Managed to get an 'A' in all my classes. Woo!

Started playing in a friend's Star Wars game, which has done wonders for my writer's block. I felt very fluid and reactive last game, and enjoyed it immensely. The plot is moving forward. With a bit of prodding, the party is moving in the right direction. Huzzah!

K got all of the Buffy she was missing at Wal-Mart on Black Friday. Thankfully, I am a resourceful bean and have managed to find some other presents. Most of my shopping is done (which is good, because I'm running out of moolah).

K did spring to get us an awesome external 1TB hard drive, which I used to back up all my crap so I could do a fresh install of Windows 7.

Firstly, I love how a 1TB hard drive, external, no less, is affordable.

Secondly, I like Windows 7. Big surprise, I know. It's pretty much Vista that doesn't suck. I want to say more about it, but that's really the big picture.

Beat Borderlands with the Hunter. It was a fun game, overall. Is The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned out yet for PC? 'Cause I can't frickin' find it anywhere. Bastiches.

ALSO finished Tales of Monkey Island. Overall, wonderful. The last installment left me with much of the same feelings as every Monkey Island post 2. Basically, the end was rushed. It's really a shame. With all the wonderful dialogue and possibilities, I feel like they really dropped the ball on the last one. Ah well.

Books!

Heart of Veridon by Tim Akers

Until I read this book, I had never heard of Tim Akers. Now I am hunting down all of his short stories.

The first thing you must know about heart of Veridon is that it is awesome. If you like troubled protagonists with metal eyes, crazy spider-people, technology scavenged from gods, and possibly the best MacGuffin since the One Ring, you should read this book.

The world is painted vividly, the characters come to life, and the action is packed. Like action. In a pack.

I would recommend this book to anyone I know and care about. A+


Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

A Discworld book. That might tell you already whether you will like it or not.

Mostly about Foot the Ball (soccer), mob mentality (especially with regard to sports), and prejudice. A lot of the Unseen University wizards in this one, mostly Archchancellor Ridcully and Ponder Stibbons. Rincewind makes some very minor appearances. Vetinari shows up a lot in this one and is in good form.

This one started out a bit clumsy, but soon recovered well enough to stand beside the majority of the Discworld books. Certainly not the best, but had some decent new characters, did justice to returning ones, and was overall, a book by Terry Pratchett.

I enjoyed it quite a bit for a book that is, basically, about a sport I don't care about. B

Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams

This book starts off as what seems like a standard fantasy with Arabian Nights flair, and then goes through at least two other genres. And it does it WELL. Great pacing, likable post-human characters, cool supercomputers, named magical weapons, wormhole technology, and all kinds of awesome stuff.

And, y'know, a talking cat. Normally, not a big fan of the talking cat. Overdone. But it works pretty well here.

Solid A

And finally, thanks to spartydragon, I present you with THE TETRIS GOD!

Firstly, health care is fixed!... Kinda. It's still TECHNICALLY having problems, but we've been told that it will be pushed through and that everything should be fine. So... Yeah. Big weight off of my shoulders. I can schedule things and not pay $3,000 for a scan. Huzzah!

K and I had a fine little feast over the weekend involving eating a lot of things and carving pumpkins. It was a great time, and pictures of it can be seen here!

Started work today at school doing IT stuff. Today wasn't too bad, but I expect a much harder time come Thursday. It was wonderful to be working again. Especially nice because I knew most of the job already.

Also, the thing that makes me a little extra-bit happy about the health insurance is that now my "extra" money from the job is actually extra! Especially since I have extra hours now! Woo!

Not much else to say. Watching Weird Al on Kevin Pollak's Chat Show. Yay! He turned fifty last week. Wow.

So I'll make a quick one about food and miniatures!

I took some quick snaps of the modded-up tiefling paladin with K's much nicer camera. You can see them here. I'm very happy with the results, overall, especially the horns. Those were a pain in the tuckus. As I get more interested in doing small details with minis, I want the sculpting tools and a magnifier and light for my third hand.

OH! Also, I applied for a job at school, just doing computer lab stuff, but it's a little extra money and I can work on homework (or game stuff) while I'm there. Score! I'm only starting at 9 hours a week, but that little bit extra will be a big help.

Food! We've made some excellent food lately! Made a great lamb curry last night. It turned out particularly well considering I had to do a little fudging with some stuff. Very tasty!

I've also been getting more bold with those dried ghost chilies that I bought in Seattle. I've added small bits of peppers to curry or chili, but not more than about 1/3. I like spice, but I'm reluctant to spoil a dish by making it inedible. Thankfully, K and I are both spice lovers, so I don't have to tread quite so carefully. I chopped one up and added it to the spicy coconut pork chops I made Monday. Definitely added a good amount of heat, but not on the level I was expecting from the YouTube videos, in fact it didn't even reach the point of some delicious spicy soup K made last week, which was deliciously and uncomfortably spicy.

So be prepared to hear a horror story where I find the magic amount of ghost chilies that can be ingested without going insane as I hop right past it. The subject for that post will likely be: My eyes are bleeding: a haiku.

It looks like it's about as warm and sunny as it's likely to get today, so I'm going to go do a bit of yard work while I can. I will leave you with this.

Also: Probably the most awesome display of accordionistry I have ever seen. Linked to me by my lovely wife.

I sleep now.

Not posting in a while always makes me want to put it off even longer, as though I should fear some manner of retribution from the posting gods.

A few things. Went on honeymoon. We stayed at the Polynesian (also referred to as "the Poly"). It was a wonderful time. Very relaxing, despite the amount of walking involved. Lots of fun. Almost avoided getting a sunburn. Ate tons of good food.

(That sleepytime extra tea is finally starting to kick in, so I will make this brief and get some sleep while the getting's good.)

Been perusing the /tg/ forums over on 4chan lately and came across an odd bird called RubyQuest. It's basically an interactive fiction deal with the DM posting up little stick-figure drawings of the rooms, characters, etc as things happen. The DM takes suggestions for actions from the other forum users.

Interesting thing about RubyQuest is that it uses characters from Animal Crossing, and puts them slap in the middle of a really good horror story. It's got a good hunk of Silent Hill 2, Cthulhu mythos, and it's really worth it to read through the archives they made of the threads. That's here.

Another, much less serious quest called DorfQuest can be found here. Hilarious.

[Edit: The Dorf Quest link takes you to the archives, but not to Dorf Quest. It just doesn't like multiple word tags. So when you get there, just scroll down a bit to the tag search box and type in "dorf quest." Huzzah.]

Been reading a lot lately. Brain is flagging, so won't attempt to post the list. I like books.

One of the players in my game is playing a female tiefling paladin with a big hammer. Not only are there very few tiefling minis whatsoever, but there are NONE which are female and have hammers. So I decided to fix that. I took this mini as a base to work from. A capable-looking female elf with a big-ass sword and armor that actually covers vital organs. Gasp.

Despite loving the big sword, it had to go. I did some filing to blunt the sword, got out my pin vise, a paperclip, and the green stuff, and the pre-painted product looks pretty awesome. (Sadly, my camera on my cel will not capture this, but I'll get a nice pic once it's all painted).

Okay. And now I'm rambling. Time for bed.

Just got in Sunday from a trip to the great Northwest! It was a blast! Instead of boring everyone about it here, I'll link you to my flickr set. The comments there do a pretty good job.

One of the things that is suggested, but not talked about at length, is that I loved Seattle. Really. A lot. I think this might be the place for Chaotic Alignments, or possibly Portland (though I didn't get to cruise around Portland too much). It's full of my people, there aren't a lot of gaming stores, and none at all even close to my model. It needs some gaming support!

With a brief visit back home, cramming in the things I gotta do (like homework and touching the puppet head), and just enjoying not having to go anywhere, I'm back on the road about an hour from now... TO GENCON! WOOOOOO!

Gonna double-check my packing. Let the dice roll where they may!

I have to list 10 things I love that start with a certain letter. captain_jester gave me the letter G.

If you comment I will give you a letter.

1. Green - It's my favorite color. I love most shades of green, though I do tend toward the extremes of "obnoxiously bright" and "earth-tone drab."

2. Groo - Groo the Wanderer has secured a lifetime spot as one of my favorite comics due to being filled with violence, dumb jokes, and old-school saturday morning cartoon morals. Add to that the fact that it's drawn by Sergio Aragoñes, the guy who did the Mad Magazine marginals, and there you go.

3. Gamma World - Gamma World is near and dear to my heart. It's got pretty much everything I love. Squid. Floating psychic squid. Squid using an egg whisk to beat you up. It's a great post-apocalypse RPG, with many of the notes which made Fallout so awesome, and also a lot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles thrown in for good measure.

4. Games - I love games. They are fun. They interest me in the way that their task-resolution mechanics operate, the way that different games make people interact in different ways, and how they help me de-stress.

5. Gently-Used Electronics - No matter how many times I am burned by the Dreamcast that doesn't work because someone thought it would be a good idea to swap out all the internal hardware for peas, I LOVE finding a good deal on electronic gadgets. From retro game systems (Got my Sega Nomad for $2.00!) to odd doohickeys like the HandiFax I had, there's nothing like the thrill of finding something weird that requires batteries or a plug at a yard sale. Giant electric banana, anyone?

6. Good Work Ethic - I have this deeply ingrained, no doubt due to my upbringing, which makes me like someone with a good work ethic. It's a bit too deep, perhaps. I've been known to drag myself in to work or school when I was REALLY sick (like when I had a case of the sausage arm). But there ya go.

7. Graphic Novels - And other works of mixed media, as well. I'm so happy some of my Nausicaa survived the mold.

8. Gluing Things to Other Things - ... or modding. Mostly miniatures. I really like messing around with my minis. I'm working on one now that will scare the bejeezus out of captain_jester. Muhuhahahahaha!

9. Great Luke Ski, the - One of my favorite parody artists/filkers, he's just a funny guy. Plus, he's got rhythm, even if he can't always sing all that well. Did some of the greats: Cornholio (to the tune of The Macarena), Resistance (ST:TNG song to the tune of Going the Distance), The Ballad of Optimus Prime (a classic original), and many others. Check him out if you haven't at his site or his lj at lukeski.

10. Gen Con - And cons in general. I'm really excited about this year. I'm doing more True Dungeon things than any other year, including Terrorworks: A bunch of marines on a spaceship with killer aliens. Sweet.

WHEW!

Man, where has this last month gone?

Studying, mostly. I've been working my twelve-siders off to try to get decent grades over this summer laden with accelerated courses. As of next week, three of my classes will be DONE! I have two classes that go for several more weeks, and I think I will be a much more relaxed bean during that time.

My D&D game has been put on hold for a bit. Since I'm leaving for vacation to Washington with K next week, trying to get all my work done ahead of time and getting all of my studying done has been eating up the time I would normally use to do the majority of my work for my game. When I get back? Next week is Gen Con. Sooooooo.... Week after Gen Con, we resume gaming!

I'm really looking forward to meeting K's family and touring around Washington. Like most exciting things, I don't really feel the excitement until the event is nearly upon me. Woohoo!

So I got that beautiful Schwinn bike in a yard sale for $20, right? Put some new tires on it, it was riding great. Well, the wheel kept shifting on me. Turns out that one of the bolts on the rear wheel was a bit too rusty and stripped, so the wheel will shift with the slightest provocation, eventually unhooking the chain. Yar! I'm going to take it to the Kettering Bike Shop and see if it's reasonable to fix. Though I like the bike a lot, I don't want to put a ton of money into it. Seeing as how I've already spent almost $80 on the bike (purchase + tubes + tires), it is unlikely that I will want to fix this problem. Maybe I can trade it to the bike shop for some store credit toward a bike with actual shock absorbers.

Lessee... That was bad news, so... good news! My Business Information Systems instructor FINALLY graded my work. Urgh. Due to that missed assignment, I'd been sitting there staring at an F for WAY too long, considering I'd been handing in A-level material. Thankfully, she has graded my stuff, which has brought my grade up to a B. If I can keep my work up and do all the extra credit, I think I can still squeeze an A out of the course.

Bad news. One of the grants that had been sitting on my financial aid sheet for some time, with me wondering where, exactly, it was, has been cut from the budget by the state of Ohio. It wasn't a life-or-death thing, a bit over $800 each quarter, but definitely would have helped make ends meet. Ah well. That's why I have a cabinet full of ramen.

Good news! K got a story up on Escape Pod! It was a great reading(actually sounds almost exactly like the reading she did herself), but it's not her most marketable story, especially for the average Escape Pod fan. You can check it out there if you like. It's called Wonder Maul Doll. Warning: It is incredibly violent, flips accepted gender roles, and will NOT make you feel like a shiny, happy person. You have been warned.

More good news! I made some awesome spicy coconut pork chops tonight. They were REALLY good. I am a good cook. The end.

Good news! K's shipment of pods was three weeks overdue, so she called her insurance company. They said "Oh, well there's an in-network provider for that now." They didn't bother to call her or send her a letter, and when she inquired which provider that might be or how to contact them, they couldn't help her. She spent most of last week trying to get the information she needs to get the insulin delivery she needs to live. The good news is, it worked. She got her pods today. The hilarious news? The day AFTER she got everything worked out, they mailed out a letter telling her she needed to contact the new provider for her pods to work it out. AFTER she talked to them, AFTER there would be no way for her to get more pods before her last batch ran out. Ain't insurance grand? At least she's a warrior woman who knows how to get what she wants.

? news. K and I have been looking at houses to buy, since we'll be in Ohio for at least a few years. Our rent could be going toward something we own (and cost even less per month), right? But it DOES have to be within our budget. Well, we've looked at a few houses. K and I, we appreciate the character that comes with older houses, so we've been looking at some that fit that bill. This is the first house we looked at. Tons of potential, ridiculously cheap, but WAY too expensive in terms of our time and money to make it livable. We looked at a few others, none of which impressed, until we got to this one. This has all the right character, and not NEARLY as much work as the first house. There are a few problem areas, but we're not sure how much it will cost. We think we'll make an offer contingent upon inspection, and say no thanks if we'd have to put more into it than we should.

Good news: I've had a lot of mini-breakthroughs during economics class about products, store layouts, etc. Especially involving MiniMounts and how I'm going to set up the business. The more I think about it, the more I think that Chaotic Alignments might work in Dayton, despite the fact that it is not a well-off city. The evidence:

A) It already supports one good game store and a few crappy ones. An excellent game store should be a shoe-in.

B) It is the location of several universities AND Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Schools and military bases are great sources for gamers.

C) Especially because Dayton is pretty small as far as cities go, there is VERY LITTLE in the way of entertainment here. Good places to eat are scarce, even the local indie movie theater sucks. All the more reason to chuck some dice.

D) There are a lot of neighborhood/family-oriented organizations up here trying to preserve historic districts and supporting small business. Imagine if I could get into a cool-looking older building! First, it would make me very happy, but second, it would mean grassroots support, even from non-gamers. I have a weekly family board-game day and boom.

E) Local(ish) support in the form of friends and family. This can come very in handy.

So yeah. Maybe. It's a possibility.

Had a fantastic weekend!

Saturday, K & I hit a neighborhood yard sale with Steph! It was about two hours of walking around and was great. I love yard sales. K found some red plates, an awesome bowl, and a sweet candle holder. Steph found a Singer sewing cabinet in very excellent shape, missing only a belt as far as I could tell. They wanted nearly $400 for it, but I talked them down to $150. At the same location as the sewing cabinet I found a ton of bikes! I ended up getting an old (1970s, I think) Schwinn 3-speed for $20! It definitely needs some new tires and a bit of a shine-up, but it rides great! So woooo!

Next week our neighborhood is having a yard sale, but I am unprepared. S'okay. I'd probably have it at Pidgy's anyway.

Had my first game in a while on Friday. It was mostly one big fight. I think I've impressed upon them how tough these bugs can be, so next episode will be mostly plot? We shall see how it works out.

Oh! I have a Wii Fit again! We got Sams Club memberships on Sat, and they had one there for a very reasonable price. K's been wanting it, too. So huzzah! Balance games galore!

Cleaned up my room a bit today. Did all my homework. Very tired. I sleep now.

We had hardly any customers yesterday. I watched some movies, read some comics, and sorted out the needs from the do not needs. Man, a lot of Shang-Chi stuff we needed! But yeah, apparently the undead are walking the streets keeping everyone from being good consumers. The replica of Mjolnir will be a handy skull-bashing weapon, should it come to that.

It figures the zombies would rise on my last weekend of work. I never get to have any fun.

Yesterday, K lost her PDM on her way out of work. She retraced her steps to find it, but no luck. At first glance it looks kinda like one of the bigger Blackberry devices, so it probably got nabbed by someone and tossed once they realized what it was. Anywho, she was upset about it, and it meant she had to go back on shots until she could get a new one. Thankfully, Omnipod is awesome and they are dropping one by her work today. Also, they apparently have a NEW, smaller one, which she'll be getting next week. Yay!

Tuesday, I made Steak & Cauliflower mash. Since K is a type 1 diabetic, we stay away from crazy high-carb stuff, like potatoes. So we steam up some cauliflower, add a lot of cheese and some cream, and mash it up good. S'very tasty, and I am happy she taught me the recipe. The steak turned out GREAT, so I thought I'd share what I did. I made do with what I had, so feel free to extrapolate. ( Here thar be recipe! )

And since there was so much cauliflower mash, the next morning I tried using some as a potato substitute for hash browns. They were tasty, but not quite there. I must figure out another cooking method. Maybe try deep frying? Or it might just be that they're a bit too "mashy" and I need to forgo the cream and some of the cheeses. Hrm. I shall experiment and report.

CC2 did not work under Vista at all. In fact, it wouldn't even finish installing. CC3, though, seems to work fine, so I may upgrade.

Paid my tuition today. Need to order my books, too. Urgh. I'm about to be so very, very broke.

My mom contacted me because a friend of hers has a daughter who has (fairly) recently been diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. She wants me to talk to this girl because I was so positive throughout the whole thing. Much of the reason I was so positive (other than that I'm a bit of an optimist) is that I have a great (if often crazy) family to help me through this stuff. I have never met this woman or her mother... but I will probably talk to her. It just feels weird. Ah well.

Anyway, I am really tired and need to study some more, so I'm off to flop and study.

Due to finals, the D&D game we were going to have this week was shifted into boardgame time. Robin and Max showed, so we had a crowd of seven!

The evening started with Max, Robin, and captain_jester showing up around 3:30. We broke out Race for the Galaxy, which I don't think I've ever won at, but love all the same. This game was no exception, though it was close: I tied with the Mattman!

Just as we were wrapping that up, Ian and Mike pulled in. We split into two groups of three; one playing Small World, the other (mine) playing Cities & Knights of Catan, which I had never played before! I must say that Cities and Knights adds a lot of awesomeness to Catan, although the hands quickly get out of control. Ian had a few house rules which sped up gameplay a bit:
1. If you roll a seven, everyone gives you a card to bribe you not to put the thief on them.
2. You can have players "hold" cards for you if they have room in their hand, so that your stuff doesn't get taken by a seven.
They definitely sped up play, though if I had more time to kill, I think I would leave these rules aside.

Tony showed partway through the drubbing Robin was giving to Ian and I in Cities and Knights. He stepped in on a game of Red Dragon Inn the other group was just starting. Once we wrapped up, our group played a game of Lunch Money, (Robin kicked our asses again) and then we broke out Guillotine.

Ah, Guillotine. A fine game, especially when you have awesome minis to stand in for whatever is delivering the death blow. For this evening, the slayer of the condemned was Huge Fiendish Tyrannosaurus. Nom nom nom! I won the first game pretty handily, and I think Ian mopped up on the next one. Tony and Mike had to take off, but everyone else joined in on the next game! It was awesome. I lost a lot, and totally didn't care. After a few many-person games of Guillotine (with Cthulhu stepping in to do the honors in the final round), we parted ways. T'was very nice. =)

In boring news, I dusted the inside AND outside of the house today (got rid of all those cobwebs hiding under the eaves), swept everything, and huzzah! Also, last week I bought a weed whacker. It is SO much better than the manual push mower my mom gave me, especially with some of the foliage I have to deal with and the small lawn. I'll likely sell it at the yard sale.

Speaking of yard sales! There are quite a few neighborhood-wide ones coming up! I am excited! I love yard sales. Of course, I will likely be broke at that time. Ah well.

Been playing a lot of Starfighter: Disputed Galaxy when I'm up late and can't sleep. Reminds me a little bit of Starflight 2, but with more weapon options, better combat, and little in the way of trade. It was multiplayer when I started it a week ago, but some shitty hackers got into it and messed it up for apparently the nth time, so the creator decided to take multiplayer out. Le sigh. Does anyone know any good Starflight-esque games? ie - space, you get a ship, you get to fight things and buy and sell goods at different planets, and improve or upgrade your ship as you go? I love this stuff. Probably because of my exploration bug.

Restaurant City is beginning to bore. There aren't any challenges I care about, there's a level cap (27), and once you have eight employees, your restaurant just gets bigger. There's no way to earn more money for your dishes or anything... Just getting tired of it. Need a new timekiller when I'm up late and not quite coherent enough to read.

Speaking of games, I have a lot of miniatures. Seriously, a ton. And many of them are strangely shaped or quite large. Does anyone have any ready-made solutions for storing/sorting these? I have the space for it, I just don't want to spend a ton on foam or whatever, especially since a lot of them are plastic and can take a little abuse.

Hrm. That's all. I think I shall install Campaign Cartographer 2 and see if it will run under Vista.

They added a food stand outside your restaurant! About frickin' time! Woo woo!

My life is pretty good right now.

The Toe is healing up pretty well right now. I've been upgraded to non-stick bandages and am allowed to wear socks! In a week or two I'm allowed to try a NORMAL shoe on it instead of this flipper they make me wear.

I just had my first tenative, serious offer for future funding for my store. (awesomesauce!)

K and I are going on trips! In late August, I'm going out to the west coast for the first time (not counting airports). This is exciting! I'll be out there for about a week. Up for a visit, Joie?

In September, we are planning to go down to Florida for a bit. This trip is so exciting that I have trouble putting it into words. It will likely get its own post.

Also, I am going to Gen Con for a mere two days this year. I'm doing True Dungeon and TerrorWerks, amongst other things. Wheeee!

Plants and Zombies is fun.

Study study study. I want to play more Plants vs. Zombies, because it is fun. But big test and research paper say no.

What's gone on in the last 16 days? Hrm.

The weather has, in turns, been warm and horribly, horribly cold for this time of year (including a little snow). K and I have been using the warm bits to garden and work on the yard. A lot of raking and sweeping and replacing of bricks later, it's lookin' pretty sweet. We repaired a lot of the damaged bricks in the brick fence and extended it so it looks a little nicer. There's still a lot of open ground, since we're starting our veggie seeds inside due to the weather and squirrel bandits. Gardening is fun!

Lessee... on April 15th I got to meet Jim Butcher during his book tour for Turn Coat. He and K have the same agent, who apparently plays Amber Diceless. Who knew? He was really genuinely nice, was funny and had a great turnout. He answered questions very patiently and with a great deal of humor. One question was something to the tune of "How do you feel about all of the fan fiction that people write about your characters that is out there on the net?" His response: "What fan fiction? I'm not aware of any fan fiction. See, if I were aware of it, I would be legally obligated to go out and force what are arguably some of my biggest fans to take down stories that they obviously enjoy making in order to enforce my copywrite. So the answer to that is... What fan fiction?" While I've never been a fanfic writer, this is the PERFECT response. Good job, Jim. ( As you can see, he was really, really pleased to meet me. )

Something else important... After the crushing blow dealt to me by the Ohio Pain Clinic, and after a bit of gardening to help me feel better, and after much talk from K and Ian, I made the decision to go to school full time. At the end of this quarter, I am quitting my job and living off of student loans (and a lot of help from K). This is a really hard choice for me. I don't like borrowing money and I don't like living off of others, but it seems like the thing to do right now, because I honestly don't feel like A)having a schedule opposite K, thus rarely spending quality time with her or B)having a 1 hour+ commute.

Also, I like skewl.

Had the first ever game here in Tuberculosis Town. Chi is growing more violent and demented every game and dragging the rest of the band along. I woe for what will befall them all. ( Pics here... )

THE END

Just did my interview at the Ohio Pain Clinic! It went very well. Using the nice resume paper, taking a while to decide what I was wearing, and practicing really paid off. He mentioned how wowed he was at all of the above, although it was a much less formal interview than I was expecting. I think I've got it. *crosses fingers*

Came back just a bit ago from my first class over at Sinclair, my Entrepeneur class. Wow. My brain is on fire! I feel as though some kind of veil has been lifted off of my thoughts and I can think clearly for the first time since the cancer. It's... amazing. I'm REALLY glad that I went for a classroom setting over the online. My professor seems to be excellent, and our class is full of a variety of people, including a gamer, so I already made a friend!

Talking about Chaotic Alignments a little and what I want to do, even just for a moment, was incredibly freeing. Having validation from someone who has started, lost, and sold several businesses makes me feel way better about the idea than I ever thought it would.

My school schedule, along with my work schedule, is sadly making life difficult for the gaming side of things. About the only day I'm totally available is Wednesday. I can do Sunday night starting at around six, but I've already gotten a couple of ixnays on that day. Looks like I'm just going to have to find a better job to fit around my gaming schedule, huh?

That's about it. I'm gonna job hunt a bit. Maybe I'll stumble upon something. =D

Okay, maybe you can. K ran around taking pictures with her camera on a sunny day, and stuck the pics up on her flickr account. So, without further ado, Tuberculosis Town!

Also, a weird "unique" goth guy came into the store today. He was wearing a tuxedo t-shirt and a top hat and was carrying around a fairly hefty wooden box with brass handles on the ends. He looked like he was in his late teens or very early twenties, had long blondish hair, and had the air of someone who wants attention but doesn't want it to be obvious. Y'know. Someone who plays White Wolf LARPs a lot.

I wanted to ask him what was in the box SOOOOOO badly, but I heard actual things inside it, and knew that the reply could not be "Nothing! Absolutely nothing!"

So I didn't. Instead, I amused myself with all the things that COULD be in the box. Dice. Tiny jerky mummies. The bones of his last cat. Dice made out of the bones of his last cat...

Anyway, just wanted to slap this down before it was forgotten.