Recently in Personal Category

So game night yesterday was a bit of a bust. There was only two of us. A few factors probably contributed to the low turn-out.

First, the weather has finally turned. Winter is here. For the last four days the highs have been in the mid 20s, with lows at night in the teens. I'm sure that dissuaded our cyclist for heading out, and possibly a few other folks as well.

There's also been several Saturday and weekend gaming events lately. Given the choice between gaming on a Thursday and on a weekend, most folk will choose tot weekend. Two weeks ago there was a gaming con down in central Vermont. This week one of the gamers just decided to hold a Saturday gaming session for some reason. My understanding is that a bunch of people just said "hey, I'll go play games on Saturday instead."

Unfortunately for me I have to work Saturday. Gaming starts I 4:00, but I won't even get out of work until close to 5:00. I will be tired and need a shower. The host lives in Montpelier, which is in the opposite direction(South) from Burlington as me (North), so I would have to drive all the way back to Burlington, and then another hour or so to Montpelier. It's just not worth it. No Saturday gaming for me.

So it was just the two of us for Thursday gaming. Neil went downstairs and picked up some good two-person games. His choices? San Juan, Saint Petersburg, and Starship Catan. Anybody who knows my gaming habits will immediate know that I chose Starship Catan. (I really hate the other two games).

Starship Catan was a fun little game. I lost, of course, since it was my first time playing it, but I still enjoyed it. It has the basic "Catan" paradigm of accumulating resources to purchase various items, with the ultimate goal of acquiring victory points, but there are some nice twists to the game that other "Catan" type games don't have. The "space exploration" theme is also developed rather nicely. I will avoid going into too many details since you can just follow the link above to the Board Game Geek review.

I'll definitely be looking forward to more games of Starship Catan.

Next thursday is Thanksgiving, so no gaming then. Oh Well. I'll be sitting at home with my dog, trying to keep warm.

Yesterday I took my car in to the dealership for some simple repairs. I got an oil change, had my wiper blade fixed, and took care of a recall and some general maintenance.

When I got home (after smashing an owl on my windshield) I discovered an extra set of keys in my car. I can only guess that the flunky who drove my car out of the repair bay back into the parking lot has to move several cars and accidentally left the keys for another car inside mine.

So now I have this extra set of keys. Of course I'm going to do the right thing and drive back to the dealership today to drop them off. The only catch is when.

Driving down to South Burlington and back will eat an hour and half of my time, not to mention my gasoline. I also plan on driving to Burlington tonight to play games. That makes 2 trips to Burlington and almost 3 hours of driving. Ideally I'd like to combine that into one trip! Unfortunately, gaming is going to be at night, but the service bay in the dealership closes at 5:00.

I could drive down to Burlington, drop the keys off and sit around for 2 hours. Maybe I could grab dinner somewhere. Or I could just drive back and forth from Burlington to my apartment.

It's not clear to me which is better ... sitting for two hours in a restaurant, presumably reading, or driving the extra hour plus.

Aw hell, like I'm going to give up an opportunity to eat out...

I'm really not happy with either choice.

While driving home today on the expressway I smashed into an owl in flight. The bird just swooped down out of the trees and right into my path. As soon as I realized that the animal was in dire peril, I jabbed on the brakes, but that only managed to reduce my speed from around 60 to 45 before the bird impacted on my front window.

I ducked - not that I was in any danger - but from my perspective the animal was headed directly for my face.

It hit the car with an unremarkable thud, the slide up across the top of my car. What happened to it after that I cannot say. I checked my rear view mirror and saw no sign of the animal.

And then found myself doing some order of magnitude calculations regarding the transfer of kinetic energy between my Passat and that poor owl. There's a lot of mass in a Passat relative to an owl. It probably was killed instantly.

And now I feel horrible about the whole thing. I can't beat myself up too much because I really can't figure out any realistic way I could have avoided the thing, but I'm still feeling just a little ... guilty ... Not really guilty - mostly just plain sad.

Owls are such pretty birds, really - glorious and magnificent.

So I have just returned from Game Night. I managed to find a guy on the internet who invites people over to his house for games once per week. Tonight we played Reiner Knizia's Poison while waiting for someone to arrive, and Mission: Red Planet once everybody was there.

It was fun meeting new people. It was fun playing new games. It was fun just being able to gab about mutual interests.

I definitely want to try to get there every week, but that will take some small "lifestyle changes" on my part.

I'm really not used to staying up late. Usually I'm in bed at 9:00. It sounds extreme, but some days I need to be at work by 6:00. I've found it much easier to approach every day like I need to be at work by 6:00. Unfortunately, that makes staying up to 11:00 on game night a bit of a task. This week I was lucky enough to have tomorrow off, so I can us caffeine to perk me up, but that's not something I can do regularly without paying a price.

From now on I'm going to have to start staying up until (*gasp*) 10:00. On most days this will mean absolutely nothing. The only difference is that when I do get up to go to work at 6:00, I'm going to pay for it a little bit on that day. The perk is that I will pay for it a little less on Thursday nights (and Friday mornings) when I stay up to play games.

It will be worth it just to get out and be with people someplace other than work. And these seem like decent people too.

I was first relieved to see that our host and his wife are Jewish. Although it sounds odd from an atheist, I really need Jewish people in my life and find comfort in their presence. For one thing, I grew up in a "reasonably Jewish" area. I have always known Jewish people and always had Jewish friends. It just feels right to me to have a Jewish presence nearby.

But, unlike the Christian presence, which often seems stifling and oppressive, the Jewish presence is non-threatening. The Jews are never trying to convert me, or convince me that I'm going to hell, or change my behavior to accommodate what they believe. If anything, the Jews are sympathetic because we're both religious minorities.

I guess the heart of the issue here is that a Jewish person will not freak out when I declare myself an atheist. He will respect my beliefs and allow us to carry on just like before, whereas Christians tend to get offend, and/or freak out, and/or try to convert me, and/or back away from me because I'm actually infested with demons.

In any case, hooray for Jewish gamers!

Tonight there were only a couple of other gamers. The is a big gaming convention in central Vermont this weekend, so the "regular crew" seemed to have bagged tonight. I guess there going to spend their whole weekend gaming, so they needed to do some of their more practical activities tonight.

Tonight I met Craig and Brian.

As near as I can tell Craig is something of a Luddite. He arrived by bicycle, and doesn't own a phone. Apparently he's living without two of the most indispensable pieces of modern technology in existence - the car and the phone. I'm not sure if he has a computer, but I suspect he doesn't. At this point I have to wonder if he uses light bulbs.

I don't hold any of this against him.

Apparently Craig grew up in a family of avid card players. As a result he's developed a habit of blowing on his cards every time he dealt a new hand. I don't believe that it's a matter of superstition for him, just mindless habit. He even blows on his cards when they have absolutely no bearing on anything. For example, in Mission: Red Planet everyone starts out with exactly the same hand of nine cards. There's no way his cards are better or worse than anyone else's - yet he blows on them anyway.

I admit, this habit is a little strange. Then again, Craig is strange. He doesn't even own a phone.

Brian, on the other hand, didn't have an remarkable foibles. He did seem to like to be "in charge" - when pieces needed moving he was the one who needed to move them. I don't think it was a conscious thing on his part, but it does appear to be some kind of inner need. I don't think it's a big deal, but it's certainly a defining personality trait. It's certainly not disturbing like a perpetual nose picker would be, or someone who only speaks in Tom Petty lyrics.

So now it's official. I have friends. I stay up late one night each week hanging out with people. I have a social life outside of work.

Pretty soon I might be able to think of Vermont as my home.

An odd sequence of events has led me to having nothing to do today.

Usually my days off are Wednesday and Thursday, but I volunteered to work for someone today because she had to go to the dentist. Thinking I had to work today, I scurried around yesterday doing all the errands that I normally might have two days to do.

Then I got blindsided. The supervisor called me yesterday afternoon to let tell me that they were having issues with the floor and that the whole restaurant was going to be closed today. So the good news is that I now have an unexpected day off. The bad news is that I have nothing to do.

It's a nice day, so I suppose I could go out and do something, but I really can't think of anything. If it were warmer, I'd go sit by the lake and read, but that's really not a good activity for November.

I suppose I could clean ....

OK, there really aren't any pancakes in this story, but generally speaking I do cook a lot of pancakes.

Today near the end of my shift, after working at least 6 hours, I keeled over and started puking into the garbage can. I busted my butt to get through the lunch rush, but after things started to slow down I just felt awful. I spent about 45 minutes thinking that I just needed to get through the day, but I couldn't hold on.

I have no explanation for what happened. I don't think I'm sick .. Ok, I do kind of feel like crap right now, but not a "sick" kind of crap, more like a "I had a rough day at work" kind of crap. I'm going to guess that I overheated or something. Actually, I think that I was overheated, but I cooled to quickly by pouring tons of ice water into my stomach after get so heated up.

The odd side effect here is that I didn't eat lunch, so I haven't really eaten anything since 7:30 this morning. After nine hours of not eating I'm just not hungry. I'm sure that won't last. I should try to force something down my throat or I'm going to be very hungry when I wake up tomorrow.

Food just doesn't seem appealing right now.

As advertised I've decided to give up on Star Wars: Galaxies because I just couldn't stand the interface. However, I seem to be in a Star Wars kick right now, so I went back and dug up Knights of the Old Republic and installed it on my new machine.

Damn, that game is good.

I sat down and played it for about 12 hours more or less straight yesterday. Ok, that's probably an exaggeration. I did manage to go shopping and do some cooking yesterday, so it was more like 11 hours with interruptions. Still, I player a LOT of KotOR.

In fact, I managed to get further into the game in one day than I had previously done in all my other attempts. For some reason I just couldn't get through that game before, despite how much I enjoyed it. I know I'm playing it a little differently this time, but I can't really put my finger on what I was doing those other times that made me give up on the game.

On this attempt through the game, I decide to play it "old school". Instead of worry about completing quests and following the story, I set my character out to open up every part of the map, obtain every piece of loot, and kill every enemy. Usually when one follows that approach the rest of the game takes care of itself. (And it seems to be working so far). And for some reason the game just seems much more fun that way.

Since I'm really into Star Wars games right now, I went out and bought Knights of the Old Republic 2 (for a whopping $15) on-line. All the reviews I've read pretty much say that KotOR 2 is just a "more of the same" game, so I shouldn't be disappointed. In the mean time, I've got plenty of gaming to keep me going until I get around to grabbing Fallout 3.

Yay!

So I just cleaned some old contacts out of my e-mail. These are people I haven't e-mailed in years and probably won't ever again. For example, I deleted the contact info for my old boss(es) at the Defense Logistics Agency.

The funny thing is, that I have a couple of contacts that I have no idea who they are. I assumed some of them are job-search related, but one is a real puzzle. Who the hell is "Bill" with a @nyse.com e-mail address? I don't think I really know many Bill's to begin with ... but @nyse.com? Where would I know such a person from?

And for some reason, I have Wil Wheaton's e-mail address in my contacts. Ok, I've never, ever, ever, gotten an e-mail from Wil Wheaton, so don't go thinking we're buds or anything. But still, I added Wil Wheaton to my contacts list - how totally geeky.

Why him and not Portia de Rossi or Alyssa Milano? I mean, Wil is cool and all, but he doesn't have Portia's hair, say.

I suppose if I wanted to be really cool I'd get a MySpace page and invite all these celebrities to be my friend... that would make me cool, right?

On Tuesday morningI gave myself what might be the nastiest burn I've ever gotten by grabbing the handle of a hot pan. It had blistered within minutes, with the blister breaking open by the afternoon.

I'm trying to keep the wound bandaged and cleaned. I suppose it's healing, but it looks and feels absolutely awful. There's literally no skin on it. There's just a hole in my finger, with the flesh looking out from the inside. And of course it hurts ... a lot. Especially when my it gets in contact with salt.

Now I truly understand the meaning of the expression "rubbing salt in a wound."

I have a day off tomorrow, so hopefully it will heal a bit.

Today is a miserable, rainy day in Vermont. The sky is so dark that I need to keep the lights on inside the apartment. The rain drops are so large and cold that you can feel each and every one pelting you like chilly grape.

I woke up today at 6 in the morning, pretty much the same as I do every day. Despite refusing to get out from under the covers, I could not get back to sleep. Eventually I dragged myself across the apartment to feed the dog and go the bathroom.

I just opened the door to let the dog out. I had no interest in going outside this morning. She could wander all she wanted - although that really wasn't very long.

I was about to give up on my planned trip to the in-laws. For about 10 days now I'd been trying to get over there to drop off some of my wife's stuff and pick up some of my own. Last week I had gotten called into work, derailing my plans; I'd rather have spent the day at work anyway. Today I was about to abandon them for crappy weather.

But my wife called just before 8 AM to tell me she left some things out for me. It was enough to get me going. Twenty minutes later I was out the door with a few piles of her belongings - just enough to be considered a decent gesture. I was going for quality not quantity.

Thirty minutes later I was cursing myself for not eating breakfast before I left. I didn't want to pilfer the in-laws fridge, but there's really no place to eat on the islands. I settled on a convenience store breakfast sandwich that had been sitting under a heat lamp for way too long.

Thirty minutes after that, the deed was done. My car had been unpacked of her junk and repacked with my junk. I wiped the floor down with a paper towel because I didn't want to hear about leaving muddy footprints before I left.

I really didn't feel particularly awkward or uncomfortable about being in my in-laws house, despite the fact that there was no one home. The whole event went by rather mechanically: carrying her stuff down the stairs, my stuff up the stairs, and finally loading up the car. It was an emotionless task.

The weather was about the only thing preying on my emotions today.

At least now I'm done for the day and don't have to go back outside.