Random Ramblings

It's been quite a while since I've done anything but gaming posts, and about two and a half months since my last "seven things" post, so I figure we're about due.

1. Work: Is having its ups and downs. Sometimes it's moderately busy, sometimes it's dead slow. My boss's last day is theoretically tomorrow, but I suspect he's going to stick around another few weeks until our Board of Directors meeting at the end of the month. I still have no idea who my new boss (#4 in two and a half years) is going to be, which is kind of nerve-wracking.

2. SCA: Speaking of the Board of Directors meeting, the specific timing of it conflicts with both Panteria and War of the Roses, two events I like to get to if I can. The fact that I'm missing both is kind of irritating. I will, on the other hand, try my best to be at Northern Region War Camp, where my house sister Alethea will be formally invited to join the Order of the Pelican. (Woot!)

3. Pennsic: As a subset of #2, Pennsic approaches. I'm registered for three classes: one session of "Your Persona in an Hour" and two of "Sexy, Silly, Scheming Saints." I'm about five weeks behind where I wanted to be in my readings of the Golden Legend, but I still have every confidence that I'll finish it in time to have new saint stories ready. I just wish I were going for the full two weeks instead of only one. I miss Pennsic.

4. Auntie Julie: Lyra is now just over two months old, and getting huge, at least comparatively. Still not doing much in terms of tricks, but definitely very cute and getting slightly more interactive every time I see her. Sadly, it'll still be a few years before I can teach her about roleplaying, but there's no rush.

5. Roleplaying: Obviously continuing full steam ahead. I'm in five games at the moment: two weekly (well, weekly-ish), two biweekly, and one occasional. Sometimes it feels like it's too much and I'd just like some free time back, but then I remember what life was like without gaming and I bite my tongue.

6. Cooking: Having done much lately except try a new recipe for "lembas bread", which turned out kind of like a cross between a biscuit and a cookie. Sadly, I've been sick the last week, which means I haven't really wanted to cook, and before that I was quite busy on the weekend. For good or ill, the busyness doesn't show any signs of abating any time soon, which means I'll have to figure out what to do about squeezing in "playing in the kitchen" time. (On the other hand, a few weeks ago I had a lovely time with my friend Eri at the Jean Talon Market and we made some awesome fish and chips afterwards.)

7. There Is No #7: Is it wrong that I'm having a hard time coming up with an appropriate #7? Almost everything else is pretty even keel, really. My birthday's in two and a half weeks, but that's gonna have it's own post, and there's not much else I feel like saying right now. So it's a sneaky "six things from my life" instead of seven things. So there.

Unlike years past, I did not have a true break for the holidays this year. Instead, I've got two 4.5-day weekends, the first of which just ended. Despite that, it was quite pleasant, consisting of many of my favorite holiday traditions. One of these is the Christmas Eve drive with my dad, brother, and boyfriend, in which we drive around looking at the pretty Christmas lights and listening to The Shepherd by Frederick Forsyth, and then we go find somewhere that sells donuts. (A far easier proposition now than it was when I was a kid.)

Christmas Day was spent with Ian's family up in Laval. I took a preventative Benadryl, and while it knocked me out for a while, it worked as advertised: I was able to spend two five-hour stints in a house with two cats, with only minor discomfort. Yay! I gave out all my cookies, which seemed to go over quite well. (Ian's cousin Asha was very vocal about liking them; her favorites were the snickerdoodles.) Marc and I got a few presents as well: some throw blankets, a couple of tear-away day calendars, two heart-themed mugs, and a lovely sectioned serving platter. We also saw The Adventures of Tintin, which surprised me by being highly enjoyable and a great movie to get in the mood for playing 7th Sea.

Monday I spent the day conquering the pixelated world of Civ IV with Eric, and Tuesday I cooked for the week. (Something I sadly didn't do last week, and my wallet is lighter as a result.)

Also yesterday, I went with Marc to Alpenhaus to celebrate our five-year anniversary, which will be on New Year's. Tasty food, good company, actual wood-burning fire... life is good, my friends. Yes, it is.

And now I'm back at work for a 2.5-day week, and then I'll be on my second mini-vacation. I suppose I should actually attempt to get some work done, huh?

I come from smart stock. In today's Gazette, there's an article about my grandfather, who just finished writing up a PhD thesis at the age of 93. This is the same guy who celebrated his Bar Mitzvah at the age of 89. (Link is to a Canadian Jewish News article.)

I wish the Gazette article had better copy-editing (my editor senses are tingling), but it's still a lovely article and it makes me very, very proud. Whenever I tease my grandfather about calling his USB key his "dig", I've always got at the back of my mind that this man wrote a PhD thesis in his 80s and 90s, on a computer, corresponding with some of the leading academics in the world. I should only be so lucky to be in his situation when I'm 93.

In about an hour, Marc and I are hosting breakfast for 9, mostly consisting of his family plus my dad. I must say, we're getting much better at this. This will be time number... three or four, I think, and we're getting it down to a science. Marc's cooking up the hash browns, the coffee pots are ready (though not yet brewing), the table is set, and now it's just a waiting game, really.

I like hosting breakfast, actually. (Who'd'a thunk it?) It's calmer than in a restaurant, we can take all the time we want, and everyone can hear everyone else.

I suppose I should get dressed, though. It's probably a faux pas to host breakfast for family in nothing but your bathrobe.

I haven't done a "what I've done today" post since Monday, and there's a good reason for this: I haven't been home much. On Tuesday night, my aunt from Edmonton treated Marc and I to a lovely dinner at Baton Rouge (yay ribs!). Point of note: the W hotel feels like you're walking into one of those movies where everything seems to be utopic, right before they reveal it's a distopia. That's what it feels like.

Yesterday, I was gaming D&D, featuring the exit of my previous character and the arrival of my new one. Within 2 minutes, she'd managed to make half the party leave the room, and 2 more are feeling distinctly uncomfortable. This has all the markings of some wonderful in-character conflict. Unfortunately, Eric won't be at the next 4 sessions (he'll be in Toronto), but that'll let me set myself up a bit for his character's return.

This morning, Mom treated me to breakfast and then I worked the late shift. Boo late shift. Yay breakfast.

I've also been doing more writing: about 2,200 words over the last few days spread over two stories, both of them only half-finished. Hopefully they'll be more finished soon.

Plans for the next three days: dinner with Ian, Kristin, and Marc tomorrow; rib dinner at my dad's country place on Saturday; character creation for Kyn's game Sunday afternoon. Sometime in all of this, I'm gonna have to do groceries, laundry, etc. I've decided I just need a pill that allows me to survive comfortably on two hours of sleep a night, and I'll be set.

Anyway, that's it for now. G'night all.

Hi everyone! Just did some more updating to Home of the Pocket Bard. I've uploaded the last two Pennsic diaries (for 2003 and 2004). I've also posted two songs. The first, "I Passed the Devil's Pickup Truck," is a silly little song I wrote for LC a few years ago. The other, "For Grandma and Grandpa," was a 60th anniversary present for my grandparents.

Enjoy!

For the first time in far too long, I woke up to cuddles. This made me happy.

Since Marc finished classes on Monday and doesn't start exams until tomorrow, I invited to join my mom and I on our weekly breakfast. It was really nice to be together, the three of us. It doesn't happen often, but I like the energy that we have. Of course, it's still nice having a "usual" at our weekly breakfast place, and having a waiter who knows us.

Got to work. Dear God, Glasgow accents and slang are HARD! Beat my head against a 68-minute file for my full workday plus 45 minutes of overtime, still didn't get it quite to the point where I'd like it, but knew there really wasn't any more I could do. So I delivered it, and I hope that whoever's reviewing it in London has a better ear for these accents than I do.

I rarely buy books, but bought one today called StrengthsFinder 2.0. I bought it mostly so that I could get the unique access code to take their online test. Unfortunately, the code only works once, otherwise I'd be happy to share. The most ironic part of the whole thing is that I'm so braindead from work that I have the results in front of me and don't want to do anything more than skim them: my brain is just overloaded right now. More on the test and the results when I'm less tired.

Now, shower and sleep and work again tomorrow. G'night all.

So, a long but good day. Started by heading out to Eric's to watch Babylon 5 and play Civ with him and Jing. In terms of B5, the Earth civil war is well underway and the Minbari civil war is over. One of my favourite episodes today, of Sheridan being sneaky. ("I repeat, nothing happened. Please remain calm.")

Then off to dinner with my mom's family, including some out of town relatives, and Marc. Chinese food. There was a bit of drama as we tried to figure out a table that was both acceptable and big enough for 14 people, but it all worked out in the end. As an added bonus, it looks like I've got leftovers for at least a few lunches this week. Yay for leftovers.

From dinner, my aunt and uncle kindly gave us a lift back to Marc's place, where we hung out for a while before heading over to Chris's birthday party. I was there for about 15 minutes before the following exchange took place:

Me: *sneeze sneeze sneeze*
Hooper: Oh, yeah. I forgot you were allergic.
Me: Wait, what?
Hooper: Chris has a cat.
Me: [insert expletive here]

So I took an antihistamine (which really should have been taken 45 minutes before reaching Chris's place) and hung out on the balcony for a while, followed by hanging out in the hallway outside Chris's apartment for a while as people decided to go smoke on the balcony. I'm very, very grateful for my new ipod and for video podcasts. Came inside for another 10 minutes before deciding this was a Bad Plan (tm) and chose to leave before my lungs stopped working.

On the other hand, catching up with friends I haven't seen in 6 months or more was... eye-opening. Friend A is moving to California for grad school. Friend B has moved back to Montreal. Friend C is pregnant. Crazy!

Many thanks to the people who replied to my camera post. I think I'm going to go with the A1000 instead of the A1100. The differences are not worth $80, I don't think.

Anyway, now I'm home and I'm not setting my alarm for tomorrow either. So there. G'night all.

After a lazy morning spent doing not very much at all, I went over to Warren, Blue, and JBash's (and Kaia's) for brunch. As is pretty typical with me, I was one of the first people there. But all that meant, really, is I got more time to play with Kaia, so I see nothing wrong at all. In fact there were four children under the age of four, which put me in "little kids heaven" for a while, though I mostly played with Kaia. Brunch was plentiful and very nummy. Warren made omelettes and I brought over Farmer's Market scones, which are super-awesome.

After most of the people had left and there were just 10 or so of us left, we moved out onto the balcony to play Lunch Money. The game was raucous good fun, involving radioactive nuts, a horde of neighbourhood watch moms, and an industrial dishwasher. It was a "had to be there" thing, I think. I won in the end, but only at the expense of my lungs, since we had relocated to Warren's room midway through the game, and Warren's room is where the wild things cats live. Sorry, lungs. I promise I'll make it up to you, but not tomorrow, since I'm going to be at Ian's tomorrow.

Anyway. Left Warren's to have dinner with my dad, my step-mom, Marc, and my aunt from Edmonton who's in town on business. We went to Etoile des Indes, which was surprisingly tasty. The waiter decided to stay at our table as we were passing all the dishes around, reminding us what they all were and offering such helpful advice as "have the butter chicken with the naan, not the rice." It was kind of weird, but I suppose it was appreciated. He did leave when we all seemed to be ready to eat, I suppose. Dinner was fun and involved lots of good conversation.

After dinner, I went back with my aunt to her hotel room to chat. I showed her how to make MOO cards and tried and failed to show her how to use SendOutCards (there was a problem with her computer). She showed me her pictures from India, I showed her my pictures from Europe. It was lots of fun, and if I'm going to be sleep-deprived tomorrow, at least it was worth it. Speaking of sleep... time to get to it. G'night all.