of all of my writing and whatnot.  So I am going to go ahead and post today and, if you really want to know what happened over the past month and a half, dig through old posts sometime when they appear.