The weekend was good. Not mind blowing or earth-shattering, but a good solid "good". Got in some grocery shopping, a trip to Home Depot to get the necessary parts to rectify our substandard gutter downspout, placement of a few Grant's ant stakes in our crawl space and subsequent delight seeing those poor ant fools swarming to the bait, and a trip down to V's new favorite mall Valley Fair for a bit of shopping at Kenneth Cole ... a swanky pair of pinstripe pants and two shirts for me ... i guess it's my favorite mall too then. I got some cleaning in around the house as well, moving Tara's now unused kennel to the back of the yard to free up space in our driveway and tidying the kitchen, living room, and bedroom a bit. Tara's got two ear infections so i'm back to torturing her by putting eardrops in twice a day. Ear "drops" may be a bit of a misnomer, as to ensure she doesn't shake it out i end up dousing her ears with the stuff and rubbing it in with my fingers. Fairly disgusting ... V refuses to participate. The medicine usually helps her quickly, which i'm hoping is again the case as she's seemed a bit under the weather lately. Maybe if she stopped eating everything she can find. I left a new box of tropical green tea bags next to my computer bag on Sunday, and after we returned from Valley Fair found she'd torn it up presumably because it smelled so damn nice. Luckily Tara didn't ruin all of them, probably because she quickly learned that tea doesn't quite taste like it smells.

I'm about 80% done with my Christmas gift Gun for the Xbox. I love it, although V and her distaste for westerns can't stand listening to it while i play. I'm playing on the normal difficulty setting and it's not really a problem avoiding death ... probably should've played on hard but seeing as i'm almost done i'll keep going. The story is interesting, and the gunfighting and horseriding mechanics flow very well so it's been a very enjoyable gaming experience. The cutscenes are brutal ... i just got through a scene of my ally being tortured by having his teeth pulled out with pliers, and remember the earlier shot of my prostitute friend getting her throat slit. Not to mention the dismemberment that occurs when you blast someone with a shotgun at close range. Definitely an adult game, one to pull out after Ana's gone to bed or back to Iowa. Speaking of adult games, i appear to be approaching the close of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. It's been a worthwhile entry in the GTA canon, a worthy debut on the wonderful PSP, although it hasn't grabbed me like any of the previous three console incarnations.

Okay, Harry Potter is officially over for me. It's all J.K. Rowling's fault. How can i be expected to show any interest in a work of fiction when the author is saying things in real life like "[i promise to] guard the time allotted to writing as a Hungarian Horntail guards its firstborn egg"?

Every now and then the typically repetitive and commercial-laden Subterranean on MTV2 is good for something ... i'm checking out the most recent albums by down under James disciples Youth Group and London-based indie rock guru Tom Vek, and both are holding their own.

Our drain saga continues, although at this point i think it's more apt to call it our Redwood City saga. I called the city drain inspector yesterday and left a message asking about the status of our request to get a camera inspection. He returned my call this morning, saying that the inspection had been done (?!?!) and that a repair had been scheduled, which might not happen for another couple of weeks. What did the crew find? He didn't know. What kind of repair is scheduled? No idea. Who should i contact to keep tabs on the upcoming service? They'll call me. I guess it was good news, but why do i still feel uncertain that we're any closer to fixing the problem? Oh yeah, that's why ... dumb question.

Eager for some new recreational reading, i continued my history bent and picked up Karen Armstrong's Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World at Barnes & Noble. I watched the four hour History Channel Crusades documentary recently that piqued my interest, and this treatment appears to embody both a medieval history as well as continued observation of religious aggression in the Middle East through the present. I'm only 30 pages in, barely through the summary of the origins of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but it's been a decent overview so far. I just checked Amazon to get the full title of the book and saw many reviews that slam the author for her pro-Muslim bias. However, i hear enough anti-Muslim tirades in the media so i quite welcome reading something that tilts the other direction.