Welcome Home

Aaaah... there's just something about early-morning police activity as I'm riding my bike to work that really lifts that whole vacation fog, y'know?.

TFSMIF.

Salt Mining

Back to the office. Wow. So this is what work feels like?

Where did all this email come from? Madness. IT'S MADNESS, I TELL YOU!

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Started reading "The Alloy of Law" by Brandon Sanderson (a Powell's purchase). Loving it. Damn but Sanderson is awesome!

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A contribution from a reader. I have readers? WTF? I feel I should apologize for the banality and general poor writing I provide.

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On the topic of banality, I have gotten handy popping the tires off of my bike, stripping them off, and reinflating them as needs be. Why? Oh, the last flat I got (a torn valve stem) has me paranoid so every time my valves in my tires bend, I deflate 'em, pop 'em off, re-adjust 'em, and re-inflate 'em. It's dirty work but it sure makes for a smoother ride. My bacon-and-beer fattened self rode a smooth ride into the office today.

Mmm... bacon...

Seven Days - part two

Forgot to mention my trek to Powell's Books in Portland. Some eight-something dollars later, I had many a book. Over the seven days I read a couple of "Doctor Who" novelizations and Neil Gaiman's "The Ocean at the End of the Lane". All were thoroughly-enjoyable. If you're a Gaiman fan, I recommend picking up that book. It's a quick read and typical Gaiman-weird.

Seven Days

Seven days of driving up and down Hwy 5. From the Bay Area to Seattle and back. Oh sure, it could be done in a shorter time, but there were complications that made it nigh-impossible for me to drive longer than 5 hours at a pop.

Saw Ashland for the first time ever. Neat town.

Saw Mt. Shasta City. I heard someone earnestly extol the virtues of certain crystals when channeling one's chi.

I drank at many an Oregon brewery.

I compared California, Washington, and Oregon rest stops (California has - hands down - the worst).

I rode in a ferry across Puget Sound to an island then went along befuddling roads to a hidden location along a dirt road.

As trips go, I found myself quite enjoying it.

Except for all the driving. That is a HELL of a lot of driving.

True terror

There is nothing more terrifying than children.

Don't believe me?

Enjoy.

If anyone needs me, I'll be hiding somewhere very, very clever for a nice, long time.

what in the Monday hell now?

Lovely weekend. Just lovely.

• Saw the original 1954 version of Godzilla with a couple of friends who were either incredibly tolerant of my being a mental vegetable or just didn't notice. I don't want to know the truth there.
• After said lovely viewing of said delightful film (there must be a rule that every kaiju film has to have bad acting) I enjoyed a crushingly-packed ride on BART back home filled with Oakland Raiders fans. I am being sarcastic when I say I enjoyed this. I'm clarifying 'cause I really did enjoy the elements of my first bullet point.
• Saturday was monthly gaming. Two months (give or take) of prep work went into a fairly small game in terms of players, but seemed to go fairly-well.
• The hosts for said game (I opted not to subject them to my apartment) have a pair of cats. One is quite social, the other a skittish little ninja shadow. I experienced a strange moment of sublime pleasure when skittish ninja shadow cat let me pet him (and purred as I did so). I am - per one of my friends - the first person skittish ninja cat has let pet him aside from the couple who actually own/serve said feline overlords. I am clearly being set up as a sacrifice to the cat gods.
• I slept so much over this weekend that I'm actually wondering if I'm fighting a bug.

Oh please! Oh please! Oh PLEEEEEEASE!!!

It makes me a bad, bad man to want this to be how Series Eight goes.

I can live with that. I'm already a bad, bad man...