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You're probably not going to see this until well after I'm done writing it. Last night in Williamsburg, we had a thunderstorm, and apparently a lightning bolt came in and let the magic smoke out of the big router that lets us see the rest of the Internet, and lets the rest of the Internet see us, so for the moment we're just our little isolated office, unable to see the rest of the world, so to speak. How 1980s. This is especially annoying since I'm waiting on an email to get some testing data before I can go any farther on my project.

What was I doing last night, while lightning bolts cascaded down on or near my workplace? Why, out running around on blacktop that had tall metal poles sticking out of it, of course! The storm never seemed to be all that bad near where we were playing. It rained, of course, and we spent most of the game shuffling around the court, not willing to lift our shoes up and slip to the ground. There was one new guy there who just didn't seem to grasp the concept, and must have fallen down a good six or eight times. I just did the run-and-slide a lot, which made me think of the old video arcade game Joust, where you rode these flying ostriches around the screen, and if they landed on a surface and you quickly slammed the control in the opposite direction they were heading, they did this screech-to-a-stop that I thought was hysterical. Someone with a good sense of humor wrote that.

I'm still getting used to this whole "homeowner" thing, which so far seems to consist of: 1) Shit breaks. 2) We call the builder, who's supposed to come fix it. 3) They never come fix things, and when they do come, they do one little piddly thing and let the rest ride. An example: I walked around the house with a notebook, and wrote down everything that I could think of that needed to be done to get the house (and yard!) up to finished standards. Liz typed it up and it came out to about a page and a half. About 95% of this is stuff that's been unfinished since we moved in. The last time a guy showed up, he put a temporary cover in place for the hole into the attic. It's basically a piece of pressboard that he cut to about an inch longer and wider than the hole, so it'd stay up there once he put it there. And then he left, since that's all he was there to do. ARGH!

We did install blinds on all the windows except the computer room, and that room has had curtains installed in its main window. We bought and put together two more bookshelves, so all our books should (theoretically) be able to be put away on bookshelves. Now we've just got to do it. :P After that, the only things that need to be unpacked is the random miscellania in the guest bedroom. There's a fair amount of stuff (okay, my comic book boxes) that are technically unpacked, but we still need to find a good place to put them.

I don't know if I've talked about this yet, but I've decided lately that I really loathe the comic book box. Actually, I dislike the form factor of the comic book in general. It's so rooted in its old, disposable format that actually storing the things is an exercise in this obscure fetishism that has really worn old. Stuff the board in the bag, making sure the shiny side faces the front. Get the comic in the bag (tough sometimes, since quality control on the companies that make the bags and boards is abysmal). Fold the little flap of bag down, and tape the bag closed. Don't worry. When you go to reopen the bag, about one-third of the time the tape will tear, rip, or refuse to become unstuck from the bag. It's part of the charm. Then, stick the bagged comic in a box. I think the bag&board combination started with "collectors" who were trying to keep their copy of AMAZING MONKEY BOY #1 in mint condition, but since you need the board to give the comic enough rigidity to be stored, and the bag to make sure that the board stays with the comic book (static electricity, while quite abundant, is not to be trusted), they've sort of evolved into a staple for any comic book reader who doesn't toss his comics after he reads them once or twice. Most every comic book buyer person I know has this slippery stack of bags with boards already in them precariously tucked away in some corner.

Anyway, due to my growing distaste for the comic book itself, I've been trying to convert as much of the issues as I can into trade paperbacks, as well as doing a general cull of the issues I've got. So far, combined between Liz and I, we've got a little over two shelves worth of trade paperbacks, which is kind of impressive in its own right. I've got a stack of about 60 more comics that I either have in TPB form or want to get in TPB form, and another stack of about the same size that I just want to get rid of. I'm still trying to decide what to do about the comics that Mark (owner of ye olde locale comic booke store) doesn't want. The best idea that I've heard so far is to give them to a literacy organization or something similar, and I'll get to write it off as a charitable donation. Hey, works for me!

Anyway, I've rambled on enough for you today, haven't I?