Food, Films, Fun!

(Reunion Time!)

Friday was a pretty slow day. The big event was my bro-in-law's birthday dinner at Texas Roadhouse. This was the first time our two families had assembled since the unpleasantness of a month ago.

As luck would have it, Ape's mom was leaving for New York Saturday afternoon and Ape's sis called to apologize for her atrocious behaviour back then. Cynically, we think it's because without her mom, Sissy has no one else to watch her kids...

In any case, dinner itself was good, and the company pleasant. Major lols of the night came at the end when the waitress brought the check. BIL had gone outside with the restless young'uns a few minutes prior, so when the waitstaff came a'clapping, the birthday boy wasn't there ^^ They offered to do it again if we could wrangle him back in, but he said no.

At home, we just chilled, watching Medium and some other stuff. Later, I took another Ambien, at about 11:15. I logged on 5 minutes later and found only Deej on. She seemed unusually quiet when I found her in Al Zahbi, so I let her be and ran next door to see what I could stir up.

Well, the Ambien kicked in hard and by 11:50 I was barely conscious, so I fell out by midnight.

Aaaand, as per usual, I was up again about 5 and a half hours later >< I decided just to get up and went right back to Vana'diel. I gamely flagged up on WHM, hoping for a merit or two, but with the low numbers online I wasn't hopeful.

Fortunately, not only was I wrong about getting an invite, I seriously underestimated the fun I was about to have. Benscot recruited me almost immediately for another Mire party and as the group was already 5/6 before me, we were able to get down to business very quickly, just after six.

The party rocked until about 9:45. Not one downtime for MP, and not one death. There were only a few cure-panics, one of which was my fault when an errant Dia struck a fly instead of our imp. I got to have fun with Benediction and a DS-juiced Curaga IV. I need to check on that one because it really seemed that I pulled less hate from that than from the Curaga 2's and 3's.

Not only did this party really click, it was the fastest XP I've gotten, I believe. Just over 11k an hour and FOUR merit points!

Two things really seemed to make the difference: We synced to 71 rather than the usual 67-68. And our tank was a NIN. Who could totally hold hate. He even got props for it from the rest of the crew. He rarely lost hate on imps, and with flies there's no faulting him for AoE damage. Which, in many cases our DRK was able to stun anyway.

One thing I learned is that I really hate flies in this camp. I can't easily work my Misery > Esuna magic and their AoE really does hit hard. Much harder than Jnuns do. I can only hope the only reason we used flies for fillers between imps is that we were too far from the jnuns' ponds.

Our Bard did a great job keeping me refreshed (the main reason for no MP downtime) but I had to ask him not to cure me when I got yellow. I'm pretty sure he was Japanese and I think I was able to explain my Medicine Ring latent to him in auto-trans.

One other minor issue we had with each other is -na spell usage. We never did chat on that but I worked it so I -na spelled from the bottom of the roster up and if he didn't start (because he was singing or somesuch) I could just keep going up the list. We still cast over each other a bit...

Three of us were ready to go at nine-ish but stretched time to get our NIN his level. I explained I had to go to the airport and when the NIN dinged (plus one buffer) I had to jet. (PhilKenSebben) Ha-ha! Fuselage!

I didn't log in again at all the rest of the day because we went from the airport to lunch, then to the Toy Story double feature, in THREEEE-DEEE! There was shopping at the mall, and dinner for Ape at Panera's. We weren't able to make iCarly, again. But we watched some other stuff then threw on "Adventureland".

Movie Review time:

* Toy Story and Toy Story 2 - If you don't know about these yet but love good wholesome entertainment that anyone can enjoy, go see them. Nao. One is just plain fun with a great "horror" scene at the end. Two is surprisingly emotional, but just as fun as one. Each gets 4 crystals.

* Adventureland - See, here we go again. AGAIN I tells ya! A deep character-driven DRAMA masquerading as a funny movie. This movie is so unfunny it's sad. Well, it's actually quite sad, as it's an angst-filled young-adult coming-of-age plus romance and heartbreak tale. But it isn't very funny. The core story isn't bad, but the pacing is glacial. If I weren't already at home I'd have walked out I think. 1.5 crystals. Would have gotten at least a half more had it not been misleadingly margeted.

Sunday was brief, with just eough time to spend my merits and say hi to Kushi. Nobody else was on. Time was tight because we had a car to wash, grocery shopping, lunch with my mom and ape's sis, church, dinner, Amazing Race, Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters.

I also squeezed in the first one and a half episodes of "Rumbling Hearts", a show that may have the right blend of drama and romance I'm after. I'm not far enough into it yet for the main story event to have happened (the coma) so I'm not sure of the overall tone yet.

To all my friends, especially Fhox, yes, I still watch DH with Ape. And B&S is another pleasure. Although this season both seem to be getting much more soapy. And the whole Kitty/cancer angle really made me sad. Not what I wanted right before bed!