I fixed my laptop, and got a really nice upgrade in the process. I had the hard drive fail, which caused a kernel panic. I got an SSD hard drive and it is so much faster. I’ll also get longer battery life since it won’t suck up all the power. It is a good upgrade and I’m glad to have my big laptop working again.
I was able to hold the kitties close to Howard today without them being upset. Howard and Archer even did some mutual sniffing. It was really good for them to be so calm together. I’m glad they are getting along, and soon I want to try having Howard moving around while they are there.
While many of the other books had exciting things happening at the end, this is by far the most blatant cliffhanger. I was a little annoyed even by the uncertainty with which this book ends. I was also annoyed that the main action from the last book, while echoing all over this book, didn’t actually resolve at all. I was suspecting that it would be all over the place, because it must have been, but they didn’t even bring up the characters that were involved with it in the last book. So all together this book set up more cliffhangers without answering any of the ones from last book. The characters that were focussed on in this book also aren’t my favorites. I would have liked to have had more happen with Matt and Perrin, but their parts of the story were only honorable mentions by the scale of what happened with them. I’m still looking forward to the next few books and finishing the series.
Archer and Lana were in the same room as Howard for an extended period of time, with him walking by them even, and there was little to no hissing. I’m impressed that they would be up to it so soon. I’m really glad they are getting along better. One more highly supervised time and then we can have a loose Howard I think.
This morning Steph drove to Monterey so that we could go diving on the Escapade. It was a good 2 dives, but all sorts of things went on. We went out to stillwater cove in Carmel. The boat tried to get us to Cathedrals, but the kelp and wind made it too difficult. We ended up getting tangled in the kelp anyway, but the dive was nice. I was buddied with Mai, and she was overweighted. When we tried to surface she was too overweighted to make it up, so I had to drop her weights and help her to the surface. Steph buddied with Jason, who had the exact opposite problem. He had just enough weight to make it down, but when he was surfacing on both dives he popped right to the surface. He also didn’t know how to position himself correctly to empty the BCD, so he was having issues from that as well.
We ended up diving Erik’s Pinnacle as the second dive and it was really nice. I would really like to go back there and dive it again. Mai sat out the second dive after the weight issue and the kelp monster issue. We got to see tons of fish, sea slugs, nudibranchs, and an octopus. The octopus was sitting on a yellow sea star and trying to blend in by being yellow as well; it wasn’t working. He was really cute, and we looked up the species afterwards as the red octopus.
After the dives we went and picked up Steph’s new hood at otter bay. The cat ears look better, but not great still. I drove back and took the fast way, going back over 17. Along the way we stopped at one of the fresh produce stands and got all sorts of snack foods and fresh fruits. I got 23 avocados, 20 tiny ones, and 3 massive ones of a different type. I think we should take 17 back every time we go to Monterey, but we will just have to see whatever Waze says will be the fastest way when we are ready to head out. It was pretty accurate on this trip.
Nick was nice enough to make some curry for Steph, Brian, and myself out of the vegetables he got from the delivery service. It was really tasty, and we talked about all sorts of board games while eating. I am hoping to meet this Steve guy that Brian has befriended and hopefully talk about design, business, and kickstarters.
While we were playing board games and cooking dinner we had Archer and Lana out. They were being so cute, and wandering all over the place. They seem to be getting much more comfortable with the space, and even were trying to get out of my room once I lured them back into there. I need to get some extra things to keep them off the chairs, tables, and out of the fireplace. They are pretty good kitties, and are staying social and playful. I’m so happy to have them.
This game was a lot of fun. I picked it up pretty quickly and figured out that the best way to go about playing is to specialise, and then use that speciality as much as possible. I started out with two upgrades on the food track and quickly picked up a building that game me the third. I used that to get a ton of food and then used the trading center to exchange the food for other resources. I didn’t use the aspects of paying to go back nearly enough, and I didn’t do as much picking up and replacing as much as I could have. I’d really like to play it again, as I think I could do much better. I played with Adam, Nick, and Brian. Adam ended up winning, but by only one point to my close second.
Adam, Nick, Steph, Brian, Andrew, and I went to see Pacific Rim. We did the IMax 3D experience and it was certainly worth it. I can say that they didn’t let things like plot or character development get in the way of the action. I wasn’t disappointed in the least by the total disregard to logic or physics that the movie provided. The one thing I could have done with more of were fight scenes, actually. The fights happened rather slowly when they did, and the robots that weren’t the main characters died almost immediately after you saw them start fighting. I’d say you should see this movie if you want mindless violence, robots, and monsters.
It's an Exciting World 