Your home is a

Magic Gamer's Castle

Your kitchen is stocked with chips, dips, and assorted caffeinated beverages. There's a pantry with emergency backup caffeinated beverages. You also have some breakfast cereals in there, but you haven't had breakfast since last Spring. Your master bedroom has blankets printed with images of Mario and Link. Your study includes unread copies of various gamer magazines, each purchased for the free demo CDs. One of your garages contains a life-sized X-Wing fighter, and KITT. (KITT was a gift from a well-meaning uncle.)

Your home also includes a roost for griffons. You've never actually seen a griffon, but you keep the roost ready anyway. Your guests enjoy your collection of every console and associated game ever made. Except the Intellivision -- those controllers drive them NUTS. Outside is the moat that protects your home from goblin invaders and extended family.

And, you have a pet -- a koopa named "Shelly".

Below is a snippet of the blueprints:

Find YOUR Dream Home!

So shoot me for starting with a quiz... be nice or I'll drop your cranky arse in my moat.

Social Security wants to 'review my case'... the receipt of this particular piece of mail triggered the most spectacular mood crash in years. Bad enough that I found I had a pyramid of drinking glasses in the middle of my kitchen floor surrounded by little 'Keep Out!' signs on pink sticky notes... at the very center of which was my Ryo-Ohki keychain. A cabbit in a house of glass. Nothing like sending messages to myself, is there. They all went into the dishwasher this morning as I tried to clean up the wreckage. Two picture frames were found smashed, both of them empty. Randomness, there. My truck key and coinpouch were in the freezer, my tennis shoes in the crisper, and two pairs of socks in the butter compartment in the fridge. I seem to have this recurring refrigerator thing going on.

... I'm left with a brutal 'what if'... if my disability benefits vanish, then the entire house of cards crashes to the ground. I don't make enough from my job to even pay my rent, much less the other bills.

I have no answers. I'm looking at having the rug pulled out from under me with this. From a practical viewpoint, this is simply a bureaucratic review and nothing will happen... but the possibility of disaster feels very, very real.