A few months ago our neighbors moved out, and I garbage picked a pair of barely worn size 11 rollerblades, nothing special, I think they were a Dick's house brand. It was very green of me, saving those blades from the landfill.

Saturday we were off to Buffalo to see my inlaws and attend a skating party at Rainbow Rink in Tonawanda for my niece's dance group. I decided to modify my blades (I now had two pair), since my arthritic flareup my feet had gotten wider and neither pair fit comfortably. The newer pair, without the liner, fit the least uncomfortably, so I decided to cut open the liner around the ball of my foot, and that changed it from feeling painful to just mildly uncomfortable. When you think of it, lots of sports involve wearing uncomfortable clothing, being uncomfortable, or both. After that, I removed the back brake, because I like crossing my legs over in the whole speed skater thing. I'm all about the modkits.

Anyhow, off to Buffalo, an hour at the nursing home, then off to the inlaws to go skating. We spent much of time teaching our youngest to skate, but I had unattached time to zoom around, relearn the tee stop, try some speed skating cross over moves, and even slowly skate backwards, just like a hockey ref. Now I just need to find cheap wide hockey skates. A shame the nearest rink is across the city, we had a good time, and nothing wrong with admiring firm skater booty.

While returning to the inlaws, after the skating party, my bud called me, he had free tickets to see The Cult (he's an on air radio personality with his own show, focused on rasslin'). I might have gone if I were in Rochester, but I was in Tonawanda, so I had to say no. Later we had Buffalo pizza and stout and Sam Adams oktoberfest, it was all good.

I also learned some distressing family news, and my sister_in_law was unusually open about the shitty job her parents did raising them (she used to be in denial). Maybe as her daughter and nieces gets older, she's seeing what damage is done when parents sweep stuff under the rug.

Sunday we met my sister's fiancee. He seems like a nice guy. I got leftover ham.

In other former neighbor news, friend's of ours from up the street (when they still lived there, they've since moved) have announced that they are now single on FB. I'm not sure how to deal with that, we never email or anything, a FB message asking what's up might be too intrusive. Maybe I'll run into one of them at the Y and ask.

Our house is five bags of clothing, two boxes of documents, two computers and one monitor emptier. My $corp had a free recycling and shredding program one morning, so I got rid of a lot of things, I couldn't have fit much more in my little econobox. The clothing was girls clothing, from sizes 10 to 2, some of it in good shape with name brands (Abercrombie, The Children's Place, Rugged Bear) that my girls outgrew or won't wear (the youngest doesn't like turtlenecks), some of it was suitable for rags, but it's a start. The computer equipment was old and obsolete, a Pentium II, a parallel port scanner, shit I don't need. I could still get 4 computers running if I needed to, though two are obsolete laptops.

I finished Ghost Soldiers last night, a book I bought cheap at a Goodwill (where the clothes will end up, see, it's a cycle) about a 1944 Ranger raid to rescue Allied prisoners from the Japanese in the Philippines, along with some background about the bastards of Bataan. A good read, I'll pass it along to my dad.

I also realize I forgot to link to American Rifle the other week, so there.

I'm glad recent booze rebates are getting rid of "cut the UPC label off the bottle" requirements. When I last went the route, it was doable with wine, which we would usually finish off in a week. But a 1.75 L bottle of Bacardi Black might not be emptied until 2011, a long time to wait. So, I have $12 in rebate checks coming in a few months.

In other booze news, the pretty blue bottle of Relax Rissling tempted me, so I bought it to go with quiche for dinner. It was imported from Germany, fancy! We'll drink some more tonight, and eat some more quiche.

No real plans for the weekend for a change, hooray. Maybe I'll get a chance to brew, my order came in and I might try a spiced holiday ale (I may have to warm it up once in a while to keep it fermenting).

I raked a little this morning, and had to scrape dog shit off my sneakers. I've been lazy about depooping the yard, now I'm paying for it.