Mentally Replaying: "Your Cloud," Tori Amos
Desiring: focus
Aches and Complaints: usual -soreness

Cannot stop yawning... URg.

I told Molasses about my plan to read at least 20 minutes everynight. he's eager to help, but still let me spend the time reading Newsweek than either of the two novels I'm slogging through. He spend the time reading old X-Men. }:P


Oh well. This weekend wasn't particularly exhausting but I still feel pretty tired. I think it mostly has to do with no caffeine this morning and little direction. I need a plan.

Need to take care of insurance for the car, need to wrap presents for my family members (a brithday a graduate and a father). I need to write and send cover letters.

As always there's a ton of stuff to do for the Cam. I need read a *bunch* of stuff including the new rules set, send out emails, approve/deny stuff and assigning my characters. Plus I need to write out my game's history and then some.

The only gaming I did this weekend was on Friday night. The lady who usually runs the game was out of town so it fell to her assistant to run it. There was no plot and it became the boring old games of yore centered around the Prince's Court and people chatting about how cool they were. I guess this is supposed to be what Vampire is all about - posturing and jockeying for a chance to see the prince (even if you have shit all to say) - but that just makes for a really fucking boring game.

My kingdom for a plot.

So there were about three and a half hours of struggling to stay awake and then the last half hour was the audience. Now I really like the guy who plays the prince. He's known far and wide for being a sweetheart. But when it comes to making speeches and proclamations I *always* have a hard time staying awake. This time we were in an auditorium and I totally nodding off. *sigh* My character worked pretty hard to get primogen, and now that there's a stable court I want to ditch it because it's just not interesting. blerg... well we'll see..

Molasses and I stumbled home after the game and slept like logs. He skipped his class in the morning and I dragged myself up to call my family. I wished my brother a happy birthday and set up plans to visit this week. Then we went shopping.

I miss books. I miss bookstores and wandering the aisles loading up my arms with books and knowing I'll finish reading everything I grabbed within a month. I always swore I would never be too busy to read. But here I am. Whining about not having time instead of pulling out a book and occasionally hitting refresh on my queue. *sigh*

It took a lot of willpower to hold myself to the two books I went to get. I still slipped and got an extrabook about artwork Latinas have made for their mothers. It was also tough not to get an extra book for my dad, or more than one. Like I've said he's rediculously easy to shop for.

Then I got the CDs I wanted for my middle brother and made up my mind to look for Rabbit's present on Amazon. I also looked idly for a dress to wear to Jupiter's wedding, but I don't really like summer fashions, and nothing really seemed to suit the formality of the event.

That afternoon we did our laundry and eventually headed out to Lone Star for a nice dinner date. At the place a humongous black bus was parked. I noticed it because you could see wide-screen TVs inside - two to be exact. It attracted a lot of look-y-loos and we wandered around just stunned at what little we could see of the interior. The driver saw is and invited us inside to look around. Jeesh. IF you put a Las Vegas casino lounge onto a bus, took out the gambling tables and added a refridgerater and microwaves, laptop computer and three bunkbeds you would have this bus. For $150/per hour, for five hours minimum.

It was um...amazing. It nearly made me want to round up half a dozen friends and head out to Vegas just so we could hang out in it.

Apparently it was prom night and a bunch of high school seniors had rented it. Gah, and I thought stretch Hummers were silly.

So anyway we had a great dinner at Lone Star, as always. We indulged at the bar first, and though I was going to get one of their "famous" margaritas, I got side tracked by a Rusty Nail. Few places even know what a Rusty Nail is, let alone advertise it in their drinks menu. Of course since it's basically half J&B and half Drambuie it socks one hell of a punch (especially if you're at a restaurant bar and very hungry). And just for the record Lone Star Irish nachos are the best ever.

So after dinner we waddled home and collapsed on the bed gasping for air. At some point we turned to reading and I fell asleep in the process. In the morning the boy left me to go play on the Playstation on the Agent's Monstrovision.

Monstrovision, if you're wondering, is a 47" screen with surround sound. For added dimension and flavor it has giant entertainment towers to include machinery that can include but is not limited to, a VCR, a DVD player (that can hold over 200 DVDs), a 500+ CD disc player/changer, a Playstation2, a Game Cube and Lord Knows What Else.

In a word, it's silly. But the boys like it. *shrug* Personally I can't make head or tails out of the damned thing. It takes three remote controls to make anything work and then there is one master remote that looks like an old Texas Instruments calculator I had in the fifth grade to control *them.*

So anyway I lounged around, read some email and finished off my Transmetropolitan: Dirge. I don't honestly know if there is anymore, but I sure as fuck hope so. Especially now.

I was wondering what we should do when inspiration/insanity struck and I grabbed a tour book I bought at AAA a while back and looked up a driving tour of CA's southern coast. I went out and told Molasses what I was gonna do and that he was welcomed to join me but he had to get his butt in gear. He was playing some Jedi game where the player is Obi-Wan Kenobi right before and during Episode One. I don't really like it, the art is not that great and the voice-overs are ass. They got somebody to do Obi-Wan and they must have told him, "Ok, so this guy is played first by a studied British actor, and then by a really good Scot who can fake a British accent fairly well, now we know you're not really an actor but we've heard your impressions of Sean Connery and thought they were cute so you're going to play Obi-Wan. Just make sure to make it sound as snotty and annoying as possible. We'll pay you with cheap drugs." As hard as it may seem to believe it was pretty easy for Molasses to ditch it.

We got ready and I told him my plan for investigating this tour. According to the book it's supposed to take 2 days, but since I only had the rest of Sunday I was going to drive around on the first half of the tour and see what was what. I mentioned that Solvang was on the tour (though in the second half) and Molasses took that idea and ran with it. He'd heard about it from some co-workers and hand a real hankerin to see it. Molasses went to Denmark when he was in high school and really loved the place and loved things that reminded him of his trip.

Now, I've been to Solvang a few times with my parents. I'm not nearly as impressed with it as most people are, but it *is* a fairly cute little place, way out in the middle of no where. And, as some have noted strange things happen there, on occasion. But Molasses loved it and even got a Father's Day present for Molasses Sr. The only thing was we hit the road rather late so we rolled into town around 6pm. All the shops were closing and the streets were mostly deserted. We wandered around on foot for a little over an hour before heading back to Anderson's Pea Soup and hit the road at 8pm.

I'm suspicious that we may have to go back, possibly even spend the night so he can take in more of the town.

Eh, oh well. I had fun with my camera at the ostrich farm. Yes, ostrich farm. Them motherfuckers is BIG. then he had fun with my camera and all the frickin windmills.


OSTRICHES!


WINDMILLS!

We crashed around 1130, but the Agent had music going well into the wee hours. I've become good at tuning it out (remember I grew up with four siblings), but I'm not good at tuning out Molasses tossing back and forth in bed. *sigh*

This morning it was drizzling again. I needed every second of the hour and a half I gave myself to drive from the LBC to Pasadena. Nothing bad happened on the 710, and no one around me was driving erratically, just a whole buttload of people were driving slowly. S-L-O-O-W-W-L-Y Which of course left extra time to listen to some really depressing news. Not that I'm surprised by what happened in Isreal but...it's still depressing. And of course in listening to people debate the proposed expansions of the Patriot Act I kept wishing for a real world Spider Jerusalem. Just like on 9/11 I was looking around for a real life Jack Ryan.

*sigh* Why is there room in the world for a real life rich madman, but not our own dark knight?

Okie. I've caught up on most of the interesting bits. I'm starting to ramble now, so I guess I'll find some real work to do.