Enter generic hyperbole.

fod @ 2008-08-06T20:53:00

2008-08-07T04:00:09Z

Yesterday we had a raccoon visit our backyard. We've seen them around before, but only after dark. This time it wasn't even mildly dark yet. It came to eat birdseed, apparently. It was pretty cute, and didn't mind at all that we were watching it. I made sure to bring Putter inside so she wouldn't be tempted to chase it off and possibly get bitten or scratched. After hanging around for half an hour, it went back down into the gully behind the house.

fod @ 2008-07-29T18:59:00

2008-07-30T02:00:52Z

I always post these kind of posts "early", because otherwise, when the day comes around, I forget. :(

Happy birthday, Steven!

fod @ 2008-07-13T16:16:00

2008-07-13T23:16:07Z

We recently got a new DVD player. The old one was five years old, and had started having trouble playing certain discs. Mostly anything that wouldn't play in the DVD player would play on my PlayStation 2, but recently a few discs wouldn't play on either and I couldn't figure out why. So I asked mom if we could buy a new one. We bought the new one at Costco, which didn't have much variety in the models they had. All of them were DVD/VCR combos, though, so now we can play VCRs. We don't have many, but we do have some.

We went to the Scottish Highland games yesterday. I don't have much to say about that. It was sort of fun, I guess, but we never really see much of the "games" due to the fact that we get tired of standing out in the sun and that the games never start exactly when they should. :P

fod @ 2008-07-05T17:05:00

2008-07-06T00:04:50Z

Mom had yesterday off, so she decided to make a Fourth of July meal for us. We had hamburgers on buns with pickles, mustard, ketchup and mayonnaise. We also had deviled eggs. There were a dozen eggs, which made two dozen deviled ones, and we ate them all (not in the meal, but all of them were gone by 9 PM). We also had baked beans. All very good food.

The fireworks had started by 7 PM. I think it's pretty pointless to do it before it gets dark, but it doesn't get dark until nearly 10. If you like fireworks for the noise, I guess there's no reason to wait for the darkness. A usual, we only watched for forty-five minutes or so. We quickly get bored and wish people would quit and let us go to sleep. Mom wears ear-plugs to bed most nights, so she was able to go to sleep when she wanted to, but I think I stayed awake until most of the fireworks stopped a little after midnight. There were still a few that I saw around 1 AM when I got up to let the cat outside, though.

Thunderstorms

2008-07-03T17:54:30Z

Last night we had a minor thunderstorm, which is fairly uncommon here. It passed over fairly quickly though. Later, around midnight, we saw a lot of lightning down south, but it must have been more than fifteen miles away, judging by the number of seconds that went by between flashes and thunder booms.

Today, it seems we have another thunderstorm, though I haven't seen any lightning yet. It's raining heavily, and is very foggy outside. Mom and I both hope this weather will carry over to tomorrow and that it will discourage a few people from setting off fireworks really late into the night. I doubt it will happen, though. :(

fod @ 2008-06-21T20:32:00

2008-06-22T03:32:33Z

We went down to Seattle to visit my cousin David today. We went to eat at a place called Ozzie's Diner. It's a sports bar, and the food was good, though it was a kind of long wait before we got the food. While waiting, we watched today's European soccer match between Netherlands and Russia. During the bit we saw, there was no score at all, but we left just when they came back from half-time. After eating, we returned to David's condo and watched I Am Legend. While I didn't think it was overly great, it also wasn't overly bad. ;P We then played three games of Yahtzee and returned home. Fun.

fod @ 2008-06-05T20:50:00

2008-06-06T03:52:35Z

Well, this is three days early, but Happy birthday, David!

fod @ 2008-05-27T08:46:00

2008-05-27T15:46:49Z

Well, I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but we have chipmunks now. I went downstairs this morning to see one climbing the tree to get nuts from the squirrel feeder. I thought it was a Douglas squirrel, which we have several of, but then I noticed that it had two dark stripes down its back. Chipmunk. I didn't know we had any here.

fod @ 2008-05-20T20:52:00

2008-05-21T03:52:57Z

I finished reading Green River Running Red today. It's a book by Ann Rule, who is apparently a famous "true crime" writer that I'd never heard of until mom bought a few of her books. This one is about the Green River killer, who is a killer that I'd never heard of until he was caught in 2001. All the killings he confessed to happened in Kings County, actually fairly close to where my Aunt Carol now lives. Most of them were committed before I was born. It's not very pleasant to look back on your childhood and say "Gary Ridgeway was killing people the month I was born". At any rate, an interesting book.

Don't beat 'em, join 'em!

2008-05-18T02:51:23Z

After three weeks of getting no achievements on my XBox 360, I went back to playing games I have that have achievements that are harder to get. I was trying Bejeweled, but lost patience so I went back to Viva Pinata. I got the Pixie Prize achievement, that was fairly tough. The Sour Crocodile ate a few of my Swananas as I was preparing them to romance, but I let him because I wanted to get him as a resident (I never had before, but I have now). After I did manage to create a Pixie, he started fights with all his Rashberry and Swanana relatives until he himself was eaten by a Sour Mallowolf. Now I have a tame Mallowolf, which I'd also never had before. What fun!

Mom and I did a little work outside today. I mowed the lawn, and she edged with the weed-whacker. It was very hot which sapped our endurance so we quit with that and didn't do any weeding or pressure-washing. I feel sunburned now, and I have two blisters. :|

"Well, I'm back."

2008-05-16T03:59:39Z

Finished reading Lord of the Rings today. It's always fun to note what things are the same or different in the movies and the books.

Today felt like summer. I don't know how warm it got, but I had the fan on for a while. Of course, both my XBox 360 and the computer produce added heat to a room, so maybe if I'd been just sitting doing nothing I wouldn't have too warm.

I'm feeling a bit less sick. My nose isn't running nearly as much, and the soreness in the throat is barely noticeable.

fod @ 2008-05-12T06:18:00

2008-05-12T13:18:51Z

Yesterday mom decided to give me a new pillow. We had some unused ones already, so she didn't have to buy a new one, just replace my old one. The old one was very old. As best we can remember, I had it almost all the years we lived in Spokane, which was fourteen years. It was all lumpy, but familiar. A part of childhood is gone, but not a very big part.

About five days ago, I noticed I had a slight sore throat, but didn't say anything about it. Yesterday, I mentioned it to mom and said it was great that I didn't have any other symptoms. I spoke too soon. :| Yesterday evening, my nose started running like crazy, so now I guess I have the common cold. Common, but still annoying and somewhat miserable. I didn't sleep all that well last night, partially because the cat kept wanting to come in or go out and mostly because I couldn't breathe very well.

fod @ 2008-05-06T21:14:00

2008-05-07T04:14:13Z

It's been so long since I last posted that I feel obliged to post, but I haven't really got anything to say. I've been reading Lord of the Rings, mostly. I usually do this at the end of the year, but I was having trouble finding anything interesting to read after the four Jane Austen books I read, so I decided to read LotR.

This Sunday is Mother's Day. I never get anything for my mom, mostly because I never know what she'd want (and I don't have tons of money). I do appreciate her on a daily basis, and she knows I love her, so I don't feel incredibly bad about not getting her stuff. Mostly when she sees something she REALLY wants, she buys it for herself, so I'd be hard pressed to know what to get her if I did have money. :|

fod @ 2008-04-21T09:10:00

2008-04-21T16:11:55Z

Today is the birthday of Queen Elizabeth II. It's also my own sister Elizabeth's birthday. Odd, isn't it? Happy birthday to the queens!

fod @ 2008-04-13T14:37:00

2008-04-13T21:37:35Z

Yesterday was a fairly sunny day, so we worked outside for a few hours. I mostly just mowed the lawn, which in itself didn't take long. While I was out, however, two eagles flew directly overhead. We rarely see eagles around here, though once we saw about two dozen in a field down by the highway. They didn't stay, or even stop, but just kept flying south.

Today it is raining. Hurrah.

Sometime last week mom and I watched Pride and Prejudice and Emma. After that, having nothing to read, I decided to read Jane Austen's books, which I've never before read. I finished Sense and Sensibility within a few days, and also Pride and Prejudice and now am nearing the end of Mansfield Park. One can tell that these books were written for women mostly to read and are best understood by women. I, however, can identify more with the female characters in each story than with the men, who generally are not very sensible or respectable in Austen's stories.

Mom is doing her taxes today. It always gets put off until the weekend before they are due, and the main difficulty in doing them is finding all the documents and statements that are needed to fill them out. We don't really keep important documents in any one place, so it always takes a bit of time spent searching before she can actually fill out the tax sheets.

fod @ 2008-03-31T19:44:00

2008-04-01T02:44:37Z

I rented two games on Saturday, Lost Odyssey and Condemned 2. Neither are that great in my opinion. I guess I should have realized that LO would be turn based, a system that I'm never entirely comfortable with.. the only reason I don't like it is because I die too easily without any chance of butting in and defending myself. I did get a few achievements though, so it wasn't an entire waste. Condemned 2 reminds me of why I wasn't all that eager to finish the original. It's HARD. :P Also a little scary, though that didn't bother me so much in C2. Serial killers are pretty interesting, and I liked the investigation tools in the first game. In C2, though, there's a lot more fighting and less investigation. Bah. Way to go, developers. Again, I did get some achievements, so not an entire waste. After this, I went back to Viva Pinata in an attempt to get the fairly elusive achievements. I did get two pinatas to stay that I hadn't before (Buzzenge and Eaglir), and I did get an achievement for my garden's value, but the one I spent most of the time trying for I haven't gotten yet. I Master Romanced ten different species today (now having a total of fifteen), and I need twenty. *sigh*

Unseasonal weather continues

2008-03-29T15:53:22Z

It's been snowing off and on for the last three days. Not a great deal of it stuck to the ground, but the ground is all white and some people are driving cautiously. Arlington rarely gets snow, even in the dead of winter, so I'm wondering where all this came from.. not that I'm complaining! ;)

fod @ 2008-03-27T07:05:00

2008-03-27T14:04:23Z

I beat Assassin's Creed yesterday. I did tend to agree with a few of the reviews I read.. it was a bit too repetitive and some elements of the plot weren't all that clear. I did particularly enjoy leaping off tall buildings, however. I didn't do the flag sidequests, nor did I kill all the Templars. There are just too many of each, and I didn't feel like hunting them down. I did, however, save every citizen that was being bullied by thugs/guards. That was fairly easy, and left me with three more achievements! Speaking of achievements, this game brought me up to four hundred six achievements.. I wasn't expecting to be able to beat the game and was going to stop with four hundred, which is a nice number, but these things rarely go as I plan them.

That's a first...

2008-03-24T19:36:09Z

Yesterday was Easter, as I'm sure most of you knew. For the first time ever, we didn't celebrate it. Usually we don't really celebrate it, just have a little feast. This year, all we did that was at all un-normal was to eat lamb.

Nothing more to say, except that I'm playing Assassin's Creed again. I didn't beat it because some of the later fights, I was so outnumbered I couldn't block all the blows coming at me. This time I'm just trying to get some achievements, and if I still can't beat the game, that's fine.

fod @ 2008-03-21T11:57:00

2008-03-21T18:59:10Z

Despite it being Spring now, we got some snow today. It didn't stick, of course, but I glanced out the window and it was snowing. Weather is so weird sometimes.

fod @ 2008-03-19T15:01:00

2008-03-19T22:02:28Z

Although Spring doesn't officially start until tomorrow, it's been here for nearly a month. The birds are all back from the south and all the bushes/trees have green sprouts on them. I mowed the lawn for the first time this year today. It needed it about three weeks ago, but it kept raining every time I thought about mowing. As it was, it was still pretty wet grass, but it's been mown.

fod @ 2008-03-10T19:54:00

2008-03-11T02:55:27Z

Happy Daylight Savings!

Hm, nothing really to say. Played a lot of games, read a lot of books. Spent very little time online. It's amazing to think back on the years when I would spend three to four hours a night online. Wow.. probably the social highlights of my life, there, and mostly to people I'd never met before. And now I'm a social recluse, but by my own choice. The more time I spend alone (or with just my cat and/or mom), the more time I want to spend that way. It's really hard to decide to change my life and become productive when I like my life as is.

My aunt Cathy called today when my mom wasn't home, so she called her back when she got home. She'll be in the area sometime soon (I think mom said this weekend), but she probably won't be staying with us this time. We don't really see her much, but we do see her more often than my Uncle Brian and Aunt Paula. They don't travel much, and neither do we. There is a family reunion this summer at Badger Lake, though, which we probably will attend. A lot of the family that attends these are people I've only met once or twice in my life, so we don't always go (it isn't Mom's family after all), but this year will be reasonably close so we don't have true excuses for not going. ;P

fod @ 2008-03-03T14:11:00

2008-03-03T22:11:37Z

Mom got home Saturday night, a bit after 7:30 PM. It's good to have her back.

Dean sent some games home with her for me to play. Marvel's Ultimate Alliance, Forza Motorsport (2, I think), Orange Box (Half-life-2 episode2, Portal and Team Fortress 2), and Assassins Creed. I have spent the time since mom came home playing UA, and beat it. It wasn't really my kind of game, but getting more achievements led me to continue playing anyway. I think the most annoying thing about it was the point of view/perspective. I could never really see what was in front of me until I was really close, and there was some difficulty in seeing little hints on walls about what I was supposed to do next. I'll probably play AC next, and save the Orange Box for last. I actually read a lot of negative reviews of AC, so it'll be interesting to see if it actually is that bad.

fod @ 2008-02-27T20:58:00

2008-02-28T04:59:13Z

Today I finally got the last elusive Oblivion achievement, so I now have all 60 of them (including Shivering Isles ones). I got the last two from the main storyline last week, after having to look up an online walkthrough to figure out how to get through the Great Gate within the time limit, and became Guildmaster of the the Thieves Guild today. That was pretty difficult.. not so much due to the quests themselves, but due to little glitches along the way. The first time, it wouldn't let me put on the Books of Springfield Jax, so I kept falling to my death. I started again with a new character, and got through that bit but then everytime I tried to enter the Anvil Castle the XBox totally locked up. Eventually it stopped doing that, and I got to finish the quest, but I'm doubtful that it was worth it. At any rate, I now have two games that I've gotten all the achievements from: Mass Effect and Oblivion.

Mom's been gone nearly two days now.. I haven't really done anything that I don't do when she's not here. I have been doing a lot of reading, though, because she went to the library and got me some books to re-read while she's gone. Our cat hasn't really been too bothered... she is pretty confused about mom not coming home in the evenings and spent a bit of time with me before I went to sleep last night, but otherwise her life seems to be the same, and so is mine. Hm. I wouldn't want to live alone, though.

fod @ 2008-02-26T05:53:00

2008-02-26T13:53:48Z

Mom is flying out to Colorado today to see my sister's family for four days. We got up a bit after 5 AM. I won't be able to go with her to the airport, as I can't drive the car back alone. I hope she has a good time. The only reason she might not have a good time is because my dad is also there, and they are bound to argue. It'd almost be better for her if I was going too, because when I am around, dad argues mostly with me and she doesn't have to argue. But I can't go, because someone has to stay with the cat because she gets so terrified when we leave her in kennels. I'm sure mom will put a brave face on it and do her best, but I think we'll both be glad for her to return.