Aside from watching DBZ movies I also revisited some of the older selections in my DVD collection: I watched Days Of Thunder and really enjoyed myself until I realized I had a blown speaker on my TV. Dammit, I need a real sound system! I must have been on a Tom Cruise kick because the next film I dropped into the player was Top Gun. I only got partway through that movie, about 25 minutes in, before I decided I was done with movies. A lot of my time that day was spent online, even while I was watching the movies. Can you say "addict?" Sure, I knew ya could. It was cool, though, because I got to spend a lot of time hanging out and chatting with
aynjel, something I enjoy a great deal. Later in the evening I got to do some silly role-playing with another friend on FurryMUCK. I don't see her player very often, and the character is an absolute riot to hang out with online because when the mood is just right all sorts of hi jinks ensue. It was a pleasant way for me to pass a few hours. I wish I'd had the stamina to stay awake longer and get a bit more RP in, but I'm really not wired to go past 11:00 PM anymore because of the change to an earlier start in my hours at work. I require seven hours of sleep a night, no matter how bust or not-busy the day was, and there's just no way around it.Also of interesting note was that around 8:00 PM or so on Friday night my parents called. As you may recall, I have a very weird relationship with my parents. Sometimes we get along perfectly, other times we're at one another's throats. This animosity usually tends to be held between just one parent and myself, with it alternating between my father or my mother based on the topic at hand. In past months there has been a lot of sparks flying between my mother and myself for reasons I couldn't really determine, with my dad trying to mediate but not really achieving anything. Then, like magic, the whole thing cooled off and now all three of us are getting along great again. I can't really say that it's anything I did, although I would be more than happy to take credit for it. What I think happened is that my parents -- most specifically my mother -- have come to the realization that no, I am not moving "home" to Minnesota. Illinois has become my "home" now. I had to throw away all my ties to family, friend and job when I moved out here for school. It's taken me six years but I've finally reassembled my life into something I'm even moderately proud of, and I've built a base of friends -- low in number but incredible in quality, I wouldn't trade a single one of the Illinois Pack for anything -- that I'm simply in awe of. I won't tear my life asunder by giving up on them just so I can move back to my old stomping grounds and live near my family. I think when my mother finally realized that I wasn't going to move back she was finally able to get behind the idea of my buying a house and was able to see all the benefits it will have for me. My dad seemed a lot more at ease talking about the subject with me, too, going so far as to offer me the loan I mentioned before to help with my down payment. It's funny when you think about it, but all that tension and underlying anger was generated just because my parents miss me and wanted me to buy a house back in Minnesota so that I wasn't as far away as I am now. Weird, huh?
The phone call went very well, though. My mom had various tidbits of news about current events in Minnesota that I was interested in, and talked with me for some time about my plans for house hunting. Eventually the call was passed to my dad, and he and I shot the breeze for another hour or so, touching on the house topic again for a little bit. Then he asked how I was doing at my job and I laid the honest truth on him -- things haven't been so hot. He understood, and then the next half an hour was passed trading war stories about how stupid the bureaucratic system was and how similar the problems can be in the workplace between the public and private sector. Hearing that his boss at the fire station had done incredibly stupid and costly things as well helped cheer me up, even though my head still hurt that late at night.
Saturday saw me waking up once more at 730 in the morning, partly in a panic because I thought I was late for work. The moral of the story, kids, is that if you miss work on Friday you'll wake up the next day thinking it's Friday -- sort of like your own little version of Groundhog's Day. I got up, performed my morning rituals (checking LJ, synchronizing my Handspring and reading my e-mail, naturally!) and then hopped on line for a bit. I shot the breeze with
aureth, enveri and roho before I dropped offline to trot into work and pick up some paperwork I needed for Sunday's MFF meeting. The cops were out in force on Saturday morning -- one had a speed trap set up on the road immediately outside my apartment complex, another had a speed trap only a mile or two away from my workplace and there were about five troopers that I counted out on I-290. I made it to the office and back without incident, though, and when I got back home I received a call on my cell phone. Aureth was giving me a call to inform me that our planned rendezvous wouldn't be happening because some silliness had introduced delays into his travel schedule. Since I didn't have to worry about answering the door for arriving Cornwuffs I took advantage of the situation and jumped into the shower. Once I was nicely clean and shaved I shrugged into my clothes, grabbed my wallet and took the truck North towards Roho and Kestral's place. Aureth had gotten there before me so everyone was ready and eager to head over to bd's Mongolian barbeque. I absolutely adore that place, as I believe I have mentioned before. I can pepper my dish to the point that it's glowing and walk away feeling satisfied because I can get my fill. I did have two complaints about our outing this Saturday, however. For one, the guy manning the grill had a complete dearth of personality. Didn't talk to you, didn't have any energy, just sort of stood there and poked your food with his sticks. The second problem was that he sucked as a griller, and must have been a griller in training. He didn't separate the beef slices so you were left with nothing but big hunks of meat, he didn't ask how you liked your steak strips done, and he let the food sit in one spot so long that the noodles got burned no matter how much oil you'd added to the bowl. Eating noodles that had been reduced to carbon took some of the pleasure out of the experience, but this is the first time this has happened so I'm not going to get too worried about it yet.After we had gorged ourselves (I believe Aureth's exact words were "I am a bloated Mongolian tick," yet more evidence of the influence of Cthulhu prophet
chebutykin) we piled back into Roho's car and drove back to his apartment. There we set up jenwolf's PC and started to do some troubleshooting. It became rapidly evident that we would have to reload Windows 2000 on the machine because the existing install was just fucked six ways from Tuesday. Attempts to perform the reload resulted in frustration and pain, which was alleviated through game after game of Bloody Roar 3 on Roho's PS2. I'm beginning to get a little better at it, much to my surprise. While we were playing games and battling PC evil Aureth decided he needed to leave so as to continue his SMOFing with various cool folks who were visiting for the weekend. Once he'd slipped out I went back to battling the PC and finally reached a breakthrough -- not only is heat a problem for this machine, it also had a bum memory chip. We pulled the card out, tried doing the load again and huzzah, things started working! I was rather pleased by finding at least one of the root causes of this mysterious failure. The load was slow and painful, though, so we eventually decided to just let it do its thing and drop in a movie. Roho had rented Léon (also billed as "The Professional" in the States) from Blockbuster. I'd never seen this movie before. I think it was very well executed, and it possessed a certain unsettling quality that mixed well with the plot twists they through in. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised, though, since this was directed by the same man who directed The Fifth Element. The bad news in all this is that I now have Yet Another Film to add to the "wish list" for my DVD collection.Once the movie was over Roho and I proceeded to go right back into the gaming mode and whipped up on one another some more in Bloody Roar 3. I played the hell out of that game and started to get fairly comfortable with a couple of the characters it contains. It is a bit unsettling for me, though, to discover that I play the cute little anime cat girl "Nuriko" (described as the "half-beast" in the game) so well. Why can't I play really well as somebody fearsome like Long or Stun? No, I have to play the cute innocent little girl who happens to grow ears, paws and a tail when she morphs. Still more disturbing is that I kicked some ass with Alice, the rabbit, as well. Alice wears the obligatory Japanese nurse outfit. Help me.
Boozing and gaming went for some time, and eventually Jen's machine was restored to a minimal level of functionality. It has a few of the base programs that she needs installed on it, and seems to be much more stable now. I know for a fact it's definitely faster, but a complete reload of Windows can do that for nearly any system. Around 11:00 PM or so I bid the cheetah and fennec a good night, packed up the electronics in my truck and drove home. When I arrived home I hopped online, said goodnight to everyone and then promptly fell face-first into bed.
Today is MFF meeting day. I've got a small presentation to make which should provide good news to the con chair, the head of registration as well as the art show lead. The rest of it I will probably not participate in, though I do plan to keep an ear open just in case.
Tomorrow I go back to work. Why is it these three day vacations are just never long enough?
Now I ain't saying it's right, or it's wrong
