06/25/2012:
My upper back and shoulders have been bothering me for the past week or so. The pain was worse over the weekend, especially after Saturday, when I spent a lot of the day sitting in various bad postures. On Sunday, I had a massage that ultimately helped, but I didn't drink enough water afterward and the pain last night was pretty bad. I put some tiger balm on the sorest spots before going to bed, and that helped, but I still woke in the night, probably a dozen times, in various stages of discomfort, always with a bad headache. I felt ok when I got up this morning, and started my drive to work, but within just a few minutes of driving my head was pounding and I felt dizzy and nauseous, with cold sweats. I decided at that time that work was not happening, since the drive was out and even when I made it to Hartford I would be working under flourescents all day. I called out instead, drove home, and have spent most of my day on the couch, reading and watching some shows. My neck and shoulder muscles feel better now, though there is still some pain. My head is definitely still woozy, and I'm glad I decided to call out.


06/21/2012:
Aside from the painting project, I did do other things during my vacation. Since I was moving furniture around anyway, the living room got several vacuumings, and all the furniture got a nice dusting once I moved it back to its original location. I rearranged the shelves on our DVD cabinet, making room for many of our photo albums to be stored there. We needed a place for them, and having them in the living room should ensure we look at them more often. We also have no other shelves in the house that are large enough to hold them :) Another accomplishment was the washing of the girls' cage. This is something I've been wanting to do since it started getting warm, and I made the time last week. The girls were relocated temporarily, and I stripped down their cage, then took the doors off and the ramps out, then soaked and washed everything in the back yard. It took a few hours overall, and I am very impressed with the results. Looks almost brand new again :)

Aside from chores and projects, I did get a fair amount of gaming in as well, in both League of Legends (my Blitzcrank game is improving) and Diablo III (all of my characters are now in Nightmare, and my Witch Doctor is almost to Hell difficulty).


06/20/2012:
I had most of last week off from work, and it was great. I worked Monday and Tuesday, then had the rest of the week off, plus the following Monday. It was a relaxing vacation at home, but also a very productive one. Joanna and I repainted the entire living room and hallway! She actually did all the painting. My contribution to the project was moving furniture and buying supplies. We agreed this was fair. We were originally going to take down the plastic panels the previous owners had put up, but we found that they were glued on, and taking them down would most likely have resulted in significant damage to the plaster underneath, which we would have had to repair or replace before painting, potentially costing more money than we were able to spend at once on the project. At the suggestion of an employee at Home Depot, we purchased some all surface primer, used that on the panels, and painted over them. The results are very satisfying, especially so, we think, because the wall we didn't paint is wood panel. The walls are now a cran-apple color, with a few small walls in a dark reddish plum color. Joanna added gold accents on the corners and the sides of the door frames, and she is also repainting our lamps to match the room. At this point in time, the project is mostly finished. All that remains is painting two of the heater covers to match the wood panel and finishing the lamps. We furnished with a new gold curtain rod and red curtains, as well. We really like how it came out; we look forward to seeing what others think of it :)


06/04/2012:
The weather has improved. It is cooler and less humid now. The weekend weather was decent. It rained all day Saturday, but that was ok. Joanna and I hit the mall to wander for awhile and pick up a few things we needed, including a new blender, which works wonderfully. Upon returning home, we settled into our respective games: Perfect World for her, League of Legends and then a lot of Diablo III for me :) Sunday brought nicer weather, and I was able to get the lawn mowed and the trimming done in the morning while it was sunny and warm, before it got rainy and cooler in the afternoon. After my outside stuff and a shower, I played a lot of League of Legends, earning lots of IP during the IP boost weekend and improving my Blitzcrank game :) I also played my wizard for awhile in Diablo III. He's currently working his way through Act II on Normal difficulty.

Last week, I was happy to be able to upgrade Joanna's computer. She was still running a single core machine with a couple GB of RAM. Not super slow by any means, but in need of an upgrade for better performance. The upgrade resulted in a much faster machine: an AMD A6 Llano quad-core processor w/ a built in Radeon 4350D GPU, 8 GB of RAM, and Windows 7. This machine should last her quite a long time; it's the fastest machine in the house now :) I admit, with that upgrade done, I will probably be looking to upgrade my own soon as well. I recently upgraded to 4 GB of RAM and Windows 7, which netted a fairly large performance boost on its own (my processor is a dual-core 2.6 GHz, and still in fine shape). For my next upgrade, I think I'll be looking at a video card, since from a game performance perspective, it is the slowest piece of hardware currently in there (Nvidia Geforce 8600GTS). Yay for affordable and hopefully long lasting computer updates :)


05/21/2012:
Now getting on towards late May, and it feels like mid-summer: warm and humid. The weekend was beautiful, temperatures in the mid-80s during the day, cool at night. I hope for similar weather next weekend :)

I spent last week in Utah, visiting Meghan, JJ, and my new nephew, John Wells James VI, born 5/16/2012 at 5:57 pm :) I arrived out there on Sunday and got to spend a few days with Meghan and JJ and Mom and Dad before Meghan and JJ had to go to the hospital. I was able to see the baby just a couple hours after he was born, which was great. By that time, both my sister and her husband were exhausted, but also incredibly happy :) They are all home now, settling into their new routine. I look forward to the next time I can see them, out here or out there :)


05/02/2012:
Early May, but the weather doesn't really feel like it. It was cold and rainy all day yesterday. Today it's overcast and cool. Hopefully tomorrow we'll have some sun and warmer weather.

Two weekends ago, I spent Saturday in NYC for Ryan B's bachelor party. We had a great time - go-karting in NJ in the afternoon, dinner in Manhattan at the RARE steakhouse that evening, and then to a bar in Brooklyn to hang out for the rest of the night. We were supposed to go to the Barcade there, but it was packed wall to wall when we arrived, and we decided to find a more relaxed place to hang out. We did find one close by, though I can't recall the name. It was an excellent time, though, and I am glad I went :)


04/16/2012:
Had a great weekend. The weather was beautiful, and Joanna and I got a lot done around the house. We did errands on Saturday, including a trip to Sixteen Acres, the garden center in Springfield. Between there and Home Depot, we purchased some new, large plastic pots for planting our herbs, along with the herb seeds themselves and a few herb plants as well. We also bought some additional flowers to fill out the flower garden. We got some hollyhocks for the back, and some gerberas to go in our new hanging basket. Also, some little forget-me-nots for the front. They are little, bushy plants, with tiny flowers. Very pretty :) Joanna filled all the pots and put all the flowers in them, and also planted the others in the ground, so everything we bought has been planted. We also have peas, which will hopefully come up, and an empty planting box remaining, which we'll put some other type of vegetable in :) I was able to get the yard cleaned up a bit, though I didn't get to pick up any leaf piles like I'd hoped. I did refill my little 3 gallon gas can, though, and get the mower running. The front lawn needed a cut, and now that's done, yay :)


03/26/2012:
My computer case replacement was a success. I was having some boot issues for the first couple of days, but after reseating the RAM and video board, that seems to be resolved, so I think one of those components was just not seated cleanly the first time around. There were also some heat issues on my video board, due to the top-mounted vent on my power supply, but I resolved those by adding an additional 140mm fan to the case, blowing on the video board. My next power supply will definitely have a rear fan... but I can't afford to drop the $ just for that at this point, and the side fan works fine as a cooling option. I'll want one there when I upgrade to a newer video board, anyway.


03/19/2012:
Last week was busy and stressful, but the weekend was nice. Work was stressful during the week, and also my computer was having some fairly major problems: an svchost.exe process that was consuming mass amounts of memory every time windows was running. I did some troubleshooting monday and tuesday, and got to the point where I believe a worm of some sort was causing the problem, but I could not clean or repair it. I tried as many things as Sean or I could think of, but in the end I decided a format and reinstall of Windows was best. Since I was reinstalling anyway, I decided to upgrade my RAM and install Windows 7. Joanna and I also both got new computer cases. We had been planning to do so since Christmas, but had not gotten to it. This was a good opportunity to add them onto an existing order, and we did so. Her case is a Thermaltake V4 Black Edition. It arrived Friday, and I successfully moved her computer from its previous case into that one on Saturday morning. My case did not arrive until today (Antec 300 Series, also black), and I plan to move my components over tonight when I get home from work. I did get Windows 7 installed last week, and most of my apps and games installed over the weekend. There are still a few games and utilities to install, but the majority is done now. It does feel nice to have a clean machine, and Windows 7 does some things much more smoothly than XP. Installation is one. Killing frozen programs is another. It is quicker to kill processes when you tell it to than XP ever was.

The weather was beautiful during the weekend, so while I did get a lot of computer stuff done, I also got outside and did some work. We had little bits of trash scattered about our lawn, which I picked up. That is one of the downsides of living close to places like Dairy Queen, Subway, and the Knights of Columbus. It wasn't a lot of trash, just bits of paper and plastic. I cleaned those up and it looks nicer. I also finished disassembling that old couch and bagged the remains, which were picked up with the rest of the trash this morning. After getting that broken down, I swept out the garage and tidied things up a bit in there. Looks much nicer, and nearly ready for spring and summer gardening and yard work activities :)


03/12/2012:
Had a very nice weekend. The weather was good, I was productive. We were supposed to play D&D friday night, but Kris was not up to it. Disappointing, but it happens. People get ill. I did get some good games of League in that night, so that was a good time. Saturday, Joanna and I did errands. We spent a few hours at the mall, got groceries on the way back. She cooked us an excellent dinner of swai (a white fish) and potatoes in a dill sauce (made with fresh dill), with a side of mixed vegetables and fresh cucumber. That was dinner both saturday and sunday night. It was very tasty. Tonight, fish again, but breaded/crusted. Looking forward to it :)

We had very nice weather sunday, so I spent some time outside, cleaning up the yard. We're out of leaf bags, but I filled our 3 barrels with leaves and sticks and put them out for pickup today. I also did some work in the basement on both days, dismantling an old couch so we could remove it. I finished that up yesterday evening, and Joanna helped me move the remaining bottom piece into the garage. Most of it was picked up by the garbage crew this morning. I plan to dismantle the rest next weekend and put that out sunday night for permanent disposal. Yay, cleaning!


03/07/2012:
Zinnia passed away last night, around 9:30 pm. She lived with her lump for a long time, but really started degrading in the last few days, and we knew the end was near. She was a sweetie, bright-eyed until the end, and she is missed dearly.


02/24/2012:
I had an excellent time last Saturday, skiing at Butternut with Jen, Steve, Peter, Serena, and Chris. I left the house fairly early, arriving at the mountain around 9 am. By 9:30, we were gathered and skiing the slopes. Throughout the day, I think I hit every trail, and it was a lot of fun. We skiied all together awhile, then Peter, Serena and I split from the others to ski some of the more difficult trails. We then gathered back together at the end of the day for a few more runs before the lifts closed. I hope we get to go again this year. There is one more trip planned, for March. Hopefully it happens :)

After our ski day, we returned to the Travelodge where the others were staying, ordered some italian food, and played a tabletop, zombie-themed, modern-day D&D 3.5 session run by Jen. It was pretty inventive. Our characters were ourselves, the location was where we were, and our equipment was just that: whatever we had on us or in our cars. We played a few hours, until about 11 pm, and then called it a night. Everyone was tired, but happy-tired. The others were skiing in the morning, and I drove home, arriving around 12:30. I took a shower, then went to sleep immediately. I turned off my phone, so as not to be disturbed, and slept well, for about 10 hours. :)

Unfortunately, my week has not been as good as my weekend. Monday and Tuesday were ok, though I started feeling sick Tuesday night. Wednesday morning, I awoke dizzy and exhausted, with an upset stomach. I showered, didn't really feel any better, so called out of work and went back to bed. I slept about 3 hours, and felt mildy better when I woke, but still not great. The day was much of the same -- dizzy, light headed, "zoned out", upset stomach. I watched a lot of TV, read a bit, and got to bed at a decent hour. I felt better yesterday...but I feel worse today, especially my stomach. Ugh. At least I have no plans for this weekend, so hopefully I can relax and feel better soon.


02/14/2012:
I had a nice 3-day weekend, with Monday off. It was long, relaxing, and very productive.

On Saturday, I took Joanna's car for its yearly inspection. It passed (yay). After that, Sean and I went on a nice hike at Mt. Tom, followed by a trip to Modern Myths in Northampton, where I picked up 2 boxes of D&D miniatures (5 per box). I got some nice ones, and look forward to using them :) After returning from there, I did some work down in the den, in the basement. I want to open it up so we can game down there regularly, and I'm getting there. Friday night, I emptied and disassembled the old entertainment center, and put all the pieces in the garage. I am hanging onto most of them; they could make good shelves, but as a total unit, it was taking up too much space. After working for awhile on cleaning things up on Saturday, I spent the rest of the evening gaming and watching TV.

Sunday was a more relaxed day. I did some more work in the basement, then had a massage at the Abundant Wellness Center in the late afternoon, which was, as always, excellent.

Monday turned out to be quite busy, but it was good. In the morning, Joanna and I took Lynx to the vet for his yearly checkup. The doctor gave him his shots, and pronounced him "very healthy" for his age. Always good to hear :) Nilla has developed a little lump next to her incision, so I took her back in later in the morning. It is just a little fluid buildup; the doctor drained some of it, and recommended a warm compress twice a day to ease the swelling. Between Lynx and Nilla's appointment, I gave Zinnia a much needed bath, and changed out all her bedding. After returning home with Nilla, I went back out to do some grocery shopping, finishing off the "out" stuff I needed to do for the day. Once home, I did some laundry and played a few rounds of League, then worked in the basement some more, getting stuff put away. We still have things we both need to sort through down there, to clean up further, but progress is definitely being made! I finished off the night with a movie (X-men: First Class), and some gaming (Portal 2 - finally finished it). :)


02/10/2012:
Embarrassed rat is embarrassed. Nilla had surgery on Wednesday, to remove a small lump near her hind leg. She pulled all her stitches out last night, so had to go back to the vet today. Now she has staples holding the incision closed, and a little rattie cone around her neck so she can't chew on them. She was given her pain meds a couple of hours ago, and now she is sleeping. Sad rat is sad.


02/09/2012:
Had a very nice weekend in NH with Jeff and Sajin. Friday night, Jeff's band Ellen Page played in a "battle of the bands" at a local bar ("The Page"), and Sajin and I attended the show to cheer them on. They played well, and it was nice to hear them play. I can't remember the last time I saw Jeff drum; it was probably in high school. They didn't win the battle, but they made a good effort. After the show, we returned to the house to hang and chat awhile, then got to bed, probably around 2 am. On Saturday, we did a lot of nothing, which was all any of us felt like doing. We did go out for breakfast, and did some grocery shopping in the afternoon, picking up some dinner food (haddock, rosemary and olive oil bread, and fresh spinach). Other than that, we hung out, listening to music and talking about all manner of things. In the evening, we joined the other housemates and watched some TV. We watched the movie "The Game", and then some hilarious standup comedy. I left around noon on Sunday, to make it home at a decent time. It was a very nice weekend, with very good company. :)


01/23/2012:
Another nice weekend. It snowed quite a bit on Saturday, but we decided to go out in it anyway, to get our errands done. We donated a bag of books to the library, and 4 bags of stuff to Savers. We have been organizing our possessions lately, and finding lots of things to get rid of. Well, Joanna has been, mostly. I still need to go through most of my own stuff. I know there are things I have that I don't need and do not have a firm attachment to..just need to get around to going through them and finding those things. We were only out for a couple of hours. Thereafter, I sat on the couch, put in the second Fellowship of the Ring DVD, and worked on my D&D campaign for a few hours (I watched the first DVD Friday night, while doing some campaign work). I also worked on D&D stuff for about 4 hours on Sunday, all in preparation for Slobfest this coming weekend. I probably have too much stuff prepared, but I'd prefer too much than not enough, and a lot of it could be used later if we don't get to it all this weekend. I am always worried about not preparing enough...

Other than D&D work, I also played some games over the weekend, UT3 and League of Legends. League games did not go very well, overall. I was 1-2 ranked Saturday night, and 0-2 regular, 0-3 dominion on Sunday. Frustrating, but sometimes we all have nights like that. I'll play again soon, I'm sure. Probably not tonight, but definitely tomorrow night. Need to get some wins :)


01/16/2012:
Had a very nice weekend, and accomplished everything I wanted to during it. Friday night, we played D&D, my main campaign with Sean, Kris, Roland, and Joanna playing. Everyone had a good time, and I look forward to next session, which will most likely feature an incursion into goblin territory. Saturday was mostly a lazy day. I played some League of Legends both early and late, and broke even through the day, 3-3 Dominion, 2-2 solo ranked. I had a very nice massage at the Abundant Wellness Center on Saturday afternoon. My neck and shoulders had been bothering me quite a bit for a few days, and they feel much better now. Plus I enjoyed some nice conversation with Kristen during it. Sunday was a day to get things done. I did some grocery shopping, then returned home to pay bills and give the boys' cage a little cleaning. I also got my summary typed up from our Friday night D&D session, and got some work done on the D&D campaign for Slobfest, which is coming up in a couple of weeks. We are continuing where we left off during the summer 2011 Slobfest, and I'm really looking forward to it :)


01/02/2012:
Need to remember to start putting 2012 on everything now...

It's been a good New Year's Eve weekend. I didn't get much done Saturday or yesterday, though I did watch some TV shows and movies and play a lot of games. Also went for a nice hike with Sean, Rob, and Brittany yesterday morning and then brought our new futon home (Rob and Brittany were looking to get rid of one, and we were looking to get one; it worked out well). Today was my day of accomplishments. I stacked and split some more firewood, cleaned the boy's and Zinnia's cages, hung up 2 small shelves in the kitchen for our tea cannisters, and replaced 2 light switches in the house. Oh, and cleaned up a barrel's worth of leaves and sticks from the back yard. Feeling pretty good about getting all that done :) Just renewed my PlayOn license, so I think I'll be hitting the couch soon to watch another episode or 2 of Game of Thrones.