T is for being Totally awesome, YMMV
O is for his Offbeat sense of humour
D is for his Dependability in certain specific situations
D is for his Doggedness – mostly in avoiding things
W is for being Weird and goofy
D is for Darn there are a lot of Ds
Y for Yoda it is
C is for being Clever, but not as clever as he thinks he is
K is for Kooky, which is distinct from the weirdness above

Put them all together and what does that spell?

Tisforbeingtotallyawesomeymmvoisforhisoffbeatsenseofhumourdisforhisdependabilityincertainspecificsituationsdisforhisdoggednessmostlyinavoidingthingswisforbeingweirdandgoofydisfordarntherearealotofdsyforyodaitiscisforbeingcleverbutnotascleverashethinksheiskisforkookywhichisdistinctfromtheweirdnessabove

At least it rhymes.

Some years the Oscrs have movies that interest everyone.  Sometimes they don’t.  This is a year with type 2.  This is actually more interesting to me because I get to go out and see a number of movies that I otherwise might not.  But I wonder if the average Oscar viewer will be too interested in the nominee list.

Best Picture

There were nine(!) nominees this year.  I have only seen 4 of them.  Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball and Warhorse.  I am interested in seeing The Artist and The Descendants as well.  Someday I’ll probably watch The Help.  Of the ones I’ve seen my favorite is Midnight in Paris.

• Hugo – this was very good, but although it is a PG 3D movie I would have hated it as a kid.  A nostalgic look back at the 1900s?  For adults though I think it is excellent.  (There is nothing that kids shouldn’t see in the movie – I just don’t think they’d be interested.)
• Moneyball – There are also nominations for both Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill.  Jonah Hill with an Oscar!  Who could have seen that potential coming.  Aaeon Sorkin co-wrote – there is no surprise that I like this.
• Warhorse – I wrote about this movie earlier this month.  This is a good movie worth seeing.
• Midnight in Paris – this was just a nifty, awesome, groovy film.  I’ve written about it before too.  Go watch.

I don’t have too much to say about all the acting nominations.  I’ve found that there can be great acting in some pretty garbage movies.

Best direction and Best writing

In these categories I’ve also seen: The Ides of March and Margin Call.  I’d like to see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  That looks nifty.  The director category overlaps 100% with Best Picture.  My pics would be Midnight in Paris for direction, Moneyball for Adapted Screenplay and Midnight in Paris for Original Screenplay.

• Ides of March – This is a good movie about very bad people.  I liked it.
• Margin Call – I thought this was only  so-so movie.  The screenplay had some nice speeches, but they felt like speeches.  “Look at me!  I’m making a point here!”  I felt like I was being hit over the head with the “get the point?” hammer.  Because they were delivered by Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany and Stanley Tucci they worked OK.

The news says there were some snubs.  I’m fine with the nominees.  50/50 and Drive made my personal best films list of 2011, but I am not sure they needed nominations.

And that is what I have to opine about that.

Friday, January 20th was the memorial service for Dean at St. Joe’s.  Today is the actual anniversary.  (Dean actually disappeared after midnight so the disappearance is tomorrow, but in my had it was Thursday night).  Our old college president (e.g. twenty years older than he was – not elderly) tried to gather a group of the 1991 alumni to attend the event, but only three of us were able to make it.  I was still thrilled to see the people who were there.

Dan (the president) gave a remembrance of Dean.  He did an excellent job.  He covered the facts.  He covered the feelings we had.  He went over what we all did wrong.  He also covered how we learned and grew.  Like my own remembrance last week it was a bit short on details about Dean himself which is unfortunate.  But it was a really good presentation.  I also learned (or maybe relearned) some aspects of the weekend and following weeks I had missed or forgotten.  Fr. Terry ed us and the current Rangers in prayers.  All told I was very happy with the service.  I am very glad this is something that Joe’s is still doing every year.

After the service we went to a nearby bar for some fellowship and supper.  I met several of the current house committee including Scott – the director of residence, Tyler – the president and Jerod one of the sports reps.  Joe’s is going to win its 25th consecutive intramural cup this year.  20 years ago I was there for the “drive for 5″.  I’m not sure the house committee had as much fun – we spent some time taking about mid-thirties issues like kids and health issues.  18 year olds are TWENTY years younger than we are now!

It was a good evening.  Unfortunate that it was a sad event bringing us together.

But it followed a lousy day.  The rest of the blog will contain details of events south of my personal equator that may not be for the squeamish.

Friday morning I woke at 4 in the morning.  I was really hot – sweating and feeling a little dehydrated.  As I tried to fall back to sleep I also realized that I had a slight pain in my right abdomen.  This would turn out to be a new kidney stone.  I couldn’t fall back to sleep, but the pain wasn’t bad to I stubbornly stayed in bed until my alarm went off at 5:15 am.

When I got up in addition to my normal glass of water in the morning I added some pain meds.  They worked and I felt a bit better.  I left for the bus at 6:45 am and decided to have one more pill for the road.  It is pretty normal that drinking water increases the pain since more pressure is then applied to the stone.  With the pain meds I was expecting to be able to put in a full day at work.  Often if you get by the initial pain the stone adjusts and doesn’t cause pain again – often for weeks.

That wasn’t the case this time.

The bus came at 7 am and at 7:50 am we were dropping a client off at the Cross Cancer institute on campus.  Instead of getting better the pain had just gotten worse throughout the trip.  I have no idea what it would have been like without the two pills I had popped that morning.

I asked the bus driver if he could make a detour and drop me at the U of A hospital instead of at work.  Shortly before 8 am i was scootering into emergency.

I waited 2 minutes to get into triage.  I went straight from there to registration.  I went straight from there into the ward.  I was surprised.  The ER waiting was not overly crowded, but there were at least four ambulance crews who had just brought in patients, plus two walkins ahead of me.

From there I went into a waiting room on the ward.  There I did wait for about 30 minutes before getting a bed.  That was a long time.  But overall from time to arrive until the time I was in a bed it was well under an hour.  I’m pretty happy with that.  Considering I had no spurty blood, wasn’t in danger of dying and I suffer pretty much in silence I was likely not at the top of the list, but I was still settled pretty fast.

So this is what happens next.  You put on a gown (I left my shoes on), get into bed and get re-triaged by the ward nurse assigned to you.  This triage includes a more complete history and some poking and prodding plus blood pressure and temperature and listening to heart and lungs and bowels (my bowels were apparently very quiet).  Then you wait for the Doctor.  This took a while – maybe another 30 minutes.  The Dr. re-confirms some of the details on the forms to his satisfaction and the instructs the nurse on some tests and treatment.  In my case this was to start an IV for fluids, administer some anti-inflammatories and pain killers (morphine), giving a blood sample and urnine sample and getting an x-ray.

One morphine shot in my IV drip later and I was feeling much better.  The pain went away.  By the time I went for my X-ray I was pain free and a little loopy.  Then I fell asleep.  When I woke up they asked for the urine sample.  I gave it with difficulty – not because of pain but there was nothing there to give despite having been given fluids for a couple hours.  They also had to retake my blood sample at the same time because the lab had trouble with the first one.

The x-ray showed a stone.  It was about 3 mm x 7 mm and low in the ureter.  That is still within the size that can be passed normally.  The doctors like you to pass them yourself if possible.  I agree.  As much as I like lithotripsy it isn’t my first choice.

Mom came down to spend time with me, but they didn’t actually allow other people on the ward.  Every hour she was given a five minute pass to come see me.  I hate bothering her, but a Mother’s love is nearly as good an analgesic as the morphine.

At 2:30 pm I got my release papers.  The urine test wasn’t back from the lab yet, but the x-ray had been pretty conclusive.  Since I already had pain killers at home I was prescribed an anti-inflamatory (NSAID) and a diuretic.    The pain was also back by this point, but on the pain scale I only rated it as a 1 out of 10 (I rated the initial pain as 6 out of 10).  My next stop was Dean’s service.  Since we were going out to a bar that night I asked if beer would have a bad effect on the pain meds.  The Dr. said it would be fine, but not to get drunk.  That was a surprise!  I was sure I’d get an absolute no!

The pain stayed at a 1 for the service.  We spent a good amount of time after the service talking with Fr. Dave.  That was pretty awesome.  We headed to the bar.  I took another pain killer and and an NSAID.  I ordered a beer with dinner.  Two sips of that beer later and I was feeling better than I had all day.  Beer is a cure all!

Now the rest of the weekend was me passing the stone.  Here are the side effects of the pain, the medication and likely my own mind playing tricks.  The pains meds blocked up my digestive tract.  The diuretic eliminated all control of my urinary tract.  I ALWAYS felt that I had to go to the washroom.  And then in 10 seconds that would change from a slight pressure to “I need to go right now!”  The pain stayed all weekend.  Normally between a 1 and a 3, but the only other time I took a pain killer was Saturday morning.  The rest of the time the pain wasn’t bad enough.  I was tired all the time, but I couldn’t sleep any later than 7 am in the morning.  I wasn’t hungry at all and when I did eat it didn’t sit well in my stomach.  I’d belch for an hour after and each time it felt like more than gas was going to come up (although I didn’t really feel nauseous and never threw up).  Finally Saturday night was the worst.  I was exhausted and I started to feel a bit feverish.  I went to bed and slept great.

Late Sunday afternoon I think I passed the stone.  I’m not positive since I was sitting on the can and didn’t see it go, but it felt weird.  More notably I started to feel better right away.  I was still tired at bed time last night, but that was my last remaining symptom.  By this morning I felt great.

That is my story from the weekend.  The low points were waiting in the ER waiting room for a bed (but that was short) and Saturday night and the high point was meeting the house committee and some old friends in the bar after the service.

Hopefully this week is less exciting.

20 years ago this week we left Dean alone (January 24th, 1992).  I was never alone that night.  It seems hard to believe that anyone was.  But Dean was.

Dean disappeared.  We all went out.  We all came home – except Dean.  Dean never came home.  20 years later and he has never come home.  I do not know much more than that. Other than that we should not have left him alone.

I lived at St. Joseph’s College during the the 1991-1992 school year.  It was my first year of university and I was in general science.  Dean lived in the dorm room directly above mine.  A college outing was planned.  We put on our college colours and invaded the Lister Hall bar.  We walked four blocks from the college to Lister.  There were fifty men in the college and nearly all of us went plus alumni.  The bar was filled with St. Joseph Rangers.

It was cold.  Cold like it is this week.  But the bar was warm.  We drank.  We laughed.  Likely we made asses of ourselves.  As midnight came and went we began to go home.  I went home with two other people.  We walked home the four blocks.  I fell into bed and slept until morning.

I think Dean left the bar about ten minutes after I did.  He wasn’t the last person to leave.  But he was quite drunk.  When I left I could have asked him to come with us.  But I assumed he’d head home with others.  I wish I could say that I’d even thought about it, but I didn’t.  When Dean did leave, he left alone.

He went out into the night and the cold alone.  It was only a short walk home along a busy street past the Jubilee, the Butterdome and then up the steps into our college.  A street filled with lights.  But it was very late.  It was late and cold.  There were very few people out.  Just us Rangers walking home before Dean and again some few minutes after Dean.

The bar was full.  Full of us – a sea of college jerseys in blue with red and white stripes.

The next morning Dean didn’t come down to breakfast, but many didn’t.  When he wasn’t around for lunch folks started to worry.  We determined he wasn’t in the building.  We figured out that he had never come home.  Soon after that we knew he was missing.  We started to search.  Some wore jerseys and some didn’t, but it was a sea of Rangers searching campus.  Then is was us and the police and others who came in to help.  All together searching for the one person that we had left alone.

Twenty years ago, somewhere between the front door of Lister hall and the front door of St. Joseph’s college, Dean disappeared because we left him alone.  Because we took it for granted.  We were all together.  We were on campus.  We were so close to home.  We didn’t have to leave Dean alone, but we didn’t think.  We were careless.  I was careless many, many times in my life.  This one time it cost someone their life.

20 years ago this week.

I’m sorry.  This post should be about Dean.  Dean was quiet.  He was smart.  The last time I saw him he was happy with a grin that split his face in half and surrounded by friends.  Dean was good people.

I had a tough time getting out of bed this morning.  I was moving 50% slower and seemed to be expending twice as much effort.  I thought I was just tired, but apparently it is blue Monday and everyone else in the world was not at their best either.  But the bitter cold woke me up as soon as I went outside.

I had reason to be tired.  Last week was busy.  Monday was the cable install.  I think I covered that last week.  Tuesday was a day off.  Not of work, but of interesting things.  Wednesday was comic book day.  I still haven’t finished all the books from last week.  There’s a reason for that coming up.  Thursday was drinks out with the team.  Friday was Mom’s birthday and the Jim Cuddy concert.  Saturday was laundry and bill paying.  Sunday was church and a movie.  (Hugo – very good.)

For me?  That is a very full week.  This week is more in control.

I also read a four book series this week.  I just finished the fourth and final book before starting the blog.  The Sharing Knife by Lois McMaster Bujold.  I rate them as page turners, but not quite recommended.  Too much romance and not enough plotty goodness for my particular tastes.

Adventures?  Only two.  At drinks with the team, I stiffed the table for $15 dollars.  My nacho plate turned out to cost a whopping $21 dollars.  It plus my beer and wings came to more than I had on me.  I would have made up the difference paying with debit, but my bus conveniently arrived 5 minutes early for my window.  So I dropped the money I did have and rolled for the door.  My team doesn’t seem to hold this against me.  Very odd.

A better adventure is the Jim Cuddy show.  It was Mom’s birthday gift.  Tim and I took Mom and ourselves to the show.  It was just excellent.  Basil Donovan from Blue Rodeo provided bass duties to both the Jim Cuddy band and the opening band and the difference in the base sound highlights the difference between the bands.  The opener had the bass sounding overloud and disconnected from the music around it.  In the Jim Cuddy band it was excellent.

The band was just tight.  In addition to Cuddy and Donovan there was a keyboardist, drummer, trumpeter, fiddler and lead guitarist.  It was a big full sound.  Together they meshed well and there was also lots of time for each to strut their stuff.  The fiddler did the keyboard solo from 5 days in July and it was just incroyable.

Of course Cuddy is the band leader, main vocalist and star.  I prefer the Blue Rodeo songs to his solo stuff, but delivered live they all pop and shine.  His voice is still clear and enthusiastic and inviting.

So belated Happy birthday Mom!

Til next week peeps.

Another old joke, “What do you call six drowned lawyers?  A good start.”

It has always been fashionable to disdain lawyers in some way, but it seems to me that I see worse lately.  At least when it comes to TV and criminal defense law.  You used to have Perry Mason or Matlock on your side in the courtroom.  Now calling a lawyer is taken as a sign of being guilty.  (See almost any episode of CSI.)  Most defense lawyers are sown as being slimy.  Even on The Good Wife – they are all compromised.  At the end of the latest episode, the slimy intern from season one has now become a stalwart champion of good at the state’s prosecutor’s office while the main character who stayed behind if embroiled in legal, personal and political scandal.

The worst show is Hawaii 5-0.  Here they threaten, intimidate and beat their suspects until they get a confession.  They deny them access to their lawyers and at the end of the episode glibly state, “Book ‘em Dano.”  I think the only defense lawyers ever shown have been payed for by the mob.

(Note here – I’m not watching Harry’s Law and the Firm looks like it might be different too.  So my impression may be skewed. )

If I’m ever brought in as a suspect, questioned as a person of interest – I’m calling a lawyer.  Accused or charged, guilty or innocent – calling a lawyer.

I don’t think I could ever be a defense lawyer – lacking the smarts aside – I’m sure most of the folks they deal with are more guilty than innocent. That would be too hard.  But I believe they are the most important part of our legal system.  It is easy to point fingers and assign blame – everyone wants at least the appearance of quick and decisive justice.  But our rule is that a person is innocent until proven guilty and the defense lawyer is the safeguard to ensure that.  I’m not sure how hard it is to stand up in court and advocate for the accused in front of the victims of the crime who might often almost want a lynching and who believe you are nigh as bad as your client.

On TV, the plot dictates whether someone is innocent or guilty.  The writers, directors, actors and viewers all know.  The end, whether it be justice or injustice, is just as predetermined as the crime at the beginning.  But the surety can’t be found in real life.  Locking up an innocent man or letting a guilty one go free are both giant travesties.  But we’ve decided that the first on is worse.

Entertainment doesn’t have a responsibility to show a balanced view.  Unfortunately.  It isn’t news (although it fails there often too.)  Entertainment has to provide what its consumers are looking for.  (In the case of good entertainment it might not be what they know they are looking for until they see it.)  At a worst case, this means that it is society that wants to eliminate the process of law.

As a society, then we have a responsibility to maintain it and reinforce it.  Vote, volunteer, educate and provide an example.  If we are fortunate enough to participate – as a clerk, sheriff, lawyer, judge or jury – to do our best to uphold the law to the very bet of our abilities.  Some parts are harder than others to appreciate.  But all are necessary.

Or at least I think so.

Tomorrow will be less blustery and more recappy.  Til then.

Nothing is the answer.  You have to understand that I am practically perfect in every way.

That is statement is only 75% BS.  In truth, when your nose is stuck in a book 95% of the time it keeps you from doing too much damage to your surroundings.  Tim was more rambunctious than I, but even he wasn’t too hard on the place.  The other inhibiting force was that whenever it got rowdy we were told to, “Take it outside.”

If I was hard on anything it was my toys and small appliances.  I loved to take things apart to see how they worked.  Space shuttles and AT-ATs were disassembled.  So were Transformers and other action figures.  Under supervision so were VCRs and toasters.  I wasn’t too bad at putting things back together either and Dad was awesome at it.

Here are a couple incients with the house though.  Two I think.

Bath night was Tim’s favorite night of the week when he was really young.  Or at least his after bath ritual.  Once his pajamas were on, but his hands and feet were still tacky due to retained moisture he would climb the walls.  The back hall was about 20 feet long and fairly narrow.  Enough that if you were a kid who stretched out their legs you could brace on the parallel walls and spider walk up to the ceiling.  Tim would hang out at the ceiling like a ninja – a giggling ninja with bright red hair.

This story would end better if he also jumped in order to take us out, but that didn’t happen.  The rest of the family would sit and watch Knight Rider while eating popcorn in the tv room.  Tim would be in the hall watching the same show from his perch up at the door jamb.  At least until his skin dried out and he eventually slid back down the wall and couldn’t get back up again.

But the house does suffer in my last story.  The large basement room downstairs was very large.  Big enough that chasing games like tag were entirely possible, but not large enough that most chases didn’t end up with someone crashing into a wall.  The dry wall held up pretty well to 80 lb kids crashing into it.

Wagon races in the basement ended the same way as foot races though.  Except when a wagon hits the wall it leaves a chip, a dent, or a hole.  As I mentioned, once crashing was heard from upstairs normally all the kids were shuffled outside post-haste.  But a red wagon moves pretty quickly when headed to a wall.

Once we were too big to sit comfortably (or uncomfortably) in a wagon, we got even luckier.  Dad got a new wheelchair and his old one was still on good enough shape to keep as a backup in the basement.  Nearly everyone learned to balance the chair in its hind wheels.  But that learning required learning to fall over too.  Falling into a wall could leave a hole from the rear handles.  With enough force, falling onto the tile could crack a tile.  And wheelchair races were even more fun than wagon races.  The kids were bigger, the wheels were bigger and we went faster.

I wonder if when the ping pong table was purchased and filled one end of the basement if part of the reasoning was to prevent us getting up a head of steam?

That might be enough.  Oh, I just remembered.  At least one of my brother and I was scared of matches and the other liked to set them ablaze.  There was never a big blaze, but I think we can count on vigilant parents for that.  At some point both the fear and the fascination were matured up out of.

That is all I have.  What about your homes?  Lots of my friends had a hockey wall in the basement that was even more beat up than the one we crashed wagons and wheelchairs into.

My family was in that house for nearly 30 years.  The lift worked for all that time.  Pretty amazing for a piece of machinery cobbled together from odds and ends.  I wish I’d been born when they designed it.  It was exactly the kind of practical engineering problem that Dad loved.

When lowered it vanished into the ground.  Almost.  It lay flush with the pavement around it.  When raised it was up flush with the height of the fourth stair and level with the threshold of the house.  Constructed from recycled metal it was durable.  The concrete pad was dug it so it could nest in the ground.  A single hydraulic ram caused it to be raised and lowered.  On top of the lift a small white wooden box covered the motor.  A normal solenoid turned the power on and off.  A metal lever with a big ball bearing for a handle made it go up and down.  Up handle for down.  Down handle for up.

In winter, before Dad got on when it was raised, you needed to step on it because it would settle up to three inches and needed to be raised again.

If you ever need to make money, medical aid – wheelchairs, lifts, converted vans – there is a fortune to be made there.  But getting all the permits and licenses and safety regs would be tricky.  The lift at home had none of those.  No railings.  No safety belts.  But the lift never failed and I never heard of anyone getting hurt on it.

It was pretty awesome.

I grew up in a really cool home.  18 years we spent in he same house.  Most of my friends seemed to move around every once in a while, but we stayed in the same home my entire childhood.  I think I’ve said that once before in this blog somewhere.  I have to start with the yard.

We lived on a hillside.  To the west was the road (running north to south).  Across the road is a hill down to the hospital – 50 yards of bush and a thirty degree slope.  Heading north the road went down the same hill on a slighter grade.  South the road was mostly level – sloping up slightly.  Behind our house to the east was another hill heading up – as steep and long as the one down to the hospital.  Some of the of the homes on our street terraced their back hills and planted gardens.  We had a single terrace, but it was only planted years when Mom felt particularly gardeny.  The rest of the hill was light bush.

Counting the hill in back it was a big yard.  The hill was pretty cool.  Good for playing explorers in the back yard, but it was pretty lousy for throwing a ball.  None of the yard was particularly flat actually.  Some effort had obviously gone into leveling a spot large enough to put a home.  Everything tended to roll down towards the street and then down the street for a block and a half until it leveled off again and you could catch up to it.  I’m not sure how long it took my folks to train us not to run out into the road after stray round things.

It was fairly cool.

We had a flat-roofed carport beside the house with a tiny shed built into the far end.  It might have been the only flat surface around.  Fortunately it was easy to retrieve balls from atop it by climbing onto the rear terrace first and then onto the carport.

The house itself was only a few hundred square feet larger than my current condo.  But it had three bedrooms and one bathroom upstairs and one more bedroom and bathroom in the partially finished basement.  Partially – it was mostly completely finished, but I’ll get to that.

The house was a custom-built job.  When my folks bought it it was less than five years old.  The coolest aspect was that it was a single beam home.  The roof had a large single beam holding up the roof running from the front to the back.  The front living room was open to the beam resulting in a large vaulted ceiling.  It was almost an open concept before that idea really existed.  The living room and dining room under the vault in front.  The kitchen was open to the dining room separated by  sideboard.  The open concept was only spoiled by the upper kitchen cupboards.

As cool as the vaulted ceiling was the view was even niftier.  Two giant picture windows faced west, another faced south and the east wall was double sized patio doors.  The west windows looked out over the valley below the house with a clear view of the river and the hill across it.  There were prettier views if you got higher up the valley sides so that even more of the valley was visible.  But only marginally so.  Spring, fall, winter and summer were all beautiful when viewed from our living room.

But that wasn’t what you noticed when you first came in the door.  The front hall opened up into the living room through a big arch on one side.  On the other side was the stairway down to the basement separated from the hall by a long steel banister.  Decorating the wall above the stairs was a giant mural six feet tall and twelve feet long.  It was a sea town scene, fishing and sailing vessels against a small town with a large open harbour.  It was done in greens and blues.

The rest of the main floor was pretty normal.  The exception would be the tv room.  The third bedroom upstairs was converted into what most folks called a family room, but we kept the tv back there and called it a tv room.  We spent a lot of time back there.  Odd since it had only a single small window compared to the light and view out front. The tv room was only odd in the manner Mom decorated it.  To add light and make the room appear larger Mom mirrored an entire wall.  Six inch by four-foot mirrors paneled the wall.  Interspersed between them were wood planks – 2x6s, 1x6s and maybe other thickness too.  The entire wall was an exercise in-depth and texture and light.  I loved it.

That takes us downstairs.  There were two cool aspects down there too.  I said it was a finished basement – and it was.  A fully complete bedroom, laundry room, bathroom and a bare unfinished storage room.  The rest of the basement was a single giant open room that ran from one side of the house to the other.  It was partially separated by the stairway that came down one-third of the way across it. Another giant open concept.

Rather that leave the stair riser visible the builder created little walls to conceal them.  This created another little storage area under the stairs, but it was built primarily as a children’s fort.  Three doors led into the area.  One was tiny and usable only by those under ten.  Another was a pair of shutters that swung open at ground level about 2.5 feet high.  The last was four feet tall and skinny.  It was an awesome place to play.

The final cool thing was the secret passage between the basement bedroom and the laundry room.  You went into the closet in the bedroom, went through the wall and came out on a tiny, narrow space between the wall and the dryer.  When we were young enough you could squeeze through at almost full tilt.

Hillside, vaulted room, picture windows with a view, giant mural, mirrored room, children’s fort and a secret passage.

I loved that house.  My current place doesn’t have a single comparable feature.

If we do lose power, I think that I’ll miss the elevator more than the lights though.  there is emergency lighting in the hallway after all.

My HD TV signal showed up today.  I have watched a movie in HD.  It was beautiful.

The big news last week?  There was a big turnout for gaming.  I ordered 8 donair (or at least donair’ish) items.  Yes, the first week of the school year.  Everyone is home, but most activities haven’t started yet.  So everyone has time for gaming.  I played Quarriors for the second time.  It was much improved.

We also played Year of the Dragon.  We had quite an easy event pull.  I won the game by grabbing an early initiative.  (The first.)  I was able to turn that into being working slightly ahead of the rest of the crew for the whole game.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a game where initiative matters more.  Next game I think my strategy will be to try to get the victory point persons early – court ladies, researchers and a cheap privilege.

The week in work was oddly dull.  Too many people absent.  Urgent matters moved forward at a slow pace.  Tomorrow I am kicking it into high gear (although my scooter only has the one – I’m still looking for that nitrous attachment.)

I finished Stephen King’s latest book.  I found the beginning terrifying and the middle suspenseful.  The end – climax and denouement – meh.

Now – I must find a show good enough to be worthy of PVR’ing.  Any suggestions?