2 Bit Hacker

Well, I finally managed to snag the laptop away from Delia long enough to update again. Day 2 was mostly spent finishing the drive from Rochester to Michigan. I got a little lost trying to find my dad’s house, but we got here eventually. My dad wasn’t doing too well, but he was social for a little while, and got to meet Delia and such. I got the last of my birthday gifts, a tea mug from England and a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR250, for the HTPC. I can hardly wait to get home and install it.

Day 3 was mostly spent in the hospital, waiting during my dad’s surgery. It sounds like everything went fairly well, though they’re still not sure if it was cancerous. I guess they’re going to run some tests on the stuff the removed, and they’ll know more at the end of the week. We visited with him for a bit afterwards. I had received warnings that he was going to look horrible, but I didn’t think he was looking all that bad. He seemed pretty tired, so we left after a bit.

That evening we went into Ann Arbor looking for a BookCrossing book at a cafe, but were unable to locate it. Then Delia played some DDR at a local arcade and we hit a Borders, where I grabbed a book on house buying. Apparently Ann Arbor was the location of the very first Borders book store, which is kindof cool. We then went back toward my dad’s house, and went into a Meijer, so Delia could experience the less evil version of Wal-Mart.

Today the plan is to go visit my dad again, then head up to Toronto to meet Delia’s sister, and probably do some touristy things. Hopefully I’ll find a place to hop online again to make another update.

Sitting in a hotel room in Rochester, NY with free Internet access, so I figured I’d do an update. Yesterday was the start of Summer Vacation 2004 (SV2k4!) Kindof followed Doug and Delia out to Vershire, VT for the wedding of Doug’s roommates, Michael and Michelle (probably spelled wrong, ah well.) It was a renaissance themed wedding, and Delia managed to get me to dress appropriately. Once I find a CF reader, I’ll work on getting the pictures posted.

After that we started the long drive to Michigan. We were going to stop in Syracuse, but all the hotels were booked. After checking a couple of exits, Delia had the bright idea of calling and finding a room while we were on the highway, which led us to Rochester. It’s kindof ironic, since we were thinking of trying to visit Dave when he went back to school here, but we ended up being here a week and a half before he’s heading back.

So today, Day 2, we’re finishing the drive out to see my dad. We’re heading through Canada, which is always a nice, boring, flat drive. This is the first time I’ve made this trip with someone else, it makes it a lot easier. I’m looking forward to seeing my dad again, and I’m happy that Delia’s coming along to meet him, but I’m nervous about his operation tomorrow. I’m sure everything’s going to go well, but I’m still nervous about it anyway.

Well, I’m officially a year older now. My birthday was on Saturday, and I woke up to find a cryptic note on my chair; the start of a scavanger hunt of sorts around Manchester. Delia set it up for me, running around Manchester finding clues, eventually leading to her and a bunch of friends down by the river behind UNHM. I’ll be scanning the hints at some point and putting them in my gallery sometime soon. From the river, we went over to Bickford’s for breakfast, then the group broke up, since lithiumlilly had to go to work, and angry_amy had some other things to attend to. So the remaining group (myself, Delia, Dan, Dave, and Tim) made our way down to the Loop to catch Spider-Man 2 with a bunch of FoR. This was my second time seeing it, as we caught the 11:59 showing on Tuesday, when it opened as well. It’s a great movie, as good as the first one, and certainly among the best comic book movies ever (X-Men being the only other good series that comes to mind.)

After the movie we wandered back to my apartment to play some SC2 before wandering off to dinner at La Carreta, perhaps the best Mexican food place in the area. Then we caught some of the fireworks, and went back to my place to play Apples to Apples until far into the night. Oh, and somewhere in there Matt gave me a call, which was cool, since I hadn’t heard from him in a while. Overall, I think the day went very well, and I’m still amazed at how much Delia did for me. It’s certainly the best birthday I’ve had in recent memory.

Oh right, the booty list: Delia got me DVD’s of The Two Towers and Invader Zim, a ton of red pens, a bunch of graph paper (my favorite kind of paper), a fishie (from last month, but he’s still a birthday gift), and some other stuff once she finds it. Amanda gave me a gorilla keychain with an LED in the mouth that lights up. Dan claims my gift isn’t here yet. Tim or Amanda (I’m sure one of them will correct me if I’m wrong) gave me a Dogma inaction figure of Silent Bob wielding a golf club. absinthexl and shiftless put together a poster of p4t images, which is really cool, I should get it framed. My grandma and grandpa Nixon sent some money, as did my mom and Ralph. My dad is making me drive out there to get my gift. I think that’s everything, but I’m sure I’m forgetting something or someone, I always do.

On with the weekend. On Sunday, Delia and I went to her aunt and uncle’s house in New Boston for breakfast and to watch the parade. We hung out there for a bit before heading over to kyotemusings’s house for a party. There was a lot of food (which I ate too much of), and a lot of drink (which I drank very little of) and we managed to get some new people to play Apples to Apples. We left kindof early from there and met up with darkenna and theglitterfades for dinner at Denny’s (a Sunday night tradition) before finally wandering home to collapse.