New Specs

I got my eyes checked yesterday. It had been at least four years since my last exam, and I figured I was about due. The whole process took over an hour, but that included my time with the optician picking out new frames and so forth.

The exam was even less pleasant than I anticipated. I could have told them I'm red-green color blind, but they made me look at the test cards anyway. They also did the always joyful glaucoma test. The worst was having my eyes dilated; I'd never had it done before. Not only did it blur my near vision, but it made my already sensitive eyes even more sensitive.

But I'll come out of it all with new frames and new lenses. The lenses will have an anti-glare coating, which I like the idea of. They will also be made of high-index plastic, instead of glass, which is supposed to make them lighter. Optically they'll perform better than regular plastic; I never did ask about price, and now I'm thinking I should have. We'll see how they go. Part of me is thinking I'll end up switching back to glass lenses.

Riddles

We had a gaming day on Saturday, starting later since Maryanne was attending a bridal shower and Tina was not able to join us, and running a couple of short, one-off adventures. In retrospect I should have run them in the other order.

The first was Dry Spell, a site-based adventure involving the PCs being hired to take care of a group of bandits. They worked through this adventure surprisingly quickly.

The second was The Ettin's Riddle, and was more of an event-based adventure wherein the PCs had to solve a riddle. The riddle proved more challenging than I anticipated, though I don't know how much of this was caused by the lateness of the time. Thus I ended up reworking the module quite a bit, leaving out the bit where the town constable shows up to kill said ettin regardless of whether the PCs have solved the riddle or not.

My experiment of putting basic PC information on index cards and then putting them in initiative order to help move combat more quickly seemed to work pretty well. I think instead of trying to hold them, though, I may clip them to my screen instead.

Disturbing....

This is pretty disturbing for a number of reasons, but somehow amusing at the same time.

Wet Paint

So our house started getting repainted yesterday. We're hoping that not only will its appearance be helped by a fresh coat of paint, but by the new color, as well.

The weather was pretty good yesterday, which meant I had the windows open most of the day. The house ended up smelling like primer. Daisy wasn't enthusiastic about the noise caused by scraping, but once that ended and the priming began, she was rather fascinated by all the commotion.

Maryanne's aunt Sarah is also visiting from Mexico. We had Maryanne's family over for dinner last night, and I once again tried some barbecue on the gas grill. The dry rub is pretty good, though maybe a tad spicy; I'd like something a bit more savory. Nonetheless, the results were must more satisfactory this time around, as the heat was low enough this time.

The experience made me wonder though: I used country-style ribs, boneless, which turned out delightful. Compared to a rack of ribs, it's a much better deal. No bones, more meat, and less than half as expensive. Why does anyone bother with spareribs?

"Instant Karma"

Ever heard that clever pun, "My karma ran over my dogma?"

Well, apparently they never saw this.

Firefox

So I'm kind of diggin' Mozilla Firefox. Well, most of the time, anyway. It handled pop-up blocking a lot better than Internet Explorer, and tabbed browsing is sweet. However, it sucks at downloading plug-ins on the fly. The dialog box for downloading extension appears no problem, but even if it manages to figure out what plug-in it needs, it never downloads it.

Severe weather

There was a bit of excitement in Stoughton last night.

The good news is that neither Maryanne nor I were hurt, and there was no damage to our property. We lost our cable services, and couldn't get any cell phone service, but everything else appeared to be fine.

I was bad, though, and didn't go in the basement. In fact, I was cooking my dinner.

This was probably much safer than the guy who did this.

Lost in translation....

Chinese has always been a good source of things that translate poorly from English, but things are far worse when translated from English to Chinese then back to English, as evidenced by these shots from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.

A 1001 Nights

I finally finished The Last Battle today. I've enjoyed reading the Chronicles of Narnia, despite their being written for a younger audience. As an adult it's easier to see the obvious symbolism, that they are obviously allegories. I think younger readers would enjoy them for the adventure stories they are, but still might learn something useful from them.

I'm next starting on The Arabian Nights. I won't rehash everything I've mentioned before. This particular edition is from the Modern Library collection, and weighs in at 931 pages, shorter than the entire Burton translation, but much larger than a shorter edition I read many years ago. The stories for the Modern Library edition were selected by Bennett Cerf.

Trial run

I decided I'd give Firefox a try, at least at home, and see how it performs compared to Internet Explorer.

I used to like Netscape Navigator up to version 3 or so; once version 4.0 came out, I thought it was so hideous and terrible I switched to IE immediately. Now in addition to the features that Firefox has that IE does not, I also hear Firefox is faster. We'll see.

Last....

So today I came prepared: not only have I started on The Last Battle, the seventh and final book in the Chronicles of Narnia. C.S. Lewis wastes no time in this one; the book clearly parallels the book of Revelation, and only two chapters into it we've already seen the Antichrist.

I also brought with me The Arabian Nights. It's an abridgement of the Richard Burton translation. I've read some of it before, but it was a long time ago, and was a much shorter abridgement.

Someday I'd like to have a complete edition, but they have a tendency to be very expensive.

Changes

Today I started my new work schedule, working 7:30 a.m. to 5:50 p.m. to get a full day off each week. It remains to be seen if it'll be worth it. It'll make for a long day. And if I go to the gym after work? Yikes....

Still, I'll try it for a month, and if I can't handle it, I'll go to a four and a half day week.

I also finished The Magician's Nephew today, but forgot to bring the next book of the series with me today. I suspect it's going to be a boring day.

Adventure

Today I finished book 5 in the Chronicles of Narnia, The Horse and His Boy. It was a fine adventure story, with some Christian morality thrown in.

Next is The Magician's Nephew.

Succession

So I've now finished The Silver Chair as well. It featured a bit of Christian symbolism, as well as a jab at British politics. I liked it on the whole.

Next shall be book five in the Chronicles of Narnia, The Horse and His Boy.

Next

Today I finished The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, book three in the Chronicles of Narnia. It was entertaining, with a bit of Christian symbolism thrown in, this time in the form of a lamb feeding people with fish.

Next will be book four, The Silver Chair.

Beginning of the end

Today is the beginning of the end, the first of August, the last full month of summer. It sure feels like, it too. Opressive heat, sweltering humidity, and not nearly enough rain. The most prevalent sounds in the air have been cicadas and the occasional scream of a blue jay. None of these are very pleasant.

I'm actually looking forward to the fall.

Faith

This morning I finished Prince Caspian, the second book in The Chronicles of Narnia. While it had less symbolism than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, did, it was still good. It was a nice adventure story while still teaching a lesson about faith.

Next is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Symbols

Today I finished The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and moved on to Prince Caspian. It's been entertaining so far. It's obviously a story for children, and told in the tone of a story teller, as if C.S. Lewis himself were speaking to you.

It's also quite obviously a morality tale of some sort. If I didn't already know that C.S. Lewis wrote about Christian ideas, even in his fiction, it would be easy to determine from these books. The parallels are striking, and he draws from European legends as well, particularly Norse and Greek. We have such Norse elements as the bitterly cruel winter, the White Witch, sledges, reindeer, dwarves, and so forth. We also have such decidedly Christian elements as a lion (the Lion of Judah, and St. Mark the Evangelist), eagles (St. John the Evangelist), a bull with a man's head (St. Luke the Evangelist), and humans (St. Matthew the Evangelist), the last being explicitly referred to as the Sons of Adam and the Daughters of Eve. There's enough symbolism to make your head spin.

And then we come to Aslan himself. Supposedly Steinbeck's The Old Man and the Sea included a Christ figure in the form of Santiago, the old fisherman. Please! Aslan is a Christ figure if there ever was one. His actions parallel the Passion and the Rapture. All the fisherman did was cut his hands on his fishing net.

Despite the fact that the Chronicles of Narnia was written for younger readers, I have the idea I'm going to enjoy it immensely.

It's magic

I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on Friday night. Since a good portion of my small readership have not read the book yet, I'll be sure not to include any spoilers. Some things were surprising, some were not. Some were unexpected, some were not. I enjoyed reading it, despite a number of downers, and can't wait for the next one.

Next on the list is Narnia. That's right, I'm starting The Chronicles of Narnia. Pauline loaned me a paperback set of the seven books, and I'll be starting The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe today.

Ignorant

As much as I slag Illinois for all the stupid things there, it's now Colorado's turn: in an act of ignorant, bigoted prejudice that words are insufficient to describe, the city of Denver has banned pit bulls and is now rounding them up to be destroyed.

Then read the comments on Fark, and try to guess who's a pet owner and who's not.