Thursday musings
Seems we are not having a heat wave after all. At least it’s not happening at the moment. We’ve had two very pleasant days and tonight is already quite chill. Our air conditioner hasn’t come on all evening, which is nice for this time of the year. I think I’ll be adding a blanket to my side of the bed since my feet will likely go cold with this chill. It looks like it might warm up a bit over the weekend and into next week.
The place I visited to see the trackball contacted me a couple times yesterday and this morning although I managed to miss all the calls. I assumed the Slimblade Trackball might have arrived earlier than expected. I just happened to be in the area this afternoon and stopped by to check it out. It had arrived and different guy to the one who I spoke to earlier opened it up for me to have a look. It’s a lot like my old Expert Trackball mouse but much sleeker and probably more ergonomic than the earlier model. It was a bit pricey but I went ahead and bought it since it the temporary replacement has been driving me bonkers. At least I know I can use it for short periods of time should I need to do so in the future. I’ve only used it for a little while but it’s been pretty much a breeze so far. The click sound is different than I expected but I’m sure I will get used to that. Also, this doesn’t have a scroll wheel but I quickly found it easy to turn the trackball like a scroll wheel and I think that’s going work out well once I get the hang of it. I think it’s just a matter of working out what’s comfortable for me. When I was researching potential replacements for my old trackball, I read this one was great until you got to the software support for the device. Apparently there was none for quite some time after its release. The good news is that seems to have been rectified and there is software that I might download and try out.
This morning the boys and I went to visit an old friend of Game Fanatic from his Dungeons and dragons/ board game group. That group sort of disappeared quite some time ago and aside from one of those guys, we haven’t seen anyone for at least two years. I’d kept a slight contact with this boys mom via email and more recently on Facebook but we hadn’t seen them at all. This guy had recently earned a perfect score on his year 12 exams and had appeared in our local paper (his distance ed high school is local to us) but not theirs. I had offered to collect some copies of the paper for his family and it was a good opportunity for Game Fanatic to get a bit of social interaction happening. It was also an opportunity to put Lego Lover in some sort of social situation.
I didn’t think Lego Lover would wake up in time since he sleeps late almost every day lately. But he did wake up almost immediately. I had offered a positive consequence if he went and was well-behaved so think this might have been a good motivation for him. It was a bit harder to get Game Fanatic up but he did manage and got ready reasonably quickly. Once there I left the boys in the kitchen to play a board game (Age of Mythology-which apparently bears little to no resemblance to the computer game) while I chatted mostly with the mum. We had a rather nice catch up in the limited time we had there. And Game Fanatic enjoyed playing the game with the two older brothers for this family. Lego Lover mostly stood and stared at the ground but eventually started showing some attention to the game that was being played and even talked to Game Fanatic a little bit from what he tells me. It’s nothing big but I think it all went better than I expected. Lego Lover’s involvement is just a starting point in a plan I have to get him more socially involved this year. As the school year will be starting soon, I may post about that in more detail before then.
I should also add to the above bit about the friend’s achievement that this is the second boy from the same D&D group to have a perfect score on the year 12 exam. Another boy did the same two years ago and is now studying to be a surgeon if I remember correctly.
