Figaro

My birthday was awesome. Shane got me the cake above and this. It was a Tidus birthday. ;)

Hibachi was excellent. It was good seeing Jane, cause she was in Australia for the past two weeks and just got back. Zach and Barbara were good company, too. I had a great birthday dinner.

Barbara and Zach got me a $25 Amazon gift card. Jane got me a $25 GameStop gift card that I used to buy another $25 Amazon gift card, haha. My friend Scott got me the next three issues of The Walking Dead series I needed. I went ahead and bought the rest of the series with my Amazon gift cards. Now I own up to Volume 17. I stopped at 6 because they were too expensive to keep going til next payday. The series is so good but so expensive! I'm happy I don't have to worry about that now. The series is still ongoing, but Volume 18 isn't out yet, and now that I'm caught up, buying one a time as they release won't be so bad.

My mom sent me a $100 money order for late Christmas/early birthday. I bought a keyboard and case for my Kindle Fire with some of it. I can use that case to stand the Kindle up with the keyboard so it looks and feels like a laptop. I downloaded My Writing Spot (check it out here), a cheap novel-writing app that I'm going to use for Nanowrimo this year. I'd like to use it to start writing a novel before November, but my work life needs to calm down first. My Writing Spot uses a cloud storage system and comes with a free PC version, so I can write from my Kindle Fire or my PC, and pick up where I left off no matter where I was writing. I really like how the app looks and feels; I particularly like how I can divide my novel by chapter, and it tells me the word count of each chapter.

Shane and I went to JC Penny yesterday and spent the rest of my mom's money order on clothes. I bought a red button-down shirt, and three polos - black, navy, and red. It took everything in me to not go to American Eagle instead, but JC Penny has some pretty nice stuff, and I was able to get more for my money. I think I'm growing up, haha.

Yes! I beat Diablos!! My strategy:

• Junctioned a bunch of blizzards to Squall.
• Stocked up on Phoenix Downs.
• Drew and casted Demi on Diablos over and over. This failed a lot, but it ended up being successful about 4-5 times.
• Let Squall and Selphie get low in health. Kept Zell's health up so I could use Phoenix Downs when Squall or Selphie KOed.
• Abused the crap of out Squall's Renzokuken.
• Used Selphie to cast Full Cure on the party when everyone was low on health.

If this was all I had accomplished on my day off today, I'd be a happy man. I read a volume of The Walking Dead today too, though, and got hooked on yet another expensive graphic novel series. So far I'm into Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate X-Men, Superman Earth One, and The Walking Dead. A few other series look amazing, but at 7-9 bucks each, I think I should stick with just my current ongoing series. Even if price wasn't an issue, I'm short on free time these days and have to pick and choose what I get into. Too many things look good though, dammit.

But yes! Diablos! Now I can get back to the story in the game.