Can't believe its been two weeks since my last post. I'm really getting bad with this lollyblogging thing, and from the look of the future I won't have a lot of time to update soon.

So not too much has happened lately that is really exciting, but did you really expect anything different?

There was a really good Paradise Lost game a couple of weeks ago. I won't bore anyone with the particulars, but there was a lot done. There was much mocking of evil wannabes, discussion of the sexual problems that would have arised in Brokeback Mountain, and the taking advantage of emotionally traumatized women. In other words a pretty typical night for Tempest.

Before the game a friend invited us out for dinner and the place we agreed on was Gino's, a small Italian place just off Whyte Avenue. My dinner was excellent if a little spicy. One of the things I've noticed about my advancing age is that my stomach doesn't seem to handle hot food so well anymore which is unfortunate as I like everything spicy. The conversation was of course fabulous with a variety of topics. Among them was Emmet almost perfectly guessing all the major Oscar winners.

Going to a place like that reminded me of how much I like the small out of the way restaurants like that. Most of the places that I've gone out to lately have been the big food chains like Moxies or Earls and it has always been a real pain. It seems like lately that these places are getting busier and busier, you have to wait usually an average of an hour to get seated on the weekend and when you do the place is crowded and noisy. I was talking to someone recently, and he was saying that his friend was an award winning chef from France who opened a small restaurant here. I guess from what he was saying it wasn't doing too well which is really sad if you think about it. It's very true that Edmonton has no food culture at all. I'll start to do my part though by heading to some of these smaller places in the future.

I received my Purgatory character finally, and let me tell you it was pure agony waiting as Bregan was one of the last characters to be created as I was very late handing my submission in. The character's fantastic with lots of power and neat extras. It was a little strange though as the organizers had to build the characters up from their starting point at the last game. I understand the necessity completely, but apparently some people ended up with almost the same power level they had in the last game after they spent all of their experience.

There was another character creation session for Crown of Thorns, the new angels Arthurian game. I probably should've taken more initiative and discussed more stuff to involve my character with other players, but I think I'm going to play Malegant as completely new to Camelot and court. The analogy I'm thinking of is the kid in high school who skates by and is really popular, but then when he hits University he's a small fish in a big pond. Instead we started to watch Excalibur which is a big nostalgic favorite of mine. Others there didn't feel the same as there was a lot of group mocking of the admittedly dated and cheesy movie. It was a good time with lots of geek social talk which is always fun for me.

Just this last week I started working once again with the bricklaying stuff much to my dismay. It didn't start off well at all either as they had me working at the workshop doing the most pointless job ever. Myself and another kid were going through pallets of bricks sorting the good ones from the bad. Definitely not the most exciting task, and it didn't help that my co-worker was a pretty quiet guy. Quiet guy plus quiet me equals a very long quiet day.

Anyways we should have been done on Thursday, but of course we didn't get the bricks brought to us so we had to sit around and do nothing for the afternoon. This meant as well that I would have to come in on Friday morning to finish everything up. So I did and we spent about two hours sorting the last of the bricks before the head guy comes in. Apparently we were too picky and the bricks that we had just pulled out were all actually fine. So we wasted hours doing something completely pointless. In addition he said that we would have to go through all the pallets that we had sorted in the previous days and recheck them. That's when I said that I had to be somewhere and took off. I know that there's many people out there who don't care what they do, who would say that it doesn't matter because they're collecting a paycheque. I realized that I'm not one of those people at all, I don't know what I want to do but I'd defintitely like it to matter at least a little bit.

Things get even more scary from there. There's a cement plant that in Northern Edmonton that's temporarily closing down for repairs, and obviously whenever a place like that is not open they're losing a lot of money. So we have to go in and get everything fixed up on a very tight schedule. That means working twelve hour days which means that with a hour commute I won't be having a lot of free time in the near future. That also means that they need to have people working there 24 hours a day, and lucky me I got stuck with the night shift.

It's been quite a few years since I worked graves, and from what I remember I really didn't like them. I'm not a very light sleeper but I can imagine that I'll have some trouble sleeping during the day. The other downside is that I'll be working with a guy that I know and hate. He's rabidly pro-union, no doubt looking to impress everyone so that he'll end up union president some day. I'm already not looking forward to him getting on my case about my non-commital to bricklaying and the union.

Also very bad is that I'll have to miss the first Crown of Thorns game which makes me sad. Right now it looks like we have to be finished before the 31st so I am actively praying that I can make it to the first Purgatory game. My character is the Chamberlain after all so I definitley have stuff to do, and I only have a couple of games before my Primogen seat is up for re-election. I have to start my threatening early because the lord knows that I'll never win the election on popularity. Right now it looks like I should be able to make it. I just hope we dont screw up this job too bad so that we have to stay later.

Addendum

So my list of bad qualities was far from complete apparently.

I totally forgot to mention my bad MSN habits. As it has been pointed out to me, and it has dawned on me I have many; never turning my status to "Away" when I'm away from the computer, abruptly leaving conversations hanging, and replying in vague monosyllables. There's probably many more, but that's all I can think of right now. There ends up being a real conflict there between my desire to be polite, and my dislike of electronic communication. I really don't want to be rude because my MSN contact list is pretty exclusive. I don't have everyone I've ever met on it like Shani. And people really need to be aware of etiquette even on these new-fangled communication techniques.

I've never been a letter writer, or a phone talker, or a MSN chatter. Of course I can't really say I'm a chatter box in person either, but there can be times where I'm quite verbose. Unfortunately most of the time my chatter is related to geeky topics.

When I worked at Toys R Us I had more than my fill of geeky talk, that's pretty much all we did all day. When I worked in the female dominated bookstore that outlet pretty much vanished, and I think I've been storing it up for years.

Anyways to summarize I'm aware of the MSN problem, and its being addressed. I formally apologize if I've offended anyone, I'm sure you know who you are.

So nothing really exciting to report this week. I'm starting to get my butt in gear which is a good sign. You know a rolling stone collects no moss, and all of that. Finished my taxes already this year and as usual my lucrative return is going to pay off my annual insurance bill. Someone please remind me not to get in any more accidents. Oh well it's nice that it's taken care of so that I don't have to worry about it for the rest of the year.

There hasn't been any super-exciting job prospects, but I've been putting a few resumes out there. I'm definitely not at the point yet where I'm going for quantity over quality, and I hope I don't reach it. The construction business seems to be building up slowly to the point inevitably where they'll become desperate enough to hire me again. Wish me luck in getting a regular job before that happens.

Not really a lot of exercise happening, but I'm justifying it by saying that I'll run myself to death once winter is over. I don't have a gym membership, and I don't really have a lot of indoor options so I'm not sure what else to do. Of course winter just started here apparently. While I must admit the snow is quite pretty and good for the farmers it's a pain in the ass, and I'd trade it gladly for clean streets and warmer temperatures. You would think I have a higher tolerance as we haven't really had any winter this year, but I'm ready for what little we have to be done.

And then of course there is the live games. March will be simply lousy with games, and the excitement is building. Of course excitement leads to dread as there's a scramble to get costuming and everything ready. To top it off there's two period games I have to be prepared for.

There's really no clever ending here, so...Bye.