White Paper Mice

**I am thinking that one of the things that you'd need in order to start a successful club/organization would be a cool name. More importantly, I think you'd need people who were interested in joining, but a cool name would be helpful in that area. Irregardless, game night will be next Sunday, the 23rd of August, and will start at 7PM and run till whenever. I want to get Gemlok to the table but Big Bri wants to drag out his unused copy of Zathura. Which reminds me that I need to get a hold of Trotz and see if he's available. Any other takers?

**Since we are teetering on the edge of becoming a Communist nation (you did know this, right?) I figured now would be as good a time as any to start kicking some dust on Facebook. I can't wait to see what kind of reactions I get. Time to go piss off the narrow-minded. What fun!

**A guy from the Dept of Public Works was out scratching around at the end of my driveway Tuesday morning. They had already come by and marked the sidewalk in the space where it needed to be fixed, so I was curious as to why this guy was there. I went out and talked to him, and he was there to mark out the exact area that was to be replaced. Half joking, I asked him if they were going to replace the little corner of the driveway adjacent to the sidewalk that has been steadily sinking over the past few years. I was pleasantly surprised when he said yes they would. I really hadn't thought they'd replace anything that wasn't part of the sidewalk proper. So there you go, a free repair courtesy of the city of DeKalb that should hopefully keep me from having to replace the rest of my driveway for another few years.

**The upstairs carpets are finally clean, after two years of debating as to when or if we would have it done. Hasn't rained since then, so there has been a wonderful lack of muddy paw prints. Ah, the wonders of a somewhat clean house....

**The parking lots here at the hospital are all being resurfaced, and it just so happens that the wind is blowing in just the right direction today to cause the airborne essences of tar and asphalt to be sucked into the air intakes and piped down into the lab. Just lovely. As if I needed something else to cause me a headache while I'm here.

**The NIU student invasion starts next week. While I intend to avoid the southwest corner of town, I may just have to go hang out in the newly redone quad and do some people watching.

**Go figure that I should get a very interesting offer from Jeweltiger, only to have it rescinded the very same day.

**It may sound like an ego trip on my part, but I really am starting to become amazed at the amount of tiki stuff in my collection. There is literally box after box after box of the stuff. Go through one, and I find another two or three right behind it. It's like that warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark; it just keeps going and going and going. That's just what ends up happening when you've been collecting the something for 5+ years, I guess. While going through all this stuff and trying to remember where it came from, and under what circumstances, I find I have developed quite a yen to head back up to Trader Vic's in Chicago. Be nice to just sit and soak up some concentrated tiki vibes for an evening. Plus, if I were to catch a glimpse of a certain Polynesian goddess while I was there, I sure wouldn't complain. I would flirt shamelessly, but wouldn't complain a bit. Anyway, the recording of the collection has fallen into a bit of a routine: take about 100 pictures, glean them down to less than 50, crop them all, upload them and then attach comments as necessary. It's quite a bit more time consuming than I had thought it would be. The misguided notion that I may have a chance to get most of the stuff photographed over my time off is rapidly being nibbled away by all the other things I intend to do during my time off. Most likely, just about none of it will end up getting done, but I do plan to take some rather spectacular naps.

**Got my fingers crossed hoping for a most awesome Sunday morning.

**Rented "The Great Buck Howard" and watched it Friday night. Kind of odd watching John Malkovich channel a calm Lewis Black. It's also freaky to see the resemblance between Tom Hanks and his son Colin. The movie itself is an interesting look at a mentalist (not a magician) whose act is still stuck in the 60's-70's and the brief interaction between him (John Malkovich) and a law school drop-out (Colin Hanks) who he hires to be his road manager.

**After a recent trip to Michael's, I feel the need to revisit my holiday rant. OK, summer vacation is still going on and the corn is still green and growing, and yet the Halloween stuff is out already. That I find disappointing. No, actually I find that to be very destructive to a season i quite enjoy. Fall is great in my book. Speaking in general for those of us who tend to live along this latitude, Halloween is part of fall. Here fall entails certain climactic and vegetative changes that cause one to be aware of an upcoming seasonal change. None of those events have occurred, so, in my book Halloween is nowhere on the horizon. Unless I happen to go into any store on the planet. Then it becomes pretty hard to miss. Once I accept that there is really nothing I can do to change the mindset of retailers, then I become disappointed by the low quantity and quality of Halloween items that are available. Irregardless, I suppose I'll just be setting some kind of record for starting my Halloween shopping early this year.

**Even after a brief explanation of how Tit Time works, I find myself no closer to a birthday gift idea for Cromag.

**Bracing for another family based invasion next week. Hoping they will just chat themselves silly and not even notice that I'm not there. If that doesn't do it, the smell of new baby should be sufficiently distracting for me to be able to enjoy my time off.

**Cornfest?? Anybody really care? Nah....didn't think so.

**I need to go get one of of the Pirate Queen's recumbent bikes to try for the week.

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