Miscellaneous

"Miscellanneous is always the largest category" - Walter Slovotsky, Some Fantasy Book That I Can't Remember the Title of (Please don't sue me Joel Rosenberg)

I don't know why, but for some reason I've always loved that quote. It's simple, but to me it has a deeper meaning. That it's really hard to categorize and organize life, and that things never fit into simple boxes. It kind of sucks for me because I really want my stuff neat and tidy, folded up just where I left it. Then again it's probably just me, and this quote is probably just some flip comment in a book.

So anyways please forgive my spelling errors in my previous posts. I know they're there. I'm really an excellent speller. It's just my keyboarding skills are not always so great. And the main problem is the computer that I type most of my posts on. It's slow for some reason. I can be typing along merrily, and on the screen my words are two sentences behind.

Blah! I didn't realize the time here. I was going to ramble on aimlessly for a few more paragraphs, but my brain just died completely. If I remember I'll add more later, if not you'll have to suffer without my cutting witicisms for today.

All's Well That Ends Well

So the exciting stuff in the Purgatory game went by in a flash for me. Not to say the rest wasn't exciting because it was.

Bregan's sire Popel, had told him that he needed him to participate in a ritual that he was performing. Although reluctant my character is very fatalistic when it comes to his sire so he accepted. Indeed the whole Malkavian clan had agreed to do and say nothing about him because they couldn't stop him anyways. This is where my favorite quote of this game's downtime comes in:

"Finally Popel looked at him directly. "You're in it this much already, Bregan." His voice became firm. "It's your destiny."
And that Bregan simply couldn't refuse."

Captured my character's mindset perfectly, and it really hit home for me the downsides of playing a Malkavian. Not that as a player I wasn't dying to find out what he was up to.

So I found out. On a first glance Popel's plan seemed pretty ridiculous, but it fit his character when I thought about it some more. He got infernal mages to jam the shattered soul of the Methusaleh Grendel into Bregan giving him a body to run around in. Oddly all he planned to do with this new power was install him as Prince of London to "help" the city.

This is where I had a big decision as a player. Obviously the other players were not going to accept Grendel as prince, but nobody had the power to take him out. So something special was going to have to happen. Dave and Cam kind of surprised me on Thursdqy by asking if I saw this character continuing. One of the ways that he would have been defeated was for Bregan basically to sacrifice himself to destroy Popel, and Grendel. I got the distinct feeling that this was the option that the organizers preferred.

So I thought it over and I eventually came to take the road where Bregan survives, and uses his brother's soul to oust the Elder. I came to the conclusion that I did want to keep playing Bregan into the next chronicle. Also I really felt that his death wouldn't be as dramatic as the organizers felt. All the players would have assumed that he was along with the whole thing, and when he died they would see it as just desserts.

Like I said the whole scene went by in a flash. I was really worried that the players weren't going to do anything, but it seemed the opposite was true. They were being very active with lots of yelling and crowding around the confused Grendel. I guess it wasn't going like Dave had wanted though as he triggered the event where Frances gives Bregan his brother's soul back very early it seemed.

I hope I did an alright job with the scene. I'm somewhat paranoid when I'm acting for a game that I'm going to do something wrong and ruin the game so I tend to err on the side of caution. I've heard a few horror stories where actors have done some crazy things, and caused a lot of trouble. I was pretty quiet as Grendel, and only really spoke the lines that Dave was feeding me. As a lot of other people were speaking it was really hard to get good timing for Grendel's odd statements. Then it got really fun as I got to flail around as Bregan, Thomas, and Grendel fought for his body. This is also where it got confusing as people piled on and combat rounds interfered with the drama. Oh well players need to be involved, and there has been a lack of big combat scenes in this game. So they pushed Grendel out and Bregan fell unconscious. I was trying hard not to laugh as I lay on the floor with people practically on top of me because Matt as Popel was so over the top. Especially when he yelled that he would be back right before Grendel entered him and he exploded.

It was a good time in all. And I think it speaks really highly of the game that Popel's appearance didn't make more of a splash. Everyone was so involved in their characters, and the roleplaying they didn't want an interruption.

I should stop my rambling now and head home. Feels like I have lots of sleep to catch up on.

This Town Needs an Enema

To players of Purgatory: Trust me this title will make sense after tonights game.

I am bursting at the seams here with secrets about the game, and I can't tell anybody. Surprises are a lot more fun anyways, but I'm very nervous to how people will react tonight.

So I got hit by an enormous plot hammer this turn, and as I am a Malkavian it's fitting that it came almost completely out of nowhere. Of course Bregan being who he is walked right into it gladly. Not sure how I feel about this because it's a big change. But anytime plot happens it's going to make your character change from what you originally had in mind, so you just have to roll with it and have fun I guess.

So I stayed up till 2 again last night for some reason, and once again I feel pretty good today. It might be the fact that I had a small nap yesterday, or I might just be excited about the game tonight even though the character I am playing is arriving fashionably late. It will be fun to sit back and watch the politics.

Hopefully I will be freer to express my feelings here after the game tonight.

Tired?

So last night I was thinking, "If I'm going to be tired tomorrow it should be for a reason."

Previous nights I had gone to bed in the pm, and still been groggy and cranky the next day. Most days I was having a couple of hours of nap as well. Very worrisome as I really lacked motivation to do anything, and I'm getting to the point where I realize I'm not as young as I used to be and maybe I should watch my health.

Anyways so last night I got back into World of Warcraft after an extended hiatus. For those not in the know it's a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game that has occupied a significant amount of my time since December. I really lost interest though when I hit level 60; the highest in the game. It seemed there was nothing really more to do, I'm not that fond of PVP, and the prospect of doing the same dungeon over and over to get gear didn't appeal to me.

In the course of playing last night I discovered my killer instinct. Repeated attacks by an annoying paladin (is there another kind?) drove me over the edge. I started attacking all the Alliance members that I could find. I racked up quite a few kills before guildmates asked me to come to the Battlegrounds. Then stuff got really crazy.

I'd never tried the Battlegrounds before, and I was kind of out of my element not knowing what to do but it was a lot of fun. Basically it's set in it's own seperate valley where the two sides can meet and do battle. It becomes really complicated though as there's all sorts of missions you can do to help your own side out besides fighting the hated Alliance. You can loot bits of armor off dead enemies to take back to your base so that the blacksmith can upgrade your npc's. You can collect blood as well, and if you get enough an npc shaman will summon a huge ice elemental to attack the other side. Don't quote me on this, but I believe you win if your elemental smashes the other team's base.

It's kind of crazy though as you can get huge bounties for collecting pieces of your enemies. For the Horde it was stuff like a dwarven spine, a severed elf's head (yay), a lock of gnome hair. I had always like that Blizzard seemed to be keeping their players poor by being stingy with their money, but I guess they want to be generous so that none of their players leave. The other wacky thing was the honor kills. I was in the battlegrounds for over two hours, and I got something like 324 honorable kills. I'm assuming these kills are not all weighted equally though.

Anyways to summarize I stayed up till 2 o'clock in the morning being a huge geek. I briefly thought of staying up even longer until Dave sent out the Puragtory turns, but that way lay madness.

Being sane I went to bed, and got up early this morning. Like a kid at christmas I ran up upstairs and turned on my computer. My downtime turn for Puragtory was waiting and as usual it did not disappoint. Very interesting! I get the feeling that my character Bregan comes with an expiry date. Oh well I love it, and the organizers just keep feeding my desire to cause trouble.

And I actually don't feel that bad this afternoon.

Caped Crusader

On Father's day my Dad was in Regina working so obviously I had no big plans with him. He's not really the outing type anyways unless it involves golf. A couple of years ago a friend and I went out golfing with my Dad around Father's day. It was an interesting experience let me tell you.

My Dad takes the game very seriously, every stroke counts, every penalty, and he doesn't believe in mulligans. The funny thing was that he refuses to rent a golf cart when he plays. Personally I think half the fun is in tearing around the course on the cart, which we did that day. So you have a 60 plus man walking toting his bag, while two twenty somethings are screwing around in the golf cart taking it easy. It was fun until the groundskeeper gave us heck for parking on the green. Who knew?

I should suggest that to him again when he comes back to town. Although he's working so much scheduling could be a problem.

So on Sunday afternoon we convened to play the tabletop game of Exalted that I run. It's an excellent game by the way with a huge developed world, and an interesting combat system. The only drawback is that it's a difficult game to run for the storyteller. Anyways we usually play at a friend's house, but he said we couldn't because he hadn't had time to clean. I protested saying that none of us would really care, but I can understand his reluctance. So we played at Whyte Knights, a gaming store on Whyte Ave. that sells mainly used role-playing books. Back in the day I played there a lot, and it was kind of nice to go back. The nostalgia was soon dispelled as the next table over was occupied by a very large group of loud obnoxious role-players playing something like D&D. Now it would be hypocritical for me to call someone a geek, but if the shoe fits...

The session went all right with me being a little anxious about one player in particular. I have come to realize though that he will never be happy in a game so there's not much I can do.

After the game we went to see Batman: Begins, and I could say with authority that it is now my favorite comic book movie of all time. It was seriously very good. Good acting from Christian Bale, good acting from the supporting characters without them dominating the scenes. Gary Oldman playing an understated soon-to-be Commisioner Gordon was my particular favorite. Anyways trust me if you haven't seen it, and you're a comic book geek you have to go right away. Even if you're not into Batman. I've never really read any of his comics, and it was probably better going in not knowing all the particular details of backstory. That way the changes they made couldn't upset me.

I guess the only downside was is that they never showed the Serenity trailer before the movie.

The Devil Writes for Hollywood

Good weekend overall. Nothing terribly exciting, and I'm sure everyone will be surprised to hear that. The theme seemed to be hanging out with people that I usually don't get the chance to see too often. Which is good, no live role-playing for me this weekend.

On Saturday, Shani and I rented the fourth Prophecy movie after an intense battle of wills. See the problem is that I like to rent actual movies that will be good instead of the alternative. Even though we rented what she wanted last time she acted out passive-aggressively until we rented the Prophecy 4. I protested on the grounds that I hadn't seen the second or third, but it turns out it made really no difference as it didn't follow the continuity anyways. Technically it wasn't even the fourth anyways as it had some random adjective after the title which I have mercifully forgotten.

It didn't even have the benefit of having Christopher Walken's awesome overacting, or Viggo Mortensen as the spooky Devil. What it did have was an incomprehensible plot, and some pretty boy british actor. I'm guessing he was hot because of the fact that Shani mentioned this fact several times to me.

Anyways I don't think its too much of a spoiler to say that Satan plays a part in the movie and once again he saves the day. This only confirmed for me my theory that Satan is heavily involved in the Hollywood movie industry. Probably not a huge surprise to anyone, but the facts might scare you if you examine them.

1. Satan is never defeated in the movies. People might set him back by ruining his plans, but you know that he's always going to be back with some wacky plot to takeover the world.

a. An addendum to this is that in order to ruin his plans one must often kill themselves. Numerous examples abound. What better way to get rid of all those pesky heroes than to have them believe that they should sacrifice themselves nobly to ruin your plans.

2. The devil will often come in and save the day at the last moment. Of course his motives are always selfish, but at least he's being proactive. While meanwhile God is shown as an "absentee landlord", never around when you need him to kick some butt. If He does make his presence felt it's as something abstract like a beam of light, a smile on a child's face or something else equally unhelpful. And usually of course this heavenly phenomenon will steel the hero to sacrifice themselves nobly (see above).

So when rogue angels come to Earth and start killing people who have we been led to believe will come and get rid of them? That's right, Satan.

3. Lucifer is really cool, hot, spooky, powerful, and oftentimes a snappy dresser. This fact could be the most worrisome especially to vulnerable goth girls. Think about it. He's almost always portrayed in a way in movies that our primitive brains would identify as positive. Sure he might be the Lord of Lies, and pure evil, but he can turn into a flock of ravens. You can't beat that for publicity.

In this age of shallowness I don't even think it would be a contest between a beam of light, and some british guy in an expensive suit.

So there you have the signs all laid out for you. I'm sure you can think of many of your own examples, and ways in which the Devil is controlling the movie industry.

Meh

OMG! I missed another day of posting. This whole blogging thing is way too stressful.

And for the record I am working to make this blog better looking. I make changes then publish, then go to view the changes and it looks the same. Can anyone tell me why this is?

Anyways onto the title of my blog which describes my feelings as of late. I've been going to bed pretty early for the last few nights, but I still feel tired in the morning. Perhaps I'm recovering from the sickness that Dave talks about in his blog. A lot of the symptoms he has describe the way I felt last week. To top it off taking transit to work this morning I got a bad case of bus-sickness. I'm not sure why it only happens once in a while, but it kind of sucks.

My work is also extremely meh. Today is the last day for the Bookstore part of my job. So I will spend the next two weeks at work doing the copying and the mail all day. Should be fun and exciting.

Not sure what I'm feeling about the closure, which is odd as I can be sentimental about these types of things. Probably the biggest feeling though is one of disappointment mixed with apathy. Disappointment because I haven't got things together for the closure the way I would have liked. I have gotten almost no direction on how things were to be handled so I had to muddle through. Additionally I finally got clearance from my manager on Wednesday to run a sidewalk sale to clear some of the junk that we've had forever. Not much time to advertise the fact or anything else. Needless to say we didn't end up selling a lot.

Part of my personality is the need to see everything wrapped up neatly, and in it's proper place. Warring with that is my apathy, and frustration. Why should I care how the store looks? I won't be here, it's not my concern anymore.

I'm hopeful though as I have small glimmers of hope poking through. Mostly coming in the form of excitement as I try to imagine all the directions I could head in now that I'm not tied down here.

Zombification (is this a real word?)

It's frightening how guilty I feel over not blogging yesterday. I had lots of time to do it at work I just never got around to it.

Relating to the title of my post I have felt like the walking dead for the last couple of days. Not sure whether it was from lack of sleep, or maybe I'm coming down with something, or maybe it's that my sweetie is a big bed hog. It's probably that last one come to think of it (she snores as well). Or maybe it's just a huge lack of motivation in going to work.

Again relating to my title I've been reading Anne's blog, and her adventures with the tyrannical unnamed telephone and internet service provider. It's pretty scary stuff, and if I was smarter I would link to it here. I honestly can't believe that a company can be that anal concerning time. To me that smacks of the kind of regimentation you would face in kindergarten, and it's obvious they have no respect for their employees. Oh well I suppose they don't really care as long as the machine gets fed.

One of the really great things about my job is the freedom. Although I am not technically the manager of my store I might as well be. My boss works a vast intellectual distance away in Big College, and since I have started here over a year ago I have seen him maybe half a dozen times. So like I said freedom, and to be honest I abuse it.

When things are slow I spend a lot of my time on the computer surfing the web, reading blogs. When I'm extremely bored I go home early. To be honest though there is downsides, and the thing that most people forget about freedom is that it goes side by side with responsibility. In a lot of ways I'm out of the loop, and without manager authority I've had my hands tied frequently.

Anyways I'm really reflecting on this lately because my job is finished at the end of the fiscal year, June 30th. Unfortuneatly I am too young and too broke to retire so I must seek new employment. This is where the dread comes in. I hate looking for work with a passion. To me it's always seemed like begging, and I hate the way that that can feel. I realize that it shouldn't be that way, but I've always had trouble selling myself, especially when it comes down to the interview.

The other very large fear is the job that I may end up with. I don't want to end up as a drone at a company where they freak if you leave for your break a minute early. And I've become accustomed to my lackadaisical 9-4 monday to friday schedule. What if I have to work evenings or weekends? The horror.

Going to an open house hiring sesson for a large computer company with a call center in Edmonton yesterday brought back vividly the pain of this process. They were looking for technical support specialists, and I've heard they paid pretty good so I went to check it out leaving my work early. So they had all the usual hoops there. First the test asking the stupid questions.

"Why do you wish employment with us?"

Duh. Because I need money, and I heard you give it out. Like many people if I was wealthy I would live a life of leisure.

After the questionnaire you had to wait for the technical part of the interview. Where inevitably myself and the interviewer were speaking different languages. I was answering his questions, just perhaps not in the way that he preferred. I thought I did okay especially compared to some of the braniacs that were present. The I sat around for a hour waiting for my next interview with a human resources representative. We're only a few minutes into the interview and the woman stops saying that my experience, and bad performance on the technical portions tells her that I would be a better fit for a customer care position. Of course they're not actually hiring for these positons right now so my interview is done. She tells me to check the website for future positions.

I leave angry and discouraged. It seemed a little unprofessional to me to keep people waiting hours for an interview then abruptly cut it short. At least go through the motions. Oh well I suppose they were getting pretty busy and they wanted to hurry it along.

It's times like that I wished I had marketable skills so that I was in demand, and possibly employers would have to jump through hoops to hire me.

Interlude

So I'm going to take a little break from talking about my work. In an effort to create suspense (ha) I'm going to say that I am depressed at work now for a reason, and maybe I'll talk about it later.

I realize that when I write I tend to ramble, and I can go on and on. I was even bored writing my last post on Friday which is hard to do once I get going. Oh well this is my space so I suppose I can do what I like, but it is hard to ignore the thoughts and needs of my legions of fans.

Anyways, I had a good weekend even if it wasn't the most restful. I must not be getting enough sleep during the week because come Friday night I am completely wiped. It's sad because I can rarely make it to midnight anymore, and it takes an effort to want to go out and do anything. Which sucks because since I started to work full time I have come to appreciate my weekends and staying up late on them. I guess I'm only a step away from the retirement home.

So on Friday evening I sat around waiting for my Dad to get home so we could go out for supper. He finally made it home at 7:45 after working a 12 hour shift (totally shaming me for being tired after working my measly 7 hours at half his age). So we went to the Flamingo steakhouse by Heritage mall. It's a favorite restaurant of my parents because it's owned by friends of the family. So I ate a mediocre meal, and listened to my Dad jabber in greek to his friends for a while. It's quite funny how they'll intersperse a few phrases in english when they're talking. We then did some late night grocery shopping, before I went home and had a shower. At 10:30 p.m. I hit the sack. I briefly woke up at 12:30 a.m. and considered doing my downtime turn for Puragatory, but I discarded that idea in favor of more sleep.

The upside was that I was able to get up in the morning early on Saturday. Rested and refreshed I was able to get a lot of stuff done, and I had a good day by myself. That evening Shani and I headed to Sherwood park for a BBQ at some friends. The party started at 6 and we got there at about 7. As usual most of the women present were already drunk. Also as usual the women split off to talk while the guys hung out and discussed geeky topics like Battlefield 2, and the make up of mad cow disease. It was fun though and with my roleplaying schedule I never to get to see my non gaming friends.

Then on Sunday the obligatory roleplaying element of the weekend came about. Shani and I headed to Kinsmen park for her live Werewolf game. It was a fun game though it was a tad chilly out. Everyone will be comforted to know that my character is once again a bastard, who is a lawyer, who lots of people don't like because I slept with Jenn's teenage prostitute character. Anyways the jury is still out with me on this whole playing outside thing.

In the evening we went to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Oddly Sunday night must be a popular night for movies because the theater was packed. We decided that we didn't want to sit in the front row to kill our necks so we went to see Madagascar. A pretty entertaining movie, much better I would imagine if one was seven instead of mentally fifteen like myself. There was a few in jokes for the adults of course though, the best being the Planet of the Apes parody. When we got out of that movie people were lining up for the next showing of Mr. and Mrs. Smith so we decided that we'd go see that then. I must have been tired because I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. Some good laughs, good action, really predictable and lame plot. Still Angelina Jolie was HOT in this movie, and I can say that because even Shani remarked upon it. I'm usually lukewarm to her as I don't think she looks good in every movie role. The Tomb Raider ones for example.

So it was a late night with an early morning. Good thing my brain doesn't need to be on at work.

I'm beginning to see that I must really like the sound of my own voice as well. At least no one can accuse me of being a lollyblogger yet.

Back to our Regularly Scheduled Programming

So I suppose now would be a good time to speak about my place of employment. It's an important facet of my life considering how much time I spend here (not always a lot of time, but we'll get to that later).

Anyways I work at a college bookstore, with some extra time spent in the printing room. As exciting as that might sound I can assure you it is not all glamour and hot coeds. For many reasons:

1. I work at a satellite campus of the big huge campus. A few years ago Big College purchased Little College, and then promptly had no idea what to do with it. Ever since they have been generally running it into the ground. So therefore it's pretty dead here most of the time.

2. I don't work in a proper store. I have a window that people can come up to, to ask for stuff. Me interpreting their demands is half the fun of my job. Obviously this format is not conducive to lots of sales. They were thinking about building a real store here, but the sales were not good enough. Of course there is no sales because the damn store is a window, or a wicket if you like. A co-worker used to refer to the store as the "wicked wicket".

3. My campus only teaches the college upgrading high school courses, and the English as a Second Language classes. Neither of these categories produce a student that is either intelligent, or particularly communicative.

4. Teachers. As my job is combined with the print service I not only get to deal with students, but teachers as well. Individually they are nice, but they have the tendency to think that everyone else in the world is their student that doesn't know anything.

5. Working in an office setting. I don't know what it is like in other offices, but in mine the population of workers tends to be 98% middle aged women with grand-children. Also nice people, but little ground with which to build a conversation.

6. BUS PASSES! I was going to add several profanities there, but I thought I'm new so I better ease into that kind of thing. Bus passes are the bane of my existence here. This store is one of the few places that sells the discounted student bus pass, and since there is almost no parking around here everyone needs one. You might say that any business is good business surely, but you would be totally wrong. For each $54 pass sold the bookstore receives 32 cents. Now we usually sell about 400 passes in a month. I have no idea what that adds up to, and I'm too lazy to figure it out, but I bet you can get the idea. All the time and effort spent does not even come close to covering my salary. Oh well I suppose it's a customer service thing.

I was talking to Dave last night and he said he blogs because he likes to hear himself talk. Thanks for ruining the whole noble motive thing I posted earlier! Anyways I see I'm rambling on so I must like my own voice too much as well.

to be continued...dunh...dunh...duhhhhhhhhh

Breaking Promises Already

Okay I lied. Although truth be told this is not really a quiz. I just thought that everyone could get to know me by reading my answers to a bunch of totally irrelevany questions. And maybe I'll learn a little about myself at the same time *sniff*.

1. First name: Emmanuel
2. Were you named after anyone? My grandfather. He had the same middle name as me as well. My dad, Nikolaos was named after his grandfather, and his middle name is Emmanuel. No one is sure how long this has been going on, but if I ever have a son his name will have to be Nikolaos Emmanuel Zervakis. Mostly I think it was just a big excuse so that my Dad could open my mail when I was younger and claim innocence.
3. Do you wish on stars? Nope.
4. When did you last cry? Tuesday
5. Do you like your handwriting? What's handwriting? My handwriting is awful, but I don't really care. Who even uses handwriting when they're an adult?
6. What is your favorite lunch meat? I can't remember the name. Damn now I'm hungry.
8. What is your most embarrassing moment? The one that I can immediately recall is when I was in my first year of high school. I was really nervous, and I didn't know anybody so I had no footing. Anyways I get out of my social class, and for some reason I figure I'm going to be late for english. So I rushed through the halls into this classroom full of people and sat down quickly. What I didn't realize was that it was still the previous class in there. Needless to say everyone laughed their heads off including the teacher. Ironically that's the class that we spent getting to know each other and talking about our embarassing moments.
9. If you were another person, would YOU be friends with yourself? Sure. I'm really good at entertaining myself, and telling myself how terribly witty I am.
11. Have you ever told a secret you swore not to tell? Don't think so. I'm really good with secrets.
12. Do looks matter? Somewhat. I'm not sure why, but it has something to do with our society. And I'll stop myself before I go into a huge psychological rant.
13. How do you release anger? I suppress it. Especially with strangers. With my family that's a different matter. I was going to say playing violent video games, but that's more of an anger causer than a release.
14. Where is your second home? Wherever my sweetie is.
15. Do you trust others too easily? Yep. I tend to believe that people are always basically good and rational. I haven't been burned by that too many times so I must be right.
16. What was your favorite toy as a child? Good question. I had and still have a bad habit of breaking everything I own. None of my toys lasted too long.
17. What class in high school do you think was totally useless? Gym. Fuck off, Nazi bastards.
18. Do you have a journal? Aside from this blog? Nope. I'm terrible at keeping a journal.
19. Do you use sarcasm a lot? Yes, but unfortuneatly (sp) people often miss my humor and think I'm serious. It's best therefore to just assume that I'm never serious.
20. What is your favorite movie? It's impossible to pick a favorite movie for me as there are so many different categories. The Matrix would be up there defintiely.
21. What are your nicknames? Eman is the most common.
22. Would you bungee jump? Yes please.
23. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? Nope.
24. Do you think that you are strong? No not really. But who knows until we're really tested.
25. What is your favorite ice cream flavor? Tiger
26. Shoe size? Eleven
27. What are your favorite colors? Black, blue, and red.
28. What is your least favorite thing about yourself? I have little to no personal charisma or presence.
29. What do you miss most? Being younger and living in the days when you could hang out with friends without making a schedule because no one had any responsibilities.
30. Do you want everyone you sent this to, to send it back? Whatever.
31. What color pants are you wearing? Beigfe.
32. What are you listening to right now? A compilation cd that I made. Currently Gary Jules "Mad World" is playing.
33. Last thing you ate? Raisin Bran
34. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Something obscure that no one ever uses
35. What is the weather like right now? Sunny.
36. Last person you talked to on the phone? Some annoying customer, asking something annoying. I forget what it was about.
38. Do you like the person who sent this to you? This has been copied down the line by a bunch of cool people I know.
39. How are you today? Not bad. Suddenly very hungry.
40. Favorite Drink? Coca Cola.
41. Favorite Sport: Curling.
42. Hair Color? Brown currently mixed with a dark red dye job from long ago that blends very well I think.
43. Eye Color? Brown
44. Do you wear contacts? No, and I've always been amazed that people are able to put stuff in their eyes.
45. Favorite Food? Pizza. Yes thank you, I know I am supremely uncultured and original.
46. Last Movie You Watched? I rented a movie called "Nothing". I wouldn't recommend that anyone else do the same. In the theater I saw The Longest Yard. Meh.
47. Favorite Day of the Year? Christmas.
48. Scary Movies or Happy Endings? Scary movies.
49. Summer or winter? Neither. Summer is too hot, and the winter is too cold. I like the Spring or Fall even though they are practically non-existent here.
50. Hugs or kisses? Both please.
51. What is Your Favorite Dessert? Pumpkin pie.
52. Where Would You Want to Go on your Next Vacation? Disneyland with my baby.

To Blog or Not to Blog

So...uhhhmmm...yeah...here we are. Awfully big space. So much room for words. Oh well I suppose It's too late to run away now.

I've been thinking about starting a blog for a while now, and let me tell you there have been hurdles.

First,I had to learn to appreciate reading other people's blogs. It started out as a way to kill time at work before I began to actually be entertained and informed by other people's thoughts.

Second, I had to get past the opinion that blogs were for narcissistic navel-gazing, or a desperate cry for attention. Naturally this was the hardest part. But seriously I have talked to many friends, and read lots of posts on this matter, and self-expression seems to be a big part of it for most people. Along with reassuring people that haven't seen you in a while that you are still alive. There's many other reasons I'm sure, but so far so good.

Thirdly, overcoming my own shortcomings in this matter. Namely procrastination, laziness, and fear. Well I find that for me if I dive into something my work ethic forces me to continue that effort to it's perfect conclusion, so that takes care of the procrastination and laziness. Fear is really the big obstacle as it is for most people in most things.

Will people read my blog?
Will they like what I write?
Will I have stuff to write?
Should I leave stuff out?
Should I go back and edit my posts?
Should I pick a different title, so that I don't have to live up to something I can't deliver?
What does it mean that if "I was a Lord of the Ring character I'd be Legolas"?

You know all the usual stuff. Anyways I have come up with the easy solution of not caring that I've perfected for so many aspects of my life. It doesn't matter if people don't read my blog, or don't like it. I'll just write what I feel like, and I won't go back and examine every little thing I write. So what you see is what you get.

...And I swear to you that I will never ever post any quizzes here so you'll have to read on never knowing which ninja turtle I am.