Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

Mind-numbingly boring work today. We’re reviewing emails in response to a Congressional inquiry, and actually what we’re doing is reviewing the work of the summer interns, and while I’m sure the member was expecting to find something smoking, what we’re finding instead is that people are really, really dull over email. If I have to read one more argument about where to go for dinner, or an announcement of another new baby, I may scream. Unfortunately the torture continues tomorrow.

Oh, and a manager (not in the counsel’s office) at the not-so-BGA called me today unsolicited to let me know there were attorney openings coming up there, and offered to answer any questions I had. I’m going to take her up on it tomorrow, since finding the actual structure of the counsel’s office there has proven to be a futile task. Again, nice to have folks with whom I’ve worked think of me for such things.

So, after the doc review, as a treat I stopped off at Jenny’s and picked up Chinese take-out (mmm, Fiery Tofu…). Ate at home, cleaned stuff up in the living room (pre-gaming chore), then set myself to setting up the Xbox. I actually crawled under the “entertainment center” (aka my desk) and unhooked all the cables from the PC that’s not worked in months now due to lack of a fan, and got that cleaned up and put away. Then the Xbox itself was relatively easy to set up and get into. Used the same old same old user name on there, ‘legalmoose,’ because my first choice was already taken and I didn’t feel like trying to come up with something else. Got hooked in, got the free month of Xbox Live Gold membership, and then popped in Bioshock.

Wow. Blown away. Absolutely loving this game, as evidenced by the posting here at 11:30ish. I had actually set an alarm on my phone (appropriately enough with the old horn “ah-OOOga” sound) for 9:30. That got snoozed a couple of times. I just played the thing on Easy mode, but am really enjoying it.

This is actually the first time I’ve played with a controller of this type. I know, scrape yourself off the ground, but up to the DS purchase, all my gaming had been on the PC. Now I’ve the DS, a Wii and an Xbox, and I love all three for the different types of experiences they give. Still having problems with the camera (for some reason I want to push down to move the camera up, and vice-versa – holdover from some other, older game on the PC maybe?), so occasionally I miss stuff, but the plasmids are quite fun. I’m playing the nice guy, rescuing the little sisters instead of killing them, ’cause for this one I wanted to see how that played out. Next time, slaughter.

So I have Bioshock, and Mass Effect (still in the shrink wrap), and two games that came with the system (some racing game and a Marvel Comics marketing ploy, I mean game). A fun addition to the living room, I have to say.

Forgot that I got to do a video conference via iChat with my parents down in the Tampa area. They called while we were at Dad’s place to see if they should go swimming then or wait until later. Life is so rough in retirement. But the chat was a lot of fun. It’s so neat to be able to do something like that now and have it work so easily and clearly. They loved their gifts, which was fantastic, and it was a great way to visit with them for the holiday.

Xbox 360, Bioshock.

Sweet.

That was an interesting trip ‘home.’ I went down to Tidewater this weekend to see my parents, and my grandparents, and help my brother and his family move their stuff out of their old apartment. Oh, and pick up Mom & Dad’s Cooper Mini to drive back to DC ‘on loan’ from the parental units.

The parents were chipper (though I despair of Mom’s occasional racist outburst – they’re couched in code, but I know what they are. Ugh). My brother was doing much better. At one point I rubbed his fuzzy little head (he’d shaved his head before the latest bout of madness – a sure sign he’s about to go over the deep end – and it’s just growing back) and told him I’d never be able to take him to a bear bar because they’d just keep rubbing the fuzz there. Thankfully he’s quite cool with the queer thing, and wouldn’t freak out at it.

Did not see the oldest niece, but did see the younger two. The youngest was much, much more animated than the last time I was down, which was right after she’d had some eye surgery. The middle one is a trip and a half. Will babble like crazy at you, making no sense (that we can tell), but as long as you are attentive, she’s happy. Must be nice to be 19 months old that way.

The grandparents were, well, a bit sad to see. Granddaddy has terrible balance now, and is starting to lose his hearing. Grandmother’s balance is better, but still a trifle shaky. And thank heavens I’m thin or I’d have been hearing ‘fat’ comments all afternoon like my brother got an earful of. But not within Mom’s earshot – she’s let her father know she does not appreciate such comments and that he needs to quit it, in no uncertain terms. Saw many recent pictures of cousins and their kids, and was greatly saddened that they all seem to be, well, fat. Or at least on the pudgy side of average. One aunt is just plain morbidly obese. Oy. And the family wonders why I do triathlons.

Oh, and in among the pictures was one of the president and first lady. Evidently the grandparents sent his campaign money. I still wore my earrings down there, though.

And appropos of nothing, there was absolutely no cell signal to be had down there. I started feeling like the little geek god from American Gods when they were in the nowhere place.

Traded in my DS for a DS Lite while down there (among other spending) and gave the DS to Dad. He’s had this Brain Age game for a bit, and could only use it when the eldest niece came over with her DS, so now he’s good to go. He also got some vision training game for it when I was getting the Lite (or, rather, I got it for him, though he picked it out). The reviews were right – the Lite’s screen is much nicer, though I’m not completely sold on the feel of the thing yet. The rumble pack sticks out of the front of the Lite, where it was completely inside the DS, and it’s not as comfortable to hold the sides while playing Metroid Prime Pinball as it was on the DS. I suppose I’ll get used to it.

I always forget how much driving is involved with being down there. Driving to stores, driving to restaurants, driving to grocery shopping, etc. I’m so spoiled here in DC, with a bus and rail system that, for all its faults, is pretty good at getting me (and others) around.
The drive back was uneventful. The mini’s a manual transmission, but does have cruise control, so most of the trip was spent with that on. Unlike driving back on a Sunday, traffic was pretty light, and I was able to actually spend most of the trip in the right lane, cruising along without being in other cars’ way, and vice versa. Only when we got into Richmond proper, and on the approach to DC, did I really have to take off the cruise control and dodge folks.

It’s going to be interesting having a car at my disposal again. I have an assigned parking space in one of our lots, so it’s off the street, and I’m supposed to pick up a cover from friends soon so I can keep it cleaner. It does have South Dakota tags, but the handicapped tags (Mom qualifies) were not in yet, so Dad’s going to send them to me later to switch out the plates. Shouldn’t run into problems with DC fussing at me for not registering the car here since it’ll be off-street and so not in the regular view of parking enforcement types. There are a couple maintenance issues which will crop up soon, two things that are going to need replacing/repairing, for which I have estimates, but which are not immediately needed. Otherwise everything which needed to be done to it has been repaired by Dad in anticipation of the trip to DC. Oh, and Dad prefers to put premium gas in it, so there’s that expense as well. But at 30 or so miles to the gallon, that’s not overly burdensome I suppose.

So it’s a mixed blessing, as most cars are. But I’m glad to have it.

I had been thinking about gaming systems, but if my obsession behavior the past two days is any indication of how it would be if I got one, I really, really should not. I picked up the new Zelda game for the DS, and it’s been absolutely fantastic. Some of the elements are a bit slow, but for the vast majority of the game I think they nailed it for my gaming likes. So much so that I’ve been up far, far too late the past two nights playing the game. Only had to revert to guides twice, which is a good sign for me.

Big thanks to the folks who came out on Friday, I had a marvelous time, and it was good to see people. That was precisely the b’day celebration I needed – low key and fun chatting and watching folks chat.

My eldest niece and her mother popped up today to play tourist, so we wandered through the Mall and a few museums. She absolutely loved the Metro. It’s a shame Air & Space is still so disorganized and doesn’t have more hands-on stuff for kids – that’s what she stopped at whenever we were in an exhibit, the ‘I can play with this’ things. She also spent most of the day talking about going to City Lights, my now former favorite Chinese restaurant in town.

The service was, in a word, atrocious tonight. They were busy, that much was readily apparent, but that’s no excuse. No one came by to check on drinks. My niece managed to down her water and her soda fairly early, and even after I specifically asked a server to get her a refill of her soda (even handing him the glass), it never came back. Then I couldn’t manage to flag anyone down because they were all flying by so quickly. The one guy I did finally catch was one of their busboys whose English was somewhat lacking, and unfortunately my Spanish is non-existent, but we did manage to get soda refills, at least, for the niece and her mother. To say I’m miffed would be an understatement – this is a place where the more established wait staff calls me by name, in Chinese, when I come in, so it’s not like I’ve never been there before. Hell, I was lying in bed for about 1/2 an hour just now and all I could do was dredge up much-unused vocabulary for expressing in Mandarin exactly how annoyed I was at the whole thing (and it’s amazing what ancient vocabulary can be dredged up in the service of strong emotions). As it was I did get one of the management staff before we left and let them know that this was the most dismal service I’d ever received there.

Otherwise it’s been a lovely weekend. I’m going to get my newest toy hooked up to the bike tomorrow and head out on a ride with a friend after his bike (re)fitting. Haven’t played with it yet, so this is the inaugural run. Should be interesting to see the data once I’m done.

Someone at work today called me lazy because I took the elevator down a floor to find a working bathroom, rather than taking the stairs. I laughed and declined to point out that I went 70.3 miles on Sunday. Lazy. Ha.

Firefox 2.00000000000000000whatever sucks donkey balls on the Mac. Not all the tabs fit on the screen, each one has its own “X” button rather than a single button that would close the one active tab so you have to keep moving the stupid mouse cursor to shut them, hitting apple-key-W won’t close the entire window if it’s the last tab, and the font for the bookmarks menu is too large to hold all of my delicately balanced bookmarks on one page, like it all used to do just fine under version 1.5. I am not amused. Additional features are not always improvements, folks.

I remembered some more vignettes from the race that I want to put to writing later this evening. Should’ve been in the initial race report, but I wanted to get it up sooner rather than later.

It’s the last month of the federal fiscal year and I’m again one of the most popular attorneys in our office, if not the most popular one. The next month is going to be b-u-s-y.

That light coming from yon burning orb in the sky? It’s fall light, not summer light. No humidity to futz it up, and much cooler out than it has been. Clearer, but different in hue and tone. Nice to see, nicer to know I can throw the windows open and not waste electricity on the AC. But so not ready for it to get darker earlier.

If there’s one thing the iPhone has done for me, it’s brought my dislike for having anything on my hands to the fore. The screen is just such a good collector of schmutz.

I’ve always hated having stuff on my hands, specifically the palms and fingers. Lotion, sweat, grease, you name it, hate it all. As a result, I wash my hands fairly often, which isn’t very good for my eczema. I try to put lotion on, but that’s right up there in terms of ick factor.

And of course, by necessity, you have to get the lotion on yor palms in order to get it on the rest of your hands. Yuck. So it’s lotion, wipe, lotion, wipe, and washing as much as I can.

But no matter how clean I keep my fingers, they always collect more stuff. And it always drives me crazy.

Okay, got laundry done, went grocery shopping, assembling the race gear now, as well as cleaning the house now (and by “cleaning the house” I mean that I set the Roomba loose in the bedroom while I was out shopping and it’s now getting the kitchen and front hall done). Car reservation made. Hotel reservation confirmed.

Once assembly’s done, there’s not a lot more to do except try to relax. Which will likely drive me crazy. Thankfully I have Sacred to keep me somewhat distracted.

Tomorrow’s plan is to pick up the car, get BC, then off to Bear, Delaware, for packet pick up the race on Sunday. It doesn’t appear they’ll be doing live updates, but I’ll try to get something up on LJ after I’m done.

Let’s see. Today. Bullets:

• Left work “late” (aka on time) because I got caught up in fixing something. Not a bad thing, it gives me something to write tomorrow. (I say “late” because it’s summer and I typically am the last one in the office, with an official quit time of 6pm, and it’s been dead after 5pm)
• Got home to a new obsession in the mail. It’s all BC’s fault for mentioning it. And Amazon’s for offering the full set for less than $10.
• Played said obsession until just now. Hadn’t evven checked email this evening, that’s how bad it was.
• Despite that, managed to get laundry done for this weekend’s trip and race.
• Ran briefly this morning (as in, less than 2 miles). Went okay.
• Discovered while doing laundry that my favorite big running shorts have a hole in the crotch. Thank heavens I have multiple pairs to choose from.
• Still recovering from the head cold, but getting better.

And that’s about it today.

Another week, another head cold. Wouldn’t mind so much if I could just sleep. And maintain a stable temperature. And breathe. Aside from that, it’s all good. Ha.

Left work a bit early to come home and nap. We’ll see if I go in tomorrow. I brought some stuff home to read over for a meeting Wednesday, so I can be missed if need be. It was important to get in today because an investigator was coming in for my latest background check and I had to confirm this, that and the other with him, as well as sicking him on all my friends for their confirmation that I’m a crack-smoking communist spy an upstanding citizen.

And yes, they still ask if you are or have ever been a member of an organization which has plotted the violent overthrow of the US government (though they do not name the communist party specifically any more, at least they didn’t today). A new addition was questions about membership in terrorist organizations. All of it was pretty bland, truth be told, but glad that round’s over with.

Finally bought a backup disk for my iBook this weekend, so I went ahead and partitioned that and backed up the important files this evening. It’s not automated a la the PC version, but a simple copy and paste worked just as well. Getting all the music backed up, as well as the quicken data, addressbook, porn, and calendar on there was a good feeling. The laptop’s coming up on 3 years old, I think, with a lot of data I consider pretty important, so ’twas well past time for this.

Not much else going on. Hoping the cold’s gone enough for the next two races (the last three I couldn’t care less about), this weekend and next. In the meantime it’s rest, try not to kill myself, taper, etc. Quiet time.