Real life, with a dash of Doctor Who

It's strange. I'm busy at work, but when I remember I don't have class in the evenings, I feel the strangest sense of boredom. Like, "Ugh... what am I going to do now." I need a list!

Things I hope to accomplish in the next 90 days:

• Clean my house. And I mean top to bottom, clean out the closets, and shovel out the basement. It is time to streamline! It is time to get rid of the boxes I didn't unpack when I moved into my house nearly six years ago!


• Play FFXI. Hopefully get my BLM to level... whatever the new level cap is right now.


• Collaborate with flydye8 on a DW fic. I'm terrible at brainstorming, but I'm trying to do that now. I will send a multitude of terrible ideas to you soon, fly!


• Go home for a visit. This is becoming more difficult than I had anticipated. Firstly, airplane ticket prices have skyrocketed and all of the direct flights have been canceled. Secondly, I was considering flying directly to Spokane because it turns out we won't have many people to visit in Seattle this time around, and rental car prices around the Seattle airport are outrageous (I will literally outraged). Thirdly, my sis is moving to Seattle, so I won't have a place to stay on the East side of the state. So I'm not quite sure how this is going to work.


• Most importantly, spend quantity time with Dominic. It doesn't matter what we do, but we should do it together.

There. Now I feel properly intimidated by my work load. That's much better.

This was the sort of weekend I really enjoy. Busy and fun.

Saturday morning I took Dominic to the mall to redeem my "Real Women Dollars" from Lane Bryant. Soon I will not fit in their clothes and that will be both triumphant and a little sad. When I was thin I wanted to shop there so bad and now that I'm fat I can't shop anywhere else (or I could, but I don't want to). In any case, Dominic was well behaved so afterwards I took him to Inflatable Insanity and let him jump around for an hour. By the time our hour was up it was 12:30, so I took him to Sbarro for pizza and then got him some popcorn from a mall kiosk. He crashed in the car. Unfortunately he didn't sleep very long. I had logged into FFXI and was waiting for Besieged to start. The troll merceneries had just started advancing when Dominic started crying. So much for leveling my magic skills.

That evening I went to Pat's house for a Twilight viewing party. The movie wasn't good, but the company was and I think we should do it again. Maybe "Idiocracy" at my house?

On Sunday Justin and I had planned to go to the International Gem Show at the IX Center in Cleveland. We left a little early to have breakfast at Wally Waffle then headed up. Neither the IX Center website nor the Gem Show website mentioned that parking cost $8. Luckily Justin and I together scraped up enough cash to pay for parking then headed inside. I knew the Indoor Amusement Park was going on at the same time, but I had assumed that it would be completely divided from the gem show. It wasn't. We walked in the West entrance and the whole area was covered in balloons. Beyond the low divider there were flashing lights advertising rides and carnival food. Dominic's eyes were huge like platters. We walked away from the indoor amusement park toward the gem show box office. Dominic was confused. We tried to buy tickets to the gem show, but they didn't take credit cards (another tidbit left off the website). We tried to find an ATM, but had no luck and the IX staff we asked didn't know where to find one. So we went to the amusement park box office (where they *did* take credit cards) and went to the IX Indoor Amusement Park instead.

The carnival had tons of fun rides for small kids and we spent several hours riding each one. They also had a trained dog show (which we left because Dominic just didn't care) and also a "Backyard Circus." He was so into this circus. They said that they would ask for volunteers from the audience, so Dominic and I sat down front with the other kids and their parents. Then when he asked for volunteers to be lions and tigers Dominic raised his hand. The ringleader looked at me and said, "A little young, mom" and moved on to some kids who were about the same age as Dominic and one who looked to be about 8. Dominic understood and was devastated. As soon as the ringleader passed him over, he just dissolved into tears. He refused to look at what any of the other kids were doing until the lions and tigers came on. The 3 little boys and one older boy were wearing t-shirts labelled "Lions" or "tigers". They had them lay down on their bellies and roll over, then put their legs and arms in the air. Dominic, in an act of defiance I swear I had nothing to do with, decided to show the ring leader he wasn't a baby and followed all of the instructions he was giving the other boys. Then he sat back in my lap and watched the rest of the show.



The gem show may not have mentioned that parking costs $8 and they don't take credit cards at the box office, but they made absolutely certain that we knew that no cameras or strollers were allowed. So I had neither. I did have my Treo, so I was able to get this one blurry picture.

When Dominic started wearing down to the point where we knew he'd have to go home soon, Justin and I decided to hit the gem show after all. We'd found an ATM, so we bought our tickets and headed inside. We walked around with Dominic on our shoulders for most of the time. I fell in love with 3 pieces. One was a necklace of red cubic zirconia hearts. It was stunning, but a little too fancy to wear very often. The second was a necklace of creamy cultured pearls with the occasional red spikey cultured pearl here and there. The third was also a strand of cultured pearls, but in cranberry and cream with bits of unfaceted semi-precious stones (they look like pink and green tourmalines, but I could be mistaken). Dominic was getting close to meltdown, so I left him and Justin so I could go back and forth and decide on one. I eventually decided on the pearl and tourmaline, but when I decided to buy it I couldn't find Justin and Dominic. So I stood near the vendor (who eventually asked me what I was doing and kept an eye out for me when I explained I was looking for my husband and son) until Justin showed up again. Justin gave me the cash to buy the necklace and then explained that he had gone to a different vendor where we had seen a bronze copy of my second all-time favorite statue...



...and talked the vendor down to a price within our budget. So Justin and I are now looking for the perfect spot to display Shiva as Nataraja.

Necklace:


(Lousy pic because the sun isn't shining today.)

So, yeah. Good weekend!