Friday

Gailon told me my car would be ready that afternoon. Gordon happened to call and said he was taking the afternoon off since it was so nice, and wondered if I wanted to have lunch with him. I asked if he would mind taking me to get my car, so it was a date.

I convinced hub to come home for lunch, and we three went to Zorba's Greek restaurant up in Round Rock. I had previously not been too fond of Greek food, but this place has excellent chow! I think this is what Greek food is supposed to taste like and I've never been disappointed with it. The lunch rush was a new experience, and it confused Gordon a little but once we sorted everything out we had another great meal. Hub thinks one of the waiters was hitting on him, but wasn't sure if it was that or just a difference in personal space zones. He was cute, too. Anyway, we chatted with the owner a bit and Gordon made noises like he was going to eventually cater through them for D&D, which would be cool. Then hub returned to work, and Gordon took me to Gailon's.

He pronounced Homer to be in excellent shape after a bit of a tune up, and with the exception of a couple of tires that will need to be replaced before I go on any long road trips. He talked more about hub being a gun smith, and said that after talking to some friends he thinks it could make him a ton. There are apparently people here that take their guns to Houston for custom work since there's not enough quality smiths here. The obstacles, of course, are start-up costs- the machining equipment is not cheap, and the government keeps a paranoid eye on gun smiths to the point of wanting maps of your house for their records (or for raiding purposes, as hub calls it). But we talked about it for awhile. It was nice; Gailon is a very cool guy.

Back home, and we got ready to play D&D. After, Bob said he was interesting in visiting but he had foundered himself at Pancho's and wanted to crash instead. So we just noodled on our respective computers, and then Bob pinged us at 1am. He was awake, and came over and we watched the Prisoner and other fun stuff until we finally all crashed around 3:30am.

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The weather has gotten really nice now, since I'm at work. For whatever reason I was not able to sleep worth a damn last night- I feel like I was half-awake the whole night. So when my alarm went off at 6:30am, I couldn't see inflicting myself on hapless callers. I called in for the morning, which has not endeared me to my co-workers. Oh well. They suspect the hickey hub gave me has something to do with it, but I got that hickey Saturday so they can all go pound sand. Anyway, while I was home, I noticed 3 things:

Thing one- the squirrels have figured out how to get the birdseed out of the supposedly squirrel-proof feeder. Basically they jump on top of it and flip it over so the seed spills out like it was a busted pinyata. I didn't mind it at first when one would occasionally come by, but now as soon as the seed goes out one or more comes out and vacuums it all up before the birds even get a shot at it. I've never liked these glorified rats. Greedy bastards.

Thing two- the semi-annual live oak leaf dump has begun. The pool is clogged with leaves, so I have some work to do. This happens every Spring and Autumn, but they are basically evergreens so are never completely bare.

Thing three- I was admiring my 55 gallon aquarium, which is quite stuffed with java moss and ferns. Then I spotted a teeny little black molly, about one centimeter long with big eyes! I have a baby molly! Everyone told me if I had mixed-gender mollies I'd be up to my ass in mollies, but I never saw any definite signs of reproduction. I thought maybe they were all one sex, or homosexuals, or concerned about overpopulation or something. But somebody's been breeding, and I have at least one new molly to prove it... and one of the others just died a couple of weeks ago, too. I wonder if there are any other babies lurking about in the plants. The reading I've done seems to say that baby fish need special food and such, but I guess not- or else that's why there's only one of them. I also wonder if the last tank-cleaning I did might have sucked up some babies that I didn't notice. I try to keep an eye out for that, but it was a big water change last time and there was a lot of muck I hosed up.

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Oh yeah, the bad news. Mom is sick. She gets sick a lot, but Dad (we are the most triangulating bunch of bastards...) said she'd been to urgent care, which I assume is one step below going to the ER. It's bronchitis, which she seems to have all the time. This time, however, she wasn't getting enough oxygen to her blood and needed some kind of breathing treatment. I called her yesterday and she sounded awful, and said it was the worst she has ever felt. In addition to the usual crappiness she is also very weak from lack of oxygen. I called back again this afternoon, and she still sounded awful; she said she hasn't bathed in a week, hasn't cleaned or done laundry, and doesn't have much appetite. Then she said she was going back to work Wednesday whether she felt like it or not because she's out of leave. I told her I would come visit her Wednesday, show her my new car, and run errands for her and help her clean if she stayed home. Blatant bribery, but I don't know what else to do.

Any of y'all smoke- please stop. She's been a chain smoker for something like 40 years now, and I really hope she quits- but I fear she won't. I really worry about what she's doing to herself.