Feb. 4
I had a Dungeons and Dragons game scheduled for yesterday. We wrapped up at about midnight, and spent the next hour or so chatting about what happened. I almost killed a couple of people in the game, but everyone made it out alright. My sister is too tired to drive home, and I’ve got to get up in the morning to help my dad transport our new dressers back to my place.
I didn’t sleep well, and woke up to the cat using the litterbox in the room I was sleeping in. I was awake, but I didn’t want to get up just yet. After about an hour of lying on the mattress, I get up at about 9 a.m. and wander downstairs. Dad is in the kitchen, cleaning up after yesterday, and getting ready to make waffles. Mom gets up a little after I do, and my sister comes downstairs about the time the waffles are ready. God I love those homemade waffles. They are nice and thick, with just enough crunch to avoid being doughy.
After a little time to recover from breakfast, dad and I get ready to load the dressers. He works to shovel the dusting of snow we got out of the way, while I sweep the snow out of the bed of his truck. Once he’s got the truck in position, we pull out the dressers and start wrapping them. I say we, but mostly it was dad. He’s unbearably stubborn, and it’s hard to work with him sometimes because he tends to know what he wants to do, but not how to explain it to anyone else. As he’s wrapping plastic around the dressers, I can’t help but feel a little useless for just sitting there and watching him.
Once he’s got them wrapped, we put the dresser on a two-wheeled cart I got him for Christmas to replace his older one. The hard part is getting them up on the truck bed. We had to tilt them up onto the tailgate, and then used a sheet of plywood to slide them securely in. Then it’s rinse and repeat for the next one.
Meanwhile, mom and my sister are inside, equal parts guilty and relieved not to be involved. Mom isn’t feeling like a three-hour drive to Muncie and back, and my sister was told that she doesn’t need to be part of the move. Just me and dad should be enough, and she still looked half-asleep by the time we were ready to go.
I hug mom goodbye, and say I’ll see her soon. Then I head to my car while dad goes to his truck. He jabs me about whether I want to take off first or second. I don’t like leading or following other cars, so I just tell him that I’ll meet him there. He takes off first, and I follow behind.
Over the course of the drive, he puts a lot of space between us. Dad drives faster than I like to, and more aggressively. I caught up to him about twenty minutes out, as he’d pulled off to adjust the straps on the dressers. I moved to park next to him, but he waved me on and soon enough was right behind me. I pulled off into a gas station (I was at about a quarter-tank) and he went on ahead.
As I get back on the road, I’m listening to Father, Son, & Friends in my car. It’s a lot of folk songs and the like, and it’s a nice background for the trip. I get stuck behind a couple of old folks on the road, however, and they drive maddeningly slow. It’s worse because I’m on a road that doesn’t really make passing easy, with lots of hills and turns. I-69 is better, but I’ve gone up and down it so many times that it’s just boring.
I finally get in to Muncie and pull up to my apartment, only to find my dad already there and halfway finished without me. He’s already gotten the first dresser inside, though apparently my sister hadn’t cleared her doorway very well. Turns out I hadn’t either, my freshly moved desk partly blocking it. I hate making mistakes like that, but he doesn’t take me to task for it. Instead, we work together to get my dresser in my room and position my sister’s properly. We load up the old, cheap one previously in the living room, and my goes to the bathroom. He comes out, we hug, and he heads over to Lee’s to pick up some chicken on his way home.
I decide to kill some time playing Super Smash Bros. 4, until my sister gets home a little later. My Wii U Gamepad is on the fritz, so I’m using a Wii U Pro instead. The game typically frustrates me, as lag or control failure sometimes intervene and cost me matches I think I would otherwise win.
I get bored, and spend some time just watching t.v. with my sister. Stick It is on for a while, and later it becomes Batman v. Superman, dawn of mediocrity. I try to make plans with my sister for dinner, but she blows me off. I get frustrated when she does this. I ask if anything sounds good, or if she wants anything from the store, and I get the usual “I don’t know” which is unhelpful. We fight about it for a bit. I get pissed off because she not only doesn’t answer me, but because she gets angry at me for asking. I don’t really want to go into to details, but we shout at each other and eventually settle the dispute. I hope the neighbors don’t think we’re murdering each other.
Dinner is Mac ‘n Cheese, and I prepare some sausage coins for myself to go with it. I check the fridge a few times before starting, to stave off paranoia and reassure myself all the ingredients are there. Cooking it is easy, though I still have trouble timing the sausage right with boiling the macaroni. Overall it ends up pretty good, and we watch Bill Maher while we eat. Neither of us is really interested in the Super Bowl. My sister checks her phone, either reading Tumblr posts or fanfiction of various types.
After dinner, we watch the terrible CGI Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, until my sister decides to take a shower. She’ll get the dishes afterwards. I’m bored again, so I kick on Smash Bros. for a while longer. I’m not sure that I really enjoy the game that much anymore, but after all the time I’ve spent playing on it I’m a bit addicted. That is to say, I’ve played 8000 online matches over the last…4 years? Maybe only 3. I win more than I lose, though, so at least there’s that. Tonight is a good night. I win several games in a row, some of them in flashy display of skill.
By about 9:30pm I get tired of Smash Bros. and retreat to my (newly rearranged) room. My clothes still need to get into the new dresser, but I decide to ignore that until tomorrow. I decide to let my mind wander through a YouTube pit, mostly stupid meme videos. You can only watch so many before it wears on you though.
On a whim, I decide to check out the VRV streaming service. After confirming that there was in fact a free way to use it, I searched for Dofus: Kerub’s Bazaar. I’d seen other shows set in the same world and decided to watch it. The episodes are only 12 minutes long, and there’s a clump of commercials every 4 minutes. I get REAL tired of the ads for the new Call of Duty game. Still, the show is amusing. Most of them involve an older character telling tales about his wild and reckless youth.
I watch until about midnight, then decide I should go to bed. Have to go to the office in the morning. It wouldn’t be so bad, except I make the dubious decision to walk the 20 minutes to get there. It’s great in every season but the winter, but c’est la vie. Hope I sleep well.