Lovely weekend. (Isn’t that how all my posts start?)

On Friday, I met plumtreeblossom after work in Central Square (with some difficulty, since I was incorrect about where the CVS we were supposed to meet was), and we went to Shalimar of India, where I had exceptionally good lamb korma. Then we went to joyeous’ birthday party, where we had a delightful time chatting with folks, watching Treehouse of Horror and (if I’m remembering correctly) little snippets of Return of the Living Dead in honour of it being Friday the 13th, petting her housemate’s very soft bunny rabbit, and generally having a lovely time. Thanks to audioboy for giving us a ride back to Mare’s place.

On Saturday, we met a friend to go to the Flea, where we had a productive day of shopping. Then we got a ride to my house in Quincy, where we had a game of Munchkin (plumtreeblossom’s first) with cathijosephine and darxus and watched a little bit of Spun, a creepy-funny movie about speed freaks that they were watching when we came in. I like the fact that we spent our Valentine’s Day with three other people, and that didn’t detract from it being a sweet, romantic date

On Sunday, after breakfast at a little hole-in-the-wall diner near my house, we went to the Museum of Science, where in addition to wandering around the permanent exhibits a bit we saw the frog exhibit and watched an IMAX movie on the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers. Then after a brief stop at the Cambridgeside Galleria so we could both drool over gadgets I took her home. We both have tomorrow (Presidents’ Day) off, so we’ll have a day to rest and recover from all the fun. And we do have an awful lot of fun.

On Friday I met plumtreeblossom after work (see her weekend write-up here) and we took the train to Quincy Center together. We had dinner at Outback Steakhouse. I don’t like their corporate politics, but I love their food and sometimes I just need a hunk of cow. As it turned out, I’m very glad we did, because I ordered an Australian beer I wasn’t familiar with — Cooper’s Brewery Sparkling Ale — and it was so good I ordered a second, and then went looking for it at the liquor store later in the week. (If you are wise enough to follow my example, be cautioned that it’s fermented in the bottle, so there’s some sediment in the bottom; you want to pour it into a glass.)

After a yummy dinner, we went to my house and watched Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical, which was very funny, and a little bit of the original 1930s exploitation/propaganda movie, which was a bonus on the DVD.

( Another few meals, another movie, some geekery, and some games with darxus and cathijosephine. )

At some point in the weekend, plumtreeblossom took a whole bunch of pictures of grim warrior beowabbit, including the one that I eventually munged into my new userpic, and I also took some pictures of her cats, who were sleeping together on her bed looking especially cute.

The one bad thing about the weekend is that towards the end of the workweek I’d been having little twinges in my hip, and they got considerably worse over the weekend. I’m going to need to drive to the T tomorrow (where parking is $7); there’s no way I can do the normally 15-minutes walk to the T station with the ice that’s on the sidewalks. I’m not sure if this is a return of my sciatica or if I did something to my hip slipping on the ice. But if a hurt hip is the price for all the joy and fun I had this weekend, it was worth it.

Had a great last few days in Hawai‘i, including a trip to the water park with sionnagh, our friend K, and her daughter D., and a games night at which I got to meet a bunch of sionnagh’s friends and play Web of Power and Frank’s Zoo.

Oh, and the Crockpot Fairy has visited sionnagh. :-)

I have a very tight connection in LAX, which I made it in time for despite my flight from HNL being delayed. Only now my flight from LAX to ORD is delayed, so my connection in Chicago is now iffy. Wish me luck.

Yours very sleepily,
beowabbit

Slept really late yesterday, and was conscious today. (Er, by “today” I mean “Sunday”.)

Got to go to King Richard’s Faire today with the wonderful eisa, who’s up from New York City for the weekend. We got to see [person who’s LJ name I don’t know, if he has one], who works there. They had tigers, leopards, and a stunningly huge liger, a falconry exhibition, an albino Burmese python, and oh, I think there were also some people walking around in funny clothes. It was quite fun. Afterwards we watched Grave of the Fireflies, an amazingly well done and amazingly depressing animated Japanese film about a young brother and sister orphaned towards the end of the war. It also presented a rather, um, simple picture of the war, but I wasn’t too surprised at that. Very good movie, but I’m glad I wasn’t alone when I saw it. Oh, and we got to play a couple games of Chez Geek, which neither of us had played in years. And on my way home from dropping her off to meet jadasc, I got to spend a little time with cathijosephine’s cat Chickenfinger.

Still wish I could have made it to BiCamp, but today still made for a good weekend. Now I must sleep. Actually, a long time ago I must sleep, but now I’m going to.

PS — Eventually I will post photos of the cats and raptors.

So yesterday afternoon was about cleaning and organizing and even doing a smidge more unpacking. In the evening I got to see the lovely plumtreeblossom, so it was a delightful birthday. :-)

This morning I had breakfast at IHOP with cathijosephine and faerieschylde, who was visiting cathijosephine. Was great to see them, although I think between the three of us we’d had enough sleep for one and a half people. :-)

This afternoon I had people over for games. This was only the second time since I moved here that I had made the house semi-presentable for company (and I think it was more presentable than the first time, actually). This was also the first time I actually got around to having Artoo vacuum since I got him many months ago.

It was a great time. treacle_well won the first game of Cities and Knights, and surrealestate won the second game, although since she had to leave just before the game ended, dabunny got to deliver the coup de grace on her behalf. Then zzbottom introduced us to a very nifty game called Ticket to Ride: Europe, which is a territory-control game that reminds me a bit of Through the Desert, although much less sedate.

Howdy! I plan (slightly tentatively) on having a games afternoon on Sunday, August 27. It’ll be the day after my birthday, and it will have been a long time since I’ve played Cities and Knights, or Carcassonne, or Puerto Rico, and I’d love for y’all to come and help me fix that. (I’m going to be mostly interested in playing German-style board games, but if y’all want to bring card games, other kinds of board games, retro video games, party games, or whatever, you’re welcome to. And I plan on starting this at 2:00pm and going till 9:00 or so, so we should have time for several games.)

This will be at my house in Quincy. RSVPs (via comment here or by email) are highly recommended so that (1) I can be sure that my relatively small house will accommodate everyone (although if the weather is nice, we can use the deck for those games that are less likely to blow away) and so that (2) I can get you directions.

PS — Also, Remember, Remember the 25th of August.

Busy, busy week at work, and productively so. My boss is about to have a baby (well, his wife is), and that’s happening a bit sooner than expected, so this week was all about him trying to brain dump to us as fast as possible before disappearing for six weeks. There was also a long power outage that we got a few days notice of. Anyway, lots of stuff that wasn’t routine, which made me happy.

Tuesday I got together with chienne_folle for yummy, yummy diner food in Wakefield, followed by Pirates of the Caribbean II, which was nice fluffy fun. We did lots of catching up, too. Also, my conversation with chienne_folle pretty much convinced me that yes, I do have sleep apnea, despite what my doctor said when I raised the possibility with her a couple years ago. This is exciting, because it means that there may actually be something to be done about my erratic memory and low energy level. I need to contact her again and see if I can get a referral for a sleep study. (And then talk to an otolaryngologist, because while I suspect a CPAP machine will help, I also want to look into things I can do while travelling or camping or sleeping with people who don’t want a machine running by their heads.)

Wednesday, um, I think something probably happened, but I don’t remember what.

Thursday I got together spur-of-the-moment with elusiveat for Thai food and hanging around in Harvard Square, which was delightful.

Friday I went back to chienne_folle’s for a games night that her lovely husband was having, and met some nifty people and watched a fun game of Carcassonne.

Today I went to bbbsg and chillguru’s place and had a fabulous time.

Here’s about where you all say “Low energy level? What is he talking about?” Well, I left very early, because I’m wiped out. I considered not going in the first place, actually, because I was so tired. But yes, I realize my “low energy level” is some people’s “manic frenzy”.

Watching: As mentioned above, Pirates of the Caribbean II with the marvellous chienne_folle. The Italian Job (the 1969 original) on the subway yesterday, which I loved. Started Cat People (the 1982 remake) on the train today. I saw it when it was first released (and yes, all you young ’uns with your cell phones and your electric iceboxes and your motor cars, I was already old enough to drool over Natassja Kinski then :-) but I found it for sale cheap and wanted to watch it again. It has very stylish and memorable opening credits. :-) I’m quite fond of being able to put my DVDs on a video jukebox and watch them on the train.

First, the morning from hell. For background, I got a new prescription for contacts a few months ago, which turned out to be incorrect, although the sample lenses the eye doctor had given me to try out were correct. So I had an eye appointment scheduled for today to get the prescription fixed.

I’m too tired to do a fully-fleshed-out write-up, so I’ll just tell you about my morning by copying and pasting from mail to cathijosephine. ( Here’s what I wrote. )

So, the three good things: Thanks in large measure to mud_puppy, I went to a fundraiser/rally for Deval Patrick at the Hynes Convention Center on Thursday. Introducing him was Barack Obama, who of course was a really good speaker, but who did a very good job of not stealing Patrick’s thunder. I’d heard Obama’s DNC speech and a couple other sound bites, so I knew what to expect from him, and I got it. But I’d never heard Patrick speak; at most, I’d read short quotes. And wow, he is a kick-ass speaker! Inspiring, entertaining, honest-sounding, impressive. He gives the sound bites, but he also connects them and uses them responsibly. He doesn’t just assert or imply something, he explains why it happens. His speech made me simultaneously really confident in him as a politician and really confident in him as an officeholder, and you don’t get that combination very often. (Even people who are in fact going to be good at both often do only one or the other in their speeches.) So that was amazing. And it was nice to see mud_puppy and a couple co-workers of hers, docorion, and lilbjorn and M. there.

After that, I met cathijosephine at Sarsfield’s, our local Irish pub, for a pint and a half each, which made up in caloric value for not having had dinner. :-) We had a really good time. While I’d seen her a few times recently, this was the first time we’d had a chance to just chat one-on-one since before I went to Hawai‘i, and it felt really good.

And tonight I went over to chienne_folle’s for a night of text-adventure games with her and her husband and a bunch of their friends, which was really, really fun. Makes me want to put some text adventures on my Treo to play on the subway; evidently there’s a lot out there. We played a game called Ad Verbum (if I’m remembering correctly), which was interesting in that it was largely about verbal puzzles. For instance, there’s a room in which all the descriptions use only words that start with S, and you can only use words that start with S in your commands. Atypical, I guess, but lots of fun. I left before they started the second one, because I was starting to get too tired for that kind of brainage, but I had a great time, and seeing queenofhalves there was an unexpected pleasure.

So, all in all, life is good! And soon I will have new contact lenses that don’t give me headaches and with which I can actually read computer screens!

beowabbit sleep now.

As usual when I haven’t posted in a while, it’s because I’ve been having too much fun. I’ve had a lot happen lately that I’ve wanted to post about, but I can’t quite remember everything and certainly can’t remember all the eloquent, moving, timeless prose I composed in my head. So a whirlwind tour through the things that actually made it into my calendar will have to do.

( Cut for length )

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m going to Honolulu to visit sionnagh next month. Exciting! Yay, sionnagh and Hamlet! Yay, swimming in the ocean! Yay, spam musubi and loco moco! Broke da mouth!

Oh, and the only reason I’m using this new userpic is that I like it so much. It’s a detail from the back of the 1896 issue of the (silver-backed) US $5 bill. The engraving is entitled Electricity Presenting Light to the World, and you can read more about it and lots of other equally gorgeous and lyrical currency designs at http://www.flyingmoose.org/truthfic/1896.htm. The figure reaching in front of Electricity with the trumpet is Fame, proclaiming Electricity’s glory. Cropped out of the userpic are Jupiter with a lightning bolt to power the lamp and Peace holding a dove, but you can also see a bald eagle next to Electricity. Why on earth anybody ever thought to change the design of the $5 bill after such a pinnacle is entirely beyond me, but I suppose all is corruption and decay.

Oh, and I bought flowers for the yard! Those of you who know me will ① realize what a momentous occasion this is, and ② feel sorry for the plants. Wish them luck.

Thanks to zzbottom for a couple of fab Cities and Knights games last night, and to missdimple for opening her house to us.

This morning I read the Reuters headline “Straw urges Iraq to build unfed government”, and my first thought was “They’re going to want to spend some wheat real quick.”