Leftovers

Item 1: Great Divide Titan IPA - great googly moogly is this ever delicious. It's like hops in a bottle - I might almost like it more than Summit.

Item 2: I was very confused after drinking an Item 1 because I realized there was a piece of paper in front of me that says, verbatim, "I hate the commies and cheese" - and it's in my handwriting. It took a little while to process, but I determined it's a reference to the game "War! Age of Imperialism" that I've been playing on the computer. I remember a game in which they sneakily undermined my authority - I must have been really irritated. Why I name my opponents "Commies" and "Cheese" - well, I'm just not very original sometimes - I'm in a hurry to play rather than a funk to be original with my naming standards (applies to my coding as well). I'm currently playing a round where the Democrats, Liberals, Republicans, and a few other parties are fighting it out versus Pissboy (my friend Dan's favorite moniker) and Scooter. The world is looking a very Democrat blue at the moment, which actually makes me feel not so bad about losing to the computer. The game - a computer rendition of a board game - is actually pretty fun, but it's absolutely a board game. I own several Eagle games, so I thought this would be a good game to own, particularly as it was on the sale rack at Target for $6.97 a copy and supported multi-player online capability. I actually had Pooteewheet look at another Target for an extra copy so I'd have four (4) to share with my gaming friends. At $28 for four copies, it's significantly cheaper than the actual board game.

Item 3: my mother was in a Vespa accident, yet talked to me on the phone without explaining that someone had literally run her over. Nice, Mom.

Item 4: my sister, LissyJo (and husband Ceri and niece Amelie) are back from Australia. They have more chutzpa than me to take an infant on a 16 hour plane trip...twice.

Item 5: my Dad is having troubles with his acid reflux - big problems - and seems kind of bummed. He's been on a diet for a long time. If the issue is that he's holding still and not getting better, but that it's not hurting him, and he feels like he lost all that weight and did all that dieting for no reason - well, he looks great and I'm sure he's 1000% healthier on all sorts of other fronts, if not the acid reflux front and he didn't get worse, so that's something. We here at Casa de McVay are happy he's o.k.

Item 6: Mean Mr. Mustard is sick. I hope he's feeling better for the weekend. Being sick during the work week is one thing, even if you have to come in for emergencies - losing your weekend is unacceptable.

Item 7: I took my road bike out for a spin. Yeah, it was only like 10 blocks, but I put on the shoes, trued the wheels and went. Damn, that makes me happy. Clipping into the frogs and just pounding it, even in jeans, ecstasy. The back wheel is still a little untrued - but functional. I think I'm going to just replace the rims with some wider ones - I have the money, so why not. Speaking of which, I took my mountain bike in after the whole Iron Man slipping chain into the ditch lose the keys ordeal and they put a new chain on it while informing me "your cassette could be bad too" - and of course it is, absolutely, I know it - it has probably 4000 miles on it. A new chain ($23 with labor) wasn't too bad, but new cassettes and rings is a bit of an expense. I'm about 24 hours from just deciding that I should take it up to my parents' cabin (flat - so it'll last for a decade without a new cassette) and get a new bike - a hybrid - easier on me, easier on pulling a Burley, and after I deduct the hypothetical cost of a cassette, probably $200 or so.

Item 8: A friend of mine actually got in touch with me today after about a decade - an old D&D buddy who was also a Scoutmaster and fellow Order of the Arrow member. I went looking for him once before with no luck, so it was very pleasant to have him find me (helps that I've had the same email addresses for approximately 10+ years). He might be interested to read this (if he's reading), but I actually have the candle that he had on his OA overnight. Not one of the candles from the box of whatever was sitting around, but the candle that he had in his campsite overnight. For those of you that were never in the OA - meaningless - for those of you that were, that's a pretty serious coup.

Item 9: Ming - I made this so long because you hate long posts. I very much doubt you got this far >:)