This is a rough draft.

Author's note: Updated since the original posting.

I'm not sure what Mom did to make us move here, but I've never been more bored in my life. I was an officer in my guild, but now I can't even log in. Dad told me to close my account because we wouldn't have an internet connection here. He didn't tell me that no one would have one. They don't even have cell phones for that matter. It's like I've been taken back in time to a world before civilization began. What did people even do before the internet? Dad said I should find a new hobby like building model airplanes or something. Unfortunately, model airplanes can't get me out of the Lost World, so I'd rather not even bother.

Mom said I should find out what other kids do around here. Easier said than done. Today was my first day in school and no one even acknowledged my existence outside of the teachers adding me to their roll and giving me their tattered old schoolbooks. My algebra book looks like someone's dog vomited on it, but Mr. Green said that was the only one he had left. Not only are parts of it colored unnaturally, but there are weird scribbles and doodling in some of the margins that don't look like any math I've ever seen. I would have just shrugged it off as some bored kid passing the time, but there are numbers here and there in between weird symbols. Supposedly Dad was a math whiz in school, but when I showed him one of the pages, he just shrugged and said it was probably some new technique the teachers here are trying. I hate it when grown-ups try to act smart. Obviously he has no clue, because there's no way the teachers here are trying new techniques.

Since the internet apparently hasn't been invented yet in Birdwood, my usual avenues of information gathering are completely cut off. Back home, I could have posted a scan to the various forums I troll, but I'm not even sure I want to unpack my computer here - it just seems less depressing to have it boxed up than to have it there taunting me. Besides, it's kind of nice to just have a stack of boxes in the corner of my room; it kind of keeps my hopes up that our stay here in the corn fields of Lame might not be permanent. And it kind of drives Mom nuts.

She's been trying hard to make the move easier by being especially efficient around the house. All the old wooden surfaces gleam like they've been polished within the hour, especially the banister by the stairs. I noticed that particularly because it looked it would be a lot of fun to slide down. I was about halfway down when it occurred to me that the blank wall about three feet from the base of the stairs wouldn't be very welcoming if I hit it at top speed, so I tried to perform one of those rolling dives you see in the movies when people jump out of burning cars. The resulting crash made me rethink my budding career as a stuntman and brought Mom in yelling about breaking stuff in a house we haven't even lived in for a week. Whatever. I'm sure it's her fault we're here anyway. Between the cleaning and the incredible meals she's been serving, you'd think she'd recently hired a maid and a cook, but I haven't seen anyone around the house other than Mom's friends coming over to chat with her in the "parlor."