I made it back safely. Jeff got me to the airport just in time, and my flight wasn’t too bad. I finally got to see a decent copy of Star Trek, although it was on a 7″ screen, then I rocked some Super Stardust and Space Invaders Extreme on the PSP. My flight also had the map feature I’m ever so fond of (as I’ve mentioned before). My brother left work early to pick me up, then drop me at Holly’s. We hung out with the boys for a bit, then went and got some Sahara! – I love those guys.

Friday was Holly’s birthday and in the morning she went to work, and I walked Roan to school. I found a little wood pipe on the ground on the way to his school. I brought it home and threw it out. I had a bit of a panic attack when I got up and tried to get my desktop machine running.

Holly had some dude put a wireless card in it while I was out west, and although it powered up and booted XP no problem, not one of the ports on the board was working, and only one input on the video card was working. I’ve come to the conclusion the machine does not like being moved. The board was never meant for the case it’s in, and I don’t really give a shit. I’ll leave it where it is, finish this book, then build a new machine. One that is able to dual boot XP and Ubuntu. Or maybe I’ll just build an Ubuntu machine and keep this one as an XP machine until it dies beyond what I feel like putting the effort into fixing. I got everything working (including the wireless card), and now just need some speakers from my parent’s house. I also need to install all my ruby scripts on my desktop, and make sure Sketchup is setup how I like it.

After I got it working I called Mary Beth. I haven’t heard from her in probably a year, and I wasn’t sure why she disappeared. Turns out she was pissed at me for turning into who I was. She said I changed for the worse, and I asked if there was anything I directly did to piss her off. She said no, which makes it harder on me, because I would rather know what I did so I can prevent it in the future if I choose. Either way, I’m just glad she’s still my friend and we’re not too far from each other so we can hang out.

Mary came by, and Holly got off work early. The Dude dropped in, and we hung out on the patio. Brandi came by to pick up Mary, and the Dude left at the same time. Holly and the boys made Lesley and I eat a unicorn, then we came back here for a bath and UFC.

Today the Dude came by again with Benz, and the boys went nuts when they saw him. Gage played with him for a couple hours I figure, and eventually Benz got comfortable enough with the trampoline to not only jump on and off it, but to also play with the boys on it. It was pretty cool seeing him play with the boys the way he was, considering the last time I saw him he was still a complete asshole. Perhaps getting hit by a car changes a dog for the better. If the same is true for humans, I can think of a few who could really use a city bus intervention (okay, maybe more than a few).

For dinner, Holly made some strange dish with mashed potatoes (gross) which was actually pretty good (don’t tell her), then she left without feeding me dessert. Even after I bought her a huge bag of her favourite candies today. She went to see some lame band in Hamilton, so I hung out here with Roan and watched UFC, while Gage played his DS. Now the boys are in bed, and I’m thinking about doing the same.

I’m glad to be here, and it’s nice to be comfortable in a lot of different ways finally. Now if I only had belly full of dessert…