So it's been a long time since journaling has occurred. What can I say?
* I just got a call from my wife who got a call from her friend telling her the story of the cruise they just went on (not my wife- her friend and her friend's husband). Apparently the steering computer turned it too sharply and it tipped right over! Yikes. Never trust a computer. They got their entire trip reimbursed, and didn't get injured, and the tipping was just 10 miles from their final destination, so it's all good for them (not so good for the people who were apparently thrown through windows in the process). Quite a story.
* Our garden is doing nicely. We have some reasonably tall corn all covered with tassels and things. It probably won't be too great, since it tasselled out when it was about thigh-high, but we'll see! There's definitely corn on it. Our garden fence, which extends slightly into the ground as a shield against digging, is working well at confounding the rabbits. But gophers are not impeded at all. The bean plants have been disappearing day by day. Some are gnawed down to tiny nubs, while others have been sucked under and vanished, just like in a cartoon. They were huge plants too, it's pretty sad, and they were making lots of beans. The zucchinis have been growing amazingly (after picking the first huge pile of them, it was pointed out that nobody at our house
likes zucchini, which makes me wonder on Sol's reason for getting them!). The cantaloupes and watermelons are all shaping up great, but I'm really not sure when a watermelon is ready. They look perfect, but small. Either they'll grow bigger, or they'll crack and be ruined like the ones we grew at our old house. Tomatoes are doing great - they seem to be the easiest thing in the world to grow. In fact, we have about 10 of them that we didn't even plant. They just came up from seeds in our compost (several cantaloupes too, which are making fruit!). The strawberries all died but one, which almost died, but has come back and now has several berries on it. The raspberries are slowly growing as well, not doing anything too exciting. Oh, and the jalapenos are doing nicely, and the bell peppers are growing, but seem to be too overshadowed by the tomatoes to do well. That's garden news.
* We have finished installing an electric fence around our property, and so at last the dogs can run free(ish). They actually jumped over the fence the very first day. Oh, they got shocked. They just didn't care. They were closer to the top than the bottom when they got shocked, so they continued over. One challenge with it is that it cycles on and off in 1 second intervals, so that gave them, depending on timing, as much as a whole second to touch the wire with no effect. So we've moved the wire down in the corner they like to jump, hoping they'll touch it sooner and give up. We've also strung some non-electric wire across that corner just to make a physical barrier. They really seem to like that corner. Since then, they have not tried to escape again, and have been extremely happy to run free(ish) like in the good old days.
* There was a fire! It was about 1/4-1/2 mile from our house (always hard to tell). Scary. We got the stuff that was important all ready to go just in case it turned and came at us. It was a really small fire in the end, about 20 acres I think. But seeing those big plumes of smoke, and then seeing actual flames - that looked taller than the houses around them - was cause for concern. We've since gone by the site. It looks like a wasteland, all dead sticks poking out of black ground. No houses were even touched, but it burned into some peoples' yards. That was a nice thing to see - that this fire went right between a bunch of houses, and none of them were so much as scorched. The fire dept has good priorities, and they did a good job. We live in a lovely land of earthquakes and wildfires. Hey, no tornadoes or hurricanes!
* Yes, I AM working on Loonyland 2. It's movin'. This is probably the most complex game I've ever made. There's just so much
stuff! Supreme is much bigger, but that's just because it has all those levels and monsters. This game has many more things that actually are a part of the code, interacting and needing to be dealt with. Once the framework of Supreme was down, you could just crank out levels with the editor and enjoy. This game, everything's got to be tied into all the quests and skills and all. It's a lot to juggle. I thought it would be quick and easy, but it's possible I was mistaken. It's far past the halfway point, at least.
