Rooks & Squids

That'd be a fun name for a band. But it also has a much more significant personal meaning. Let's read on.

Last night, Charles and I took on the folks in our favorite card game, Rook. It requires 4 or 5 to play, and is a lot like Spades or Hearts. Its awesome. Dad and Mom have been playing it for like, decades. They won the first game, but Charles and I OWNED the second game. No contest! It is named rook, because there are 4 different colors of number cards (green, red, black, and yellow...oddly Jamaican in that respect) and one high-point wild card with a picture of a hideous bird on it. The Rook. And I did not get it AT ALL yesterday. Stupid bird. Anyway. Yes, I am SO bored at work that I'm writing about a card game in my blog.

I mention squids because of my recent visit to Atlanta. There was much searching for apartments and weddingy places whilst I was down there. Good times. We found a great apartment, but its still a few months early for that. Probably around June I'll be heading down. We also played 'Whirlyball' with the youth group of Behtia's church. For those of you in the northlands, Whirlyball is like polo, but in bumper cars instead of on horses. Its very entertaining. Had dinner with the future in-laws at an Italian place while visiting, which was fine, but the appetizer was Calamari. And I ATE SOME OF IT. Yes, people, I love this woman enough to eat fried squid tentacle. It was like a piece of onion ring that had been left in the fridge for a couple days and then reheated in the microwave. Not too bad if you can get 'tentacle' out of your brain long enough to eat it.

Anyway, made it down and back safely, am narrowing down options on tuxes, and everything is just pretty much going ok! Work is boring, as usual.

Long Live the Band!

Last night after I got home, me and the brothers went to Best Buy, where I bought a AC/DC power cord for my iPod, and William got Rock Band (Special Edition). All 4 of us siblings played that evening. It was pretty fun. Of course, I was rockin the guitar, with Jean on drums, doing pretty well. Our only negative was Charles' LOUD and OFF KEY singing. But he insisted, and none of the rest of us wanted to do it. Our band name is the Cheeky Monkeys.

Wedding plans are progressing! More updates on this as it develops.

What I'm wearing now: "+2 Shirt of Designing", "Slightly Too Short Jeans of Nerdery" (-1 to charisma, but +3 to all computer skills), "+5 Doc Martens of Butt-Kickage", "Holey Moley Socks" (all resistances -1), and "Seuss's 1 Fish, 2 Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish Boxer Shorts" (+2 to charisma, increases morale for all party members).

Today I got a craving for a food I've never had. Ever get that? Its really a weird feeling. This morning I was like "man, I could really go for some fried frog's legs". I've NEVER had those, and would probably find them gross, but I was craving them this morning. Stupid frogs...

Not much else going on today. Looking forward to having Sunday off and then only 2 more days of work til I get to go see my fiancee. By the way, I found out that the difference between Coach and 1st Class is exactly 500 dollars between here and Atlanta. Not worth it. Now, if it was 500 dollar difference between here and say, Belgium, then that extra cushiony seat and leg room becomes more valuable. 500 dollar valuable? Perhaps, perhaps not. Something to think about.

What's up? I'm the Spleen.

Admit it. You secretly want to be part of the Mystery Men. Well here's your chance! For the low low price of $2,900, you can own the actual screen-used costume of the Spleen! I saw this and had to share. Plus I'm having a good day at work. Could it be because if I was home, the family would be driving me up the wall? Could it be because all the management called out sick? Could it be because I was off for the last 2 days and toured castles? It could be all of those things.

I posted not long ago, and nothing really new has happened...I've been updating my Facebook page. Facebook can be fun. It gives me a way to keep in touch with the most random of people. I have like, 2 dozen friends on there, and I don't think I have more than 3 (those 3 being my siblings) from the same group. Some college, high school, family, 4 places of employment, friends-in-law, fiancees...its quite a collection.

So looking at wedding stuff is cool. People fall all over themselves showing you things and making sure you have everything you need. I guess if you're paying them thousands of dollars for something, it makes people nicer, but still, I feel kinda special. Yesterday I looked at 2 prospective wedding sites up in the Towson area that were so cool. Maybe later on I'll go look at tuxes, since I'm not allowed to have anything to do with the dress. I believe there is the hiding of bridal magazines when I walk into the room, in fact.

iPod iUpdate: This thing is awesome. I can check my e-mail, listen to sweet tunes, DOWNLOAD sweet tunes directly to the iPod (which will upload to iTunes when I sync, not erase it), watch TV and movies...the only beef is that the battery life is pretty weak. Still, its definitely in the 'good stuff' column.

Last night I dreamed weird stuff. Combine a costume party, high school reunion, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and the Dukes of Hazzard, and you might have some idea. Post-apocalyptic evil government, has strict corn (everything runs on corn) regulations, but big, weird looking, punk dudes in freaky cobbled-together cars that shoot flames run through rural USA stealing corn. I had to steal a bunch of corn, so I could take some girl in high school I barely knew and didn't even like to the costume party. Also, the government agents were sketchy and wore weird hats, like in the 'Take On Me' music video.

Peace out.

Bored At Work Again...

So last night I dreamed that I had to eat mixed vegetables. Pretty awful, right? Of course, those mixed vegetables consisted of spiced potato cubes, broiled butternut squash, carmelized onions, and stewed carrots. I remember being ok with everything but the squash. Maybe it means I hate squash or something. Or perhaps that I am still repressing bad P.E. memories of playing the tennis-like game of the same name for weeks on end.

Nothing much new to post...I know I say that a lot, right? Um...I'm still engaged. The wedding is less than 9 months away now! We've gone location-shopping recently, and have a couple good ideas. I'll let you know as soon as we decide, foregoing the "Swedish surprise" avenue of location announcement.

Do you think its acceptable to put the special edition of Rock Band on your wedding registry...? I've been thinking of lots of random stuff to put on there, but I am told that the registry is for all the boring household stuff like chafing dishes and fruit juicers. It looks like we aren't going to NEED that much of that kind of stuff, both of us being older as we are. I think between us we already HAVE like, 2 microwaves, 3 waffle irons, 2 blenders, 3 sets of dishes, and so on. I even have a vacuum cleaner. Not much left to ask for. Maybe a nice set of kitchen knives, but word is that its bad luck to give knives as a wedding gift, because it symbolizes wanting to sever the unity blah blah blah. I'd LOVE a nice set of Wusthof Grand Prix knives, or, while I'm dreaming, a complete set of left-handed Shun knives. It'd be outstanding!

I'm heading down to ATL in about 2 weeks to see my sweetie. We get to do fun stuff like look at apartments and go furniture shopping. (Blondie, remember when I ran into you at Tyson's? And I suggested the giant bean-bag store? We are SO going there and getting one!!!)

And now I'm just sitting around at work, slowly freezing to death because they have the air conditioning on, and playing online sudoku. Found a good deal on chainmail while online, though. Aluminum, too, which means a suit of it will weigh like, 15 pounds, rather than the 45 pounds my current steel mail weighs. Not that I'm going to get it or can afford it. Perhaps for the registry...his and hers chainmail hauberks are weddingy, right?