New is so last year... Old is the New New!

Been a while since I've blogged. I've been having a hard time getting started lately.

Yesterday I was a half hour late to work. There was a massive wreck on the freeway involving a pickup and an 18-wheeler. You'd think the semi would have won, but it looked like a tie. >.>; Back end of the trailer completely torn up and lifted off the ground, laying on top of the truck. The authorities had all three lanes of traffic exit on one lane to a small access road, so it took forever to get through the mess. It must have been fairly recent, because I got to the scene just as the helicopter and the jaws of life were getting there. Past few days at work have been kinda busy. One of the guys has been out clearing up some personal legal matters and another likes to take 2 hour lunches. :P Nothing that couldn't be handled, but not necessarily fun.

The money matters have gotten a little worse. We kinda knew that this week was going to be a pinch if we bought the car, but this was a little more than a pinch. The bank slapped us with some pretty massive overdraft charges and fees. I've freaked D out more than once this week with news of our depleted savings. It's going to take a while to get that back again, but that's why it was there to begin with. I get paid this Friday, and things will get much better at that point, but it's scary nonetheless...

Little wonder I've come home every night so far this week in an incredibly bad mood. Then I'll walk through the door with a barrage of frantic wife and baby and dog and stupid cat and spastic son, just waiting for me on the other end - I'm just not ready for that when I first get home... There are just so many things on the attack this week, there's not much I can do about any of them and so much of it will be solved simply by it being the weekend. -.-" Which can't seem to come fast enough...

On more of a diversionary topic, the FFXI update finished on the second day. While the update didn't necessarily add any new areas or drastically change the mechanics of the game, as have previous updates, this one did make some sweeping additions to many old areas. One of the things added was a system of new pop NMs throughout the ToAU areas. You have to defeat lower tiered monsters before you have access to the higher tiered ones. I find the whole system a huge step in the right direction. Many of the NM's can drop some pretty decent gear, and the whole system is designed to reward hard work and team effort over the common endgame/HNM asshattery that dominates the rest of the game. Our LS decided to do a few of them to try them out. The first tier so far seem to be relatively easy, and have dropped decent gear at a fair drop rate. I'll be looking into some of the drops when I have time. My goal list needs updating anyway. ^_^

Another thing they changed around a bit was Einherjar. Before, Einherjar would only reward you with drops and ampules (key items traded for special gear) for successful completion of a chamber, and you could only move on to the higher chambers if you completed all the chambers beneath it. Now, all you need is the leader to have the chambers completed. You can have no wins at all and enter a tier 3 chamber, as long as the leader has all the previous wins. You also win ampules for just trying - more kills equal more ampules. Basically, they made it more like a really tough Limbus. We did Einherjar instead of CoP Dynamis this week, and (of course) didn't win, but we still all earned 960 ampules. Most of the gear is 15k ampules, so there's a long way to go, but the fact that I can start working on it even if we lose is a ton of incentive to go.

Tomorrow is Static night. Hoping to down a few more Anniversary ring charges, hit 67BLM and use up another scroll from my delivery box mess. I can't wait until the moogle lottery is over so I can get my 10 inventory spots back. I'll try to remember to take some screenies or something: my blog is starting to look a little like a wall of text. D:!

6am Directions

I was rousted from bed at the bright and early hour of 6am by the doorbell. I looked sleepily over at my wife, who was just as confused as I was, and thought it might be one of the neighbors needing a jump or someone accidentally hit one of the cars on our narrow streets. When I turned on the porch light and looked through the peephole, there was a very haggardly man waiting right up against the door. I jammed my knee against it so that I could crack it open without being barged in on. As the door opened, he tried to stick his face right in the crack of the door only to be met with the resistance of my knee. He pleaded that he needed to come in for just a few seconds and get directions, that he'd been lost in this subdivision for hours. That's a hard one to swallow: we're a pretty small neighborhood surrounded on 3 sides by business/commercial sites and on the 4th side by a forest. Pick a direction. If you hit a tree, choose a different one. I told him to get out of my neighborhood, that I was calling the cops and pushed the door closed and locked as he pressed his face against it. Armed the security system to instant on and tried to get some more sleep.

Yeah, that worked. D: I couldn't get back to sleep, and I was just off my game all day. Didn't help any that it was a Monday. To top it off, there were several things that hit the bank account that we weren't expecting, and that dropped us in the red. Luckily we had a little cushioning to move over, but we need to get our budget together with the new money, car and offering factored in before we get into some bad habits.

Today was also the big FFXI summer update. While I'm slightly intrigued by the prospect of new things, the fact that it always takes me 2-3 days to get the update finished annoys the hell out of me. D will get the update with no issue in 5 hours. Mine will fail half a dozen times and take 20 hours to download. I started at 5ish. By 11pm, it had failed 4 times and was still at 8 1/2 hours to go. -.- Maybe tomorrow.

After dinner, I just couldn't stay awake. I took an early evening nap. D came in to join me, but didn't get up for the rest of the night. I woke up at 9 to put Colin to bed, let the dog out and clean the house a bit while fighting with the update. Didn't get to bed until about 11:30, but at least I felt refreshed for the first time all day.

While tomorrow would be our static night, I might not be able to make it on if the updating goes the way it did tonight. Wouldn't be an altogether bad thing. Not like I can't find other things to do around the house.

Weekend Intelligence: "Under my proposed plan, things like these would be things of the past!"

I feel like I got a lot done this weekend. The house still needs some major work inside, but we made a decent dent, and I still feel like I got to relax a bit. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

Friday started off like normal, but around 2, the assignment I'm on told me I was needed at a remote site to fix a network printing issue. The place was way out on the east side of town (more like out of town :P) Wasn't hard to find, and I was done with my Friday by 4:30. It took nearly an hour and a half to get home from way out there. Got about the same hours with more mileage, so the paycheck for last week will be pretty decent.

Saturday, we did our usual cleaning routine. Laundry was started, yard was worked, trash was picked up. In particular, the grass that was weed-wacked last weekend had turned into straw, so I sent Colin out back with the brand new rake to get it all into a pile so we could throw it in the dumpster. I was able to mow the side yards and edge all around the house, as well as get all the tall grass plant before the heat of the day hit. We also got our loft cleaned and some of the dishes put away. Unfortunately, Colin thought it would be a good idea to put a bunch of dirty dishes in the dishwasher before completely unloading the clean dishes... To top it off, we were out of dish soap, so it was off to WalMart.

While we were there, there was a woman with 4 rambunctious boys, bouncing off the aisles, crawling on the displays and generally being a nuisance. We didn't say anything, but at one point we needed to get past them, and one of the boys said "Excuse me..." as he ducked and dodged around another one. Very polite of him, but the lady told him that "they can say excuse me too, they don't have to be so rude to other people" and glared at us as we went by. I just about snapped: rude? I was polite in that I didn't publicly rail on you for setting your spawn loose in the aisles to do as they pleased instead of keeping them locked away in the car, or at least leashed up outside... That would have been rude. Narrowly missing one of your little hellions as we try to go about our business? Not so much.

Sunday was a bit easier. We had church and took a nap when we got back. We also started the process of watering the dusty patch of earth that was once a lawn. All the weeds, long since dead from the drought, choked off the grass and left the lawn looking very scrubbly. I bought weed-n-feed and more grass seed, but they all say to water the lawn for at least 2 days if the ground is dry. And our ground is waaay past dry. I also laid down the pesticide to keep the ants and spiders down.

Hopefully this week I'll get the weed-n-feed down. The rest of the house also needs to get some deep cleaning. Maybe I should drop for Stanley Steemer to come by and do the carpets, but that would require the floors to actually be clean. :O