Entries this day: Dream Games christmas_eve christmas_presents hottub_movie

Dream

6:35am PST Tuesday 24 December 2002

(dream)

With five other men from my men's group, or some men's group (though Wende may have been one of them) we were in a house that looked a lot like my dad's house, at least in the ceiling. We needed to paint the ceiling white. With six people, I suggested we either get into three teams of two or two teams of three, and I knew of a way for each setup to work. With three people per team, one person paints, another person watches for missed spots, and another person gets the missed spots, plus wipes up spots that shouldn't have been painted (oh and the second person gets supplies as needed).

They thought this was a pretty good system, which I had described while I was painting te ceiling with a broom, which worked relatively well - long handle, bristles..

So I went outside to get a ladder to be the third person and second combined by getting supplies because someone had gotten paint on the wood paneled support beam at the top of the ceiling.

I went outside to the back yard and down a hill to get my dad's extension ladder and first I just picked it up and threw it down to see where any wasps may be on the thing so I could spray them merceilessly and kill them (we don't have much compassion for wasps around my dad's house) (not that anyone is allergic, bt there are just plenty of wasps living in other places besides the ladder that I need to use).

One wasp flew up and I could see a large pile of mud indicating the location of mud dauber nests, so I went back inside to get some Raid and a stick to knock off the mud. (*)

Inside I found a stick and they were basically waiting for me to get the ladder, so I ran back outside and used the stick to spray Raid on the one wasp and it didn't die, but just flew away before the Raid could get to it.

I used the stick to knock off the mud nests and most of them broke off in one big chunk, and hopefully didn't die.

I tossed the ladder one more time to wake up anything else there might be living on it, but nothing else moved.

So I brought the ladder inside and did not have to use the extension to make it reach the celing with the paint on it. But the paint had already mostly dried so I had to use some alcohol combined with wood colored dye to remove/cover up the white paint on the wood at the top of the celiing. (**)

(*) at this point I had actually woken up from my dream, but I just wrote more in a sleepy state.

(**) at this point I fell asleep again.

Games

3:43pm PST Tuesday 24 December 2002

Been playing Animal Crossing on a Nintendo Gamecube. It's for little kids, but pretty fun and somewhat addicting. It's like a simplified non-aggressive non-violent version of Civilization or some such. Although there is fishing in this game, which could be seen as aggressive or violent toward fish.

The computer driven characters in the game "keep doing stuff" even if the human players don't play, thereby simulating that time has passed in the game, making human players not want to miss anything and play more more more!

Veronica is playing now. Her character's name is Cutie. Mine is named Bunny. Pablo's is named Morcheba.

We have one free house in the town if you'd like to join.

Veronica hadn't played since October, so she owed the town banker/store owner interest on what she owed him previously. She now owes him like 10 times the amount that I owe him, which is presumably how much she used to owe him. (this is basically to purchase a house in the town.)

Pablo says that if one plays long enough, the townsfolk will build a statue of the player in the middle of town. Wow.

christmas eve

7:13pm PST Tuesday 24 December 2002

Christmas Eve has been pretty lazy, with me and Veronica playing Animal Crossing, and Veronica and Pablo cooking an amazing dinner while Dude and I sponged on the couch watching Tech TV (featuring the beautiful Megan (who is now pregnant) and Morgan as the hosts for a day with the regular hosts gone (on vacation?)) and Dude playing Civilization.

I vaguely sorta kinda worked on a new perl project I'm working on for Wende so she can store passwords securely on my website (and once it's working I may allow others to do the same thing), hopefully solving the problem of having to remember too many username and passwords for a variety of websites strewn about the internet.

christmas presents

11:23pm PST Tuesday 24 December 2002

After fabulous dinner of crepes around spinach and italian bread, we opened presents. I got nothing for anyone, not even for the dogs Bailey and Remington, but everyone got me something. I feel thankful and indebted. I realize now that I haven't even replied to my mom when she asked me some days ago where I would be for Christmas. I didn't know for sure at the time she wrote, and as the answer became apparent, I still didn't write to a parent.

Anyway, Dude got me a conservative tie as a gag gift (no pun intended) and I said I'll use it in Japan. They also got me a $20 gift card from SAM'S so I can change my oil at some SAM'S on the way back, *and* a roadside assistance case (tools, battery terminal cleaner, ponchos, light, blanket, *plus* a 24 hour free roadside assistance up to three times in the next year from date of purchase). Holy cow wow!!

I think we're going to jump into the hot tub in the cold outside.

hottub movie

1:05am PST Wednesday 25 December 2002

We hopped into the hottub which started at 106 degrees F and slowly cooled to F 102 over a period of about 30 minutes.

Dude and I remained in it the longest, but he, by far, had the greatest amount of time in the water. I was in and out, maintaining my body temperature at a more comfortable level than boiled.

- - - -

They are watching Meet The Parents in the other room. It's a movie that I don't really like so I'm not watching.

Zoolander is a far superior Ben Stiller movie. Heck, Mystery Men is better.

Dude just came in here with me to play on computers. I guess he doesn't really like it either. Nope, he doesn't.