Corner of Bourbon & Division

I spent all of today cuddled on the sofa with Peggy and Lidan, and then I remembered I had a Mage game scheduled tonight and decided to nap beforehand, because playing until midnight is very tiring these days.

So instead of writing a post I napped, and I have no regrets. :)

Tonight we find out about time travel and the apocalypse!

I decided to get myself a birthday present(ish), and bought a laminator and laminating sheets, a Nakia Funko Pop figurine, and a packet of fidget toys. The latter are for an experiment at work to see if they help me focus better during longer meetings. It's a packet of ten and it cost a few dollars, so I think it's worth trying out.

I have the worst headache today. I woke up with it, medicated it almost entirely into submission, but then it came back with a vengeance. It didn't help that I had nothing to eat for lunch. Having a lunch ready for work has been a hell of a challenge for me since I started this new position. Before if I forgot a lunch or was disorganized I could always just run out on my lunch break and grab something, but now I'm "only" working 8 hours a day and I often work through lunch. I take frequent very small breaks throughout the day because I find that more helpful, but it does mean I don't get a proper lunch break. So after work today I went to the grocery store and got myself a bunch of emergency back-up meal replacement drinks. I am going to also make an effort to be more organized and bring a lunch with me, but for the days I inevitably fail I know I won't be spending the whole time hungry with nothing to eat except my own words.

I found out yesterday that my immediate boss is stepping back from his supervisory duties for mental health reasons (he was off for nine months and only came back full time in November) and will be working a reduced number of days a week, so I'll probably be reporting to the Director for the next little while. I like the Director and I think we'll work very well together, but I am going to miss my boss--we don't see eye to eye on everything, but he has a lot of experience and a willingness to mentor and I was looking forward to collaborating with him. Hopefully this is temporary and we'll still get to work together before my time is up. He DID mention that he was mindful of what I'd told him about not wanting to work with my manager when she returns, and he wants to find a solution for that, so that's a good thing. I am not going to hold my breath, but at least it hasn't been forgotten.

The week went by in the blink of an eye. It's so hard to believe tomorrow is already Friday. I have one big project that I want to get done before the weekend, which is the first draft of the standardisation of the PSE evaluation criteria, so I must devote most of my time to that tomorrow. I really don't want to have to work on it over the weekend, and the timeline I have to do it is *tight*. Hopefully the interruptions will be few and I will have the time to finish it.

I think it is time to go sleep off this headache. Tomorrow night is the first official session of my Mage campaign with all the players. We've been doing mini-sessions in two separate groups with the Storyteller in order to set the stage for when all the characters finally start working together. I am pretty excited to see what happens, as we are split down the middle into two diametrically opposed character types. It ought to be very entertaining.

Hello, and welcome to the new people from the friending meme! I am trying to be better about posting. We shall see how long my good intentions last! This is a really nice road I'm paving, I wonder where it leads? ;)

I had a bit of a day today. In the grand scheme of things it wasn't anything terrible, but it felt unnecessarily stressful. My current landlady and I have a bit of a fraught relationship. She's a hot-tempered Italian lady who runs a hair salon. She favours long fake nails, platinum blonde hair, skin-tight white jeans, and an enormous white SUV. Now, I'm not usually one to make a big deal over cultural differences (I will totally cop to being a snob, but I'm a self-aware snob, at least), but I think it illustrates where we have trouble communicating. She tends to perceive a problem and immediately fly off the handle and threatens to evict me (always over voicemail), and then once we've actually spoken in person she calms right down again, because it's never as dire as she assumed it was. This has happened three times now, and each time, once I've seen her face to face, she climbs down off the ledge she's on and apologizes for pitching a fit. It's exhausting.

Anyway, today wasn't a threaten-to-evict-me day, at least. Instead, she called at 16:00 to tell me that she'd hired people to come clean out the air vents, and they were coming at 17:00. Yeah. That's right. One hour later. Actually, she first said they'd be there between 17:00 and 21:00. We had the following exchange:

Landlady: "They're going to be there between 5pm and 9pm."

Me: "I'm working tomorrow, [Landlady]. On work nights I'm usually in bed by 8pm, because I have to get up early."

Landlady: "Oh, GOOD, you'll be home, then!"

Me: "..."

Me: "No, [Landlady], what I meant was, I'm home at that time, but I'm usually asleep."

Landlady: *breezily* "Oh, well, they'll probably be there at 5 anyway."


As it turned out, they arrived at 16:40. Now, new people to this LJ will not be aware that I am, to put it mildly, a terrible housekeeper. Combine that with working long shifts, as well as four cats and a dog, and you may not be surprised to learn that my house is, on a regular basis, a disaster area. Today was not an exception to that, and so I did a bit of a mad scramble to get things moderately presentable so that the workmen could come in and access all the air vents and registers.

The noise terrified all the pets, to the point I had to bring the dog outside so he'd stop freaking out. Two of the cats hid under the shelves in the pantry, one hid on top of a bookcase, and another under my bed. Poor kitties. Then my landlady informed me that ANOTHER crew was coming for furnace maintenance, "between 6pm and 10pm." I showed great restraint and didn't lunge at her throat. Feel free to drop off cookies in this handy container here. *puts box out*

Anyway, the furnace guy actually arrived at 19:30, and was gone an hour later, so it wasn't too terrible. It's now way past my bedtime, but I'm all cranked up from running around after workmen, so I'm trying to wind down by writing an LJ entry. Could be worse.

I got more work done on the garden today, in more exciting news. I obtained some cucumber seedlings and took them, the dog, and some gardening supplies to the community garden. I had spotted a (rather expensive) planter at Costco yesterday, and decided to acquire it today, but it was sold out when I got there, much to my disappointment. At least it saved me some money. So now, unless I decide to squeeze in some herbs, my community plot is completely planted. Time to sit back, water and weed occasionally, then reap the rewards! The tomato seedlings seem to have borne up well overnight, too, which is a good sign. Here's hoping the cucumber holds up as well!


I repotted all the mint into a planter on my patio, but ran out of energy before I could get to the basil, thyme, rosemary, and remaining tomatoes. Even if I'd had the energy, it was soon after that my landlady called and set the furnace adventures into motion. I was going to try to get the rest done tomorrow after work, but I just got reminded that I volunteered to help clear out the garden at the Quaker meetinghouse tomorrow evening already. Whoops! Guess it may have to wait an extra day. I'll water the seedlings well and hope they can tough out another day or so.

Someone remind me that, in the next few days, I should talk about D&D! I started watching an online stream/show on Twitch called "Critical Role," which is literally a livestream of a D&D campaign. You know how, very often, watching other people roleplay if you're not in the game is super boring? This show is the exception to that rule! It helps that it's run and played by professional voice actors. I love the show so much that it actually inspired me to get back into D&D and roleplaying, and then somehow some of my Twitter friends ganged up on me and now I'm actually running a game for them. We've had two sessions so far, and I'm pleased to report that, fourteen years after I ran my last game, I no longer suck as a DM. I'm still learning the ropes, but I've figured out a bit of the mental flexibility required to juggle plot lines and the like.

In short, remind me to go into detail about this later on! I mean, most of you may find it boring, but I know for a fact that a few of you are gamers, and therefore I need yell at you about how awesome Critical Role is. ;)

On that note, I should head to bed. Sleep is a precious commodity around these parts.

Between all my moves, I've lost my copies of the Incarnate world/rules/notes, and in a fit of nostalgia (and Other Secret Reasons™ ;)) I wanted to go look through all of it again. I know it was online for a while, but I'm pretty sure forthright must have taken it down by now.

Does anyone still have a copy somewhere? Pretty please? I am perfectly willing to offer bribes. ;)

I am taking a page from owldaughter's book and writing a weekend round-up. It'll be easier than going back and writing individual entries.

Friday

After work I headed out to pick up my costume for Sunday's party. I got a car from Communauto, went to Laurier st., got the costume (lost my little paper, but they were nice and understanding) and drove back to get my dry cleaning...

...

... only to realize that I left my wallet on the counter of the costume shop across town. There was swearing. Lots and lots of swearing. It was 17:00, right in the middle of rush hour on a Friday afternoon, and I think I may have aged five years from sheer stress. I lucked out: they found and kept my wallet for me, and on my way out I met my old friend B, whom I hadn't seen in a very long time. So, bonus. I even managed to pick up my dry cleaning with five minutes to spare before the place closed.

After that I hied myself to the Parental Units' for dinner, where W., the mother of my childhood friends, had also been invited. We had a very nice time, although W. was in fine form, which meant I had to run interference for most of the evening because she seriously gets on my father's very last nerve. Damages his calm something fierce.

Went home and collapsed, after watching a couple of DVDs.

Saturday

Awoke on Saturday morning, feeling god-awfully tired and wondering what god I had angered that I would feel that tired after sleeping for so long. Then I saw that it was 10:00 and that I was LATE. So I jumped out of bed in a complete flap and made a beeline for the phone to call luvenditti to let her know I'd overslept and was going to be late. She answered the phone and sounded bemused, but agreed to meet me a bit later than we'd planned. She called back about three minutes later to see what the hell was wrong with me, and by then I had figured out that I wasn't late, but that my alarm clock was poorly set.

Not a great start to the day, but things improved swiftly after that. Saturday was a cooking day with Lu. I am not allowed to discuss much of what we cooked, because it is part of the Soopar Seekrit Menu for her next dinner party, but let me tell you it was SINFULLY DIVINE, OH GOD.

We also made stew and meatloaf and pizza. So. Much. Food. In between bouts of cooking we also watched part of the latest episode of Glee (meh), Eastwick (cute) and The Mentalist (so much love).

After the day of cooking we called it an early night. Turns out spending all day cooking is tiring. I went home, watched a few episodes of Supernatural, and then turned in for the night.

Sunday

I got up early-ish to do a minimal amount of tidying before tcaptain and maya_banana came for breakfast, and then realized belatedly that I had nothing for her to drink, since she can't have tea or coffee. One hasty phone call later, and they agreed to pick up some orange juice. They arrived resplendent in their costumes, and we set to breakfast with enthusiasm.

Breakfast was not a success. I was off-beat the entire time, and managed to burn the pancakes and came rather too close to setting fire to my kitchen for my own comfort. Luckily they were very understanding with me, and the bacon turned out delicious, so it wasn't a total waste.

maya_banana helped me get into my costume, since it's one of those Victorian dealies that hooks together in the back, and once I was all put together (photos will be forthcoming as soon as people who took them send them to me, I promise!), we headed out to Hurley's, where the murder-mystery Blood, Sweat and Gears was taking place.

I had a blast. I was playing Priscilla "Prissy" Swinton, who was invited to this scientific exhibit along with her husband Dunstable. The guy playing my husband never showed, but it turned out not to matter. I decided that Prissy was an amiable twit, and so I wandered around being insipid and saying stupid things in the loudest, most fatuous fake British accent I could muster. I *broke* people. Repeatedly. My rule of thumb was to think of the most inane thing to say at any given moment, and then to say that. It worked like a charm.

By the end of the evening I was exhausted. I have no idea how the people running the show managed, because it felt as though I had been there for ten hours instead of four. It was a great time, though, and I understand that there will likely be repeat performances in the future.

I came to the realization sometime toward the end of March/beginning of April that many of my priorities have changed along with my new job and new interests. One of the sadder realizations I had was that I no longer really have the interest in gaming that I used to.

I still like roleplaying, don't get me wrong. It's just that I no longer feel good about setting aside huge chunks of time for it at the expense of all the other things I do in life, especially not when I spend so many of my weekends working now. While I get to spend time with my friends while gaming, it's also four to six hours of time in which I could be seeing other friends whom I haven't seen in a really long time, or in which I could be simply hanging out with my friends *as ourselves*.

The same appears to be getting increasingly true for online gaming as well. I'm only involved in one game online these days, but the amount of time it requires is slowly but surely beginning to take a toll. I find I'm no longer especially passionate about it, which is unfortunate. I still like it, and I love the people I game with (well, some of them, anyway, most of them the ones I also know IRL), but I'm seriously starting to wonder if I'm not just staying there out of a sense of obligation, which if we're honest does all of us a disservice. I'm taking up valuable slots in the game which could be given to other, more enthusiastic players who would post more reliably. I have a tendency to disappear when work gets out of hand, especially when I'm on night shift (like last week and this coming week), and often enough that forces people to wait for me, or work around me, and that's not fair to anyone.

So it looks like I'm going to have to do some serious thinking about all this. My IRL game is going to come to a natural end by the end of next month, and after that I won't be actively involving myself in any others. That's not a problem, regrettable as it is to give up what was an important passtime for me for so many years. The real question is whether or not I should still be involved in Skywatch. It's a wrench, because I've been in that game for close to seven years, and I've got a lot invested in it. Hell, pulling out now would seriously mangle a number of plans that I have with other players, and that's a major consideration as well. At this point, I can't tell if it would be worse to stay in and not be giving it my all, or to pull out and leave people and plotlines in the lurch, no matter how gradually I try to ease out.

Meh. Thinking about these things at 3am is never a good idea.

I'm listening to Avril Lavigne, and it's making me nostalgic for perseity. That campaign rocked.

Two artists have that effect on me: Avril, and Maroon 5 (the song which will be forever known to me as "The Jero Song."). I wouldn't listen to them if it weren't for Perseity.

I am such a geek. :)

Carole Nelson Douglas must be beaten with her own book. How dare she write a cliffhanger right before I have to write my serial and get started on NaNoWriMo? I don't have time to read the next book today, but I WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS! AAAAAAUGH!

I have so much writing to get done today, it's not even funny. I still have about 1,000 words of BTP to get done for tonight's instalment, I want to get the write-up of the last Mutopia session done before NaNo starts, and I owe people responses to JPs for Bluebook.

Also, Hallowe'en preparations start at 1630 today. Aiee! At least the pumpkin carving went really well last night. In exactly two hours we had five pumpkins carved and all the seeds were washed and ready to be put in the oven. There was a batch already baking when I left.

Tonight is going to rock hardcore. Hallowe'en, then NaNo. w00t!

Okay, off to produce insane amounts of wordcount on *other* projects before tonight. Panic!

Well, I haven't heard from ashforestwalker, so I'm assuming that means I'm getting a lift to work today. Score.

Everything in my life seems to be about the busy these days. What with work now eating an average of three extra hours of my days, five days a week (one hour of overtime, two to three hours in public transit on days when I don't have a lift), it gives me very little time to do anything except come home and crash.

Weekends are almost a thing of the past, too. Not that I don't enjoy my activities on the weekend, but they certainly do swallow most of the free time I have. Band practice cuts my Saturdays in half, and also result in my not really being able to sleep in past 9:30 (not that that's been an issue lately, what with my body deciding that 8:30 is the very latest at which I should be getting up in the morning). The afternoon seems awfully short when you begin it at 2:00 pm instead of 12:00.

The new games on Sunday effectively mean that I have a choice between sleeping in and thus devoting my entire day to gaming and catching up on sleep, or else to getting up early and getting stuff done, which is what I did yesterday.

I very quickly noticed that my wardrobe is, apart from being sparse, not entirely suited to working in a renovation company. My office clothes before were geared toward being on the front-lines in a bank, in a department that catered to very big clients with a lot of cash to throw around. So I had to lean toward "office chic" or something along those lines. At Dial-A-Husband, that's definitely not the case. For one thing, the entire office (as I believe I've mentioned before) looks like a demolition crew has been in there recently. That's because DAH only just moved in a few months ago, and there won't be any renovations done during the busy season.

So wearing my fancy-schmance office clothing isn't really going to fly. My first few days there I kind of felt as though I stood out like a sore thumb. I also have very few "casual" winter clothes. So yesterday I went out and, after some searching, I found three very nice "hoodie" sweaters at the Footlocker. The ones at Roots had giant logos on them and were going for $68 each. I'm sorry, but for a cotton sweatshirt, that's extortion. I got three sweaters at Footlocker for the same price, and am much happier. If I'm going to be advertising for a company, I want them to pay me, thankyouverymuch.

I borrowed the second season of Dead Like Me from gats yesterday, and am enjoying it tremendously. I've already seen a couple of the episodes on television, including the very first one I ever saw. Unfortunately, I can only watch one or maybe two episodes per evening, unlike the marathons I used to enjoy when getting a minimum of eight hours' sleep a night wasn't as much of a priority. Ah, well, I shall survive the horrible deprivation of not being able to watch six episodes of a tv show straight. :P

Okay, off to finish getting ready. It's 6:30 now, which is when my bus runs, so I have to ignore all the paranoid thoughts in my head clamouring: "But what if you misunderstood?!?!?"

Have a good day, all. :)

So, here's what I would be (according to one website, anyway) if I was to have a race and class in D&D:

( Cut for sanitation purposes )