Back Online After Ike

It's been a little more than two weeks since Hurricane Ike. We were without power for a little over a week and we just got our internet service restored today. When I called Comcast to find out if we had service yet and the tech said it must have been horrible because couldn't live without by the second sports scores. He then proceeded to rattle off current scores of a few games going on at the moment. I honestly have no idea what sport he was even talking about. I'm not sure my, "Wow, really?" every after every score update was convincing.
We decided to ride out the storm this time although I think next time we will be leaving town. We managed to get all the windows boarded up and the girls even painted a few with stuff like "Tina Ain't Here!". Completely Lana and Helen's idea. It got pretty intense towards the back end of the storm and we spent a bit of time in the closet under the stairs. Afterward was a blur of days spent reading, cooking on the patio by tiki torches on Helen's little grill, and playing Munchkin with Marcel by candles while everyone slept. We were hot, probably pretty stinky from taking quick cold showers, but really not that bad off. We had plenty of MRE's, the stores started opening up pretty fast, and the house was relatively unscathed. Other than a bunch of large limbs in the yard and a few broken roof tiles we came out of the storm prett good. Marlana's bird house, the one her grandfather built for her as a housewarming gift, was busted up pretty good and is now on the project list of things to fix.
Now that we have power and a internet connection, things are nearly back to normal. We still need to tear down the huge tree that fell in my yard, there's the top part of a tree sitting in the yard by the side of the house that needs removing, and we're still waiting to hear back from our insurance about the broken roof tiles but other than that were good.
Good Stuff That Happened While We Were Offline

Olivia has decided that walking everywhere is much faster.

Marcel discovered there are games that don't require a keyboard and mouse.

I finished reading Footprints of Thunder and American Gods, and The Cartoonist.

Turns out everyone likes MRE's.

I fixed the roof leak in the kitchen before the storm.

The huge dead tree in our backyard missed the garage, fences and our neighbors house and hit smack in the middle of the yard.

We now have a beautiful Red Eye Tree Frog!

And Now the Bad...

The birdhouse Lana's late grandfather built as a housewarming gift broke into a few pieces when the big tree fell.

Our roof now has three small holes in it where limbs broke some tiles.

My Stylus 810, that I always carry in my pocket, broke.

One of my Green Tree Frogs died due to the cricket shortage in our area after the storm.

So with that all that said, I'm off to check my email on something other than a phone screen! Whoo hoo, we have that internet again!!

Fly By

So the kids are now officially a year old, Marcel's back in school, and Olivia has decided she wants to walk now. Now we've known she's been capable of walking for sometime now but she's just decided to knee walk up until just a few days ago. This was only after a weird period of her camping on the couch. She's been able to get on and off of the couch for a while now but for a few days she dicided she didn't want off. It was really sort of funny - for a little while. She'd point, throw a sign (drink being the most common), and expect whoever was close, to get it for her. It was really pretty funny until it became more of a demand. Nothing like having a one year old make demands. I don't really remember Marcel being all that demanding but then I guess it has been a while since we had a toddler in the house. The time goes too damn fast.
I still can't believe Marcel is ten. He's started to notice girls. I think I should be scared. I remember how sneaky I got around his age but I'm still having a hard time imagining my kiddo being sneaky. Now I'm not one of those "not my kid" parents but I know that, generally speaking, he's one of the best behaved kids I know. I'd like to think that Marlana and I had a lot to do with that but I honestly think Marcel is just one of those naturally kind and easygoing souls. We'll see once the hormones kick in...
We keep putting off sitting him down for the talk but I think it's imminent now. Sometime very soon in the near future we'll have to openly discuss sex with our son. I'm still a little weirded out by it. So much so, I think I'll change the subject.
I've been reading a lot of roleplaying books lately. GURPS 4th edition, D&D 4th edition as well as an oldie that's close to my gaming heart - Palladium Fantasy. Back when I first met Oscar and John I ran a game for them and my brother using this system for nearly two years. This was, of course, before I nearly twisted their arms into switching to GURPS third edition. We had a lot of really great moments sitting at my dad's dining room table tossing dice playing that system. It was only in second edition at the time so that's what I decided to run again. This time there's no John and I don't think I'll ever convince my brother to game again so we wrangled up Anthony. I managed to grab up eight of the world books for twenty three dollars. Gotta love eBay. I forgot just how simple a system it really is. There's a lot to be wanted for a system as simple and downright clunky at times as this but it is fun. Honestly, I'm not sure I would enjoy it as much if it wasn't for the fuzzy nostalgic feeling that comes with it. I've become quite the gaming snob when it comes to gaming and almost always prefer GURPS. Now that I've been gaming more regularly, I've really got the itch to GM more often. I might actually finish some of those demos I started to sketch out.
Well, I'm off to read some comics for now. Oscar and Anthony gave me a crap ton to read last time they were here and I'm tired of them bitching at me for not reading them. Later!