We have a game called Ticket to Ride. I came in second place the first time we played it. Ever since then, as long as it wasn’t a two-player game, I’ve always come in first place. Until tonight. Twice. Amanda and I played with Nick and Amy tonight, and I came in second both times. On the second game Amanda beat my previous high score by a few points. It was devastating. I was always nervous playing the game just for the simple fact that I had such a streak. I don’t know how I’ll feel playing in the future. It feels like the world has lost some of its magic.
I saw today that I finally got my Reward Zone points from Best Buy today, so I went and bought a trackpad and a wired keyboard with a number pad on it for the iMac. Both will take a little getting used to. For example, I’m already used to the placement and spacing of some of the keys on the wireless keyboard that came with the machine. I found out a minute ago that I’m already conditioned for the Enter key to be above the direction arrows, but now it’s a little to the left. Regardless, I’m really glad I’ve got a number pad now. The track pad will take some getting used to too but again, I think I’m going to be pretty happy with it. There’s a cheat sheet on the back of the box it came in, so I expect I’ll be referencing that for a few days.
About half of my day is booked up with meetings and phone calls tomorrow, but it’s all good stuff. The Boscaljons are coming over to review their website after having waffle breakfast with us, then I’ve got two, maybe three phone calls to field, then I’ve got work on two sites to do. And that just reminded me of another one I’ve got to make some minor adjustments to. Tomorrow’s meeting prompted me to clean up some of the office’s clutter, although I meant to vacuum and steam clean the carpet as well. I should at least have time to vacuum it.
I had a record distance run today at 2.65 miles, but my pace wasn’t the best. I’m pretty sure I can attribute that to the fact that I was pushing Milly in a stroller for the first 2.15 or so. I tried to convince myself not to use it as an excuse, but it is what it is. We were passing the house at 2.15 and Amanda happened to be coming out while Milly was saying she wanted to stay at the house, which was all very convenient. I could definitely tell a difference without the stroller though. As I was thinking and as Amanda said later, if I ran with that thing all the time, running without it (in, say, a 5K) would be a breeze.
I fell into my habit of running the first mile (and change, until the end of the road I was on when I hit a mile), walking the main road and jogging the cul-de-sacs. I did, as I’ve been doing, push myself pretty hard at the end with an actual run.
The Warkentiens got to the house as I was getting out of the shower after my run. I knew they were there because I heard my daughter’s delighted squeals. Nick gave me some Mac hotkey tips then we ate taco soup (the contents of which Milly helped me dump into the crockpot this morning), salad and celebrated Amy’s birthday (which was just a couple days ago) with cake, ice cream and brownies.
We attempted to put Milly and Eli in the same room to sleep, but that worked about as well as it did the last time we tried, which was not at all. Eli decided within a few minutes that he was going to sleep downstairs.
I mentioned that something happened for Amanda a few days ago. That continued today. We’ll see how it goes from here.
Side note about the new keyboard. One thing I missed was having a Home and End button, which the new one has, but I’ve gotten so used to hitting command+left or +right that I’m now not sure how much I’ll use those. We’ll see. I’m also hitting / instead of the period quite a bit. As with any keyboard, I’ll get used to it soon. I am already getting used to the trackpad’s method of click+drag.
Zach Dotsey