Once again, no gaming session last night. But, Adamczykon did show up for a couple of hours. He’d left us a phone message saying that he wasn’t cleared to drive, yet, and that if we could give him a ride, he’d come over.
     We made a very nice dinner, BBQ’d steaks, redskins roasted on the grill, my fried green beans, and dinner rolls, and Adamczykon visited with us for a couple of hours, before he had to go home. His back is still hurting him pretty badly from the surgery, but he thinks he’ll be better in plenty of time for GenCon.
     MrJames made it back from his “mini-vacation” with his folks. They went to Detroit for two and a half days, and saw all the sites — the zoo, the museum, every bookstore in town, some movies, many great restaurants — sounds like they had a marvelous time. MrJames came back with plenty of great loot, too, including some very nifty toys for his step-grandkids, some books, and some cool trinkets (including a pointy bludgeon masquerading as a paperweight).
     About the books — MrJames’ soon-to-be-ex-wife, Mary, had called to chat several hours before MrJames got home yesterday, and during the course of chatting, mentioned these books. She told me that she’d heard they were very good, something I might like, and that I should look for them.
     Guess which books MrJames came home with? Bit creepy, that.
     Later last night, MrJames and I went to coffee with ViolentClay at the little 24-hour diner where we used to work, and had a good time chatting. VC wanted to know if the gaming group was “dead”, as in, no longer meeting, to which MrJames explained, no, not dead, just getting old. We have three members out on “medical leave”. Felonious Murphi had to go back to Chicago — he was diabetic, and had a kidney and pancreas transplant about two years ago. He’s had nothing but trouble with the pancreas. It’s not rejecting, but it won’t quite work right either, and he keeps getting pancreatitis. As a result, he’s had to have a shunt with a bag out of his side for several months now, to drain the pancreas. It’s painful and annoying, and about every other month or so, he ends up going back to Chicago to have more blood work and fiddling done. He had to go back yesterday, so he wasn’t at the session.
     Adamczykon’s been out for three weeks with his back surgery, and thinks he might be out longer. He’s only up to leaving his house for a couple of hours at a time, at the moment. And VC himself has been out for a few weeks, due to having had almost all of his teeth pulled in preparation for having dentures put in. He was on some medication that ruined his teeth, and so he’s having to have them all replaced.
     Y’know, Adamczykon’s the oldest of us, and I think he’s only 35 or 36. We sound like a bunch of old geezers, don’t we? Pretty sad.

     Meanwhile, I’ve barred Rhea off my computer. There’s a fellow pestering the chatrooms that Art and Rhea play in. Well, we happened to get an IP address off an email header that Art had, from this fellow, and I ran an Arin search for it, and it came up for an ISP provider that, the week before, had been pinging my computer. (My ZoneAlarm had blocked it, but still.) You can get a computer’s IP address a number of ways — sending someone an email, downloading something through Yahoo instant messenger, a few other ways. Rhea’s apparently been known to chat with this fellow. On Yahoo. I find it entirely too coincidental that suddenly this obscure little ISP is pinging my computer, and it matches this fellow’s apparent ISP, and Rhea chats with him on instant messenger, through which you can easily obtain an IP address, and she’s certainly stupid enough to download things from him.
     This fellow has been harassing Art, as well as cyberstalking another player at their chat rooms, and threatening all sorts of computer mayhem. I am, to say the least, displeased. So, I scanned and cleaned out my computer, and locked it down, just to be sure. It was all clean, but still.
     In the meantime, we’ve made Rhea start apartment hunting. I mean for her to be out, come hell or high water, by July first. Either Art didn’t put it strongly enough, or she’s too dumb to grasp the concept of a deadline, but she doesn’t seem overly concerned either way. I’m sure she’ll be concerned one of these nights when she gets home and finds her house key missing and all her shit on the lawn. She might, just maybe, be bright enough to get the hint, then.

Playing the Popularity Game:

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