I'm afraid of heights, so I'm not sure why I wanted to climb up the high stone tower beside the parking lot. The views are supposed to be beautiful though and by the time I'd reached the fourth landing, clutching onto the thin metal railing on the inside of each turn, I would have to agree. Still, that was plenty high enough. The cars in the parking lot were like toys and even though the tower was sturdily constructed of stone and concrete, I couldn't imagine the view from the top would be any better. I went back down slowly, clutching that rail until I hit solid ground and wandered back to my car.

As I drove away, another car was coming into the lot and had stopped on the opposite side of the crossing, a wide ford across a stream. I thought I was on the wrong side of the road, so I went to the left and immediately realized I'd driven off the edge directly into the water. "Well, this is not good," I thought, unbuckling my seat belt and reaching for the door handle. When I looked out the driver's door window, though, I could see that the water had pushed the car against the stone foot of the tower and I wouldn't be able to push it open. The water was also much deeper than I anticipated and as I sat there I could feel it rising up and lapping at the corner of my mouth. Even though I knew I couldn't get out, I kept fumbling with the lock and handle on my door until I sat up and thought, "That's twice now I've dreamt I would drown."

I think that means I need to balance my checkbook. Or something.

Ooooh!!! That's one of my quests on the top of page 2! The folks who did the voices for the npcs on this quest did a great job. It's so cool to listen to someone else say something you wrote and it sounds exactly as you imagined it. :) In a related note, I was giddy with delight over one of my npcs whose voice sounded so familiar I wondered what TV commercials he'd done. Turns out he'd done the voice for one of my favorite npcs in KotOR too. How cool is that? :)

Mittens has always been highly observant, just not very bright. Rob and I used to watch him trot across the living room in his clueless way when *zoinks!* he'd spot a piece of lint or a twisty bread tie. Then he'd become a fierce jungle predator or perhaps an English hunting dog as he would freeze and point at the unfamiliar object.

Maggie showed practically no interest in her surroundings; all she wants is her food bowl, some water (the magic, refilling porcelain urn was perfectly acceptable) and a someplace to lie down. The only things she finds compelling are catnip and going outside to survey her domain. Nothing outward distresses her, even the day she schlepped around stuck in the handle of a paper bag.

Last night I brought Mo home from work, since we are off this week. Mittens was so busy with the pile of catnip on his little rug that he didn't observe me changing Mo's water or putting Mo on the top of the cable box (where it's warm) before going to sleep. Early this morning, however, Mittens finally saw Mo. Early this morning. Very early.

From the sounds of it, Mittens thought Mo was going to attack (which he might have been; he's a fighting fish). I awoke to the sounds of Mittens yowling and realized he'd seen Mo. Mo swam gracefully around his bowl, unaware of the attention he'd attracted. Mittens pined for him and after I threw some pj's at him (they were all I had on hand), he stopped trying to climb onto the cable box to get a closer look.

Instead, Mittens sat entranced for over a half hour, watching Mo circle lazily. Mittens is perched on the edge of the bed now, still longing to visit Mo up close but Mo is not a stupid fish. He's stopped circling and is now spreading his fins in a display of virility to scare my cat. Now I see why Sylvester and Tweety were so funny; the antics that Mittens will go through to try and get this fish will be interesting to observe.

I've been leery of saying my XPS is fixed, lest it go belly up yet again. It is currently running Sims2 on the high-high-high settings. I installed EQII on it last night and logged in briefly, but since the XPS is on my rolling file cart, it's not exactly ergonomic.

This morning I ran into JohnD, or rather he passed through the building lobby as I was admiring the "holiday gift tree" in the building lobby. It's rather amusing; I suspect poor Rob up in Seattle believes I spend my days chumming around with JohnD, Broos and their respective kin but in reality, I never see either of them unless we pass by chance or I poke my head into Broos' office to give him grief (which means that he will walk down the hall past my cube at some point and strangle me in passing). Indeed, while I knew Broos was going to San Francisco last week, I didn't know JohnD and Michelle would be there until we were at the airport on the way back to San Diego. However, JohnD observed that while I might not have seen them at the party, they saw me wandering around. I don't know if that's a good thing or not ;)

It's very nice and cool now. Who knew that SoCal gets a real autumn? At first when I saw leaves turning yellow, brown and red on the chestnut tree near my apartment, I thought it was dying from lack of water. Heh! So despite me wanting to lay out all the time and get a tan, it's now too cold! Gar! Well, I suppose if I lay out very still on a towel at the pool I'd be okay; it's probably much too cold at the beach. Perhaps this coming week, I shall head out and find out! Stay tuned!

I have determined that the base cost of one's Dell system exponentially increases the likelihood of its failure :)

Rob's XPS, bought a year ago in anticipation of EQII, is already dying. Mine is awaiting the Second Coming of the Dell Tech Dude only 3 weeks after I got it. My original Dell Dimension 8100 (three years old) is doing absolutely terrific and is the cheapest of the three. Hmmmm...shall we say it together?...hmmmm.

I took the day off (or rather, will work on Saturday instead) to be home for Mr. Dell. He hasn't called or shown up yet and after another one hour call to Dell ("Hello, my name is Hugo...do not let my East Indian accent throw you off...of course I am in America; how else could I get a ridiculous name like Hugo, mem sahib? I mean, ma'am?") I really hope this guy realizes my Saturday night Dell call concluded with "The guy will be out on Tuesday," not "The guy will call you and figure something out."

In other news, my Christmas cactus is thriving again, though it looked touch-and-go for a couple of months. Right now, every single stem is sporting a tiny little bud which will burst into flames of fuschia in time for Thanksgiving! Isn't that cool? Even the bits I pruned off and stuck into a glass jar with water are budding. On the bright side, being home today I can also get some maintenance guy in to fix my closet doorknob, which doesn't work. If only I had a locksmith in the family to fix it for me. Oh! I do! But he's not here! Goober :P

Matt took some photos of the party. "Medieval" lads and lasses served tasty treats and libations, the game was showing on all the walls, the music was loud and as they say, "had a nice beat" so we danced to it.

Well, some of us danced. Broos disappeared to schmooze. Matt followed someone into the VIP area and spent most of the night chatting with the celebrities. After some dancing, Glenn and Jake tried to brazen their way into the VIP area. Jake was spurned, but Glenn waltzed in...then took pity on me and Jake and led us downstairs to get our hands stamped so we too could pretend to be VIPs. There's a photo in Matt's collection of Glenn, me, Matt, Brande and Jake. The VIP area didn't seem any more VIP than the rest of the club, and eventually, I wandered back downstairs to dance some more, then wandered back to the hotel.

And now, the sad news. Recall that Dell sent a tech to replace my motherboard and memory? Since I was going to be gone anyway, I left the XPS at the office. The tech assured me verbally that it was fixed as we had no monitor to hook it up to after he finished the repairs. I figured he would have some sort of gizmo to hook it up to a regular PC monitor and left mine monitor at home...but he hadn't any gizmos to speak of.

Saturday, I stopped by the office to pick the XPS up and later that night hooked it up. Push power button; no response. Switch plug to different spot in the power strip; no response. Peer into its computery innards; no response. One and a half hours of phone call tech support with Dell; no response. So Tuesday (must be their day to tech), another tech will be going to visit my XPS with another motherboard, different memory AND a new power supply. This time, I will hopefully be able to take the day off and hold Mr. Dell Tech hostage until the damn thing works. Damn it! :)

Before I left Seattle, Larry was planning (or having Clare plan) a retreat for the entire firm. As it happens, the retreat was the same weekend as Susan's wedding; had I still been with the firm, I'd have gone to the wedding anyway :)

Tomorrow night, the big firm I work with now is hosting a little bash to show off our game. No lakeside chalets and camp fires for us...the party is at the apparent social center of San Francisco and only a few folks from San Diego are going.

I'm not sure that we were supposed to see the part of the email that said that some folks were being invited to offset the "geek factor." :D Still, it was an amusing little turn of phrase. I am a very lucky chicklet as I get to go; not as an offset mind you, but as a geek. Whee!

Of course this gives me some social anxiety. Broos will be there, but as one of the big cheeses he and his kilt will be schmoozing with the other bigwigs. I'm not sure about Matt's plan for fun; he wants me to take photos of him "farting on celebrities." I hope the celebrities have no sense of smell.

I slept in today, blissfully unaware of the drama that would soon come my way. For lo! Upon booting up the XPS, the behemoth that currently resides upon a bookshelf in my bedroom, the motherboard blew her fuse and well nigh took out one of her massive memory thingers with her!

At least, that's what the Dell phone dude speculated. He had me operate on the patient, pulling cards out and putting them in, turning the behemoth off and on again. Now that the memory is moved to different places inside, I can turn it on without it sounding like an F-15. Tuesday next week they are sending a cheerful Dell tech to replace the motherboard and the memory.

It seems so odd to have the whole day stretch before me like this. I am cleaning, laundering, pondering the layout of the bedrooms and listening to the XPS whirring like a blender as it updates itself.

Our game is shipping! We got to watch a spiffy video about it, like a trailer, and I got goosebumps. This is nothing like running around Icemule Trace, fixing typos on the day it opened. Nor is it like spending weeks thinking about Greece, building it my mind and in text and then watching people scamper around in awe of how many "real" places we worked into it. It's something completely different and yet the same. I guess I finally see why folks are drawn to the graphical games like this.

And yet, all my contributions to it are text :) I wrote books that every single player in our game will get (though quite likely, they won't read). There isn't a shimmery shiny thing that I contributed to the end product other than prose. It's beautiful. I sit at Daryann's feet in our little village whenever I log out; she looks at me and smiles. I like our game :) But it's exhausting to think about.

Broos has offered to come peer at my computery innards the following weekend. I haven't seen Broos in ages, socially speaking. It'll be a pleasure to spend time with someone for a non-work-related something. Mayhaps we shan't look at my computer at all! Mayhaps we shall just do something completely insane! Like eat dinner with other than plastic utensils! Oh! To live so dangerously yet again! :)