#365Gratitude: Wet & Schmoopy

So one of the things I did with Squee in Chicago was go swimming.  When you're looking for a swimming vacation, I heartily recommend Chicago in February.  Well, technically, we were in Wisconsin, so maybe that was slightly more tropical.

Anyhow, my own snark about it aside, part of the purpose of the trip was to get to know and spend time with Squee's kids, who are all amazingly awesomesauce.  One of the ways we did that was hanging out in the very nice hotel pool together.

There's my cartoonified picture of Squee with 2 kiddos in the pool.  You can just make out my tattooed leg in the lower left hand corner there.  Lounge chair for the win!

A while after we got our swim on, Squee's partner, my metamour Veronica showed up.  That was awesome too.  We'd met before, at CAPcon, but she hadn't really been on my radar at the time.  In the ensuing months of Squee and I blasting off into relationship space, Veronica and I have become good friends and text-buddies.  We hung out in the pool and got our chat on, and spent time, and it was just nice.  

After the pool we all got together to play this game I'd brought with me as a present for the family, The Game of Things.  I love this game.  You get a card like "Things you should not call your children"  (my answer "That guy with the pants"), and everyone writes down their answer and hands it into a reader.  After they get read aloud, people try to guess who said what.  It's hysterical.  For some reason, the whole lot of us got obsessed with bacon in our answers.

After the kids got to bed, we hung out some more on our own, and in the morning, I awoke to find that Veronica had left us this little schmoopy gem.

See what I mean about the bacon?

What a good trip this was turning out to be!

#365Gratitude: Chicagoing easily

A few years back when I went to Chicago for CAPcon, I had pretty much The Worst Day of Travel Ever™.  It was filled with canceled, rerouted flights, delays, airport hopping, bad taxi rides, and lost luggage.  

That's why I was so happy when I had the exact opposite day traveling to visit my Auntie Squee.

Everything was smooth sailing.  I left the house with time to spare, got to my prepaid parking without incident, found an actually lovely restaurant by the gate at which I had a healthy, delightful salmon salad.  Then I boarded without incident, had an easy flight during which I had a funny conversation with my row-neighbor about being a pescatarian (which she had never heard of, and at first thought was perhaps related to being a Presbyterian).  I assured her otherwise, and said that maybe I might seek out some nice presbyterian food when I got to Chicago.  

Then I got off the plane, passed the cheese hats, and went right into the loving arms of my Squee.  That's a good day of travel, right there.

#365Gratitude: MOAR CUDDLES

Man, Yang is just really bringing it with the cute, lovey, huggy-touchy stuff lately.  He's always been a lover ever since I got him (when he was 10 weeks old), but now that he and his sister are eleven years old, they're both just so affectionate.  They love me, and they love Missy, and I love them.

#365Gratitude: Everyone needs a Chum... And a Missy

So lately, Missy and I are back doing the World of Warcraft thing again.  We like playing it with our girl, Katiebug.  It's a nice thing-to-do-together-at-a-distance, and we're really enjoying it.  We rolled new toons, which is WoW-speak for creating new characters. 

They're all pandaren, big anthropomorphic panda bears.  Think Po from Kung Fu Panda.  Mine's a healer-spec'ed shaman named Hôgô.  (It's a munge of the Japanese word Hogo, or 保護, which means "protection".  I'm the medic for our little troupe.) 

There's an aspect to the game that Missy is really into called "battle pets".  It's like this meta-game-within-the-game.  As you travel from place to place there are these little animals all over.  All sorts of animals, like rabbits, squirrels, vultures, exotic birds.  You can pit a team of three pets you've already tamed against these animals in the wild, and if you beat them, capture them. 

The whole thing has flavors of Pokémon, and collecting stuff, and a lot of the battle pets are just adorable.  No wonder Missy digs it.  She loves collectibles, and loves cute things. 

The other night I was upstairs in my home office, massively catching up my gratitude backlog, while she and Katiebug were playing, and she stumbled across something very very cool.  She shouted upstairs to me, "Hey Mako, you've got mail. ". (Because she got me a present!)

I bet you can guess what it was. 

The pet's officially called "Left Shark".  Isn't he ADORABLE? 

She rushed upstairs to see if I'd opened the in-game mail, and then we both decided together that I just had to name him Chum.

When I run around in the game, Chum air-swims next to me, in the most adorable way.  He's just precious, and I really, really love him. 

But not as much as I love my wife.  

#365Gratitude: Yip, good friends

My friend Frankie knows I LOVE Avatar. My car is even named Appa, just like the Avatar's flying bison. 

He sent me this picture over social media the other day. 

A plushie Appa is flying through a house, held aloft by a bunch of white, helium filled balloons.  This is an excellent idea. 

I really love my friends.