Blecch

Sorry for the silence, another wretched summer cold has struck, & I've been flat on my back, snuffling snorting sneezing, and generally providing too many bodily fluids. Oh well, mostly over it now, and back at work (altho whether I'll last past lunch is a moot point so far).

On the bright side, we had another visit from Ray last weekend, which was really great for both of us: it's kinda weird to make such a good friend, at the age of 50, but we seem to have so many shared/overlapping experiences, it's like I've known him forever, without ever meeting: like some parallel dimension.

We did a couple of sessions of Runequest, so he could see what it played like: I was a bit lacking as GM, with a sore throat precluding much detailed descriptions, but it seemed to work pretty well overall, and gave him a fair picture of classic Gloranthan RQ.

Cat keeps getting snippets from NZ about her father's arrest, which has finally happened (thank ghu) - but then his idiot brother wants a 'family conference' to sort things out, i.e. help Ashley escape the just retribution coming his way; then the police were asking her whether she was interested in 'restorative' justice rather than 'punitive' justice ... I ask you, what is it he's going to restore, her childhood innocence? the years wasted in mental hospitals because her accusations were deemed to be psychotic fantasy? the years after that where she was miserable, offcentre, and self-hating? Fortunately, she didn't get sucked into that, and firmly expressed her opinion that there was no avenue for that with her, and the best restorative she could have was to see him rotting in prison at last.

Of course, all this has left her extremely upset, and depressed. I've gotten her to talk to her therapist in the UK, to try & identify a US therapist that might fit her, and she has, I think, some hints about what to loook for - hopefully she can find some help shortly. I do what I can, of course, but I'm hardly a trained therapist.

Well, back to work now, there's actually something for me to do today :)

Storms

Well, we survived the remnants of Hurricane Gustav pretty easily. Weds was quite stormy (even by Wellington-winter standards), and produced quite prodigious amounts of rain: enough to persuade me to stay & work from home for the day, rather than risk the car aquaplaning all over the road: but other than that, it wasn't too bad.

The creek in the back yard must have risen by 8 or 9 feet I guess - almost to the top of the banks - but that's no real threat to the house, as there's another 8 feet or so of elevation before it would get to the foundations (and much wider, of course). The dead tree out the front yard shed quite a lot of branches, and has kinda broken in half, with the upper half now dangling down in the fork of the bottom half - we're waiting for the landlords to fix this, lacking appropriate tools (a decent length of rope, essentially).

Parts of the city lost power for the day, but nowhere near us (they appear to be the, umm, poor parts of town, for whatever reason). We did have a lot of N'orleanois up working in our Little Rock office for the week, as it seems to have been moderately badly hit again.

And afterwards, we've had just a stunning few days of weather - warm, sunny, and with just enough wind to be pleasant.

We had Betty & Dennis over for lunch on Sunday - Betty works in the quilting shop that Cat goes to all the time, and is (of course) a keen quilter, and Dennis is her husband - an interesting mix of Texas hick and sophisticate. I think it went very well, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and the food seemed to work well : I made bacon&egg pie, and Cat made corn/cheese/onion muffins, neither of which they had ever had before - Muffins in the US seem to be exclusively of the cakey, very sweet, saturated with syrup variety, so savoury ones were a great surprise :)

Other than that, just trundling along, trying to find friends, and trying to fit in.