Tuesday, April 30, 2002

 

It's been awhile and a lot has happened, so I thought I should put a note here.

First of all, the big thing this week: A young man we know was shot Saturday night and he died Sunday. His family is obviously pretty upset and we've been spending time with them. The young man's (who would have been 20 this fall) father is an elder at our church. They have 4 children and Alton was the youngest. They are a very close family. All in all though, I think they are handling it very well, but I suspect they are still in a state of shock. It was very sudden.

Alton attended college in Huntsville, AL. He was with two of his friends and they were getting gas in their car at a station. Someone in the area started shooting. Alton ducked down but the bullet went through the door and into the back of his head. He was the only one hurt in the area. His best friend is in total shock and keeps asking when Alton will wake up and talk to him. I can't imagine witnessing something like that. It's a terrible world we live in. I'm told this is the second shooting in the area in 2 weeks.

In better news, Xander has a tooth! It made it's appearance the day he turned 6 months. I could feel it beggining to cut through the gums. The next two days it was about the same, then yesterday it poked up more and today it has poked up enough that you can see it. Xander is also eating rice cereal, applesauce, and mashed potatoes. No canned baby food for him. It's so easy to make this stuff at home. For applesauce, just slice off a chunk of apple, put it in the microwave for less than a minute, then scoop out the apple 'meat' from the peel. Viola! Yummy applesauce. For the potatoes, I peel and cut russet potatoes into chunks and boil for about 20 mins. Then I mash them with a bit of the water from boiling. They are yummy too. As for the rice cereal, he eats 'Cream of Rice'. He loves it mixed with some breastmilk or apple juice.

That's about it for now, other than getting ready to have company in a few weeks. Also, we had planned to go visit James' parents this week, but with the death in the 'family' (church family, that is) we post-poned it.

Well, it's time to go out for a walk before Xander's dinner. Ta Ta!

Dawn posted this at 7:35 PM.

Saturday, April 06, 2002

 

Oh, and since the last post in March, we've been to South Carolina and back. Xander did great the whole trip. He woke up hungry an hour from home and I let him drink watered down juice and suck on his pacifier and he was a real trouper about it.

We went to help James' aunt and uncle move. The best part was that they gave us a bunch of items their children had outgrown. We came home with a high-chair, a trycycle, a bike with training wheels, a bunch of books, a large toy firetruck and some 2 T to 5 T clothes for Xander. I don't think he'd have many clothes at all if it weren't for them. They're so good to us.

Dawn posted this at 5:32 PM.

 

I just finished reading The Silver Wolf by Alice Borchardt (Anne Rice's sister). It was very good. There was one short lesbian scene though that I thought she could have left out. Also, I almost needed to keep a dictionary handy. It was set at the beginning of the dark ages and many of the terms for things she uses I had no idea what they were. I had to laugh at one place because she talked about the 'faggots' that were placed under the woman chained to a stake. At first I pictured people lying there; it was about a page later that I laughed out loud at my stupidity. I'm not used to that word being used for that meaning. :)

Sometimes she lost me in the tangled web of the politics too. One central character was the pope and there were two rival factions that wanted to gain control of Rome. Trying to keep straight who was who and who was double crossing who made my head swim!

But despite the above mentioned items, I thought it was an excellent story.

I've been being lazy lately. Xander got a cold that hit full force Tuesday and Wednesday. I got it Wednesday and James' slowly got worse until yesterday and today he's pretty bad.

So, I've been spending my time reading and playing video games. A local rental place is going out of business and they were selling their NES and Super NES games for $5 a piece. We got Monopoly, Othello, a baseball game, and Wizardry. I've been playing Wizardry mostly. It's pretty good, although the maze is truly a place to get lost in. I killed off numerous parties before I got a good group (3 fighters, 1 samorai, 1 thief, 1 mage). I used some battle tactics, i.e. choose battles carefully, to gain exp and levels. When I was creating characters, I was surprised by that samorai. I was aiming for a nuetral Human fighter. I ended up getting 50 bonus to add to my rolls! I couldn't believe it. I've tried since to re-create another one, but it must have been a glitch. I'm not complaining. I named him Wicked, because he is a wicked figher. I later realized that only 3 people could actually fight, so I dumped a fighter from my party and gained a cleric and I'm happy for his healing spells and his AC lowering spells.

My March dare didn't go quite as well as I'd hoped, but I am glad I did it. Even though I didn't completely meet my goals, I did have more days of working on those things than if I hadn't been doing it. Instead of the normal approximately 4 hours per month I would have spent on writing, I think I spent about 15. This new story is beginning to take shape and I'm learning as I go along how to create a world. Having the world created is helping me understand the characters more fully. And understanding the characters will help me know what they are going to do. I need to do some more work on it so I can get to writing. Not sure when I'll make time to do it. I'm behind in housework and behind in my work at the library. And this blasted cold is still hanging on...

Dawn posted this at 5:28 PM.