shirenomad | Minimal Net access?

Try none. The main house computer was constantly occupied by my father or brothers for some reason or another. The second computer had been replaced by a new one that was stronger! Faster! Better! ...and had no modem. Brilliant. I had access for a brief half hour at a friend's house late Friday, during which I checked LJ and my mail. Other than that, nada.

At least I managed to enjoy myself in other ways, even if my schedule was kind of packed...

For starters, I got home to discover I had a new little sister. Well, sort of. Elyssa (I think I spelled that right) is the daughter of a friend of my mom's; she's been crashing at our place while taking summer classes at a nearby college. Mom often jokes that she's adopted several kids in this manner (although most just spend most of their waking hours at our place), but I think Lyss is the first to really act the part: she goes out of her way to annoy my brother Andrew in a sibling-like way. (Cut in on my territory, will she? :p)

Spent most of Friday playing Civilization with my entire family (as I noted in the last entry). I came in second... to last. >_< Had some bad planning in the first few rounds, and then a couple disasters hit me hard midway through the game that I never recovered from. Will came in first by a longshot (there, I said it; now stop gloating). He started playing ruthlessly towards the end -- raiding a couple cities simply because he could and so forth -- and it paid off.

Also Friday, dropped by the Nguyens' place and enjoyed some BBQ. We had planned to have dinner with them the day before and watch fireworks, but Will's plane was arriving far too late to make it. So we get a new invitation from them the next day. *shrug* I'm not complaining. So we dropped by, we ate, then I got to show off how bad I was at tennis. (Never played the game before, and my limited badmiton skills didn't translate very well.)

Andrew, being a huge drum corps fanatic, dragged the entire family to a DCI competition Saturday. Gotta admit, that was kinda fun. Too bad the most amusing performance (Impulse, with an "I Love Lucy" theme) scored so low.

Watched two movies over the weekend. MIB2 was amusing, but pretty weak compared to the original (tried to overextend itself, for the most part). Then we watched Black Hawk Down on DVD, which is a good war movie if you like that sort of stuff. The artery scene had everyone wincing, though.

Going to be around for a couple more weeks, then I'm packing up, leaving the apartment, and off to Japan. It snuck up on me, somehow...