It's the end of the year, and what you do at the end of anything is reminisce about the past. Not this year, for me. The first half I have very little interest in remembering, and the last half is too close and really still too much in media res to reminisce about. But between a letter and the smell of cloves, I've had a couple of memories taking up quite a few cycles.
Cut for ramblings that go on for quite a long time....
( Erection! )
( Camp Chief Ouray )

My tweets from yesterday:

13:50 Quiet day inside today, staring out at waves of snow coming down. We're watching Harry Potter movies and eating popcorn. Lovely day! #

15:23 Scottish accents are sooooo hot. (At least the ones I can understand.) You know, just FYI. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

I have decided that I'm not one of those people who can say "Well the story was crap and the characters were flat, but the f/x made me wet my pants! That was awesome!"

For those who observe it, Happy Saint Stephen's Day. For the godless heathens who don't, have a good day anyway--it's Saturday and you probably don't have to go to work.

Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious. Glorious!

"What's to-day?" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.

"Eh?" returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.

"What's to-day, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge.

"To-day?" replied the boy. "Why, Christmas Day."

"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I haven't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!"

"Hallo!" returned the boy.

"Do you know the Poulterer's, in the next street but one, at the corner?" Scrooge inquired.

"I should hope I did," replied the lad.

"An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge. "A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they"ve sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up there -- Not the little prize Turkey: the big one?"

"What, the one as big as me?" returned the boy.

"What a delightful boy!" said Scrooge. "It's a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck."

"It's hanging there now," replied the boy.

"Is it?" said Scrooge. "Go and buy it."

"Walk-er!" exclaimed the boy.

"No, no," said Scrooge, "I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell them to bring it here, that I may give them the direction where to take it. Come back with the man, and I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes and I'll give you half-a-crown."

The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.


(Happy Crimbo. Or not, as it pleases you.)

I have a housemate engagement early tomorrow morning. Which means I gotta get up earlier. But I'm going to get up to the sounds of Cornershop.

Yay: I found a Portuguese restaurant in Little Portugal. Anne and I went to Sousa's yesterday and it was frickin' awesome. She had pulvo, an octopus stew that was really nicely done, and I had something I forgot the name of with marinated pork and potatoes and two jaunty slices of orange (and of course olives). My mouth is very happy. A bit spendy for every day but a trip to look forward to.

Boo: I still cannot find my razor. Grizzly Adams.

Yay: Do you like water you can drink without (ironically) dying of dehydration? My friend Clay asked me to pass on word of an organisation that is looking to make certain this happens more often. A Single Drop is sending testing kits to Africa, but they can't do it without money. Or, if you're feeling a lack of money, they can't do it without other people knowing about it. Helping others would be an excellent way to get some Christmas spirit.

Yay-ish: Penn State sent me mail. Unfortunately, it's just them asking me to fill out a form which has all the information I've already given them. (Except for my veteran status and ethnic origincy.)

Yay: I got to see friends yesterday, I shall see friends today, and again tomorrow.

Yay-ish: Weird West and cowboys on New Year's Day. I'm so totally not ready.

My tweets from yesterday:

15:24 just hugely overtipped her waiter due to basic math fail. Ah, well, it's the holidays, he was cute, & he flirted with me, old lady that I am #

23:50 gets to drive into the Chicago ice storm tomorrow. Whoo hoo?! #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

According to Sigourney Weaver, Avatar is the movie James Cameron has wanted to make since he was fourteen. So this would make it his "Fifth Element".


I'm not yet certain if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

EDIT: She also says the most moving thing is the story and the romance, and the effects are all sublimated to that. I therefore assume she was also lying about the 'fourteen' thing.

I just went for a walk and startled a family of four coons. They broke for the sewers and disappeared.
It gave me a great idea for a plot for my Deadlands campaign.

I didn't have a lot of luck with online dating.  It seemed a natural fit for me when I got divorced 4 ½ years ago and contemplated the dating market for the first time in ten years.  After all, I started meeting people on the internet in 1990, when I got addicted to a multi-player text adventure game, the ancestor of the modern-day MMORPGs (which I do not play, for the record).  And I must confess that almost every romantic or sexual partner I’ve ever had has come out of an internet meeting.

But it turned out that online dating wasn’t quite the same thing as the way I’d met people in the past.  Meeting people through a game like MUD is more like meeting people in the journals here, or in any online community where you aren’t connecting with any particular goal in mind, but rather are just… hanging out and seeing how people interrelate.

( Lots more yapping about how I'm a weird freak who only seems to be able to get into relationships with people I meet online... )

So I often wonder – how do other people meet their partners?  I often see profiles where people say “I’m tired of meeting people through the bar scene” – do people actually do that?  (I would feel totally weird meeting someone in a bar.)  Or is it a friend-of-friend networking type thing?  I’m interested in your stories of how you have met those you became romantically involved with, just out of curiosity.

I'm sitting here in the den playing video games, and somebody comes quietly up to the front door, depresses the latch and pushes on the door. Then they're gone. There's no attempt to use a key, no repeat attempt in case the door got stuck. This seems to be just somebody going around hoping somebody's left their door unlocked and aren't too close to the front door.

I took my first turn around the potential new neighborhood this afternoon, picked up a couple of carry-away menus, that sort of thing. For a place called 'Little Portugal' there are a lot of Mexican style taquerias. And a strong Viet Namese presence, it looks like. There are some adorable gardens behind the chainlink fence, and my brief 'parking in a garage' time is already highly enjoyable. (I didn't have to roll my windows down, and I can just leave the trunk open to try and air out the moldy smell.)

Now that we've survived the mad rush of Hannukah, we can all settle down and start to focus on the new year. Classes start in just a couple of weeks!

Local celebrity and personal hero Edgar Allen Poe visits London and discovers the local customs... intriguing. Leslie of course needs to click on this.

Also? First run to Rasputin's nets me $180. (Of course, it also had half of my for-sale DVDs in it.) And I'll see if the library will take my VHS tapes.

Plus? I only spent ten bucks of it on new CDs (Arrogant Worms, Special Beat/English Beat, the Bauhaus tribute) despite being there an hour waiting for them to finish!

So, just in time for everybody else to move on to The Next Thing, I've started playing the variety of MMORPGs that have a video component. I'm playing City of Heroes with Hedgepig, Violet Jones, Basari, and Basil Wrathbun (he's a bad guy).
I'm having a lot of fun with it, but I don't know how long I can continue soloing. (Probably exactly as long as it takes opponents to develop immobilizing or incapacitating powers.) Plus, I'm still experimenting with powers and costumes, so there's an element of novelty the missions don't always provide.
I can't do anything quickly that involves changing orientation or maneuvering, but that's me. I also had a weird experience that felt like some stories I've heard from women I know in real life. I was running across town when I got a pop up that "D3v1ls W1ngs" wanted me to join his party. I declined and kept running. Thirty seconds later, I got a repeat request. I didn't respond immediately because I was confused and I was busy. But I declined it again. And about forty-five seconds later, a flying character with membranous wings landed in front of me and asked me "want 2 team?" I started feeling weirded out, and said "I admire your tenacity." He asked "wat that mean?" I vascillated between logging out and bailing on the boundary violating situation and teaming up after all. I decided that I wanted the XP and it would be interesting to see what running in a (very small) team was like. But it was kind of creepy.

I'm fairly certain there are organizations that take laptops and cel phones that may not be bleeding edge thousand dollar tech but that somebody else may be able to make use of.
Does anybody know of such an animal?

We make everything you need. You need every thing we make.

Some of my stuff has made it out the door, and I've been given some cash, so that's good. Now to start hauling stuff to the shops, and go through my closet.

Speaking of which, I have the talking Baby Sinclair doll in a box, and if you would like to take him home and love him then you should let me know. Or one of Jhonen's FillerBunny dolls. Kaleidoscopes? L5R or Over the Edge cards? I've got a few.