Arontius of Bygelswade

.....Wow! What an adventure! :-) The roads around here really are sheets of hard ice. I took off from home at around 5:15, just a few minutes earlier then usual. My thought process being that it didn't really snow a whole lot last night, so the roads should be clearer and easier to drive. If I had managed to turn on the news instead of the music video channel this morning, I might have learned the stupidity of that thought process. :-)

.....Drove by the bank and its thermometer was reading a balmy 17 degrees. The glare off of the ice was incredible. Especially on the side roads. Once I made it to the main highways though, they were in much better shape as they had been pretty well sanded down.

.....Cassie, the Audi, did absolutely fantastic! It has a German version of all-wheel drive and is very low to the ground. Has good tires on it as well. I thought that it being small and light weight she would be all over the road. But she dug her heels in and acted like a trooper. I didn't slide once. Not even on the hills on the back roads. Very excellent.

.....I did try to keep my speed down. I've always thought of myself as more of a speed demon than a safe driver. :-) But after watching the idiots come up behind me at twice the road's speed limit, honk at me for actually DOING the speed limit and not going faster, and then fish-tailing around me to get to where they are going faster, well, maybe I'm a safer driver than I give myself credit for being. :-)

.....I'm actually curious to see just how many people actually make it into work today. :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.

.....It's lunchtime here at work so I'm taking some time away from the phone (the cell phone and pager are turned OFF at this moment :-)) to concentrate on something other than work. Although things have not been too bad today. We're currently in the long slowdown before the end of the Fiscal Year, so emergent work should slow down noticeably. It's when there is a fresh infusion of funding on October 1st that we'll need to move fast or get run over. :-)

.....Most of this week looks like it may be devoted to figuring out what is going on with my Crier template. It has accepted all the input and looks fine when printed directly from Pagemaker. But when I produce .pdf files they wonk out on me. I pulled up last month's issue and made some changes and pages .pdf'ed out just fine. So I'm going through and trying to find out what I did. I may end up having to re-do the issue. Which will not be too bad. Everything is ready to dump into it. It's just time consuming. Not necessarily something I wanted to spend the week doing.

.....Wyvern's meeting on Thursday. I'm really hoping that The Crier will be complete by then. I'd like to go with no distractions. The last Wyvern meeting was on a Monday and I was zombied out from work. No constructive words from me whatsoever. I'm hoping that I'm a little more involved this time around. :-)

.....Have a couple of circlet orders waiting in the queue as well. Might be able to get them done on Saturday morning. Then looking forward to movie night with Laurellen. Am not sure what we'll see yet, but doesn't matter, it'll still be fun.

.....I found out yesterday that I have been harassing Angharad just a little too much about being the 'East German Judge' from her judging of my work at Yule Feast Bardic Championship last year. She was not entirely sure that I have been joking around with her. Ack! In reality I am totally respectful of her knowledge in the bardic arts and in reality would much rather receive honest and critical judgement than a bunch of 'fluff'. So no more teasing Angharad. Although, to be honest, I thought that having a fearsome reputation might help her as Seneschale. But I can see that being thought of as someone to be feared might not be all that fun either. Angharad is truly a very nice person and should be thought of as such.

.....Looking forward to attending Kingdom Bardic. I'm not slated to actually DO anything for that event. It's making me feel rather strange. :-) But I am rather looking forward to listening to the entries. I would really have loved to listen to Giuseppe's performance, I've heard some amazing accounts of it. I am also looking forward to cheering on Talia. I'm impressed at her ability to take this on. I'm having trouble psyching myself up to take on the Baronial. :-)

.....Renart was talking to me last week about starting a D&D game. I used to play a long time ago. Had a really good time with it. But so many other things became more important that I eventually stopped playing all together. Renart intrigued me enough where I'm finding myself pulling out old characters from my files (I don't throw away much :-)) and thinking about what fun it might be to have a major distraction a couple of times a month. I really got into the role playing at one time. I would play some amazingly obnoxious Paladin and have a really good time. I wasn't that bad of a DM either. Although I did a much better job in the world of MERP. :-) Middle Earth is like a second home to me. I know Tolkien's map better than I know the map of Kitsap County. :-)

.....Thinking about a second car. Bernie has an Audi that a friend of his is selling really cheap. Gets fantastic gas mileage and comes with a built in service group (Bernie is HUGE into the local Audi club :-)). I'm thinking about it. Heather (the van) is starting to get up there in mileage and doesn't do all that well on gas. I've been dreading the thought of actually buying a new car. The surgery last year wiped out my savings and put a huge dent in the credit cards. I'll be paying them off for a while. So 'cheap' and 'help with maintenance' are good things to my ears.

.....Not complaining though. Not a bit. For the results I've received from the surgery I would have paid twice as much out of pocket. The surgery is not a cheap thing. The hospital stay / surgery alone was $85K. Wow! I've had to pay a little over $10K out of pocket so far for my share of the total. Not too bad actually. I've met a number of people who have had to finance the entire thing. It was still worth it to all of them, but it's like buying into a mortgage, you are going to be tied to it for a long time. At least with a house you can sell it off if things get too bad.

.....Well, lunch is coming to an end. The phone is starting to ring again. Sending out good thoughts for everyone to have a good week. :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.