Time to start a shiny new thread...

<celebration>

We've got a new anti-vent thread!  Woohoo! \o/

</celebration>

I won my disability case. I now can move into my own place.

CONGRATS!

In reply to shady joker (msg # 3):

Mue Buena! (that is kinda like 'very awsome' in spanish, I think...)

While I was eating lunch today the solution to the vexing problem of how to bring about world peace simply popped, unbidden, into my thoughts.  And it's really easy.

Pizza.  With a fish and chips topping.

It would simply put everybody in far too good a mood to fight each other.

In reply to bigbadron (msg # 6):
*laughs*
If I ate pizza with a fish n' chips topping, I'll admit that I'd be too horrified and disgusted to even consider taking over the world as an evil overlord.

Still, There's nothing like a good joke and memorable food to bring us all together.

On another note: I've had some good news in a series of medical tests.
Well, "nothing bad found" more than anything, but I'll take that.
I've got a somewhat tedious and stressful job, but I'm grateful that I've got one, especially one with medical coverage, when so many people don't.
I've got a bit of "survivor's guilt" but I'm able to stay healthy for my family.

In reply to bigbadron (msg # 6):

I think the real question would be what cheese to use?

On the bright side, the temperature is so high I get to wash all the heavy bedclothes and hang them on the line to save money (no need to run the dryer).

Was given Orange Gum to chew on.... It made my tongue swell.

As compensation, I was given a box of delicious cookies. <3

Corrupt Bluray discs.  Almost lost nearly 180 Gigs of image data representing a huge portion of the images I've shot over the past couple of years.  Granted, it's a redundant backup, but the primary backup is off-site and difficult to access right now.

Then I discovered CD Roller.

More than 98% reocvery-rate.

Bloody awesome software.

After reading the wedding stuff on the vent thread: I am happy that for weddings, I only need the same suit I can fit in.

In reply to Wyrm (msg # 11):

That's what I'm leaving for today:  My brother-in-law's wedding, out of state.

I'm happy that he's found a great woman who loves him and puts up with him.
(granted, he was SUPPOSED to be having the wedding in Hawaii, but then moved it to Alaska, but I'm not bitter or anything.....This is about him, not me....)

Yay instead of November a therapy slot opened for me as of tomorrow. Finally i can start on getting back to work and drag my mind out of the gutter.

I have a million reasons to lament, but the weather is too good for me to chose any of them.
^_^

Just came from a staff meeting, all of a sudden I have a lot more shifts at work.  Money!  I just hope I'm up to it physically, at least I got the change I asked for, originally they had us working five shifts one week, only two the next, now it's more even.

<Anti-Vent> I think I'm gonna hop back on and join a game on RPoL again. For the first time in years :D Or, well, I think it's been years.

Time to go through the fun process of finding a game and character creation. I've missed this ^_^</Anti-Vent>

<Anti-Vent/Praise>

RPOL has a wonderful staff and I am extremely greatful for all the hard work, and the personal time, that everyone puts in to the site.  I joined when the site was at the start of its evolution ... when there were no 'changeable' backgrounds, there were no portraits, there wasn't a week that went by when some 'well meaning' individual didn't question policy regarding mature/adult content and the location of the games that held it, etc., and all the new users were asking for these things or the reforms.  jase and elSpike worked almost tirelessly on coding and design, and cruinne, Shannara, & Jhael worked tirelessly with them to keep the public forums running smoothly, set up and regulate the Adult games (there was a mass explosion of those), and get the portrait gallery going and organized.  And all of them did it without pay (meaning they were doing something else in addition to this site to support themselves) and while still trying to enjoy the games that they ran and played in that were the reason that jase and elSpike created the site to begin with.  As it appears that the only money the site receives is (for now) donations, I must assume that their time and hard work (and bigbadron's) is still given freely while they continue to support themselves and enjoy their games.

Very, very rarely did/have I ever see/read a harsh post from any of them ... and honestly, there were/are many times when they would have been/are well within their right for the way they were addressed or the context of the post they were replying to.  All I've ever seen them request from users is that we keep public forums clean and free of sensitive topics, that we be honest with them and the gaming community by posting under one user account, and that we report genuine breaches of the TOU (which have always been clear, concise, and readily available to anyone who chooses to read them.)  We're all extremely lucky for their love of gaming and commitment to creating & maintaining a site that is so easily traversed,that attracts good gms and players, that provides so many options, and we're lucky for their patience and good will.

In truth, the only complaint I can find with the site is that from time to time a user forgets how much the RPOL Creators & Moderators have done and continue to do in exchange for following a few simple rules.

Hear Hear! Agree with wyldchild 100% ^_^

So many good things today. OOhh--the comic book anthology I contributed to is on sale now, but have yet to receive my copy. Still--finally! I'm published. Just have to get crackin' on the next thing so I don't lose me steam.

I have discovered that organization makes a huge difference. I've always been a by the seat of your pants kind of guy but I've made a concentrated effort to organize my day to actually make some progress towards my goals and it's working. My games are starting to pick up, my eating and sleeping habits are improving, and I have a chapter of a rough draft novel written.

And that's based off using 2 and a half hours of the 16 hours I'm awake every day. Who knew that I had that much time on my hands? It's kind of an eye opener.

I decided to preorder Funcom's The Secret World (was kind of leery after Age of Conan but it looked too good to pass on). Yesterday I did my first dungeon with my guild. Despite only having been a member of the guild for a few hours everyone was really friendly, my tanking went awesome (which was a relief - I'm not good with dungeons generally) and the dungeon itself was so much fun. It made me realize that I haven't had a lot of fun in MMO's lately. I think I'm in love <3
This message was last edited by the user at 13:06, Sun 01 July 2012.

Made a few new friends, and found out that a shop not too far from me has a monthly sale of manga. A blind bag of 10 volumes for £5 just made my eyes water with anticipation...

Who'd have thought it.  I never got into MMO's.  Tried some, but was sort of, "meh".

Now, suddenly, I'm having so much fun in DC Universe Online that I've actually paid for a subscroption.  Shocking!  :)

So, I got one of the more unusual compliments that I can recall yesterday...

I was working as part of the entertainment at a corporate event, at an Old West photo booth they set up (we had an assortment of costumes...we'd dress people up, put them on a set, and shoot pics of them for 10-15 minutes, then burn them a cd with all the pictures, including several that were color-changed to B&W or sepia-toned)...

Late in the day, after a VERY long and hot time, some of the kids at the event had finally stumbled across us, and to their great delight, discovered that we had guns (most of them were props, and the ones that weren't, were not loaded...one little kid was really annoyed that there weren't any guns that he could actually fire, there, but after seeing the way he handled the ones that WERE real, even though they were unloaded, you couldn't have paid me money to put a loaded gun in that kid's hands...someone would have been killed, I'm sure).  Different kid, however, was in there, at least had the good grace to restrict his horsing around to the prop guns.  At one point, he was talking with a lady outside and thought he'd convinced her to take a bunch of pictures of him in just his normal clothes, with one or two of the guns (which he kept holding 'gangsta-style', even after I explained to him the reason why doing that would actually increase your odds of completely missing your target...)  She, apparently, had a completely different take on what the conversation was about, because he came into the booth to borrow a couple of the pistols and then when he was walking back out the front, she'd turned and walked off.  He pointed one of the pistols (toys...realistic size and color, but with the big orange plug on the barrel) after her and I commented, "You know, pointing a gun--even a toy--at someone who was just talking with you is a great way to screw up a first impression."

He shrugged, and said, "But I already made my first impression with her...we've known each other for a while."

Trying very hard not to roll my eyes, or give into my impulse to reach over and smack him in the head, I explained, "Maybe so, but everyone else that sees you doing it probably doesn't think much of you...you're screwing up your first impression with them."

Very much to his credit, the kid thought for a couple of seconds, and then said, "You're trying to tell me to stop playing with the guns, aren't you?"  I grinned and said, "Well, that's part of what I'm trying to tell you, yeah..."

He walked back over to the table, put the guns down, started to walk out, and paused and looked at me.  "You know, you're a real good peacemaker. I should get your email address so I can get ahold of you next time my sister and I are tryin' to kill each other..."

I've been told I'm good at settling arguments before...but never had it phrased quite that way...

My bro started saying that OotS is original, and that Homestuck is a generic piece of rubbish which should be judged by the awards it has won.

I got a good laugh out of that.

A partner at my work said I was a miracle worker in handling her trouble ticket. I was quite pleased.

Recently a roommat'es Jewish employer followed their genorsity virture by donating to us their 12,000 BTU air conditioner. Its replaced the cheapo 5,000 BTU $100 minimalist unit we got when we first learned a high floor apartment gets hot.

Happy to say we blew two fuses, a sign of the power it converts into chilling power. Found a different circuit and no more blown fuses.

12,000 BTU living/dining room
10,000 BTU in the "cold bedroom"
0 in the "hot" bedroom.

We also here they will dontate to us their portable air conditioner which will take care of me "hot" bedroom.

This message was deleted by a moderator, as it was off-topic, at 10:19, Thu 05 July 2012.

The director of the show I'm in has expressly ordered all of us to learn to play chess, as it's kind of an underlying theme in the staging of the show.  Now, I grew up playing chess...my dad taught me when I was maybe 7 or so, and we used to play at least a couple of times a month, until I was about 17--the Christmas Day that I beat him, 5 out of 5 times, he swore he'd never play chess with me again (it was a rare demonstration of Dad's competitive side...the only other time I really remember that coming out was during waterfights, where it wasn't so much that he hated to lose as it was that he loved to escalate things...)

Anyhow, we never played another game of chess for the rest of his life, and I think I can count the number of chess games I've played since that day on the fingers of both hands...so I've gotten REALLY rusty.  But I found a decent online chess game...I'm consistently beating its 'beginner' setting...although I tried starting out on 'easy' and got my butt handed back to me on a platter, over and over again...

But it's an odd way of reconnecting with Dad.  We had an awful lot of chess games together...and while the strongest memory of all of that is Dad saying, "That's it, I'm never playing you again," there's an unusual sense of...comfort?  I don't know, exactly, but it's yet another reason for me to be thankful that I auditioned for this show.

I just sold a screenplay. For real money. To a real production company that shows every sign of turning it into a real movie. Just a little one, true, but still, professional screenwriter! Woot!

Heh. I cracked a joke to somebody, and they tried to use a position of authority to make a "joke" back. It flopped.

Oho! Eees funny because their joke vas not funny!

Tired reference go!

Normally when I make the hour drive up the mountian to the closest comic book shop to where I live, I leave annoyed, angry, or down right irate.

Today for the first time in 4 years of going to Magic the Gathering pre-releases up there I came back happy, even though I lost over half my games.

Doctor Who marathon on Space!

Who! Who! Who!

Started applying for jobs yesterday. First interview offer today.

In this economy at my experience level and field? Even an interview offer that quick is cause for major celebration. Whohoo!

Ladies who normally cook are both out today so their son is hanging out with me. We got hungry. Since the ladies also handle the grocery shopping (my job in that to carry heavy things and drive them around ^_^ ) I run into the issue of opening the fridge and cabinets not really knowing what we have or what plans they have.

Staring at the options for a while decided to do a varation. Turned out pretty awesome!

In the big pot lots of maccaroni noodles with parsley for flavour and break up the colour.

In the frying pan two tins of corned beef, onions and our common spices like lemon & herbs plus some oregano.

When ready mixed noddles and beef on the plate. Guess its a beef casserole.

Dang! This was good. Very filling too!

Lad cleaned up and boiled some vegetables to have on the side.

Bonus... made enough that there 2-4 more servings so tomorrow the ladies have the option of not cooking for their lunches, just grab this stuff.

My company's kickstarter campaign got its funding, and I'm getting a nice fat advance on the next project. Life is good.

Got my Order of the Stick Kickstarter package in the mail! Every book, autographed by Rich Burlew himself. And beside every autograph? A little OOTS picture!

SO AWESOME.

*fanboi*

After a great interview Wednesday, I was told I would know if I was hired or not "Friday at the latest."  Sent the lady an email Friday at 5pm after never getting a response.  She finally answered today: I'm to show up for training Tuesday at 9am.

After a year and two months since graduation, I've finally found full time employment (okay, 36-38 hours a week isn't quite full time, but I WILL TAKE IT!).  I can finally start blasting away at this loan debt!  And buy things like the cigars, beer, and Gushers I'm currently celebrating with!

Popped open an outstanding Old Vine Merlot from Kestrel Wineries.  Normally, not a big merlot fan, but this one is exceptional.  Now I wish I'd bought a whole case of it.

It is not nearly hot enough today for the cold shower I just took on account of not having hot water in the house right now to have felt refreshing intsead of annoying.

This was initially going to be a vent. However...

It is not nearly hot enough for the cold shower to feel good. And I'm *totally* okay with it not being that hot.

*cheers*  Hurray for being so insane about the care of my own teeth that I might actually make it the four years I need to wait for treatment without any serious repercussions (I hope.)

My son can roll over.
My son can roll over.

I can say it one million times, I can see it one million times and it never gets old.

Got my laptop infected with a nasty piece of scareware. Managed to remove it.

The parachuting Queen of England.

Q E 2 my kinda gal.

This message was deleted by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 05:49, Mon 30 July 2012.

Yay!  My thrift-store box of Dungeonquest does have all the pieces!

Well, it's missing a d12, apparently, but we have those.  And one of the characters has lost his feet, but he can be replaced, too.  I've got a box full of pewter miniatures that would love to have his job, for half what we were paying him.

Discovering that you can work twitch-shooters slightly better than you thought. It's kinda yay. YAY all over.

'specially when Avernum has been wearing thin recently.

It's nice to have friends who know you well enough that you can make potentially awkward jokes and have them take it as a joke, rather than as awkward (telling a woman half your age that she makes you feel like a dirty old man sometimes is definitely a risky thing to say...)

Man...I can't believe how fast this summer's gone.  Seems like yesterday, I walked into an audition.  Two months later, and we're a week out from performances.  Been awesome, watching this stuff come together...and I feel incredibly lucky/blessed/what-have-you for the cast I'm working with...for a community theater production, they're remarkably professional about stuff, and everyone has been very good-spirited about changes being made, rehearsals sometimes running long, rehearsing out in the heat of the day, etc (the one complaint I've heard consistently is from the guy playing Treville...his teen-aged daughter is in the cast, and it's been REALLY hard on him to watch her flirting with a guy twice her age, even though it's just part of the scene...)

I'm both excited and just a little scared at this one...I've never played a character important enough to appear on the show's promotional posters, before, and if this isn't the largest role I've played on stage, ever, it's definitely in the top 3.  I feel like I've got the general gist of everything that needs to happens...I just need to get to the point where I'm not struggling to remember all my lines.  There's just one or two scenes where the word flow of my dialogue gets unwieldy and I'll say what I remember and as I'm saying it, think, "Now, I KNOW that's not the way that line goes, even if I'm saying the same basic thing..."

Four more run-throughs...We can do this!  (After that, there's an audience...)

I know, I know...I post these things in clusters.  What can I say?  A lot of good stuff happens in my life...

A friend of mine hired me to help her figure out what to do for her role as the Witch in Into The Woods (for those unfamiliar with the story, she starts out hideously ugly...partway through the show, a curse that she cast gets broken, and she goes from being the ugly old hag to being young and beautiful...and the change happens in a few seconds, on-stage...)  She was having visions of having to put makeup on and take it off and all kinds of stuff that would make the process far more challenging than it needed to be...

I came up with a simple, cheap, extremely effective option that didn't require gluing anything to her face.  When she made her first entrance of the show, the lady sitting next to me gasped in surprise...'cause she was REALLY ugly--a mass of gray hair with a massive hooked nose and a long chin that poked out past in, when she stood in profile to you.  It looked even better than I thought it would...and she had NO trouble with it at all.

I love it when plans work out smoothly.  I love it even more when those plans are the cheapest, simplest option and they work as good or better than some really elaborate, time-consuming, expensive, laborious options would.

The owner of our apartment building didn't tell us it was being forclosed on. We have to be out in 90 days. Why is this good news? Bank just offered us $2,500 to be out by the 17th. We had already saved up to move and signed on another place anyways.

TCM channel is doing one of their dedicated to actor days.

Today is:

Toshiro Mifune!

Wooo! Samurai overdose!

*goes play Shogun Total War 2 while watching*
This message was last edited by the user at 19:15, Thu 09 Aug 2012.

<GOOD>

I have been permitted to become a volunteer author on Christwire/Daily Bleach and write humorous articles for them!!




</GOOD>

Got made redundant at work...

Already had a job lined up anyway.

BOOM!

Just got a chance to read the review from our opening night.  Granted, theater around here is pretty tight-knit, so reviewers aren't terribly cut-throat...after all, most of them are theater folk, themselves, and it would be really awkward to end up auditioning for someone who you tore apart a week earlier in a review...

But, even with that consideration in mind, we got a great review!  Nice to know that, while we're having fun on stage, the audience is enjoying what we're going, as well.  That's what it's all about!

Last night I had a bolt of lightning hit very near my house. It ruined my fathers car, badly damages my mother's minivan, destroyed the phone connection box, threw 10+ pound rocks over 20 feet, likely killed a 50 foot tall hickory tree that stands less than 30 feet from where I was sitting at the time, and dug an 8 inch deep crater.

Yet everyone at my house is alive and well, including the outside dogs that usually sleep on the porch right less that 6 feet from that crater.

Makes you get real humble real fast when you see the power of nature.

I woke up sore and stiff this morning.  Why is this a good thing?  Because I got sore and stiff helping execute a show the likes of which have never been seen in this area.  And, all things considered, it went off pretty smoothly (there were a lot of things that I noticed that went wrong, but I was 'in the know' and on the inside...the audience didn't notice anything hugely problematic).

What's so special about this show?  Well...first off, we didn't ever get to do a full rehearsal (or even group read-through) of it.  It was at a public pool, and the producers couldn't afford to rent the venue for more than the one night.  It had high-divers, mermaids, aerialists performing from an anchor that was raised above the pool during the show, pirates, singers, dancers...

Man, when I start describing it in those terms, I feel kinda like I'm doing the initial pitch that leads into 'Spectacular Spectacular' (from Moulin Rouge)...

And I got to go swimming for the first time in years (and it was even intentional).  Found out I'm in better shape than I thought, but in worse shape than I'd like to be...

I found out yesterday that I don't need surgery. While thAt's good news to begin with for most people, it's especially good for me. I have a congenital heart defect, and at 26 years of age have already had 5 open-heart surgeries. Since last October they've been tracking some findings on various tests that were pointing to the possibility that my valve is calcifying, which would mean replacing it. While valve replacements are, at least as heart surgeries go, fairly routine, because of the number of other replacements I've had there would be a lot of very troubling complications. In particular there's a good chance the heart's electrical regulators could fail, requiring the additional installation of a pacemaker; and the surgeons would have to cu into the base of where the coronary artery branches from the aorta (itself more than a little risky without all the other problems). So anyway for the past year they've been running a battery of tests to determine what's going on, and evidence was piling up that it was as we'd feared and I'd need surgery. So yesterday they did a cardiac catherization and flouroscopy - short of opening up the heart the best way to see what's going on inside. And turns out there's nothing to worry about. There is some calcification, but it's minor and no more than what's typically to be expected. Oddly enough I don't feel super elated. I guess I was so prepared for bad news that the good news hasn't really sunk in yet.
This message was last edited by the user at 23:28, Sat 01 Sept 2012.

It was my birthday recently and over two days the Landlord of my local has been really cool, on the day I got a free pint on the house. I was out last night and he was equally accomodating.
I enjoy my local immensely, I really feel like I'm becoming a regular, even though I only really pop in every other day for a single pint. Really good people who have been great to me since I first popped in on an off-chance after a job interview to get rid of the post-interview butterflies :)

I had a deepfried oreo sundae. With a beer. COOKIES AND BEER! it was so cool.

They're saying that the weather this weekend is going to climb up over 15 degrees! ^_^
I'm so taking my friends to the beach.

i think i can touch type. this msg is done using the skills a lifetime of gameing using a wsad setup. so although i can just about write this msg without looking at the keyboard its quicker if i do and i keep getting the first hit of anything on the left hand side wrong for the first couple of strokes

still writing all this without looking at the keyboard has to indicate that without training i can just about touch type.

however i am starting to feel the strain in my hand from using my odd 6 finger touch typinf skills. (my little fingers still refuse to type)

This is the first official rpol post on my brand new computer!!!
It's a laptop that's not exactly top of the line, by any estimation, but it's better than the one I'd recently broken, and even though I need to get used to it, it's a darned sight faster than posting on my phone.

Now, if I can just get caught up with everything that I fell behind on.

One of my best friends has turned to me as a kind of 'brain trust' for ideas on what to do with her Star Wars game.  It went from me being an occasional player (she lives an hour and a half away, so being a regular at a weekly game just wasn't an option), to me making up some characters for her to use as NPCs, to me creating several pivotal NPCs that she's now running the entire game around (not that they're part of the group, they are serial bad-guys and mysterious former Jedi Masters that keep crossing the group's path for various reasons.)

Now, without any input from me at all, she's stumbled across a way for the bad guys to be working for the good guys, while still working on what they were doing as bad guys...and she's picking my brain for input on what each of them would do with the situation.  In the last 48 hours, I think we've exchanged about twenty emails, some of them rather lengthy, about motivations and attitudes and contingencies and what-ifs, and plot ideas for the party that may or may not be even remotely connected to what the rest of the NPC discussion was about.

Got another email message from her tonight, thanking me for all of my help.  Apparently, from what she said, I have, in two days, given her enough material for her to run her game for the next year or so.  (Now, if I can just muster up that kind of creative energy for my own game...I need someone to start asking me the right questions, I think...)

An oppertunity arose at work to go to mexico for 3 months shadowing one of the higher ups and I GOT IT.

I am crossing the pond and advancing my career WOOT

Roommates got a costco membership yesterday. Today begins devouring of those double chocolate giant muffins.

I got a letter today inviting me to take an aptitude test tomorrow for an accounting course I've applied for. Hopefully it will go well. :)

In reply to PushBarToOpen (msg # 64):

What part of Mexico?

An RPoL game that I figured would run for a year, tops, when I first set it up has been running for ten years today.  Happy Birthday to my game, and a big "thank you" to the players.  :)
This message was last edited by the user at 04:07, Fri 07 Sept 2012.

Happy B-day, bigbadron's game!

Yesterday, we won another game, this one 28-0, bringing us to 2-0 AND so far we have given up 0 points! This is football, FYI. The main thing, I finnally got in and got to hit someone NOT on my team!

Hope you pass :)

Got my first paycheck in more than 5 years today.

WOOT!!

Congrats! (for BBR and BE)

I think I passed the aptitude test for the accounting course. I zoomed through it and was the first to finish, but then I worked in the job (untrained) for 2.5 yrs.

It's a pretty good opportunity - study a certified qualification for free AND get paid to do it, but I need to think on it to be really certain it's what I want to do.

I applied late so may not get into the course during this round anyway.

I got my results from my Masters in Law back, and I got 60%, which nets me a Pass with Merit, and means I now have an LLM!

The list of letters after my name is now:

BA(Hons), LLB(Hons), PGDipLaw, LLM

:D

So, spent the afternoon and evening at the State Fair, with a woman who I'd really like to be dating...and it was her idea.  After all the times I tried to invite her along to something over the summer and had plans fall through, I wasn't holding my breath for this one...

But, sure enough, it actually happened.  And I got a chance to get a little more acquainted with her son (which is harder than it sounds...he's legally blind so it's been challenging for me to relate well to him.  While I'm generally good with kids, a lot of time it is, I think, because I'm willing to clown with them a bit and make myself look a little foolish, and he doesn't see any of that, so my 'primary weapon' is rendered null-and-void.  But he still seems to like me...)

And not only that, but a couple of other odd incidents that ended up being both totally unexpected and somewhat endearing happened while we were there.  Another friend of mine, we discovered, was showing goats at the Fair...and her goats apparently think I'm awesome, one of them just stood there and let me scratch her head for the better part of ten minutes--very much like a dog, every time I stopped, she'd step forward and nuzzle my hand.

And the baby lemurs that my 'friend' was so eager for her son to touch?  I don't know if it was because of scratching the goat, or what...but they decided that my hand tasted AWESOME.  I've never had my right hand groomed by lemurs before...it was kind of an odd sensation (I'm glad they didn't decide to really bite down when they were mouthing my fingertips...they've got a lot of fairly sharp teeth...)  And I think the guy handling the lemurs was impressed that I didn't freak out and jerk my hand back when they started mouthing me (these 'babies' were actually about five months old, so they looked a lot like the adults, just half-sized...)

So, all in all, three cool things that I didn't expect to happen.  I like days like this.

Missed the Legend of Khorra on YTV for the 2nd week in a row. Last time a power failure had mean the timer hadn't reset. This time they had changed the schedule. What is this good news? Well in checking for the new schedule it turns out ytv web-airs the previous episodes so I got to see the one I missed last week! yeah!

I'm not Hoshana!

This seems like a good night to be not Hoshana.

But good luck to anybody who is!

My eldest came home from college, and the family spent the day at local outdoor festival-type things in our town and the next largest nearby town.
I'm smiling.

Got paid my latest advance for the new book. Life is good.

10 years left until retirement. I can do it!

After a whole week without her, I get to spend the whole evening with my True Love. Two years ago I didn't even believe in love, let alone Capital-L-Love.

Never been happier to be proved wrong in all my life.

After a whole week without her, I get to spend the whole evening with my True Love. Two years ago I didn't even believe in love, let alone Capital-L-Love.

Never been happier to be proved wrong in all my life.

I love the block option on Rmail. :)

My steampunk mystery collection has hit #1 on Amazon Kindle's UK mystery anthology best-sellers chart. I'm not exactly sure how that works, but I think I now technically qualify as minor gentry.
This message was last edited by the user at 02:58, Wed 19 Sept 2012.

I Just Won a Competition at work

I now have the choice between an Ipad 2 or a samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 But which one do i choose?

I'm happy because I got into a web design course I applied for. Not only is it fully paid for, but I get paid to study it. It's like an 'almost job' for that reason, even though it isn't. Providing I pass the test near the end, I'll get an Adobe certification from it.

I start on Monday morning. :)

my firstborn has a job.  A real paid for work job that he got on his own without assistance from the school, etc.  1st day is over and he's still employed. On top of that, the hours they've given him so far are ones he can do and use the bus to get there.

I found a brownie!

Running at night listening to the Rocky IV score.

The Gorillaz.

and Jun Maeda.

and, well, music period.

Playing Deadpool in MHR and writing ooc stuff as dialogue, thanks to him breaking the fourth wall and cracking (bad) jokes whilst doing it! I really need to play him in more games :)

Reading a big ole' stack of Alpha Flight=:)

Finding proof that there are still gamers out there that want to just have fun.

I got a form signed yesterday in the city so I could begin my course (it was more of an ordeal than it sounds... red tape etc), only to just realise that in the process of sorting it out and getting utterly drenched in the rain coming home, it and my other forms for my course are sodden (realising this the next afternoon)!

Thanks be to ballpoint pens. The ink hasn't run! And the pages are now drying out.

Finally!

Got a rare, randomly dropped item that I've been after for ages in DC Universe Online.  A Green Lantern hoodie for my main character.  Been after one for months, but they've only been dropping for alts that don't have hard light powers, and they can't be traded.

Now, at last, my hard light using main character has a GL symbol on his chest...

All is right with the world.  :)

Had two of the performers I work with for our Halloween season at the park tell me about the number of compliments they get each night about how awesome their makeup and costumes are.  While I'm not responsible for every aspect of all of that, I did come up with and okay the initial concepts for makeup...helped put together all the costumes (and in at least one case, built a significant portion of the costume from scratch, including making my own modifications to a pattern so it looked right).

When park patrons are favorably comparing your work to the stuff they see at Disney and Knott's, etc, you're doing something right.  I knew the performers liked the makeup stuff...but it's nice to hear that the park patrons are impressed by it, as well.

(Now, if only the guy who actually signs off on everyone's pay rates was hearing all this praise...my rent went up this summer, I need a raise!)

My incompetant boss finally put in her notice after seven long months of ineptitude hell. I'm poised to have a pretty good shot at her position and double my pay.
Even if I don't get it, Ding Dong! The Witch is dead!

Gleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! ^_^
There's a new series of Museum of curiosity out!

Enjoyed a most excellent Halloween party over the weekend.  Even if I hadn't enjoyed the rest of the party (which I did), it would have been worth sitting through for the last ten minutes.  Been a long time since I had a good-night kiss like that...

Just discovered that one of my favorite book series (Tales from the Age of the Solar Clipper) has a new book out. I had more or less resigned myself to the fact that it might never happen. Great!

Did any of you guys hear about the man from Turkey who was planning a trip to India, but ended up going to Europe by mistake?

His whole trip was occidental.

In reply to habsin4 (msg # 98):

Ba-dump-bump!

In reply to habsin4 (msg # 98):

Much like the man who traveled the country with a hatchet in his mouth.

His trip was Axe-in-dental.

In reply to nuric (msg # 100):

That one does NOT deserve a rim-shot.

Sometimes laziness can be a virtue. Like when I just found a $50 gift card I'd gotten for my birthday over a month ago that I apparently couldn't be bothered to find something to spend it on. Time to order a couple things online~

In reply to DaleN (msg # 99):

He tried to find his way home, but he couldn't orient himself.  After a long Kuwait, he ended up stuck between Iraq and .....

Can you complete the sentence?  Because I sure can't.

Effie Trinket costume for Halloween so awesomely coming together.  Lady at the wig store sold me a discontinued $130 human hair wig for $25!!!  It's perfect!  I can't wait to dye it pink!

"May the odds be ever in your favor!"

Paternity leave workplan finished.  Assistant now has tasks to keep her busy while I'm home with the Little Squish for 5 weeks.  Looking forward to a relaxing, easy month-long vacation watching a 4 month old.  <gulp>

So, I was a little stressed out about my finances, this month.  One of my jobs wrapped up the pay period early, last month, because the accountant was going out of town, so that check (which really isn't for much, anyway) ended up being just a few bucks.  And since they've raised my rent, my paycheck for the first half of the month is pretty much shot in the process of paying that.

So, I hung on by my fingernails until my second check came in...and by the time I payed my bills (some of them overdue), I was down to just a couple of dollars again.

AND THEN...

I got the paycheck with the missing hours from the end of last month.  AND I got the check for one of the freelance jobs I did.  AND it was for more than I was expecting.  I've gone from "I might just scrape by if I live off Hot Pockets and Ramen for the rest of the month" to "I can actually afford to buy something tasty for dinner tonight."  I can pay my dental bill.  I can even pay most of what's left of the bill for my root canal.  And our season's almost over, so I should be getting a bonus check from my primary job in the next pay period, as well.  Been a long couple of months of trying to hold on, but I think I'm gonna make it.

last week my secondborn got a fulltime job.  Today, the house is no longer ours, we dont' have to send bunches of money back to pay for a place we no longer live in.

breathe, just breathe.
This message was last edited by the user at 22:14, Thu 01 Nov 2012.

Raw cookie dough right out of the tube on a rainy day.

Mmmmmm.....

In reply to Evil Empryss (msg # 108):

Basketball season started yesterday. yayyyyyyyyyyyy

The site got launched....

Five days of leave; catching up with the oldest of old friends; my besty's's firstborn's first birthday party and a 9 hour drive each way.

Oh yeah. I can feel it.

Day after Halloween, kids are at school

Addendum to Ginny:

Kids are at school and I'm home with their bags of candy. XD

Passed the hardest test in my classes yesterday. True, it may have been with the absolute minimum score possible, but it was a lot better than I expected to do!

I have just been promoted At Work!!!!!!!!!

Fair enough I have Gone From Trainee Design Engineer to Assistant Design Engineer but thats Still something And it comes with a pay rise!!!!

So I'm no Longer a Trainee I'm an Assistant I see Little diferance But i don't care Its still good News!!!

I love it when friends throw good-paying freelance gigs my direction, even if it is last-minute.  Going to do some fairly basic makeup for a video shoot tomorrow...eight hours of work, and I'm getting paid more than my take-home pay is for an entire week's work at my regular job.

"Why, certainly, I'd be happy to show up and glue on pre-made prosthetics and get paid a few hundred dollars in the process."

Finally found a way to take the vinyl Predator mask they gave me at the paintball game last fall, and attach it to a paintball mask (all the adhesives and tapes that I had available at the time didn't hold...managed to get it on there long enough for a good photo...but that was about it).  Going to see about coming up with some version of the 'Predator dreds' to finish off the headgear...looking forward to the scenario game this year!  (Hopefully, they do it on a weekend where I do NOT have to work...)

Free dinner for veterans and active duty personnel at the Golden Corral tonight.  There'll be a heck of a line, but it'll be nice to be back in the middle of my fellow vets.  :)

Saw an old geezer getting out of a beat up pickup truck today. License plate:

PLMYFNGR

Grandpa is full of Win!

Old farm lady in my area.  Plate reads EIEIO.

Her last name McDonald.

Trying not to count the chickens before they're hatched, but...

Sometimes it really IS who you know.  A college friend of mine (that I'd reconnected with via Facebook) offered me a job writing for the company she works for...basically, writing copy for a website that's promoting some new technology developments.  I have no idea what I'm getting paid, yet, haven't even had a chance to really look, in-depth, at what it is that I'm writing about...but I'm thrilled that she was impressed enough by my writing to offer me the job.  Never expected to get offered something like this.

And, to make my week just that much better, found out that the movie theater isn't changing any films this week.  My holiday schedule got SO much simpler with that bit of news (since Thanksgiving dinner was going to be 60 miles away, and the rest of the weekend was to be spent with friends another 25 miles beyond that!)

Not getting political or anything but I voted against the person who just won re-election here in the good ol' USA.

The interesting part is that I am a data architect who has extensive experience in the healthcare/insurance industries.  I have been bombarded with so many job offers in the last week it is sick.  By sick I mean good.

It seems that a hardcore campaign against the 1% just propelled me into the 1%.

Got everything I went shopping for at the Black Friday sales -- two of the items even cheaper than they had been advertised!  New TVs and Blu-ray players!  Woohoo!

http://www.evilhat.com/home/coming-soon-fate-core/

Very pleased to see this coming...  I'll definitely be kicking in to help make it happen!
This message was last edited by the user at 02:38, Wed 28 Nov 2012.

Forget the Lords of Winter!  Do it Gangnam Style!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jWN5Myxtwg

Sweet!

ETA:  This one's even better!  It has a singing face!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...&feature=related
This message was last edited by the user at 04:16, Tue 27 Nov 2012.

Life of Pi. I'm just happy that it exists. great art makes the world a better place just for being there.

My web design course finishes up in the new year and I'm considering whether to study another after it (they've got courses in Photoshop, PHP and other related subjects coming up) or focus fully on finding another job.

Maybe I should just sign up to a course and keep looking for work, but I don't like taking on a course if I may not stick around to see it through.

Just had a first meeting with a new writers' workshop group that a friend of mine is starting up.  We talked about some ideas for stories, about setting some easily attainable goals that will still get us to a good point in a reasonable amount of time, and discussed concepts like knowing your target audience and how to write a 'genre' novel without falling into the stereotypes of the genre.

I think this could be a really big...REALLY big...help for me, to get off my butt and get focused on consistently writing again.

I placed an order for heating oil today, so in a few days it should be warm and toasty instead of utterly freezing. :)

Finishing up work to go on a week long vacation with my beloved tomorrow morning sans the wee ones.   Good, good, good.

So, it's official, as of today (well, tomorrow, technically, since that's when the assignment would start).  I have a third job...freelancing as a copy writer for an online marketing company.  And I might have a big costume project to take care of in the next two weeks...find out tomorrow.  I have a makeup gig on Friday.  The last big hitch I was dreading in the script I'm writing (adapting, actually, from a fanfic story in a Star Trek club newsletter that some friends in the club want to turn into a video project) fell into place because the one person I could think of who used to speak Klingon with any degree of fluency still remembered enough of it to translate the appropriate lines for me.

It's been a pretty awesome day.  I wouldn't even mind if the costume project fell through.  With so many things going right, I don't want to get greedy.  Let the good fortune spread itself throughout the season, y'know?

My gaming buddies.

I'm taking an exam today that will (finally!) fulfill the last of my requirements to get a bachelors degree. I'm pinging off the walls from nerves, but I've gotten nothing but support and encouragement from all my gaming buddies. Some of these people I've known online for years, others are newer friends, but all of them are awesome.

Is it dusty in here?  I think I've got something in my eyes....
This message was last edited by the user at 16:09, Tue 11 Dec 2012.

My son is no longer sick and will get to enjoy Christmas!

Proofs for my paperbacks arrive today, and my audiobook is live in Amazon and iTunes!

So...I just finished the first draft of my first ever freelance writing assignment.  I'd be ecstatic about this, but it was writing a white paper for a technology firm (don't know what a white paper is?  Neither did I, before getting this assignment...)

I'm incredibly relieved that I've actually been able to glean enough for the heavily-jargon-laden information that was passed on to me to be able to figure out where to look online for other stuff that was actually easier to understand, which explained what it was that they wanted me to re-write for them.  I also feel like my brain has flowed out of my ears and congealed in my lap.  *grin*

But, hey...first draft has been sent in for a review, and it's not due until Friday, so if it needs some polishing (and I know it does, in at least two places, because I ran out of brain cells before I ran out of topics to cover), I've still got some time to do something about it!

I was just promoted to team leader! I worked so hard this year and I didn't think it was going to happen because of the crisis. I'm super happy right now :3

I just received reduced rent at my apartment complex, effectively doubling my amount of discretionary income <_< now time to pay off some bills.

Months ago, brother-in-law calls me lazy bum.

Yesterday, I carried out a 50lb. bag of road salt out of the basement and out to his car with one hand.

Tonight, he can barely move it a fraction of the distance out of the car, with no steep stairs involved and employing both his hands and with a lb less salt in it.

Win for ego.

ikr im a beefy bum too *high fives* :D

No zombie-pocalypse on the West Coast yet...

been to California....Zombies have been there since the 1960's.  how can you tall if it has apocalypsed or not?

Old Faithful hasn't Super-Erupted yet.  So I got that going for me.

East Coast is still here :)

Just passed the biggest exam of my life :)

In 2012, I reduced my debt by 21% of my net pay. We're not fooling around anymore. *Happy dancing.*

The kids went back to school today  ^_^

Elite: Dangerous is going to be made.  Now I just have to survive until next year to see it.

It just dawned on me that I'm trying to make prosthetics for the first time in about 6 years...actually, more like 8.  Considering how out of practice I am at it, it's been going pretty well, thus far.  We'll see whether I come back to edit this point and exult in having managed to get my first attempt right, or if I wind up venting about how I screwed it up...*grin*

But part of me is kinda tickled to just be getting back into it again, even if it's for a project that isn't paying me anything.

EDIT: (I warned you this was gonna happen...)  It took me a few attempts (lucky the stuff that I'm using is quick...well, relatively quick, anyway), but I finally got the right combination of release agent, mold temperature, compound ratios, etc etc etc to come up with two usable Klingon foreheads and a set of Andorian antennae.  Now, I just need to make them up (and figure out how to attach the antennae to the wig...) before the video shoot tomorrow.

Have I mentioned my procrastination habit?  *grin*
This message was last edited by the user at 08:01, Sat 05 Jan 2013.

A couple of things...

Went to put the Christmas money Mom gave me in my wallet last night, and discovered a check from one of my pre-Christmas freelance gigs that I had not yet deposited.  This is a two-parter...first, YAY for unexpected money! (over $200 worth of it!)  Second, it's nice to FINALLY be in a place, financially, where I don't feel like my first stop after receiving any check MUST be the bank, for the sake of covering expenses.  I still regard myself as living from paycheck to paycheck...but at least I've got a little bit of a safety net in place (how long that will last, we'll see...I've got a dental appointment at the end of the month and have a bill to pay off with the dentist on top of the new bill that will come from that...)

I also heard back from my 'boss' at my new freelance-writing job.  Considering the fact that I had very few of the reference materials that she told me to use in the style-guide for my last project (stuff the client hadn't bothered to provide for us), her one big note on it was some stuff that she had to change to make it match up with a layout decision that nobody ever told me about (and, yes, she acknowledged the fact that I was never given that information, either.)  She also asked me if I'm ready for my next project with this client.  I must be doing something right...

And, because of the timing of the first paycheck from said freelance job, I finally decided I could afford to buy the drywall stilts I've been thinking about getting for a couple of years, now.  These may open the door to still other freelance gigs, as one of the people I freelance for regularly hires stilt-walkers for corporate events, and the ones that she uses are popular enough that it's sometimes difficult to get them--and some of the alternates are not-so-reliable.  So, if I can get myself to the point of being confident moving around on these things (they should get here Friday), I could find myself getting some additional phone calls for work in front of a crowd (something I really enjoy, but don't get to do very often.)

2013 is off to a good start, I have to say...

Yay~ My professor fixed my grade and now I have the GPA to apply for my school's nursing program. On a side note, that also means I finally spoke up for myself and got things taken care of by MAHSELF! Woo! +10 Confidence! :D

I work from home, so never see my boss. And I only ever talk to my boss during monthly phone calls, or if I've screwed something up. Today I got a call from her, and NOT for our monthly call. Naturally I thought I'd botched a job or something. Quite the opposite: I received a 15% pay bump, totally out of the blue.

Cha-ching!

Needed a third to round out the pattern here, got one tonight.  Call it silly, call it vain...even call it pathetic, I don't care.  But I went to my friend's gig tonight (she's one of the singers in an 80's band), and while sitting there, enjoying the music, I noticed a woman on the dance floor looking at me.  And, for about the next ten minutes, she kept looking at me...even when she was dancing with some guy (or with the girl she came to the bar with).

No, I didn't go look for a hook-up.  Didn't even go looking for a phone number.  (For one thing, she was pretty obviously drunk.  For another thing, I didn't go to the bar to hook up with some stranger...never really been into that kind of scene).  But it was good for the ego, I must say, to have some stranger giving me smouldering looks from across the room.  I don't get that often.

Haven't been in this thread before, but seeing as how this is freakin exciting news for me, I figured I'd share with the lovely RPoL community.  I found out over the weekend that I'm going to be a father! Been trying for close to two years now, and finally the time is here! I'm' over the freaking moon and can't stop smiling.  Cheers!

Last Friday I asked my girlfriend to marry me and she said yes! I can't stop smiling either!

Got a new roommate. He's a good person. He is quiet, respectful, and doesn't find every excuse to blame us for his issues and problems. The house is peaceful and we're not behind on bills because our new roomie is responsible. I feel relaxed for the first time in a very, very long time. My migraines are not being triggered by 'broken' doors that are slammed day in, day out. Not one door's been slammed since he got here - proving that the 'broken' argument was yet another lazy excuse to not be a decent human being.

Getting a non-bad roomie is truly awesome. Congrats on that!

I'm gonna brag on something for myself, and something for a friend. For myself, I'm finishing up a bunch of freelance writing for a game company in Texas. It's nothing huge, but in the end, if I told my younger self, "You'll be writing RPG stuff professionally," I'd have been over the moon!

As for my friend, she, until this point, has been the soux-chef in one of the high-end restaurants in Chicago. She's not anymore... She got picked up by a different high-end Chicago restaurant as executive chef! I'm so damn proud of her!

Not really huge or anything, but I thought I would share a crowning moment of awesome I had in a DnD 3.5 game recently.

We were using Tome of Battle stuff BTW.

Anyway, we were having a 'diplomatic' meeting with the leader of an enemy guild. Essentially it was a bring a party of 5 and we'll bring 5, we can talk this out and if that fails fight it out. It was agreed that we would meet on the top of a neutral guild's tower so that no snipers or shady hijinks could happen.

The enitre time I am playing around with on end of my signature "double grappling hook" (just a 50 ft rope with a grappling hook on each end) while every other person there has a weapon drawn for safety. The enemy guild leader is clearly a bad guy and cops an attitude. So I start taunting him, poking him with the tool in my hand and then hooking his tie to pull him close and get in his face about his attitude.

Talks go officially sour (though they were already souring) and initiative is rolled. I go first and use a maneuver that let's me make a trip attempt and if successful throw the target 10ft and prone him. I succeed and throw him off the tower with my grappling hook still hooked to his tie and me still holding the rope.

The turn continues, the enemy guild leader spending his turn falling down (next round on his turn the rope will go taught and he'll get the chance to stop himself but he'll take falling damage from the hanging and I'll have to make a Strength check or be yanked off the wall. So on my turn (which is right before his BTW) I toss the other end of the double g-hook to his second-in command. Enemy leader's turn comes around and the rope goes taught, and he swings to the wall... but starts falling the second his feet touch in an almost cartoony way as his second rolls a 1 on his strength check to not get yanked off the roof and falls, taking the other end of the rope with him.

Both fell to their deaths. :)
This message was last edited by the user at 07:52, Thu 24 Jan 2013.

I was nervous about agreeing to design this show...I mean, right away you have the almost insurmountable task of trying to find period-appropriate firearms (that will actually fire blanks!) for nine characters, from the 1860's to the 1980's (luckily, it's only one or two per era, and not all nine in the different eras together...)  But it's a show that's intrigued me since I first heard about it, and friends of mine run the theater company producing it, so...I caved, and said yes.

Went home after the first production meeting and started looking for rental options, and the VERY first place I checked out had a couple of pages dedicated, specifically, to listing prop weapons for this same show!  And they had options in stock (not great options, but better than I'd be likely to find anywhere else at the budget level I've been asked to work with!)  So, feeling reassured, I pressed on.  Started getting nervous about some other very specific stuff...like a 70's-vintage Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket or cans of Tab soda.  First two places I went (after ransacking my own inventory, which got me surprisingly far) had almost everything I needed.

And, thanks to the freelance writing job I started last month, when I was looking at the gun-rental place and noticing that I really didn't like a couple of the options they had available, I was able to find a place that had some good alternatives for sale...at a price I could afford.  So, I'm expanding my own 'arsenal' by two blank-firing pistols, which I'm renting to the production for the same price that it would have cost to rent the sadly-inadequate-options from the other place (which will add up to be about a third of the purchase price!)

Stuff like this is why I feel so certain that I'm where I should be, doing what I should do...too often, really ridiculously large problems just kind of seem to evaporate as I wade into them.  Makes up for those other occasions when I feel like I'm barely hanging on by my fingernails and just scraping by.  I keep thinking I want to start my own production company...or, rather production design studio.  Stuff like this just gets me that much closer...I've had a lot of that happen over this winter.

I am getting married tonight in Seattle ... and I stayed at a Holiday inn Express last night ! Pretty cool either way !

I'm going to be a guest lecturer at an International Swordsmanship Symposium next month, doing a panel on writing Medieval Martial Arts in fiction.

That I'm getting to a point in my career where people want to have me stand in front of a room and talk is beyond bizarre to me.

So after getting an eviction notice due to a busted pipe, a week before Christmas, taking the next 1 1/2 months looking for a new place and being turned down by everyone, we finally found a place this morning.  My husband and I sign the lease tonight with the new landlord and can start moving in anytime  ^_^

*Does a happy dance*  :)  I feel like the world has been lifted from my shoulders, I can finally start to relax and calm down.

It's not quite as bizarre to the folks who've watched you progress over the years.

-------------

Anyway, as for my own bit of "yay", this may not seem like anything to be happy about, but I accidentally popped a filling out while flossing last night. The good thing, that I'm quite happy about, is that it doesn't hurt and isn't preventing me from eating normally. So I can basically just carry on as normal until I get to the dentist next week.

I only need to wear my retainers at night now! I'll be rid of this horrible lisp that has plagued me since I started wearing braces! *happy balter*

So just played 7.5 hours straight of Ni No Kuni after picking it up today.

Considering the effort it took to put it down even now, when I'm dead tired, I think I can say the game is officially very good.

Haven't really had one of those "sit down, play FOREVER" video game sessions in a long time. Felt pretty good~

Thanks to the horrible wind we're having today, I dont have to spend a couple of hours taking apart my storage shed.  It did it for me :)

Just got back from the dentist.  No new issues to report!  And I've got an appointment for late March (the first time I'll have some downtime to recover!) to take care of two of the three issues that are still pending (a replacement for a chipped filling and taking out a wisdom tooth...)

Effective tomorrow, I have been married 21 years!  Officially more than 1/2 my life in wedded bliss!  :)

Okay, I realize that getting excited over a one-night-a-week, usually-2-to-4-hours-a-night job is kinda silly, but I am, anyway.  Not because I got it...I've had it for years (I'm the guy who changes out the films when we get new titles at the local movie theater).  I was about to lose it, however, because they're upgrading to digital which means my job will cease to exist.

However, they've been so impressed with my work ethic and reliability that they want to keep me around...and THAT is what excites me.  I don't know if they feel the same way, but they've become kind of 'extended family' for me, and I've really grown fond of showing up at the theater and having some part of that be 'mine'...my domain and responsibility.  So, they're training me for some new positions and keeping me on after the transition.

Nice to be appreciated enough that they'll ask you to stick around.  Even nicer that they didn't just assume, either...gave me the option, up front, to walk away when they changed over.  Wish my other, 'day' job was anywhere near as cool in how they treat employees...

I forgot how exciting it is to get ready for a trip. ^_^

Snog vs. The Faecal Juggernaut of Mass Culture

The name of that album just makes me happy


What i've heard off of it is pretty good as well.
This message was last edited by the user at 18:03, Wed 06 Feb 2013.

Just made my first bottle mold (working on a show that needs break-away bottles, and for the cost of three of them, I bought a mold kit and all the supplies to cook up a supply of them.)  Had a bad moment this morning...I mixed up the silicone for the mold LATE last night, and the instructions said it should be cured in five hours.  Apparently, having my apartment 5-10 degrees below their suggested working temperature equates to several more hours of curing time for the silicone, because it wasn't quite done setting up when I woke up this morning.  Been stalling going into work so I could get the whole thing ready for the next step, but we're good to go now.

The weird stuff I end up doing in my career field...last night's other project was making a fake chicken drumstick (to go with the fake hamburger I made two nights ago...)

Couldn't you have just bought some from KFC?  :p

Rolling a d100 because your GM demands a die roll, and you land on a 42.


So long and thanks for all the fish!

The 9000 things I'm not allowed to do in an RPG thread on this very forum... It's anecdotes have been getting a smile out of me recently ^^

Homeless hatchet surfer dude.  There's still heroes in the world.

Also, smash, smash suhmash!!

This is a post-script to my earlier Vent...

Second time around?  SOOOO much better.  Still lots of room for improvement (I think I cooked the batch up too quickly, the color's a little off and they say heating it up too fast caramelizes it and turns it brown.  But the details came out beautifully!)

I just added another skill to my array of abilities that would be almost useless in any other field...in theater, they make me the go-to guy when you've got a weird project and don't know how to get it done.  I'll have to write in a bit about busting bottles over someone's head for my friend's fan-film, now that I know how to make the bottles...*grin*

Got a job interview tomorrow. Sure it's just for a call center that will hire pretty much anyone, but still... in this economy and with the local job market being one of the worst in my part of the country any job is welcome.

I've been trying to find employment here for 3 years now and it looks like I might finally have a chance of getting one. Wish me luck!
This message was last edited by the user at 03:00, Tue 12 Feb 2013.

This is jumping the gun just a little bit, but...

Got my birthday plans nailed down tonight.  I'm turning 45, so I wanted to do something memorable (at 40, the burlesque troupe I design for pulled me up on stage at one of their shows and had the whole audience sing 'Happy Birthday', so this milestone has to be unique to stand out in its own right...)

Found out that the tour of 'Evil Dead: The Musical' is performing locally on my birthday!  Got my ticket (in the Splatter Zone, of course!) tonight...and some friends of mine, who own an old church house that they've been renovating, and LOVE to host big parties, gave me the okay for an after-party at their place.  Karaoke...maybe some hot tub time...who knows what might happen there?  (This is the same place where, just a few months ago, I played Spin The Bottle for the first time in my life, so it could be an interesting night!)

I don't usually make much of my birthday...because, usually, anything that I plan falls through in a spectacular fashion.  The circle of friends I've built here in the area over the past four or five years?  They've actually been consistent enough that I dare try and throw an occasional party or two...so I'm guardedly optimistic about this one.  But, I suspect, even if the afterparty completely fell through, the show on my birthday would be awesome enough.  Never thought I'd be excited to be turning 45...*grin*

'Tis better to reach 45 than not. So Happy Birthday then, even if you're contributing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. (But breathe on a plant; its gratitude will increase our karma.)

P.S. Is it sexist that there is "karma" but no "karpa"? Wrong again; Karpa is a village in Poland. Couldn't sleep so wound up writing, in this post, my contribution to the welfare of humankind.

Yeah, getting older has its drawbacks...but it beats the alternative.  I'll keep doing my best to stir up good karma...maybe add a few more houseplants to the one that I've somehow managed to not kill off over the winter, but I think I'm done rescuing birds with broken wings for a while...the one I adopted is MESSY.  I keep finding little feathers all over the place...

(And I'd never considered the 'karma vs. karpa' question before.  Thank you for enlightening me...*grin*)

I found someone I used to go to school with years ago using FB.  I love Karma  ^_^

Like karma, synchronicity is interesting. It could be anything, but that thing will crop up time and time again in some form or another.

And then there's running into people you know when the odds are very slim (a person msgs you out of a web site of thousands, and after talking you realise you already know each other).
This message was last edited by the user at 01:24, Wed 13 Feb 2013.

Happy birthday, facemaker!  And 45 is a very good age, enjoy it.

*wishes she were 45*  *sigh*

I got the job I previously mentioned! Also, though the schedule will require that I take the bus to work, I just so happen to live only a mile away from the central hub of the bus system, where all routes depart from. So I have an easy ride to work and can get in some exercise on my way to work every day. Boss.

Sadly, I have to work Sundays, which no buses run on, so I'll have to arrange something there. All in all though, good goings on.
This message was last edited by the user at 06:26, Thu 14 Feb 2013.

Congrats on the new job!  Always a good thing to hear someone getting a job that they wanted...

Preview night...the (almost) culmination of weeks of effort by an awful lot of people.  We only had a scant handful of people show up for it...but it went really well.  Not flawless, by any means...but there were no 'the show's gone completely off the rails' moments, either, and most of the foul-ups were things that the average audience member wouldn't notice, except to say, maybe, "Well, THAT was an odd choice for a sound/light/music cue..." or wonder why there wasn't something more in this spot or that spot.

But, for me, the best part of the night was the director's note, after the show, that even though the breakaway bottles I made aren't completely clear, they're still working right and getting the reaction we want from the audience, so I don't need to worry about it if they're a little amber-colored.  That's good, because I came home and whipped up a batch of the sugar glass...which caramelized on me.  So, they're gonna be amber/brown.

Now I just need to wrap up a truckload of props and costumes for a dress rehearsal for someone else for tomorrow night...

Not only is my rabbit fine (I was worried about her and wrote in the vent thread), but I just passed my Photoshop certification with 95%.

Rarely does my husband surprise me for any holiday or birthday.  He just doesn't have it in him to think outside the box.

Well yesterday was a first.  Not only did he get me tickets to participate in Run For Your Lives again this year but also got me Jesus Culture tickets.

Woot!

(odd combination, I know!)

I did it.  Two shows, same weekend.  It's likely that none of you will be around to do anything about it...but just in case--if you hear me talking about designing for two shows that are running concurrently, stop me, right there.

(But, y'know, it's satisfying to know that I managed it.  Granted, I ended up overdrawn on my bank account because of last minute problems, and would likely have been stuck WAY up a creek without a paddle had it not been for a snafu at my movie-theater job...one of the few times where something going wrong has actually been a benefit...but I pulled it off, bad shoulder and all.)

Now, I just need to catch up on two weeks of severely insufficient sleep...*grin*

Ahhh! I have a pen pals in The Netherlands and Russia now! Snail mail pen pals!! So cool~! :D

I suppose there are much worse things that waitress could have decided to nickname me.

I'm now known in a Canadian Irish Bar as "Rocker Dude."

I need to remember that my fellow authors have holes in their ankles. Drink with them at thine own risk.

This gen the PS3 really won me over with its quality exclusives, and the Infamous games were my absolute favourites. However, the ending to Infamous 2 created a situation in which no sequel seemed likely. When announcing the PS4, Sony also announced a new Infamous title which has made me super happy :3

I have found a perfume that smells just like blueberry waffles.

I think my 2013 signature scent will be Breakfast. :)

My boss is no longer calling me to tell me my work is lagging behind when it's finished before the end of the day anyway ^^

Yeah... bit of a slow starter in the morning XD

Today I have an appointment for having pictures taken with two of my godchildren.  :)

I got my new biometric pistol safe from FedEx today.. approximately two months before I get my first pistol, to allow for adequate testing time of the safe.

The best part is the picture I took of my cat right after he crawled inside. :D

It's a bad news/good news kinda thing, but I'm going to focus on the good aspects of it...

Finally got to a doctor yesterday and got my shoulder checked out.  What I was afraid might be a rotator cuff injury or rheumatoid arthritis is, actually, most likely just severe tendonitis and/or bursitis, and should be cleared up with some anti-inflammatory meds and physical therapy.  The other potential health concerns I had, in talking to the doctor (first non-emergency doctor visit I've had in over two decades), are all things to be noted, but not necessarily concerned about, as none of them sounded severe enough to be alarming and/or I could describe specific conditions that caused them (like my migraines).

The ironic thing?  The day after the visit, I'm coming down with a serious cold...

My grades were finally changed, finally another worry off my shoulders. ^___^

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 196):

Glad it's not a rotator cuff problem, but I'd suggest when you're in therapy, you ask for some guidelines/exercises for that too.  In your line of work, I'd expect you to be at risk, and some pre-knowledge might avoid that.

And if it wasn't so soon after, I'd say you caught the cold at the doctor's - prime place for exposure!

For myself - had a lovely evening last night with my sisters and daughter, in honour of my mother's birthday.  She died in the fall, but we had always done this (and several others have birthdays around this time), so we've decided to continue the tradition, and it was a great idea!

In reply to Brianna (msg # 198):

No, I'm pretty sure how I ended up with the cold, and it wasn't the doctor's office.  Both Friday and Saturday nights last week, I didn't get to bed until about 6 am, and had been frantically scrambling to get props finished for one show and costumes finished for another.  Between the lack of sleep from those two nights, and the natural post-production letdown, I'm actually surprised I'm not more sick than I am now.

But it was worth it...*grin*

Thank the goddess for backups. :)

I got offered an interview for an internship today. While it's not quite as good as a job interview, it still sounds like it might be a good opportunity.

My Neighbor finally dumped her cheating boyfriend

Had my annual review today and got a 5 (scale 1 to 5) on one of my review tasks. My boss who in my best estimation is a truthful person said that I have been the only person ever to be given a 5 by him for something. Man that sure feels good. Rest of review was good so hopefully I'll remain gainfully employed for a bit longer. :)

I'm not currently on fire.

My puppy came home after running away.

In reply to Dottie_V (msg # 205):

Awesome!

On my own note I am finally feeling somewhat human after weeks of letting my knee heal after a dislocation and several days of my stomach going on revolt. I've managed to eat, sleep, and walk with only a small amount of pain today. It's not much but I'll take it.

:)

I'm reading the Chronicles of Amber and really enjoying them. I'm up to book 4 in a week or less. My games may be suffering slightly, but wow they're good books. :)

Heh...so, our local movie theater just upgraded to digital projection equipment.  A couple of months ago, I was very nervous about the change, because my job at the theater was all about handling the film (I wasn't actually the projectionist, as we didn't have any specific individual for that...I did the film-building--joining the individual reels together, putting the trailers in place, etc--and taking it all apart after we were done and ready to ship it back to the distributors).

In the course of a couple of days, I've gone from being one of the least-educated people on the projection gear to being one of the most knowledgeable, as I'm the only one who's been trained how to put everything together in the new system and I was the only one who was able to be present for all of the training stuff we did between yesterday and today.  Any lingering concerns I had about my job security were cleared up tonight when the manager informed me that she was telling everyone, "If something goes wrong or doesn't start up, call HIM first.  If he can't help you, call me and I'll call the company..."

It's a family-run theater, and I've commented to several people that they've made me feel like I'm part of the family, there.  Now, moreso than ever.  Nice to have a place where your value is truly appreciated...

So I spent the whole day in an amusement park and not once did I have a panic attack nor did I faint when I was forced onto an amazingly high and twisty roller coaster. Yay~! ^___^

Literally more good stuff from the movie theater...

Got a pay raise on my last check...and not just a little one, either.  They increased my pay by 20%.  Granted, it's not like I'm getting paid a phenomenal amount to start with...but this actually makes this the second-highest hourly wage I remember earning (for regular work...if you count the occasional event that I've worked as a makeup artist, it become the fourth or fifth highest wage, but those were one-night affairs and not on-going positions.  And, actually, since the highest hourly wage I recall earning was a short-term scenic art job, I guess it should also be disqualified in that regard).

AND--I was saddened by the death of my DVD player a couple of weeks ago, but I finally got paid for my design job and bought a Blu-Ray player to replace it.  Problem is, my TV is old enough that it doesn't have HDMI inputs, and the BD player ONLY had HDMI outputs.  So, what did I do?

Asked my boss if I could trade my brand-new Blu-Ray player for the old one at the theater (which was old enough to have standard AV outputs, as well as HDMI).  So, I am once again able to enjoy my movie collection.  (My only complaint is, this player doesn't have a repeat-play function on it.  That's probably for the best, however, as I killed the DVD player prematurely with my tendency to put a disc on repeat and just leave it going for days or even weeks at a time, turning the TV on for background noise.  No longer an option!)

So the month of March has turned out to be pretty rough for me.  I got a $300 ticket, my car broke down, and my youngest needs minor surgery.  And we got more snow.  But through all the stresses Ive encountered I have remained 14 months smoke free  ^_^  YAY ME!

http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesom...-places-in-the-world

Some gorgeous shots of abandoned sites. WWII fortresses in the English Channel, sunken boats in Antarctica, abandoned hotels on cliffsides in Colombia and sunken Jesus.

In a little over six and a half hours, I will no longer be 44.  Some would ask why this is something to be excited about, but I'll try and elaborate, just a bit...

At an age when a lot of men are starting to exhibit signs of potentially serious health issues, I recently got a clean bill of health from the doctor (after the first visit to a doctor in 25 years).  My blood pressure was marginal, but I'd been in full-on 'production mode' while working on a show (which involved me drinking anywhere from 3-6 cans of caffeinated soda daily), and I was also coming down with what proved to be a pretty nasty cold.

If this pattern holds true, I should still have a few years before I actually hit 'mid-life'...my aunt passed away at age 90, I have an uncle who's still alive and a little past that, on my dad's side of the family.  On my mom's side, my grandpa was in his late 80's or early 90's when he finally said his final goodbyes to the world.

People I went to high school with are starting to look at slowing down and taking it easy, and I feel like I'm finally getting up to speed.  :D  Time is being pretty good to me.

The films of Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and Studio Ghibli, not to mention Akira Kurosawa.

The designer of School Daze and One Shot is at my house, and we are having crabs for dinner. Yumm ..

I was feeling quite down but hubby cheered me up with a hug and a friend cheered me up with a really dirty joke.

:) I'm really glad to have such wonderful people in my life (occasionally wielding terrible yet funny jokes).
This message was last edited by the user at 01:10, Tue 09 Apr 2013.

Didn't count on a bonus this quarter but we did get one. Yay! :D

My 6 year old was being picked on yesterday morning while getting on the bus for school.  Her big sister turned around and stood up for her telling the bullies to leave her little sister alone.  They sat together on the bus to school, and I got to see with my own eyes the love between them.  I know I raised good girls. :)

Got to experience first-hand the fact that not every tooth removal has to be an excruciating and arduous process.  They spent more time fixing a bad filling (originally done in acrylic, but it started cracking pieces off, so they replaced it with amalgam)...shoot, they spent almost as much time actually getting a good X-ray of the tooth that was coming out.  Glad to have it gone...should have a lot fewer toothaches (and headaches!)

And I was even dollars enough ahead that I could afford to pay for it in one lump, as well as the prescription meds to help with the aftermath.

Holy cow, the dice roller decided to like me for once!

I had a giggle fit at the most inopportune time ever, which made me laugh even more, which got me into trouble...


I REGRET NOTHING!!

I wasn't going to apply for anymore internships, but there is one that's just a few minutes walk from where I live. It means I probably wouldn't need to spend any money on transport and it's a 9 month internship so should be somewhat stable.

While I have my name down for a full-time course starting next month, it would only run for a few months and then I'd be wondering what I'm doing again (though I am really interested in the subject). So, I'm going to apply for this.

I know I was only venting about internships in the vent thread the other day, but I'm weighing up possibilities.

So, I was really nervous when I got the email from my auto insurance company, because I haven't paid them yet, but I had a gig today that required me to drive some twenty-five miles each way.  So, I promised myself that I would do nothing that would necessitate referencing my insurance (like getting pulled over or having an accident).

Got home, finally decided I better check the message.  It's a cancellation WARNING, not the actual notice.  The actual cancellation doesn't kick in until a little over a week after my next payday...and I can get paid up by then.  I'd have been fine, money-wise, if I hadn't had a $200 dental bill last week for the wisdom tooth removal (which is healing up nicely, thank goodness!)

Only $200? Insurance? Hooray for healing!

Unfortunately, my health insurance doesn't cover dental.  And the pain meds are still below the deductible for my coverage.  I just have an awesome dentist who doesn't believe that he's gotta wring every available dollar (plus a few more) out of my wallet anytime I go in to see him.  I mean, I don't like going to the dentist...but I like my dentist.  I picked the right guy to go to after two decades without any dental care beyond my own efforts at proper dentifrice.

I was complaining to a friend of mine who is waist-deep in the sci-fi and speculative fiction authoring world about how my days now feel somehow frustrating if I haven't put down 1500 words or more on a page, and how it was beginning to bug me. He told me (with a grin I could hear over Skype) "You're an author now."
Hearing it from him really made my day.

Started working on putting together a costume for an event I'm working at the end of the month (which is, I'm starting to realize, a lot closer than it sounds).  The theme for it is sci-fi/time-traveler, with kind of a 'modern hippy' vibe to it (one of the two production groups collaborating on it has a pretty large contingent they send to Burning Man every year...and since they don't get enough of that, they do their own smaller, local take on it a few more times during the year...)

Started rummaging through my closets, and found several items that I'd tucked away 'just in case the need arose' (sleeves I took off a chain-mail shirt for a film I worked on, silver pants, vintage motocross boots, an old-school tactical vest...)  Started mixing and matching and I feel like I've got something that I can wear to this without feeling like I'm hopelessly out of my depth.  There will still be a lot of people there with cooler outfits...but I'm used to that.  I'm pretty sure I'll be the only one with chain-mail chaps...*grin*

My room.  It is rearranged and completely SPOTLESS.  I am very happy about this.

It fits me completely for the first time since I moved into this house.

I have room for another bookshelf and I will be doing a portrait gallery above my bed.

Epic win.  That is all.

^_^

Today I celebrate my 13th wedding anniversary with the greatest man in the world ^_^  Im looking forward to 13 more.

My boys' team just won the school "Battle of the Books" and will be representing their school at the district meet!  Proud papa...

Got a glowing review from the head of our Safety/Loss Prevention Dept. at work, during the recent round of inspections with the local fire marshal.  There's stuff that needs to be fixed, and they're coming back for a 'verification check'...apparently, we're not allowed to have anything stacked within 18 inches of the ceiling (why that's suddenly an issue this year, when we've had stuff on those shelves for AGES without anyone batting an eye, I don't know, but whatever...)

Fortunately, we just found another storage space for the junk piano someone dumped in the far corner of our work area, so I had space to set up some other shelves over there to accommodate all the junk we had to take down.

My dad came home from his trip to Mexico and he brought a suitcase full of candy *_* It's like Christmas in May.

I'm celebrating today. :)

Finally got a chance to see the pictures, and I've gotta say it...I'm really pleased with how my Jedi costume turned out (wore it for a friend's May the Fourth karaoke party...)  *grin*

They are making an Ender's Game movie.

No more need be said, imho.

I'm excited because I'm starting a full-time course on Monday.

So, it's not the same as a full-time job, but it'll be good to have some more constructive things to do with my time, other than job hunting and playing online games.. and chatting (can't forget the chatting). ;) Not to say I don't love *some* of those things, because I do.

It's in PHP/MySQL, so look out for more unsolicited advice! In truth though, there will probably be less. I may have taken on a few too many games of late and they need keeping up with. They're fun, though.

Munchkin is a very fun card game and probably made me love rpgs all over again when I was losing the faith. We're now at a point where we're going to play until the first person gets to Level 20 to keep games going longer...

Epic Munchkin! XD

Not quite sure where to put this, but here seemed to be as good a place as any that exists on here...

Found out that a friend of mine, many years ago before I ever even knew her at all, was in the throes of depression compounded with the all-too-common sense of adolescent disconnectedness, not knowing where she fit in or feeling like she belonged anywhere.  She had it all figured out...how she was going to do herself in, even the day she was going to do it...

She got to school that day and saw a poster for auditions for the school musical--a show that she loved--on the very same day that she'd planned to put herself out of her misery.  She opted for the audition...and that started a string of experiences that totally turned her life around.  By the time I met her, she was one of the sweetest, happiest people it's ever been my pleasure to work with.

So, on top of the nine years of shows that I've worked on with the guy, I'm thankful to the director of one of the local high school drama departments for creating an environment that convinced my friend that she did, in fact, belong somewhere in this world and she did have something worth living for.  We're not particularly close or anything like that...but I can't help but think my world would be a less-awesome place had she been absent from it.  And as I consider the fact that he's taught for over 35 years, I can't help but wonder just how many others stepped back from the edge because his efforts--totally unaware of their problems--ended up shifting their self-perception from loathing to acceptance.

One man can make a difference...it's not just a platitude.

when I was young I may not have understood or appreciated all that my father had to teach me.  but now that I am older and hopefully wiser I can look upon some of my actions and realize that some of the things I do, I do because that is how my father taught me.


Earlier this week I volunteered myself to assist in the repair of the mats at the Hapkido school I train at, I was told it would take up to 8 hours.  I asked the man in charge if I needed to bring any tools, he said just a battery drill if I have one.


This morning when I was getting ready to go to class, yes I went to class and then stayed to fix the mats, I pretty much packed ALL of my tools.  I don't if we will need a hammer but I brought one,  I didn't know if a staple gun or pliers would be useful but I brought them, etc etc.


We used a lot of the tools I brought including the pliers, hammer, and staple gun.  I stayed the whole time and worked hard.  my contribution was greatly appreciated.


I realize that I did that because of the lessons my father taught me.  He always volunteered to help at school, with boy scouts, in indian guides, anything.  If somebody needed volunteers my father could be counted on to help and to work hard.  My father always brought more than enough tools to get the job done.  And my father was always one of the last to leave, making sure that the job was done and everything was cleaned up.


These are lessons that my fathered passed onto me and sometimes I find it interested to see these connections.


Thank you Dad

I know tonight that which ever dark place my depression leads me to, whatever may happen... There are memes that I have passed onto my close friends and I see my interetes and motivations passed onto them.

This gives me pride and a new found sense of freedom. I know they will all be fine. I may be an agent of chaos, but sometimes chaos brings good change.

Maybe not much, but i was checking the RPoL Chamber of Lost Souls section when i spotted something i hadn't before. Not sure why, maybe i just looked past it a number of times, but i hadn't really noticed it was there until today:



Dunno, just made me grin. For a second my mouse hovered over the 'Request Access' button, but i decided not to after making a guess which thread my account name would have shown up in.

Some games you just want to not be a part of i guess :P

Redundancy to Job offer in 2 hours. now thats good going.

My son finished this semester with a 3.8 GPA - all A's.  I am so proud I could bust.  Such a smart kid and has to put forth little effort.  He plans on going to college for graphic design or video game technology or something along those lnes.  He talked of moving to Seattle for school (gulp) but now he is talking Chicago (I live in Indiana so that is a relief!).

On a less than bright note - I am now the mom to a senior.  Say what?!

It's opening night.  I'll admit it...when the Power That Be said they wanted a show built around a live rock band on the stage with the singers, I had my reservations.  A LOT of reservations.  And if the band members had been cast wrong, I think it could have been a disaster.

But the band is awesome, the singers are great (and with only a couple of exceptions, are learning how to make the most of having a live band on the stage with them and interact with the band instead of acting like the band is set dressing and the music tracks are still pre-recorded), and I'm more excited for this show to open than I've been for opening a show at the park in a LONG time.  Even though about half the music is stuff that we've used in other shows, earlier, I actually feel like we've created something new, rather than just recycling the same stuff again and again.  It helps that we've got new choreographers this year...who actually believe that even if the song is something we did before, we should try and make it SOMEHOW a little different (the choreo we've had for the past eight or so years just remounted the old numbers, without bothering to figure out a different dance routine...)

But I'm excited about being excited, even...sometimes I worry that this job gets me jaded, that I get so tired of the same stuff that I stop caring as much and stop trying as hard.  It's good to know that I can still be hyped for opening night, as opposed to coming into it thinking, "Well, thank goodness we made it through dress rehearsals without me wanting to shoot anybody..."  THIS feeling is part of why I got into theater...the joy of coming up with something new and original.  I've missed it, here.

Welcome back, old friend...

One week from today I will be heading off for vacation!!  Two weeks of being away from the stress of every day life.  Woot!

I love the fact that I live so close to a small community-appeal movie theater.  Yeah, if I want to see the latest and greatest movies before people get a chance to spoil them at least a little bit for me, I've gotta go to one of the megaplexes in the area, but I never get into the same kinds of conversations with people there as I do in the one just down the street...

Like tonight...went to see 'Admission', and saw Michael Sheen's name in the credits when it was done and knew it was familiar, but couldn't remember why.  I was apparently not the only person to have that reaction, because some lady on the other side of the theater whipped out her iPad as soon as the credits started and looked him up.  She found a picture of him in the last Twilight movie and pointed it out to her friends, who all started discussing it quite animatedly.  At this point, we were pretty much the only ones left in the theater, and it looked to be a good bet that we were all staying until the credits finished...and it was literally impossible to NOT overhear the conversation.

Now, I'm no fan of Twilight, at all.  Haven't read the books, couldn't be bothered to go see the movies, even though I could have seen any and all of them for free--it just utterly failed to inspire my interest.  But the mention of Michael Sheen's name in the context of vampires and werewolves reminded me...'Lucian', from Underworld.  So, as we all stood up as the final credits scrolled up the screen, I mentioned that he'd also been in the Underworld films...and the same lady responded, in surprise, "THAT'S RIGHT!  I had completely forgotten about that, but now that you mention it, I can totally see him with the long hair and all..."

We walked out of the building talking about Underworld and Van Helsing and how incredible Dracula's brides were (both as beautiful women and in the way they handled them with the visual effects for the movie), while the rest of her group looked back and shook their heads.  She laughed and said, "I love movies like that...I don't think any of them ever watch anything like that, though..."

Now...if she'd just been about fifteen or twenty years younger....

The CEO of another company just vomited praise about me to my CEO.

I finally have a pair of new shoes!  OK, they aren't perfect (is there such a thing??), but they are new, not held together by gobs of glue, and they fit well enough that I'm not thinking about my feet all the time!  (My requirements for shoes are very specific, in a size large enough not to allow much choice, let alone anything that will do.)

I was finally able to buy my ticket for my vacation this summer! ^_^

Had a great night over friends last night. Saved my one mate's relationship and kind of sorted things out with my first love to be in the comfortable friend-zone rather than the exes-now-friends-but-still-kinda-awkward-but-it's-cool-I-guess zone. I'm hung over but I made myself feel good by making other people feel good and resealing bridges.
Good stuff.

Here's to making a good impression on the boss!  The senior exec where I work asked me...for the second time...to mark some suitcoats for alterations for him.  The first time, I told him that I have no formal training in it, and my experience in alterations is all theatrical, where it doesn't have to look good when you're right up close and personal, as long as it looks good from stage.  But apparently, I did something right, because he had me do it again.

Never a bad thing when the president of the company has you coming by his office to do him a favor...and it was nice to see a more 'human' side of him--his sister (another one of the execs there) and daughter were both there to provide feedback on the suits, and hearing the interaction between them (and occasionally even chiming in on it) gave me a more nuanced view of the man.  I still disagree with the way he does a lot of stuff...but I've definitely got a more personable image of him in my head than I did last week.

Three times the minimum number of responses needed for hubby's research and they're still coming in!

A big thanks to everyone here who completed the survey!  *hugs*

Husband is at work, and kids are gone for the night.  I have the house ALL TO MYSELF!!  ^_^

Not only did I finally sell off the eyesore of an entertainment center that's been hogging up a ton of room in the living room, but while cleaning up around it I found two jackets... with a total of $15 in the pockets!

Found money is always good.  Time to go to lunch!  XD

I think I might be able to afford to buy something cool from amazon today! ^^

Well, if I'm going to have a bout of insomnia, at least this was a good reason for it (definitely not a good time for it, but...*shrug*)

A friend of mine who's recently gotten into film-making (can you call it that when it's all shot on digital video and there's no actual film involved?  I don't know...  Anyway...) said a few weeks ago that the next project he wants to do is a Western.  With no dialogue.  Just visual storytelling with some sound cues to help move it along.

When he said it, I thought, "Hmmmm...that could be kinda cool."  A week later, I thought, "Okay...I've got a general concept that would work for this...."  A couple of days ago, I started thinking about titles.  Tonight, the title gelled in my head and I also found a great, significant name for the town where this fictional story is set.  And discovered that I couldn't sleep because it was all rolling around in my head.

So, I wrote it.  Just the bare bones of it...the action, the characters (which have no names because nobody has any dialogue, so the characters are 'the horseman', 'the marshal', 'the saloon girl', etc), and the few key visuals that I thought were necessary to tell the story.  My version of it, double-spaced, came in just under 4 pages.  I'm curious to see how long it ends up being when he goes through and puts it in 'proper' screenwriting format, along with all the extra notations about shot selections and camera movement and such.  But I feel like it's a very do-able project (if we can just find locations for the exterior shots we need.  I think I know of a location for the interior shots...but whether or not we can use them will wind up coming down to a question of how much money are we willing to sink into this, and how much do the people who own the various locations that I'm thinking of want for the use of their space...

But at least now I think I can sleep.

When Albert Einstein was making the rounds of the speaker's circuit, he usually found himself eagerly longing to get back to his laboratory work. One night as they were driving to yet another dinner, Einstein mentioned to his chauffeur (a man who somewhat resembled Einstein in looks & manner) that he was tired of speechmaking.
"I have an idea, boss," his chauffeur said. "I've heard you give this speech so many times, I'll bet I could give it for you."

Einstein laughed loudly and said, "Why not? Let's do it!"

When they arrived at the dinner, Einstein donned the chauffeur's cap and jacket and sat in the back of the room. The chauffeur gave a beautiful rendition of Einstein's speech and even answered a few questions expertly.
Then a supremely pompous professor asked an extremely esoteric question about antimatter formation, digressing here and there to let everyone in the audience know that he was nobody's fool.

Without missing a beat, the chauffeur fixed the professor with a steely stare and said, "Sir, the answer to that question is so simple that I will let my chauffeur, who is sitting in the back, answer it for me."

Well would you look at that, I made it to my 21st birthday intact!

Oh, thank you for cancelling rehearsal tonight.  I need the rehearsal, I know...but I also desperately need the five or six hours of rehearsal time we would have spent to try and get stuff finished up for the other show I'm working on.  Your timing could NOT have been better.

As a follow-up to the last one...Still not done with everything I need to finish before rehearsal tonight.  I was SURE that I had to work today...got to work and saw that my name was, in fact, not on the calendar at all for today.

Thank you!!!!  Six more hours of unexpected prep time...(now, if you'll all excuse me, I've gotta go make good use of them!!!)

I might have part time work that will extend past the summer and through the rest of my education so I can have work experience when I graduate!

I passed the first of my Oracle exams today (with a fairly decent grade), so I'm happy about that. I have the next one in around 2 weeks time, so I'm not anticipating much of a break between now and then.

Evil Hat are Awesome.  With a capital "A".

I got my copy of FATE Core on Wednesday, and it had been damaged in transit.

Yesterday I got an email from Evil Hat, saying that they'd had a few Kickstarter backers contacting them to say their books had arrived damaged, so they would replace any damaged copies, free of charge, no questions asked.  And no need to return the book, just send them some photos of the damage.

Sent them an email today, with photos, and said that since I don't live in the US I'd understand if I'm not included in the offer to send a replacement.  Five minutes later I had a reply telling me they'd send out a new copy today.

Would definitely spend money with them again.

Recently announced the Volkswagen GTD (diesel version of the GTI) is FINALLY coming to the United States. About bloody time. Sadly, it looks like we'll still have to wait another year, maybe two, before actually driving one off the lot. To quote the birds from the movie Nemo. "Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine...". Estimated price was stated at $27,000 USD. Not cheap but more or less in line with the pricing for the current VW GTI model.

Yeah! I'm still alive.

Always something to have on a good things list! ^_^

My daughter chose to go to an agricultural high school and just finished her freshman year. She's a smart kid but had a tough time with her math class and was worried her average might not be high enough to get into her first pick - large animal focus - since that's what everyone wants and selection is grade-based. She worked teally hard this last term, brought her average up and got in though, letter came today.

The best part is knowing that she gets the relationship of effort and reward

My wife is pregnant with our first child. Due January 1^stish.

Timing on moving seems to be working out.  Landlord has listed this place citing 60-90 days possible possession, the buyer for the kids' UK flat that doesn't need vacant possession seems to be stepping up to the plate finally, and probably possession for the new place would be 60+ days also.  It would be scary if everything syncs, but probably best if we are out of here shortly before the landlord sells.  Have to see what interest he gets, but at least he's set a reasonable price.

Got a job interview finally for a job I can actually make decent money.

The Lions beat the Wallabies, first series win since 1997!

Had a great day at the lake with my daughters and nephews. ^_^

Both shows are up and running or over and done...back down to just my regular gig at the park and the once-a-week bit at the movie theater.  Going to a friend's party tonight...it will be nice to get there and not have some nagging voice in the back of my head saying, "You should really be at home working on the show..."

SHOW'S DONE!!!  I'm gonna have some fun!

Just finished running one of the statistical analyses on Hubby's dissertation data and two of his hypotheses are supported by statistically significant results!  That's ambiguous academic talk that means two of the things he thought he would find, he found.  While he would get his doctorate whether he found anything or not, it's always nicer when your final work is supported by the data.  :)

And in case anyone's curious, he has found that people who are usually GMs have higher levels of self-efficacy than those who equally GMs and players and much higher than those who are typically just players.

Woo-HOO!

I am now one of the 1337 members of RPoL.

More RPoL stuff:

http://i42.tinypic.com/ezpxjo.jpg

...Okay, so it's not a REAL milestone in that it's not exactly 7.5 mil, but odds are i won't be online at the time that happens, given it can only be witnessed by raw chance.

Either way, congrats on 7.4 mil :P
This message was last edited by the user at 01:51, Mon 08 July 2013.

I finally have my own vehicle ^_^

Going back to my old tabletop group,  I'm kind nervous its been so long since i've seen them and I've changed so much in more ways than I can count.  I'm nervous but terribly excited to get back around the table.

My book is finally done!

Started out as vent and turned into a good stuff...

Took my wife and 12 year old boys to see Despicable me 2 (good movie if you're into that kind).  Son had surgery two weeks ago and is in full leg casts and uses a wheelchair to get around.  We need handicap parking or space to park.  No handicapped parking, so we put up our handicapped placard and took up two spots.

Left the movie to find some jerk had parked in one of the spots (leaving us 3" on the driver's) side and someone had legally parked on the other side, pretty much blocking us from getting in our car.  To make matters worse, they put a sign in our window "Teach you to take two parking spots."  Wife takes note to manager of movie theater and comes out crying.  End Vent.

Begin good stuff.  Manager calls local sheriff's deputy on duty at movie theater.  Deputy sees situation and is PISSED.  (His mom is disabled.)  He takes pictures, and calls a tow truck.  Jerk's car is towed.  Cop looks to see if there are any outstanding warrants or a revoked license (did I mention cop was pissed).  Cop is on duty at theater for several hours and is looking forward to meeting the person who will claim that their junker was stolen.  Theater manager gives us 4 comp tickets for next time at the theater.

Moral of the story - don't kick the idiots doors in when you are frustrated with them.  Let the local authorities do their job - they do a much better job of it than I ever could.

This could easily have been a rant, but, hey...I'll take the good slant on it...

So, the Powers That Be at work decided that our drummer isn't up high enough for the audience to see him.  I already had to build a small platform to extend that level of the stage, so there'd be room for the drum set--and I almost had to fight with my boss to get him to agree to have me build it.  He kept telling me to draw up plans and give them to the carpenters and have them build it (at a time of the season when we couldn't even get them to show up and install a door they'd already been booked to install for several months).  I finally just said, "Look, there is NO reason to give this to the carpenters...I can build this.  It's not that big, it's not that hard, and they're already overbooked as it is."

I must've done the job well, because when HIS boss decided another riser was needed for the drum set, there was apparently no talk about having the carpenters do it.  My boss called me and told me that we needed another 6" riser and I needed to figure out what supplies I needed to make it happen ASAP.  Got him the supplies list Tuesday night, he expedited the paperwork, we had the lumber arrive yesterday, and I started cutting stuff for it this afternoon.  If all goes well, I'll be painting it by tomorrow night.

Yeah, I know, it seems like a simple thing...but for several years, my biggest obstacle at work was getting the higher ups to realize that Wardrobe Manager was just a job I did, and there was a LOT more there to be taken into account.  The more diverse the variety of jobs they want me to tackle, the better my job security gets (I've had several people comment that, if they ever decided to get rid of me, they'd have to hire three people to cover all the different things I do for them...)  *grin*

This also follows on the heels of my successfully arguing with my boss about needing shelves in our new instrument storage area (he wanted to just have the musicians hang their instruments on wall hooks, because that's what he does with his) and having the band pretty much universally rave about how fast I put them in and how useful they are...and our tech supervisor and I also won the argument (sort of) about whether or not the instrument room should have AC overnight...couldn't get the boss to agree to leaving THAT particular AC unit running, but he did agree to the notion of propping the door open so the AC from the rest of the building could help keep that space climate-controlled.

It's frustrating to have to fight for every improvement that needs to be made, right out of the chute...but it's gratifying to have them start piling up to the point that, when the improvements come down from 'on high', I'm the first person they call to get it done.  (Now, I've just gotta live up to it...that's the tricky part...)

In arvel: Avengers Allience a bug in PvP season 9 gave me all the rewards, even the hero, Angel! And that was the season they nerfed my main combo, by makeig Rescue nowhere near as good as she'd used to be, and I hadn't even gotten into the place for the 2nd reward, let alone all. Yay glitches! And the company said we get to keep the stuff!

I've been thinking for years, "Man, I should take some pictures of some of the cool stuff that happens in these shows..."  And for the last several years, by the time things settle down enough for me to start worrying about bringing a camera to work and taking pictures, I'm sick of the show and don't want to sit through it long enough to take pictures.

FINALLY, this year, we have a show that doesn't have me bored to tears, with a cast that doesn't make me want to place-kick small mammals in frustration.  These guys are awesome...talented, fun to work with, (mostly) down to earth...dug out my camera (got it second-hand, with no manual, so every time I pull it out to start shooting something, there's a LOT of guesswork on my part), and started shooting some pics a few nights ago.

And I'll admit it...I've got some really good stuff.  Granted, there's a LOT of garbage between the really good shots, but I managed to sift through what I'd shot over the course of two or three nights and pick out thirty or so images that I didn't mind showing the general public...good clear focus, a relatively good spread of who's in the pics (even with a group like this, some are more photogenic than others and some of them just don't capture in a still image very well but are fascinating to watch in motion), visually interesting, and I feel like they capture a lot of the fun of the show.

I feel pretty pleased with myself...looks like I haven't quite forgotten everything I ever learned about photography just yet...

Just got around to replacing the window that got busted in my car back during the Thanksgiving Holiday (I've been driving all winter, spring, and thus far into summer with a homemade lamination job of clear shipping tape holding what was left of the window together).  Nice to find a place that was not only close to home and easy to find, but it was also affordable (my biggest consideration, right now) and the guys were extremely competent.  And nice.  I mean, I've been at places that had a 'you MUST wait in the waiting area' policy...but I was curious.  I wanted to see how it was done.  They let me watch.  And when I didn't ask questions or try and keep a line of small talk going or make noises like I wasn't sure if they knew what they were doing, they started talking to me, telling me what they were doing, asking me how long I'd had my car, etc etc...

Here's hoping I don't have to replace another window anytime soon...but if I do, I know where I'm going.

After a rather disturbing lying on the couch followed by a scared pee on my rug, my wonderful Louisiana mutt bolted out the door , completely disappearing into the night. My dog, Taylor, has been my constant and loyal companion, getting me through various jobs, bad relationships and doing wonderful clean-up on the floors whenever I cook.

I combed the neighborhood after she activated her cloaking device, driving up streets and usual haunts that she had. I even called the police and the next day I called and went to shelters, hearing the line that if there is only a collar, someone could have picked her up and there would be only the click of that collar standing between she being my dog and someone else's. At the pet shelter (if you sympathize with animals I suggest you DO NOT go to a shelter, puppies and great great dogs all behind chain link. Worst was a wheelbarrow of puppies which made me think of sick dead-baby jokes. Best advice I heard was to put the dog's bed, bowl, or toy on the front porch, they could smell that from very far away. This I did I put up posters, I talked to people. I decided that whether or not I found my dog, I could probably run for mayor.

I drove around one last time before the sun went down. When it did I plopped on my sofa and just looked out my porch window, turning at ever movement of leaf, bug or passerby. Then I saw her back, gone for almost 24 hours and just started eating- voraciously. I opened the door and she came in, drinking more water than I have ever seen her.

Behold my puppy came home, all on her own.

<Thank you>
Drop the chaff. Stop looking back and get on with the now.

Sound advice and perfect common sense.

Nice to have found someone I was able to confide in. It means a lot :)
</Thank you>
This message was last edited by the user at 00:15, Sat 27 July 2013.

Leaving bright and early tomorrow morning with the family for a fun filled camping trip.  Everything is all done and ready, just waiting for the new day to start.

See y'all in August ^_^

This could be a rant about being almost famous, but I'll take the more positive slant...

My friends' band is performing in Miami, tonight, at the wrap party for Burn Notice.  One of them posted something about it on FB, and I half-jokingly told him if he got a chance, to give Gabrielle Anwar a kiss for me.

He just let me know he did it.

I've got some awesome friends...*grin*

I passed my Oracle MySQL exams. Despite deciding otherwise, I'm thinking of giving the DBA exams a go.

I'm not going to let it overwhelm my time completely, so that might decrease my odds, but I need some time for me and other things I want to do. It's nice to have the choice.

Congratulations.  :)

I was nervous with this upcoming Halloween season...I've lost a third of my makeup crew (one moved to California, the other is moving to Indiana to go to grad school), and I'm always nervous about looking for new makeup artists, because what we do is actually fairly uncommon in this area, especially for Halloween time (people are used to haunted house makeup, which is often done quick-and-dirty and designed to be seen for a few seconds in a darkened room...we're doing makeup for people who are going to be on a well-lit stage and/or standing just a few inches away from people for photo ops, etc...but we still have a fairly stringent timetable for getting this detailed makeup done, and most of the people who are used to working fast aren't used to doing detail work, and vice versa...)

Found out one of the makeup artists that we used years ago wants to come back and work with us again.  Also found out that one of the friends of the artist moving to Indiana is interested in working for us.  So my problem may be solved.  Even with one of the remaining artists having auditioned (and done fairly well, from what I've heard), I'm still not worried about it...I've got a couple of alternates that I should be able to sweet-talk without too much trouble, if I have to.

(Man, it would be nice to have SOMETHING I'm responsible for happen the easy way, this year...)

Just spent the last week and a half camping with my family.  We head home tomorrow.  My bed has missed me terribly ^_^

Hubby's dissertation is written, passed his committee review, and is on its way to the final departmental review!  Holy cow... in another month I'll be married to a DOCTOR!

I'll be Mrs Dr Evil Overlord!  :-D

What would be more scary is if your name is Clara (You will never tell us!) or your husband is named either Leonard, Sheldon or Rajesh (Mind you, you're pretty scary...)

Moving on

Good Thing: This thread has restored my faith in humanity, thank you very much.

Okay, so that was just funny...

Went out to watch the last few numbers of the last show tonight, was helping close up the gates and stuff when a group of mildly drunk guys came in (as everyone was going out, which was guaranteed to catch the attention of those of us waiting for everyone to leave so we could pack up to go home...)  They had that slightly furtive look about them, the one taken on by people who think they're about to get away with something...

So one of them started to get up on the stage...surprisingly enough, he immediately got down when I started walking toward the stage shaking my head and giving him the 'come here' gesture with my hand.  And that's when things got REALLY funny...

First, they tried to tell me that they were going to get up on the stage and have a quick jam session because they were the backup players for the band (they're not...I was at the call-back auditions, these guys weren't even in the running.  I don't even know if they auditioned...)  Then they tried to talk me into jamming with them (wouldn't have been tempting, even if I played any of the instruments up there, because I know and like the guys who own all those instruments and I wasn't going to let these guys monkey with them).  They tried about five or six different approaches, and I didn't know whether to yell at them in frustration or burst out laughing at the ludicrous lengths they were trying to go to...

They finally realized it wasn't going to happen, and turned around to walk out...and, surprisingly enough, thanked me for being so tolerant of them screwing around.  (That was actually almost more surprising to me than the thought that they believed we would just somehow turn a blind eye and let total strangers horse around with a few thousand dollars worth of musical equipment...)

Fourteen summers working there...plus the two Halloween seasons I worked before I got on the regular staff...and I've never had anything even remotely similar to that happen.  And people think I'm just echoing empty platitudes when I tell them that working in entertainment provides a never-ending supply of new and unexpected experiences...

Just finished building the mechanics of my Survival RPG System Hypothermia and have started to test it, feels good.

So, just a couple of weeks ago, I was on the verge of going back to looking through the W:P list to add a couple of games, as I'd dwindled down to two active and one semi-active games that I'm involved in.  Everything else had kinda wasted away...didn't ask to get dumped from the games, just took them off my sticky list and figured if something happened, they'd pop back up.

Since then, I got invited to join a new game (that sounds very intriguing to me), and the GM of another game that I'd really been enjoying before it folded up decided to try and revive it.  Which will put me right back at about the max number of games I like to be in, once they're all up and running.

My favorite Grandmother, and the woman I named my first born child after, turns 82 today!  Happy birthday Gram :)

Finally going to finish up my mother's estate - looking forward to having it done after all these months, and to spending an evening with my sisters, good food, some wine...

Yay~! My dad fixed the air conditioner after the dogs chewed through the wires, now the house is comfortably chilly. ^____^

I can almost touch the ceiling with my left hand again.  Considering the fact that, five or six months ago, I had a hard time raising my left arm past horizontal, I'm thrilled with that!  Our bodies really are remarkable things...

May have finally found a location for one of the more troublesome shots in a short film I'm working on.  It's hard to find an Old West main street that's still in 'working condition', that doesn't have a bunch of modern stuff in the background...

It's just a question of whether or not the website I saw it on has up-to-date pictures posted, and how much they'll charge for a no-budget short film to use it.

And then we need to find the saloon interior.  Which, if we're really lucky, will actually be part of the town location.  (I actually know a couple of interiors we could use, I'm just pretty sure that they would be prohibitively expensive.)

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 301):

try Antique Archeology (from the History Channel's show American Pickers) they encounter many people that have entire transplanted towns (not just facades) from many eras in their travels.

The kids went back to school today!

In reply to Dottie_V (msg # 303):

My kids go back to school in 7 days and 15 hours  ^_^

Husband just passed his oral defense for his psych dissertation.  The rest of the process is rubber-stamp paperwork.  Therefore, I'm calling it official:

I am now Evil Empryss, wife of DR. Evil Overlord!

Thank goodness for expedient paramedics and kind nurses.

Had a good time at one of the area bars where my friend's 80's band was playing.  I didn't expect to know many people there...turns out, I didn't know ANYBODY there, except my friend (and I recognized the guys in the band, even though I don't know them all that well).

As someone who has a hard time 'letting loose' and enjoying myself if I don't know someone in the place, it was an interesting step outside of my comfort zone.  No, I didn't end up striking up a conversation with someone that resulted in me getting a date, or even a phone number...not what I was there for, either.  I'm just pleased that I managed to push past my 'I'm all alone in the crowd' reaction and actually got up and started dancing (with nobody in particular, just moving to the music), singing along with what I knew (and could at least kind of sing), and had a good time.  I need to do that kind of stuff more often (not necessarily the dancing to 80's music, although that was a good workout and I should probably do something along those lines more often, yes...but the going out on my own to see something that interests me, yes.)

Well, this is a mixed post, since I'm not really looking forward to moving, but it now seems to be on track to actually happen, and before the place we're living now sells, leaving us with no home.  Still no definite date for the move, but dates for some of the steps along the way of the kids completing the deal on their UK property...

Its the first day of school today.  Im more excited than my girls are I think ^_^

In reply to ginny (msg # 309):

I've actually found that to be a pretty common reaction among parents...*grin*  Unless it's the first day of school for their first child.  But once they get past that hurdle?  Oh, yeah, they're all kinds of excited for school to start...

So, normally this would be a vent, but the ending just has me feeling so much relief that I think it belongs here.

So, after spending the weekend at my brother and sister-in-law's house (we got the car problem fixed from my rant, since the battery just needed to be replaced and my brother came down at 9am to help me do it) helping them with taking down a tree and stripping the paint off of their deck, I came home Sunday evening and crashed.  The next morning, I wake up stiff and sore, so I vow not to do much moving.

I should note that my parents' house, which I currently reside, is on 10 acres of land and the field is rented out to a cattle rancher, so there are 17 cows and none of them belong to us, and my parents are still very much in Iceland right now, which is very much not anywhere near Washington state in the good ol' USA.

Cue the stray cow in my driveway, with a helpful neighbor having herded it in.  With his help, I get it into the field after spending several trips up and down the 1/4 mile driveway testing keys for the field (I'm housesitting while the 'rents are gone, and one set of keys was mislabeled so it was not, in fact, keys to the fence gate's lock), and I check the fence line that I can (very muddy and one side's on a treeline so I can't get to it easily) and find that there's no gaps or problems and the electric wire's running fine.

So I figure it was a fluke and I'll be fine.

Wake up this morning at 9:30 am to have a county sheriff knock on my door, having herded the SAME cow into my driveway.  Try the same solution, but the cow decides it will have none of this strudel and takes a left instead of a right, climbing over a downed fence, getting its hind legs stuck for 20 seconds (further throwing me into a panic) before getting through, then climbing over ANOTHER fence and into the neighbor's horse pasture.

So, after going through more panic and trying to contact the neighbors, who are not home, I call my brother, who is still very much an hour's drive away (and at work) for advice.  Following his advice, I finally calm down enough to contact the owner of the cows (which, had I been thinking straight, I would have done first thing) and got him to come down.

Turns out, all his cows are in the field, and the other cow somehow escaped the horse pasture.

So it was never a problem with our fence or any of the cows we're supposed to take care of getting out, and the problem cow (which was the exact same one, by the way) has proven itself to be the fruiting Houdini Cow, Bovine Master of Escape.

Which means someone down the road is missing a cow.  But it's not my problem.

Got some brilliant life advice from my 80-something-year-old neighbor, quoting her mother...

"It's better to wear out than to rust out."  She then told me that she was pretty sure that I wasn't doing much rusting, since I'm rarely home and always off doing something at some odd hour of the day or night...

She kinda reminds me of my maternal great-grandmother...

My pet rabbit is knocking her ball with a bell in it around the floor. It amuses me when she does things cats do.

I'm so excited! I got an awesome picture when I went hummingbird banding, and it's already moved up to first place in this contest I'm in! Now I just need it to stay there for 308 days. XD
http://photobucket.com/ibeatyou?entry=2039772

Got to replace my beat-to-hell Dodge Neon with a sweet 2009 Ford Fusion.

Now I'm just waiting for everything else to fall into place.

Just got to do my first high-concept, 'artistic' makeup job, for a photoshoot.  I had a lot of fun with it, the people I was working with were awesome, the imagery I saw from a few of the pictures was REALLY cool...

Would've been nice to have a paycheck from it, but considering I've got less experience at that kind of makeup than the (self-described amateur) photographer had at those kinds of pictures, I'm just grateful for a chance to experiment and try some stuff that I've never had a chance to do before.

Hope it leads to more stuff.  Enjoyed the photographer, the model was beautiful (and personable)...I'd work with these folks again in a heartbeat.

well, my morning yesterday started with a flat tire, went to go change it and the spare was shot...great start to the day huh.

well the good stuff starts when a lady stops gives me a ride up to the store to get a patch kit and fix-a-flat So I can get the truck to the auto shop for a repair on the tire.

So she drops me off and the tire fights back. I cant even get the patch into the hole the nail I picked up left....more fun.. now I am hot sweaty dirty and late for my date with a lady I haven't seen in months.


good thing two happens a few moments later when a fella I don't even know stops and offers help, between the two of us we get the tire patched and re-inflated...he follows me back to the tire shop where the folks at the shop patch the tire, check to make sure it's on good and tight and get me out the door in less than fifteen minutes.  all for 8 dollars and change :D

I raced home showered changed into clean clothes slapped on more deodorant and cologne and back out the door nearly tripping over my chihuahua and my roommate.

I drive the fifty miles to meet with my Lady Friend, no construction no slow traffic, no detours....

My lady friend is smiling ear to ear when she sees me then gives me a mock frown Where were you.... I thought you had ditched me " and grins wide again giving me a hug that I can say was very enthusiastic


So with the assistance of two strangers I managed to beat Murphy, make the drive in record time, and get the best hug I have had in months..Yayyyyy friendly strangers

thanks to the lousy start of the day Just making it to our meeting was great, made the day and our shared time even better :D


Murphy 2
Kindness of Stranger 2
Strangers for the win!!!:D

Flipping through a stack of CDs came across my backups from 2001.

Among that is my sound set clips used for custom sound files. Including one used for Windows error messages: Johnny Bravo's: Runaway weini dog!

Freelance gig yesterday, working an 'Old Tyme Photo Booth' at a harvest festival, dressing people up in Western attire for a photographer to shoot pics of them looking all cowboyed out...

Seven hours (11, if you count drive time) work...

And the paycheck for it?  Almost equal to one week's take-home pay from my regular job.  On the day I found out my rent check hit the bank and dropped my account balance negative.  Excellent timing for getting a good paycheck...

My 11 year old is in middle school this year and already she has her plate full with extracurricular activities.  Tonight is her first Cross Country meet and she is super excited.  Im going to be one of those crazy moms there cheering her on  ^_^

We start dress rehearsals for our Halloween shows tonight.  I was at work, yesterday, trying to figure out just what was most urgently needing to be focused on in order to be ready.  So, I asked my one assistant, who was there, where we stood, because I'd been running around doing so much other stuff (out of three shows PLUS roaming atmosphere performers, I'm responsible for the wardrobe, scenery, AND makeup, so there was plenty of 'other stuff') that I didn't feel like I had any idea what was going on.

The show they asked her to design?  Almost done...she was taking care of the final details on the last costume.  Our 'monster' show?  She thought we were done, so I texted my other assistant to find out. Yep...all the alterations were complete.  The third show?  Well, it's been on hold because a quarter of the costumes we ordered shipped in the wrong color so we're waiting for the replacements.  And the fourth?  Well, again, Assistant #1 had that one in hand.

So, basically, my wardrobe duties are taken care of.  The set designer for one show came in and started working on his project yesterday, as well, which freed me up to worry about painting the stage floor for the other venue.

After the custard fruitpie that was dress rehearsals at the start of this summer, this is an incredibly welcome change of pace.  THIS is the way it's supposed to work!

I saw a man in an old roadster, top down, enjoying the pleasant weather, his dog by his side... Both of them wearing driving goggles.

It made me  :-)

Found out that due to an initially infuriating change in our company's leave policy, I now have a total of a month of paid leave that I can use throughout the next fiscal year.

Well, the 'weak link' in my makeup crew (oddly, not the least experienced makeup artist...just the one so worried about appearing to be inexperienced that she wouldn't ask for help or explanations when we were doing the makeup tests, and ended up needing a second night to reassure all of us that she could actually do the makeup we needed her to do) took care of my worries about her by simply choosing to not show up--at all.

Why is this on the 'good stuff' list?  Because her no-call-no-show cleared the way for me to hire one of the artists that I worked with a couple of years ago, who'd mentioned to one of the other makeup artists that she was interested a couple of days after we'd finished hiring.  So, on a crew of six, we have four seasoned professionals, one excellent artist who's finally adapting to the notion of makeup being just another medium in which to work (much to my relief, as I hired her back over my boss' concerns that her work last year--her first year--was not up to par), and one newbie who's got a really good eye, conceptually, and is quickly learning how to translate that into an actual design.  My Halloween season, over the course of one weekend, went from 'Oh, please, let this work out' to 'HA!!!  This is AWESOME!'  Can't quite say that I've got my Halloween makeup dream team working with me...but they wouldn't let me hire enough people to put together my dream team, even if I could convince all of them to come back and work for us again.

But half my crew is on that 'dream team', so I'm pretty happy.

On a different note--digging out my dad's golf clubs to go play tomorrow morning.  I don't know how many years before he passed away was the last time he used them, but I've had them for 16 years.  And as I was dusting them off, I realized just how much sentimental value they have for me...wiping them off reminded me of playing at caddying for Dad and my maternal grandfather--Dad wasn't an avid golfer, by any means, but he and Grandpa went golfing at least once every summer when we went up to visit (my grandpa was the groundskeeper at a golf course near where he lived).

I have no idea how well or poorly I may do tomorrow.  Don't even care.  Dad and Grandpa will be out there with me, in a way, and that will be reward enough, even if I'm scoring 7 or 8 or 10 on every hole.

I finally got the last vaccine I required and it turns out that I only need one for having had chickenpox as a younger oddity. And the nurse was very nice, and had a very light hand. ^___^

Well, it looks as though the move is a go.  The kids sold the UK flat (and temporarily 'rich', yay), the house inspection is done, now they just need to arrange a time to sign the papers for the new place.  Just in time too, the landlords apparently have a buyer, their house inspector is probably coming Tuesday.

Of course this means I have to pack.  *shudder*  And figure out how to get my cable switched over so that there's no big gap in coverage, even if at some point that means coverage is not where I'm currently living.  The biggest problem is to have enough furniture and the TV and computer moved to have the new installation done, separately from the main move.

I passed my PHP cert, though there still seems to be way more that I don't know than what I do.

It worked! Found it in the desk drawer that I forget that I even have since it's completely hidden from sight under the keyboard tray. I *probably* put it there on purpose so it wouldn't get...well, lost. -_-;

One dog may have been needlessly put down, but today my family saved the life of another shelter dog.  Copper comes home Wednesday, after he gets fixed, and I get to start training a new service dog.  YAY!!!  XD

Finally found a job opening that looks like a nice place to work and is close - going to apply tomorrow, hopefully I get it. :) They seemed like really nice people.

Nyquil. Nyquil is good stuff. It lets me sleep through whatever this internal hell is.

Our Office of Employee Services actually did something useful...for the second year in a row.  They sent out online surveys for employees to provide feedback (in relative anonymity) about working for the company.

--Do you feel you're being paid enough to keep you from looking elsewhere for work?  (My one regret is that there wasn't a 'hot-cross buns no!' option as an answer...)

--Can you tell us some things that would make your work experience more enjoyable?
(Teach your managers to communicate with their employees in a non-condescending manner...I realize that the majority of employees for the summer are teenagers, but for those of us who are old enough to be parents of said teenagers, being treated like we're one of them gets old, fast...and actually pay the people in skilled positions a wage that is competitive with the marketplace for that skill, in general, rather than paying them relative to what everyone else who works for the park is making.  Two-thirds of your employees could be trained chimpanzees and we'd still run pretty much like we do now...paying me just a couple of dollars an hour more than them to 'be fair' when I've been doing my job longer than some of them have been alive is just insulting to me.)

--Can you suggest some additional prizes for our incentive programs?  (Yeah, how about cold, hard cash?  I'll get more mileage out of a $10 than I will out of a turn on the skycoaster ride.)

Been biting my tongue about all that for MONTHS...hope this one yields results as effectively as the last one did.

I just received this amazing email from my wife, who is home today with our 15 month old.

Subject line: Milestone

Amos just farted, paused a beat and then giggled hysterically.



This father couldn't be more proud.

Don't know you, habsin4, but I'm guessing from your reaction that this is a case of the acorn falling pretty close to the tree...?  ;)

In reply to habsin4 (msg # 333):

Maybe it tickled.  :-)

My good news.  Got a new dog today with good service dog potential.  Only problem is my old girl isn't sure she likes the new guy.  Goldie is very people-oriented, while Copper (at only a year old) is still very much a puppy and wants to play with her.  I think things will settle down nicely in a few days.

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 334):

I believe toilet humor definitely has it's place.  Timing is key.

Timing is the key to most comedy...*laugh*

Oh thank God, thunder.

Finally got into the new place with a tape measure, not too many unpleasant surprises.  Fair number of electrical outlets, enough phone jacks (yes, I have a landline).  I hope she's going to get that garage cleared out ASAP, so I can go measure it with an eye to filling it with my stuff!

In reply to Brianna (msg # 339):

Just walked into my Mom's house.  It smells like bad meat or good cheese...

Update: Turned out to be fondu for a 70s themed birthday party.  Thank goodness.

Having a ridiculously proud "I fixed it myself" moment...just flushed the heater core in my (almost 30-year-old) car.  Setting up and cleaning up took most of an hour.  Actually getting the blockage cleared that's had my car running just above freezing for the last year and a half?  All of about three seconds.  Turned on the water, there was some gurgling from the core, and then this massive gout of rusty water blew out of the end of the drain hose I was using.  Three seconds later, it was flowing clear.  Hooked everything back up, started the car, and within seconds, the defroster was blowing warmer air that it did after I'd been driving for an hour and a half.

Driving places will be a much less miserable experience this winter...

Sitting in the living room watching TV with the hubby, our 7 year old is outside playing with her friends.  What do we hear her say?

'Say hello to my little friend'  ^_^

So cute

This is kind of a 'silver lining' thing, but...

I'm really grateful for my second job.  Not for the income, because, let's face it, how much money are you going to earn on a 2.5 hour/week (on average) job?  Nope...the thing I value most about that job is the fact that, week in and week out, for five and a half years, now, I have felt appreciated every time I've gone to work.  It's not like they seek me out each time I'm there and say 'thank you' or anything like that...but it's a family business, and they treat me like I'm family (better than family, in a few cases...there are a couple of the nephews that are tolerated because they ARE family, but that's pretty much the only reason they're still there...)

I compare that to my regular job, where I'm there almost daily (6 days/week, this time of year, for at least 6 hours/day) and doing all kinds of stuff that nobody else there knows how to do...and I'm treated like a glorified grunt laborer.  Someone's always looking over my shoulder, they're so busy pinching pennies that we actually got mildly chewed out last week for talking with the costume designer when she stopped in to see how things were going with the show she designed, and my assistant will pretty much only be able to help with makeup during the second half of the month because the guy scheduling labor hours didn't stop to consider the fact that we have enough extra days that we're open to basically equal a whole additional weekend and then some, so he scheduled her for the same number of hours that she had during the first half of the month, when there were no extended weekends.

So, when I go to the local movie theater and lock myself up in the projection booth, just the thought that they trust me enough to not feel like I need to provide a detailed breakdown of what I did when I was there, or they don't feel like they need to install additional surveillance gear to make sure that I'm working...they're willing to part with free soda, popcorn, and candy (my regular job regards 'free' to be a dirty word, unless it's free to them and they can charge someone else for it)...it's refreshing to work at a place that actually practices the notion of, "Hey, we hired you to do your job...we're gonna stand back and let you do it."

They've been the anchor to my sanity for the past few years, now...without that one night to reset my perspective on the world, I think I would have snapped and had a case of screaming profanities at anyone who entered the building (it's come close, as it is, a few times...)

I wish I could trade bosses...except if I did, I'd lose out on the free movies and popcorn and stuff, because Dave would never surrender that much potential monetary value...

So, thank you, Bill (RIP), for bringing me into such a wonderful organization, and thank you, Lisa and Jeff, for carrying on in Bill's tradition after he was no longer able to.  And, David?  Well, I make it a general principle to never wish ill on people I know.  So...yeah.

Well, we now have possession of the new place, and keys - lots and lots of keys.  Figured out what some are for, lot we haven't, and some doors we haven't matched a key to.  Kids are probably painting as I speak, went shopping for bathroom fixtures yesterday, going again today.  Previous owner left a lot of junk, hopefully they got the real estate guy (who has too much going on in his life ATM, poor fellow) to do something about that.

And then on to the tough part, packing and moving all my stuff!

I'm moving in to a new space today. The people seem nice and the neighbourhood is friendly. There's a game shop not too far away, but I don't know if it's for board games or rpgs. Looking forward to exploring the town.

They gave it their best, but a team from Norway was unable to break the current record in sheep-to-sweater knitting (i.e, start with unshorn sheep, then shear, spin, knit, produce finished sweater) currently held by the Australian team, 4 hours 51 minutes.

Not really sure whether this goes with Vents or Good Stuff.  It depends on who you root for in the exciting world of team knitting, I suppose.

For the record, Norway's team finished at a dismal 8 hours and 33 minutes.   Norway's NRK television broadcast the whole thing live, along with 4 hours of knitting-related additional programming.  (NRK is Norway's television network)

And also for the record, about a quarter of Norwegians tuned in.

I guess, from the American point of view, the Good Stuff is this:  although Europeans can still sneer at American culture, when it comes from a Norwegian, we can giggle a little bit.

I'd say that counts as Good Stuff, Eur512. I'm an American and I'm happy to see the Back to Back Wool Challenge posted somewhere besides my favourite fiber forum. The Australians are still the world record champs, but the Norwegian team was fun to watch. I liked the fun, competitive energy between all of the teams.

_{Mumbles something about hot dudes shearing sheep.}

I met my wife at a post-Halloween party, November 1st, 1985 :)  We've been having fun together ever since!
This message was lightly edited by the user at 21:17, Mon 04 Nov 2013.

Your wife is a sheep?...

Maybe u wanna change the subject before setting yourself up like that. Wish I could party like it was 1985. I am glad you have a fun filled relationship. I think that's good thing.