Sewicked

I stayed a little late on Friday & caught up on typing my writing. Yeah, me. Then I hurried home to watch tv & clean the living room. I was supposed to spend Saturday working on it but if I worked on it at least some on Friday, then Chris would take me shopping Saturday, without the guilt trip.

We ended up looking at stoves for close to 2 hours. Our oven element died (we know it's the element because broil still works) a month ago. If we can't replace it/fix it, then we need a new oven. We went to Sears because they are trying to recover their formerly sterling service record. We saw three that we liked. At the bottom end, feature & price-wise is the model for $649, on sale. At the top end was the Maytag for $1299. In between was the $899 model, on sale. The salesman gave us the 800 number to call about the part. The website did not list the part 'no part found' so the phone call was our last resort before making a purchase. Since the sale on the 1st one & the no-interest special on the second ended on Saturday we had to hurry to make a decison. We are buying a part & fixing our current oven. That's a good thing, really. Much as we'd like a new one, with a ceran, flat-top stove, it's better to fix the old & keep using it than to replace it before necessary.

The JC Penney sale was not as good as we remember it. There were a lot of things it did not apply to, including small appliances. Chris wants a new toaster, a smaller one. No sale? Then no sale.

I bought Timesplitters 2. I looked at Syberia but wanted a multi-player that Chris & I could play together. We got home, hooked up the second controller and played it. Favor point: male & female protagonists, disfavor point: what is that girl wearing in the first scene? They resemble pants but have straps covering the hips instead of fabric. Favor point: in the 2nd scene she's fully dressed, the only skin is what's showing between her clam diggers & her boots. Disfavor point: the targeting drifts. I'm lining up a shot on a door. Instead of aiming the gun/crosshairs & leaving it, I have to keep my thumb cocked just so to keep it lined up & try to shoot with the forefinger of the same hand. If my thumb twitches, say because I'm squeezing my forefinger, then my shots go wild. For those of us with smaller hands this is an even greater concern. It's not easy to keep my thumb cocked just so and squeeze the trigger.

After we died a few times on that (once I blew Chris away, I mistook him for a bad guy), we played Halo. Chris started a new character with me. Unfortunately, they did not give us the 'getting used to your equipment' phase. Instead we jumped straight into the running & fighting. I had fun driving the warthog. I found a cliff with it once. Crash! Oops, time to respawn. We made it through the first mission & then stopped to eat supper. We had literally played for most of the afternoon, well, okay, it was only 4 or so hours.

Sunday it was off to grocery shop after I worked on the living room & dining room. I cleaned up the detritus of my cleaning. Okay, it was mostly, this bag of books goes to the basement. This group of presents goes with the other ones in the basement & so forth. Then we went grocery shopping.

No matter what, our grocery shopping takes an hour, then putting them away takes 20 minutes. We had breakfast/brunch at the Pizza Inn buffet & made it home with time to finish clearing the dining room table & to vacuum the dining room & the living room. I was finishing up the vacuuming when Joe & Mike showed. I had finished when Rosemary made it. Richard was the last to arrive but he was only a little late.

We played the third session of our Forgotten Realms campaign. This is the almost Freaks & Geeks game. We have a tiefling, an aasimar, & a half-drow. Of the other two characters, one claims to be a priest of Mystra but although he prays for spells, he has not been blessed with him (maybe that's because he's a monk, not a cleric). The other one is a downright normal elf ranger. The game so far is a straight-forward old-fashioned dungeon crawl. Richard was feeling sleepy so I made him a cup of my new stay-awake tea from Sacred Grove Apothecary. He said that it's marvelous. I have yet to have reason to use it, myself.

After the game, Richard left to go have supper with his wife, Kathy, while Joe & Mike left to find supper of their own. Chris & I peeled shrimp & he stir-fried them in teriyaki sauce with scallops and mixed vegetables. He also cooked corn on the cob for Rosemary & I. Rosemary wanted to watch Cold Case but it never came on. The football game delayed 60 Minutes & we ended up watching that while we waited. Once we learned that Cold Case wasn't coming on we watched the last hour of Robin Hood: Men in Tights instead.

All in all, a good weekend.