blue_carbon

So, I'm done my first week of classes at RRC.

It has certainly been enlightening, if nothing else. Enlightening and expensive. Total bill for textbooks and uniform is... $1,445.00. Okay, maybe I have been complaining about it overmuch. I was sure that it would be over 2k. Well, I suppose if you add the $500.00 parking pass.

Thank goodness I got money for Christmas =P

Anyway, things have been pretty intense, what with the instructors wanting us to be in the kitchens sometime next week. I just took my Sanitation exam yesterday, after reading a good 150 pages of textbook. This is the first time I've felt bad about getting 94.5% on a test. I got screwed by a question about Hollandaise sauce because I got excited and marked B before even reading D. I can tell you now that won't happen again.

And so, here I am, slacking off instead of reading the next unit or two. It is really hard to balance my new-found desire to do well with my natural proclivity towards being a horrible slacker. At least I'm not in a location that supports League of Legends.

Getting up at 5 is getting easier with practice, but I find that I am, naturally enough, slowing down around 9pm. I almost fell asleep on the couch last night copying my CDs onto the new laptop. At 10. Nothing makes you feel older than getting out of bed three hours before the sun comes up.

Off to play Traveller tomorrow. Here's hoping that we actually manage to get some gaming in this time. I've been looking forward to rolling some dice for a while, especially since I'm not sure how much longer it is going to go on considering everyone's work/class schedule. Mike suggested that I should just flush the airlocks and recommend a boardgame, but I think that is just jealousy talking.

Speaking of boardgames, I've got a serious itch to play more. Sat down to a family game of Dominion yesterday after dinner, promptly got beaten by 1 point. I require more games to practice, damnit. And that is not even speaking of the game of Twilight Imperium I've had on the back burner for the better part of a year. I need to get people who can agree to play a 2-3 hour game at least a day in advance.

So, uh, is anyone interested?

I keep telling myself that I will update my journal more often, but I simply don't. I don't know why it is so hard to find the fortitude to write about my life on a regular basis. Maybe because it is a pretty boring life, overall.

My family picked up Wii Fit Plus, which was... disheartening. Turns out that I'm the most out of shape person in my family, weighing in at a whopping Wii age of 32. That is eight years older then I actually am. You can imagine that I'm not to happy about this. Time to, uh, make those gym trips a little more regular, I guess.

What have I been doing instead of going to the gym? Good question. I've been trying to get at least one game of League of Legends in every day. I like it. I've been going at it pretty regularly for over a month and I still haven't tried out all the heroes, and I have a long way to go before I can actually be comfortable with my skill level. I'm just having fun playing a video game again.

I've kind of slowed down on my reading list. After thoroughly devouring Kat Richardson's "Greywalker" series (which I'd recommend as light mystery/supernatural reading), I've kind of hit a wall with the next book in Jack Whyte's "Dream of Eagles". It is just too dense for me to get into so far.

I finally got my teeth into Devil Survivor on my DS. Certainly fits with the rest of the SMT series. I'm not very happy with the fact that it seems to be randomly freezing during Atsuro's walking animation, though. I've had to restart 3 battles so far.

I've finally dusted off my Facebook account. I guess that is why I'm back of Livejournal, too. After six months of very, very limited social contact, I think I need to get out and about again. It really is a useful tool, as long as you don't let it rule your life. No, I will not be joining Yakuza Wars, thank you very much.

School starts on Monday. I don't know if that has really sunk in yet. I'm ready (more or less), but it seems like I should be panicking a little bit more. Really I'm just looking forward to a break in the routine.

Also, I have a Croagunk. It is awesome and I love it.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/preview-knights-in/49496

A danmaku strategy game? I require this!

Too bad about me finding out about it so late. Apparently the preorder comes with an art book and a soundtrack CD. Also, it is an Atlas game and it has been out for more then a week. Wish me luck...

In other news, grumble grumble money grumble. I know with my current status as "still living at home", I shouldn't be complaining about money, but still. I'm going to be broke next week with my watch coming out of the shop, my car coming out of the shop, and my requisite bills being paid. Which wouldn't be quite so bad if it wasn't for the fact that my Visa is pretty much maxed out.

Do I really buy so much stuff? I mean, it really doesn't feel like I do. I've bought Small World, a Star Wars Map Pack, a Dreamblade booster, and half a Complete Monty Python box set. And a copy of the Lost World, Witches Abroad, and another discount book.

Okay, maybe I do buy too much.

Well, that is enough self-pity for one day. Time to go get ready and pay off some of that debt!

The chance of getting General Aayla Secura in a pack of Clone Wars: about 1 in 10.

The chance of getting 4 identical copies of Aayla Secura: about 1 in 10000.

Never tell me the odds.

So, do you ever have one of those days where you wake up at some ungodly hour in the morning and just can’t seem to get back to sleep? I have three good hours with nothing to do right now but update my Livejournal. Considering I meant to finish my update about gaming last week, I guess that is fair.

Hum, where to start? Twilight Imperium is awesome (as long as you make a few rules changes). I’ve always really enjoyed games that are A: overly complicated and B: very strategy dependant. TI is both of these wrapped up in a shiny sci-fi setting. Unfortunately, the game has a few glaring weaknesses. Most namely the victory point system, which operates completely independently of what is happening on the board. I finished the game with control of just under half the universe, and my brother still won by a long shot. The expansion, of course, should fix these issues; which is why I have it on order from Game Knight. I’d like to get the game myself, but it has a hefty $100.00 price tag attached to it, and, well, I don’t want to get it THAT much. I’ll see what happens at Gencon. The other real issue with a game like that is the fact that the game gets better with more people playing it, but the play time is already prohibitively long. Like, 4-5 hours long. I’ve have a hard time getting 4 people together at once to play something like that, let alone the max of 6. When you are only playing with four people, there is a lot less jockeying for position. In the game we played, there was about 4 actual conflicts, all between myself and Mike. Pat and Shawn were engaged in a mutual stare-down, as Pat kept playing the Diplomacy strategy to enforce a cease-fire, and the board was just too large to move an invasion force across.

Overall? I give Twilight Imperium 4 stars. Good times.

The best part about summer is the fact that people actually have time to get some gaming done. Nothing says summer like sitting indoors and playing with little plastic miniatures, I say. I’m finally in a D&D group that does not seem likely to explode in the next little while, which is nice (although this week‘s session was cancelled due to illness. And Rock Band). If the first two sessions are any indication, this will be a game more focused on interaction then straight up DUNGEON CRAWLING, which is nice considering the major hardon for combat most of the DMs I’ve had until now have had. So far, things are looking pretty rosy. I’ve rolled up an Illusionist with Evocation as my forbidden school, just to see if it’ll work. We have all the major party rolls split up between us, with myself as the arcane caster, a Paladin as the tank, a Bard as the skill monkey, and the face/healer shared between the two of them. We also have a Ranger who might, for various story reasons, end up under the proverbial bus. Again, we’re only about six hours into the game, so anything might happen.

Gaming aside, life is going as life typically does. Slowly. I’m still in mourning over the loss of my portable hard drive (and still wondering how it died), but I’ve reformatted it, and it is chugging along fairly well now. I’m putting a backup of all my important info on it and then packing it away for a rainy day. Something that messes up after two-odd months of use is not stable enough for everyday operation.

I’m waiting on word back from Red River on when I go back to school, although from the letters I’ve been receiving, I might not be getting said word until three days before the start date. I’m looking forward to it more and more, although I still get the nagging feeling that I shouldn’t be settling for a career in this. I mean, I’m far from the most disappointing person in the family tree, but I’m going to be on a completely different pay scale then everyone else in my household. I know that money doesn’t prove everything, but, well, I still feel like I’m a bit of a let down.

And yet I felt fine getting a theatre degree. Fancy that, eh?

Gen Con is coming up. Considering that it has taken Pat a few weeks to read through all the info on what is happening, I guess I should get started on that. If I want to get into all the really exclusive events, I should register for them… two months ago. I guess I’m just not taking this thing “seriously” enough. Which could be a good thing, considering it is supposed to be my big vacation this year, but the last day of Gencon the first time around wasn’t actually very fun. You can only walk around a big giant convention centre full of shops so long before you want to do something else.

I’m sure that there are other things I could possibly talk about, but I have two and a half hours of free time, and I’m just starting to realize all the organization stuff I can finally get to. I’m sure that I’ll be back with more info about something at some point. Or something.

Woof. Well, it has been a pretty decent weekend for gaming.

Saturday was spent over at Game Knight, participating in the Game Day festivities. You can imagine my surprise when I arrived around 12:30 to find literally every flat surface in the store covered in gamers. Scott was a little bit rueful that the first time he didn’t organize something really special is the time he got the greatest response. It was so full that I actually ended up running my game out on the street. Which was actually kind of fun. Certainly a good way to enjoy the weather. And seeing as I’m a nerd, I need all the vitamin D I can get.

The game itself went well, although I must say that I was not so impressed with the pre-generated adventure we got. The first encounter allows the party to pre-emotively kill the final boss (which they did), leading to awkward railroading to get them on the second encounter. I was also not very impressed with the performance of the Warlord and the Wizard. The former because Wizards seems to have built the worst possible character for the role. A whole lot of self-sacrificing powers from Martial Power that are good in moderation, but when you can’t do *anything* without provoking an attack of opportunity, you’re doing something wrong. Scott was stuck using basic melee attacks a whole lot more often then he should have. The wizard’s lack of effectiveness was mostly due to the player. Running your wizard into melee so you can pop a daily on the first round of the first encounter does not make for a good time. With all her escape powers and healing surges gone, the wizard was the first casualty to the boss.

The second encounter went well, more or less. The skill encounter was terrible, though. I mean, talk about railroading. It was a game of “chase the orc” for half an hour. And come on, you address ancient guardian spirits of a long-dead civilization who can be fooled by a DC-12 thievery check to scribble a writ of passage. Oh, and you can get special magical items from the ghosts, but good luck having the players find that out themselves.

The last encounter was fun, but certainly challenging. At the end, the only character still standing was the Rogue facing off against two orcs. Around 6:30, when everyone was looking at their watches to try and get out, said rogue was planning on circle strafing the orcs with 1d4 daggers until they died. 100+ hit points 1d4 at a time. I wasn’t going to keep everyone around for that, so I just gave up and gave him the win. I feel bad, as I fell into the Strategy Game mind set instead of the Dungeon Master mindset. After Pat charged the buffing Orc Shaman and split the group, I looked at the board and thought “hey, I can win this!”. Which is, y’know, not the way to look at things.

The party happened upon two orcs and an orc leader. Pat hopped down the cliffs to engage them while the wizard went and dropped her second daily. Unfortunately, the rogue accidentally ran into the main boss when she ran off to try and flank. So the boss pops up and the Wizard is too far forward. One of the Orcs is tying up the horrible warlord and the paladin is trying his best to keep him alive. The Barbarian is flanked by two orcs, one which can buff the other and, well, things go South from there. The rogue does the most heavy lifting (incidently, the rogue’s player was the only regular 4ed player), but really, the tank was ineffective, the Warlord was a terrible character, and the Wizard just got sucker punched by an angry possessed kobold.

Everyone left the table a little bit disappointed by the actual game content, but happy with the fact they actually got to play something. I think that was the general feeling from everyone at the event, really. There was some good natured bashing of the ridiculous railroading and lackluster character builds. I’d speculate more on the general mood of the mob, if it wasn’t for the fact that everyone had left by the time I got inside the actual building. Huzzah.

Sunday was spent playing Twilight Imperium, which I have a lot to say about when I’m less tired and sick. Oh yeah, by the way, I’m sick. Bugger.

Shenanigate: Verb. An action resulting in the production of shenanigans.

It is kind of sad that it took me fifteen minutes to figure out that sentence. I keep talking about updating my livejournal (because, heaven knows, I’d hate to disappoint my fans), but never get around to doing so simply because I’ve fallen out of the habit of writing. It is odd to think that one can get rusty with the written word, but that is what seems to have happened. The words just don’t flow like they used to.

Time to get back in practice, I guess.

I suppose that the most interesting (and that is using the term loosely) new content from my life is the whole cheese making thing. At some point, I’m going to start a separate blog with the experimental data and stuff, but sufficed to say, it is not going well. Turns out that most of the off-the-shelf milk brands have been fried so badly by the pasteurization process that the best you can get out of them is ricotta.

I’ve tried the easy soft cheeses about 4 times now with various brands from various places and, well, it has almost worked once. Oh, I can make some really delicious ricotta, but it takes a lot of chemical doctoring to get a curd together that can actually make something more complex. And even then, it is not exactly high quality stuff.

To those who have never tried making their own mozzarella (and I think everyone should try at least once), the idea is that you add rennet (as well as citric acid and cheese salt) to warm milk to clump all the delicious milk solids together, then you stretch it to get all the excess water out of it. Unfortunately, in an effort to save time and money, most milk companies pasteurize at ridiculously high temperatures, totally ruining the milk’s ability to form a curd. You can solve this by adding calcium chloride (the reasons for this are something I’m trying to research. Sufficed to say, it works), but the curds are still not exactly robust. I got about 24 bite-size bits out of a gallon of milk before the remaining curds gave up the ghost and fell apart.

It is fun though. A little frustrating, but fun. The fact that the difficulty increases exponentially once you move on to hard cheeses is a little daunting, however…

So, yeah. You don’t realize how boring your life is until you start trying to talk about it. I’ve gotten into Starwars Minis, but a few weeks of splurging has given me an army I like and no real incentive to purchase more. I have a bunch of Monsterpocalypse stuff that no one really wants to play with and a magic deck that is quickly becoming more of a burden to play with then a pleasure. Even Red Dragon Inn is getting a little stale from pure volume of play. I’m at a bit of a gaming low point right now, having burnt myself out on gameboy games and lacking a good cross-section of opponents.

I’m starting two D&D campaigns this week, though. I’ll see if that helps.

I’ve registered for the Culinary Arts program at Red River. I am excited at the learning opportunities that will be provided, but not so much about the employment opportunities. I mean, I like food. I like working with it, talking about it, learning new things about it… but I don’t really want to own a restaurant. Being mostly disinterested in the apex of the field I’m going into is, well, worrying. I need to do some research on careers in the field that aren’t aimed specifically at, well, restaurants. Or maybe not. This is what I’m going back to school to find out.

The fact that my brother’s projected starting wage is almost double mine does sting a little. Ugh, pre-employment jealousy.

What else is there to say? Oh, I love my girlfriend. And I’m not saying that because I’m pretty sure she is the only one that reads my journal. I’m saying it because she’s smart and understanding and the best person ever for 2am mutual shenanigation. And because she’s DM-ing one of the previously mentioned D&D games.

*dusts off his Livejournal*

Hello again, folks. I know I haven't been posting very much. Which is to say, I haven't been posting at all. Well, there just hasn't been much worth posting about. Life is pretty boring.

However, I finally have a reason to come back! THE PUDDING CHALLENGE. More accurately, it's the popover challenge, but, well, they will always be Yorkshire puddings to me. Although few may know this, I love a good popover. I've also recently delved into Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here For More Food". Inside is a very interesting popover recipe that involves, of all things, a blender. So, I'm making traditional popovers, new popovers, and buttermilk popovers to compare and contrast them. You out there on the internet have a front row seat for every step of the process.

First off, I'm mixing up the bruscetta that'll go with them. Tomatoes fresh from the garden, red wine vinegar, and fresh chopped cilantro. I'll be sure to keep you all posted!

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

Back from the first bit. We added Garlic, feta, and olive oil to the bruscetta, because we can't follow recipes :P

We've also completed test batter #1, the classic.
-1 cup flour
-1 cup whole milk
-3 large eggs.

Mix all ingredients in a large mixing bowl, whisk until arm falls off. While you're doing that, preheat the oven to 375. Into the oven, put a greased muffin tin with about two tablespoons of oil in the bottom of each one (or roast drippings, if you're hardcore). Wait for oil to bubble, then remove from oven. fill the cups up about half way with batter, then put back in the oven. Wait for them to brown, then remove it from the oven. Top with delicious bruscetta, and enjoy!

Right now we have the batter, which is about the consistency of pancake batter, sitting in the mixing bowl waiting for the oil to be done heating. You can see the little bubbles rising to the top because of the whisking it got, so here's hoping it cooperates and rises. Back when they are done!

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

Okay, batch #1 is still cooking away, nice and brown. Still has a little time left, so I'll start talking about batter #2. This one is just a little bit more complex.

-3/4 cup whole milk
-1/2 cup water
-2 large eggs
-3 tablespoons melted butter
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-1 cup flour

Add wet ingredients to blender. Blend for 10 seconds. Add flour to blender. Blend until smooth. Preheat oven to 450 with a greased muffin pan. When it's done preheating, take the pan out and put about 1 tablespoon of melted butter in the bottom of each cup. Fill half way with batter, add to oven, cook until pleasantly puffy.

The batter is done and sitting in the blender as we speak. Definitely much thinner than the traditional batter, and kind of... foamy.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

Okay. Alton's stuff is out. I'm... not that impressed. Batch #1 was definitely more pop-over-y. I don't think that they did well cooking at 450. Kind of... well done. Also, they just didn't pop up as much. I mean, it might have been because they just didn't cook as *long*, but... well, a point for the traditional. I will say that *none* of Batch #2's puddings stuck to the pan. Taste test is next.

Third batch is highly experimental buttermilk versions. I'm using the recipe for #1, just subbing in buttermilk for milk. I am making it in the blender, though, because that's just way too convenient.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

Well, it is the day after. All of the delicious pastries have been eaten, and the final opinion is this: the votes for the old recipe outnumbered the new one 8 to 1. Batch #2 came out more like a very greasy biscuit. Batch #3 got a fair number of votes, but the buttermilk didn't really make that much of a difference in the final product. That being said, they were as good if not better then the ones whipped by hand. The bruscetta was awesome, and considering the volume of tomatoes coming out of our garden, it will probably be tried again.

That being said, I've spent about half an hour scrubbing away at the muffing tins that I used to make the puddings. The one problem with making them, I find, is that the batter inevitably fuses to the side of the cup, no matter how well you grease it. Ah well, the deliciousness was worth it.

CHRISTMONKEY!!!!!

Well, after a illness, frustratingly long schedules at work, and a horribly placed major family event, I'm back! AND FREE!

Apologies to all the fringe people out there. Said horrible family thing kept me out of the country until today... I was really looking forward to some of the shows, too.

So, now that I have free time again, who feels like doing stuff?

So that big 40 hour training thing I had to do for work? Cancelled.

Of course, they couldn’t tell me until I showed up bright and early, ready to learn. Nope, that would have made too much sense.

I’m not sure whether to be pissed they messed up the scheduling or glad that I now have five days to myself. I think I’ll decide after a nice, long nap.

Soooo… who wants to do stuff?

*Dusts off his laptop*

Been a while, eh? Well, now that my life has slowed down, I actually have time to post again. This feels kind of weird, to be honest. Where to start?

Well, I’ve finished my fourth year of University. Woo. That means that for all intensive purposes, I have half a year left to do. It’s kind of exciting to know that I’ll just be up and done by this time next year. Kind of scary, too. Now that all the hard stuff is done, I kind of miss it. It’s a lot easier to remember all the fun times then the miserable ones. And I did Backstage.

Oh, Backstage. So much hatred for it. Seriously. I have never done anything that has required that many hours of my time except sleeping before, and there were very few things about it that I enjoyed. Stage manager wasn’t bad, strangely enough. You have so much to do with the project that you really feel like it’s your baby. There’s no other tech position where you get so far into the process… I miss the power, and the responsibilities weren’t that bad. Granted, I was physically unable to do anything OTHER than stage manage while the project was up. I’d do it again. Light op was fun and light, nothing really to do, and it still gets you invited to the party afterwards. Props though. Oh, props. Props was what ruined Backstage for me. You’re expected to find what the director wants. However, what the director wants is subject to random change. Trying to pull them aside for instructions and opinions is next to impossible, and if you don’t psychically know exactly what to get and when to get it, you get a lot of flak thrown your way. I dunno. Do I value the experience? Yes. Would I do it again? NEVAR!

Now that I’ve covered both halves of the theatre experience (onstage and backstage), I figure it’s about time to direct something. Problem is, of course, that other people want to direct next year as well. It’s amazing: this past year, we had barely enough submissions to run the whole season. This year, we have enough submissions to run the whole year, and the season is 4 months away from starting… Chances of me getting a show aren’t looking that great.

However, I do have four-odd months to get a truly awesome proposal together. The first step of that, however, is to find a play to direct. Um… ideas? Anyone?

Other than that, there’s not much to say. I’m working weekends at Vitran Express, which is nice. The pay is good for now doing very much. Gives me time to work on other stuff, like, oh, say, Livejournal posts. I’m hoping to jump up to five days a week as soon as possible, which, while guaranteed to drive me a little crazy with boredom, means that I might actually have enough money to pay off all my loans and still move out sometime around December.

Speaking of, I’m hoping to move out sometime after Christmas. Assuming I don’t buy anything too extravagant over the next 6-7 months, I should have a fair bit of change in my pocket. More than enough to get myself a place of my own. I don’t know whether to feel scared or excited… or maybe both. I still have no idea where I’m going to go or what I’m going to do, but at least I’ve got a solid idea of when it’s going to happen.

So, who would be interested in getting together for an game of Exalted? Some time over the next few weeks, I say we all get together somewhere and throw some dice around. More detailed information will be forthcoming XD

Also, I’m weak. Everyone should go to http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=554905836 XD

pasting from earlier boredom-spawned typing:

"Alright, so here I am, on Christmas night with nothing to do other than watch the Transformer’s Movie (which I can do while typing. I’ll just pause during the awesome parts) so I might as well start a gigantic LJ post chronicling my Christmas vacation and the life leading up to it.

So we left bright and early Saturday morning for a long and more or less uneventful trip down the American freeway system. Other than the immense pleasure that I got watching the riced-out, custom-license-plated Honda that cruised on by us at 90 miles an hour having a run in with a state trooper not twenty minutes later, there’s not a lot to report. I actually like freeway driving. Once you get past the fact that you could seriously damage yourself if you aren’t careful, it’s interesting. Definitely a better way to pass the time than making yourself sick reading a book in the back seat. Once you get into the city, it’s a lot less fun, though. It’s ridiculous how few people follow the speed limit. I was a few miles an hour over the limit and was STILL one of the slowest cars on the road. Combined with the fact that the only light you get on the road at night is from the other traffic, and you get a driving experience that’s better not to have.

Christmas Eve wasn’t that bad. Got up early for a Christmas mass, which wasn’t that bad, all things considered. I’m not sure how proper it is to have an eight piece band backing up your hymns, it sure as heck makes it more interesting to listen to. And the priest sounded like Kermit the Frog, so I was amused through the whole service. If I was a little more devout, the job of priest would be a pretty attractive one… write and perform sermons, research the bible, be an all around nice guy. There’s something to be said for spiritual leaders…

Too bad sinning is so fun.

In the evening, we headed over to my Uncle Dave’s house for a delicious dinner. Unfortunately, the pleasant dinner was somewhat marred by the fact that my hyperactive little cousins decided that stealing my wallet was a game fun enough to entertain them for 4 consecutive hours. They’re good kids but… wait a sec, they aren’t good kids at all. It’d be a lot easier to control them if I could actually discipline them, but I can’t help but hesitate when their parents are sitting in the same room as they climb up me. Also, dinner there is always good, but it’s inevitably rich enough that you’re sick for the next few days as you digest it.

So today is Christmas day. After an hour long breakfast with the entire 18-person DeFranco clan, we set into a gift opening orgy that lasted well into the afternoon. I didn’t make out to bad, truth be told. I got:

-The Transformer’s Movie 20th anniversary DVD (woohoo!)
-a new cookbook
-a new watch
-Priest vol. 15
-tickets to GenCon

Woah woah woah… wait up a second.

Yeah, apparently, my parents have figured out a way to spend their stack of airmiles while still giving my Mom an excuse to visit with her parents (we’re up to 4 family visits to the twin cities a year). They’re shipping me and Pat off to Indianapolis for a weekend of gaming and rampant consumerism. So yeah, not a bad Christmas, overall. Also gives me a date to have my various models finished by. I wasn’t planning on spending any more money on the hobby, but I’ve been handed a pass into the national tourneys…

Guess I can’t complain, eh?

This also marks the first Christmas ever without a videogame for either me or my brother. I’m scared…"

Coming whenever I finish it: an exact map of my family and how they manage not to kill one another!

Also, what's going on for New Year's?

Anyone?

"Every actor is just an abused spouse who goes back, thinking he or she can make theatre change it's ways"
-Something Positive

That's the short answer to my life right now. I promise I'll be back to tell everyone the gory details later.

Go see Beyond Therapy in the mean time. It's a good show.

There is a big long rant I could write explaining my current mood, but my internet died and ate it. Besides, you all don't need to listen to my pointless bitching.

Sufficed to say, Chris is not happy right now. I'm going to go retreat into my anti-social bubble of hate now, if you don't mind.

Sitting in a trailer totally removed from human contact for eight hours after not sleeping for a few days is not a healthy idea. I really don’t recommend it, unless you feel like facing up to your personal demons.

On the plus side, thanks to the extra shift and a half worth of work that I’ve done this weekend, I’ve made over $300.00. It’s nice, but it’s not worth the mental strain.

Now, if you’ll pardon me, I’m going to turn off all the lights and curl into a ball in the corner until my brain stops thinking without my permission.

PS- I just recently realized that my birthday is next Tuesday. I suppose I should start planning what to do for it, eh?

( cut for pointless angry ranting )

Well, I’m here again, wondering what people are doing for the next week or so. I’m working Wednesday evening till early morning, Thursday graveyard, Friday graveyard, and Saturday afternoon. Now, there are a few things that make this week special:

1- Fringe Festival. Anyone who wants to go check out a show, give me a call.

2- DVD marathon. I have some spending money again, and feel like hosting some kind of media event. Popular choice seems to be His and Her Circumstances/Kare Kano. Sounds good to people?

3- Parents and brother are leaving for family reunion this weekend. Yes, that’s right, I have the house to myself this weekend. Now taking suggestions on how to abuse this >: D

Well, here I am, sitting in a trailer on the southern portion of the Perimeter Highway, getting paid $9.00 an hour to type up a LJ post. Pretty freakin’ sweet, eh? For those of you out there in LJ land that happen to have vehicles, G4S still has a lot of hours to give out… feel free to join me. Just make sure to have some kind of entertainment handy, because it’s really, really boring.

I’m finally getting a feel for just how slack this job is, too. I just relieved a guy who had his girlfriend in the car and was lacking 2/3 of the uniform… So if anyone feels like popping over and hanging out, feel free. Only problem is that I need to have my car parked out front of the trailer and I need to sweep the site and call the office once an hour. It might be slack, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to leave the site an open target, especially when FRC is in walking distance.

Well, had a bit of fun yesterday, for those who might not have heard. I introduced my head to a sharp corner by accident yesterday, owing to the fact that I am both tall and awkward. Two hours in waiting rooms, six gobs of paper towels (wow… head wounds bleed a lot), and two ice packs later, and I’m the proud owner of three stitches just above my hairline. I kind of wish that I had a cooler story to go with the head wound… maybe I’ll start telling people that I took a shuriken defending the construction site from killer vampire ninjas or something.

It was into my second hour of waiting that I realized how screwed people are if they get seriously damaged outside of business hours… they had one doctor covering the entirety of the ER at the Vic. Thank goodness that nurses, for the most part, know what they’re talking about. 20 minute wait and I got sent off to the walk-in clinic to get my head put back together… As I was leaving the guy I was sitting next to at the Vic, waiting to see if he had a blood clot in his leg came in, saying that there was no end in sight for the line at the Vic, and he was going to try his luck at the walk in clinic.

As an aside, I’ve never felt any stranger feeling than getting stitches in an area with localized anesthesia… It was really kind of fun. Wouldn’t want to do it again, however.

Kernals is okay, as a second job. Not sure how much farther I’m going to be going with them, of course. Got my first paycheck and it was $57.00 (!!!)… If I didn’t have the security job to supplement things, I doubt I’d be able to afford University this fall. Gee, thanks for the position, but I’d really appreciate working more than 6 hours a week… didn’t you make a point of telling me about your exacting interviewing process, and how you never over-hire so your employees get as much time as they want? So… why are we overbooked now?

Oh, and Faye, one of the bosses is a obsessive control freak. She insists that I hand over every bag I fill to her to check the popcorn levels before I seal it. Most of the time this is after I’ve gone back to the bins to adjust the amount. All well and dandy, except for the fact that we have customers sitting there and watching as she adjusts things for both the people that I’m serving and the people that she is. Also, she insists on a rigid schedule of popcorn preparation, which is, again, fine until you need to serve someone. I should never have to make a customer wait while I do 5-6 different pieces of prep work. Blah

Well, seeing as the sun is coming up, I should finish this up.

Parents are leaving me the house tomarrow. Now accepting plans for ways to abuse this fact.

Not a very good update after 2-odd months of silence, but eh, I'll try to do better next time :P