Ten Tentacles - So many arms, so little time.

The flights were both flawless: on time, smooth, and uneventful. While waiting in DFW we stoped at an Irish pub I hit sometimes where I travel to Dallas on business. Corrie Ann and Devin seemed to enjoy the food.

“Dad, my favorite bacon cheeseburgers are from Irish pubs,” Devin was heard to say. The Guinness was definitely worth it.

We stayed over night in San Diego, then picked up our rental car and drove up to Costa Mesa. On the way we had Rubio’s fish tacos for lunch. Oh, dear Rubio, how I’ve missed your sweet, sweet … ahem.

We made it up in time to attend a BBQ, which was awesome with lots of good food and old friends. Some of the kids there I hadn’t seen since they were younger than Devin and now they are all graduated and living on their own.

Today, I am not sure what’s on the agenda. I really hope it involves more food. I’m starving.

And happy 29th birthday to my lovely wife!

Sitting at the airport in Greensboro mooching off some free wireless connection here. We have about another half hour before our plane boards for the first leg of our flight: from here to DFW. There we’ll have another hour an a half wait before we take the second and last leg to San Diego.

Corrie Ann says, “New category of meanest person evahr: Airport Gift Shop Lady!”

Devin says, “Daddy, you spelled ever wrong.”

Back to being the Luggage Master; it’s going to be a long day.

Corrie Ann and I have been, for well over a year now, wrestling with a desire to once again have an SLR camera. Having both grown up using Pentax K-1000s and reveling in doing our own B&W prints, we always felt a great void in the features that were available to us in the point-and-shoot cameras we’ve been using for the last several years. Going digital with an SLR seemed only right, but we needed a camera that met both our needs (Corrie Ann is getting into astral photography). After lots of research and much consultation of photographer friends (thanks, Reverend Jim!), we settled on the Cannon EOS Rebel XT. We then checked Amazon.Com and placed the order.

We ordered the camera with several other things. All the other things were shipped and arrived in due order, but the camera, despite having been listed as in-stock, was curiously delayed. When their estimated ship date, over a week after the order was placed, finally rolled around and it hadn’t shipped, I called. The nice man in Bangalore told me that it had not shipped because the price was changed; it had gone up $140. After I railed about bait and switch tactics and the fact that it was a great shame I was the one who had to contact them, he assured me the original price would be honored, after they charged the current price to my card and then credited me the difference. I just wanted my freakin’ camera and I agreed. A new delivery date, two days hence, was set.

On that date, they bumped it out another week, and on that third date it was postponed yet another week. Seriously, any sane person would have given up by now, canceled the order, and gone down to Best Buy, and I really wanted to do that, but it was a matter of principle now. Despite the fact that the camera’s ship date was now set for a full month after I had ordered it, I resolved to stick it out, get my camera, and force Amazon to honor their original price.

Yesterday my new baby arrived. I’m happy with it, but greatly disappointed in Amazon. I will likely continue to buy books and DVDs from them, as they seem to have no problem delivering these things on time, but I think this will be the last piece of major electronic equipment I buy from them.

Incidentally, I note today that Amazon has it listed as only available from external sellers. When I ordered it it was available, and listed as in-stock, from Amazon.

Boo, Amazon. I love you my little Rebel!

So, it’s getting better and at a quicker rate, it seems, than I was lead to believe by my Interweb diagnosis. It still creeps me the hell out, and I have had this constant, phantom ache in that eye ever since I discovered the existence of the blood spot of doom, but I think I’m getting over it.

The weekend was good; lots of burgers and brats were had, along with my mom’s now famous potato salad. Dessert consisted of brownie sundaes, with homemade brownies, choice if ice cream, hot fudge, real whipped cream, and a cheery. Tres yummy.

My dad didn’t seem too impressed by my self diagnosis of the blood spot of doom. Of course, he’s at that age where every little health thing could be a signpost for a more serious ailment. He also thinks that if he’s concerned about it I should be as well. I know he means well, but honestly? I can wait til I’m forty for the regular ass examination.

The Boy is now, officially, done with school for the summer. Today marks the first day he’s home with me while I work. I told him last night his first task of the summer would be to clean his room. When I got up this morning, he had already picked up most of his room and was watching YouTube videos of Halo CE mods. Really, he is so much more the parent than I am. I think I’ll suggest he vacuum his room a little later.

… and maybe my office too. Heheh

So, last night Devin and I swung by Wendy’s to pick up some quick dinner. As we’re waiting for our two Mandarin Chicken salads and one Kids Cheeseburger meal to arrive he says, “Hey, dad. What’s that red thing in your eye.” I didn’t really think much of it until we got into the car and I could check in the vanity mirror.

… yipe!?

The above is what I saw and, the entire fifteen minute drive home, I think I could feel my eye pulsing. I was convinced I was in eminent danger of stroke or heart attack; anyone who knows me knows I have an eye thing. This was MY eye. It freaked me the hell out.

I got home and immediately hit Google. Turns out it’s a subconjunctival hemorrhage, and quite common. And I did, in fact, have a hellacious sneezing fit yesterday (damned allergies).

It still freaks me out, though. *shiver*

The last three of my six main toons are now all at level 40 and are all decked out with mounts. Having no Exalted status with any other factions, I went with racial mounts all around. I also, for whatever reason, have hit forty, with all six toons, in Dustwallow Marsh. Maybe it’s because there are a truckload of quests there, or maybe I just like those goofy Goblins, but here are three screen caps, taken just outside Mudsprocket.

I guess all the retooling done, for faster leveling between levels 20 and 60, really has done the trick … up to and including focusing leveling in Dustwallow Marsh with its 60 new quests since patch 2.3. Hurray for me!

Yesterday, working from home, I didn’t venture much into the outdoors. Mostly, I left to take The Boy to school, and then pick up my niece from daycare. Both times, though, I heard a helicopter. I couldn’t see it anywhere over the woods behind my house, but I distinctly heard a hovering helicopter. My first thought was that the DEA was out scanning the woods for hobby farmers again, and I pretty much stopped at the first thought. Then I left for work this morning (there was some other stuff in between, but seriously, who cares).

Yeah, yeah, I know. What the hell is that? Honestly, I nearly drove past the dude with the stop sign holding up traffic. I had to hit my breaks so hard I stalled the car. All this happened, mind you, while I fumbled for my camera phone and cursed myself for not having my regular camera in the car with me.

I tried to get a better shot of it, but as you can see the zoom feature on the old camera phone sucks big donkey gonads. When I saw the giant chainsaw suspended from the helicopter I nearly crashed again. Why haven’t we seen one of these things in a zombie movie!?

I realize these photos don’t do it justice, so I found this video. Seriously, that’s one badass piece of machinery.

If they’re still around tomorrow, I’m going to try and get down there with my real camera and get some decent photos. Honestly, I had no idea something like this even existed! I mean, wow, could it get more dangerous for the pilot?

Note: I think this explains the inexplicable power outage that happened yesterday at my house; the power went off and on long enough to knock me off line, reset the satellite TV and every clock in the house, and bum my niece out, who was watching Spongebob. I bet you the knucklehead hit the line.

It seems The Fates have decided that today is the day I think about feminism. It started with reading this post of Spider’s, which for me read as a laundry list of things I do every day … part and parcel of life in a two income household and spending a good 35% of my time working from home. I’m not sure I agree with her basic argument, though, that not thinking of or doing the things on the list makes you somehow and enemy of the modern feminist movement.

Several things on the list I would attribute to natural genetic propensities towards nurturing; testosterone and estrogen do funny things to people, and anyone who has ever been on hormone therapy can attest to this. Does it mean that one sex cannot and should not assume the perceived roles of the other? Most certainly not. But, there is certainly a genetic preference. Is that genetic preference wrong. I don’t really think so. It could be that I’m just not seeing it, but then again I don’t really consider myself a feminist or feminist-ally. It’s not that I’m against the movement, it’s simply that I think equality and fair treatment is a universal axiom and should not just be fought for for one special interest group. Race, creed, gender, class … these are all ways we find to label segments of the population and ascribe preferential treatment. No one group has any more right to freedom than the other and the fight -should- be towards universal equality.

I’m sure someone’s going to yell at me for that …

But, as I said, it was a convergence of things that got me thinking. John Scalzi, who I’ve only recently discovered but am enjoying immensely, posted about pronouning hermaphrodites this morning. What does that have to do with feminism, you ask? Why, the non-gender specific pronoun of course. He pointed to this interesting article over on Grammar Girl, which again I found myself nodding to. I honestly, and admittedly my memory grows fuzzier with each passing year, can’t ever remember using ‘he‘ or ‘him‘ as my genderless pronoun; I almost always use ‘them‘ and ‘they‘. It’s not a linguistic anomaly either … Spanish, my first language, is very gender oriented. It just, for me, is.

So, what does this all say? Sexual harassment, rape, unequal treatment, reproductive rights, contraception, domestic violence … are these wholly feminine issues? I know that women are in the majority of sufferers when it comes to these things, but is fighting it all on one front the answer? And what does remembering to clip your kid’s nails have to do with it? Honestly, I guess I’m not really sure. In my house, when we fight about chores it’s not from the perspective of how one might think it’s simply the other’s duty, but from the simple fact that either one of us can be a lazy fuck at times. I might not think to bathe The Boy, when I should, but it’s not because I think that that’s my wife’s job; it’s because I’m busy playing World of Warcraft. She might not remember to change the oil in the lawn tractor, not because she’s thinks it’s my job as man of the house, but because she’s too busy lugging her telescope outside to try and find the crab nebula.

I think, as I ponder this more, that this is the central problem with many modern feminists I know and why I don’t consider myself one of their number: too many things are laid on the altar of anti-feminism and misogyny. That very word, in fact, gets bandied around, I think, without much thought to its real meaning.

Friday, I held a door for a guy in a wheel chair on my way into Barnes and Noble. On my way out I held the very same door for a woman, behind me, who gave me a dirty look and let the second door swing shut in my face. I’m sorry, but I hold doors … and it has nothing to do with me hating women. I do my own laundry, not because I think that I’m being an ally to my wife’s femininity, but because she messed up some uniforms of mine when we were first married and since then I have done my own laundry because I like the way I do it better. I bathe my son and take him for haircuts because he’s a dirty, little monkey (as he should be), I vacuum because the Roomba is so much fun to watch, I feed the dogs on the nights it’s my turn, and I even make sure she finishes first because, dammit, that’s fun to watch too.

I do these things because I want to, not because I think any of them are my job or are hers. I sometimes have to be reminded to do some of them, but it’s not because I hate anyone. I’m just lazy.

So, what is the problem and what makes one part of it? Human nature. We still have a lot of evolving to do. A week ago, 10,000 mostly white kids lit up and smoked out with not a single citation issued; today a young black man trying to turn his life around, who my wife was a character witness for, got 10 - 15 years for trying to sell 5 oz. of the very same herb.

Excuse me, I have to change over the laundry.

My brother and I set out today to knock out a couple of quests we both needed some help with. After spending the morning killing centaur in Desolace and ogres in Stromgarde, we set out after Fozruk. As you can see below, he and his kobold entourage fell to the might of the Horde:

After Fozruk, we headed over to the Circle of Inner Binding to turn in the quest. I had a sneaking suspicion something wasn’t quite right, so I urged my brother to assist me in knocking out surrounding mobs before the turn-in. This proved to be a sound precaution, because Thenan attacked. We had no problem knocking him out, or his twin, to complete the quest for both of us.

I-I am going to be a storm-a flame-
I need to fight whole armies alone;
I have ten hearts; I have a hundred arms;
I feel too strong to war with mortals-
BRING ME GIANTS!

/cheer

So, last night I was running around Duskwallow Marsh, like you do, trying to level my Paladin. I was over where the murlocs are, in the northeast, and I was picking off one and two of them at a time and feeling pretty good about myself. I’d just sat down to take a break, and I happened to have one of the main villages in my line of site, when I saw a Dwarf Paladin, two levels below me, charge into the middle of the village and draw like seven murlocs down on himself. I figured the guy was dead meat, especially when the first one he was hitting ran off and pulled a couple more down on him. To my astonishment, though, the murlocs fell, one by one, not the dwarf.

I actually moved over for a better view, as this progressed, and sat down and just watched. When he was all done, I complimented him on what I’d perceived to be an astounding feat, and asked him how he’d done it; he was gracious and very forth coming. All of this hoodoo led to a re-speccing of my Paladin. Below you’ll see both my very minor first attempt at Paladin AoE (though still a situation that before would have easily squashed me), as well as the moment of fourtiness (it’s a word). Wee!

As per usual, I took some screen shots as well. Below is Jawani decked out in full plate, a shot of her on her Warhorse, and a shot of her on her Elekk (because I play WoW like Pokemon … gotta catch’m all).

Oh, the fun.