Android Hell is a real place.

Tweet Dump

2009-12-02T07:01:24Z

00:36 According to Random Website, my BMI is pretty much perfect but my waist-hip ratio puts me at risk for obesity issues. Curse you, science! #
11:58 @alicefiend dang, 11 inches! I've got a 4 inch difference, because I am a walking inverted pyramid with no butt! #
11:59 I want to go walking around and look at festive lights at night, any suggestions for places that are free and vaguely near Arvada? #

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2009-12-01T07:01:10Z

11:43 I wonder where in the Denver area one might find men's tacky Xmas socks? #
23:31 So it's really bizarre that, on a regular basis, Estha (our cat) comes running into the bathroom the moment I start to pee. #

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Tweet Dump

2009-11-30T07:01:07Z

17:24 I've got Google Wave, now what? Dislike that all instructions/tutorials are in video. I demand text, dangit! #

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Laptop Quandries

2009-11-30T02:28:36Z

So, for various reasons, I am currently debating getting a laptop, primarily for web development purposes. I've got a vague idea of what I need: a decent screen size (at least 15 inches, I'm thinking), don't care if it's light or heavy, decent amount of RAM (at least 3 gigs, I'm thinking), enough processor speed to handle Photoshop plus gobs of browser tabs plus gobs of Vim windows. Beyond this, though I find myself overwhelmed by choice.

Plus, add to this my quandries on that whole Windows 7 thing. I know it supposed to be significantly better then Vista, but when doing some brief research into laptops, they all came with 64-bit Windows 7. Now, I don't know a significant amount about 64-bit, but according to my brief research, it will not run some older programs. I haven't found anything saying *how* old of programs it won't run. Like, will I be able to run Civ 3 still? Or, what about MS Gif Animator and Hex Code Helper (two rather antiquated programs which haven't been updated since probably the late 90's, but are quite good at what they do, so I still use them). Anyhow, I'm hesitant to jump on the 64-bit bandwagon right now.

I could make the jump and get something with Linux (Ubuntu, perchance). It's going good on my netbook, and I feel like if I'm going to be in any way a decent programmer, working in a Linux environment would simplify my life. Just too used to Windows at this point. I could figure out some sort of virtualization program to use (VMWare?) and install XP? Or, for that matter, I could figure out how to dual boot and have both Linux and XP? Or, maybe I can get a laptop with Windows 7, and install Linux to dual boot with it. It's also really hard to even find laptops sold with Linux on them (well, that's not a netbook, at least).

So anyhow, this is what my brain has been mashing around lately.

Tweet Dump

2009-11-29T07:01:20Z

11:56 Facebook won't let me change my language away from Spanish, it's rather bizarre! #
11:56 @AliceFiend a run followed by pirates could also be excellent #
12:35 Quest for the Fountain of Life (by me!) is now available in paperback! www.varoper.com/fountain/ #
23:52 YAY a weiner is me! Hit 50K. Now, to finish the other 3/4 of the novel... #

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Quest for the Fountain of Life is now available in paperback!

2009-11-28T19:12:52Z

So, about a year ago, I did Nanowrimo (aka National Novel Writing Month). I wrote a Choose Your Own Adventure style book, primarily as a means to test out the Storypath system I'd recently built on Writaur.com. Anyhow, I liked what I wrote, and have spent chunks of the last year editing it and finessing it and all that good stuff. Well, it's finally done, and is available for the low low price of $10 at multiple fine internet establishments, namely Createspace and Amazon.

Quest for the Fountain of Life can also be read online for free! This way, people can preview the book first, and hopefully share the link with their friends.

I'm still trying to figure out how to market this thing, so I appreciate any suggestions on that, as well as any feedback on the book itself. Thanks!

Tweet Dump

2009-11-28T07:01:10Z

15:40 #nanowrimo Are there any write-ins happening tomorrow in the Denver area? My usual one is cancelled, and I need to write!! #
15:47 @niassa Yay! We came last week, we shall try to come again this week then! Plot lizards, perchance? #

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Lubricants and pliers and meats and other fun things

2009-11-28T04:01:34Z

So my car needed an oil change. We picked up the oil and filter, and, as the wrench I've been using was Carolyn's, I looked for a new wrench. All they seemed to have at Advance Auto were these weird belt wrenches, which I'd never used before. As Drew needed help figuring out stuff for his car, there was some guy helping us (who couldn't have been a day over 20). I asked him about the wrenches, and he said he didn't recommend the belt wrenches, and that you can remove your oil filter easily by whacking a screwdriver into it and twisting it off that way. I was wary of this method, as it sounded both messy and potentially difficult to achieve given the angle I had to position myself into in order to reach my oil filter, but I thought I'd give it a whirl as he seemed to adamant that this was the way to go.

Well, it was both messy and awkward. I'd hoped I could just twist the filter off with my hands, as I had a Fram filter on and they have a really good gripping surface. No go. Tried it with one of those kitchen rubber lid twisty things, still no go. Tried whacking a screwdriver into the filter using a hammer. Got it in, and found it impossible to turn, so I had to whack said screwdriver in further. By this point, residual oil is dripping down the screwdriver, onto my hand, down my arm, and onto the hammer. I kept having to rest my arms, as there were all of these car parts in the way and I needed to hold both arms at angles not comfortable to hold for long periods of time. Got the screwdriver in enough, and twisted. It turned, just a little bit, until the lever that the screwdriver made ran into other car parts. Still couldn't get the filter off with my hands, even with the loosening. So, made another hole. Everything is doused with oil at this point. Hole took entirely too long to make, as I was sore and pooped. It worked, eventually, and I got the filter off. Had to throw my poor blue hoodie away, though, it was unsalvageable.

Didn't do Drew's car yet, no way in Hell are we undertaking that method for his car. Don't even know where the parts are gonna be on his, as he's never changed his own oil before. So we went to Lowes and Home Depot, neither of them carried oil filter pliers, the bastards! I've located a pair, though, at Checkers Auto, so I'll have to stop by there tomorrow or whenever next is convenient. Incidentally, there is an infinite amount of schlock carried at Lowes and Home Despot now, what with their tupperware bins and home accents and stuff. It's like everyone wants to compete with Walmart. Soon you'll be able to buy underwear and bananas at Lowes/Home Depot, too.

In other news, I just got a lb. of ceviche from the grocery store for a little over a buck a pound. It's got a kick to it, too.

Put Xmas lights up, along with our wee little purple tree. Once Xmas is over this year, I look forward to scarfing up reject lights and decorations off of Craigslist so next year will be fabulous.

Tweet Dump

2009-11-26T07:00:42Z

10:26 @jeffkirvin Choc. milk for kids books, Red Bull for comics (+ vodka if Vertigo style), MRE issue powdered drinks for war novels? #nanowrimo #
10:29 Just opened a 100 pack of green tea. $6! Will hit Rancho Liborio for Bonus Cheap soon. Also, need cookies. For cookie-related purposes. #
10:30 Also, current goal: Whack out about 3,000 words in next 1.5 hour. Also, don't lose plot. Book = headache sometimes. #nanowrimo #

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2009-11-25T07:00:55Z

11:12 @niassa I <3 wordpress! I use the livepress plugin to post to lj, too, so I'm not losing out on the lj community and such #

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2009-11-23T07:00:16Z

17:43 All I want to eat are cookies and gyoza #
22:37 Spiced pumpkin creamer is indeed the Creamer of the Gods. #

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Tweet Dump

2009-11-21T07:00:53Z

09:15 News of the day: 1.) Cramps are the Devil. 2.) Recruiters are the devil. #
10:52 My ideal kind of day: 1.) Make waffles. 2.) Eat waffles. 3.) Run on a treadmill for 1 hour. 4.) Repeat! #
22:07 #nanowrimo Tomorrow, Drew and I are gonna try hitting two different write-ins! (With motivational chicken in the middle!) #

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Tweet Dump

2009-11-20T07:01:27Z

00:06 #nanowrimo A slacker is me. I typethed not today x.x #
10:43 Drinking about 24oz of earl grey at the moment. Consciousness soon, perhaps? #
22:21 #nanowrimo Only 4 people at the writein tonight, me included! On the bright side, am caught up again. Might hit two on Sat, for bonus words! #

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Ads and Jobs and Books and Such

2009-11-19T18:35:33Z

So I'm distracted on the internet, reading some news article on the ABC website, when I notice an ad for some ponzu lime sauce in a side banner. Now, I got to go to the Pacific Mercantile Market in downtown Denver yesterday (which has the best selection of Japanese products I've ever seen, incidentally). And, in order to get there, I had to research where the place was online. And, while there, I saw ponzu sauce and contemplated if it might be good. So now part of my brain is wondering if cookies have logged my interest in Asian groceries, and the paranoid part is wondering if too much time on said internet has lodged cookies in my brain that captured the fact that I was contemplating ponzu sauce the other day. Incidentally, the sauce does look pretty good.

It's also an ad I don't mind. Like, in an ideal world, more ads would be like this. They would say 'hey, this product is pretty good and you might like it', rather than preying on fears and paranoias. While I'm glad that a lot of the "hey, look at this closeup of stomachs" ads have disappeared, I am rather weirded out by their being replaced with "Hey, look at all these closeups of teeth" ads. And those really weird "Obama wants moms to go to schools ads" (though, at least they're not repulsive like the teeth ads, for whatever it's worth). So, I could clear out my cookie cache and be whacked with all these lowest common denominator ads. Or I could leave it in the hopes of more ads for Kikkoman sauces and other things I might actually have an interest in trying. Though, then I'd have to worry about that whole "people who like food probably also like weight loss, lets use this ad to make them feel fat!" Or, you know, I could just use Firefox, and block all the ads. Unfortunately, Chrome is far far faster then Firefox on my computer, the speed is addictive. I still use Firefox as Firebug is indispensable for design, but at some point I became a Chrome convert. In any case, this is also a reason that, on my websites, I only use text ads. I fear the teeth and the bellies and those weird 3d dancing women that Obama desperately wants to get degrees.

In other news, I had an interview two days ago. Spontaneously, I might add. I called, and got to come in the next day. It ranks up there as one of the more bizarre interviews I've ever had. I barely talked to the company's owner, and in fact spent most of the time being interviewed by a guy who'd only worked there one day - who had replied to the same job posting on Craigslist that I had replied to. Definitely a start-up feel to the place, and I'm thinking the owner only recently decided to bring in some in-house web people. It's in Boulder, so a bit of a drive, and the pay is less then I'd hope for but more then I'd fear. However, one of the advantages of a more chaotic startup environment would be that I'd have more control over my projects and could more directly influence the direction of a company. However, all of this is pretty moot as I have not heard back from them. C'est la guerre.

Now, I've got this book where, to get it published, all I need to go is hop over to Createspace and hit a series of buttons. But I'm not letting myself do that until I've fixed the storypath system I originally built it on. Everything lives in one database table in disgusting piles of arrays. It's getting cleaner, though, I've got three tables full of neat, clean data, plus three classes where before there were none. I wish I'd been able to wrap my brain about object oriented PHP sooner, really. But there's a lot of bugs, which I'm slowly hashing out. Stupid bugs. Rewriting gobblydegook is about as bad as scratching the whole thing and starting over, unfortunately. Yup.

And, on a final note, I didn't touch Nanowrimo yesterday, and haven't touched it today yet. Mind you, this post already contains over 700 words, so some of it is me being a slacker on the things I should be focusing on. However, there is a write-in at the library tonight, so hopefully that will help. Unfortunately, teeny netbooks are not really designed for speedy typing, but it works.

My poor smooshed car

2009-11-13T22:54:15Z

So my car is 'fixed'. Or about as fixed as I'm capable of making it.

I ordered the rear brake light, and that came in the other day. I was worried that I might have difficulty trying to attach it, but it attached with a single plug, no wiring involved or anything. We popped out the backseat and I crawled into the trunk that way, after emptying of all the junk, including the ramps I'd just bought before the accident. Everything that needed to remove came off easily with your standard range of tools plus a bit of oil. It was kind of awkward maneuvering in the trunk, but the plug for the rear light was obvious, so that got hooked up pretty easily. Tested the light, works perfectly, yay!

I secured the light as best I could with duct take (gorilla tape!), and also taped up a bit of plastic in the areas where I was concerned about potential leaking. From there, I slathered duct tape all over the areas where possible leak areas, along with parts where the paint was completely flaked off. I still need to get a hold of some paint at some point, as the paint is peeling off of other parts of the car. Suppose it's less of a rush now, since the car is technically worth negative dollars and all, but I'd still like to see it run as long as possible (where "as long as possible" means "when I have a steadier income and can actually afford to get a new car"). I had been thinking about getting some black car paint to touch up places, and then I could do...something(?)...to make the ghetto-fabulous back not look so awful. Not sure what that is, though. I don't care too much though, I suppose. Car still runs fine, and that's all that really matters. I'll miss the use of my trunk, though.

Though, there is one good thing about all of this. The cost of getting the brake light plus shipping, plus the cost of the tape I bought? About $150. The amount of the check the insurance company mailed to me for the car? About $3000. I heart dollars.

"Divisible by 365 (minus those pesky leap years)" day, plus random ingestible media

2009-11-09T07:54:09Z

So this is the part where I say goodbye forever to my 20s. Yee-haw. For my birthday, I would like an income and a drivers side rear brake light, please. Oh, and sushi. Mmm sushi.

I've recently discovered the joys of a magical manga series about cooking called Oishinbo. I don't generally get into manga for some reason, but this one is particularly exciting. Probably because it makes me really hungry, the food in it is drawn particularly well. Apparently they made it into an anime back in the 80s, but it was never translated into English. The manga started being published again this year, so maybe enough American types will get into the manga to make it financially viable to translate the anime into English (I'd be happy with either dub or sub).

Watched the Passion of Joan of Arc, which was made back in the late 20's, complete with intertitles and orchestra for sound. It was really good, and caused me to sit and read the entire Joan of Arc wikipedia entry afterwards. It also caused me to look up the history of breastfeeding. See, I found it interesting that, in the film at one point, there is a closeup of a baby being breastfed, nipple and all. And I'm not too knowledgeable about older movies, but as far as I knew, they didn't go in for nudity and such back then. So after a cursory glance on the internet, it seems that breastfeeding in public was pretty normal up through the 1940s or so, and then at some point after that it became seen as scandalous or something. It's generally considered legal to do now, but you can still get harassed by random people and asked to cover up and such. My brief poking encountered a case where someone was asked to leave a theme park for doing it in public, and another commented on the fact that she was breastfeeding in an area where children are present. Which is weird, since as children and all, it wasn't that long since they themselves were probably breastfed. And if you're gonna have your kids exposed to nudity, wouldn't that be a good way to do it? Since the kids are more likely then not already learning via semi-nudity from advertising and media and such that breasts are sexual, it seems good to also include opportunities for your kids to learn that they're functional?

And speaking of breasts, I've been having a fabulous last several months, in that the vast majority of my bras fit. As long as I don't get glued to the front of this computer for the duration of the winter, I will hopefully continue that trend. It's kinda useful to be really new to a place and not know much of anyone, well, useful in the lack of Christmas junk food being slogged at me, which I am generally more then happy to eat because it is delicious.

And on a final note, Nanowrimo is going more or less ok. Am at 13126 words right now, need to get to 15,000 by tomorrow night.

Halloween and Burritos and NaNoWriMo, oh my!

2009-11-02T17:25:01Z

So Halloween was fun. I dressed up as a purple raccoon, which I think I've done for the last 4 years. See, I put some decent effort into making the ears and tail back in the day, and I would consider it a tragedy to not have continuous opportunities to wear said ears and tail. Aside from misc cons and clubs, there's only one day you can get away with wearing such a getup, that day being Halloween of course, so I feel the need to take advantage of it when I can. Maybe in a few years I'll get bored and decide to be something else, we'll see.

Drew was spectacular as a vampire: he wore khakis and gobs of glitter.

We went to the Nanowrimo pre-party in someone's basement, which was fun. Lots of niblets plus socializing and such. It took me most of the night to figure out I had "Harry Potter" stuck to my back. Started on the book at midnight, only to lose battery power at 1:00 or so (silly me didn't bring my cord). At just under 4000 words now, am a little closer to having a plot even if not all the way there yet.

Oh yeah, and we have a ginormous number of burritos. You know how Chipotle was doing their "Dress like a burrito, get a free burrito" deal on Halloween evening? We hit four Chipotles. Thus, 8 burritos. Unfortunately, they're not as good reheated, but they're still pretty tasty.

Chick-fil-a, snow, my car, and other miscellaneousness

2009-10-31T05:07:04Z

For those not in the know, I had an adventure this past week. Drew and I, having entirely too much free time and no money to eat out, decided to camp out in front of a Chick-fil-a to get 52 coupons for free combo meals each. Incidentally, there was a blizzard going on at the time. It was....cold. And sometimes it was fun. I wrote a big ole description about it (plus a few pictures) at my food blog, and I've got the rest of the pictures available to view on facebook.

My car is still in the shop. The repair place called me the other day and informed me that it'll be around $3500 to fix the car. Which is quite possibly more then my car is worth. However, the insurance company should be covering it, so all is good. If they weren't, I'm pretty sure I would have heard back from them by this point. I've not really driven the rental car at all. Part of that is the blizzard, and part of that is that it's bigger then I'm used to and a bit clunky and currently covered in snow. Well, I can't really say "clunky" I suppose. It's clunky in the way that cars covered in doohickeys that are super spacious for larger people are clunky. So really, I'm just used to driving a cheap small car, and feel weird in this nicer large car. I also want more visibility. The Kia's got me spoiled on that, I just don't care for super-slanted windshields and rear windows.

Nanowrimo starts in two days. Need plot soon. Going to super exciting Nanowrimo launch party tomorrow.

Also, and this is important, if you dress like a burrito tomorrow, you can get a free burrito from Chipotle. You can just wrap some tin foil around your arm, it totally counts. Guess what I'm planning to eat for dinner tomorrow? And for the next several nights, if all goes well! Mmm, nothing tastes better then free.

Car goes crunch!

2009-10-27T05:33:50Z

So Drew and I decided to go hiking with a meetup group last weekend. There was potential bad weather, but other people were gonna tough it out and go, so I figured we could as well. So we get there kinda late, and do the hike with a few other people who also got there late. Take lots of pretty pictures, like this one:

And these ominous clouds:

So we get down from the hike, and slowly make our descent off the mountain. I was driving slow, but apparently 20mph doesn't cut it in some areas, because I went around a curve, hit a slick patch, and drove into an embankment. Slowly though, so it was a nice fluffy 'thud', and as it happened I was dreading the possibility of having to get a tow truck to get my car out of said embankment. Then there was a crunch as the car behind me also hit the slick spot and plowed into my back.

It was a gentle plowing though, no injuries. Well, except to my poor car. It was unfortunate too, as the guy that hit my car was one of the people I'd just been hiking with. And as sad as I was about my rear getting crunched, I felt pretty bad for the guy, as he was feeling awful about hitting me. It was pretty minor though, I could drive home on it (slowly, to keep the back light from flying off).

So I've got this rental car now, and my car is in the shop for an unknown length of time, all covered by the guy's insurance. Rear panel needs to get replaced (if I remember correctly), along with the light of course. I'll miss my companion cube!

In other news, Drew and I are getting up very early Wednesday to go plant ourselves in front of a Chick-fil-a in Fort Collins in the hopes of being one of the first 100 when it opens. Ah, the joys of being underemployed.

Adventures in unpacking, future adventures in writing, etc.

2009-10-23T16:51:44Z

We are 99% unpacked. This is an achievement, as we didn't reach that state at the last apartment until about 8 months in. I am super happy with Drew for being rather gung-ho about getting everything out of boxes and onto shelves and such. It also helped that we got a ginormous 7' x 3' bookshelf off of the free section of craigslist. It clears the ceiling by about a few inches. I'd love to get rid of the other shelves and just have a second shelf like it, it makes that corner of the apartment feel like a library (possibly because we're about 84% sure the shelf originally came from some sort of library!). We've got partial ghetto apartment going on, as videos are hanging out in shelves made of boxes, but we're working on that part.

NaNoWriMo is coming up in less then 10 days now, and both Drew and I are gonna do it this time around. I wanted book #1 to be out of the way before book #2 got started on, and I'm just waiting on proof copy #3 (the final one, at least it better be) to come in the mail. Assuming that's perfect, I can set the book for sale on Createspace and Amazon. Then comes the fun part of figuring out how to market one of these babies.

Shameless Plug + Yay, Jeans!

2009-10-12T05:58:39Z

So I made bacon sushi. It was awesome enough that I feel this strange urge to cross-post the blog I wrote about it pretty much everyplace I can. There are pictures and details located here!

Also, thank you to whoever advised me try the Old Navy "Sweetheart" jeans. They fit and are really comfortable, despite how ridiculous their name is!

Snow! Plus bonus text message complaints!

2009-10-11T04:02:56Z

It snowed here this morning. Super magical! Not too much, and it didn't stick all well, but it was still exciting. Look, I took pictures:

Poor flowers!

Yay mountains!

In other news, I no longer have any of my text messages. My phone randomly decided to display a message stating that I had no more room for text messages. So I deleted several, a few with pictures attached. This message still displayed. Forgot about it for a bit, then made googoo eyes at Drew until he called AT&T for me to see what was wrong. It's fixed now, and I can receive text messages, but in the process of fixing it all of my old messages were erased. Which is ok I guess, as it's not like I go back and look at them on a regular basis or anything, but still.

Here's some handy sexual assault prevention tips

2009-10-09T17:22:26Z

1. Dont put drugs in peoples drinks in order to control their behavior.

2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!

3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!

4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.

5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DONT ASSAULT THEM!

6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.

7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.

8. Always be honest with people! Dont pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you dont communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.

9. Dont forget: you cant have sex with someone unless they are awake!

10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone on accident you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.

(janked from here)

Whereupon I complain about grocery stores (again) and ramble about other assorted things

2009-10-08T17:02:34Z

So for the past while now, I've done most of my grocery shopping at either Kroger or Walmart, with the occasional side trip to Ukrops. Now, all of these places have the same lid coloring on their milk. 2% milk is always dark blue, and skim milk is light blue. I am now in a situation where I'll be going to Safeway for the majority of my food needs. The problem is with Safeway's milk lids. Their 2% milk is light blue and their skim milk is dark blue. This is a cruel joke to play on those of us who grab the carton based almost entirely on the lid color. Skim milk is a sad, sad substitute for 2% milk. This has happened multiple times now, too. Maybe one of these grocery trips I'll learn. I even considered returning the most recent gallon of milk, but being lazy, I decided to postpone the trip until later in the day. At some point before that time, I impulse ate some cookies, looked in the fridge, and decided that watered down milk was better then no milk. D'oh!

Drew got me to watch the video for Genesis: Land of Confusion, and I now have creepy puppet people hanging out in my head.

I will make bacon sushi soon, and it shall indeed be glorious.

So I decided that Writaur.com needed a pm system. It's actually pretty easy to put together a messaging system when you have a good tutorial to work off of. Albeit, I could have figured one out without the tutorial, but it probably would have taken at least twice as long. Now I've got to figure how to go about sending messages to a set of users without the server deciding that I'm trying to spam people.

On a sad note, I seem to have left my sewing machine in Richmond. Problem is, my parents can't seem to locate said sewing machine either. I'm going to assume that there's some Heisenberg Uncertainty mischief going on here.

Cross country travel in a ridiculous vehicle, etc

2009-10-03T13:47:56Z

So the excruciatingly planned last weekend seemed to turn out OK, minus the fact that we generally left places about an hour or so later then I'd anticipated. That, however, can be attributed to my being entirely too optimistic about how efficient Drew and I can be in getting things accomplished.

It was nice to see people and eat delicious Thai food Friday night, though in an ideal world we would have had more then just that evening for such things. Saw Carolyn & Todd's house, which is magical and full of penguins. Spent the night at my parents' place, got delicious Mexican for lunch the next day with both my & Drew's parents plus Julie. Next, headed off to Charlie & Tara's wedding, which was weddingtastic. Hung out with all sorts of OWP-related peoples at reception and ate/drank copious amounts of items (it is indeed possible for asparagus to taste really good, crazy!). Went to OWP Jason's afterward for continued OWP-related socializing. Then, off to Drew's dad & stepmom's place in Chester for sleeps. Get moving truck from Budget the next day, move items from attic into said truck, eat copious amounts of delicious seared tuna. Head back to my parents place, sleep. Get up next day and move my items into truck. Eat bacon, load up on travel sandwiches and cookies, hug Mickey the pigeon goodbye.

We left around 11:00am or so, taking 64W. The trip is the same that we took back in July, except this time in a giant bouncy truck (well, if you consider 10' "giant") that costs about $50 to refill the tank. Anyhow, the drive through Virginia was one taken many times before, and the drive through West Virginia is absolutely gorgeous. Giant mountains everywhere! West Virginia is totally underrated. We go through Charleston, which looks like a fun place to visit. Then, the long drive through Kentucky, where we end up in Louisville at Drew's aunt & uncle's place around 10:00 pm or so. Stay the night there, eat breakfast biscuits, load up on travel sandwiches and cookies. We drive for forever and a half the next day, all the way to Kansas, going through Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. In St Louis we switched from I-64 to I-70. St Louis also looks like a fun place to visit, what with their fancy arch and all. The worst state for driving through, for me, was Missouri, it was just long highway and terrain not dissimilar to other long highways in VA/NC/OH. I wanted to make sure that last day of driving wasn't Hell, so we pushed into Kansas, and stayed in Abilene at a cheap hotel, getting there about 11:00 or so. Or maybe 10:00 or so. Or possibly 12:00 or so. Our truck was on Mountain time the entire trip, my watch was on Central time, but my head was on Eastern time because I kept getting sleepy entirely too early. This continues, as for some bizarre reason I am typing this post at 7:30 am, and it's not from staying up all night!

Anyhow, we left at 11:00 the next day, driving the long haul through Kansas. Almost all of this drive through Kansas is farmland. The first 1/3 or so is full of lots of rolling hills, and it's really pretty. The rest is really flat. Everyone seems to complain about it being really flat, but I never really got tired of it. I kept looking around and being all like "Wow, it's really flat!" This fascinated me until we hit Colorado and I started getting antsy for mountains. Also, it was super windy, and tumbleweeds kept flying across the road. As you move across Kansas, it also goes from "hey, it's pretty green and farmy here" to "Hey, it's drier, but still farmy here, just with more cattle" to "gee, it's kinda brown!" and mostly ranches/farms with cattle/horses. Oh, and there are giant wind turbines at one point along the highway, which are really neat to see. I took pictures, and if I find any ambition whatsoever, I'll try to post them at some point.

So we get into Colo Spgs around 7:00, making good time, eat chicken, and decide to sleep at Pam's place for the night and drive the truck up the next day, to give Estha the cat one more day of sanity (she was staying with Pam for the week we were traveling). We've spent the last two days locating furniture, and today we get to take the truck back. The furniture has been an adventure in itself, and I shall post more when I have more ambition.