It's early. I'm exhausted. I need to go to bed.

But, before that, I need to test this server. Because I just moved this site to a new server, and I want to know that it's working okay.

I moved Ben's site, too, so that he has enough disk space to hold all the pictures he's sure to post about his new little boy. Very exciting! I missed Kyle's site, and Sam's, and Jackson's, and Lora's, and a bunch of other sites I had up that were just lingering a bit. I hit the two major sites.

Crap. And just remembered the other major site. Crap crap crap.

Not going to bed quite yet.

Bah, the server time is three hours off, too.

A few years ago (they all blur now, somewhere between 3 and 6, I'd guess), I purchased the book Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. I had asked a Borders clerk for a recommendation, having read all of the Guy Gavriel Kay books, and the Robert Jordan books that I cared to read until the Wheel Of Time has actually completed its rotation, and the C.S. Friedman books that were published. I needed a new author to run through, and as long as the author had more than two books I was willing to give him a try.

Well, I read the book up until Eddard died. Eddard was one of my favorite characters and what the hell, why is the author killing off one of the good guys. In the first book. In the first half of the first book?

Bah.

I put it down, and went on to some Vernor Vinge books recommended by Greg Wolff. Much better.

At one point, Matthew was visiting and noticed I had the first three books of the series on audio CD. I hadn't quite forgotten the book, and had purchased the first three books at a fantastic discount on Audio CD when Books on Tape decided to end their consumer rental business. He commented that, wow, good books, and yes, I should try to read them again.

But Eddard died! The author killed off Eddard. Who does that crap?

Read them anyway, he said.

So, last November, Kris took a job that made his 35 minute one-way commute into a 45 minute one-way commute, and started burning through the audio cds we have that much faster. I offered him the Game of Thrones on CD, and he loved them, reading Game of Thrones and the following two books in the series. He enjoyed them so much so that I had to buy him the fourth book, Feast of Crows, for Christmas (along with another set of four or five titles because his commute was so long and boring). He tried to buy them for himself and I had to shut him down. So sad.

Because Kris liked them so much, I started listening to them again. Recently, however, I've found myself listening a little less each time I turn on the CDs, turning off the story a little earlier than the end of my commute. Each time I listen to it, I come a little bit closer to Eddard's death.

Again.

I'm at the point in the story when he dies. He'll die within the next ten minutes of my reading/listening. I'll turn on the CD when I get into the car, realize where I am in the story after about 30 seconds of listening, then turn it off again.

If I keep this pace up, Eddard will live another 3 weeks.

Almost.

Heather mentioned to me today that she was heading to the grocery store. I asked to go with her, as I needed to pick up items for Kris to make his world famous curry dinner (where world is defined in this case as the 6000 square foot lot known as Krikitt Downs, of course). That, and honey. Didn't have any honey for this morning's English muffins. Few things will make me grumpier than honeyless muffins.

Come to think of it, no toliet paper would make me grumpier. And we needed toliet paper.

After wandering back from the grocery store, Heather started putting the cold groceries into the refridgerator. After a few moments, she commented, "You have a lot of rotten fruit in your fridge."

Um, yeah.

She continued, "And what's this?"

I peered into the fridge to see the glop of something that had spilled on the second shelf maybe two, three years before. "Um... condensed milk? Maybe?"

A look of surprised horror came over her face as she looked back at me. She then lifted up the knife she had in her hand and started scraping it off. One! Two! Three jabs of the knife and the blob was gone. The nearly three year old, hardened white something that I had no idea what it was any longer was gone.

Heather wasn't done yet, oh, no. Pffft! Out came the shelf, lickety split cleaned. Zip! Out came the crisper drawer. Shwoosh! Clean.

As she began putting things back into the refridgerator, she commented to me, "I've found putting leftovers on the top shelf means they'll be seen. And eaten." New rule number 4 in the house, to follow the current rules of:

1. The noise maker can be on by default at night, unless Kitt specifically requests it be off. Then it's off, and there are no arguments. (This one replaced the rule the first one in the bed decides, which resulted in one of us going to bed fully clothed, without any teeth brushing, on numerous occasions, just to be first in the bed.)

2. Dirty dishes go into the dishwasher, if they aren't hand-wash only dishes.

   An extension of this rule is, if the dishwasher is full, and you can't put your dirty dish into the dishwasher, unload the dishwasher and put all the dishes away.

3. No balancing more trash on the top of the trashcan. If the trash is full, take it out.

   An extension of this rule is, the trash isn't fully taken out until there's a new bag in the trashcan. Kris made me put that one in.

There are a few other house rules, like no farting around guests unless they fart first, or blame the dog when you do said fart, but they're usually unwritten and unspoken rules.

But now we have number four, to put leftovers on the top shelf, so that they'll be eaten.

When Heather was done with the bottom half of the fridge, she moved to the top. Out went the frozen tomatoes from the harvest three years ago. Out went the veggie dumplings that we bought by accident two years ago, along with the frozen creme brulee that had more freezer burn than brulee. We also pulled out steaks and, what do you know, frozen potatoes I had purchased a while ago. They'll make a tasty dinner tomorrow.

So, in the span of less than an hour, the fridge was cleaned out. Heather is the best roomie EVAR.

I recognize that things are going to change in life. The only constant in life is change blah blah blah. But that doesn't mean I don't find it annoying a lot.

And I mean, A LOT.

Today is Julia's birthday, and wanted to get her a nice bowl and fill it with chocolate covered peanuts. The peanuts were easy to get, so I dashed over to the local Pier One for a nifty bowl. I have several bowls that I like, a couple from there, so I figured it was an easy run.

The gaggle of teenaged girls going into the store at 8:50 at night should have clued me in that I should turn around and run. The "Everything 50% off!" should have screamed at me to freakin' run! There are few things I dislike more than the frenzy of cheap or free. People who would never buy some of the crap at the store, buy the crap. I don't get it. I don't like it. I can't stand it. Blech.

I didn't figure it out, though, and went into the store. Another "Blech."

Most of the shelves were bare. What remained was basically crap. No, no, real crap, not just the crap crap. Annoying.

It reminded me of the time Kris and I drove to San Jose to the Home Chef store for a rolling pin for Cal. We walked in, noticing the store had significantly more people in it than it normally did, only to realize most of the shelves were bare because they were closing the store down. That was the second Home Chef store closed (the other in downtown Palo Alto that burned down a few years back, to be rebuilt and reopen as the Apple store). The only reason I went to the San Jose store was because of the Palo Alto one burning down. But they're both closed now, and I'm left with the Williams-Sonoma or Draegers for my nifty kitchen gadgets and cookware (also known as expensive and even-more-expensive kitchen stores in my world).

I know that stores that don't have the clientele are going to close. But it's annoying that the stores I actually like and shop at are the ones doing the closing.

Entertainingly enough, I have come full circle.

Nearly two years ago, I came to this hospital for a group appointment to discuss options for laser hair removal. I really can't stand shaving, even though I've been doing it nearly every day for over last two decades, and wanted another option. I went to check out laser hair removal as it promised quick (sweet!) and painless (awesome!). The reality is far from the idealized version of such promises, but that's the subject of another post.

Today, I'm sitting here again. This time, as an after patient. I'm here with three old women with names like Gertrude, Arvilla and Palmina. Fifty years from now, will some punk kid look at me sitting across the room and think my name is odd?

The other people are here to listen to the presentation about the Mohs procedure: what it means, what to expect. I have never seen this video before. I'd like to see it, but I'll be heading into the back room while the rest of the crew watches the full video.

Once again, I feel like I'm in the wrong place. What am I doing here with these old people? I'm reminded of when Mom's second husband's mother told us about why she stopped going to her high school reunions: it was full of old people. She'd look at all these white haired people that she used to know and think, "Where did all these old people come from?" They reminded her of her own age, and who wants to be reminded of that?

Note to self: send an email to Scott. Before the email address I have doesn't work any more.

Holy crap.

A woman my age just walked in!

With her mother!

Okay, the older woman is her cousin. But her cousin looks old enough to be her mother. And she doesn't look old enough to have skin cancer.

Which may be the point.

It happens. It happens to a lot of people. Ask around. Just about everyone you know will know someone who has had some form of skin cancer or growth that needed to be removed. The only time it's a worry is when it's located close to something important (can you say, "eye?").

Time to get the stitches out