I seriously need to post more often.

So. Um.

I am reading World War Z by Max Brooks, the same guy who wrote the Zombie Survival Guide. It's good. A series of "oral accounts" of fictional survivors of the great worldwide zombie outbreak. I'm not even a quarter in yet and already he's brought up all sorts of interesting things that probably WOULD happen in a zombie plague scenario, but that I never even imagined myself (even though I think more about zombies than is probably healthy). Like: what happens to the organ transplant business?

I am also playing City of Heroes (on Victory, if anyone out there is still playing a MMO that isn't World of Warcraft). I got a free two-week acount to mess around in it a bit with a friend, and then mecha got his own free account, and the two of us realized that we both liked it a lot. So for a little while, anyway, we're going to keep playing. Went out and bought two copies of the Good Versus Evil edition and everything. Of course, we had to hit SEVEN STORES before FINALLY finding them in stock at WAL*MART of all places. But.

I am also also in love with this video, which is a pairs skating adaptation of the Million Ways dance. I used to love watching figure skating when I was younger, and then it started getting really boring because really all the skaters do basically the same thing over and over again, with a few exceptions. These two have made it interesting again, at least for the span of four minutes.

I am also also also generally feeling a bit better about stuff than I was a month or two ago. Part of this is because we are getting a handle on the whole going-back-to-school thing. We should be getting our financial aid packages in soon, and there should be enough money to survive on; we'll be getting our old bursar bills paid soon and then we should be able to actually register for classes; and, perhaps nicest of all, we've secured what looks to be a very clean and quiet two-bedroom two-bath apartment that is on a bus route to campus and is affordable. Probably the last one of those left in Bloomington. Ours now, suckas!

Oh, and I've also started taking a daily vitamin, which is just a good idea anyway, plus if I was sad and listless because of any deficiencies then not so much any more. "Deficiencies" does not look like a real word. Maybe I spelled it wrong.

So that's about it until the next time I post, which will probably be in, like, five years. Or not. Either way.

PS: Mike's Halloween costume fills my heart with malicious glee. (He is the guy in the first three pictures!)

HEY TOM

My family lives in an old house where none of the outlets have the ground hole thingie. We are about to be shipping off an idiot-proofed laptop to them, and we would prefer to know that that laptop won't get borked by, say, a lightning strike. Mecha's saying they make adapters to turn a two-hole into a three-hole, and then we could plug a surge protector into the adapter and then the laptop and router into the surge protector. Only he says that since there's no ground, in the event of whatever it might try to dump the charge on the adapter, and then the adapter might explode.

Please advise on the best course of action to take in this matter.

A UPS is also being considered as a possibility (remote, as WE had trouble hooking the battery in ours up, so who knows if my family could do it), and similar requests for advice go along with that.

Kthx.