Daily Report: Game Called Due To Rain

I didn't sleep as well last night: I never sleep in an empty house, so even asleep, this rare occurrence of being alone in the house stayed in the back of my mind, and every little sound I heard (primarily Ella, my mother's cat) pulled me to a drowsy state of semi-consciousness before drifting back off. (Ella got the munchies at 3:00 a.m. and got up on the kitchen counter and swatted the half-served can of cat food, sending it clattering to the floor.)

When I woke up, even though the curtains were drawn, I could tell it was raining as I made my way to the bathroom and heard the tick-tick-tick of rain drops on the plexiglas sunroof over the shower. That tick-tick-tick was to remain steady and true for the entire day... a rainy July 4th: For an American, worse than a green Christmas or a snowy Thanksgiving or a sober New Year's eve.

I spent most of the day just hanging out in front of the computer reading the news and watching some videos. Since I'm not in Thailand, I viewed the video that got YouTube banned there... or not the original, but yet another one. It's bad enough that I can see why Thai people are angry... but they might as well do their best to try to get over it.

In the evening, I went to the Wayland's for dinner. Noi cooked a shrimp Thai dish, and there was steak, chicken, corn, and rice, with a fruit tart for dessert. Paul has sitting around quite a wonderful collection of 30-year-old hand-held computer games, including football, soccer, a couple of card games, and some others that I can't remember... all in perfect condition. Those will be worth something someday... if they aren't already.

After dinner, we sat down in the family room and I got to watch broadcast HDTV for the first time. We tried watching Casino Royale (James Bond) via HDTV Movies On Demand, but unfortunately after about 30 minutes of movie time, it started freezing up 3 or 4 seconds at a time every 10 or 15 seconds... which got terribly annoying after half an hour. Our best guess was that with the rain, and it being a holiday, too many people in the neighborhood had decided to download a high-definition movie, and the pipeline was over-taxed, and the movie's cache kept emptying.

I gave up watching as I needed to drive home. I don't know if the Wayland's stuck it out to see the rest of the movie — hoping for the problem to clear — or not.

After getting home, I got the munchies for a slice of pizza, but unfortunately both of the pizza shops in town that sell by the slice were closed (and I wasn't going to buy a whole pizza at Pizza Hut or Dominos); therefore I wound up settling for a burger from McDonalds.

No Mike's Thousand Words today, as that photo above of the computer game is the only photo that I took all day long. Sorry.