It’s been a while, and I apologize. Tomorrow marks the two week anniversary of President Bush’s commencement speech at SVC, so hopefully I’ll get all my comments into an entry (although to be hones, a lot of the article will be discussing the media’s coverage of the events, as it was a decent speech).
I was at Hallmark the other day and a small girl had on wheely shoes…and decided that she didn’t need to walk, she could lean back and her father could drag her. He promptly told her to knock it off (which I was very happy to see) and she started to move her legs. I’ve never seen kids with wheelies do that before, so that was weird and sad, all at once.
Speaking of wheely shoes, on a sadder note, Wheely Engberg died on Tuesday surrounded by mysterious circumstances. Wheely is a character in Myst Online: URU Live, the daughter of one of the members of the DRC. It made for compelling and very engaging drama as the rescue effort unfolded (and other events happened elsewhere as well).
URU changed to episodic conent, so instead of a small stream of new content throughout the month, one week is packed full of events, content releases and storyline elements. I think it’s been going very well (this episode is entitled "Scars"), although the lag is horrible when groups gather (which is odd, other MMOs have no problem with hundreds of people in one area, but then again URU is very advanced graphically) and Cyan needs to come up with some way to "echo" the action to all the instanced city and hoods, so things can be experienced by more than 60-150 people at once. But otherwise, I think it was good, we’ll have the rest of the month (at least until more content comes out) to explore Minkata (and anything else that may come out), which will be nice for me. I did however have to miss the first few days of the episode due to Spring Ceremonial.
Ceremonial was pretty good, tiring as always. Things seemed unorganized, work projects weren’t assigned until the work meeting, which meant there was lots of standing around waiting for volunteers. And the vigil was really short, which was disappointing, by the time everyone got in place it was probably 1:30ish and we ended around 5: so just around 4 and a half hours for some of the candidates. The ceremonial ring got new benches (much needed) and during the Brotherhood ceremony, the candidates (who were doing very well until that point at following directions and being smart), forgot to put their name in the obligation and "repeated after Allowat Sakima." Chuck and I laughed a lot, but it was deserved. There is a new staff adviser, and the lodge adviser (who has a recent, unfounded hatred of me) finally waved to me Sunday morning after a weekend of being blatantly rude.
But the highlight of the weekend had to be when Matt and I were hiking down the road from the ring back to my car when Ranger Ken passed us and told us to wait up for him when we got to our car. We got to Commodore and waited and when he came back, the three of us lamented things being so crazy, unorganized and we all shared sighs and wishes to go hide places. We knew that we had made it when Ken asked us to wait so we could all bitch a little bit. /happiness!
Tom’s graduation party was a lot of fun. I went over the day before and helped set up and construct a fence. A bunch of us stayed around until about 1:30 in the morning just catching up.
For mother’s day we went to the Radisson’s brunch, which was very nice. There were flowers, ice sculptures and really good potatoes. Then we went home and had ice cream cake!
I planted flowers here (and at my grandmother’s house), since I have the greenest thumb in the family (at least I think) and because I love plants. I’ll post some pictures, but we are trying something different this year, planting Martha Washington geraniums in the large pots.
Heroes, Survivor and Lost all finished their seasons with great finales. I can’t wait until the fall (or February for Lost)! You can watch Heroes (and I think Lost, and at least clips of Survivor) online, so check out their respective sites (Lost: abc.com Heroes: nbc.com Survivor: cbs.com) to watch.
So after our commissioner meetings we usually go to Kings on 48 in North Versailles. The waitress is wonderful, as we ask for her section and leave a large tip since we visit often. She made for me and others (even though it’s not on the menu) a piece of apple pie with melted sharp cheddar cheese, vanilla (or cinnamon) ice cream and whipped cream with a cherry. It was wonderful and she was a lot of fun. Conversely, the Kings in Monroeville (also on Route 48) had horrible service when Cat, Brad, Alandra and I went out. We only saw our waitress twice and even when the manager came by, he only stopped when I asked for more water, even when we were all out of water and he was halfway past our table by the time he finished his question. Sad, but also because the two restaurants are on the same road, maybe 15 minutes away from each other.
Ok, that’s it for now, long update I know. Special entry coming hopefully tomorrow, have a great one!
