Wombat Rampant

Well, this screws things up mightily. I had been under the (mistaken) impression that Valleycon was on the October 29-31 weekend, but phoenixalpha pointed out that it was actually the previous weekend. This poses a problem, since there was supposed to be an AD meeting on October 24, and it'll be a tad hard for me to preside if I'm still in Fargo. So that meeting will probably be rescheduled for the evening of the 21st, unless people want to push it back to the 31st, and that'll have an effect on scheduling the November meetings. Blech.

I picked up the cable modem, associated cables, and the software from TWC in Richfield, and then went to Best Buy with phoenixalpha after dinner (and a futile search for the cable jack I thought was in my room) to buy cables and a router since both of the cable jacks were in the living room and the cable TWC provided wasn't going to reach that far, quite aside from the fact that we needed to hook both desktops up to the cable feed anyway. All of this technologery turned out to be moot since we couldn't get a connection. Apparently there's either a filter on the line (best case) or the jacks aren't hooked up (worst case) and either way TWC is going to send a tech out today to check it out. And that's the way it went.

At least I'm not feeling totally drained this morning. I'm not wheezing any more when I take a deep breath, which means all the gunk is finally gone from my lungs, and I felt rested this morning instead of dog-tired. Maybe phoenixalpha's chicken stir-fry with extra chili (someday I'm going to teach her how to use measuring spoons) helped after all.

After yesterday's fiasco, Quizno's is off the list of acceptable lunch options. Despite previous experience with other stores of the franchise, I went to the one in Six Quebec hoping that I would find a hot sub like the ones I remember from my youth in Washington with a toasted roll and hot meat & cheese.

Unfortunately, while the roll was toasted quite nicely and the cheese was all pleasantly melted, the beef was COLD. This is number ten, man. This is even worse than Subway's lame excuses for hot subs, which consist of various nuked fillings dumped onto the same old room-temperature roll. Cousins and Blimpie are no better. Basically, no matter where you go in the wretched Twin Towns, you are going to get some variation on a poor boy.

Unless you go to Great Steak & Fry...now there's a thought. However, even they don't do a decent steak, egg and onion sub. Their rolls are too damn small.

Reading Megatokyo over the last couple of weeks, I'm struck by the way the plot is developing and starting to really wonder how things are going to work out for the main characters. Normally I don't like to speculate about these things, because then I have expectations about what Fred (or whatever serial artist I'm watching/reading) is going to do, and that colors how I react to the story. It's Fred's story to tell, after all; I'm just along for the ride as part of the audience.

Still...I have to wonder. It seemed as though Piro and Largo were on top of the world, in full control of their destinies, and now it looks as though that was just a cruel hoax. Largo's been fired from his consulting job with the Tokyo Police and has been publicly dissed by not only Miho but the class leader, and Piro has a broken nose to go with his screwed-up relationships with Erika, Kimiko, and Yuki. I am beginning to wonder if this story is going to have a traditional American/English ending with our heroes succeeding & living happilty ever after, or a Japanese ending where the heroes and heroines struggle bravely against their fates before dying. Yes, I'm indulging in drastic oversimplification here, but nothing says that Piro and Largo have to get out of their situation with anything other than a Bad End.

I think I actually like the strip better now, with all the angst and depressing scenes, than I did at the beginning when it was more often funny than not.