The long weekend (even for me, who has a 3-day every week) was celebrated in fine fashion by The Boyf, Katastrophes, Mr. Pink Eyes, Pants Wilder, Deadblob, Mr. Saturday and others. Saturday we had sushi around the corner from our house, then rented Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Mr. Pink Eyes tried half-seriously to get us to rent some bad, bad vampire movies, but we were strong. Instead we dithered over videogames for an enjoyable while, then when it came time to check out we realized that none of us had a membership to the evil video place in question. I remembered that there was a card for it that had literally fallen out of space-time to land in the floorboard of my car. I had not rented from Blockbuster in many, many years, but on checking the card in my car it turned out to be my card from, oh, seven years ago? Eight? Something like that. I handed it to the woman behind the counter as though it were a thing made of fairy dust, as though it were an illusion that would pass right through her hand and vanish with a tiny fwip! before we’d even have time to gasp. Instead, it worked just fine. I was shocked. I didn’t even know that card still existed. I don’t even know how it got into my current car when the last time I used it was… three cars ago? Yes. Three cars ago. How it came to be in my floorboard on the one night in a decade that I’d be at Blockbuster, I will never know.

Curse of the Were-Rabbit was pretty funny. I think it earned mixed reviews from my friends, and it was certainly lacking some degree of the madcap that can be found in, say, The Wrong Trousers, but it was still pretty hilarious. I think they’ve gotten very good at refining out all but the most visual elements of some of their gags, to the point that my favorite joke in the whole movie didn’t involve a single spoken word and didn’t even make itself apparent until it was practically already over.

Sunday was The Day We Cleaned The House. It has to be capitalized like that. It has to be turned into an Event. I mowed the lawn, we vacuumed, we swept and mopped, we washed floor mats, we cleaned the back deck, I mowed part of the back yard, and so forth and so on. By the time it was over, I wanted to lay down and die. Sunday was also the day I started playing Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, which is a fun little action-platformer. It is not exactly a difficult game (at least, not so far), but it’s very entertaining. It’s just hard enough that I get the satisfaction of having succeeded, but not so hard that I can’t breeze through most of it. Recommended if you haven’t played a modern platformer in a while.

For part of Sunday, in order to keep the kittens occupied while The Boyf did work he didn’t want them to disturb, I holed up in the bedroom with the cats and Sight Unseen. It’s easily the creepiest ghost story I’ve read in a long, long time, and it’s built around a really clever idea. A sci-fi ghost story? I’m sold.

Monday was The Day We Ate. I hit Chapel Hill Comics for the week’s bag, tossing Astonishing X-Men into my lineup on being told it’s written by Joss Whedon. Picked up the first two trades and the three most recent issues to give myself the whole run. So far, yes, if you’ve seen X-Men III then in some ways you’ve read this. The major difference is that Astonishing X-Men doesn’t make you want to slap everyone involved in its making. On the other hand, the 2nd trade’s main story-arc is, frankly, dumb. It’s entertaining, but the core idea is just… well, it’s hackneyed, but I can’t say why because at least two friends have asked to borrow it. Still, it’s entertaining. And the third arc, which starts with issue 13, looks to be a lot more interesting. I also picked up the first four issues of Doc Frankenstein, which makes me giggle with glee. Frankenstein, advocate of science and rationale, goes toe-to-toe with the Church. I like it. I like it very much.

After that, it was off to Driade to hang with Deadblob for a while, where we eavesdropped on an extended family repeatedly testing their children’s memories of mundane trivia about their relations. Questions like “What does daddy cook for breakfast?” and “What color are your eyes?” and “What is Uncle Bob’s last name?” do not, at least to me, suggest a methodology of engaging small minds and checking them for fact retention. Instead, it just sounded like they were making sure the kids had their new identities down pat. I kept waiting for “Where have you always lived?” and “What do you do if the phone rings and you answer it and a strange man tells you ‘the mongoose is loose in the stream?’ Yes, you hang up and bring daddy his guns, that’s very good.”

That evening, a whole slew of us met up at Chez Gingerbread to grill and eat. We grilled a lot. Then we ate a lot. Then we sat around and played Mario Party 7, with Katastrophes taking the crown.

And finally, on Tuesday, I spent the day playing WoW, as several of us did some practicing for our 45-minute UD Strat run. When we are really on top of our game, the five of us are simply a wonder to behold. We’re just really, really good at WoW. It was so nice to spend a long, hot day inside, doing nothing serious, just enjoying myself with friends and kittens. I really don’t think it gets better than that.

Today, back in the office and vaguely numbed by how much there is to do. Earlier I walked outside right at 9pm to take a break and found that the sky had turned such a color that I could not tell what was sky and what was cloud; one was very, very deep blue-black, the other grey. Either night had just fallen and the lights of the city were starting to reflect from the clouds, or the sky was something just shy of utterly dark. Either way, it was beautiful. It’s that kind of thing that keeps you going when you’re ready to throttle some customers to finish out the day.