Started Black Plague pretty shortly afterwards and it is easily surpassing its predecessor in how engaging it is. The first game starts off kinda slow, you’re in an old mining cave for most of the game and your major enemies are various creatures. There’s a lot of awesome puzzle elements throughout both games, and the atmosphere is amazing, but the game does start relatively slow. It ends on a cliffhanger, though, that ties directly into Black Plague. Because of all the work the first game did in building up the atmosphere and situation, the second is far easier to get into for people continuing from the first.

Though the game does take a wildly different term in what’s going on. There are clues and hints throughout the first game about what’s really going on, but you don’t really get a good idea of it until you get a little bit into the second.

And then shit gets weird.

I’m loving it a lot right now.

Owning a cat is totally different than living with a cat. I merely lived with Orangey, who belonged to Nicole. She was a great cat, I loved her, great personality. A total bitch. A really loving cat who, if you showed her she could trust you, was all over you. It wasn’t out of the ordinary to have her spend the night in my bed, stomach exposed. She was my buddy that summer.

On Janaury 6th (happy birthday, Brian!), Sarah and I adopted our cats. Hers is a small tuxedo named Pinto. He appears to be part oriental based on his face and love of jumping. Duster is my dude, a blue cat with very light tabby markings that appears to be at least part Chartreux based on a wide variety of characteristics (communicates mostly by chirping; when he does meow, it is high-pitched; dainty feet; hair on and near his spine is water-resistant and more wiry than the rest of his hair, eventually becoming almost fleece-like on his underside; green eyes (he has some green, but they’re mostly yellow.. so that’s why we suspect he’s either an undesired Chartreux (only solid green eyes are allowed in competitions) or part Chartreux); kitten like until 3 years of age (usually that behavior dies out around 1 year, he’s about two months beyond that point as just as childlike as ever); full of energy; and many others).

These guys are a part of the family. I’m usually greeted by Pinto when I get home from work and then Duster usually won’t leave me alone once he wakes up. Orangey would rub the hell out of me, very forcefully, but she was… a pet. Nicole’s pet. Duster and Pinto? They just seem like more than that for some reason. It’s weird. It’s really freaking cool, though.

The best part is that they freaking love each other. They’ve been having a few dominance fights lately, which causes Duster to emit this really pitiful sounding cry (we suspect that, because he’s older than Pinto by four months, it’s meant to be intimidating in some way; Pinto just ends up hopping on him), but when those are done they’re grooming each other and playing with each other and having a good time. I’m really glad that Pinto is challenging Duster, now that he’s old enough to understand dominance. Duster used to push him around and sit on him and Pinto usually just let him. Pinto is small, fast, and muscular. Duster is bigger, still pretty fast, and not as muscular. Duster doesn’t have a hope of winning until he begins to use his weight, but that might take a bit more intelligence… Chartreuxs are supposed to be pretty intelligent, but Duster? Sometimes we question him… I think he might have some form of ADHD, the way he’ll sit there and “watch” nothing, then run around and get distract by… nothing.. and just play with… nothing… It’s cute as all get out. Both of them are.

Man, if I’ve already written about these guys I’m going to feel like such a dick.

Work flew by today. I don’t get it.

My Chicago Card Plus finally came in today. Put the wrong zipcode on the mailing address, so that delayed it nearly a week beyond Sarah’s. I can’t wait to use it.

I need to (re)discover Chicago this summer.

My mom telling me, in my new apartment that she hasn’t seen, that I shaved my beard unevenly. So much so that it was four inches longer on one side than the other. This was not the case in the dream, nor is it in real life.

My bracelet breaking again.

The State Street Chicago River draw bridge rising up as I was walking towards it. Not even as I was walking on it, just towards it. So I had to wait, and then I woke up.

Weird dreams.

Got the script working and implemented into the whole thing. Fixed a few other issues that popped up. Day goes by fast when I actually have things to do.

Writing documentation isn’t as bad as I thought it’d be.

I honestly still have no drive to update this thing despite having an accessible client (the web interface is accessible, but.. :/).

Right now I’m trying to figure out just what the hell is going on with Groovy and SoapUI properties. Groovy seems to insist on storing properites as strings. This is fine, until I need to do some math on — holy shit. I can probably just store it as a global context variable, but I might get the same issues.

Nope. Same shit. Properties are strings, and none of the java functions (parseInt, getInteger, valueOf) seem to be able to pull the value of it! GRR!

This should work. It doesn’t. This is annoying. I don’t like trying to fix the same damn bug all day, but I’ve got nothing else assigned to me… soo…

Fellow tester just said ‘sephamore’ instead of ‘semaphore’ …..

Working at Law Bulletin again. Same place I was at two years ago. Let’s just hope that nothing else from two years ago comes back…

Just checking in with your recanting Michelle, Here you may unit.

Hey Johnny. The. If you give them a this is message then if not 3 let me know somehow. See you later. Bye.

Hey Johnny, so I left my head and loves and my calms we talked. And I’ve got there right now if I can girl and I have to get in Phoenix. Anyways, I have to get up his head content at the time you get out of work evening and I wanted to see you go to a Florida’s far. Holler at us the Laton about this and see if you can find them. Yeah. Talk to you later. Bye.

• two tablespoons ground flax seed == 1 “flax” egg

Delicious Sarah-friendly Baked Beans:
1/4 cup molasses
1/2 cup rich maple syrup
1/2 cup cheapie maple syrup
chopped onion to taste
1 teaspoon olive oil
4 teaspoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon vinegar
salt to taste
at least 2 can white beans

Mix all but beans on simmer until it tastes good (adding stuff as needed) for at least 5 minutes.
Add beans and stir on simmer for 5 minutes.

Note: By using this, you will go DIRECTLY to my Google Voice-mail. You will not bother me by ringing my phone at all. Google also tells me that you will NOT be able to find out my number using this thing. But if somehow you get my number, then I can just screen calls via Google Voice and all is good.