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Yesterday was a day for running errands & taking care of obligations. Got my hair done (and have I ever mentioned how much I love my hairdresser?), dropped off a deposit slip at HKB so they can mail my check to my bank, went to Costco and stocked up on dog food and supplies for Rob, got a little work done in the afternoon, and then went to Stoneline. Their quarterly payroll taxes are due in just a couple of days. I hate leaving them till the last minute, but due to a series of mix-ups the disk with the payroll data on it hadn't been there the past couple of times I was there. Anyway while I was thinking of it I made extra big tax deposits since I won't be there next week.

After Stoneline I headed over to Christa and Ray's to drop off a couple of DVDs that I had borrowed so long ago I hadn't even remember them until Ray reminded me. Ray was outside using his telescope when I got there, and he showed me the moon, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. Wow! It was really amazing. I had never looked through a telescope before. We could even see color variations on Jupiter.

Christa was busy tiling her bathroom, but I went inside just to say hi for a minute. After that I stopped over at Lisa's to pick up her firewire hub. I got there at almost 9, saw that Lisa was working on her website, and realized that she's right, the three of us really do get a lot done.

I got home around 9:30 and Georg kindly cooked my dinner (I hadn't realized how late I was going to be, so I stupidly bought groceries at Whole Foods rather than premade food) while I worked on the new mah jongg set for the hood. They took the varnish really well but I had kind of glopped it on, so I had to scrape some off the sides of the tiles.

I set up on the coffee table and played out a real game. I used modern Japanese rules, which are slightly different from the classical Japanese rules I play, because I thought the game would be recognizable to more people using modern rules. Not like there are crowds of people proficient in modern Japanese mah jongg checking out my car all the time, but still! I'd like for people who know mah jongg to be able to look at that game and see what's going on.

I confess, it wasn't a purely honest game: I monkeyed around with the results, trading tiles back and forth, to get the outcome I wanted. Just like everyone always gets a straight flush or four aces when they play poker in the movies, I gave my fish spectacular mah jongg hands. Well actually, 2 spectacular hands: one of them is about to pick up the winning discard for Nine Gates, which I've heard called the ultimate hand. It's a pon (three of a kind) of nines, a pon of ones, one each of 2-8, and one extra one, all in the same suit. (The extra tile can be either a one or a nine.) I think what I've got isn't "pure" Nine Gates because the winning tile is being taken from a discard, not drawn. But I think it makes the game look more interesting this way.

Also I gave that player the dora, which is a rule in modern Japanese mah jongg that I don't normally play with. One tile near the end of the wall is turned over, and if you have either that tile or the one sequentially above it (depending on your rule variation) in your hand you get another double.

Oh! it just occurred to me that instead of taking the win from a discard, it should have been robbing the kong. Damn, that would have been awesome! Wish I'd thought of that before gluing all the tiles down.

The lobster, who is discarding the winning tile, is himself one tile away from Big Three Dragons, another great hand. It's pons of all three dragons, and to sweeten the deal a bit I made his other sets South and nines. So he would have gotten all ones, nines and honor tiles as well as the dragons.

The other two hands are much more prosaic (and more like the hands you would see in a typical game). One of them is one tile away from a basic mah jongg with no ones, nines or honor tiles. The other one is two tiles away from the same type of basic hand. Maybe I should have made them all spectacular hands, but I thought it would be better to have a little bit of normalcy in the game.

Did I overthink this? Maybe, but I had fun doing it.

Today I worked until about 2 -- everyone is finally realizing that I'm going to be gone for ten days and scrambling to get their work to me -- then glued the new mah jongg game in place. The old game was really hard to remove! I had to use a screwdriver to pry most of them loose. I'm glad to know that they hold the glue so well.

Speaking of glue there was a nasty glue residue left behind from the old set. In most places I was able to glue the new tiles right over it, but where the tiles stand up I couldn't. Also the new game didn't have exactly the same configuration as the old one, so there were a few places that just weren't covered. So I used those little beads to cover up the old glue. The little beads are a pain to work with -- it goes more slowly than with the big ones, and you tend to get more glue on your hands -- but I think it turned out nice!

Some of the birds are so brave they came to the feeder while I was out there, not fifteen feet away from the feeder. Georg said he's seen goldfinches at our feeder, but I didn't see them. Just a very hungry cardinal, a few teeny tiny birds, and one that likes to scratch at the ground. I may need to borrow Ray's extremely fragile and expensive bird call computer thing to identify them.

In other news, Georg finished the mounting rack for the bubble machine. Yay for Georg! It looks great and I think it will keep the machine much more stable. It adjusts so we can level the machine, even if it's on a slopey part of the roof. And Rob is definitely coming down to house sit. Yay for Rob! What a relief. Also, Lina sat outside for hours while I worked, and never looked for baby bunnies to kill. Yay for Lina!