Mishaps and other haps

The cats have a new toy that they are seriously crazy about. It consists of a couple of feathers attached to a string, tied to a pole. The string has a lot of spring to it, so when we dangle it in front of them and shake it around, it is just taut enough to make the feather toy bounce wildly and fly out of their grasp as they leap and pounce after it.

Eventually, one cat will catch the feathers and chew on them for a while. Small Horse usually drags the feathers back to a basket he likes to spend time in and SOMEHOW manages to TIE the “captured bird” to the basket and/or a chair leg. I am not sure quite how he does this without fingers and the process may actually be more akin to a spider wrapping up a fly than a person tying a knot, but the resulting loops and knots are sometimes difficult to sort out without taking out the scissors and ruining the toy.

The last five or six days have been fabulous.  I am posting from Florida, where the weather is currently set at medium-sauna. 

Our household met the Guffeys at Old Chicago for dinner last Friday.  We celebrated the fact that we can now have dinner together without having to include so much travel time.  Artie and Mr. Guff and Mlitiagrl and I hung out at our west side Borders for a while, chatting and counting the huge spiders that were hanging off the side of the building.  Mlitiagrl and I picked up tickets for our reserved copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  We went home for a while and came back before midnight, but since we had picked up our tickets late in the day, it was still 1:30 before we received our copies of the book.  We were home a little before two.  I stayed up reading until about 3:30.  I read in airports and on planes and finally had the time to finish the book around 11:45 last night.

Saturday morning PhysOrg and I went to Maxwell Street Days, looking for hats and gear for his upcoming bike/float trip.  I had a lot of fun shopping with him.  Between the two of us, we bought five hats.  He also found a backpack with a water pouch, some black sports clogs, and a few other random items.  We had lunch at the Parthenon and headed back home in time for me to pack for my trip before our Karazhan run.

Sunday morning I was at the airport around 5 AM for an early flight to Florida.  My parents and sister met me at the airport, we went to lunch, and then headed to my parents’ place briefly before driving to my grandmother’s house.  We spent a couple of hours there and I collapsed pretty early that day.

Monday morning, my sister and I were up and on the road by 8 AM, heading to Tallahassee.  We hit a few stores while making arrangements for lunch with a couple of friends from WoW, Sabbath and Michiru, and my sister’s co-worker, Heather. 

All five of us arrived in the Steak & Shake parking lot at about the same time, which was good because we weren’t quite sure how we were going to identify Sabb and Michi since we hadn’t met them in person before. 

I had a strong feeling that the hip young things on the motorcycle would be our gamer friends and I was totally right.  Michi and I drank matching banana milkshakes.  The Frisco Melt seemed to be a popular menu choice.  We talked about our game and real life stuff.  The notorious name “Rockwel” was mentioned multiple times that day, as my sister noted.  Nodor’s true age was revealed (he is much younger than people were beginning to expect from his “old man” stance in officer channel chat) …

Sabbath and Michi revealed the workplace of another in-town, WoW-playing friend, Katalist.  Siriusjules and I hit Fresh Market for a few items to take back to our parents’ house and then went to visit Kat at work.  I was so excited not to miss him while I was in town!  We had a co-worker call him out to meet us and the look of complete confusion on his face turned into surprise and happiness when he found out who we were.  He took a lunch break and we chatted for a while.  Mostly, I think we decided that we need to get a bunch of the DF people together in real-life sometime. 

We visited the rest of our grandparents (who live in Tallahassee) and had dinner with Siriusjules’ co-worker before heading back to our parents’ house.  I managed to laugh very hard at dinner, partly because some funny things were said/done and partly because I had been drinking before the food came.  I almost choked to death twice, which is a side effect of being around my sister when she is being funny at dinner.

Yesterday we spent a little time in Destin, not for the beach, but we saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix since my family had not seen it.  Today is my mother’s birthday, so we are having a birthday dinner (with more family visiting) and cake for her tonight.

Tomorrow I get to wake up at a reasonable time and head back to the airport for the trip home.  I have been missing my kitty, my roommates, my house …         

My updates have not been too frequent lately.  I blame the chronic shortage of hours in a day.

I made it out to APT for the first time this summer back a couple of weeks ago with PhysOrg, Terry, Becky, and Jack.  We saw “Dickens in America”, written by APT’s Jim DeVita.  I am glad I didn’t miss it (apparently it was a one-time performance last year, repeated once this year).

Last week I made it to Ratatouille with PhysOrg and to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with Phys, Mlitiagrl, and the Goddess.  Go see Order of the Phoenix on the IMAX.  The 3D scenes are worth the couple of extra bucks on the ticket price.

We helped Artie and Mr. Guff move on Sunday.  Hopefully they are starting to feel settled into their new home.  Now that they’re practically down the street from us, we’ll have to plan to get together and do something soon.  (Futuramathon?)

The tomatoes and the squash/pumpkins are taking over.  Beware, your neighborhood could be next!  We almost have ripe produce and at some point, I think we’re going to have a lot of ripe produce.

We’ve been running 2 or 3 Karazhan raids per week and the guild has grown quite a bit lately, due to various fortuitous circumstances.   We don’t recruit and we don’t really have a reputation (for RP or raiding or PvP or any type of organizational “gimmick” that causes people to gravitate toward us), but we seem to attract nice people, good players who are looking for friends to game with.

I am heading out for my Florida trip this weekend, well after the very last Harry Potter midnight release party and the purchase of my book … and well after one last Karazhan run, which I am hoping will happen.

And I am still job hunting between the gaming and the gardening and the kitties …

Our Friday night household dinner outing tonight took us back to Arbat, the Russian restaurant we first ate at back in the winter. We had been avoiding it just a little since PhysOrg had an entree he didn’t care for the last time he was there. By all indications, he found something he liked this time and Mlitiagrl and I were again very satisfied with our choices, so hopefully we will be going back again soon. Ah, and they had some new/revised menu items, so I guess they are figuring out what their customers like and changing things around a bit.

I have been on a mini foodie kick lately– getting excited by different varieties of feta, falling in love with a fig/cocoa spread from Croatia called Ficoco (delicious on chocolate cake), cluttering up the fridge with quite a bit of fresh fruit and new varieties of yogurt, cooking bison burgers for the first time this past week, gathering herbs FROM OUR OWN GARDEN (rock!), pondering old recipes that may make a comeback in our kitchen sometime soon … I feel like I need some kind of theme or cooking project.

I finally made my plane reservations last night for the Florida trip. I am staying in Madison long enough to go to the midnight release of Book 7 with Mlitiagrl and make up for the expected sleep loss. I’m staying in Florida through my mom’s birthday and flying back the next day. It will be a short trip, but I am only taking a week off total and I have learned that if I don’t add enough downtime and recovery into these things, it’s not much like a vacation– then I am back at work wishing I had another week off.

I get back home a day or two before Mlitiagrl leaves for her Canada trip.

Running off to work …

Hugs to everybody out there. Hope you’re enjoying your weekend-before-the-4th!

We’ve had a few friends drop by to visit this weekend– Sy and Gretchen Saturday night and Danny and Joel on Sunday (ostensibly to game, but we didn’t actually game).

We had dinner with most of the Babler-Dotzour family on Friday night (Brian’s folks have been in the area this week and it was nice to visit and chat with them a couple of times).

PhysOrg went bike shopping yesterday. He seems particularly excited about the helmet, which he has been wearing indoors and at times when he does not intend to go bike riding. I have no theories about this one.

Mlitiagrl has picked mulberries at the park and I am trying to encourage the wild strawberry plant to continue its expansion in our front yard.

I have started re-reading Order of the Phoenix in anticipation of the movie … (Yay, movie! Yay, Deathly Hallows later this month)

We’re beating our heads against the Shade of Aran again tonight. Karazhan has been going well overall. We are picking up gear that people can use. Minni picked up the Shard of the Virtuous this past week, a big upgrade and one of the main non-armor items she was interested in.