Friendsgiving is returning to San Diego next week so I've been working hard on the house.


The downstairs back wall was looking a bit ragged so I painted it to match the surrounding terrace walls. Since it's under the deck, the dark color won't make any appreciable difference to house temperature in summer. This area will get a couch, rug, patio heater, temporary walls, and other amenities for the weekend. Of course the adjacent pool will soon be heated.


The Table in a Bag commercial (e.g. Green Flash has them) lights do well to light above the deck and pool, so I bought another length for under the deck. Now to get more 2W led bulbs from Costco.


Running the lights from the inside switch meant either stripping the plug from the cord or converting the light fixture to an exterior gfci. The latter seemed more sensible; weatherproof faceplate to come.

Photo credit Sue.

Thursday was Dog Halloween at the park. The best on-the-spot costume I could manage was to make Kafka a surf dog. When the sleeves ran past his front paws he walked funny.

Photo credit Dan.

A couple weekends back was Heidi's wedding in sunny Nevada. It was great to see a lot of people who are normally very far away, and there were so many amazing meals. Hopefully the couple will soon come see Heidi's San Diegan brothers.

Source.

And the weekend before Las Vegas was DC, or Borderlands rather, on account of linked xboxes and very little to do in suburban Virginia. We covered almost all of the dlc:

• The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned: Zombies are always great because it means mowing down throngs of undead and a huge emphasis on headshots. Alas, J and I stumbled on a bug that made the experience a bit of a snooze. We traveled to the island but then decided to do a different dlc first. Apparently all of the enemies level to match your first arrival, because when we returned much later they were a dozen ranks below us. The production of this one is great though, Gearbox definitely didn't phone it in on the dlc...
• Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot: ... except on th'underdome. Yes, survival mode is fun (like Halo: ODST and onward), but there isn't much to this content. Compound this with the fact that the only second-tier arena we completed took upwards of two red bulls (six hours), all for marginal lootz. That said, the variations put into each wave keep things fresh and it has all the feel of a Borderlands environment. Being a hunter had the significant downside of no phasewalk (so very quick death), but the pleasant upside of then sniping (and spotting) from the cage hung over the arena.
• Claptrap's New Robot Revolution: The funniest of the dlc packs, but how can something focused on Claptraps not be? It's big, it has a great town with plenty of hidden stuff, and lots of sidequests.
• The Secret Armory of General Knoxx: Favorite. First, level cap increases are always welcome (especially with perks). Second, it is a driving-oriented world built on a long causeway that minimizes the horrendous vehicle physics issues. Third, secret armory! Fourth, this dlc introduces the game's White Whale - the Crawmerax (seen above). Yes, the world has a massive diameter that you have to traverse way too many times. But the design pleasing and the amount of content is staggering.

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