Arontius of Bygelswade

.....It's been an interesting weekend so far. Well, interesting by MY standards, probably boring for most others. :-)

.....TBT escaped on her grand adventure on Friday, leaving the Rhys Monster home with me. I caught up with e-mail before dinner, with the RM a constant stream of conversation behind me. I tried to pay attention at first, but then finally mastered the art of nodding or saying 'Uh, huh' at appropriate enough points where I could concentrate on the e-mails in front of me. :-) Although as much of that time was tending to Farmville as it was answering e-mails. I may have to curtail that particular mindlessness, it's actually starting to eat into my precious free time. :-)

.....Took the RM out to Chinese dinner. Which was pretty good even though it was at the local Mongolian Grill dive. I'm leary of that place normally as I have returned from there ill a couple of times. But this time I ordered from the menu rather than the grill and it wasn't too bad. The RM continued with the stream of verbal consciousness and I did my absolute best to follow along. :-)

.....Then it was time for a viewing of Up. I made it through the short stories at the beginning and then promptly fell asleep when the movie actually started. I was informed the next morning that I had failed in my duties and my next opportunity to try again was on Sunday. I'll do better next time.

.....Took the RM over to Rich and Wendy's house to spend the day. They are so accommodating. I actually am starting to feel guilty whenever I drop the RM there. I keep thinking that I'm taking advantage of their generosity. But I make sure to ask point blank if they are up to the task. And it is always good when we can get the RM out of the house for a while. So I shook it off and made ready to do other things.

.....The RM did inform me though that he thought a sleep over would be good and that I should bring a sleeping bag, a pillow and a book later in the day. I was surprised but pleased and told I would do just that.

.....Then it was off to run erands. I had a long laundrey list of them, a list I'm staring at still now. :-)

.....I did manage to get my Computer Room and the kitchen cleaned though. The laundrey is about done. The cat boxes were cleaned. So I did get a few things accomplished.

.....It was at that time that I received good news from my friend in England. He sent me money via PayPal and paid for his order of (10) circlets! Wow! And it isn't a re-enactor. This is a guy who arranges weddings in England. He's had a couple of people ask about circlets like what I carry in Ingasbo and decided that he wanted to have an 'outlet' for them. It took me about a month to get them all done. I wasn't sure that he was going to wait that long for them, but he did.

.....I'm not a very good businessman, I can tell you that. I felt guilty for charging him a little over $300 for the set (after taking 15% off of the price of each circlet) that I threw in several freebies as well (bracelets and a couple of 'oops' circlets). All in all he is getting a fantastic deal. And I'm still hoping that he likes what he receives.

.....So I bundled everything up and ran to the Post Office. Cost me about $40 to ship, plus the new and dreaded Customs Declaration Form that the Post Office warns everyone on their front door will take a minimum of ten minutes to input (which it did). But it was worth it.

.....When I returned home, I drooled over Kindles for a little while. But moved quickly away when I started to feel my resolve slip. :-) And I went over to the Cratex site to buy supplies for the shop. Sigh! Being practical is good I suppose. :-) But, wow, it was a good thing that this order can through when it did. Supplies are getting expensive!

.....I was dutiful and also ordered vitamins as needed. :-) And a sugar free graham cracker crust. I ran across a sugar free cheesecake recipe that looks pretty good. I think that I want to try it for Thanksgiving. I have missed cheesecake, so I'm hoping for the best. Sugar free is a real chancey thing. Every now and then you'll taste something good, but a lot of it tastes BAD!!!!

.....Now I'm running late. Running off to check a potential event site with the crew, and the lady who discovered this potential. I've got three possible event sites of my own in the running now for my own events, not to mention the Twelfth Night I'd like to do. I really need to throw a dart at them and pick the one I really like best and get it put together and submitted. Which I want to do in plenty of time to start rotating them before this Twelfth Night.

.....O.K., really have to run now.

.....Aaron / Arontius.

.....So, tonight we're on the ferry to Seattle. The Beloved Tamm and I are explaining to Rhys the fact that millions of years ago the atmosphere of Planet Earth was made up largely of methane. We explained what methane was and how it was produced.

......Then we discussed the fact that humans are again increasing the amount of methane found in our atmosphere by the number of cows we raise for market on the planet. We discussed the fact that cows fart a lot and that action produces a considerable amount of methane.

.....From there we discuss the fact that herbavores in general produce a lot of gas due to the disgestion of plant matter, which is increased in a cow due to the sheer amount of plant matter consumed, their size and the fact that they have four stomachs actively producing gas all the time.

.....Then came the ponderance from Rhys. Do humans who consume strictly or mainly a vegetarian diet produce more methane than the average human? Then the follow-up question. Do humans who are vegetarians fart more than the average human and create more methane? So we wondered if we should be asking a vegetarian, and we naturally thought of you. So, parlor_games, being a vegetarian, and a smart one at that, would you say that vegetarians produce more gas than the people around them? :-)

.....Just askin', 'cause Rhys wants to know. :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.

.....It is late in the day on Saturday and I think that I'm going to make it. :-) Taking on the Rhys watch was hard work, but not in the ways I thought it would be. :-)

.....The Beloved Laurellen had a class to teach today in Glymm Mere. Originally her intention was to take Rhys along and he would be her teaching assistant. I offered to watch him for the day up at home in Seattle and Rhys was for it. I would say that I was a little nervous. Never having been a parent I can never fully appreciate what goes into a day of taking care of children and I never used to think of myself as 'parent' material. But I thought that this would be a good lesson for me and maybe I'd get a chance to get to know Rhys more.

.....I came on over on Friday night and got to spend at least a little time with Tamm. It's been two weeks since we saw each other last and I missed her very much. I have more phone time logged in over the past two weeks than I had for the past year previous to that. :-)

.....This morning Tamm took off a little after 6AM and it was just me and Rhys. Rhys took me on a tour of the house and then we had breakfast (waffles :-)). Then we watched cartoons for a while. How to make yourself feel old in a hurry, watch the Cartoon Network. Cartoons these days are soooo much different than they were thirty years ago (my god, THIRTY years ago!, when Hong Kong Fooey was ALWAYS on my Saturday morning schedule :-)).

.....Around 8:30 or so Rhys picked up his video game and went to work battling bad guys and I actually had the chance to work on circlets downstairs. Managed to rough polish a half dozen of them on Laurellen's wheel.

.....At 10AM it was time to start thinking of heading out. I grabbed a shower. Rhys got dressed. And we headed out to Zoopa's for lunch. Then we caught the 12:30 showing of 'Open Season' at the Southcenter Theatre. Funny movie! I love the Scottish Chipmunks, 'OI!'. :-) Then it was off on a couple of shopping excursions. On the way home Rhys was hungry again and talked me into a stop at McDonalds. Yes, I can be a pushover. When Laurellen reads this I'll be properly chastised, I'm sure.

.....Then back home at about 5PM. I cleaned up a little bit of messiness and now I'm sitting in front of my laptop checking e-mail. Rhys was VERY GOOD today. And on his best behavior. I think that we had a good day. I'm still very tired though. :-) It certainly wasn't what I anticipated at all. I was thinking that I'd be tired because Rhys would be actively busy all the time and would run me ragged with wanting to do everything and be everywhere. What really tired me out though instead was the constant vigilance. Wanting to make sure I KNEW where he was at all time, always paying attention to what I was doing to make sure that Rhys was included in my thought process, looking out for things that I would have to navigate Rhys around (cars driving through parking lots know give me a terror I never used to have :-)). By the time I returned home, pulled my shoes off and sat down on the couch, I was exhausted. :-)

.....But all in all it was a very good day. I really like Rhys and I learned a lot about who he is and his likes and dislikes. I think that I could do this again. But I'll still be very glad when Tamm walks in the door in another hour or so. :-)

.....Hope that everyone is having a good weekend.

.....Arontius / Aaron.