All right, Misty just sent this link to me, and I found it amusing enough that I felt the need to share with everyone. I just hope we have as much fun when it’s our turn…
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I have to say it’s been something of an uneventful weekend.

About the only thing of real note I’ve done this weekend (other than play Team Fortress 2) was take the Beast (aka, my black 2008 Dodge Avenger) in to Spring Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge to have some work done. It was time for the car’s 21k mile service, and I had also decided to have its windows tinted. Houston summers tend to be pretty brutal, and while it’s kind of late in the year for the tinting to do much good, I figure it’ll be good for next year. In retrospect, I should have left the car there while they did the work, as I didn’t expect them to take four hours. I alternated between working on my laptop and taking a look at the Vipers and Challengers in the showroom. I have to say that while they look nice, I would not get either car. The Challenger is a bit more expensive than I’m willing to pay, and has crap gas mileage. The Viper has no cargo room, and, well… I can’t afford $100k on a car.

Still, in the end, the Beast looks nicer. There’s just something about tinted windows on a black car that makes it look nicer. Also, admittedly, current model Dodges tend to look like mean cars. The Beast is no exception, and the tint only makes it look meaner.

Otherwise, it’s been a pretty quiet weekend, all told. I watched a movie (Resident Evil: Extinction) this morning, but otherwise it’s been uneventful. This week should hopefully be quiet as well… but I don’t expect it to be. About the only good thing I’m looking forward to is a party at a friend’s house at the end of the week… which, coincidentally, will be part of a three day weekend. We’ll see how it goes.

Well, as stated in the previous post, we were getting extremely worried about Gus. Mom and I were discussing him on Sunday, and came to the decision that unless we heard good news from the vet yesterday, we would go into worst case scenario.

Fortunately, we won’t have to go there.

According to the vet, Gus has a benign tumor on his thyroid, which explains why he hasn’t been wanting to eat. Of the three options open to us right now, we’re going for the least invasive/expensive option just in case other things the vet noticed don’t make the whole point moot. The option we’re going for is daily medication. From there we’ll see how he takes to it and whether he improves any.

I’m thankful that we didn’t need to go into worst case scenario. Other than losing weight, he hasn’t shown any other signs of problems; he’s as playful and perky (and some would say annoying and pushing) as ever. At this point, we’ll just take it as it goes. I’m just glad things are really looking up for him.

Well, yesterday I weighed myself once again. I’m down to 221 pounds, which means that so far I’ve lost 37 pounds. It might have been a little bit more had I gotten a chance to exercise Thursday night. As it was, I was at work until 11 PM and didn’t even have a chance to eat dinner that night. Then again, my weight loss was helped by the fact that from Monday through Wednesday, all I would have for lunch was pho. At this rate, I doubt I’ll make my final goal (195 pounds) by the end of the year. That’s okay, though, because as long as I’m LOSING weight and not GAINING it (which I haven’t done since I started this diet/lifestyle change), I’m in good shape… no pun intended. We’ll see how things go over the next couple of months, but for right now I’m feeling good.

What I’m NOT feeling so good about is my cat Gus. Over the past month or two he’s been losing weight dramatically. We’re not sure what’s wrong with him, as about the only obvious problem we can see is his weight loss; he’s as perky as ever and his coat is in great shape. Still, according to the vet, he’s gone from fifteen and a half pounds to eight and a half pounds, and his weight loss is pretty obvious. Dad has joked that because I’m Gus’s “special friend”, he’s decided to lose weight because I have too. It’s an amusing thought, but we’re still worried about him. According to the vet he’s dehydrated, so we’ve been having to give him an IV of water or saline (I forget which) every night. Let me tell you, that has NOT been fun. I took Dad’s place today in holding Gus down while Mom put the needle in, and while he was calmer with me than he was with Dad, he still made his displeasure WELL known. I also now have a bandage on my right hand, as he gouged me pretty badly with one of his back claws trying to get away. (He’s since forgiven me, though.)

Still, like I said, I’ve been doing well on my own weight loss… but I am worried about Gus. It doesn’t help that he’s an older cat and this could very well be an indicator of something far more serious. We won’t know until the lab tests come back, though. Here’s hoping everything goes well… both for me and for him.

It’s sad when someone does a gallery of pictures of George W. Bush in a LOLcats style. It’s even sadder when it’s the Guardian, one of the UK’s biggest national newspapers.

You can find more of them here.

A few years ago I had heard word that Joss Whedon was working on a Buffy the Vampire Slayer animated series. It was supposedly going to take place sometime around season 2 or season 3 of the original series, and all cast members except for Sarah Michelle Gellar were to come back to voice their characters. I had only seen character designs, but not any actual footage.

Well, as seen on Ain’t It Cool News, someone on YouTube managed to put up a short promo for the animated series. I don’t know how long it’ll remain up, so catch it while you can.

Well, right now I’m at Houston Hobby Airport, waiting to board a flight to Jackson, MS. I’m going to be spending the weekend visitng Misty, which should be pretty fun. What hasn’t been fun, though, is dealing with Hobby Airport. I’m flying Southwest instead of Continental because the fare price was a bit better. The drive to the airport wasn’t too bad either, considering I’m used to the same drive when driving to work.

What gets me about Hobby are a couple of things. First, the economy lot is a lot smaller and more cramped compared to Bush Intercontinental’s economy lot. What annoyed me more, however, was the sheer crowd going through security. I had never seen anything near as bad at Intercontinental, and one of its terminals is as big as Hobby’s single terminal. Ah, well. I suppose next time I’ll stick with Continental.

As for what I have planned for this weekend, well… we’ll probably see The Dark Knight and The X-Files, but other than it, it’ll mostly be just us spending time with one another.

I’ll probably be off the net for the most part this weekend, too, unless work needs help with something. So, if anyone needs me, I hope they have my cell phone number or work email address. Otherwise, it can wait until I get back. Ah, well.

In any event, I’m just going to put my phone away and relax a little before boarding… fun fun.

The “war” to which I refer to in the title is, of course, the conflict between my cats and dogs. For those recently joining in, the house is separated into the upstairs and downstairs. It didn’t always use to be this way, but when we got Star (who is now the oldest of our dogs), we didn’t realize she wasn’t at all cat-friendly. So, now, the dogs rule the downstairs and the cats occupy the upstairs. A set of children’s gates separate the upstairs and downstairs. For the most part the dogs stay in the kitchen, except if we’re spending time with them downstairs. So, there are gates at the bottom of the stairs and at the entrances to the kitchen.

Every so often, Gus (one of the two cats) would come to the bottom of the stairs and start making his presence known if he wanted to be fed. Star would hear him, go over to the kitchen gate, jump up, and lean over to see if she could see him. If she happened to get a glimpse of him, she would go berzerk. If you’re wondering what that scene would typically look like, it looks like this.

Gus and Star have an unseen confrontation.

Well, recently Gus has started to realize that Star would go berzerk if he speaks out and makes his presence known… and that she would be the one shouted at, not him. So, he’s started coming downstairs and provoking her as much as possible. It’s not the first time he’s found a way to provoke them; he’s also been known to come downstairs and stand in front of the gate while they sleep, wait for one to notice him, and then slink away when they start going nuts. However, this time, he’s availing himself of this opportunity as much as possible.

Unfortunately, this time, it’s backfiring on him. Three times already either me or my Dad have had enough and carried him upstairs (while he protests) and shut him in my parents’ bedroom. Hopefully soon he’ll realize that if he provokes the dogs like that, he’ll get shut in for a while. Then maybe we’ll get some peace and quiet.

I’m not counting on it, though.

All right, so San Diego Comic-Con is over and done with. I didn’t get to go this year… but then, I haven’t really gone ANY year. This would have been the year for me to go, simply because of the fact that Midway was previewing Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe there. Ah, well. I am not here to discuss that, though, as my friend Justin has already done so over at Mortal Kombat Online. Instead, I want to speak quickly about another couple of announcements I found pretty interesting.

As a lot of people know, several months ago NBC aired a TV-movie/backdoor pilot which was a continuation of Knight Rider. It admittedly did not go over too well. Well, NBC’s gone ahead with a full series, except this time it seems like they listened to the complaints about the TV movie and took them to heart. Apparently most of the people from the TV movie are returning (including Val Kilmer as KITT), but the show has a new showrunner… namely, the guy who was responsible for The Fast and the Furious and Las Vegas. It looks better than the TV movie did. Only time will tell if it’s actually any good, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

The other announcement was much more of a “holy shit” type announcement. There had been rumours of a theatrical sequel to Tron for a while now. But then, they had only been rumours; the closest we’d seen was a video game called Tron 2.0 which had starred Bruce Boxleitner, who had played Alan and Tron in the original film. Well, at Comic-Con, Disney released a couple of minutes of footage which actually served as a teaser for the sequel, which is apparently going to be called Tr2n. What surprised me was the presence of Jeff Bridges, who played Kevin Flynn in the first film. The video here is a cleaned up version of one recorded from the Comic-Con presentation.

If you’re wondering who the yellow warrior is, I’ve heard it said that it’s Clu, Flynn’s program from the first movie. Yes, that is the younger Bridges appearance that he has.

All in all, I have to admit I’m looking forward to both of these. We’ll end up seeing how good (or bad) either is, but either way they should be interesting…

Well, I can’t say it’s not been a semi-uneventful week.

It was my parents’ 40th anniversary this week. To celebrate, the folks went to Shreveport, LA in order to do some gambling. I COULD have tagged along without using any vacation time by working at our Shreveport facility during the day, but I decided to let them have their fun and stay home taking care of the cats. The dogs were boarded because with one person looking after them they would have been too much to handle.

Anyway, they left Sunday, and were due to come back Wednesday. On Monday, I called Dad to relay his email to him (as he didn’t take his laptop), and they informed me they were coming back a day early. I was amused but unsurprised; I figured they would get bored up there, as there’s less to do there than there is in Vegas. When they got back, we ate at Texas Roadhouse for dinner, and they told me that they had indeed gotten bored, as there wasn’t anything much to do outside of the casino and they had been spoiled by Vegas. I understood, but then I’m not quite like my parents. When they go to casinos, they only play slots. The first couple of times I went to Vegas I played slots… and quickly grew bored of them. I moved on to blackjack, and nowadays you’re much more likely to find me in the poker room than anywhere else in a casino.

We didn’t get the dogs out of boarding until today, which gave Gus (one of our two cats) time to rediscover his old habits when hanging around downstairs. What I had forgotten was how pushy he could be in the morning when you’re trying to eat breakfast, because he wants to get to the milk in your bowl. I’d end up spending as much time (if not more) keeping him away from my cereal than actually eating it. That was one thing I won’t miss now that the dogs have returned and reasserted their dominion over the ground floor of the house.

The only thing of real note that happened this week was that Dolly gave us a VERY glancing blow. I had a few people ask if I was okay because of the storm. The storm actually made landfall 400 miles or so away; all we got was rain due to the extreme outer bands of the storm. We actually got more rain today than yesterday, leading to a very wet and humid day. Of course, I weathered it with no problems (no pun intended), but not everyone else did. This DHL driver making a delivery to the facility I was at today certainly didn’t…

A DHL van runs into some problems...

Ah, well. In any event, it’s probably going to be an uneventful weekend, other than possibly meeting George to create a character for the Dungeons & Dragons campaign he’s doing with Chris, Preston, and Tiffany. I never got into D&D in the old days, but after years of playing EverQuest I think I’m ready to give it a try again and see what happens. Then it’ll be a short work week, as I go to visit Misty on Friday.

Hopefully the next week will speed by.