Not the House you know

Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry were a brilliant comedy duo. I love this clip.

What, me Wowser?

In the men's locker room at my local gym is a poster that's probably supposed to be motivational and inspire the guys to work out...but I'm not quite sure I agree with their choice of picture. The person in the picture is in the Bent Over Row position and is lifting a free weight as they work out their Lats. Because they're working out they're wearing a rather skimpy singlet top, and because the camera is positioned directly in front of them, we're looking straight down their top at oodles of cleavage. Yes, it's quite apparent to even the casual viewer that the person working out in the picture in the men's locker room is quite obviously female.

Now admittedly the pose the woman is in is a perfect Bent Over Row position and it's entirely appropriate for the exercise she's performing, and yes, the picture is in a gym, and no, I'm not a Wowser or a Prude, but the shot could have easily been taken from a side angle so it didn't look quite so cheesecake or the woman could have been a guy. No, it would not have been gay to have a picture of a guy working out in the men's locker room. In fact it would have been just as inspirational. "Hey, guy. Work out and you can have a body like mine (nudge nudge, wink wink ;)." Ok, so maybe it could be construed as a little gay :P

What's everyone's thoughts, here? Am I a Prude? I haven't complained about the picture, well, not to the gym :P and I think the action of complaining and requesting it be taken down is what makes the Wowser. But should I really be offended by this picture? Remember it's in the men's locker room in a gym, so contextually the picture is in the appropriate place. Then again, it could be argued that a more appropriate place is out in the gym where it could inspire both men and women alike. "Oh, but we couldn't have that picture in the general gym! Some people might get offended!" So it's ok to have an offensive picture in the men's locker room, but it's not ok to have it out in the gym itself? Am I a Prude? Or am I just truly becoming a father where I don't think it's ok to objectify women.

Why flossing is bad

I was flossing last night, trying to get a bit of meat out from between a couple of molars when the floss got stuck. So I was pulling down on the floss when it came free with a jerk and at the same time there was a rattling sound from something falling into the handbasin. I reached into the handbasin and picked up the noisy object, looking at in astonishment, then I looked in the mirror and bared my teeth. There was a gap on one side which hadn't been there a few seconds ago.

Apparently a cavity had developed and the tooth had decayed underneath the filling and it had become weak enough that with just the right pressure in just the right place the crown of the tooth snapped right off.

I called my dentist's office, and even though it was 8pm, he picked up. I told him what had happened and he said to come in first thing in the morning. I spent almost two hours this morning in the chair getting an enamel crown put on. What a way to start my RDO Friday and a 3-day weekend.

And now, here's a picture :P

And now, something uplifting...

I just love this song. The video clip is a bit...er...gay...but the song just makes me want to get up and dance.

Ladies & Gentlemen, I give you...O-Zone and Dragostea Din Tei.



In the above video the sound is slightly off. It's only a heart beat behind the action but it's enough to be annoying to a quasi-perfectionist like me.

In the below version of the video, which is essentially the same video as the one above but with extra bits making it about a minute longer, the sound is spot on :)

Day Tripping to Catalina

Rodger and the Barrett

Here's a short clip of my coworker, Rodger, firing the .50 Barrett M82A1.
I love the way the people in the background react when this thing goes off.

Big Guns are more fun

The sound is a little off (might be better at Youtube itself. Nah, it's not.) but here's three clips from yesterday and one pic.

This is Zac with a Barret M82A1 .50 rifle.

Youtube video is here.

This is Zac shooting a Browning M2 .50 caliber, semi-automatic "machine gun".

Youtube link.

Finally we have Zac shooting a Winchester lever action rifle in .30-30 caliber.

Youtube link

And just so you don't think Zac had all the fun, here's a pic (not a moofie) of me with the Barrett M82A1 :)

Welcome back to work

We just had an office meeting regarding a charity campaign. We're supposed to feel honored to be in a position that we can afford to allocate a small percentage of our paycheck each week to a charity to help out those less fortunate than us. Maybe I'm getting jaded in my old age, maybe it's the Republican side of me coming out, or the Libertarian side which knows that many (not all, but many) of the people you see on the street begging for change are there by choice and if they were offered a regular 9-to-5 job they'd choose living on the street any day. Maybe it's that so many people who benefit from charity programs don't need it or deserve it, or they only qualify because they have 5 or more kids (and they won't stop popping them out, again, lifestyle choice), and maybe it's because I know people who could benefit from charity programs but refuse to accept it and would rather live day-to-day, paycheck to paycheck, than accept welfare or any form of charity or handout.

So this one woman got up and talked briefly (thank heavens) about the environmental program she belongs to. And all I could think about was the story my sister told me of the Tongans (yes, from the Kingdom of Tonga) who have a tourist program that greatly benefits the economy of Tonga. Tourists come from all over the world to spend their dollars in Tonga, and they all pay a small fortune to swim alongside the whales as they migrate past the Islands. Now Greenpeace (a name almost synonymous with Ecoterrorism) decided that people swimming alongside the whales as they passed through the Tongan-owned waters off the Kingdom of Tonga was somehow harmful to the whales (despite real life encounters which showed otherwise, and included whales seeking out boats and tourists and playing with them (non-violently) for hours), and so they approached the Tongan leaders and asked them to put a stop to this activity.

The Tongans thought for a while, and decided that yes, they could afford to not allow tourists to swim with the whales, because the drop in tourism and loss of income in tourist dollars could be offset by the amount the Japanese were willing to pay the Tongans to allow them access to the whales. The Japanese, of course, didn't want to do anything as harmless as just swim with the whales and when Greenpeace were made aware of this alternative they quickly withdrew their appeal.

Similar situations occur here in the U.S. Very few people know that Hunters also pay a small fortune for their licenses and the right to hunt and take deer, and the fees they pay usually go a long way towards maintaining our national parks. But when "people with good intentions" step in and stop the hunting, there is a subsequent drop in revenue and Park maintenance suffers, because these same "people with good intentions" are also often the ones who ask why they now have to pay to access the National Park they used to visit for free, and so they stop going. And as the number of people using the park drops fees to access the park increase and less people come to the Park, until eventually the Park closes because it's not cost effective to maintain the Park just for the handful of people who still use it. Finally the Park gets sold off to developers who tear down most of the trees and subdivide the land and build shopping centers and office buildings and houses, etc. and only then does everyone complain about the loss of the National Park.

So I'm very wary of environmental groups and "people with good intentions" in general.

Then this other woman got up and talked for far too long about all the good United Way does, and again, I'm leery of charity groups because far too often all they want to do is raise money to pay for the salaries of people who sit on committees talking about how to solve some problem that they don't really want resolved because then there'd be no committee for them to get paid to sit on. And this woman talks for ages, and she asks everyone to stand up, then asks half the room to sit down, and she explains that those of us sitting down represent the kids who drops out of school in 9th & 10th grade, and how sad it is that those kids can't go on to graduate from high school, and she asks a 1/3rd of those still standing to sit down, and how sad it is that 1/3rd of high school grads don't make it into college, etc.

I decided not to burst her bubble by asking how many of the kids who dropped out did so because they got an apprenticeship somewhere. And I decided not to ask her if it was true that kids who get an apprenticeship at 15 or 16 are often financially more secure than their fellow students when they meet again at their 10-year Reunion. And I decided not to ask her "What's so great about college anyway?"

Look at it this way. I'm a college grad. I'm currently making around $30/hr in my cushy government job. To get to that level the average person needs a 4-year college degree, and then they usually need to have been employed by the City for approximately 5 to 6 years. Some do it faster, some take longer, but on average, it's 5 to 6 years to get to where you're making $30/hr. That just happens to be around about what a common Union Laborer makes, per hour. Someone who digs a ditch, pushes a broom, etc, gets around $30/hr. Now if I'd done an Apprenticeship and become a licensed Carpenter, Electrician, etc, I'd be making $40 to $50 per hour as a Journeyman (a skilled laborer). A standard length Apprenticeship is 3 to 4 years long, about the same as earning your college degree. But as a 16-year old Apprentice you'll probably have a two year head-start on your classmate who is going on to college. In 12 years time (2 more years of High School plus 10 years to the reunion) the Apprentice is pulling down $50/hour (or more), he owns his own car (or truck) and is making payments on a house. The College Grad is probably making $30/hr (unless he's lucky and actually got a job in the field appropriate to his degree) and he's living paycheck to paycheck while struggling to pay his rent and make payments on his $50,000 (or more) college loans.

Granted not everyone who drops out of high school in 9th or 10th grade has an Apprenticeship waiting for them, and many of them go on to learn such valuable skills as how to say "Would you like fries with that?" but a lot of college grads get their degrees with nothing waiting for them but the exact same minimum-wage job they've had for the last 6 years. The only thing is, that college grad is now working for the guy who dropped out in 10th grade, who was the only one willing and able to work all those odd hours which got the manager's attention and so promoted him to assistant store manager.

Back to the woman who is talking for far too long and dropping statistics like how 80,000 people in Los Angeles county are homeless (and yet our shelters which only house a few thousand often have beds free), and how a $3/paycheck donation somehow buys 3 hours of tutoring for 5 students every single week, and other typical socialist bullshit that doesn't sit well with this Republican-flavored Libertarian, so I mostly tuned out of what she had to say.

All in all it was a wasted and unproductive morning, but I'm happy to be able to rant here and also glad I was able to shoot a lot of really big guns yesterday. Pictures (and moofies) of which will be added shortly :)

Loong weekend

My Mum, my sister & her husband are here for a few weeks. It's been strange not playing WoW for that time, even more so going to bed usually before 11pm :P The kids are both in our bedroom. Mum and Sue are in Amber's room, and my sister, Carol, and her husband, Zac, are in JE's room.

Liz has been taking care of making sure everyone does a lot of shopping. I've been doing my best to make sure Zac is not bored out of his skull. I think he's been playing a lot of Lego Star Wars on the Gamecube while I'm at work. I'm taking a day off here and there but I didn't have enough Time Off to take off the entire three weeks. I had last Friday off as my Regular Day Off, then had yesterday off for Columbus Day. The loong weekend was very busy.

Friday we got up early to go to San Diego. We stopped at Guasti on the way to have breakfast at the Homestyle Cafe. Liz chided me for talking Zac into getting the 3-stack of pancakes. My argument was they're only here the once (well, they'll be back someday but who knows when) so why not get the 3-stack. Now it used to be big, and I knew that, but that's half the fun in getting the 3-stack. I don't know many people who could probably eat a 3-stack by themselves and live to tell the tale, but now, the 3-stack is Fhuge. Yeah, that's right, huge with a capital F. Seriously, if you did manage to choke down a 3-stack all by yourself, I pity you, because you either weren't well for the rest of the day (& maybe the next) or you're already dead.

After breakfast at the Homestyle Cafe we resumed our trip down to San Diego and Seaworld. JE was entertained by our new portable DVD player and Mr. Bean DVDs. Everyone else was entertained by me taking photos, singing, etc. What can I say? I'm a fun guy :)

Sea World was pretty cool. We had lunch not with Shamu but with another Orca. The beer was free so Zac and I had a taste test. Oddly enough he actually liked Budweiser. There was no Miller on account of Seaworld being owned (I think) by Anheuser-Busch who produce Bud. Funny was the men's toilets which had anti-Miller Q&A trivia signs over the urinals, proclaiming how American Anheuser-Busch was, and how Miller is owned by a South African brewing company. We sampled Bud Light, as well as Michelob Ultra (another Light beer) and Michelob Lager (Michelob is also owned by Anheuser-Busch). Bud Light tasted like weak soda, the Michelob Ultra was ok until I tasted the Lager and then it was just ho hum. Zac has almost helped me finish off the case of MGD Liz bought a while back, so I might replenish it with Michelob Lager once the MGD is all gone.

After seeing numerous sights at Sea World (and going on a water ride/roller coast thing, where we got an excellent picture of the girls screaming their heads off) we called it a day and made our way to our hotel where we discovered the pool was heated, but the Spa even more so. Oooh, after walking around a theme park all day nothing beats relaxing in a Spa. Afterwards we hit the local BJ's for dinner but they were crowded (Friday night, go figure) and the wait for a table for 7 people was going to be over an hour, so we ordered Take Out which we ate back at the hotel.

Saturday was spent at the Wild Animal Park. We decided not to do the Feeding Tour where you sit in the back of a truck and feed the giraffes and other critters. Not at $80/person :P They also have a Hot Air Balloon for a bird's eye view of the park, but I think that's more of a gimmick than anything else. You see more from the train that runs around the park than you would from a balloon 100 meters up in the air. While Liz, Mum & Sue did more shopping, Carol, Zac, JE & I did a walking tour around the park. The little guy actually did the entire walk. Of course he fell asleep on the ride back to the hotel afterwards :P

We hit the Spa again, then got to TGI Friday before the crowds so the only wait was for the staff to set up a table for 7. Zac & I returned to TGI Friday a few hours later hoping to catch the Formula 1 Grand Prix (live from Japan) but we were out of luck. The BJs had no TVs, and we were SOL at Rock Bottom as well. Although the bouncer did asked us for ID before he would let us in :P

Across from the Rock Bottom was a trendy Mexican restaurant and it was our last hope. There the female manager (who I think liked talking to the two Aussie "tourists") actually went through every single channel of her cable line up, and she found the Speed Channel. Unfortunately they don't subscribe to it so we missed out on watching the Japanese Grand Prix while drinking Cerveza and eating Nachos in a Mexican Cantina :(

Sunday Zac, JE & I went to Legoland while the girls went shopping in a nearby Outlet Mall. We got JE on the fastest Lego Roller Coaster but he refused to go back on it a second time. The rides weren't too bad, and JE actually went back for a second go on one of the tamer Roller Coasters. We foolishly finished the day with one of the wettest rides where you get to sit in a small 4-seater Pirate Ship and shoot water cannons at the other boats and the crowd as your boat sails a preset course. Lining the walls of this ride are water cannons manned by people in the crowd, who use them quite enthusiastically to shoot back. Unfortunately their water cannons seem to have a greater range than do the cannons on the boats, and they don't have to crank handles to shoot the water either. We all got pretty wet on that ride (& JE was no use as a human shield). Lucky the day was hot enough that we were almost dry by the time the girls picked us up. The final ride of the day we found on the way out. It was a ride called Knight's Torment. Not Tournament, Torment. It has 5 settings so Zac and I naturally chose Level 5 - Extreme. JE said he wouldn't have gone on it even if it was on Level 1. It was basically a Robot Arm that swung your chair around, upside down, etc. Because of that last ride we were late getting back to the girls and they tried to tell us they'd got a ticket waiting in the Passenger Loading/Unloading Area for too long.

I don't know how everything fit into our Highlander. It might be an SUV, but we had 7 people in there, and there wasn't a lot of room going down to San Diego. I don't know where it all fit but the girls still managed to get everything they'd bought inside for the ride back home, and nobody had to sit on the roof.

Monday JE was back at school so Zac & I hit 6-Flags Magic Mountain. That was a lot of fun too, except six of the rides were closed. According to one of the ride attendants on the Superman Ride, even though Columbus Day is not a recognized Public Holiday half the staff didn't bother turning up for work so that's why the rides were closed. Luckily Tatsu, 6-Flags newest ride, was open. That thing was insane. Not scary (scary was when my harness slipped open a notch mid-ride) but intense. Apparently on its most severe corners Tatsu subjects you to 4.5g forces. I'm not positive, but I think that means for the period of time you're subject to those 4.5g's you technically weigh 4.5 times your normal 1g weight. We went on Tatsu a few times and got a good photo of Zac and I screaming our heads off to go with the photo of the girls on their Sea World ride.

And now it's back to work.

From Guasti to Sea World

If you don't know where Guasti is, it's very close to the Ontario Intl. Airport, off the I-10 near the 15. The obvious way to get from Guasti to Sea World is to go south on the 15 until you hit the 8 down in San Diego, and Sea World is not too far away from there.

Click here to see the directions Google Maps gave me. Oddly enough, Yahoo Maps told me to go the same way.

As much as I like Google, I think I'll follow Mapquest's directions.

*EDIT - Guasti is no more. The Homestyle Cafe has moved, and the Winery has been torn down.

Freeway vs Surface Streets

I was heading back into downtown Los Angeles on the 110 and around the 91 the traffic started to backup. One of those large freeway signs said it would take 35 minutes to get into downtown, and sure enough, within a mile or so, traffic was stop-go, stop-go. At one point we were completely stopped for what seemed like almost a minute, meanwhile traffic in the other lanes seemed to fly past. Of course when you're stopped, even 30mph looks fast.

Around Slauson another sign said it was now 20 minutes to downtown. I looked at my watch again. Sure enough, exactly 15 minutes had elapsed since the sign proclaiming the 35-min trip into downtown.

Now I would much rather be on surface streets stopped at a red light than sitting on the freeway, stopped for no reason at all, other than the fact that someone had jammed their brakes on at that very spot, 2 hours ago, and people were still stopping there. Residual slowing/stopping they call it. You stop your car, and the car behind you is forced to come to a complete stop. You then move on but before the car behind you can move on, the car behind him is forced to stop, and the cycle repeats, and if traffic is heavy enough people can still be coming to a stop at that very spot where you hit your brakes two hours before.

So I got off at Slauson and headed north into the city, and within 15 minutes I was at City Hall gassing up my car.

20 minutes to downtown indeed. Yeah, if you want to stay on the freeway in stop-go traffic.

Of course it doesn't always work out to your advantage to get off the freeway, but as I said, I'd rather be on surface streets stopped for a red light, than going nowhere on the freeway.

Amish Paradise

Just coz we're on a Wierd Al kick ;)

Weird Al does it again

"I wanna roll with the gangstas,
but so far they all think I'm too white and nerdy."

Bat Out Of Hell

Photo by (but used without the permission) of Ron Jenkins, photographer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and can be clicked on to view a slightly larger version.
Now aside from the obvious bat to the jaw, what are a few things we can glean from this photograph?

I won't spoil it for anyone. Feel free to post your observations in the comments section.

A WoW entry

This won't be of interest to most of my readers (unless a lot of you play World of Warcraft, and maybe you do).

Last week I went on a Raid to Molten Core, a dungeon filled with some of the biggest & baddest monsters & demons in the game. Lucky I went in with 39 members of one of the baddest guilds on my server. The reason I was going was to get the Petrified Leaf, an item that only drops in MC and which begins a bloody hard quest that will eventually reward me with Rhok'delar, one of the baddest Bows in the World of Warcraft.

This is the same guild whose Onyxia Run I went on a month or two back, and which let me have one of the best helms in the game for my Hunter, as well as letting me have the Dragon Sinew that gets made into the string for the Uber Bow.

So one can get the Leaf and complete the quest, which involves killing four bad asss demons, one at a time, all on your own, and then have an Uber Bow which they can't use because they don't have the Bowstring. I'm lucky enough to have been gifted with both Leaf and Bowstring, I just need to kill the demons.

I took one down the day after I got the Leaf and began the quest, and I was surprised at how easily he went down, especially as I've seen other Hunters have the devil's own time killing this guy.

This morning I took out the second of the four demons. She wasn't as easy as the first demon. I fought her off an on during the least several days, trying different tactics, all to no avail. At one point I even sat back and let another Hunter have a go at her, only to see him take her out on his first attempt. *cry*

But this morning I was finally successful. Two down, two to go.

Out of sight

Today I saw something only a small number of people have witnessed first hand. No, that doesn't make me special. I was just in the right place at the right time :)

As I watched him over breakfast, Hermes maneuvered his own shell and one of his two new shells together, then holding on to the lip of the new shell he quickly swung across and slid into his new home. He'd already been in the new shell last night but was back in one of his old shells this morning, until he changed his mind and changed shells, again.

Both the new shells are a little larger than his two old shells, but one of the new shells is larger again than the other. He chose the smaller of the two new shells, I think he will have more fun playing with the biggest one (he does love to climb) than making use of it as a home. Maybe after he's molted one or two more times he might view the biggest shell as a home instead of a toy.

Allow me to educate you

When you meet an Australian for the first time it is not necessary for you to say "Oh, you're from Australia. Good 'ay, mayte." It is also not necessary to ask if we know your friend or relative from Sydney. Do you know my Uncle from Cleveland. No? Funny that.

G'day is pronounced as I've just typed it. Hard G, followed by Day, as in G-Day. It is not Good 'Ay. If you're not going to make the effort to pronounce it properly, don't even bother trying.

A Koala is not a bear. Like most Aussie mammals it is a marsupial. It may look like a teddy but it's still not a bear. It does not belong to the Bear family. Do not call it a Koala Bear.

An Emu is an E-Mew, not an E-Moo. Importing them doesn't give you the right to change their name. Do cats moo? Do cows mew? See the difference?

When an Aussie (oz-ee not oss-ee) attempts to correct you on the mispronunciation of an Australian word, listen to the man. Your continued mispronunciation only makes you look like a wanker.

Steve Irwin was an actor (and a bit of a galah, see Australian slang term). Most Australians do not dress, talk or act like him. In fact now that he's dead it's a good bet that no Australians act like that. Just because you see four Aussies in loud, colorful shirts dancing around singing children's songs, that doesn't mean we all do it.

Internal Body Clocks, and Golf

Liz's car is in the shop so I had to ride the bus today. Wanting to catch the early bus so I could get to work on time, I set my alarm to 4:30am, 20 minutes earlier than I'd normally get up.

This morning I woke up, rolled over, and looked at the clock; it was 4:29am.

Now this was not my usual wake-up time, and yet my internal body clock woke me just seconds before the alarm was due to go off.

* * *

At the doctor's yesterday I saw a Golf Magazine in the waiting room. A Golf Magazine in a doctor's waiting room. Wow! That's the last place you'd expect to see one.(sarcasm -off) The magazine had Kathy Ireland on the front, because it was actually Golf For Women. Although one could argue that the large number of pages with pretty women on them actually makes this a Golf Magazine for Men :P

Anyway, while looking through the Index there were quite a lot of very good articles about golf (in a Golf Magazine no less :P) that would make this magazine useful for both male and female golfers. One of the articles that wouldn't be so useful to men was the fashion section. Yup, every self-respecting women's magazine has to have a fashion section, even a golf magazine. I pointed that section out to Liz and she promptly turned to the appropriate page and started oohing over all the fashions, shoes (of course), polos, pants, etc.

Later that day, with time to kill before picking up the kids, we stopped by a large clothing discount store where Liz browsed through the shoe section. Go figure ;) She was checking out one pair of shoes and she turned them over to look at the soles. Would these be ok for golf? she asked me. I laughed and told her the soles were not suitable, we needed something with grip. If not spikes (impossible to find on regular shoes) then at least a good tread pattern.

We settled on a pair of shoes that had a nice series of bumps over the sole, but more importantly, a pair which appealed visually to Liz as well ;)

Today Liz said she's going back to find an outfit which matches her new shoes. Golf is fun, she told me :)

Tomorrow while the kids are at school we're going to the local Par 3 Course. It has a driving range as well so Liz can loosen up by hitting a few balls (& cure any headache she might have, inside joke) then we'll play around, and after that we might even play some golf :P

At least the Crocs didn't get him.

Crikey, Steve! You're a bloody idiot. But at least the Crocs didn't get ya, hey?

Let's go, Dodgers! Let's go! Clap clap clap!

JE and I went to the Dodgers vs Colorado game last night. The place was packed. Official attendance count was approx. 50,000 people. Not bad, nothing like the 100,000 or so you get at The G at an AFL game, but for a small baseball stadium it was a big crowd. The parking lot was jam packed as well. We found a spot just about as far from the Pavilion seats as you can get, without being on the other side of the stadium. After walking almost 10 minutes from our car to the stadium we then lined up to get JE a pizza, but someone mentioned they were out of pizzas, so we got him a Dodger Dog instead. The line at the concession stand was pretty long as well and by the time we got to our seats it was bottom of the 3rd and the Dodgers were scoring their first run of the game.

Top of the 4th the Rockies got 3 runs, a lead which the Dodgers promptly erased by scoring 3 runs of their own in the bottom of the 4th. The Dodgers added two more runs, one in the 6th and one in the 8th, while holding the Rockies scoreless for the remainder of the game to take the win. It was an excellent game.

Afterwards everyone traipsed down to the outfield to get a good vantage point for the Fireworks show which JE thought was fantastic. His dad liked it, too :P

I must say, if you don't leave until the end of the game, getting out of Dodger Stadium afterwards can be a nightmare. Everyone takes their own route to the exit, so you end up with at least 5 cars trying to merge into just one lane at the actual exit. Crazy. If you're not aggressive, you don't get out. I might have a little Ford Focus but I've been here a while, and while I'm normally one of the nicest, most polite guys you'll meet, when the need arises I'm one of the most aggressive drivers on the road, or in the parking lot as the case may be. So when people start being rude and think they're cutting in because I have a little car and they have an SUV, they can just get the fu...er...think again.

We got home close to midnight, JE was sound asleep. I carried him upstairs and tried to get him to wake up to pee, to tell Liz about the fireworks, nothing. Head raised for a second, but only to turn the other way and flop back down on my shoulder. I put him into bed and he was dead to the world. There wasn't even a murmered request for a story.

I wasn't far behind him, although I still logged into WoW for a bit. It's nice logging in and having 20 gold waiting for me in the mail from my in-game auctions. I'm saving up for one of the more prestigious "shinies" in WoW, the Epic Mount and I almost have enough gold for it. I killed critters for another hour or so and made another 20 gold, and before I logged I listed a few more auctions which should net me another 10 gold or so. It might seem boring and monotonous just killing mobs for hours on end, but the gold racks up, and I have a friendly guild that likes to chat a lot and most of my guild-mates are my age, married, with kids, so for me WoW is very much a social experience.

I crashed around 1:30 or so then snapped awake at 8:30. Liz made the excellent decision that we should go to Hometown Buffet for breakfast. Yummo! Now I have a tummy full of carb-heavy food, JE is with the in-laws, Amber will be napping real soon. Gonna get me a drink then dive into WoW and make some more gold. Epic Mount! Here I come!

*edit* Saturday night. I now have the gold but the Stormpike Guard don't love me. I need to kill more people, real people (in-game of course :P) to get the Stormpike to like me enough to sell me one of their Turbo Rams.