Wow... what a whirlwind of stuff to put down, this week... Just over a week before I leave for school... gosh, the suspense is killing me. The packing and moving will probably kill me all over again...

 

I'm taking care of my father's apartment building this week while he's on vacation in Colorado with my little brother... What a pain in the neck, taking care of that place. Maintenance work, fielding endless calls from prospective rentors (there's only one available apartment in the place, for certain), endless calls from current rentors... Ugh. People who lock themselves out of their own apartments are another of those pains in the neck, a subsection of the pain in the neck that is fielding calls from current rentors. It isn't that expensive to have copies of a key made. Give it to your neighbors for safekeeping. Hide it under your doormat. Nobody is going to try to break into your rathole apartment, folks. And trust me, this apartment is a medium-level rathole, for sure.

 

I won't go into the politics of my father's purchase of this place, but let's just say that he borrowed against a lot of money he doesn't have right now. I don't know if he put down life insurance worth as collateral, but it wouldn't surprise me. My mom's pissed (and rightly so--this was a unilateral decision on my father's part; a birthday present to himself) and while the income for caretaking is nice, I'd rather not have to have anything to do with it.

 

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the question you've all been dying to have answered: "What do you do with all of your spare time, Jon?" Well, I'll tell you: Besides reading a lot, and surfing the Internet, I am programming a game. Or a gamelet. A little game, a scenario. Long story short, Spiderweb Software makes great games which I love to play. Ergo, when they publish a program that lets regular users create games with their code, I'm in. So now I'm stumbling through a whole new programming language and graphical interface editor. It's tough, but rewarding. As of right now, I'm dead stuck on my plotline. It has no... hook. Nothing to get gamers interested, you know? If you care to help me at all, e-mail me (change that AT) and we'll talk shop.

 

That's it for this week, friends and neighbors. See you next week, same great place, same great time. (Note: Yes, I know this week was not at the "same great time." I forgot about my update until late Friday night... thus published early Saturday morning. Keep it to yourself. Everybody's a critic.)