My eyes are filled with gods

Wow. No posts since August … Apparently I’m officially back in hedgeturtle mode* (which demands a mascot, yes…must work on that).

Things that have happened since my last post, in no particular order:

• We drove 2,300 gloriously winding miles to New England and back, and saw mountains and fall foliage and stayed with Will’s grandmother in a lovely Maine fishing village. Sadly, the moose avoided us. This time.
• The new school year started, and we have a temporary but thoroughly awesome marketing and communications specialist on board for the new year. If they don’t let me keep him, I will cry great tears of fury and then the revenge plotting will begin. Just you wait.
• My personal laptop had decided its screen looks FABULOUS in rainbow-colored vertical stripes, and so it keeps acquiring more. And more. And we’re quickly reaching the point at which the pretty stripes are making it sort of impossible to read/watch anything.
• A new season of MLP:FIM has begun, and I’ve not seen any of them. (See FABULOUS rainbow-colored stripes.) Yes, I could watch them on Will’s computer, but I have to wait for him to go to bed and then sit in an uncomfortable chair instead of my comfy couch-nest, and I’m sure I could probably come up with something else to whine about if you give me a minute…
• A squirrel got stuck in our family room chimney a few weeks ago. It’s still there, as the critter catchers couldn’t get to it without either removing the back furnace or the fireplace itself. So huzzah for space heaters! Boo on  contractors and critter catchers not returning calls! [Filed under: The House Is Trying to Kill Us.]
• Samhain quietly came and went. Peace to all who observed third harvest, and spent time remembering their Honored Dead. Blessings also to the Honored Dead among us. May we make you proud, and be always mindful of those who have gone before.
• We spent fourth harvest (Thanksgiving) with Will’s family. It was both delicious and entertaining, as expected. I was most impressed by the small child who clearly preferred cheese over cookies. Cheeeese. Smart kid.
• I voted in our local elections and was cheered by the staffers and saluted by a veteran for taking the time to do so. (Next time I’ll ask where the cookies/massage line starts. I bet you’d get a lot more voters…) This particular vote was important to me, because I very badly wanted to see some city council members replaced — specifically those who kept blocking gender-based anti-discrimination policies in housing, employment, public facilities, etc.
• Collaborative yoga is on hiatus because we lost our teacher and couch-nesting season makes me not want to go Out There unless I absolutely have to. Also, hedgeturtle. I rest my case.
• We discovered a sushi/boba tea shop at the southern end of downtown St. Joseph. As much as I like Sweet Moon Tea, this other place is kind of awesome — they don’t use powders, but fresh ingredients. The taro was kind of amazing. If only I could remember the name.
• Skyrim and Saints Row: The Third came out. I have mixed feelings on both games, though SR3 might warrant its own post. I’m replaying SMT: Strange Journeys on the DS. Maybe I’ll finish it this time! A girl can dream.
• We are now in the “consume ALL the things” phase of the “holiday” season. November is almost over. Seriously. When did that happen?

That is all.

This site desperately needs an overhaul. Put that on the things to do list, Ghost Assistant.

*Hedgeturtle: My antisocial side when I’m in hiding mode — a cross between a hedgehog and turtle, all prickly and withdrawn. Coined during a conversation with the lovely Erin Palette.

It waits. It watches. And then, when it thinks to catch us unaware, it pounces like an angry, stealth rhino of doom. If the angry rhino was an ice-filled gutter outside the bedroom window and, in fact, the exact opposite of stealthy.

Okay, granted, we should’ve tackled the great northern ice shelf sooner, given the winter we’ve had. But still. At least the House is lazy, too. The only thing it managed to kill (this time) was the outdoor light that overlooks the flat roof in back. I ought to teach ‘em a lesson … just you wait. I’m so gonna pummel ‘em in their sleep. I’m gonna … meh. On second that, that seems like a lot of work. Maybe I’ll just … yeah, I’ll just take a swing that convenient and inoffensive light fixture, just hanging out, minding its own business, and have a nice lie-down on the first-floor roof. Take THAT, light fixture. Oof. Snow! So comfy… Sloth wins. Again.

The gutter began its slow, agonizing decent with a loud, House-shaking crash around 1:30 AM Monday morning. It continued with a series of additional loud, House-shaking crashes throughout the rest of the night. Will, in his role as a Man of Action, used the window of doom as a doorway out to the flat roof since we’re currently ladder-deficient. He spent a good part of Monday clearing out the snow accumulation and carting icebergs off the roof while we waited for emergency roofers to come assess the damage. (Because we all know how well I cope with the possibility of water getting into the roof these days.) I helped. By that I mean I mostly handed things through the window, got in touch with the roofers, and fretted about him plummeting to his doom from an icy rooftop. Because if there’s one thing the women in my family can do, it’s fret.

The roofers (roofies? hm…on second thought…) were helpful and practical and half-spider monkey, I think, which normally would not endear them to me at all, but in this case it meant they got to climb all over the roof instead of Will. So I’m calling that a win. Also, they had some sealant with them and sealed up some tears in the rubber sheeting around one of the chimneys while they were getting their monkeyshines on. Awesome. I would totally call these guys again. And in fact, I probably will once the world thaws, since we’re now in need of a new gutter and all.

Gutter Assassin Aftermath: Sounds like an anime title, doesn't it?

Will Sweet: Man of Action, in mid-iceberg removal

We survived the weekend’s snow-dump, although Will did massive amounts of shoveling to dig us out. (Me, less so. He is my Snow Hero!)  Over the course of things, he did have to excavate his car from the main road and ended up sheltering it at his parents’ house while the snow plows did their magic, since there was no way for him to get it back to the garage. It was amazing the difference in the snow amounts between the two counties, I must say: our 2.5+” of snow to their 5 inches or so. Amateurs.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Finished the storyline of Fable III yesterday. All hail the Good Queen and whatnot. It is possible to accomplish all the “good and benevolent” options if you have a treasury bank of $10 mil or so, but the actual ending isn’t all that different. Except people don’t “boo” you when you’re walking down the streets, I guess. I’m happy to see there are more post-storyline quests available. Plus, I still have to find all the darn gnomes and keys.

I will not be commenting on the shooting over the weekend other to say I hope it functions as a wake-up call to the politicos, regardless of whether the shooting was actually politically motivated. We’ve become far too complacent with hate rhetoric and blame rather than compromise and solutions. This is not the America I wish to be.

That is all. Back to your regularly scheduled Monday.

So tired. Happy First Monday and all that.

We had delicious lasagna and garlic bread for dinner last night. Thank you, Lori and Patty (?) — it was very kind and generous of you to share with us!

I’m mostly recovered from The Plague other than that last lingering bit that refuses to let go. My boss, who says hers started the same day mine manifested, is still miserable. Perhaps the Cold-Eeze lozenges actually work? This is the first time I’ve been able to measure against someone else. Unfortunately, Will is exhibiting the signs, now, even though we were pretty sure he was in the clear after holding out for so long without so much as a sniffle. He doesn’t have the luxury of taking time off to recuperate, at the moment.

What did you do over the holidays? I coughed. And sneezed. And slept. And then when I was done with that, there were video games. The Scott Pilgrim game on X-Box Arcade is pretty hilarious. I still suck at platformers, but dang. I’m willing to practice that one as long as Will’s patience lasts. The Raskulls arcade game is also hilarious and amusing to watch, but I haven’t actually tried playing it yet. The humor is pretty meta and very much reminds me of Castle Crashers or Costume Quest. (We’ve not yet tried the new DLC expansion for CQ yet, but it looks like more of the same, except in a snowy/Christmasy landscape.)

Will convinced me to try Fable III a couple of nights ago so we could play co-op. He was running his second character — he’d already completed it with a Good Queen and is now replaying as her opposite — and I’d forgotten how entertaining his commentary is when he’s playing an “evil” character.

Mind you, I’ve watched him play II and now III and although I was interested in the storyline, I never really felt compelled to try either game for myself. Now that I have … well. This is going to be problematic. The last time I can remember staying up to play a video game until 5:30 two nights in a row was when Lowell lent me his copy of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne.  The only reason I managed to make myself go to bed at 2:30 last night was because I set an alarm.  Two alarms, in fact.

Yes. Alarms, plural. It’s been so long since I played an actual video game instead of a DS game that I’d sort of forgotten how badly I lose all connection to that natural alarm normal people have that says: “Hey, you know, I’m really tired now and I’d like to go to bed, please.” Instead, I play and play and play and at some point I decide to get a drink during a load screen, and happen to glance at the clock, and hey, it’s 4 AM. I ought to finish this task and go to bed. Oh, wait, but that’s a shiny thing … Hey, what’s that? I’ll just go take a quick look. Oooh, just a few more Hobbe kills and I’ll get an upgrade on my hammer.  Hm. Okay, just one more quest … Hey, I don’t remember exploring here yet. I bet there’s a silver key or a gnome up there …

Anyway, not so much of a problem if I’m on holiday break, but I had to go to work this morning, you see, so I very reasonably set an alarm to tell me it was 1 AM and I should stop playing and go to bed. And then I set another to tell me it was 2 AM and GO TO BED. I MEAN IT THIS TIME, DAMMIT.

After the second alarm, it still took me another half hour to drag myself to bed. And then I couldn’t get to sleep. Three 4-hour-sleep nights in a row leaves me functional but dragging. Which is a great way to start the first work week of the new year, let me tell you. Also, my hand is killing me again. It’s like I never left work!

This is one of many reasons I’m very, very glad WOW never really managed to click for me.  I probably would have played myself into an early grave.  /sigh

In other news, contractors are re-doing the plumbing for the upstairs bathroom today, and then commencing on gutting the main-floor bathroom for the remodel.  A usable shower on the main floor! No more terrible sunflower border and light switch! No more phantom window! A real ceiling! I think that’s an acceptable way to start the new year.