So last saturday we did the NIN and SAM quests. I've been playing SAM this past week. The damage I can do with a great katana! Woosh!

Sunday night was Mithra RSE. Alkeema was going to help, but had to leave (his ISP had maintenance and kicked him off for 2 days). I wound up with a full party of higher levels. We got -all- of my RSE pieces in 2 hours, got the last pattern before my RSE time was up. Yay! I had help from Krystiana, Krelian, Cubsfan, Cristofaro, and Pleroma. It helped to have a WHM who could Tele-Holla me and a BLM who could Warp2 me back to Jeuno (though I used a Warp scroll the first time, and died the 2nd. There was a mob beside the chest that aggroed me when I dropped invis.)

This morning I did missions 1-2 & 1-3 with Jez. She's a lvl 20 WHM now, and it's time to go to Qufim, I just didn't want to do it as Rank 1. Mission 2-1 looks fairly easy, so I will be doing that.

I've been in excruciating pain the past few days. My jaw hurts down my neck into my shoulder. And I have no Ibuprofen. Can't find it, it's disappeared. My sinuses have been crappy, too. So I went to the doctor last night. I have antibiotics now.

The best part of the appointment is that I finally was seen by a doctor while having one of my wheezing episodes. The doc had me do the breathing tests, and combined with the good results of the pulmonary oxygen test, determined that I am not asthmatic. I knew that. Instead, she said that I have Reactive Asthma, where something in my current environment triggers a temporary asthmatic state. I have an inhaler now, and I'm to use it and see if I have any more of these attacks.

On Saturday we bought an activity center for Audrey. Not an overpriced Exersaucer, but something smaller and also portable. There's no way we'd have the space for a big ole round thing. I put it together and when we put her into it she went into overload, trying everything. We hadn't even put the batteries in for the sound and lights! We may not even bother.

Yesterday morning I broke my little toe again, too. My poor toe. I caught it on the aforementioned activity center. I didn't mention the toe to the doc last night 'cause what can they do? Nothing. I tried taping it, but my toes are shaped funny, so taping it to the next toe was weird. I'll just have to remember to leave it alone.

Dats it.

Finished DRK quest in the wee hours of the AM.
I also ran Jez back up to San d'Oria and set her subjob to BLM. Since my BLM is 11, I'll be underleveled once Jez's WHM hits 24.

Wait, that's 5 levels. I guess I shouldn't worry too much about it, then. :) I'll work on BLM before I take her to Qufim.

This afternoon I worked on RNG. Halfway to level 4. Yay! I need to spend some time sorting through my inventory on my mules. They're both getting full. Not to mention I'm considering sending one of them to the new server. They're doing server emigration and while I want to stay on Pandemonium, the prospect of a fresh new server with new friend opportunities does have appeal.

My sinuses are killing me. Awful, just plain awful drainage.

Mikey gets to have surgery. He has a condition called Phemosis. Basically, his foreskin attached itself to the head of his penis. I'm not too amused as his previous pediatrician told us "not to mess with it" "it will retract on its own". But the urologist said that if the foreskin does not retract by 1 year of age, this happens in 80% of boys.

Looooovely. So he gets to become circumsized. Poor kid. I'm going to try to get his ear tubes scheduled for the same surgery period.

I can be such a slug.

My birthday came and went. I am now another year closer to 30. Nothing special happened or was given to me. I did go out and buy a slew of books.

Audrey is growing well. Her 6 month appointment was Friday. She's 14lbs 8oz. I can't remember anything else right now, but she is growing correctly on her curve. The 10th percentile curve... While waiting for her appointment, she did discover that toes are good for sucking. She's so much more flexible than Mikey was.

Mikey's adjusting to Kindergarten well. Most days he comes home without his green box. Last Wednesday he lost all 3 of his boxes. Jerry sent him to his room, only to come out for dinner. Then on Friday what does he do? Keeps his green box. At least now he isn't lying when we ask him if he kept his green box. Yesterday he told Jerry that he "needed to do better." Today he told me that he wasn't listening, so he lost his green box.

[What's this green box thing? Well, all the kids have 3 boxes. Green, yellow, and red. If they don't listen or misbehave, they lose a box. Losing all 3 boxes results in a note sent home. If they keep their green box, they get a piece of paper that says "I kept my green box!" When he gets a certain number of them, he can turn them in for a prize.]

Homework has been sent home with him for the past 2 nights. I think it's just for kids who are having trouble recognizing their letters. [What?! What happened to my kid who spells out signs?] Jerry forgot to do the letter A with him last night, so before I left for work we did the A and B sheets.

Hopefully he'll have an easier time with "c". Judging by how well Jerry handled getting Mikey to concentrate on his homework, I may need to pick the child up from school so that I can work on it with him.

The FFXI Expansion "Chains of Promathia" was supposed to be released today. When we went to EB to pick up my preorder, we were told no dice. The warehouse had flooded due to Hurricane Ivan and they had no idea when CoP would be shipped out. There's much discussion on the Allakhazam boards. Someone has suggested that this is SE's way of controlling distribution, so that fewer people are trying to get into the new areas at the same time. Last Tuesday the servers were down the whole day for emergency maintenance. That was the day of the JP CoP release and the EU release of FFXI.

On the being productive front, last weekend I got Jez to 19 and all her subjob items. Saturday I got THF to 30. Sunday I unlocked RNG and BST, and later went on to start the quests for PLD and DRG. Last night I started the DRK quest. Killing 100 mobs with a sword that has a delay of 666 is tedious, to say the least. And who knew that counting to 5 could be so difficult? I was marking down every 5, but I kept losing track at 3.

I hope I killed enough. When I get home tonight I'll be making the treck out to finish the quest.

I haven't been doing much cross-stitch. Between the books I bought and the frigid temperatures in the data center, I've been leaving that stuff in my bag. I've read a whole bunch of books, and maybe I'll list them all...If I can remember many of them.

Break is over, time to rejoin the rest of the crew.