Well, it’s a Sunday night, and I’m just sitting here talking to Misty and watching some Cops. I’m also tired as hell for some reason, but I’m willing to bet that might be because I still haven’t fully recovered from the late night Friday. I can’t say I’m entirely ready for work tomorrow, but I’ll have to manage regardless.
I had to go out to our Oklahoma City branch this past week because we were cutting the network uplink for our branch there over from a VPN over DSL to a dedicated point-to-point T1 line. I also planned on reloading a PC there, but I later learned that wasn’t going to be advisable. I arrived in Oklahoma City at around 4 PM; the flight itself was uneventful except for a turbulent landing, but I WAS annoyed at IAH by a TSA employee who wasn’t too willing to deal with the fact that my boarding pass was on my cell phone. I arrived in Norman at around 5:30, got to my hotel room, and did a bit of work before going over to Saltgrass for supper.
Thursday was fun; after work, I got ahold of Jeff and Malinda, and Jeff came by to pick me up from the hotel. From there, we went to their brand new house. I have to admit the house is damn nice, and they got it at a steal, seeing as the previous owner didn’t take good care of it. They have a pretty large living room, and their backyard even has a fish pond. :-) Malinda cooked some homemade lasagna for dinner, which she made with spicy sausage instead of regular sausage. To the surprise of myself and Jeff, it was damn delicious and probably the best lasagna I’ve had in a LONG while. After supper, we sat down and watched the latest episode of Torchwood, and from there Jeff and Malinda took me back to the hotel.
After I got finished with work on Friday, Jeff and Malinda picked me up from the hotel, and we went over to Ted’s to pick up dinner. Once we picked up dinner, we went back to their house to eat. After eating, Malinda started setting up the table to play the board game of the night: Arkham Horror. Once Karen (Jeff and Malinda’s friend/honorary little sister) arrived, we sat down and begin playing.
Arkham Horror is a board game that is based on the Cthulhu Mythos. The game is the first one I’ve ever played where it’s all players working together against the game itself. The players play as investigators in the fictional town of Arkham in the early 1920’s; the object of the game is to pass through and seal the otherworldly gates that keep appearing in the town, while dealing with random events and battling/avoiding monsters that come through the gates. If too many gates open, an Old One manifests on Earth and the game goes into sudden death (kind of fitting) where the players have a very very very slim chance to defeat or be devoured. The running mood of the game seemed to be best described by two recurring comments during the night: “oh FUCK” and “we are so screwed”. The low point was when Jeff’s character was in another world, and he drew an encounter card he had never seen before. As I watched, his face fell into an expression of shock. His character had to fight a DIFFERENT Old One, Shub-Niggurath, on his own. He barely got around it. In the end, we were almost ready to enter and seal the final gate when a badly drawn card caused Nyarlathotep to materialize on Earth, and despite our best efforts it defeated us. We may have lost, but it was a damn fun game. From there Jeff and Malinda took me back to the hotel, where I made my farewells.
Saturday was busy as hell. I got to the airport at 10 AM, which was well before my noon flight. In fact, I got there right before they boarded the 10:20 AM flight to Houston. As I watched, they had everyone board the flight. Then, after a couple of minutes, they got on the airport loudspeakers and asked for a certain passenger to come to the gate and board ASAP. A few minutes later they made the announcement again. After a bit, they gave the seat to a standby passenger, closed the plane door, and the jetway moved away from the flight. The plane sat there for a few minutes more, as the pilots presumably did the pre-flight check. At this point, the woman who the gate personnel had been calling for arrived at the gate, and was absolutely incensed that they would not let her board the gate. (“If we let you board it would delay the flight.” “THE PLANE’S STILL SITTING THERE!”) I was a bit amused, because the gate people had been diligent in looking for her, and she should have been there at the appropriate time.
I wish I could have gone home as soon as I got to Houston. Instead I had to drive to the office and pick up backup tapes and a couple of handheld barcode scanners. From there, I went to the datacenter and swapped out backup tapes. After I was done there, I had to go to the Creekmont facility to assist in the final steps in putting them on our ERP software. When I was done there (at around 6:30 PM), I decided to go straight home. Brent and Vada invited me to go to a comedy club with them, but I was tired and just wanted to go home.
Today was uneventful, except for this morning. After I got up, before having breakfast or anything, I decided to weigh myself. I have no idea how (especially as I didn’t exercise and wasn’t as good as I should have been eating-wise while I was gone), but I lost three pounds this past week. I’ll probably exercise in about thirty minutes to make up for not having done so yesterday, but still… nice to know that I didn’t lose any progress in my weight-loss quest.
As for the rest of this week, I don’t really know what I have planned other than doing work at Creekmont and also doing a bit of work at the corporate office in the morning. I might end up doing something with Brent later this week, but nothing’s decided yet. Ah, well… I’ll just take it as it all comes. :-)