December 11, 2007: Dominica Has More Teeth Out

My first good news of the morning was seeing that my money was being refunded via PayPal’s protection mechanism. That is a relief. I also, on the same day, hit a score of 100 on eBay marking both 100 good feedbacks and a 100% score which I expect to be ended if the pirate is allowed to leave feedback for me but we will see. No one gets to keep a score that good for long anyway. Someone is always looking to get you and you just have to accept it and move on.

Here is a tip for people who get a computer with loads of pirated software on it: pirates don’t like to give out return addresses so that you can send stuff back to them.

Work was very busy today and I didn’t get a chance to do anything extra, including lunch, except to make a very quick walk to the post office while walking Oreo to mail our registration renewal form for the Mazda PR5 (which is still for sale if anyone cares.)  It was a very busy day.

Oreo is getting used to the loveseat and spent a bit of the day sleeping on it.  He misses his old futon though.  It was really “his”.  None of us used it because it wasn’t that comfortable to sit on but it was perfect for the dog.  We are very glad to have more seating now in the living room and will be even happier when the matching chair arrives later this week.  We have another D&D game scheduled for Thursday evening and people will actually have places to sit now.

Min got home at five and we were off to the dentist fifteen minutes later.  Oreo waited in the car and I walked a little over a mile in the cold rain to find dinner while Dominica had her teeth pulled.  Two more wisdom teeth today so that they are all out.  I found a sub shop in Kearney that had really amazing food.  I was glad that I decided to walk all of that way.  I found that there were a lot of restaurants on that stretch that looked good.  Too bad all of the food is so far away.  Nothing like that around downtown at all.

The surgery took just under an hour and we were out of there at a quarter till seven and on our way home.  We got home and I walked Oreo and then did a little bit more work to wrap things up at the office for people who needed changes made after I had left to drive Min to the dentist and then we called it a night.  Min played a little Paper Mario and then we watched Are You Being Served? before going to bed.

Hey, just because you don’t understand it doesn’t make it random. Oh, and this is all that you ever needed to know about hamsters.

December 10, 2007: Today We Discover Natalie Dee

They don’t call them slippers for nothing. And, of course, have a flaming apple juice. Natalie Dee knows why the world is going to be okay. How bakeware feels in the midwest. And, of course, one specifically about Oreo. Mice in teacups. Why a Honda SUV must be a good idea. Fear of cats. And this important question about aesthetics in modern American eateries. Natalie Dee on “How Scott Feels About Television and Especially Donnie Darko“. I mean seriously. The big bunny was bad enough in Harvey. Donnie Darko is seriously boring. And I am the guy who liked the long versions of Das Boot and Dances with Wolves. And Natalie Dee definitely has a grasp on New Jersey shopping fashion (i.e. the fashion of women shopping in New Jersey not shopping FOR fashion in New Jersey – if there is such a thing.)

And today’s SGL award goes to: Andrew T. West for the proper use of the word “verily” in a sentence not involving sheep, angels, shepherds or choirs.

Today was busy at work but nothing like Friday. That was awful. Today was just normal busy. But busy enough to keep me tied to my workstation all day long.

Our big excitement today is the expected delivery of our new futon. For some reason it managed to pass the chair and is arriving first even though it was ordered several days later.

I had to make a run out to the post office today. I had a bunch of stuff to mail. The mail… is it really true that we still need the mail? Can’t we do without it at this point? When do we need it? For birthday cards? That isn’t a good enough reason. To mail checks to people? If they can’t use PayPal or some other simple, standard, cheap, immediate form of payment then they really don’t care enough about the money to justify bothering to send it to them. For magazines? Yes, deforestation is a great reason for keeping the post around. So that tons of big companies that I don’t like can pay some guy to deliver their garbage (you all know what I mean) and put it into our mailboxes instead of into a landfill so that we have to deal with it instead of them?

I had to deal with my first ever major issue with an eBay seller today. I had one once that sold me a $6 video game and never sent it to me and just took off with the money. But it was $6. This time it was $210 and a software pirate. Not as bad as the time that Andy got hit for over $1,000 from an online pirate but still pretty bad. Luckily eBay and PayPal have some major mechanism for dealing with this stuff so I am confident that the issue will be resolved quickly.

Dominica got home with Oreo and we immediately ran out to Subway to grab dinner. It was a quick bite and then we walked down to GameStop to do some Christmas shopping. We are loving have a nice GameStop so close. It is hard to believe that such a nice shop can exist on that corner. If anything is a sign of the times changing in Newark it is that store surviving there. Dominica found two games for the girls for Christmas that she has not been able to find anywhere else. We also picked up, used, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles for ourselves as well as Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door so that Dominica can go straight on to that after finishing the original Paper Mario for the N64.

On the way home we stopped at Starbucks and got ourselves hot chocolate and gingerbread scones. For some reason, even though we live just one block from a Starbucks, we have only ever been there a few times in the more than a year that we have lived here. This was, in fact, Dominica’s first time into that Starbucks and no more than my third! But perhaps we will be there more often now. Walking to GameStop to do some shopping and stopping off for coffee or other treats is so very handy.

After dinner we came back to the apartment and I did some work online and aided Dominica as she worked on assembling our new loveseat that arrived today from Target and Amazon (some arrangement that I am not clear about.) It wasn’t too bad to put together and in no time it was assembled and set up in our living room. It is a deep chocolate brown simple affair. We have it set between the east facing windows as the center piece of what is now, more or less, a real living room.

We did some shopping on Amazon tonight for Chessex game dice.  We don’t have any here at all and it has become a problem.

And today I leave you with this.

December 9, 2007: Lazy Sunday

Today is a lazy day for the Miller household.  For some reason we didn’t get to bed until late last night.  Video games, books, D&D, etc.  It happens.  Dominica and Oreo were both awake long before me today for a change.  I slept until noon!

We took Oreo out right away for his morning walk and went to Market City right in our building for “breakfast”.  They said that the Sunday crowd is really good there being the only business in the entire downtown area that bothers to be open for all of the people living where we do.  It is  the only place that we can walk to quickly that we are aware of that has food for us on Sundays (or late evenings.)

Dominica spent most of the day playing Paper Mario on the Wii Virtual Console.  I did a bit of just “fun” reading today.  I read the rest of “Homeland” by R. A. Salvatore.  It was really good and I am looking forward to getting to read “Exile” – the next book in the series.  One of the advantages to waiting almost two decades before starting to read a popular book series is that almost all, if not all, of the sequels have been written and prequels and corrections and all that and I get to just start at the beginning and read them as fast as I want without having to wait for another book in the series to release.

Speaking of books that we have been waiting for for a long time, Sue Grafton’s “T is for Trespass” is finally out this month, less than a week ago in fact.  Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone mystery series is our favourite series of mystery books.  We really enjoy them and have the entire collection on Audio CD.  We have been listening to them for years now and eagerly await each new installment.

Through a somewhat bizarre turn of events Dominica and I now own a copy of Super Mario Galaxy that we will get to pick up at Christmas making it, more or less, a Christmas present to ourselves.  So we now own the 3D Mario collection of Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy.

Oreo is having a great weekend.  Three straight days of never being away from us at all.  He has been sleeping and smiling all weekend long.  He is one happy dog.

Today was very quiet overall.  Eventually we decided to get another meal from Market City and settled in to watch the final two episodes of The Vicar of Dibley from 2006.  We just got the last two episodes on DVD the other day.  The ending of the series was good but definitely not its highlight.  It is sad that the show is finally completely over.  For years it kept lingering on with the hope of another show being squeezed in at some point.  While watching the show this time I realized that the opening shot (an aerial going down the M40 in Oxfordshire) was shot very near where Dominica and I traveled through.  I did some research and we were indeed no more than eight miles from that particular spot and most likely far less.  From my best map estimates it looks as though we were approximately three miles from it running roughly parallel while we were on the train following the route of the A4010.  The shot is taken near Stokenchurch.

December 8, 2007: Paper Mario and D&D

I had to be up before eight this morning as I had two hours of work to do before I could call the day my own.  Yesterday was horribly busy and I was stuck working very early until very late with no break even for lunch!  All I did was run across the street, grab a sandwich and run back to my desk to eat while working.  I was really burned out by the end of the day.  But at least we go to squeeze in a short Dungeons and Dragons game before the night was over.  Unfortunately I then didn’t get to bed until almost two in the morning.

I worked today until ten.  Dominica spent the morning playing Paper Mario to which she is now completely addicted.  She is about ten percent through the game at this point.  It is funny that I bought this game because I thought that it looked interesting and I haven’t played it more than two minutes but Dominica is completely addicted to it.  Funny how that happens.  It is good that so often we like games that are similar enough that even if one isn’t that interested the other often is.

Ramona came over around eleven thirty.  The original plan had been to play D&D again this morning in an attempt to wrap up the scenario from last night but Chris wasn’t able to make it this morning so Ramona just came over for breakfast.

We all ate breakfast downstairs.  Just something light as we decided to get a pizza lunch in a little while so we didn’t want to fill up too much now.  Ramona’s afternoon plans were canceled and Chris was going to come over in the early afternoon so we decided to try D&D then.

While we waited I did some D&D research while Ramona watched Dominica play Paper Mario for several hours.  I am slowly getting back into the D&D groove as well as learning the new rules for the new version of the game.  They are not too much different but there is some big stuff that has changed and it is throwing me off a bit.

Chris made it over around three and we were able to get a game kicked off around four.  We played for about two hours before people had to leave.  With our overall inexperience we started the game at the beginning of a battle and only got partway through it before our time was up.  It was fun, though, and by the end I was getting more into the swing of the combat rolls.

Dominica spent the evening playing Paper Mario mostly.  She is really enjoying that game.

December 7, 2007: Not Too Busy for D&D

CNN has a great article today about the twenty five year old Commodore 64 computer system.

Today was incredibly busy.  I never got a spare moment to do anything at all.  I was rushed off of my feet from early morning until late in the evening.  By the end of the day I was seriously exhausted.

After work Ramona came over and she, Dominica and I all went to Food for Life for some dinner.  We ate and returned to the apartment to just hang out for a little while.  Originally the plan had been to play Dungeons & Dragons tonight with about six people but we failed to find a dungeon master who was able to run a game for us so the three of us were just going to hang out.

But Dominica has been really itching to learn how to play – she has been hearing about it for years and just this past week finally decided that she wanted to actually try playing it and is now quite anxious.  And Ramona had been looking forward to playing so they eventually talked me into running a game even though I have never had a chance to learn the D&D v.3.5 rules which are the only ones that we have any material for here at all.  I was not planning on acting as a DM so this was going to be rough.

Min and Ramona watched some DVDs while I worked frantically to find some game material, learn some basics (I have neither played nor run a game in about fifteen years) and generate some characters for them to play.  Ramona found her roommate Chris and he came over to join us.  He was in the original lineup for a game tonight and has never played before either so he was excited to get to try out a game.

It was just after eleven when we managed to get started playing the pre-generated game “Bad Light” from Wizards of the Coast.  I did the best that I could considering we had no dice, miniatures, props or experience.  We played until one thirty.  We all had a good time and decided that we would break for the night (I have to be up to work at eight in the morning) and play again tomorrow.

As rough as it was – it feels great to get to play again even if I am stuck as the dungeon master for the moment.  It is really hard to believe how long it has been.  But the AD&D Second Edition rules were brand new last that I played and much of my gaming was done under the “D&D Cyclopedia Rules” that predate the second edition.  Now we are playing under version 3.5 and version four is expected early next year.  A lot has changed in the world of D&D.  And the “Known World” or Mystara setting seems to have passed by the wayside during that time as well leaving the Forgotten Realms as the primary setting for the game.  When I used to play the FR was the “young upstart” setting.