I've caught up with most of the stuff I need to do for our expansion. My fingers are crossed anyway :) If you aren't sure what's expanding, take a look at our website. Amazing page thingers by marketing folks, words by yours truly.

Our E3 movie still gives me goosebumps; those are my dragons (well, the story about them is anyway)! Wheeee!

Chris and I are signing up for beginning Italian lessons. He said what we'd probably learn is how to say spaghetti, linguine and penne. Probably :) But we'll sound like we mean business next time we go to Pizza Hut.

And finally: If you live on O'ahu (and I know some of you do!), go visit our friend Kurt who will be a "Cop on Top" for Special Olympics this week. :)

I spent the weekend in Valencia with my former boss Larry. We were trying to figure out a time-frame for a visit because he still travels extensively and this was the only weekend we were both free for the foreseeable future. Dinner turned into most of the weekennd as we got caught up on the past few years' worth of news.

It seems like forever ago, but he was let go before they closed our division in the wake of 9/11. I'd only seen him once since then, when a bunch of folks got together to help Liz put siding on her house. So, five or so years later, we're both now living in SoCal, though not exactly in the same neighborhood. It was a long drive up there, whereupon I realized he lives off the same horrifying exit that leads to Magic Mountain. Aieeee!

He was surprised to learn (now that he can't fire me) that he'd made me cry while I was his assistant. Hah, he's just blocking those memories :) Other than a rather volatile temper, Larry's an old sweetie with a heart of gold. We talked about our families, Hawaii (he lived there for a number of years) and folks we know in common. While we chatted, I had one of those brilliant flashes of insight: Larry is a social Sim. He probably contacted me because everyone else he knows is gone this weekend and he hates being alone in a big house with a beautiful view.

We sat up till way late chatting and watching shooting stars from his back patio. It was totally like being on holiday; he likes to cook and fuss over folks, so I had a great dinner and this morning he made us some great Italian coffee. I drove home after breakfast with the remains of a failed Larry experiment in my car: a massive cat condo for the cat he bought and then gave away. Apparently it jumped on his kitchen counters, wouldn't come when called and refused to snuggle. Sounds a lot like Melody!

Speaking of whom, she and Mittens adore the new cat condo as it towers over the one I already have. They're playing on it now. I'll have to upload the photos from their explorations!

We watched a History Channel program about the Book of Revelation. Chris observed the physical perfection in every depiction of God and exclaimed, "Man, God was ripped!"

I'd never thought of it like that, but it sure puts Him in a whole new light :)

My sweet cherub is currently at OzzFest. He's totally excited and happy because Slipknot (where do these bands come up with these names?) showed up unexpectedly. Hurray.

In the excitement, however, my cherub lost the key to his car. Our insurance company has roadside service that covers unlocking cars and Chris assures me he has a spare key in the trunk. This saves me a trip to San Bernadino, which I'm sure is lovely this time of night, but I'm not into driving up there and back again right now.

Then again, it's 8 o'clock on a Saturday. It's not like I have a date or anything. No, I was just watching a TV show about women in prison. I really need to get a life :(

Phil went home yesterday :( We had a good, long visit, but I'll miss having him around. He's so cute. If I walk by him and say in a deep voice, "Phil...uuuuuupp," he replies, "Mom...uuuuupp." We've been doing that for years, though it's funnier now that his voice is even deeper than mine :)

Chris' cat Megan lives with us now, too. That would be 3 cats, all of whose names start with the letter M. She's older than Mittens, probably around 7 or 8 now, but small. She's also very quiet, keeping to herself in Chris' room. Mittens and Melody have gone in to see her, but she efficiently disappears and they come slinking out again. While I'm sure Melody's interested in actually meeting Megan, Mittens seems more like he wants to beat her up. I am not sure where he developed such a poor attitude...especially since Melody and Megan could probably slice him to ribbons.

Tis our crunch time now. I'm very excited about the stuff that I get to do for our expansion, so the long hours will come in handy. I had to skip D&D night,though, but I stopped in to see if Todd's newest incarnation made it through the adventure (he did, brought back from the brink of -5 HP by clerical intervention).

If you don't see much of me till September, I am crunching. Crunch, crunch, crunch!

Company picnic today. All three of us went and the cherubs got to finally meet Matt. Chris said, "So, mom, I guess this is another guy you wouldn't let date your daughter...if you had one." I wish he'd stop saying that, even if it's true! hahaha! Chris rode the jet ski, Phil and I took out one of those oversized tricycle things and paddled around. No sunburns today thanks to spray on sun screen!

We left a bit early as Chris has to work Saturdays, so Phil and I followed him to the mall. Here in San Diego, there are open air malls, unlike Seattle where they're indoor malls. We strolled around in the sunshine for a bit before returning to Red Robin for dinner. I asked the hostess to seat us where we could see Chris.

He looked so professional back there, it did my heart good. If you're at the Red Robin for dinner some day, your burgers may be getting wrapped in parchment by my cherub!

I bought my tickets to Hawaii. Yay! I can't wait to go :) Although I'm dying to see Kenny Loggins and hang out with Kurt, right about now all I can think about is having a coconut napple at Zippy's. Every so often when I get a craving, I go to the website and pretend I'm going to order some sent to me. Just knowing that I could, even though I never do, feels great.

Dianne and I also bought tickets for her to come visit me for our letter burning. We decided it was much, much cheaper for one of us to go directly to the other person instead of both of us shelling out for San Francisco. Plus I have a fireplace, and we couldn't be sure a hotel wouldn't frown on us burning reams of paper in our room.

With Melodie's demise at Tuesday's session, I spent most of last night trying to figure out what to do with Lael, her "replacement." She's a druid, rather than a ranger, so we can benefit from healing early on. Our group of merry adventurers always seems to take a hit in the healing department. :/

On the bright side, having gone through D&D so far, I now have a greater understanding of what the heck all those numbers meant in KotOR. Hee! I would just glaze over them... 19/20 crit...whatever. Now I know.

And knowing is half the battle! ;)

Alas, Melodie did not survive tonight's adventure. All seven of her hit points and then some, gone. :(

Phil and I spent the afternoon at the San Diego Ren Faire. It did seem a bit spendy admission-wise, but on the bright side Phil enjoyed the heck out of it.

We almost didn't make it, since I had no idea it was happening until around noon when I opened up a newspaper. Then I copied the directions on how to get there, and off we went. Only the directions left us hanging looking for a particular street to turn left onto.

We took a tour of downtown San Diego before finally locating the obscure little side street that leads direction to the parking lot. We ended up parking on the street though, since I figured by then we'd driven the equivalent of 20 miles trying to get there.

Phil likes weaponry so we did two tours of the merchant tents. He bought himself a couple of little items as souvenirs (not weapons) and we got home just a bit ago. I'm going to make us some fruit smoothies now for dinner. :)

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

About 6:15PM I messaged Chris to ask him what he was making for dinner. Since he's a cook by trade, I figured I'd get him to whip something up for us. He hemmed and hawed and I got distracted by work. (heh)

Right before I closed up my desktop for the night, I messaged him again: "omw! lfd!"

What do your l33t skilz think my message meant? :)

That's your hana buttah test for geeks. (And as soon as I dig up my copy of the real test, I may put it someplace on this site since I can't find it anywhere on the web!)

Hahaha! I have updated Gryph's location on my links before anyone else! Haha! :)

I was happy to go back to work today. While I snuck into my email and our player boards over the past week, I didn't get much else done. Today felt very productive as I got caught up on everything and got my new assignments. I like when I know what I have to get done; that way all I have to do is figure out how to finish things up.

Chris is at work now. Apparently he's going to work Friday - Tuesday nights. That means he won't be coming to game night for the forseeable future :/ He tells me he's the only non-hispanic dude in the kitchen, which doesn't surprise me. In Seattle, I'd noticed all the Asian restaurants seemed to be staffed by Koreans. Here, while no matter what the cuisine is, the kitchen staff is hispanic. I still mentally pause when I'm at the Chinese take away place where all the wokkers are speaking Spanish.