Tied

Emily and I have this friendly little competition regarding piercings. Now, it isn't really a competition, and I know that there are tons of people out there with more manufactured holes in their bodies, but our pseudo-contest started last December when I asked Emily to go with me to get my ear cartilage pierced after my vet interview. At that point she had one hole in each lobe, plus two ear cartilage holes (4 total), and I had my double-piercings in each lobe (also 4 total). So...me getting my cartilage done put me ahead by one. We joked that she'd need to get her ears double pierced to take the lead. Instead, she decided to go for the tie recently by getting her nose pierced. Yes, that's right Emily, I outed your nose stud to my blog readers - you should update your blog, preferably with pictures. Biochem tests are no excuse. So, anyway, we're tied now, and I have to think of some way to get back ahead of her. Maybe. :)

Matt spent all weekend doing taxes, but he came home last night (in time for Grey's Anatomy, even better) victorious for having gotten some big ... thing? ... done. Not that it'll make this week any easier for him. To fill the void, I got a new computer game, The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth. It is a real-time strategy game, and I've been really enjoying it so far. You can play for the good or bad guys, and there's something really satisfying about sending a horde of orcs flying by running through them with your Rohirrim warriors (I'm doing the "good" campaign right now). So far I've also had the heroes Aragorn, Gandalf, Boromir, Eomer, Legolas, Gimli, and all four hobbits to control along with my armies at various points in the campaign. The game also looks great, and it only cost me $20. I actually figured out I'd like the game because you can download the demo for the sequel right now (it comes out in a few weeks), so I'd played that first. It has been a challenge because I'm used to Blizzard's RTS games, with all their handy cheat codes. Playing through Starcraft, for example, I would play without cheating, then get bored with gathering resources and do a quick "show me the money" to bump those up. Then I'd play some more, and all of a sudden my base would get zerged and rather than lose the mission and my 45-minute investment, I'd give myself complete immunity with "power overwhelming." Well, the only way to cheat in Battle for Middle Earth is to hack into the unit properties and, I don't know, give them insane armor and hit points or something, but it certainly isn't something easy like hitting enter and typing "whosyourdaddy."

I'm also going to pass the time by reading a lot - Amazon has been having this buy-3-get-1-free deal with their paperbacks, so I ended up getting lots because, well, that's a really good deal. Karen Smyth gave me a great reading recommendation - Carol Berg's trilogy Transformation, Revelation, and Restoration - and they are really good. I'm about halfway through them now. I also got a new Valdemar short stories collection and some of my favorite Valdemar trilogies that I wanted for my own collection (the first time I read them I was borrowing from Raye-Jean).

Oh yeah, and BOOYAH - Steelers are the Super Bowl champions. I was so happy :)