Has it really been that long?

Wow. I came here to write for a bit, and my Dashboard said my last post was Jan 20th. Thats a lot longer than I ever anticipated.

What have I been up to? A little of this. A little of that. Not much of anything in particular.

I put in a new fish pond earlier this year. Probably in March sometime, just before my parents came out for a visit. Its doing okay. There's been a bloom of somekind: algae, moss, something. It's thick, and all over one of the ponds. The two others have some algae, but not as much as the middle one. Thick and nasty. But the fish are doing good. I put our turtle out there, and he took off. I'd like to think he packed his bags and decided to go exploring. But, honestly, we've got a few rogue cats, and some big crows. Or ravens. I can't tell the difference.

Its been getting hot again. It was hot a few weeks ago, then cooled back to the 70's and 80's. Now, its closing in on that century mark again. Its hit the high 90's several days in a row now. And getting hotter. My parents were telling me about the rain in Gillette, the flooding in Aberdeen, and the mud slides in Sioux City, or maybe it was Sioux Falls. Bad stuff, but out here, its dry and hot. It rained once, now its down for about six more months.

I've started playing a game online, Medievia. Its a fantasy MMORPG. Amazingly enough, its been around since 1993, I think, and its all text based. Its phenomenally huge. Not player wise. It doesn't have 8 million subscribers like WoW does. But the complexity of the game is astounding. Once you max out your character, you can start a bloodline, and have two children. Those two can each have two more once they hero. And on and on. I've played for around 15 months, and still haven't heroed, although I'm pretty close right now. There's one bloodline that, the last time I checked, was 17 generations deep. Incredible. There are clans, and towns. Trading, shipping, dragons, swarms of crabs, pirates, storms, islands rising and sinking into the seas, with dinosaurs. Werewolves, vampires, demons, elves, dwarves, gnomes. And the list goes on. And, ofo course, the Catacombs. The Terror Below. The location changes randomly, and the monsters that live down there are so unique. There's a slug that rips the thoughts from your mind if you try to do anything in his room. Mephits that back-stab you if you use magic to move to another area in the catacombs. Hermits, girls, blood-weeds. Giant eels, and black serpents. Those are on the first level. There are six or seven levels. At the bottom is a special shop. If you help drive a dragon from his lair, you can get dragonhides. You use them in this shop to radically enhance any of your equipment. Different colors do different things to different equipment. It usually takes a minimum of 15-20 people to chase a dragon from his lair. However, the seaslugs are bigger. They set fire to the countryside. You need a minimum of 27 people to engage a slug, but 36 or more is preferred. Still, you do a lot of dying.

This is where most of my time has gone recently. However, I've been getting emails from "Grist from the Muse." He practices writing, twice a day, for at least 15 minutes each time. And thats just practice. He also has his projects he's working on. Thats his normal writing time. The other two are for practice. You want to be good, you've got to practice. Thats what I'm doing now. Just practicing.

Well, I've got to put Hope to bed now. Its already past her bedtime, but, between her stubborn-ness, and my laziness, she usually does get to bed late.

TTFN