Stuff I Want to Do This Year (Not Resolutions!)

Where has this year gone already? The time is just flying by, and worst of all I'm not getting anything accomplished. Not a great start to "Stuff I Want to Do", but at least I picked a new template for my blog and making a post. Now I just have to take some time to play with it and make it all pretty with links and stuff.

Anyways without further ado I'm going to start my list. Hopefully this written record will shame me into actually doing some of these things.

1. Become more active - This one sounds simple but to me there's a lot of different meanings here. The most obvious one is becoming more physically active with the exercise and stuff. I could definitely stand to lose some weight, and I desperately need the energy. Another meaning is just becoming more active in general, and getting out of the house more. This involves the definite purchase of a bike, paintballing, and hopefully a camping trip or two. Not that I'm a shut-in, but I'm a little bit of a homebody and quite frequently lazy. I'd also love to diversify my activities. So instead of always going to the theater to see a movie, perhaps I'd try something different. I know there's other stuff to do in this town, I've heard about it.
2. Gain some Ambition (and do something with it) - This one should be very easy as my ambition meter is currently set to zero. Not really pleased with my current career, or living situation and thus far I've done little to change it. Not a whole lot of ideas at this moment about the direction of this ambition, but I know that the whole bricklaying gong show is not for me.
3. Become more Organized - I literally have a million geeky hobbies. With all the assorted accoutrements that makes for a large mess. I'd love to have everything organized neatly, especially my comics.
4. Write More - I'm stealing this one from a friend's blog. When I read it, it struck a chord with me. I used to be a much more prolific writer, of course most of it was roleplaying related but it was still a creative outlet. Lately I have not been impressed with what I've written, or the way. It seems very formal and lifeless to me. I blame college for this. Wrapped up in this resolution is reobtaining a creative spark. I haven't done a lot of game running in the last few years, but everytime I've felt like my heart and creativity wasn't in it. Oh yeah, and in 2006 I'd like to learn how to choose puntuation properly?
5. Less Bad Habits - To the casual observer I might seem perfect, but they'd be horrified to know that this is not the case. I have a few bad habits, like punctuality to name a public example. Although you can't teach a old dog new tricks it's nice to put forward an effort to change.

Well that's all I can think of for now. I'm sure everyone will be amazed at my relatively short post, but what can I say I've turned over a new leaf.

Lost

So here I am with some time on my hands and not being sick, so I thought I should take this opportunity to blog again. Not too much new or exciting, so be prepared for my usual ramblings.

Thursday was B.P.'s, and I was in a really good mood for some reason. Most likely due to a week's worth of cabin fever. The night itself wasn't all that great as our large group had to be packed in upstairs because of a party in the party room. And as usual the group was talking about games that I'm not involved with for the most part. Still it was nice to be out, and I had a really good apple crumble.

Friday I was again glad to be out as Shani took me out for a late lunch at Brewster's. As usual the food was quite good although I had a headache so I didn't experiment with any of their beer's. Since Shani was heading off to a live game that night which I wasn't involved in I had to find a way to amuse myself, and since Shani didn't really want to see King Kong I resolved to go. As with most of my plans this one was developed at the last minute, meaning I had a hard time finding anyone to go with. Besides the movie I was also busy trying to track down a new video card for my computer. Best Buy had a really good card on sale, but of course as is common with those types of stores they were sold out almost instantly at the one by my house. So I had called the northside location, and the clerk there had said they had one and that he would put it on hold for me. At the time I thought I was pretty clear in what I asked for, specifying that I wanted the one in the flyer but apparently not as I found out later.

Anyways so there was much driving that night as I headed to the other side of Edmonton. I had a bad feeling the whole time, and I was right to have that feeling as the card they had put on hold for me was similar but not the exact one I wanted. The guy I spoke to was the same one from the phone and he assured me ardently that that's what I had asked for on the phone. I was very briefly tempted to make a scene, but it's just not me, and besides it would have done no good. I ended up buying that card anyways, but I haven't opened it yet as I want to wait and see if I can exchange it for the better one if they get some more.

After that I went to see the movie, and stubbornly I went by myself. A lot of people I know find it weird to go to a movie by one's self, but I find it nice sometimes. You don't have to worry about other people's schedules or anything. You just go and watch.

King Kong itself was a pretty good movie. I especially liked the part where they're all on Skull Island. It was a cool adventure story, something that I think is lacking from most modern day movies, and it was very refreshing. The stuff with Kong and the girl didn't interest me terribly, probably due to the fact that the story has an inevitable end giving little room to be surprised.

Anways the movie was really long and it was late by the time I got out of the theater. Because I had lazily refused to stop at a gas station earlier I had no choice but to drive down a route I was unfamiliar with to find one. I'm not the best with directions at the best of times, but at night in an area of town I'd never been to I soon got turned around after coming out of the gas station. Not to ruin the suspense, but it's pretty obvious that I made it home to write this after I eventually found a familiar street. Really though as all the streets and avenues are numbered here rather than named it's pretty hard to get lost.

Saturday afternoon was my Stargate tabletop game which was almost completely filled with tangents, and very little roleplaying. It also really sucked when combat broke out, and my scientist character stood around picking his nose. It also didn't help that none of the other players have any sense of combat dramatics whatsoever, instead always relying on the most deadly method. It probably makes sense to a lot of people to be as effective as you can, but it's boring and in my opinion it doesn't really work for a game that's derived from a televsion show.

I ended up staying way too late there so I really had to rush to get home, eat, and shower before rushing off to pick up Shani for Paradise Lost. When I got home I also discovered to my horror that the game was starting at 6:30 p.m. rather than the 7:30 p.m. that I had assumed. I was impressed with myself though because if the game had actually started at 7:30 we would have been on time. I take any victories I can get.

Anyways it was an excellent game despite our lateness. I felt a little bad at first because the other members of my Murder were waiting for me so we could all head into the game together. Our Murder had just been attacked the night before by angels, and the gang members who followed them. While everyone survived our house was burnt down, and we were all beat up pretty badly. The girls did an excellent job with makeup applying bruises which Tempest didn't need as he has a power that always keeping him looking his best. I tend to think of it as the "Action Movie Hero" power, still looking great after wading through blood.

There wasn't a lot of angst for me that game, but I can see it coming on the horizon and it ain't going to be pretty. Still very interesting though with some very odd plot developments creeping up on all of us.

After the game everyone headed to the Boston Pizza in St. Albert for food. Again I kind of assumed that I knew where I was going so I only half listened to the instructions I was given. So I got lost again and we ended up going to a completely different Boston Pizza. We found the right one eventually by trial and error, and we had some good conversation.

I'm going to remind myself here to try and find an old fantasy series that I read a long time ago. I think the series was called "The Book of Three", and someone at the table brought it up as another fantasy series that should be turned into a movie. Disney made an animated movie out of the second book in the series "The Black Cauldron", but it really bore almost no resemblacne to the book.

As my first non-sick week of the New Year begins I'm really starting to think about the stuff that I want to change and accomplish this year. Hopefully I'll blog soon with some of my thoughts which should provide a nice written record that I can look back at to motivate myself.

Grumpy, Sick, Bored, and Crazy

So as you can probably tell by this point the last week hasn't been all that fantastic for me. The fact that it included the New Years sucked even more. Since I love to complain I'm going to go into greater detail.

After Christmas I started feeling the post-holiday blues big time. I'm not sure whether it's just a let down from all the excitement or actual feelings of depression, but I find that it's a good time for me to try and keep busy. Unfortunately I wasn't at all busy, and I hardly did any of the things that I had planned on doing besides building the bookshelves that I had bought months earlier. I only really went out once last week as well so I'm not sure where the time went. A friend invited Shani and I out for dinner at the Bauernschaums (sp?), a fantastic local German restaurant. The food was very good, and the conversation was entertaining as usual with it turning to Purgatory geeking as could be expected.

Thursday I was grumpy, so I got in a fight with Shani. As a result I was at Boston Pizza all by my lonesome. There was people for me to talk to, but as usual the majority of the room was taken over by gamers who are strangers to me who play games that I'm not involved in. I've always thought of myself as a friendly person and in a way I am, but I've noticed that it's a real effort for me to meet new people. I think I'm turning into a crotchety old man before my eyes.

On the way home I start to get the chills and I begin to get a little worried because that usually means one thing for me. The flu. For some unknown reason I stayed up pretty late, and when I got up the next morning I was gone to the world. Luckily for me it didn't appear to be as severe as past times when I've gotten it. Like when I had to spend five days in bed at the beginning of Christmas vacation in High School because I was so dizzy I couldn't stand up, or the time that I forgot who I was for a small while. Anyways it goes without saying that the flu and me are not good friends.

So I spent Friday in bed, my mind going in endless circles when I wasn't shutting it up with reading. Perhaps ironically I thought about how I'd just talked to my brother-in-law about how the Influenza bug kills way more people than SARS, but it doesn't get the publicity. At that point I felt like I was dying so it was perhaps appropiate. I also received a lot of calls that day from friends looking for New Years Eve plans at the last minute. Why they would rely on me I have no idea, but my own plans didn't look too rosy at that point.

Because I was in bed all day I ended up once again staying up all night which I'm sure is not good for sickness. The next day I felt a little better, but I knew I couldn't go out and expose other people that night so I was staying home. I made the plan with Shani that she would come over, and spend the night at least. Of course then we had the difficulty of how she was going to make it here. It ended up with me having to go pick her up in my weakened state.

We had a nice quiet night of watching T.V. and movies with very little alcoholic consumption to speak of. Again obviously I stayed up quite late. The next day I felt really crappy. Probably from too much sleep at this point as I got up really late in the afternoon. Our plans to go the New Years Wake were dashed then I knew. Which really sucked because I needed a soical outing by this point. I told Shani I would drop her off, but she just wanted to go home and see her new kitten.

Nothing exciting happened after that excpet for the massive manhunt for my sister and her husband. They were supposed to be in Mexico on a vacation, but their friend who was picking them up from the airport called and said that they hadn't showed up. By this point they were over a day late so people began to get worried. Their tickets to Mexico had been cancelled at their stop off in Los Angeles so we began to think that perhaps they had been taken into custody by the U.S. custom officials. It would explain their cancelled ticket, and the fact that they hadn't called anybody. My Dad even called the Canadian Consulate to see if they could find anything out. Luckily they showed up there sans luggage before things became even more serious. We haven't heard the full story yet as phone communication has been limited, but I have the feeling that they were very angry.

This is probably a good time for me to end my very scattered narrative. With me still sick, and going stir crazy. Looking very forward to this weekend when I shall definitely be better so that I can go the Paradise game on Saturday.