journal for 2003-01-03
ice
The city is covered in a thin layer of ice. It’s crunchy.
Last night, it started snowing. Gloria usually does the grocery shopping on Friday, but we figured that today would be scary for driving, so we went out last night. It was a little weird. Lots of the fresh food area was taken apart for cleaning, and it all smelled funny. Also, I picked up a wrapped block of limburger cheese, to give it a whiff. Even through its wrapping, the aroma was amazing; I don’t mean that in a good way. I was just amazed that something could smell so bad and still be consumed by more than six people.
In the morning, things didn’t look too bad, until we realized that everything was encrusted in a thin, strong layer of ice. My walk to work wasn’t too bad, but by the time I was coming home, I had to take baby steps to avoid sliding and falling. I forgot I took Brian’s late shift, so I worked a twelve hour day, and it was pretty dark when I was heading out. Fortunately, one of my co-workers took pity on me as I crossed the parking lot, and he gave me a lift in his 4x4.
Despite the long day, I didn’t accomplish much. My motivation is only slowly trickling back in. I’m hoping that by Monday, I’ll be raring to go. I did get a significant amount of work done on jGal, and I’m hoping to release it Mondayish. I’m doing a lot of semi-gratuitous rewrites of internal structures, but it should make my life easier if I keep using it in the future. I can’t deal with its dozen different arrays of information, all just keyed to a common serialization. Blech.
On the bright side, I have some nice looking generic (non-Manxome) templates, and I have the config file working nicely.
mice
Gloria noticed some mouse turds a week or two ago, but it was only this week that we first saw the mouse itself. I ran into the kitchen in response to yelling and found our little brown mouse hiding behind the cutting board. It’s a pretty cute little mouse; its arms and legs and head are nicely differentiated from its body. It isn’t like one of those ugly little mice that looks like a rabbit’s foot.
Still, it’s a rodent living in our house unbidden. I’m trying to find a good way to catch it and dispose of it, but I’m loathe to use snap traps or glue traps, both of which are really pretty cruel. I could tell some stories about glue traps … and I probably will, but not just now.
I’ve got a little hangnail on my left pinky, and it makes typing really annoying.
I put in a few more hours toward FF7 yesterday. I got past the story of Sephiroth’s revelation, and I’m not sure what’s next. I think I’ll just try to level up for a while. Having beaten the game once, I feel like I can really loaf my way through it this time. When I played the first time, I remember being in awe of guides saying things like, “If you’ve been doing enough random encounters, you should be around Level 80 by now.” I was always about halfway there, which made the game more challenging. That was usually good.
This time, I don’t mind if I breeze through later stages. I’ll see what I can do about getting the weird goofy stuff, like the Knights of the Round Chocobo, or whatever they are.
I spent some time looking at weird old consoles, today: Game Gear, Lynx, Genesis/x32, and other stuff. I pine for my GBA! It’s not so much that I really like the games on it, it’s just that I miss being able to play them when I felt like it. Even moreso, I miss being able to do GBA things in my existing games.
My new GBA from YourHappyPlace should ship today. I got a notice that UPS got the billing information, but I don’t see shipment data yet. I’m hoping to get it delivered at work, Monday.
Now, enough typing for my crippled finger. Dinner!