Monday, May 17, 2010

A Misnomer of Sorts

As you may or may not know (and may or may not care), I play City of Heroes on a regular basis. It's a great stress reliever, I've found, although occasionally One Ring will shout out, "I'm losing you to the game!" But I enjoy it, as it takes me back to my comic book addiction days. Yep, I admit it, I'm in recovery from comic book geekdom!

So the other day, I'm at my computer, logged in, and flying my newest character around one of the city maps. For some reason, I get up to level 20 or so, then get incredibly bored with the character, delete it, and start all over with another design. One of these days I'll keep one and get it to level 50, but until then, it'll be delete and redo. Anyway, I'm flying over this body of water when my targeting thingy locks in on a monster called "The Kraken." Naturally, I dive bomb in to take a look, expecting to see something along the lines of this:













Instead, I see this sorry excuse for the most feared creature of the deep:











Needless to say, I was not impressed. I don't know the rationale behind calling something that clearly is not a Kraken, the Kraken, but they did it. And what could have been a really awesome fight turned south when the creature vomited on me. Yes, the City of Heroes monster threw up on me. Epic fail, if you ask me!

In other news ...

Vacation starts on Friday! Actually, we leave on Saturday, but the wonderful feeling of freedom will begin at 4 PM CST on Friday. It's the official babymoon, though Tigger, Pooh, and Boo will be there as well. I'm still trying to get my head around the myriad ways that my life will forever change. Seems that whenever I think of having a child, my eyes cross, my head explodes, and the only thought I can muster is, "I'm going to be a what?" But I hear that's natural ... I just can't believe that I have to grow up! An adult? I've spent the last 40 years or so avoiding that at just about all costs! Now I have to man up and get ready to welcome a baby into this often messed up world. Seemed a whole hell of a lot easier when I would sit back and say, "That's so not the way I would handle this situation if I was that kid's dad!" Now I get to be the other guy.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all in with what's coming. It just scares the hell out of me, and the desire to hide under the blankets, read comic books and pretend I'm 12 again is really, really strong some times! Even worse than the fear, though, is my ego getting pissed that life is no longer "all about me." Even though it never was. The idea that I can't be selfish and spend my disposable income on my kind of stuff really sticks me in a way that has caused my cravings to almost run out of control.

I mentioned that on the day of the Nashville flood, One Ring and I went to Guitar Center to pick up a new amp. Well, since then I've been investigating having my guitar instructor build me a new axe by modifying a kit from BYOGuitar. The plan was to order the kit for approximately $200 (I want the RG one), and then have him build it, stain id see-through black (I'm going for the evil / goth look) and do whatever upgrades are deemed necessary. I joked with a friend that I was trying to buy as much stuff on my "want list" as possible, since once the baby is born, I'll never be able to buy anything ever again!

Yeah, immature of me. And seriously NOT on the spiritual path I desire to walk. Sigh.

Looks like no matter how far I come, there's always so much further to go.

I'll write more on this topic later today. Right now the doctor is having a patient for lunch (he was not following directions, and in this clinic you MUST follow directions!), and I need to make sure nothing goes sideways.

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Friday, May 14, 2010

It's Friday, Beee-yotches!

It's been a hellish week, and this is pretty much how I'm looking at ending it. Have a great weekend, everyone!

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Monday, May 10, 2010

Big Time Drama Days

Well, there's a few things you have to know about the last week to ten days here. The first is that Nashville was struck by a 500-year flood that ground the city and surrounding counties to a stand still. The main highway close to where One Ring and I live looked like this:





























Needless to say, things have been a tad chaotic ... not to mention frightening.

So during the great flood of 2010, as it is now known, One Ring, her brother, and I had to try and get down to Mobile, AL for her Grandmother's funeral. We originally were supposed to leave on Saturday, but that was the day all hell broke loose. We finally caught a break in the weather Sunday before dawn, and were able to get on the road. Of course, luck would not hold for us, for right before we made the trip, Kona - our Corgi / Beagle mix - took ill, and we couldn't figure out what was wrong with her. A trip to the ER Vet and then to our Vet a couple days later finally provided an answer to the mystery. She had swallowed a chunk of rubber from one of her toys and had her small intestine completely obstructed. Needless to say, we were worried, especially when the vet called and said he was rushing her into surgery. Kona needed to have part of her colon resectioned, and then had to spend the weekend back at the Vet hospital. We finally got her home yesterday, where she'll spend the next week or so wearing the "cone of shame" (go see "Up" if you don't get the reference).
















We told her that she passed our Dachshund Peanut as "The Most Expensive Free Dog" we've ever owned. She didn't seem amused.


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