I’m on “vacation” this week. That means, I’m not going to my day job, but rather working around the house and working on the comic. Let’s call this a “working vacation” then.

Of course that means I spent the entire day out of the house today (zoo, Ernies, dinner out), and I’m planning on going to the Japanese gardens in Portland (three hour drive one way) tomorrow.

So. Working. Real hard.

Woodland Park Zoo is always nice. It was even nicer as there were so few people. We got a really good look at mama gorilla and her babe. We also watched a tiger stalk a sea gull. That was amusing. Although it was eerily similar to watching our cat stalk a string that is dragged along the floor.

When we made it out to Ernies, we had known that it was Warhammer 40K night, but we did not know how packed the place would be. He was kind and cleared off one of his product display tables (World of Warcraft minis I think) and we played our usual round of Memoir 44. Since dinner was acquired at a restaurant, I didn’t have the opportunity to spike the red sauce, so I lost (7 to 3–I was shut out in the first half).

We then purchased a new game–Agricola by Z-Man Games. It is a resource management game. You have land and you have to divide that land between fields, pastures and your house. And you can make babies.

Making babies is a little tricky. You have to have enough food for them at the end of the year, and you have to have room for them in your house. Oddly, it only takes one person to make a baby. Further, it only takes one turn to make the baby, and then the baby can plow a field by itself the very next turn. Since there are only 14 turns in the game, and only 6 or 7 harvest seasons, that’s a pretty impressive feat.

In the end, she had a five room stone house, and I only had a 3 room clay house. However, I won because I had cattle and vegetables and she did not. Her sheep collection was impressive though.

As a side note, you can breed animals in the game to get more animals. It takes two though. I can only assume that the game represents some odd future society that has reverted to an agricultural base, but has retained the ability to clone.

Good Lord. I am such a dork to have even thought of that.

We live a very bookcase dependent lifestyle.

We need so many book cases, that my writing desk is actually just a module plugged into a shelving system. My gaming machine is also on a “desk” that is like-wise part of more shelves. Now that I think about it, we live a “shelf dependent” lifestyle. We don’t have dressers. We have shelves with few bins.

Alright. I’m forced to admit it. We live an IVAR dependent lifestyle. IVAR is a shelving system from Ikea.

The only shelves that aren’t IVAR are BILLY. We bought two new BILLYs today. We bought them because the shortest IVAR is too tall for the space where we need more shelves. Yes. For books. Most of the things on our shelves are books. We keep our games in tubs in the closet. Or the back seat of the car for the three games that are in hot rotation. That’s another story.

If you’ve never been to an Ikea store, you won’t believe me when I say that in an average store there are acres of every imaginable type of furniture and storage system.

What? Oh yes. The people who have been there are reminding me that there are also meat balls. No. We aren’t joking.

Today’s trip was supposed to be a tactical strike. Get the BILLY and get out. Avert our eyes from everything else. Avoid the impulse purchases of tea light candles and cat toys.

No. I’m not making that up. Yes. Ikea carries that stuff too.

Anyway, we made within sight of the cash registers when she spotted a wire basket drawer thing and said, “Hey, I think that would do a good job of organizing our art supplies.”

Damn. Nearly made it. Nearly, so very nearly only purchased the only the things on our list. The basket drawer thing, ANTONIUS by name . . . What? No. I’m not making these names up. Just go to their website if you don’t believe me. Anyway, ANTONIUS–we bought two–added another 50 bucks to the total.

Two hours and three arguments later, we had our new furniture assembled.

The one thing Ikea lacks is a good system for storing comic books. That may loose them my business someday. If they stop selling wood flooring that is.

* This is a lyric from Ikea by Jonathan Coulton.

There is nothing more satisfying then taking a big chunk (10 pounds, bone-in) of pork and cooking it until it falls apart. I didn’t cook it bone-in, although maybe I should have. It would have been a more complete expression of cookery as practiced by our primitive forebears. I’m talking about my Dad and cookouts when I was a kid. Even as I removed the bone, I could not help imagining those ancestors looking on and saying, “I hope you’re going to save that for the soup.” My mom was never one for waste, and she has the most amazing ability to gnaw a cooked bone clean of meat.

I slopped a jar of my brother-in-law’s barbecue sauce on top of the meat in my 6 quart dutch oven, and popped it in the oven at 220 degrees for several hours. I then took the rendered . . . stuff from the pan, and then cooked it down until it was a sauce again. Now I have a barbecue-pork-aspic. It is delicious. I now have pulled pork sandwich fixin’s for a good long time. I’m going to take some of it and make up steamed pork buns.

I love steamed buns. I further love putting non-standard items in my steamed buns, so American style pulled pork in steamed buns is right up my alley. Chicken fajita filling in a steamed bun is a go-to in my book.

I have pork on the brain. I blame a friend of mine who told me to google “bacon explosion.”

I’ll wait while you do it.

Yeah. I can’t help thinking about a log of barbecue pork. Since my friend will be cooking one of these soon, I had to stave off my pork cravings in another way. Thus the aforementioned big chunk of pork. Either this will sate my craving, or I’m going wind up digging a pit to roast a whole pig.

I don’t think my apartment complex will like that too much.

The side effect of going to Ikea is that the table in the studio is now relatively clear. Clear enough that we can game at home. Not that I don’t like going to Ernies, but I wasn’t feeling that well. You see, I’d been forced to attend the annual all company meeting, and further forced to listen to our executive committee talk about the dire state of the economy and it’s impact on the business. The meeting was long and boring. Long boring meetings make me crabby. I wouldn’t say I’m unique. I’m just sayin’.

Last year was the company’s most profitable year. Ever. Oddly, the last major down-turn in the company was during the tech boom of the 90s. If the company that I work for cycles opposite of the general economy, then I’m good for years. If that’s the case, then the company deals in inferior goods In the economic sense of the term–the defect rate of our product is the lowest in the industry.

When I walked through the door, I immediately had two girls whining at me demanding food. She must not have been in a good mood either as she began to demand cookie dough as soon as we walked in the door. The one without thumbs wanted something really, really stinky.

Lately, we’ve been keeping a stock of homemade cookie dough on hand. We altered the recipe to eliminate the eggs and baking powder since we knew that we’d never bake the dough. I made pizza–date night you know–but forgot to drug her.

She beat me at Memoir ‘44. I must have forgot to drug her pizza. It was OK though. We were hopped up on cookie dough. Maybe it was the sugar rush, but somehow we’d entered a magical land of children’s breakfast cereal. We were no longer playing a historically based boardgame. No. We were enjoying an bowl of Allied O’s. Each bowl was a blow against the dreaded Axis. Ever spoonful was filled with an explosive combination of sweetened oat ohs and meritorious marshmallow in four brave colors–silver stars, purple hearts, green berets*, and Big Red Ones**.

At some point, we crashed from our sugar high, but I think it was some point after making the free world safe for surprises in children’s breakfasts. I’m just hoping the surprise wasn’t a desperate call for fire support or landmines.

*Yes. I know. The Green Berets weren’t formed until 1952, but we were a little out of our heads.

**The unit symbol for the US Army’s First Infantry Division.