I haven't been updating because I've been playing Katamari Damacy and Shadow of the Colossus nonstop since my birthday.

The dinner with B's parents was nice. They gave me a $100 mall gift card, which is basically a debit card and works anywhere.

That sure is a lot of money for them to spend on someone who hasn't done anything to earn it.

Unless of course making B happy is enough, which I can understand. If I were a mom or dad, I'd much rather like than hate the person my kid is dating. I think I may also have a distorted perception of what the appropriate amount to spend on a loved one's birthday gift is because I grew up poor as dirt and the only time I ever got 100 bucks for a birthday was when my whole family dropped a $10 or a $20 in the bucket for me.

In any case, I'm grateful to them for the gift, but it just echoes the sentiment that I am a potential-daughter-in-law-to-be.

Now here's a good bit of gossip:

Hints like that from M's mom terrified me and were probably the catalyst for the end of our relationship.

You know how that goes: thought about marrying him, thought wasn't appealing, thought stewed for several months while relationship got much worse, culminating in my moving out.

When I think about marrying B, I don't have any bad thoughts. It seems perfectly natural and excellent to stay in this relationship until one of us turns to dust. Married or not; just forever.

My boss is about to come back in, more on this later.

Okay, back.

Anyway, I don't want to be premature about anything, so don't get the idea that I'm trying to get myself married in a big hurry or anything. All I'm saying is, despite all my criticism of my friends or acquaintances who have gotten married young, I believe I am probably as prepared for it as I'll ever get. I'll leave when it happens up to the person who proposes.

Having babies is a whole other story. If that wants to wait five to ten years, that'll be just fine and dandy with me, thank you.

Navigating away from that heavy subject, B has been trying to get me to play games with him. My refusal has been pretty adamant, until a couple days ago, when he finally wore me down and I agreed to play Dragon Realms with him. This is a MUD. I am familiar with MUDs from having played Carrion Fields for several years, but the differences between these two games are staggering. First of all, CF is free to play whereas DR has a $9 monthly fee. CF is roleplaying and VERY player killing oriented; if you play, you will be killed often and often without any apparent reason at all. You will lose all your gear and be reported to the game staff if you get frustrated and go out of character to whine about it. CF has a very strict learning curve and, despite the efforts of the staff and the few of the playerbase who are nice, can be very newbie unfriendly to the person who is new to mudding as a whole. If you have some MUD experience, CF is a cinch. DR's interface is COMPLETELY different. Commands are different, experience gathering is different, NPC battle is different, classes are different, and the playerbase is different. DR has very little PC combat and equipment looting is basically unheard of, so while playing this game, you don't have to constantly watch your pretty little backside for the multikilling duergar shaman who has a boner for your shinies.

There's only one difference between these two games, besides the whole pay-to-play thing, which is truly offputting to me. CF is a creative outlet. You write your own character descriptions and there is even a command to input your character's detailed backstory so the game staff (who in game play immortal characters with whom you can interact) can read it and, you know, omnipotently understand your character. DR's character descriptions you choose in game, and if your character has a backstory, it doesn't matter. The origin of these differences is the volume of the playerbase. CF is lucky if it has 70 people playing at one time; DR has several hundred. I'm positive the staff manning the DR game doesn't have time to interact with characters on the level that CF's staff does.

Now that I've nerd-bored you, let me get back on subject. I can probably get used to this DR game and like it and play with B like he wants me to. The reason we can't play CF together is because their strict anti-cheating rules have the staff checking character IP addresses to make sure we're not permagrouping from a computer lab. Knowing another character's motives and organizing actions with them outside the game is strictly forbidden, and because CF has such a small playerbase, the staff is actually able to police this type of thing, and they do--strictly.

So he bought me a 30 day DR trial, and I'm trying my hardest to like it. I've made a cat-person bard and killed several rats.

B's car is broken. Some little spring thingy fell off so some belt keeps slipping and he's getting it repaired for the exciting sum of $250!

Prices of things that are ridiculous: dairy (milk is an average of $6 a gallon right now), car parts/labor, gasoline, um. Other suggestions welcome.

LN and I are planning a coup. Two of the keyholders here are quitting, leaving me and her and the manager as the only people capable of opening and closing. We're going to ask for raises once those two are gone, citing that we'll quit if we don't get it and go work for the call center.

I'm concerned the owner is going to decide it is not cost effective to raise our pay and just fire us instead, and make the manager immediately train stupid newbies for keyholder positions.

He'll have a no-manager situation on his hands if he does that, probably, so I think our chances are good.

My coworker keeps asking me how long my blog is so I think I'm going to wrap it up before her head explodes.