Game Day and Visit from Old Family Friends

This morning, I went with Dad (^z) to his friend's house for a day of board games, etc. We arrived at approximately 9:30 AM, and played "Clans" and "Medici" with the host and a couple other friends of his; both games are German board games, and a lot of fun. We finished before 2:00 PM.

On the way there and back, we dropped off and picked up my sister at UMD; she had meetings there.

When we arrived home, we found a visitor had already arrived: one of the aforementioned old family friends, and the mother of several more. It was not long before the (mostly-grown) children arrived, and they were entertained for some time watching songs from my mom's Bollywood movies. After that, we went to the mall to go eat at the Cheesecake Factory.

(While we were there, I bought a copy of Guy Gavriel Kay's "Lions of Al-Rassan" in the bookstore – it was recommended by limyaael awhile back, so I wanted to check it out.)

Now, as I type this entry, most of them have departed for their homes, and one has left with my brother nanakikun to visit a club. I assume news on that front will be forthcoming there.

So, a good day overall. I should hit the sack, though; I'm tired.

MtG, Bookstore, Microwave.

After yesterday, today was fairly quiet, however active it may have been in comparison to most of my summer thus far. I slept in late, spent my early waking hours on making an ambigram of my initials (a project that turned out acceptably well, all things considered), eked out a Scrabble victory against my dad ^z, and ate breakfast at 11:00.

The first ... well, no, the ambigram was first. Let me start over.

The second significant event of the day was the opening of the box of Magic: the Gathering cards nanakikun ordered. This is significant to me, as opposed to just nanakikun, because I decided to follow ^z's example and buy a share of the cards. Thus, I have an additional 200 random cards, many of which are strong candidates for entry into my main deck. I have yet to actually perform said modifications, however.

The third event of the day occurred a couple hours later, after ^z asked if I'd like to go out to Best Buy with him. Said trip was motivated by the recent failure of the family microwave oven. Instead of turning on the internal light, rotating the food, and making that distinctive humming noise while cooking the food, our microwave would turn on the internal light, rotate the food, and make the distinctive humming noise while not cooking the food.

This is not to be confused with the failure of our previous microwave. That one kept cooking the food without any trouble at all; its only problem was a rapidly-deteriorating door handle, which eventually would require the user to pull on a little metal tab (once part of a larger, and mostly plastic, assembly) if said user wanted to open the thing.

In any case, the third event (and the fourth, but I get ahead of myself) occurred on this trip I took with ^z; specifically, it occured when we stopped at the FOL used bookstore. The bookstore was very nice; there was a paper sign taped to the door advertising sci-fi magazines, 10 for $1, and there was a Joe Vs. the Volcano poster among all the other movie posters decorating the entrance. More importantly, they had a lot of books. Among these books was Forms of Verse, the one I bought; it appears to be a primer on the technical aspects of all the numerous forms verse can take, and a moderately well-written one. Being both an aspiring poet and an aspiring fan of poetry, I purchased it.

Well, I sorta-purchased it. It cost $2 before tax, and ^z gave me a $2 bill to spend on it, so I only paid 10 cents. I got it, anyway.

The fourth event was the purchase of the microwave at Best Buy. We got one similar to the one we had, except slightly lower wattage and a different brand. It did not fit in the trunk, however, due to there not being enough maneuvering space – thoughts of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and the impossibly-jammed couch came to mind – but ^z suggested putting it in the back seat, instead.

The last stops on the trip were the Yekta Market, at which olives and feta cheese were bought, and the Safeway, at which artificially-flavored orange soda was bought, and then we came home. The microwave was successfully installed, and all was well.

In other news, I'm now a registered member of the Internet Infidels Discussion Board. This could be interesting.

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Entry was edited for clarity on June 8. I'm pretending that I'm allowed to do that. No content was removed, however.