Mark hasn’t stopped playing City of Heroes since I got him the game over a year ago. I played for a while, and eventually moved on to World of Warcraft. While the character creation and powers in COH is great, I found the gameplay a little monotonous. Though it’s still pretty fun.

So in order to encourage us to game together from time to time - rather than sitting back-to-back in our office, enveloped in different MMO games - we created a superhero duo.

Meet Glacier Cat (my Ice/Storm Controller) and Quickburn (Mark’s Fire Blaster). They’re on the Victory server, and are prime candidates for COH’s gay supergroup. That’s also why we made these heroes have crazy sex appeal. Though Glacier Cat is clearly the hot one, right?

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I ruptured my eardrum last week. Or more accurately, some sort of infection did it for me. I think.

I was suffering from my typical March hell, where my allergies fly in from out of nowhere, kick in hard for 3 weeks, and stomp my ass into the ground. This time, I got a new fun symptom… lots of ear-popping, like March was some horrible, long family car trip taking me over mountain pass after mountain pass.

On my way to a house party last Saturday my left ear finally popped, unclogging my hearing and providing me with a little relief. Hours later, I was curled in bed in a fetal position, wondering how a plugged-up ear could feel like a hamster eating my brain out.

After not sleeping all night due to the pain, I became tired enough to Benadryl myself asleep around 10am. After sleeping a while and waking up in pain, I made Mark peek inside my ear, and I figured out why my allergies were hurting it so much. It wasn’t just allergies - I had ruptured the sucker somehow. Likely just an infection, as I don’t blow myself up with loud tunes or jam stuff in my ear like Betty is doing in the above photo.

Mark said it looked like my brains were coming out of my ear. Always nice to hear from a doctor. But I’ll admit to feeling a little bit better, know I wasn’t dealing with a ton of pain without some sort of good reason.

After a week, the pain is pretty much gone - now I just can’t hear out of that ear. That should come back, though. In the meantime, I’m stuck with saying, “huh?” more than I normally do (in that dumb way us Americans do, as my Canadians kindly point out), and pulling whichever friend I’m walking with to my right side, so I can hear him speak as we walk. Unless I tune him or her (.. her? who am I kidding) out normally.

So. No iPod for a while. That blows. I realized I hate running without tunes. Not only that, but my balance is a little off. Reminds me of a dog my friend Karey had, when we were growing up. I think the mutt’s name was Shina. Blind in one eye, used to try to chase us and would just run in circles, barking.

Cut to me, doing the same thing on my long Sunday run around the Seawall. Passing mothers pick up their children and walk briskly by.

So all of my other senses have been heightened. I’ve penciled in shopping for tomorrow.

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