Journal Entry: May 29, 2008

Yesterday was Wednesday, right?

Ah, yes. Sorry, it’s been a long day at work. Anyway, last night I invited our regular Wednesday dinner guests to pick up something of their choice, and bring it to our place (rather than meeting somewhere). Seemed like a pleasant change of pace.

K– and N– couldn’t make it, but my sister and her family came, so we still had a crowd. D– came, too. T– took AB to church at 7:00, but Jeff and D– stuck around so we could play a little AoC and introduce Jeff to it. Meanwhile, my sister ran some errands.

Anyway, after that first hour that I spent picking up drinks for everyone and grabbing our dinner from Taco Bell, I spent the rest of the evening playing AoC. I did come out of the office around 9:00 and watched the end of an episode of Boston Legal with T–, and then (even though it was bed time) we watched a Lost before we knocked off for the night. In the meantime, I got my character up to level 30.

That was my night, then today has been another busy and productive one at work. I took a long lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings again, played some AoC over lunch, but apart from that my whole day has been spent crawling through old Safety Risk Management documents and trying to match up project numbers and NCP codes from dozens of different projects, to see what we have and what we haven’t yet paneled, and make plans based on that.

In the end, we’re doing better on all of it than any of us suspected, and I have a shiny new spreadsheet to prove it. Good for me. Now I’m going to go run for half an hour, and spend the rest of the night complaining.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Fostering Creativity

I just read an excellent article on fostering creativity, and I wanted to share it here, for my own reference and for any of you interested in the topic.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-to-unleash-your-creativity&print=true

FAQ

Q: You know what would be nice?

A: Averaged monthly billing on gasoline use. Someone could probably make a killing charging a $5 service charge for that.

Journal Entry: May 28, 2008

I had an incredibly productive day at work yesterday. I got a ton accomplished, and in between projects I spent some time working on our finances for the next four or five months, and found out that our prospects look a lot better than I had feared. Even with the double mortgage, we’re going to be able to get by (barring any disasters, of course).

That’s good news. It relieves a great burden of stress on me, which is an answered prayer in itself.

After I got home I called Dad and talked with him for half an hour or so, then T– and I headed to the gym. We met K– and N– there, and after we did our strength training, K– offered to run with me again. I did the first day of week 4 on my program (after so successfully finishing week 3 on Sunday).

Holy damn! What a monstrous leap in difficulty. In week 3, I basically did 18 minutes of running and jogging — half and half, taking four walking breaks along the way to help me catch my breath.

In week 4, I do 16 minutes of jogging, plus another 5 1/2 minutes of walking at much rarer intervals. The last 5-minute stretch of jogging nearly killed me.

I managed though (with much encouragement from K– and T–), and when I have to try to do the same thing again tomorrow night, I’ll be able to approach it with the full knowledge that, yeah, I can do this. I’ve already done it once.

And, from what I’ve seen, what’s impossible on day 1 is not really all that hard on day 3. It’s been consistent that way throughout the program so far.

After we got home, T– made quesadillas for dinner, and we watched some According to Jim for the first time in a while, and I spent most of that time playing with AB. Then she went to bed and we watched some Lost, and then it was 10:00 far too soon, and with that bedtime.

I didn’t actually play any AoC last night. Instead, I spent time with my family. I’m just saying, is all. Of course, tonight I’m playing AoC pretty much all night. But that’s beside the point.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

My Vices

I have mentioned here before that I have a family history that predisposes me to an addictive personality. As so many silly children do, I spent much of my early twenties partying with alcohol, and (at my parents’ insistence) I was on the constant lookout for any signs of alcoholism. Lucky me, I’ve never seen any.

I thought it might be fun (and/or useful) to review my history with with addictive substances, for posterity as it were. So far, none of them has been my downfall, but it’s an ongoing investigation.

Drugs
I have never tried any illegal drugs.

Really, I’ve never had the opportunity. I had a couple of friends in high school who did, but never around me and they never invited me to try. I guess I grew up in the right part of town, and hung out with the right crowd, and I’ve been consistent enough about that throughout my life that it just never happened.

When I was in New York, visiting D–, we spent one evening at birthday party for a friend of his, whom he had met while he was living there. The party was in a cramped little apartment (as they all are in New York City, and there were many guests, and the food did not appeal to me but I was too polite to say so, and I may have already been a little bit drunk before we ever went over there, so all told I wasn’t in too good of shape.

Of course, the worst of it was the crowd of strangers. I had a pretty good anxiety attack going on just from that. Anyway, sometime late in the evening the birthday boy gets to opening presents, and one of them was a baggie of what must have been pretty good weed, because he was awfully excited to get it. And, generous fellow that he was, he rolled a joint and they passed it around.

That, really, was my opportunity. Only time in my life I’ve been in the same room as a joint. I was feeling sick, though, and not at all adventuresome, so I passed it right along.

So, that’s drugs.

Tobacco
I’ve smoked some cigarettes, out of boredom more than anything else. I remember one time when I got trashed at Brad’s place (which will, necessarily, be described later), Brian recommended that I smoke a couple cigarettes in the hopes that the stimulant effect would, I dunno, bring me down. I did, and it didn’t, and the night did not end well (as will be shown).

Apart from that, I’ve smoked maybe a total of a pack of cigarettes, at various times — all of them have been when I was hanging out with D– at some bar (usually with a larger social group), and I bummed some cigarettes off him just for something to do while everybody else played pool and danced and joked among themselves. More than once I’ve had a cigarette when it was just D– and me, sitting across the table talking, just because, y’know, if he’s going to be blowing smoke in my face, I feel like I ought to get some sort of vengeance.

Some of that might sound like D–‘s a heavy smoker. Not at all, really, but he tends to take a pack with him when he goes to a bar, and sometimes the mood strikes him. That’s all there is there.

I’ve had four or five cigars in my time, too, and I’d love to have more, but I enjoy saving them for special occasions. That, and I’m not wealthy enough to buy things yet just to set them on fire. And I’m still a little too pretentious to buy cheap cigars. I’d rather not smoke at all.

So, yeah. When it comes to smoking, it’s only ever been occasional, and never tempting toward addiction.

Alcohol
Oh, sweet alcohol.

Actually, this bit is long, even hitting just the highlights. Feel free to skim over it. If you know me at all, you probably know most of these stories.

We moved to Wichita when I was twelve or so, and bought a house, and apparently when we moved into the house my parents found a couple bottles of liquor left there by the previous owners. Knowing liquor doesn’t really go bad, they decided to keep it, but a desperation to be good parents had kept my parents from drinking anything at all for as long as I’d been alive (at least, as far as I know of).

So they tucked the bottles away in the very back of an old buffet that stood in our living room, and probably forgot all about them.

I was looking for a deck of playing cards one day, and stumbled upon them. They fascinated me. After that I waited, always looking for an opportunity, and one evening they left me home alone and I seized my opportunity. I dug out the two bottles. One was labeled “Gin,” but I opened it and it didn’t really have any smell to it. I took that to mean it probably had no real flavor, so wouldn’t be too exciting a thing to try. The other bottle was nearly sealed shut by the thick, long-congealed sugary syrup under the cap, and when I finally wrenched it open it smelled strongly of peppermint, and the sour smell of alcohol. This, I thought, was good liquor.

So I poured probably half a shot of peppermint schnapps into a tall glass of Dr Pepper, and drank it down. It was nasty. I probably wouldn’t have liked a Gin and Dr Pepper any better, but I shudder to think that this was my first cocktail. I was probably fourteen.

When I was fifteen, I was babysitting some kid at somebody’s house, and I noticed an open bottle of wine in the fridge. I waited until the kid was down sleeping for the night (and the parents weren’t due home for some time), and I stole a sip of it, expecting delicious things. It was just sour and nasty. I spent some time trying to figure out how to warn them that their wine had gone bad without admitting I’d tried it, but finally gave up, realizing they’d have to figure it out for themselves.

It was a chardonnay, and I’m quite confident it was a perfectly good one. I was a kid, though. All I knew was that wine was made out of grapes, so I expected something much sweeter.

When I was sixteen, I drank for real for the first time. There was a campground just outside of town called King’s Camp, when the church would sometimes have youth retreats and whatnot. It sat in some small woods near a scrawny little Kansas lake, and it only saw any real business during the summer.

My friends and I (Brad and Brian again, as well as a few others from the youth group) had found an entrance to the camp that wasn’t locked up in those long months when the camp was out of use, and so we would often sneak back there for a night out in the woods. Brad and Brian ended up hunting some, when they were older, but I can’t imagine what else we found to pass the time out there. Still, it was a favorite hangout. That’s also where I took my girlfriend Lindsey to dump her on Valentine’s Day. But that’s another story.

One night, though, Brian decided it was time we all learn how to drink. Brad may or may not have been part of this evening, but I know and D– and I showed up, as well as a guy from our youth group named Erin, and another friend of Brian’s that none of us knew. That friend was our supplier, though.

We ended up with a flask of Southern Comfort, a flask of Peach Schnapps, and a gallon jug of orange juice. We made a fire out in the woods, and spent an evening talking about girls and drinking shots and swigging right out of the bottle, and just pretending like we were awfully cool guys.

Everybody drank too much (and the oldest among us was probably eighteen, and didn’t have much more experience drinking than I did at that point). We eventually put out the fire and stumbled back to one of the cabins that had been left unlocked to sleep off the few hours left in the night. Brian, realizing we’d all probably have hangovers the next morning, separately encouraged both D– and me to drive into town and pick up some aspirin, because we were the least drunk. We both remember making the drive (independently), all freaked out that we were going to get caught drunk driving and probably nowhere close to actually drunk, but neither knew the other one was doing the same thing.

I remember when I got back with the aspirin, everyone else was sound asleep. Thinking we would probably want to clear out pretty quickly in the morning to avoid getting caught, I spent some time tidying up before I went to sleep. I threw away plastic cups and other trash, put away the deck of cards, and emptied the remains of the peach schnapps into the orange juice bottle (you know, so there’d be less to carry).

Turns out, Brian’s friend had taken both the orange juice and the schnapps from his parents’ fridge, and when he unknowing put back the spiked OJ, he ended up getting in a lot of trouble. Hah!

Nothing bad came of that night, except for D– getting a little scraped up trying to escort a falling-down-drunk Erin through the trees, and having to make up an excuse for the scrapes on his arms come Sunday morning….

Two weeks later, give or take, I was out to lunch with my mom, and we were talking of all manner of things, and I leveled with her about what we’d done. I’ve always had that sort of relationship with my mom. I think she was probably pretty worried to hear we’d been up to it, but she just said she was glad I could be honest with her, and hopefully next time I’d be a little safer about it.

After that, I didn’t really drink until my Junior year in high school when I met B–, and he taught me how to drink wine. The first time he invited me over, I asked if he would pick up a bottle of Arbor Mist Blackberry Merlot (or something equally crappy), because I’d seen ads and it just sounded delicious. He did, graciously enough, but he also got a bottle of actual, good Merlot.

I remember him laughing when he discovered that the Arbor Mist had a twist top. I also remember I didn’t like it much, even that first time. I still kept buying such stuff for a year or two, but Bruce convinced me that the Merlot was a lot better, and it didn’t take me long to learn to appreciate actual wine.

Early in my Freshman year at college, I was in Wichita visiting for the weekend and spent an evening over at Brad’s place. D– was back in OKC at the time, and he came over, too. Over the last year or two, since I had left Wichita, Brad and Brian had become pretty close. Still, everybody thought it would be fun to get together.

Brad and Brian were smokers, then, and they drank beer. That was most of the plan for the evening: poker, beer, and smoking. Ah, and Brad grilled up some venison, so I guess this was when they were hunting, too.

I was extremely pretentious back then, and I would not condescend to drink beer. D– was okay with it, and Brad and Brian seemed to love it, but when I asked if they had any wine, I was out of luck.

Brad remembered that he’d stashed away a bottle of vodka that he’d gotten somewhere, though, and I said (knowing nothing), “Ah, vodka, that’s a real drink!”

They’d spent some time ribbing me for being to effeminate to drink beer like the rest of them, so when Brad poured me a shot of vodka I slammed it back. That’s something I’ve always been good at — slamming shots without any visible difficulty, just a natural talent apparently. Anyway, they seemed impressed how easily I did that shot, and I felt pretty good about impressing them (and drinking the shot had been remarkably easy), so I told him to pour me another, and I knocked that one back, too.

I did seven shots before the first one caught up with me.

I remember spending the rest of the evening locked in a little half-bath down in the basement, ten feet away from the table where they were playing poker. I’d heard that drinking a lot of water was the key to not getting hungover, so I had a water glass that I kept filling from the sink, downing it as quick as I could, and then just standing with hands on both walls, bracing myself against the world’s spinning, and hoping not to puke.

Periodically, I would stick my head out the door and shout, “Brian…is a bitch!”

I didn’t really come down after a couple hours, and Brad hadn’t intended on anybody staying the night, so Brian drove me to D–‘s place (where I was supposed to be). I remember D– laughing at me, because he’d never seen me really drunk before, and he told me that the best solution to that level of drunkenness was Pepsi and Twizzlers, and he just happened to have both. So he gave me a 24-pack of Pepsi and a 1-pound bag of Twizzlers, and sat back and watched while I gorged myself on both.

Even 7 shots in, I don’t think I would have thrown up that night if not for D–‘s little trick. What a bastard.

Anyway, that’s the worst I’ve ever felt drinking. I’ve had nights as bad as that since then (although only a few), but that was the first, and I really wasn’t sure I was going to make it through.

Then, really immediately after that, I decided I needed to learn how to drink actual liquor. I started out with Vodka, and essentially my goal was to be able, in case it ever became necessary, to face off against a tableful of Russian mobsters and match them shot for shot of Vodka without losing my cool. It seemed like a useful survival skill.

I learned a lot about Vodka in the months that followed, and we threw a big party involving several brands of flavored Vodka for T–‘s 21st birthday, during that time. We rented A Knight’s Tale (which she loved), and made up a drinking game for it. Every time a lance broke, we said, we’d drink a shot.

Turns out, there’s a montage scene in which about fifteen lances break within ten seconds. Luckily, by that point, we were all too messed up to count, so we just gave up on it.

That’s the party where D– threw up in T–‘s drawer, in the bathroom. Her scrunchies were never the same. That’s the same one where…well, I can’t give away too many people’s secrets in one blog post. Everybody got smashed, though.

Somewhere along the way, I caught on to K–‘s appreciation of Jack Daniels, and decided I’d achieved my goal for Vodka, so I switched over to Jack. I remember going through a whole bottle in a weekend, more than once. I would drink it straight, in large quantities. It was expensive, and it wasn’t really that much fun, but I was proud of what I could accomplish.

Yeah, yeah. I was in college. Everyone in college is that stupid.

I remember Toby and I would go for walks around the perimeter of the OC campus, evenings, he with his Mountain Dew bottle full of very strong margarita, and me with my root beer bottle full of Jack Daniels. Those probably weren’t as healthy of an activity as we thought they were.

When we moved out of the OC dorms (first K– and N– into their apartment at the Links, and then T– and I when we moved to Tulsa), things changed. In spite of everything I’ve said, we did have a certain amount of restraint imposed by the knowledge that we could be kicked out of school (and our apartments) if we were ever caught drinking (or even possessing alcohol within the apartments).

That first year that K– and N– had their own apartment, we reveled in the freedom of it. When T– and I moved to Tulsa, we would still often come to OKC to hang out with K– and N– and D– over weekends, or they would come up to visit us, often once a month, and every single weekend involved at least one night of just stupid, stupid drinking (and at least one day of groaning and doing nothing following).

The biggest ones that stand out are New Years party’s, and the Halloween party where my little sister hooked up with my now brother-in-law. We went all out for actual holidays, but we had crazy parties no matter what. If we were getting together, most of us were getting drunk.

T– got tired of it before the rest of us (by at least two years), and looking back on it I feel more than a little shame. We were acting like idiot college kids, really. We’ve all outgrown it by now. Sure, we still drink (and one or two of us drinks too much, at least once a month), but it’s nothing like the parties we used to have.

That’s probably as worried as I’ve ever been, about my drinking. I hated my job, for most of the time I lived in Tulsa, and I hated being so removed from my friends. College had been awesome for me, more because I was constantly surrounded by friends and engaging with them, than for any other reason. Getting out into the real world, where every one of us had responsibilities and life called us away to other cities and states…it irked me. Real life got to me, and I felt like those parties were an opportunity to rebel against real life.

That’s dangerously close to drinking to escape from problems. Still, I knew what I was doing (by which I mean, I was aware just how much I was drinking), and I took care to pay attention. I would spend weeks at a time without drinking at all, in between visits, and I was always asking myself, “Do I need a drink? Or does it just sound like fun?”

And, through it all, I was always pretty sure that, the fact that I was even asking myself those questions probably meant I had a problem. I had been raised to start from the assumption that it was probably a problem, really. Looking back now, I don’t think it ever was. It was stupid, I’m sure, but twenty-five-year-olds are stupid. That’s just how it goes.

It waned, too. We all got older, and I think we probably stopped having those parties more because we lost the youthful energy to recover from them than because we matured out of it, but maturity came along close enough behind, and we could look back and chuckle at our own antics.

Not…not that we’re all that mature now. I don’t have any trouble remembering back to the last time one of was too drunk to remember it. I don’t ever really have to worry that I might be an alcoholic these days, though. I have alcohol in the house all the time, and I go days and weeks without pouring a glass. Then I might go a week or two in a row averaging a glass a day (and much of that bunched up in three or four nights), and it’s still not particularly responsible, but it’s not dependency, either.

I guess I always sort of assumed I would end up an alcoholic, and I certainly didn’t try too hard to avoid it, but I’ve managed so far to dodge that bullet. I’ve got an awful lot of stories where alcohol is concerned, but it’s not the vice that’s going to bring me down.

Video Games
Well, I’ve already covered all the substances. I could go into detail on “Food,” but frankly, it would be boring. I’ve got health issues and diet is a part of it, but it’s not the biggest part and never has been.

I recently read a book, though, that discussed the addictive nature of video games, and pointed that modern games, MMOs especially, implement a reward and dependency system that impacts the brain in exactly the same manner as dopamine-based drugs.

I’m not surprised. In fact, I’ve knowingly turned to video games in precisely the ways I would never allow myself to turn to alcohol, when my problems became too much for me to handle. The MMOs I’ve played have included Asheron’s Call for most of college, Star Wars Galaxies while I lived in Tulsa, and World of Warcraft for longer than any of the others. Now I’m playing Age of Conan, of course, but I could just as easily lapse back into WoW any day.

The thing is, I obsess. I do have an obsessive personality, and if I don’t have something benign to focus that on, I focus it on my real life problems. I can build myself into a full anxiety attack over finances, home repair, relationships, frustrations at work, whatever. Finances are the easiest, and I find myself constantly worrying over them, no matter what else is going on.

When I’m actively involved in an MMO, though, I worry about that instead. I’ll spend hours just sitting, idly considering what I need to do to improve a character or make progress in some dungeon I’m trying to conquer.

It’s stupid, it’s inconsequential, and I know that. That doesn’t bother me at all. It’s something that doesn’t matter, but it fully captures my attention — it lets my brain work overtime on a problem without actually building up any real anxiety, because I know that at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter.

I can’t do that with my writing. I wish I could just aim my addiction in that direction and churn out pages and pages. I wrote a post two years ago about how that doesn’t work for me, though. I write from calmness and security, not from chaos. It’s just who I am.

I use games to vent, though. To escape. It’s not harmless. I spend too much of the little free time I have on it, especially when I don’t bother to limit myself. Without careful attention, I can let myself come home from work every day and sink into my game until late at night — while away whole weekends with my only social interaction occurring when friends or family log into the game with me.

It is an addiction, and if I don’t wrestle with it, it takes a toll on all of my relationships. Still, it’s the most benign of the addictions I think I could have fallen prey to. It works in my life, if I can just maintain a little balance. But, yeah, it does work for me. It helps me handle something that needs handling. I use video games to cope with the stress of real life.

I guess…I guess that makes video games my anti-drug? Ugh. I’ve become one of them.

Anyway, yeah, I’m counting down the minutes until I can get off work and go play Conan. Don’t judge me. It’s just who I am.

Journal Entry: Memorial Day Weekend

I just finished a four-day weekend, and I definitely made the most of it.

Thursday night T– and I met N– at the gym, and I worked myself sick. Afterward, T– made us all Tilapia for dinner (an experiment for us, since T– and I don’t, generally, like fish). It was really good. We plan to try more in the future.

Anyway, N– hung around and we watched TV until 9-ish, then she headed home, T– decided to read, so I headed to the office to play some AoC. I think I got to bed around 2:00.

Friday was my RDO, so I was able to sleep in. After I got up, I just had time to do the dishes before heading to Mazzio’s to meet T– and my sister (with all three kids, between the two of them), and D– for lunch.

After that, I went home with the goal of catching up to D–‘s character in AoC. I got close, and when he showed up around 3:30 he helped me out some. We played until 6-ish, then he went home because the laptop just couldn’t handle the environments he was fighting in. I put the game aside, too, and went to watch Lost with T–.

Saturday, we got up early to head to the gym, but once I got there I started feeling sick, so I decided to put off my workout until Sunday. Instead, I went and picked up K–‘s birthday present while T– worked out.

Then we had a quick lunch, and headed downtown to watch the new Indiana Jones flick in celebration of K–‘s birthday. It was…pretty good. I’ve never been a huge fan of the series (I’ve seen each movie once), but this one didn’t seem as much a departure from the old ones as some people are saying. I think it’s just an adventure for kids, and all the kids who loved the old ones are grown-ups now, and turning up their noses at the new movie.

After the movie, T– and I ran home to pick up AB (because we couldn’t find a babysitter for all day Saturday), and then met K– and N– and D– at Olive Garden for dinner. Afterward, we all went back to our place and started our summer 80’s review with Mannequin, which was not good. It was a really fun time watching, but the movie was not good.

As far as the 80’s review goes, I’ll go into more detail on that some other time.

Sunday morning we went to church (and I got some writing done on my SK storyline for the first time in a while), and then we went to a Mexican place called Ole with K– and N–. It was pretty good. It’s nice to have another place to toss in the mix, even if it didn’t particularly stand out.

T– didn’t have a very good time, though, because AB was in a real fuss. She hadn’t had a morning nap, and she did not want to sit still. That was no fun.

We went home and put her down for a nap, then I ran up to the gym for my workout. I did my strength training, then went for a jog on the treadmill. I talked K– into trying it with me, and he had no problem jumping right in at the end of week 3. I made it through, too, so I’ll start on week 4 tonight.

Turns out there’s 9 weeks (I thought there were only 6), but I should be doing a lot more jogging than walking by the end of this week. By week 7 or so it should be closer to a 20-minute run.

Then, Sunday evening we went over to the Huddlestons’ for dinner — old family friends of D–‘s, who have fallen in love with AB. We got some free barbecue out of that, so we’re not complaining. When we got home, I played AoC on the laptop while we watched an episode of Lost, and then we went to bed relatively early.

Monday morning, Memorial Day, I had to make a quick run to Wal-Mart because B– and E– had requested that I bring salsa to lunch, and I was only too happy to oblige. I was up late enough that, after hitting Wal-Mart and then mixing up the salsa, it was time to head over there.

Lunch at B– and E–‘s was something of a last minute development, but they invited D– and K– and N– and us over sometime late Saturday. They grilled burgers and chicken for us, and we brought sangria and salsa and (among the others who came) several delicious sides and desserts.

The sangria was a new recipe T– stumbled upon in one of her cooking magazines, and it was a hit. We’d brought the same thing to the Huddlestons’, too. It’s essentially just lime juice, sugar, water, and Pinot Noir. I thought the recipe sounded foul, but the end product is actually really good.

Anyway, we had lunch and talked much. We also tried out B– and E–‘s Wii Fit, which was a huge success, and introduced B– and E– to MarioKart, which was roundly denounced. Whatever.

The girls (by which, at first, I meant AB and Maddy, but it ended up applying to all of them) went out in the back yard where E– had set up an inflatable wading pool, but I know not the details of that adventure, because I shun the outdoors and didn’t even glance their way. AB ended up sitting on Maddy’s head, though, and that brought an end to their fun.

It was a great afternoon, though. We were there until 4:30, and I spent most of the rest of the evening playing AoC. Overall, that was probably the most relaxing holiday weekend I’ve had in years.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

The Magic Architect

Okay, I keep reminding myself that the whole point of my blog migration was for my own personal archives, and that it’s not an excuse to make you guys reread all my old posts, because how boring would that be?

But, for anyone who wasn’t reading my blog back in 2006, I do recommend that you read my short parable “The Magic Architect.” I’m not saying it’s the best thing you’ll ever read, but it did get a pretty strong reaction from those who were reading at the time.

As I go through all the posts, cleaning them up, I’m rereading them all. It amazed me how much I still seriously believe the things I wrote back then, even though some of it already struck me as college-age idealism at the time.

It also continues to astonish me how substantial my blog was, back before I turned it into a diary. That makes me a little sad. But, then, it also makes me glad to have these old writings saved somewhere — that, at least for a time, I was writing these sorts of things. So at least there’s that.

Journal Entry

Okay, I have good news and I have bad news.

I bought Age of Conan last night. Also, it’s awesome.

So there you go. That probably qualifies as a full journal entry not only for last night, but for at least the next month or two.

Ooh, we did do our Wednesday night dinner, and this time my little sister got to join us. We had almost as many children as adults (depending how you count D–), but N– helped out a lot.

We went to Johnny’s, and I had the theta cheeseburger (always delicious). Afterward, the girls went to church, and D– and I went Best Buy hopping in the hopes of finding a copy of the game. Wal-Mart’s not carrying it because it’s labeled M for Mature, and both of the Best Buys we tried were sold out. There’s a Circuit City nearby, though, and we reasoned that, since no one shops at Circuit City, they had to have a copy still.

They had one.

Anyway, that was good enough. I spent the rest of my night on that. I’m playing a Herald of Xotli, which means I charge blindly into battle, then breathe fire on my enemies, and then live or die depending how much damage I can dump before I get torn to shreds.

It’s perfect for my playstyle. I feel bad for any groups I end up in, but I’m having a blast.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Journal Entry

Okay, it’s done. They’re here. My blog is now 232 posts more content-rich.

I’ve got at least a week’s work ahead of me, double-checking them all and adding tags, but it will be fun work. I always enjoy reading through my old material, even when it’s just diary stuff.

So…hmm. Let me start with this. Whenever T– goes over to someone’s house for the first time (and more so back when she was just out of college), and they know she’s an interior designer, the first thing they say is along the lines of, “Oh, god, you must think this place looks terrible.”

Not because T– puts on superior airs or anything. It’s just a common response to specialists. Anyway, that’s always been kind of a sore spot for T–, because she doesn’t walk into a house and just immediately start judging it. She can look with a critical eye when she’s working (or someone asks her advice), but she’s not in that mode all the time.

I’m exactly the same way with reading. I don’t read through every book I pick up looking for the mistakes, unless I’m specifically working on editing that book. Sometimes bad story elements will jump out at me, but they should for anyone who regularly reads (or watches) stories.

So, lately I’ve been reading The Cat Who books, as I think I’ve mentioned, but I’d put that on hold to do the markup of Dad’s novel. Now, obviously, while doing the markup I was in editor mode, and since I finished that and picked up the next Cat Who book, I’ve noticed it hasn’t gone away. I read every sentence in the book and think how I would rearrange or rewrite it to make the verb stronger.

It’s rather distracting. The book isn’t awful (although the writing is kind of weak), but I’ve gotten in the habit of giving advice and now it’s kind of got me in its grip. I’m just glad I’m not reading one of my favorite authors at the moment, because that could be depressing.

Anyway, yeah, yesterday I read a couple chapters of The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern over lunch, picked up AB from E–‘s after work (because T– had spent the day working in Tulsa), and then completely decided to skip the gym. I’d done my running on Monday, and I just didn’t feel like going.

Instead, I hit the mall and picked up some new running shoes (that I’ve been meaning to get for a couple months now), then had dinner with T– and watched an old episode of Lost, and then headed over to D–‘s place to check out Age of Conan, the new MMO. It’s pretty dang sweet.

I got home late, and got up late this morning because of it. Still, way worth it.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Journal Entry

Okay, anyone who has subscribed to this blog as an RSS feed is about to get inundated.

I spent some time during the day yesterday working (with Kris’s help via email) on my blog migration script. It’s running right now and, with any luck, will keep right on plugging away for the next three to six hours, and move all my old Xanga posts over here, probably date- and time-stamped so that they appear in historical context.

I’m doing that for my records. Don’t feel like I suddenly expect you to reread three-year-old philosophy posts. You’re welcome to, though.

Anyway, after work yesterday T– and I went to the gym, and I decided to go ahead and try jogging after my strength training. I usually do the elliptical, instead, because it’s a hell of a lot easier. I’m starting to think of switching back to a three-days-a-week habit, though, and if I were to do that, I’d probably just leave out the elliptical altogether.

Jogging went better than I really expected it to. I went ahead and started week 3 of my training program, and the three-minute stretches of jogging were tough, but not too bad.

After that I grabbed us all some dinner while T– went home with N– to start work on the Bible class they’re leading on Wednesday night. I spent the hour or so watching AB (mostly climbing up and down the stairs to K–‘s loft), and then by the time we got home it was already 9.

T– watched Bones and then turned on the new How I Met Your Mother while I worked on the blog migration script which is running even now.

It saves me a ton of work, but I’ll still need to review every post, partly because Xanga didn’t institute post titles until about a year ago, and Blogger relies on them heavily. Also, I like the idea of tags as used by Blogger, so I need to tag them all.

That will be a gradual process, though, as there’s 235 new posts I’ll have to crawl through. Eventually, it will be done.

Also…rereading them, I’m sorely tempted to start posting essays again. I don’t know how long the feeling will last, but don’t be surprised if one or two start popping up.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.