1. Level 28 Night Elf Priest. Finished the next few level of Raene's Cleansing, dinging 29 in the process. I spent my Talent point on the third level of whatever I'd done the two before; it was a three-level talent. I also finished Tower of Althalaxx up to the last one and Stalvan up to the last one.
2. Got my Pogo badges to 60%.
3. Watched TV. The only thing I remember is a car episode of Big Ideas for a Small Planet. Wait; we watched Gore on Letterman.
4. Got about 25% of the way done with Reading Judas, next month's Book Group book. I thought I might have to make copies from the other book, but this one includes a translation, so that's all good.
5. Played a little Age of Mythology.
6. I have so many things I need to be doing, and I just haven't been very motivated to do them, so I decided I'd set up a list like the informal one I already run through in my head here; this will make me somewhat accountable.
7. We need to finish Volumes Three and Four or this transcript for my Co-Vivant's mother. I've done about half of Three, and we don't have Four yet, but we just aren't getting things done.
8. This is the month for my Health Insurance Open Enrollment, and I need to take a look at the many envelopes of crap I've been getting to see if I want to change anything. There's also a survey I have to take; doing so halves my deductible and doubles my dental coverage.
9. I need to get my online 100 set up for the summer term, which starts in about ten days.
10. I need to get my 102 mapped out for the summer term, which starts in about ten days.
11. I need to get my online business going; best case scenario is that it's up and running by July 21.
12. I need to get my 101 set up for the fall; we're changing software versions, so I need to have it sketched out a little ahead of time so it can just be a straight conversion.
13. I need to write the Arthur I'm going to teach in the fall. I haven't written it yet, and again, I have to have it sketched out so it's a straight conversion.
14. I checked the BigFishGame games; last night was poker, and tonight's yet another three-matchy. Life's too short to play three-matchies unless there's something extraordinary going on.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
5/24: What I Accomplished Today
1. Did 75 pages of transcript Volume 3; that's about half.
2. Worked a little on level 28 Night Elf Priest; she did War Banners and Bazil Thredd.
3. Got Pogo badges to 40%.
4. Watched some forgettable comedy on TV.
5. I've tried to work on my new online business or my summer courses, but I don't have that sort of focus. I don't have much focus at all today, so you get six lines of text.
2. Worked a little on level 28 Night Elf Priest; she did War Banners and Bazil Thredd.
3. Got Pogo badges to 40%.
4. Watched some forgettable comedy on TV.
5. I've tried to work on my new online business or my summer courses, but I don't have that sort of focus. I don't have much focus at all today, so you get six lines of text.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
5/23: What I Accomplished Today
Have you ever had a day sort of dovetail and have a theme?
1. I graduated from high school 25 years ago today.
2. Went to Literary Society. The author of The Bill from my Father spoke today; it was a fun book, in an odd way, and he was an excellent speaker.
Since his book was a memoir, both his talk, and my colleague's introduction to it, tended to focus on various aspects of memory. He was asked how he had such specific memories, and he mentioned that this book was published within two weeks of the James Frey incident breaking on Oprah. For example, in a conversation, you may specifically remember that two conversational points were touched on, but they don't flow together, so you might have to generate the conversation between them.
He said he didn't always know if things happened with just exactly the same details that he remembered them as having, or in exactly the same chronology, or maybe with precisely the same causal chain. He was able to "remember" them into a sequence that made logical sense and satisfied him as being true to all the people involved. Is it the actual, precise "factual" sequence? Quien sabe.
Warner Bros. has optioned his book, and in the current version of the screenplay (which may of course change a gamillion times before it's made, if it's made), he's a young blond Gentile heterosexual. And this caused him to wonder: how much of his actual story, or the parts of the story that he considered central or important to himself, would actually be left?
Of course, these are just my recollections of his talk.
3. I came home and ran character #7 through the Children's Week quest sequence. The tailor made a few more Small Silk Packs.
4. My Co-Vivant's visiting uncle left this morning, but another family friend came in from out of town to spend some time with the visiting aunt, so the bunch of us (mother-in-law and visiting aunt, family friend and husband, the Fellas, Co-Vivant's sister and sister's husband, Co-Vivant, and me) had a delightful dinner together. We laughed a lot, and it was really fun.
Some interesting conversations came up. Many friends and relatives have lived with my Co-Vivant's family, some for a few weeks, some for months, some for years, over the 50 years the family has lived in town, and this family friend is among that number; as nearly as I can tell, her parents moved to California when she was a teenager, and she wanted to finish school in town with her friends. (I could have that way off, but of course, I wasn't here.) Anyway, this friend once had tickets to go to a Beatle's concert and offered to take my Co-vivant, who was six years younger than she. Despite her assurances she would look out for Co-vivant, Co-vivant's mother decided that the family friend could go to the concert, but my Co-vivant could not.
The interesting part of that conversation is no one could agree on which concert this was. Was it during the Beatle's first American tour in 1964? If so, Family Friend would have been 13, and Co-Vivant would have been seven. Would it have been a later tour, perhaps in '68 or '69? The latter would have had Family Friend at 18 and Co-Vivant at 12; a more likely scenario, since Family Friend was probably driving. (Just for the record, I'm with my mother-in-law on this; I think 12 is too young for a Beatles' concert. Yes, I am a Beatles' fan. Yes, I understand Beatlemania. I just think 12 is too young. Not that anybody asked.)
Another story that comes up (it always does) is the time when my Co-Vivant's sister fell into the pool when she was about two or three. What happened next varies from person to person. According to family lore, some neighbor named Carol Ann rescued the toddler. According to my Co-Vivant, she, my co-vivant, looked down into the pool (if the sister was two, Co-Vivant would have been eight), saw her sitting at the bottom looking up with enormous eyes, and dived in and got her sister from the bottom of the pool, handing her out of the pool to Carol Ann. She has always been a little (I'm understating) resentful that Carol Ann gets to be the hero of the piece when, from her perspective, Carol Ann was a peripheral figure at best. Now to her brother and sister, this is just another example of their self-involved older sister trying to steal focus and be the hero yet again.
Possible. I think it's a little more complex than that, though.
Let me make what will seem to be a digression, but I don't think it is. A few months ago, my Co-Vivant watched a documentary on the nature of memory. I have two memories that, if they are true, are extraordinarily early recollections, and she asked me to recount them to her again. "In one," I said, "my father had just come in; he hadn't been there for awhile. He had done the right thing and married my mother, but then when I came along, he had a moment of panic; he was a 19-year-old married man, and he wasn't convinced he was done dating, so he left and did some more. Anyway, he was over visiting one night, and he was throwing me in the air and catching me, and I was enjoying it. My mother came into the room and saw this and started panicking. 'Oh, put her down! You're scaring her!' And I remember thinking, 'Oh, Mom, this is fun; leave him alone. I don't want this to stop.'"
"And the other one?"
"I had gotten a little red playsuit for Christmas, like a tiny little Santa Suit, and my mother wanted to take a picture of me in it, so she dressed me in it; there was a hat and everything. However, I didn't sit up very well; one grandfather started calling me 'Eggbutt' because I couldn't sit up for quite awhile, and my grandmother didn't like that, so that grandfather called me "Eggie" until the day he died. Anyway, she'd sit me up and go across the trailer to take my picture, but by the time she was across the room, I'd have tipped over. The first few times, I thought this was funny, but eventually the suit got itchy, and the hat felt weird because I didn't usually have things on my head, and the trailer was hot, and I got a little fussy, so she finally just set some pillows around me so I could stay up and she could take the picture. She didn't like that, because she had wanted me in the green easy chair so she had Christmas colors and the pillows weren't the right color, but she needed them so I wouldn't tip over."
"How old were you?"
"I've seen the picture she took, and I'm about four months old. The other incident would have been a little earlier."
"And when you remember these, what do you see? Where are you in the memory?"
"Erm...I'm in my head, where I live, of course. I'm looking out as me." What a very odd question, I thought.
"So you don't see yourself in the memory?"
"Well, no, how can I see myself? I'm part of it." And according to the show she watched, this means that my memories may be real and not imagined.
She and I have discussed it, and for the sister-in-the-pool story, she doesn't see herself; she sees out as herself. Point of view is often revealing.
When she was little, my Co-Vivant's family had a cleaning lady who was black, and my Co-Vivant remembered asking her why her skin was different when she was three or four or five. The cleaning lady said it was like flowers, and God must like many different colors to make things beautiful. When my mother-in-law tells the story, it's not my Co-Vivant; it's her brother. My Co-Vivant doesn't say anything, however; there's not much point.
My late father-in-law had a strong, unhidden preference for my Co-Vivant. My mother-in-law has a preference she attempts to hide for her son. The three children's late grandmother had a strong, unhidden preference for my Co-Vivant's sister (my mother-in-law announced she was pregnant within a week of the death of this grandmother's youngest son, who seems to have seen the baby as a sort of replacement). Which child did which cute thing often depended on which person you were talking to. In the spring and summer of their childhoods, this worked out okay; neither parent wanted to be blatant in their preferential treatment (which may not always have been conscious), so the three children tended to be treated more or less equally. However, after the third baby was born, the grandmother started wintering with the family. The grandmother had no such compunction; the baby was her special baby, and she would have anything she wanted. Detente was breached; neither parent was going to go against the grandmother, so each of their own pets was at the mercy of the grandmother's.
My Co-Vivant is very conflicted in her memories of this grandmother; on the one hand, this is her grandmother, and she knows she should feel affection for her. On the other hand, this grandmother never had much time for her, spending all her time bonding with her sister, who was quite loud and embarrassing. When the grandmother was in town, the bedroom that had been hers was given over to the grandmother and the baby sister. The grandmother also tended to arrive the week of Co-Vivant's birthday, stealing her thunder. At least one year (it's hard to tell if it was one or more than one; memories are slippery things), it was a week before anyone realized there had been no acknowledgment of Co-Vivant's birthday in the hubbub of Grandma's arrival. We're talking a seven- or eight-year-old little girl whose birthday was forgotten for a week. I find that unfathomable.
My Co-Vivant has "normal" (whatever that means) memory patterns until she's about six; after her sister is born, she loses contiguous memory and has only a snippet here and there. Because she has so few snippets, I tend to believe that the few memories she relays are, in fact, hers. Is that factually the case? Quien sabe.
Another incident came up in which her brother had been utterly humiliated as a teenager. She had leapt to his defense fiercely and told off the jerk who had done it. However, he didn't want to remember this particular incident and was trying to minimize its effect on him (or at least change the subject). She said, "Oh, no, you cried all the way home." He really, really hadn't wanted to be reminded of the whole incident at all or of his response. It was hard to tell if he really hadn't remembered what had happened or if he remembered what had happened and hadn't wanted to go there.
While the visiting uncle was in town, he mentioned having to pay the poll tax when he lived here (he was one of the never-ending list of people who had lived with the family for awhile). My mother-in-law said, "Oh, don't be silly; Nevada never had a poll tax."
My Co-Vivant said, "Actually, while I was going through the records a few years ago, I found receipts labeled 'Poll Tax'; neither you or Dad knew what they were for at the time, but I'll bet that's what they were."
Her brother told a story tonight about packing a suitcase full of books as a little boy and running away from home; he walked around the block and then came back home. "That was me!" she yelled. Now that's not an uncommon occurrence; I did that, too, and I was 2500 miles away at the time (I also did it several years later, as I was younger), so I mentioned that that could have happened to both children (and it probably did). It looked odd to her brother and sister, though, I'm sure; yet another instance, in their minds, of her trying to highjack their memories, while from her perspective, she was just trying to protect one of the few she knew she had.
When I was in high school, I had a sweater, and my mother, sister, and I used to argue about what color it was. I may be misremembering who called it what, but I think I called the sweater "rose," my sister called it "orange," and my mother called it "peach." Now those are distinct, not-usually-confusable colors. I've often wondered: were we all seeing the same color and labeling it differently, or did we actually see the same sweater as different colors? If we had gone to the Sherwin Williams store and gotten sample cards, would we have disagreed which color most matched the sweater, or would we have agreed, but two of us would feel that color was mislabeled?
Whenever I try to evaluate the truth value of statements like that, I find myself thinking about a statistic I read somewhere as a child: every time we inhale, we breathe in millions of molecules Michelangelo would have breathed. Now statistically, I understand the implications here. There are X molecules constituting the atmosphere, and some percentage of X would have been breathed by Michelangelo. Statistically, however, there's no way to tell whether a particular molecule was ever respired by ole Mickey. It's entirely possible that, factually, you may have one breath in which not a single molecule spent the Renaissance in Italy, while maybe one breath you take over the course of your lifetime will be composed entirely of molecules Michelangelo would have breathed. No way of knowing. Can't know the statistics for a particular breath, can't know the statistics for a particular molecule. Heisenberg's uncertainty principal: if we attempt to measure it, the act of measuring itself affects the outcome. There's absolutely no way to know the facts: did my Co-Vivant pull her sister from the pool? Did both my Co-Vivant and her brother run away from home? Because every person available to give data has a filter, acknowledged or no, "objectivity" isn't possible. (I used to think that was what God was going to do when we died, give us the statistics on how often our memories were right, and the people who had the best percentages could go to heaven because they were obviously the most honest. I'm fairly sure I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again: no one is more obsessed with justice and "fairness" than children ages five to eight. Now I rather suspect that "Supreme Being of the Universe" and "Eternal Scorekeeper" are different job descriptions.)
I'm with Eliot here: these fragments I have shorn against my ruin.
5. I was just exhausted, so I went to bed not long after we got home. However, about an hour later, my body informed me it was time to get up. I ran character #8 through the Children's Week quest cycle. Today's BigFishGame is Recyclorama; not bad, but probably not a keeper. Another sorter.
6. Now I will try to go back to sleep.
1. I graduated from high school 25 years ago today.
2. Went to Literary Society. The author of The Bill from my Father spoke today; it was a fun book, in an odd way, and he was an excellent speaker.
Since his book was a memoir, both his talk, and my colleague's introduction to it, tended to focus on various aspects of memory. He was asked how he had such specific memories, and he mentioned that this book was published within two weeks of the James Frey incident breaking on Oprah. For example, in a conversation, you may specifically remember that two conversational points were touched on, but they don't flow together, so you might have to generate the conversation between them.
He said he didn't always know if things happened with just exactly the same details that he remembered them as having, or in exactly the same chronology, or maybe with precisely the same causal chain. He was able to "remember" them into a sequence that made logical sense and satisfied him as being true to all the people involved. Is it the actual, precise "factual" sequence? Quien sabe.
Warner Bros. has optioned his book, and in the current version of the screenplay (which may of course change a gamillion times before it's made, if it's made), he's a young blond Gentile heterosexual. And this caused him to wonder: how much of his actual story, or the parts of the story that he considered central or important to himself, would actually be left?
Of course, these are just my recollections of his talk.
3. I came home and ran character #7 through the Children's Week quest sequence. The tailor made a few more Small Silk Packs.
4. My Co-Vivant's visiting uncle left this morning, but another family friend came in from out of town to spend some time with the visiting aunt, so the bunch of us (mother-in-law and visiting aunt, family friend and husband, the Fellas, Co-Vivant's sister and sister's husband, Co-Vivant, and me) had a delightful dinner together. We laughed a lot, and it was really fun.
Some interesting conversations came up. Many friends and relatives have lived with my Co-Vivant's family, some for a few weeks, some for months, some for years, over the 50 years the family has lived in town, and this family friend is among that number; as nearly as I can tell, her parents moved to California when she was a teenager, and she wanted to finish school in town with her friends. (I could have that way off, but of course, I wasn't here.) Anyway, this friend once had tickets to go to a Beatle's concert and offered to take my Co-vivant, who was six years younger than she. Despite her assurances she would look out for Co-vivant, Co-vivant's mother decided that the family friend could go to the concert, but my Co-vivant could not.
The interesting part of that conversation is no one could agree on which concert this was. Was it during the Beatle's first American tour in 1964? If so, Family Friend would have been 13, and Co-Vivant would have been seven. Would it have been a later tour, perhaps in '68 or '69? The latter would have had Family Friend at 18 and Co-Vivant at 12; a more likely scenario, since Family Friend was probably driving. (Just for the record, I'm with my mother-in-law on this; I think 12 is too young for a Beatles' concert. Yes, I am a Beatles' fan. Yes, I understand Beatlemania. I just think 12 is too young. Not that anybody asked.)
Another story that comes up (it always does) is the time when my Co-Vivant's sister fell into the pool when she was about two or three. What happened next varies from person to person. According to family lore, some neighbor named Carol Ann rescued the toddler. According to my Co-Vivant, she, my co-vivant, looked down into the pool (if the sister was two, Co-Vivant would have been eight), saw her sitting at the bottom looking up with enormous eyes, and dived in and got her sister from the bottom of the pool, handing her out of the pool to Carol Ann. She has always been a little (I'm understating) resentful that Carol Ann gets to be the hero of the piece when, from her perspective, Carol Ann was a peripheral figure at best. Now to her brother and sister, this is just another example of their self-involved older sister trying to steal focus and be the hero yet again.
Possible. I think it's a little more complex than that, though.
Let me make what will seem to be a digression, but I don't think it is. A few months ago, my Co-Vivant watched a documentary on the nature of memory. I have two memories that, if they are true, are extraordinarily early recollections, and she asked me to recount them to her again. "In one," I said, "my father had just come in; he hadn't been there for awhile. He had done the right thing and married my mother, but then when I came along, he had a moment of panic; he was a 19-year-old married man, and he wasn't convinced he was done dating, so he left and did some more. Anyway, he was over visiting one night, and he was throwing me in the air and catching me, and I was enjoying it. My mother came into the room and saw this and started panicking. 'Oh, put her down! You're scaring her!' And I remember thinking, 'Oh, Mom, this is fun; leave him alone. I don't want this to stop.'"
"And the other one?"
"I had gotten a little red playsuit for Christmas, like a tiny little Santa Suit, and my mother wanted to take a picture of me in it, so she dressed me in it; there was a hat and everything. However, I didn't sit up very well; one grandfather started calling me 'Eggbutt' because I couldn't sit up for quite awhile, and my grandmother didn't like that, so that grandfather called me "Eggie" until the day he died. Anyway, she'd sit me up and go across the trailer to take my picture, but by the time she was across the room, I'd have tipped over. The first few times, I thought this was funny, but eventually the suit got itchy, and the hat felt weird because I didn't usually have things on my head, and the trailer was hot, and I got a little fussy, so she finally just set some pillows around me so I could stay up and she could take the picture. She didn't like that, because she had wanted me in the green easy chair so she had Christmas colors and the pillows weren't the right color, but she needed them so I wouldn't tip over."
"How old were you?"
"I've seen the picture she took, and I'm about four months old. The other incident would have been a little earlier."
"And when you remember these, what do you see? Where are you in the memory?"
"Erm...I'm in my head, where I live, of course. I'm looking out as me." What a very odd question, I thought.
"So you don't see yourself in the memory?"
"Well, no, how can I see myself? I'm part of it." And according to the show she watched, this means that my memories may be real and not imagined.
She and I have discussed it, and for the sister-in-the-pool story, she doesn't see herself; she sees out as herself. Point of view is often revealing.
When she was little, my Co-Vivant's family had a cleaning lady who was black, and my Co-Vivant remembered asking her why her skin was different when she was three or four or five. The cleaning lady said it was like flowers, and God must like many different colors to make things beautiful. When my mother-in-law tells the story, it's not my Co-Vivant; it's her brother. My Co-Vivant doesn't say anything, however; there's not much point.
My late father-in-law had a strong, unhidden preference for my Co-Vivant. My mother-in-law has a preference she attempts to hide for her son. The three children's late grandmother had a strong, unhidden preference for my Co-Vivant's sister (my mother-in-law announced she was pregnant within a week of the death of this grandmother's youngest son, who seems to have seen the baby as a sort of replacement). Which child did which cute thing often depended on which person you were talking to. In the spring and summer of their childhoods, this worked out okay; neither parent wanted to be blatant in their preferential treatment (which may not always have been conscious), so the three children tended to be treated more or less equally. However, after the third baby was born, the grandmother started wintering with the family. The grandmother had no such compunction; the baby was her special baby, and she would have anything she wanted. Detente was breached; neither parent was going to go against the grandmother, so each of their own pets was at the mercy of the grandmother's.
My Co-Vivant is very conflicted in her memories of this grandmother; on the one hand, this is her grandmother, and she knows she should feel affection for her. On the other hand, this grandmother never had much time for her, spending all her time bonding with her sister, who was quite loud and embarrassing. When the grandmother was in town, the bedroom that had been hers was given over to the grandmother and the baby sister. The grandmother also tended to arrive the week of Co-Vivant's birthday, stealing her thunder. At least one year (it's hard to tell if it was one or more than one; memories are slippery things), it was a week before anyone realized there had been no acknowledgment of Co-Vivant's birthday in the hubbub of Grandma's arrival. We're talking a seven- or eight-year-old little girl whose birthday was forgotten for a week. I find that unfathomable.
My Co-Vivant has "normal" (whatever that means) memory patterns until she's about six; after her sister is born, she loses contiguous memory and has only a snippet here and there. Because she has so few snippets, I tend to believe that the few memories she relays are, in fact, hers. Is that factually the case? Quien sabe.
Another incident came up in which her brother had been utterly humiliated as a teenager. She had leapt to his defense fiercely and told off the jerk who had done it. However, he didn't want to remember this particular incident and was trying to minimize its effect on him (or at least change the subject). She said, "Oh, no, you cried all the way home." He really, really hadn't wanted to be reminded of the whole incident at all or of his response. It was hard to tell if he really hadn't remembered what had happened or if he remembered what had happened and hadn't wanted to go there.
While the visiting uncle was in town, he mentioned having to pay the poll tax when he lived here (he was one of the never-ending list of people who had lived with the family for awhile). My mother-in-law said, "Oh, don't be silly; Nevada never had a poll tax."
My Co-Vivant said, "Actually, while I was going through the records a few years ago, I found receipts labeled 'Poll Tax'; neither you or Dad knew what they were for at the time, but I'll bet that's what they were."
Her brother told a story tonight about packing a suitcase full of books as a little boy and running away from home; he walked around the block and then came back home. "That was me!" she yelled. Now that's not an uncommon occurrence; I did that, too, and I was 2500 miles away at the time (I also did it several years later, as I was younger), so I mentioned that that could have happened to both children (and it probably did). It looked odd to her brother and sister, though, I'm sure; yet another instance, in their minds, of her trying to highjack their memories, while from her perspective, she was just trying to protect one of the few she knew she had.
When I was in high school, I had a sweater, and my mother, sister, and I used to argue about what color it was. I may be misremembering who called it what, but I think I called the sweater "rose," my sister called it "orange," and my mother called it "peach." Now those are distinct, not-usually-confusable colors. I've often wondered: were we all seeing the same color and labeling it differently, or did we actually see the same sweater as different colors? If we had gone to the Sherwin Williams store and gotten sample cards, would we have disagreed which color most matched the sweater, or would we have agreed, but two of us would feel that color was mislabeled?
Whenever I try to evaluate the truth value of statements like that, I find myself thinking about a statistic I read somewhere as a child: every time we inhale, we breathe in millions of molecules Michelangelo would have breathed. Now statistically, I understand the implications here. There are X molecules constituting the atmosphere, and some percentage of X would have been breathed by Michelangelo. Statistically, however, there's no way to tell whether a particular molecule was ever respired by ole Mickey. It's entirely possible that, factually, you may have one breath in which not a single molecule spent the Renaissance in Italy, while maybe one breath you take over the course of your lifetime will be composed entirely of molecules Michelangelo would have breathed. No way of knowing. Can't know the statistics for a particular breath, can't know the statistics for a particular molecule. Heisenberg's uncertainty principal: if we attempt to measure it, the act of measuring itself affects the outcome. There's absolutely no way to know the facts: did my Co-Vivant pull her sister from the pool? Did both my Co-Vivant and her brother run away from home? Because every person available to give data has a filter, acknowledged or no, "objectivity" isn't possible. (I used to think that was what God was going to do when we died, give us the statistics on how often our memories were right, and the people who had the best percentages could go to heaven because they were obviously the most honest. I'm fairly sure I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again: no one is more obsessed with justice and "fairness" than children ages five to eight. Now I rather suspect that "Supreme Being of the Universe" and "Eternal Scorekeeper" are different job descriptions.)
I'm with Eliot here: these fragments I have shorn against my ruin.
5. I was just exhausted, so I went to bed not long after we got home. However, about an hour later, my body informed me it was time to get up. I ran character #8 through the Children's Week quest cycle. Today's BigFishGame is Recyclorama; not bad, but probably not a keeper. Another sorter.
6. Now I will try to go back to sleep.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
5/22: What I Accomplished Today
1. I did about 75 pages of transcript, and my Co-Vivant finished it up; we got Volume Two done. We need to finish volumes three and four yet this week; three is on our dining room table, and we don't have four yet.
2. Today was World of Warcraft patch 2.1 day! That meant Children's Week started, and I ran six of my characters through the quest sequence. It takes about an hour, but you end up with a few thousand experience points, a lot of reputation, and five gold. (Yeah, we're supposed to take one of the cute little pets, but most of my characters don't really have inventory slots open for items that are precious but useless, so today, I made 30 gold.) I'm also having my tailor make silk bags for everyone, so I'm in the process of getting everyone up to 10-slot bags.
3. There's a new Pogo premium badge book. Had to buy that and work on some of the badges.
4. Watched Sopranos. Two more episodes to go.
5. In today's mail came Reading Judas along with The Nag Hammadi Scriptures. In the latter, I read the Gospel of Judas, and now I've started Reading Judas, next month's book group selection. I'll set Paul down for a little bit.
6. Did some work getting my online 100 ready for summer term.
7. Ordered my football tickets through my Alumni Association. I'm a life member of my Alumni Association; I did that while I was still in grad school so I'd have library access. I haven't ended up needing the library, though; the primary thing my life membership is now used for is the football tickets, which my sister and brother-in-law use. (I've been a life member for over 20 years; apparently, my seats are pretty good.)
I also filled out the form for my dba and registered the domain. I checked the website; since the product is virtual and not tangible, I will not have to charge sales tax. I will, however, need a state and local license as well as a merchant account.
2. Today was World of Warcraft patch 2.1 day! That meant Children's Week started, and I ran six of my characters through the quest sequence. It takes about an hour, but you end up with a few thousand experience points, a lot of reputation, and five gold. (Yeah, we're supposed to take one of the cute little pets, but most of my characters don't really have inventory slots open for items that are precious but useless, so today, I made 30 gold.) I'm also having my tailor make silk bags for everyone, so I'm in the process of getting everyone up to 10-slot bags.
3. There's a new Pogo premium badge book. Had to buy that and work on some of the badges.
4. Watched Sopranos. Two more episodes to go.
5. In today's mail came Reading Judas along with The Nag Hammadi Scriptures. In the latter, I read the Gospel of Judas, and now I've started Reading Judas, next month's book group selection. I'll set Paul down for a little bit.
6. Did some work getting my online 100 ready for summer term.
7. Ordered my football tickets through my Alumni Association. I'm a life member of my Alumni Association; I did that while I was still in grad school so I'd have library access. I haven't ended up needing the library, though; the primary thing my life membership is now used for is the football tickets, which my sister and brother-in-law use. (I've been a life member for over 20 years; apparently, my seats are pretty good.)
I also filled out the form for my dba and registered the domain. I checked the website; since the product is virtual and not tangible, I will not have to charge sales tax. I will, however, need a state and local license as well as a merchant account.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
5/21: What I Accomplished Today
1. I'm not sure what happened to the dating. I'm just wrapping up the 21st here.
2. Made corrections on 50 pages of transcript.
3. Mother-in-law and her visiting sister were joined by another brother (the fourth living sister wasn't able to come, which is a shame), so we went over there this evening for dinner. I hadn't met this uncle yet, so that was fun.
4. Watched forgettable comedy and a few episodes of Mad About You.
5. Worked on premium Pogo badges.
6. Level 27 Night Elf Priest. FInished Lost Chalice and Shameful Waste. Went to work on the Bloodfuries and dinged 28; spent my talent point on Improved Healing, Level 2. Turned in Wounded Ancients and accepted the quest from Gaxim to talk to somebody in Ironforge. Went
to Darnassus the train and do Auction-Housy things.Finished Reclaimed the Charred Vale and took the next step, which involved going through Thousand Needles to Feralas, and I hadn't done either of those regions before. I picked up the Thalsamar Flight Path and turned in the second part of Reclaiming the Charred Vale.
7. Played Nanny Mania, finishing the Mommy levels. Sure enough, after her 50 levels, Daddy gets a turn--but without Daddy's irritating muddy feet and dresser mess-ups. True, you get less time, but it's still a much easier game. The mommy doesn't even go back to taking her dumb baths you have to clean up.
8. The BigFishGames for the last two nights have been three-matchies, and the one for today looks like an uninspired adventure game, so I haven't played those.
9. Made a To-Do list. I'm good with a To-Do list, and I know I have several little fiddly things I need to accomplish.
2. Made corrections on 50 pages of transcript.
3. Mother-in-law and her visiting sister were joined by another brother (the fourth living sister wasn't able to come, which is a shame), so we went over there this evening for dinner. I hadn't met this uncle yet, so that was fun.
4. Watched forgettable comedy and a few episodes of Mad About You.
5. Worked on premium Pogo badges.
6. Level 27 Night Elf Priest. FInished Lost Chalice and Shameful Waste. Went to work on the Bloodfuries and dinged 28; spent my talent point on Improved Healing, Level 2. Turned in Wounded Ancients and accepted the quest from Gaxim to talk to somebody in Ironforge. Went
to Darnassus the train and do Auction-Housy things.Finished Reclaimed the Charred Vale and took the next step, which involved going through Thousand Needles to Feralas, and I hadn't done either of those regions before. I picked up the Thalsamar Flight Path and turned in the second part of Reclaiming the Charred Vale.
7. Played Nanny Mania, finishing the Mommy levels. Sure enough, after her 50 levels, Daddy gets a turn--but without Daddy's irritating muddy feet and dresser mess-ups. True, you get less time, but it's still a much easier game. The mommy doesn't even go back to taking her dumb baths you have to clean up.
8. The BigFishGames for the last two nights have been three-matchies, and the one for today looks like an uninspired adventure game, so I haven't played those.
9. Made a To-Do list. I'm good with a To-Do list, and I know I have several little fiddly things I need to accomplish.
Monday, May 21, 2007
5/20 What I Accomplished Today
1. We won Puzzle Day today.
2. Puzzle Day messes up my sleeping schedule, so I took a nap.
3. When I got up, I helped my Co-Vivant work on her mother's transcript. We finished Volume One, which is what she wanted to submit tomorrow. We'll have to do Volumes Two, Three, and Four this week as well.
4. Reading. I've been whittling away at Paul; slow going, but I'm doing it. Yesterday, I also read The Nation, several issues of Wired, and Entertainment Weekly. Today, I read the last two issues of The Week. I hadn't known either Wally Schirra or Tom Poston had died, so that was sad.
5. We watched the Masterpiece Theater version of Wind in the Willows; it's really hard to mess this material up, and this was a charming production. Matt Lucas, whom we know from Little Britain, did a marvelous Toad. Good, clean, silly fun. (I mentioned that this was the basis for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland, and my Co-Vivant said afterwards, "You know, that helps that ride make some sense.") Now Masterpiece Theater is rerunning Bleak House. I like Bleak House (it's the only major work of literature featuring a spontaneous combustion), but we just saw it last year, and my Co-Vivant thought it a dreadful bore; while it had some humorous bits, it was a little broody. (Yes, of course Dickens is broody, but he's also funny, and this production didn't have nearly enough of that for my taste.)
We watched two other things. Bill Maher (well, the monologue and New Rules). We watched something else, but I don't remember what it was. We also watched some Mad About You.
6. I finished the week's Pogo Badges and a premium badge.
7. Level 27 Night Elf Priest. Finally, finally, finally found the right pass so I could finish the Tower of Althalaxx (level 24 quest). After that, I finished and turned in the Treant levels of Raene's Cleansing. I finished Agents of Destruction and got the Warsong Gulch wood, and I took Howling Vale, Destroy the Legion, and Vile Satyr. I stayed in Forest Song so tomorrow I can start with the satyr wood and Lost Chalice.
8. I've also been playing Nanny Mania. I've finished all 50 levels as the nanny; when you finish those, you choose the next available character, who is the mother. Now the mother levels are easier than the nanny levels, I think, because you don't have the dumb mother taking so many dumb baths, which saves times. Early indications are the third character, whom I haven't unlocked yet, will be the father. This game would be a dream without that hoser mucking up my living room with his muddy feet and messing up everything in the dresser. I don't think I'm familiar with a game that gets easier and easier.
2. Puzzle Day messes up my sleeping schedule, so I took a nap.
3. When I got up, I helped my Co-Vivant work on her mother's transcript. We finished Volume One, which is what she wanted to submit tomorrow. We'll have to do Volumes Two, Three, and Four this week as well.
4. Reading. I've been whittling away at Paul; slow going, but I'm doing it. Yesterday, I also read The Nation, several issues of Wired, and Entertainment Weekly. Today, I read the last two issues of The Week. I hadn't known either Wally Schirra or Tom Poston had died, so that was sad.
5. We watched the Masterpiece Theater version of Wind in the Willows; it's really hard to mess this material up, and this was a charming production. Matt Lucas, whom we know from Little Britain, did a marvelous Toad. Good, clean, silly fun. (I mentioned that this was the basis for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland, and my Co-Vivant said afterwards, "You know, that helps that ride make some sense.") Now Masterpiece Theater is rerunning Bleak House. I like Bleak House (it's the only major work of literature featuring a spontaneous combustion), but we just saw it last year, and my Co-Vivant thought it a dreadful bore; while it had some humorous bits, it was a little broody. (Yes, of course Dickens is broody, but he's also funny, and this production didn't have nearly enough of that for my taste.)
We watched two other things. Bill Maher (well, the monologue and New Rules). We watched something else, but I don't remember what it was. We also watched some Mad About You.
6. I finished the week's Pogo Badges and a premium badge.
7. Level 27 Night Elf Priest. Finally, finally, finally found the right pass so I could finish the Tower of Althalaxx (level 24 quest). After that, I finished and turned in the Treant levels of Raene's Cleansing. I finished Agents of Destruction and got the Warsong Gulch wood, and I took Howling Vale, Destroy the Legion, and Vile Satyr. I stayed in Forest Song so tomorrow I can start with the satyr wood and Lost Chalice.
8. I've also been playing Nanny Mania. I've finished all 50 levels as the nanny; when you finish those, you choose the next available character, who is the mother. Now the mother levels are easier than the nanny levels, I think, because you don't have the dumb mother taking so many dumb baths, which saves times. Early indications are the third character, whom I haven't unlocked yet, will be the father. This game would be a dream without that hoser mucking up my living room with his muddy feet and messing up everything in the dresser. I don't think I'm familiar with a game that gets easier and easier.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
5/19 What I Accomplished Today
1. Stayed out of the way of the lady cleaning the house.
2. Mother-in-law required transcript corrections; worked on those for awhile.
3. We took home the lady who cleans the house and had sandwiches. We were going to pick up food to have for dinner, but neither of us could think of eating more food.
4. Finished and turned in Mage Summoner with the Level 27 Night Elf Priest.
5. We watched the Walter Cronkite tribute for his 90th birthday; that was interesting. We also watched one of Sundance Channel's new green series; that was interesting, too. We watched some uninteresting comics and some episodes of Mad About You.
6. Played more WOW. Didn't finish any quests. Did some herb gathering.
7. Feeling useless and loagy.
2. Mother-in-law required transcript corrections; worked on those for awhile.
3. We took home the lady who cleans the house and had sandwiches. We were going to pick up food to have for dinner, but neither of us could think of eating more food.
4. Finished and turned in Mage Summoner with the Level 27 Night Elf Priest.
5. We watched the Walter Cronkite tribute for his 90th birthday; that was interesting. We also watched one of Sundance Channel's new green series; that was interesting, too. We watched some uninteresting comics and some episodes of Mad About You.
6. Played more WOW. Didn't finish any quests. Did some herb gathering.
7. Feeling useless and loagy.
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