Downbeat

I'll try not to be too depressing here as everyone has problems, and who really wants to read that day after day. I know I wouldn't.

Anyways, the last couple of months haven't been great for me to sum it up succintly. I've come face to face with many of my negative personality traits, and it's pretty sucky let me tell you. Instead of working on my resolutions I seem to be actively working against them now.

One of my biggest problems lately is laziness which is strange as I've always considered myself a fairly active person. I know that at many of my jobs they frequently had to tell me to slow down and take a time out for a second as I became wrapped up in my current task. I can tell you that it's very true that laziness begets laziness. I've been very lazy, and it is indeed a vicious circle. As I get in my rut it gets harder to get out

I've always maintained that I like to do things at my own pace and timing, but I'll name it for what it really is. Procrastination. Like many people I have it in spades. I keep on putting things off till tomorrow, and then sudeenly weeks have passed and stuff still hasn't been completed. Importantly this really affects my job search or hopefully my career search which is a huge thing to me right now. There's no work in this bricklaying thing currently, and besides I really don't want to pursue that anyways. This means that I should be getting off my ass and looking for something better. A prospect I dread as looking for employment has always equalled begging in my opinion. Especially when you don't have a lot to offer right off the bat.

The other big thing lately is my anti-social tendencies. Being by one's self is always easier and I've embraced this a little too much lately. This really isn't good at all especially when it comes to my relationship with Shani. I blame World of Warcraft, it's worse than crack for me lately.

I shouldn't complain too much though. At B.P.'s on Thursday there was a lot of good conversation that I became involved with. Much of it actual adult stuff like who to invest with, and things that you need to do to sell your house. It was completely crazy let me tell you. On Friday I had a nice visit at a lonely friend's where we had really good pizza and conversation. Saturday was a very long day of gaming involving a trip to another friend's shiny new loft (I want) to make characters for the upcoming Kingdom Come game; Crown of Thorns. There was a lot of people there, but I didn't really engage anyone so I kind of felt like the wallflower at the high school dance. My character King Malegant isn't really involved with anyone off the start so I didn't have a lot to discuss anyways I guess. Much of it was no doubt due to the fatigue which always seems to accompany me on Saturdays lately. I had planned on going to the Suburbs after, but that night dancing seemed as possible as me travelling to the moon.

...and I still don;t know good, punctuation?

Part of the problem is that I don't tend to see my positive points. I know they're there, but to me those things are a matter of course. They're not something special, they're how everyone should act.

Anyways that's enough complaining for now. Although I'm sure there'll be more later, I'd like to work on some of this stuff. One of my pet peeves is people who complain about stuff, but never do anything about it.

Not really sure whether this is ending on a positive note or not, but I'll keep you posted. Maybe, when I get around to it.

I Fought the Blog...

Please believe me that in the past couple of weeks I've tried to make my blog prettier and alter this skinny template. Unfortunately I haven't been too successful as you can see. I've even had to start over from scratch because I messed the template up and forgot how to fix it. Part of the problem is that I'll make changes and then try to update it, but nothing will change immediately. I'll come back later and my blog is suddenly completely distorted. I probably don't have a stunning career ahead of me as a web designer. My last template I copied completely off of Emmet, but this time I'm going to put some effort into it and figure it out on my own.

So the watchword for my life in the last few weeks would have to be unreality. The Saturday before last was the monthly Paradise Lost game. It was a great game with some really awesome roleplaying all around, and some nasty plot developments. Shani missed the game unfortuneately as she was under the weather. I felt like I was in the groove with Tempest that night as I've completely given up hope trying to play him as a complete bastard, I don't think I have it in me to play someone irredeemable in every way. No doubt the Divine would disagree with the statement about Tempest being nice sometimes, but I'm getting to the point where I can justify most of his horrible actions as him actually helping that person. In addition there was the lovely, sappy, tender moments that provided an excellent contrast to his being rude and obnoxious.

For the past couple of weeks I've been completely obsessed with World of Warcraft. Since I bought it there's been many times where I've lost interest or focus, and haven't played it for a long period of time. This is not one of those times. I started a new character so that I could play with a friend that just got into it, and I didn't take it very seriously as I knew he would grow bored and move onto something else very quick. The original idea was to mess around and have some fun for a bit, but I ended up getting hooked. I've played my new character like mad quickly outstripping my friend's character in level. You can also blame WoW for the suckiness of this post as this is my second attempt at it. The first one was lost when the game crashed forcing me to restart.

Shani's werewolf game was outside on Sunday in the River Valley. It was a really warm day everywhere in the city except for the park apparently. It was a good game but short as many people have no concept of dressing for the weather. The attendance was small, and it was one of those games where weird inexplicable events start to happen and no one has any really idea what's going on. Inevitability everyone stands around discussing opinions without getting anywhere, and to be honest it's really not my favorite type of game. On the plus side one of my character's rivals got killed by another werewolf at the game which was an unexpected bonus.

On actual real news I'm getting old I discovered. Shani and I met a bunch of people at Suburbs a couple of weeks ago for some of Dervish's Dj'ing. The music was pretty good for being pretty well exclusively techno, a genre I'm not the biggest fan of. Like I said there were plenty of our friends there with conversation being impossible as we were sitting next to the speaker. A lot of people were wearing earplugs which you can actually buy out of a candy machine there. probably would have been a good idea as my old ears can't take all that racket anymore. Shani was tired so she left pretty quickly after we got there. Although I wasn't that much in the mood I tried to get on the dance floor as much as I could. Where I quickly realized that I'm big time out of shape as something in my lower back objected to the movement. To top that off I started to feel a little faint, like the kind you get when you haven't eaten. So I ended up leaving early as well before quickly heading to A&W's.

There's a couple of live games coming up which I'm getting excited for. Crown of Thorns is the new Kingdom Come game set in Arthurian times. I'm playing the evil King Malegant which should be great fun as it looks like the relationship web is going to be very tangled indeed. The first game is this Saturday where everyone is going to make their character and hopefully talk about enemies and stuff. I'll have to make sure and research some stuff on Malegant so that I have some kind of an idea on how to make him.

Purgatory is the other one of course, and I'm bringing back Bregan for some more shenanigans. They're accepting the write ups now, and while I have the general idea of where I'm going to go I still have to work out some specifics and get it all on the screen the way I want it.

Once again I'll make the empty promise here that I'll blog soon.

Yikes, it's February Already

It's becoming a common theme with me, but yes more time has slipped by without my being overly productive. I can't believe it's February already, the 2nd as a matter of fact. I wonder if the groundhog saw his shadow? Not that it matters because I don't think winter ever really started here yet anyways.

Obviously I haven't kept up with writing as my lollybloggerness can attest to, and I think to top it off I might have even gained some weight. I really need to play around with the format of my blog soon to make it all pretty with links and stuff as well.

Anyways, not much exciting is going on around here so there's not a lot to say.

I saw Underworld: Evolution, and like the first one it was okay but not good. Not sure what it was exactly that I disliked about this one, but I still remain to this day unsatisfied with the vampire movie genre. Except for Dracula which is an instant classic and how can you go wrong with Gary Oldman as a villain anyways?

There was a big federal election the Monday before last. Despite having to be at the airport very early to fly to Mexico my parents insisted on heading to the polling station. Apparently they've never missed an election yet.

I voted Liberal for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately the candidate wasn't one of them. With the disappearance of David Kilgour from politics it didn't look good for the Liberals in my riding. And to make it worse the Liberal candidate was a member of a ethnic minority which I hate to say really doesn't do well in my riding. The other amusing thing is that an old friend I knew from high school was running in my area as an independent. Despite knowing him though I'd never give him my vote (he was a bad roleplayer).

Oddly though I heard little from the candidates in my region so I couldn't base my decision on that. No one came door knocking, and I don't believe they held a town hall debate. It seems like candidates are getting lazy, I know the area is huge but traditionally in politics going door to door was the way to go.

So as I said I based my vote on the party line. Yes the Liberals were responsible for stealing our money and giving it to their friends, and rightly Canadians should be mad as hell about it. But you need to place blame where it's due. The Liberals we elected were not the same ones that caused the problems for the most part, and if they were why did we elect them? Paul Martin himself was cleared of any wrongdoings, and he came down hard on all of those M.P.'s who were even remotely involved. The whole vote of non-confidence to me seemed like a power grab by Jack Layton, and furthermore it was irresponsible politically as the new election could have ended up giving the Bloc Quebecois more power than they already had.

It came down to party platforms in the end for me which is appropiate because that's the stuff that might actually happen. Your candidate can say whatever he wants, but if he ends up as a backbencher he can't do squat. The Conservative's promises seemed flashy and bright, and a little bit fiscally improbable as the news reported several times. In contrast the Liberals seemed to have a quiet well thought out plan that they were continuing to unfold.

But as we all know by now it was apparently time for a change. The saddest thing though is that it seemed like the campaign didn't matter at all. People had their minds made up already, and apparently they wanted the Conservatives. Much to my dislike. A lot of people I know were worried that Canada would turn instantly into Nazi Germany the day after the election. Personally I'm blaise about the whole political change thing. The status quo tends to be a powerful force.

So as I mentioned my parents headed off to Mexico for a week for their 40th anniversary. That's another yikes, as this means my parents are getting old. And if they're getting old that means I'm getting there too. Very scary. Since they were gone I had free access to their kitchen which can never end well. The week of culinary experiments ended up with my giant peanut butter banans cookie/loaf incident. Luckily I'm not a picky eater.

Overall a good week although I was a little lonely surprisingly. Shani's kitten got am urinary tract infection so she had to stay home with him most of the time to give him his medicine. The end result was way too much World of Warcraft for me. My non-roleplaying friends came over Friday night, and as usual we ended up just hanging out as we never plan anything. It was good though with the conversational highlight being our layout of the Christian pantheon. I won't go into too much detail right now, but apparently Santa Claus is the child of Jesus and God.