The Things They Still Carry

Moved - No Really This Time!

2009-06-10T02:44:00.001-05:00

M. is writing again. Hurray.

I am obsessing about D&D again.

Find us at: http://thethingstheystillcarry.wordpress.com/

Really really! No more new posts here.

tap tap Is thing on???

2009-06-08T01:10:00.003-05:00

Apparently I've been gone a while and it's caused quite a stir among the people who follow this blog (I think that's our dog, some whack-o Canadian hording bacon and that old guy who sells tin foil hats over the nets).

I apologize for disappearing like I did, but I hope you understand that it was never my intention to abandon, merely I had had enough with everything and just wanted to get back to my home, family and normalcy. Basically I just unplugged from everything. No I didn't grow a beard, join a cult, sell all my possesions and devote myself to Rashaan, the former out of work hippy who decided his ideas warranted followers to support his hippy life-style. I just... unplugged.

Heather has mentioned for quite a while that I should resume writing again, as the three people above seem to miss my unique take on things. Also I'm sure most will find it amusing as to what's been going on since I've got back, how I view things now, what I'm up to, which Canadian/ Alien warlord I'm still trying to stop...

I've got this week off and I'll try to start with the postings again. It'll give me an excuse to use the internets for something productive other than trying to earn my 5-star General rank in Call of Duty4 online.

-M

I think
it's getting to the point
where I can
be myself again

D&D Nerdery!

2009-06-03T09:28:00.002-05:00

I've put together a group of people interested in using maptool to play D&D via the internet. I'm both excited and nervous. It will be my first attempt at DMing more than my husband and 12 year old. It should be fun. We've set up a wiki on Obsidian Portal here:

http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/keep-on-the-shadowfell999

I've decided it would be really interesting to write our adventure log in the style of an oral biograophy (like books like Rant and World War Z) because we could have bits of the story told by townsfolk, enemies, and other NPCs in everything from an interview, to conversations, to reports and journal entries.

TTTSC Revisited

2009-05-27T03:10:00.002-05:00

Unable to sleep, as usual, I just reread all the posts to this blog.

It was nice to revisit that time in our lives. It almost seems like it happened to another person.

M. is going back over there in October. He's going to Afghanistan this time.

I continue to write in the new blog periodically but it just doesn't have the same vibe this blog had.

Movin

2009-03-23T20:56:00.002-05:00

I've moved.

M. is not really writing anymore, though at the end of this year he will be returning overseas. This time he will be in Afghanistan. It may be a blog revival.

In the meantime, I've started my solo project.

I decided to keep it fairly random in content, as I'm a fairly random person. My passions shift and twist in the light like the surface of a lake and I decided not to pigeonhole myself into one or another as a result.

After all this time, I've finally become a teacher. I'll be writing about it over there. I hope you join me and my apologies for your previous abandonment...

http://thethirdpersonexperiment.wordpress.com/

Herald of the Lich King

2008-11-12T22:18:00.003-06:00

It is 11:18 pm. I sit here on the verge of Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard's next expansion to the World of Warcraft, and ask myself a few questions:

1. How did I get sucked back into this game? Oh yeah, my husband.
2. Do I really want to go to the store at midnight for the midnight release?
3. How bugtastic will things be after installation?
4. How did I get sucked back into this game? Oh yeah...

Question 2 should really read, how ridiculous will I feel going to the store at midnight? Pretty ridiculous. And old. And ridiculous. Will getting the copy and playing it now be worth this ridiculousness? There is no way to know the answer until after I have already gone and looked ridiculous. Of course, I can tell myself that I won't look ridiculous because normal people are in bed and only other ridiculous people will be awake and driving around the mall this time of night so we will look ridiculous together. Myself replies, the kids will be thinking, why aren't you in bed sleeping for your job? I tell myself why are the kids not in bed for school, humm? Myself says touche, I guess you make a point. Not one to let it go so easily, I tell myself, besides, my job status is none of their concern.

The job status, since this blog is often a forum for more personal information, is currently full of potential but not full of job. I went to a university today to talk to someone about becoming an adjunct. The staff was rather excited about my degree in fine arts. I mean - a guy walks in the door of their office and they say to him "She can teach English!" as their greeting - that kind of excited. It so happened a regional office person was there reviewing something or another this day. She was able to look over my transcripts and give her initial, unofficial, approval. Yeah, I don't see anything on here that would keep her from teaching English. I also heard a "I don't normally do this," which is something you like to hear when you are looking for a job. Additionally, there was a "I can keep you busy" and some other generally positive comments. The pay is pretty damned good for an adjunct too.

This time of year is so close to a bunch of nice long holidays where the campus is shut down that I am looking at March for my first classes. This leaves plenty of time for leveling to 80.

D&D Nerdery: What's Your Status?

2008-10-28T07:30:00.011-05:00

A number of things can happen to a stalwart hero in the course of battle. One hero is poisoned by a nasty bugger. Another knocked unconscious. A third bloody and torn. The confused cleric looks around the battlefield in an attempt to discern which pristine miniature is in which trouble.

DMs and players must track the status of both heroes and villains throughout the course of a game. There are companies who make very lovely status marker tools, such as magnetic markers that stack up under a miniature. These are great but a bit expensive, so what about status marker tools on a budget?

Poker chips may seem to be the most obvious route to cheap status marker. These chips stack nicely and come in many colors. Oh sure, the rainbow of colors exist but it is difficult to find more than about 4 different colors locally. Other options include everything from colored stones to beads pinned to the top of a miniature's head (personally, I find the idea of shoving a pin into my mini's head abhorrent). What is a cheap DM to do?

Status Marker Tools
Supplies:

Circle Cutter - Martha Stewart produces a circle cutting tool, found in the scrapbook supplies section of Wal-Mart for about $10.

Foam Board - .99 a large sheet, found at most craft stores.
_______

There are a number of different circle cutters available on the market thanks to the explosion of the scrapbooking craft. Hole punches are also a viable option, however if you intend to use foam board, you will likely find your hole punch will not work with the thickness of the board. A circle cutter similar to the one pictured will score foam board enough to pop out beautiful circles. Another advantage to this sort of cutter is the range of diameters one can cut. Try putting a poker chip under a huge Young White Dragon!

Foam board is thick enough to stand out when stacked under miniatures, cheap, and comes in a rainbow of colors for every player mark and status a DM could dream up or read out of a book.

It's a circle!

Cut yourself a bag of multicolored circles and you and your players will soon be able to see the conditions of the battlefield at a glance.

Example: Average sized, bloodied dwarf; large, flying dragon; huge, poisoned and bloodied, elemental.

First Nights in New Home

2008-10-21T16:06:00.002-05:00

I found something I meant to post earlier:

I sit on a cooler in the addition of our new house. Bella rolls around on her back and bites at her legs and tail. The sun is directly overhead so the addition is still nice and cool. Later, when the sun starts to make its way to the west, it will beam directly into the room and warm it up.

Surrounding me are bits and pieces of things I brought in my car. Several gaming consoles sans electrical cords (no TV anyway), a box of important papers with portions of files hanging askew, a backpack with books and the circa binder from work, the cpu and monitor for my computer, a safe, a box of pictures, a bag of dog food, a scrapbook, a bag of yarn half knitted into a rug, a garbage bag with clothes mostly spilled out onto the floor.

There are paper towels, empty kitchen trash bags, plastic cups, plastic utensils, the first mail delivered to our home (mostly from the mortgage company), a box of strawberry yogurt, a case of Brisk, two fresh bell peppers from the neighbor’s garden (I already ate the plum tomato and it was divine) and two rubber fire hose dog toys in the kitchen.

The dining room consists of a pop up dog kennel. The living room, the boy’s room, and the office/game room (because all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy) are all empty except for drapes left behind by the home’s former owner. In the bathroom, there is an old schoolhouse pencil sharpener, a bottle of spray conditioner, and a new shower curtain with hooks, and a shelving system over the toilet that looks just like the one that was in my great grandmother’s. It is ugly and dated but I think of her when I run a finger over the doors. The master bedroom consists of a full size blow up mattress, a seafoam green chenille throw, a pillow without a case, a pair of awful pink and blue drapes, and a red Nintendo DS. The small bathroom contains face wash, a toothbrush, deodorant, a comb, jewelry cleaner, a pair of shorts with a missing button and a pair of dirty capris.

The only noise inside is the occasional settling of the wood structure and the hum of the refrigerator and air conditioner. Outside in the evening, loud insects take over for the chattering squirrels and the squawking mocking birds. Few cars pass in the street. It is too hot for anyone to be outside now but come evening a few people will come outside to wash a car, walk a dog, or check to see if the rabbits got their butter beans.

Let There Be Rock

2008-10-01T07:50:00.004-05:00

There has been much Rock Band 2, visiting eating establishments, going to the movies, World of Warcraft, browsing book stores, watching TV and snuggling. Also, a fair amount of unpacking, yard work, cleaning up, and purchasing new household goods and appliances.

I have met the academic requirements for the alternative route to teaching program. My last step before my first certification is to pass the praxis II in the english subject area.

Tonight, is movie night. Tomorrow we get our new fridge, double convection oven, and washer and dryer. We might play D&D or Munchkin or some other table top game.

Upcoming: Status marker tools on a budget!

Mini Update@12:36EST

2008-09-18T11:39:00.002-05:00

We are home!

M. likes the house.

We're excited but tired.

Mini Update

2008-09-09T13:16:00.002-05:00

M is busy with all his processing. I have nearly finished the knitting part of a hat. We should be able to go home so that M can see his new house and the rest of his family sometime in the middle of next week.

I'd type more but I'm tethered to a spot directly under an air conditioning vent and I am freezing.

2008-09-03T08:23:00.003-05:00

I sat in the IHOP parking lot watching planes fly overhead. I called the military to find out what they wanted him (us) to do. I was told that I was ordered to evacuate that morning (gee, glad they told me, maybe when they were throwing me out of the hotel they could have mentioned the mandatory evacuation since it was a military inn). Furthermore, he was ordered not to leave Baltimore.

I told them I was pretty sure he was in Atlanta about to get on a plane. No, he's in Baltimore, they tell me. Unfortunately, orders are only useful when the other party receives them. I hung up frustrated with them and determined to wait until his plane arrived. Once the plane was supposed to have departed, I went to the airport to ask them if he got on the plane. He had.

I picked him up and we drove north. We ended up in a farm town 70 miles into Missouri before finding a hotel with a room. We shop, read, and watch TV while waiting for orders to return.

Thanks for the well wishes and concern.

Impending Doom

2008-08-31T08:56:00.002-05:00

The hotel will not extend my reservation. They only allow you to reserve 3 days at a time. I went to extend today and they told me to get out by 11am.

Mike's plane will not be in until aroun 2pm. It is currently still scheduled to be on time.

Packing up and getting it into the car.

I lived in my car like a gypsy for about 4 months or so when I was 19. I'm too old for this shit now.

I think maybe I'll just take him home and the military can kiss my ass.

Mini Update @10:20pm

2008-08-30T22:20:00.002-05:00

I have not heard from him all day. The last plane from Atlanta arrived about 40 minutes ago. I have no idea where he is. I do not know if he was able to leave Budapest. I do not know if he will be able to land here much longer. I do not know how much longer I can wait here for him.

Mini Update @ 5:10pm

2008-08-30T17:07:00.003-05:00

I really should not watch the weather report but it is impossible to take my eyes off the progress and information.

I went to fill up the gas tank. I was surprised not to find a line.

Still no word from M. There are only 2 more flights coming in from Atlanta today - 8:30 and 10pm. He said today if the plane could be fixed. I really need to find something to occupy my time until time for those late flights.

Mini Update @ 3:45CST

2008-08-30T15:33:00.003-05:00

Heather is squirmy.

People are evacuating.

I have no food, no water - hell, I haven't even filled up the gas tank yet.

I still haven't heard from M. Is he in the states yet? Is he still stuck in Budapest? I really do not know.

I've started to gather up all my things and pack them back into bags.

I checked the airports and flights are still coming in to here at this time. They will stop some time tomorrow I believe. How odd that landfall is expected on a Monday...again.

People in the media keep trying not to compare this hurricane to Katrina but it is impossible not to.

I can't focus on knitting or reading. I'm too anxious.

2008-08-30T14:06:00.002-05:00

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tiiiick. Tooock.

I'm going crazy sitting here.

I brought books. I bought books. I brought two knitting projects (one simple for mindless calm and the other a complicated pattern for challenge). I could go out into the beautiful calm before the storm.

Yet, I sit here watching the clock.

The last few hours have gone by slowly.

I wish there were a knitting store closer than New Orleans which is likely all boarded up by this point.

The hotel shower is a beast. It pings down on your skin like needles. The shower head does not move so there is nowhere to hide in the little box that forms the shower.

Ugg. Maybe I am going to try to force myself to pick up the more complicated knitting pattern or a book.

Hurricanes

2008-08-30T12:31:00.004-05:00

It is hard not to think of Katrina while watching Gustav quickly strengthen in the gulf. It also reminds me of ant hills being kicked over just as they build everything back up again.

I was blogging elsewhere when Katrina hit. It was a devastating and difficult time. There were nasty rumors about the boys at the Air Force base. Looters roamed the streets. Guns. Destruction. Areas hit by hurricanes still struggle to recover years after the rest of the world has all but forgotten.

I do not know what we will do if the hurricane turns our way. I cannot think that far ahead. My mind is focused on getting him home. I want to pick him up from the airport. I want him to get here. Then we will have to decide what we will do.

I have not heard from him yet. It's about 8pm in Budapest. I assume he would have called me if he were still grounded. Hopefully, the next time I hear from him, he will be in Baltimore.

I Want To Get Married Again

2008-08-30T01:00:00.003-05:00

I've been sitting in the hotel room watching TV and surfing the internet. I just fell in love with the show Rock the Reception. The couples learn a choreographed dance for their first dance as a married couple. It puts a huge smile on my face to watch the couples break out in these personalized, less traditional dances and the reactions these dances get. It makes me want to get married again so I can do that.

Fly Jalopy Airlines

2008-08-29T19:49:00.003-05:00

M: Hello.

H: Hi!

M: Hi.

H: Hi!

M: Guess where I am.

H: Um...

M: Budapest.

H: What?

M: Do you know where that is? (I'm not known for geographical prowess).

H: I don't remember, but it's not here!

M: Hungary.

H: Yes, that's right Hungary. Not here!

M: Laughs. Yeah, not there. The plane broke down. (Apparently, the company previously flying our men out has gone out of business. They found Jalopies R Us to replace them.) The part is being flown in from Miami.

H: How long?

M: Hopefully tomorrow, Sunday at the latest.

H: You know there's a hurricane out there.

M: Yeah, we're watching it. It seems like everything is conspiring to keep me from coming home.

H: If this hurricane interferes I'm going to be the crazy person standing on the beach screaming obscenities while my hair whips around.

He laughs. I tell him I put on makeup! He says "Awe, take a picture." I say no way, I've just about sweat it into a puddle anyway. We talk about the books I picked up. He asks if I brought a skirt. I tell him they are in boxes. I say I thought about going to the mall to see if anything nice was on sale. He tells me I should. We say we love each other.

I went to the mall and bought a dress. It needs a little altering (I'm between sizes apparently). I picked up some jewelry and new purse (my red one looked awful with the dress). I bought $260 worth of stuff for $145.

I can't wait to see him.

Bad Habits

2008-08-29T11:14:00.007-05:00

When I pull up our blog, I often pause to look at the last picture he posted from Iraq. I try to imagine that all over, as far as the eye can see. I wonder what it would do to my psyche to look at such rubble day in and day out.

I slept in this morning. I slept in until there was a fire alarm. I listened to it wailing for quite a while before finally collecting my wallet and door key and wandering into the hall. It was indeed a fire alarm. I walked to the front door and out to the shade of a tree. There were clusters of other guests under nearby trees. The sun was bright in my eyes as I paced under the tree in the hopes of stretching my back enough that it stopped throbbing so.

I have a bad habit of allowing our car to accumlate...things. I've traveled a lot over the last couple of months which means I have eaten on the road many times. Cans, cups, fast food trash, mostly empty snack bags, and loads of dog hair have taken over the car. The outside of the car is covered in exploded insect guts that create abstracts against the white paint and windows. So, before I pick him up from the airport I need to run over to the automatic car wash and afterwards pull up to a vacuum and trash can.

I have not heard from him but I suspect he left at 2am his time, which was last night for me. The length of the trip depends on where he stops on his way out of Kuwait. He normally arrives somewhere like Baltimore and then travels to Atlanta before arriving here. All I can do now is wait and clean the dirty car.

Mind Circles

2008-08-28T21:21:00.004-05:00

I am here.

It has not yet begun to rain. Periodically, I flip to the Weather Channel to check on the progress of Gustav.

I ripped apart a plastic cup to form a shovel for a small container of Chef Boy R Dee because I did not think to purchase cutlery when I picked up a few things to eat.

There is nothing on TV.

The hotel room is nice. I'm staying in a room at the base inn. I have one room with a couch, recliner, TV, desk and sink. A bathroom connects this room to the next room which contains a second TV, a couple nightstands, a wardrobe, another sink and our bed.

I have a couple of books of short stories to read, my laptop, and a couple knitting projects but I do not really feel like doing any of those things right now.

I am not sure when he will get here.

I'm excited about staying in this hotel on a mini vacation.

I'm uncertain how the hurricane will impact this mini vacation.

I'm confused about when he is leaving Kuwait. 2am his time or my time? If he meant his time it is 5:30am so he should be on a plane. I forget how long it takes to get here from there. How many stops will he make? What about layovers? Is he already on a plane? What's the time difference in Kuwait? I've run myself in so many mind circles!

Edit: It's 5:30am in Kuwait City as I type this (10:30 EST and 9:30 CST). This does nothing to confirm whether he is on the plane now, or whether he will be on the plane at 9am EST, nor does it clear up layovers, connections, etc. Bleh.

Life Unpaused

2008-08-27T11:53:00.004-05:00

Tomorrow, I make what I hope will be the final drive to Biloxi. Friday, I'll spend time in the local gaming/hobby shop or the bookstore waiting on M's plane to arrive.

We've spent the last year relearning how to get along without each other. Now, we have the awkward task of learning to be together again. Has he changed? Have I?

Sometimes, I think that deployment is harder than divorce in many ways. The idea is to move on after a divorce. You learn to accept what is your new life. Deployment is not your new life. It is temporary life - life on hold. You continue breathing and going through the motions but you cannot adjust because you know it's not permanent. Time feels distorted. You feel distorted. You want to right it but you cannot. They come home. Your life unpauses.

Initially, I was unhappy that all the various forms of processing required upon his return could take as long as two weeks. I wanted to bring him home. I wanted him to see his new house. I wanted to plug him right back into the family. Now, I think that it might be best for a slower integration. We can get used to each other again without the responsibilities of home ownership and parenting.

M often tells me how he longs for rain. I think Gustav will be more than happy to oblige him with rainfall.

2008-08-15T11:04:00.004-05:00

Yes, I'm afraid I yet live.

My beautiful little house now looks something like a tetris screen, filled with boxes at varied angles with space enough for me to pass through. I have unpacked a few and now have big cardboard boxes filled with thick packing paper piling up in a corner so that it looks like I have not done a thing in the last week.

It's true, I've been playing World of Warcraft. My shiny new little alliance priest is level 50. The thought of grinding out 20 more arduous levels is almost more than I can bare right this moment, so I have to temper it with thoughts of saving the raid and actually getting to go on them - everyone loves a good healer.

Our son comes home tomorrow. His room is still a tetris field. I will let him and his grandmother figure that one out while I continue to work on the rest of the house. I've focused on the kitchen so we can, you know, eat.

I've run into a few snags. The washer and dryer do not fit in the spot they are supposed to sit and the outlet on the wall I've decided the TV and other dodads (Tivo, console games, etc) is the one in the room that does not have a grounding prong. The prong issue will be relatively easy to fix according to Popular Mechanics. The obvious solution for the washer and dryer (buy a pair that fit) has met resistance among family members (some people would rather replumb and wire and put the things somewhere else, personally I would like to wash clothes sooner rather than later). I wanted to complete the fence by installing a gate over the driveway but it seems our neighbor has installed his sprinkler system right up next to the drive, so fence posts are likely to cut into his system. I hate to make him move his system, and it is unclear whether they are on our property or his, but I would like to let the dogs out without walking them out on a leash.

Additionally, I need to make more serious efforts at finding a job soon. I think I will give myself a little more time to get everyone settled, including M (11 days), before I worry too hard about that.

The Future Of The Things They Still Carry

2008-08-09T15:51:00.002-05:00

I come to you live from a mostly empty room in our new house. I have the full ghetto/college furniture going. My cooler is filling the role as monitor stand. I am reclined in a lawn chair. A file box is providing an end table for the mouse and something to drink.

I am absolutely thrilled about owning a house, the house itself, the neighborhood and all the people I have met. People here are just really nice. Yesterday, I was having my oil changed at the local Firestone. On the coast, people waiting in the lobby avoided eye contact and kept huddled to themselves. Here, complete strangers were all involved in conversations and chatted like old friends. The mall is unimpressive and there is no B&N or Books-A-Million but the niceness of the people, the feeling of community everywhere, is what was always amazing about this area. The locals are welcoming, kind, wonderful people and that makes up for the 1 hour drive to get to a decent book store.

As the future opens up before us and the time nears for M to come home, I find myself often thinking about this blog. The focus of the blog was to provide a piece of home and a connection between M and I. We were able to stay in such great contact via email and instant messaging that the blog was almost superfluous but we continued to write in it as a gift to those readers we knew were following our lives. His homecoming means the purpose of the blog will no longer exist. What does this mean for the blog? I am not certain.

Obviously, the focus would need to change. One option would be to narrow the focus and post about whatever obsession we decide to pinpoint, such as The Adventures of the Noobie DM, or World of Warcraft, or maybe something a little more general so that we could also talk about console gaming or anything else in the genre that might catch our attention.

The trouble I have with this is that I tend to cycle through obsessions. This month it may be D&D and next month I may not want to shut up about a book I read or a arts and crafts project I am working on. I would have a hard time maintaining posts about D&D when I was focused on knitting. I would hate making readers interested in D&D articles slog through knitting posts.

There are other options which include discontinuing blogging all together.

The future of this blog is uncertain but what is certain is my appreciation for the positive feedback, the quiet cheering, and the friends I have made through this project. Thank you, dear readers, for being there with us during the last year.

Despair

2008-07-30T05:55:00.006-05:00

I believe I can see the future
Cause I repeat the same routine

I think I used to have a purpose
But then again
That might have been a dream

I think I used to have a voice
Now I never make a sound

I just do what I've been told
I really don't want them to come around

Every day is exactly the same
Every day is exactly the same

There is no love here
and
there is no pain

Every day is exactly the same

Life: I Have Seen the Future and It Looks Grim

2008-07-25T13:43:00.004-05:00

I went to KFC for lunch, in preparation for what must now be a marathon session of cleaning and sorting before the movers arrive. Procrastination and impending deadlines (read doom, impending doom) motivates me better than any other method. I am at my best when I have no choice.

As I stuffed instant mashed potatoes and overcooked bread pudding into my mouth, I could not help but listen to what was once atmospheric dining music. The so-called music was actually a Dish Network ad regarding an upcoming boxing match between some guy they called the Mexican Warrior and Whatshisface on infinite loop. It was probably a 10-15 minute set, repeated over and over again. They seemed to emphasize the scary factor of this Mexican Warrior person, hence my inability to even remember the name of the other fighter. Not to mention I really do not follow boxing.

Was this another example of how advertising has invaded every nook and cranny? Would the future be rife with TV commercials as mood music for your dining experience? Would you have to endure limited time offers while trying to digest? Had I seen the future?

Of course, I may be overreacting. It may have just been a mental attack concocted by KFC to save money on their buffet by running the customer out of the store screaming before they could heap a second helping onto their plate. Either way, I was happy to tap out before the 30th round of furious, rentless attacks, live only on Dish Network.

Life: Home Is Where I'm Currently Not

2008-07-24T17:31:00.011-05:00

Dear Readers,

Many of you have asked for pictures of our new home. Ask and ye shall receive, eventually, maybe. This is it! A cute little unassuming home. The front is already landscaped but I look forward to M putting some color among the green.

One of the neat things about the large window in the front is the thick window sill. It is big enough to place little pots of herbs. Look at that hardwood floor! The beautiful flooring is part of the charm of the house.
I looked at a number of homes before finding the one that I knew would be ours. Several of these homes included additions. The additions looked like teenagers decided to build a clubhouse with scrap lumber. They were horrible. This is the addition in our house. It is the only carpeted area. There are a lot of windows in the space which create a lot of beautiful, natural light. I would love for this to be an area for me to sew, knit, scrapbook, or other crafty activities. I also think that being located between the back door and the kitchen, it will need to serve as a mud room. It will see a lot of traffic and people will drop things by this door and consequently into my craft space. We will have to see if we can come up with a way for it to pull double duty.

This is the room that will likely be our computer space. I would like to see M display his Star Wars collection in a showy way. I also want our desks to be set up so that we are sitting side by side instead of with our backs to each other. We like to play computer games together, so I want us to be together, more connected, so I can slap his arm when he says something nasty to someone, and so we can play footsies or maybe a little sneak hand holding.

This is the larger of the two fully wired outbuildings. It has 4 outlets and two lights. There are shelves all the way around. The building is rather large at 10x20 feet. M likes to work in the yard. He also likes to tinker with woodworking. I figure this will be a man space, where he has maybe yard stuff on one side and woodworking tools and a bench on the other side. He can refinish furniture here.

This is part of the back yard. The little white building in the corner is the smaller of the outbuildings. I'm standing at the door of the larger looking out at the yard. The neighbor has vines and plants from two small gardens hanging on the fence. There is also a beautiful grape arbor you can barely see on the left. There are blueberry bushes behind the white building. There is a lot of space between the buildings and the edge of the property but there are some trees in that space. I assume that's why they wasted so much yard by putting the buildings in the middle. We may be able to slide the buildings around and clear out the growth in the back (except the blueberries of course!). If not, it might make a good space for the kiddo to camp. It is nice and shady and kind of hidden from view.

I will post more pictures on Flickr, including the quirky things left in the house like a pencil sharpener, the kind that was attached to the wall your elementary school, hanging in our bathroom.

Life: Just That

2008-07-23T21:29:00.002-05:00

I have an official date for moving people to come pack my things. It has been a rather frustrating process. Some days I have felt like a hostage (except the guns, beatings, and bread and water) I have been emotionally and mentally moved for a long time.

My mother in law is supposed to come help because of my back. I also wanted an extra pair of eyes on the movers - not that I think they will necessarily steal things but just to be certain everything is accounted for. She is dealing with a family crisis and almost seems put out about coming here at this point. I planned this with her far in advance. I understand how she might feel pulled in too many directions; however, I really need her.

Her family crisis means my son was left with his grandfather. They know how to push each other's buttons. They are equally stubborn. My son called tonight and I had to mediate an argument over something stupid (it always is) where neither of them were willing to back down (they never are). I may have to make a 11 hour drive both ways to pick him up before I can get back to the things I'm running out of time to accomplish around here (yes, honey, my own fault to some extent being the procrastinator that I am).

In the middle of this, I am trying to apply to the alternate route to teaching program. I have been following all the directions I have been given so far. A principle from the school I intended to work in called me today. I do not know if he even read my application (I said I was applying for certification through the alternate program). He may decide to move on to the next person when he realizes it will be 4-6 weeks before I can be approved for the first step in the pre-certification. I will still have to take the Praxis II before and wait for the results of the evaluations before I can be approved as eligible to teach in schools.

Maybe I could start as a "substitute teacher" until we get all this worked out. Right now, all this means that I am filling out forms and scanning sheets and making phone calls when I should be preparing for the moving van.

I finally put my computer back together. I would like to format both hard drives and start anew later. It feels jury rigged but it is mostly functioning. WoW is still buggy and I still crash far more often than I would like.

I am in a new guild. I love several of the people in there that I knew from other guild relationships. I really like some of the new people I have met, including a pair I intend to meet for peach ice cream when I pass through GA on my way to my new home. In spite of that, I feel like I'm in a guild, but not part of one. It is not necessarily any fault of the guild and in their defense I have only been in the guild a few days. I have felt this way the entire time I have played on this server. I just cannot seem to find my place. I rolled an alliance priest (funny how we say rolled which implies rolling die as part of a character creation process that doesn't actually happen in WoW). I think I did this because I found a way to be part of things with a priest on my old server. I really like the people on this server better and I want to be a part of something here. I thought maybe another priest would do that for me.

Literature: Raccoons Can Go To School

2008-07-17T20:56:00.003-05:00

Thankfully, my son enjoys reading. Yes, he partakes of video games and like many 12 year olds he would happily live in front of a computer screen or console game while being fed intravenously but he also likes to read. We talk about what he is reading (and I secretly harbor hope he will someday learn to summarize novels without retelling the whole book). His most recent literary interest is a series called “Warriors” by Erin Hunter.

Erin Hunter is actually three separate women. Victoria Holmes comes up with the story ideas and the other two women, Kate Cary and Cherith Baldry, take turns writing the books. The novels are about clans of cats that live just outside “Twolegplace,” where some cats, known as kittypets, live in lavish comfort. The cat clans outside of Twolegplace fight over hunting grounds and young cats try to prove themselves as warriors. Fighting and talking cats! Win. Win.

I started reading “Into the Wild,” today. This is the first book in the Warrior Series. I believe I have just been introduced to what will later be Firepaw, if I managed to keep any of what he told me straight – there were a lot of paws and furs and hearts to keep track of afterall. If I am correct, Firepaw started out as Rusty, a kittypet. Times are hard for the Thunderclan and they are having to look for warriors of fighting age, as opposed to the kits in training. Rusty is bored with his complacent life and the idea of fighting among a clan of his kind appeals to him. I can see that they have little respect for kittypets so our hero also has that to overcome.

Reading this reminds me of many of my favorite stories growing up. We have our love of intelligent, talking animal heroes in our stories. I loved books like “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh,” “The Mouse and the Motorcycle,” and “Bunnicula.” Later, I enjoyed Koontz’s occasional intelligent animal character like those in “Watchers.” I fell hopelessly in love with Perrin Aybara in “The Wheel of Time” series after he found the wolves. In spite of sometimes reading like a bad romance novel, I found increasing enjoyment in the series of books about Firestarter by Jane Lindskold.

One day P came home from Kindergarten upset. I asked him what was wrong. He said that they were talking about reality verses fiction. He said the teacher asked if raccoons really could go to school. The class said no. He told me he said no too but he didn’t want to. He wanted to think they could go to school. I wanted to go bonk someone on the head and ask them why they were out to squelch any trace of imagination starting in freakin KINDERGARTEN. I told him I liked to think they could go to school too. We will go on thinking animals do talk - we just have to be quiet and listen. We will go on imagining their secret lives that are in some ways like ours. I look forward to reading the rest of the series and talking about it with my son.

Life: Paperwork can DIAF

2008-07-16T16:30:00.003-05:00

Sgt. SomeName: They put the assignment in as a regular assignment rather than a follow on.

Me: I understand the obvious difference but what does that mean in terms of this paperwork?

The family can report to the next duty station 60 days in advance of the report date for a regular assignment. The family of a person going overseas can be moved home and back or to the next duty station. No one knows why they put it in as an assignment instead of a follow on but because it was we have hit a number of snags in arranging my move.

They are working on a couple of different ways to get around this. They intend to go with whichever method is fastest. Either his orders will be changed to Oct. 1 (meaning Aug. 1 would be in my 60 day range) or they will move me "in lieu of" orders. I personally hope for the in lieu of because I would rather not pay August's rent and I want P to start school August 18th.

I cannot arrange for my utilities to be shut off until I know when I'm leaving.

A number of things are on hold while I continue to be stuck in this transition period.

Life: Interlude

2008-07-12T23:22:00.004-05:00

"I'll be gone when you wake up. Goodnight and I love you."

"Come here," he says and I come to him. He reaches out small hands and wraps them around the strings of my belt hanging down from my waist. Once. Twice. He wraps them around and around so that his hands are covered in black. I lean against the weight a little to relieve the pain in my back. "You're not goin."

I tell him I don't want to go. I tell him I'd rather stay here and fight kobolds, knit rugs, play Sorry and Rumikub and read books. I tell him our things are still there and I have to go. I have to get them out. He doesn't let me go. He repeats what he said. You're not goin.

I am holding syrup. I pretend I'm going to pour the syrup on his stomach. I tell him he must let go or else. He watches the amber drop roll along the plastic container towards the lip. It hangs from edge. He lets go and I jump away. I tell him I love him and goodnight. He rolls over so his grandmother can stroke his hair and tell him Bible stories until he falls asleep.

And I will be gone in the morning.

D&D Nerdery: A Quickie Report

2008-07-12T19:23:00.003-05:00

P (my 12 year old) is playing 3 characters: a wizard, fighter, and paladin. S (my mother-in-law) is playing the cleric. I'm playing the rogue and DMing the Keep over the Shadowfell.

They were a little uncertain about what to do during the free exploration which started the adventure. The ambush caught them just where I wanted them. I managed to snare the rogue with a glue pot. I sometimes forgot to be shifty with the kobolds but overall it was a good battle.

In town, P set up birdhouses and other knickknacks to represent the buildings. He asked questions of all the people, tipping them in silver pieces when they gave useful information. The cleric convinced the spy to tell them a little something in the hopes the information would get them killed. They also eeked a few javelins, ale and wenches out of the Lord of Winterhaven in return for their promise to attack the kobold lair.

We had rations (in real life) before heading out to the lair in spite of information about our friend Douven and the burial site he may have visited before his disappearance. The kobolds attacked us on the road. The wrympriest made many spectacular misses with his orb of acid before being cut down by the fighter.

Once at the lair, we managed to sneak over to a back entrance. We took out the kobold standing there before he could get in to warn the others thanks to a couple opportunity attacks he took on his way in. We snuck in the back and took on wave after wave of kobolds. Irontooth was marked by the paladin and in spite of his high attack bonus had a hard time doing much damage to the paladin. The wizard blew up minion after minion while the cleric, fighter and rogue picked off some of the more hardy kobolds.

There were times I could have used more things. I could have healed my Irontooth, for example. I could have used incite faith a couple times. I forgot to shift. It is hard to play a character and a good 12+ of enemy characters while still learning. It's probably just as well that I forgot because many of the party members were bloody and battered anyway.

I need a better way to track initiative. I also need a better way to figure out who is what...there are a horde of minis on the map and I don't know which is who after they all get moved around.

Is it... safe?

2008-07-06T16:10:00.003-05:00

Sure the inspector checked the house, but did he really check the house?

-M

I want something good to die for
to make it beautiful to live

Life: Road Trip

2008-07-03T19:22:00.003-05:00

The paperwork finally arrived. Closing is scheduled for next Tuesday. I'm going to pack and head out in the morning so that I can enjoy some July 4th festivities with members of family. We will own a house when I get back!

Then I have to get serious about sorting our stuff and all the other things on the moving to do list. Blarg.

Life: Tonight's Reeeely Big Show

2008-07-02T09:06:00.004-05:00

Guitar Star regaled tenants with a performance starting at the wee hours of 2am and ending some time after 4am. This was the opening act which lead into the simplistic droning styling of Lawn Boy and Garbage Man. Heather wonders when exactly she was supposed to sleep.

It would not have been so bad if Guitar Star's rocking had not been like a telegram from hell. Riff. Stop. Chord, chord. Stop. Broken Chord. Stop. Wham, wham. Stop. Four bars. Stop.

Feeling hung over minus the buzz makes Heather grumpy.

Life: Oh What A Tangled Web

2008-06-30T17:45:00.002-05:00

Um. Yeah...
Most of that was untangled and put in the Goodwill pile.

I'm still waiting on the Power of Attorney to find its way home from the desert so we can proceed with the closing. In the meantime, I am slowly untangling the rest of our belongings. Time is running out for me to accomplish all the things associated with moving and I fear you may witness a deterioration of Heather's scruples in direct parallel to the amount of time left. I put the pro in procrastination and consequently make myself, and everyone around me, a little nutty.

Get your popcorn and while you wait, have a go at Chatty & John's One Sentence NPC contest, and start brainstorming for the Adventure Writing Month.

Life: Our Neighbors Are Harboring An Elephant

2008-06-25T14:23:00.005-05:00

I am very excited about owning a home that is not attached by any structure to another home.

As an aside, the closing date had to be shifted to July 2, because the judge insisted I must have the new original Power of Attorney. I sure hope it arrives in time for the new closing date.

We refer to the woman one floor below us as "The Crazy Catlady." She actually has more dogs than cats but we call her the catlady because she sometimes stands outside calling for her kitty in a very high pitched voice. "Keeeeeee, Keeeeeeeee!" I believe she owns an elephant in addition to her dogs and cat.

She is not very tall, nor very heavy, but I can feel her walking around her apartment through her ceiling. She stomps up and down the hall and across the living room. Items in my apartment rattle when she walks. I can feel it through the cushioning in my chair. I can feel it in my feet. I can hear it, thud, thud, thud. I can only imagine what it must sound like to the person living below her.

The other night, she was still stomping about the house after midnight. I heard someone beating on a door and stepped outside to see what the heck was going on. Her downstairs neighbor was standing in front of his own door saying "you need to be quiet." I assume, he was person responsible for the door banging. She was stomping up and down the stairs between her floor and his, repeating "Asshole, Asshole, Asshole." She also made some kind of comment about his needing to get a job (he has a job, otherwise a single guy could not afford $900 in rent, an undisclosed amount in utilities, to fill up his Dodge truck, and the kind of cute girls he brings around).

Right now, as I type this, I can feel her stomping about. She's disabled in some way (handicapped sign on the car) and does not work. She is home stomping all day long.

These two have feuded since the woman moved in. She lived in another building. I assume she moved from that building because the guy below her there likes to pretend he and his band are in his momma's garage all hours of the night. They open all the doors and windows and play very loud, drink beer, and curse loud enough to hear from a different building.

I am ready to have my own house completely unattached to this kind of thing. We'll just have disputes over leaves blowing into other people's yards and whatnot. The whole Betty and Wilma (Flintstones) or the Desperate Housewives Crew kind of neighborhood and neighborly attitudes just have not been in the cards for me.

** Edit **
I ran into the guy downstairs when I was out with my dogs this evening. The cops were in fact called the other night and she got herself a citation after refusing to allow the cops to get a word in when they were trying to talk to her. That explains the extra super heavy duty stomping I heard all day today - she knew he was home and was doing it to irritate him.

Also, she saw me out there talking to him. She and another walked off and stood at a distance watching me talk to the guy downstairs and pointing at us. I anticipate potential issues with the woman before I can get out of here - just for talking to a neighbor. See! See where talking to neighbors gets you?

Tack on to her post

2008-06-24T08:10:00.005-05:00

A Side:

I read her post and wanted to expand on a few things that she commented on:

"Ideally, they will consider the fact he is in a war zone and how lucky we are that he was able to get to Balad to get new paperwork drawn up in the first place, and cut me some freakin slack."

All I can say on this is that they better. The fact that I was able to make it down to Balad in any kind of resonable time and get this done is a God send/ miracle. The next step in this is me calling them and they don't want that. My inability to not yell at imbeciles and dumbasses will rear its ugly head which will probably lead to me transferring myself through the phone lines, ala Matrix, and taking a huge bite out of some lawyers ass.

I understand the situation you're in; understand mine.

"I think about walls with colorful paint... I imagine picking out furniture and refinishing old pieces."

She asked me the other day if I had thought of this, and truthfully I have. I've thought about what I might want to do with the walls regarding color choices, but for me to really make a decision, I need to see the place. Although, I do know that I'm going to want one of the rooms red. Probably the small dining room, with the base boards and door frames being white.

There will also be a yellow and blue room too. Trust me, it'll work.

B Side:

The last time I saw Le Bleu, he'd just called me a retard. With that, he did the mime trick of hopping onto an invisible bike and peddled away while giving me the mime finger. Damn mimes on invisible bikes are fast!

Once I made it back to base I dug around in our super computers to see what information I could find about my dreaded nemesis. I had to do a lot of cross linking with other various agencies, and after a few weeks the "big picture" finally started to emerge. What I discovered was more horrifying than I had previously imagined!

It appears that the white pancake mix serves more than just to mask these people from public ridicule. The pancake mix serves as a second skin, a layer of deception, to hide the hideous truth; for beneath that white enamal of polished porcelin is something so shocking and horrifying that much like Pandora and her box, once it's out, it's out!

Readers... if there are small children, the elderly or people with spastic bowels in the room, please ask them to leave now!

Le Bleu unmasked with a rare picture of his second in command! Truely the threat is even graver than I imagined! Little did I know that a mime armada had parked itself just above the Earth, hovering over Quebec (aka Le Blue-land), just waiting for the chance to... well... I'm not sure what the heck they're waiting for but it can't be good! *personally I think it has something to do with croissants, cheese and short shorts on dudes, but I don't know just yet!

Fortunately I have America's best kept secret weapon to aide me. I think Lady Liberty can sleep easier knowing that her most trusted defenders of freedom will be hot on the pursuit of this ghost faced maniac.

I'll continue to track his movements and foil his simplistic plots of persuasion, but first this defender of freedom has to make a stop at the DFAC. It's Mexican night and they're serving cheese sticks. Momma said you can't fight mime armadas on an empty stomach and as we all know, momma knows best.

-M

Last night I saw that beauty queen
watched her paint her face on

*EDIT- apparently I need "a cock punch" for the pic I chose today. I just calls'em likes I sees'em folks! LOL ;)

Life: And All That That Implies

2008-06-23T17:31:00.007-05:00

No thanks to the technical support of Bellsouth/AT&T, whatever it is they call themselves these days, I have internet again. I am not convinced that the connection is very stable though.

I had to reformat the C drive on my computer and reinstall Windows - and all that that implies: drivers, programs, etc. I have yet to install all that that implies. I think we have decided that one of the problems with the computer is related to a bad battery back up that everything was plugged into. I am not sure if that is the problem or just one of many.

The "legal fuckup" mentioned in a previous post continues to plague us a bit. I must have the original copy of the new Power of Attorney for Friday's closing. M informs me that all mail going out of a war zone is standard - no priority. This means it is highly unlikely I will have the original in hand by Thursday morning when I have to drive to South Carolina. The attorney said he cannot legally close the house without this paper, so I'm not sure how we will work this out just yet. Ideally, they will consider the fact he is in a war zone and how lucky we are that he was able to get to Balad to get new paperwork drawn up in the first place, and cut me some freakin slack. They have a scanned copy of the original sent from the attorney in Balad. I'll know more in a few days.

My thoughts have shifted to the future, in spite of these current pressing issues. I have started to imagine what life in our first house might be like. I think about walls with colorful paint (I've lived in military/apartment blah for a good 10 years). I think about once again having space to quilt, and a place to entertain people, a place for my outdoor swing. I imagine barbeques, tomato plants in pots, boys riding their bikes up and down the street, M standing in his workshop making something nice for the house. I imagine picking out furniture and refinishing old pieces.

I knew this was the house from the moment I walked in the front door. I made the offer and was in a Charleston yarn store looking for a rug to knit for our beautiful hardwood floors before the seller even had a chance to respond. I found the perfect balls of wool yarn on clearance. In the midst of dealing with these issues and the other implications of moving, I am working on this rug.

I am excited about making something for the new house. It is a typical braided rug. The braids are made of lengths of icord - 4 stitches, on a giant needle (US 19). The brown in the center will be repeated twice more, alternating with two bands of the contrast color. The colors are neutral, so they will be a nice accent with any crazy color scheme we ultimately decide to use.

Our ISP as of late

2008-06-22T06:40:00.003-05:00

Quarterly ISP cost to the American taxpayer: 10 million smackers

Annual cost of WoW montly subscription: 180 smackers

Disconnecting during your first run with the new guild while they're trying to do new content because the ISP is run by incompetent jackasses which continues to make you look like a shitty player?

PRICELESS

For everything you don't want to do, Nashita it.

To say that I'm really really pissed about having my second raid in a week fucked up by our ISP due to problems on their end... well, I think I've made my feelings clear on that. They didn't even bother to call. Usually they see when we've dropped out and call to find out if it's something on their end. Didn't bother to call, wouldn't pick up when we called them... just lovely. Glad we got rid of the reliable American company to hand out even MORE money to a substandard provider. Awesome.

The mission impact on this was the intardnets just came up. Most of the work day without comm due to poor service provider. i r thrilled!

-M

Tired

2008-06-19T17:21:00.002-05:00

I'm back. Lots of travel in the past 24 hours. Heather's computer has taken a power surge which has killed the DSL modem and we're not sure about the computer itself. It's on a surge protector but it's acting really funny now. Same ole shit.

-M

On the road again...

2008-06-18T05:23:00.003-05:00

A Side:

Chalk it up to the legal eagles back at home station, but it has been brought to our attention that the Power of Attorney that I had drawn up before I left is invalid due to the shit heads not notarizing it. You'd think there would be a simple check list involved with this type of document, but alas either 1) there isn't or 2) they ignored it.

Either way, I now have to get to Balad and have another one drawn up by 27 Jun, because that's the day we close on the house. When Heather called the legal dodo's and explained to them that I was in Iraq atm, they said, Oh he has services there that are easy to get to so it should be no problem. She then relayed that to me and I was like, orly? I'm in the middle of no where with the closest American base being triple digits in miles from me. Where exactly was this legal service hiding all this time, because we would've put their asses to work for us!

So now I'm having to coordinate a trip to Balad to get this done. One problem is that for the past week all flights into the base have been on weather hold. The skies have been too dusty/ sandy/ mucked up to do anything but emergency medevacs in or out. What that creates is a back log of people needing to be moved, so my chances are looking slim that I might get out by air. What that translates into is that I'm now entertaining the notion of covoying to get there in time to get the legal work done so we can buy our nice little house.

For the record: do I want to convoy? Hell no. Will I? If I have to, yes. Am I going to punch a new shitter hole into my homestations base legal dodo team? You bet your ass I will. The fact that something so simple/ crucial to this document was left off that now requires me to make a danger run to Balad to fix their fuck up is not something I look forward to.

I've told Heather, half in jest, that should something happen to me as I convoy there, that she knows who to sue. Military members can't sue the military, but civilians can.

B Side:

This past Saturday through Monday I was on a mini-jazza. Jazza is the arabic term for vacation. It's the last little bit of time off before we leave for home here in the next few months. The end is rapidly approaching and it's starting to feel really good.

I've got a good idea for a Le Bleu post, but since Sunday I've been dealing with the mess above so I need just a few more days on that. Lets just say it's going to be a retro awesome post ;)

In WoW news, my mage has joined a new guild. It's a rather bold move for me due to the simple fact that I hate change. If I get into a nice comfort zone, I tend to curl up like a fat cat and nap there forever. But this change was born out of a need to try to expand my horizons and see new stuff. The guild I left is a guild of awesome people and great friends, though it's kind of developed into an alt guild.

The mains of most toons are in progressing guilds who do a fair bit of raiding and see a good bit of the end game content. As such, while I was in my previous guild I had a fair number of contacts who could get me into some of those higher end guild runs on some of the content they had on "farm" status. It was nice to be able to see new content, but it wasn't always the most consistent. Sometimes they would do stuff, other times not. I wasn't one to complain because I just liked being invited on the runs and seeing new stuff.

But over the past month, I've had a friend in another guild who was in a leadership position ask me to join his guild. They'd lost some of their members and were looking to add some more quality people. I was wanting to see more content on a more consistent basis. They also raid just twice a week for three hours at a time... sweet! So after talking with my friend who brought me into the old guild and explaining to her the situation, she said she understood and wished me luck (she's a great friend and champion of gnomes everywhere <3).

I put in my app, did a DPS test, conjured some sweet buns (you really don't want to know) and this morning I joined the new guild. Of course, I have Hurricane Legal Dodo up above that's threatening to wreck everything. It's not permanent, but it also doesn't leave a good impression.

"HI!!!11!!! THANKZ FUR INVITZ!1111!! I CN'T RAID NOW EVEN THO U JUS INVITZ ME!!!11!! LOLOLOLZZZZZZZZ"

Fortunately, the guy who asked me to join also reads this blog and knows my situation. I'm friends with most of the people in that guild too, so it helps. They know I'm not there to be a loot whore, but that I want to see new stuff and do it with people I like/ know. Most people on the server are pretty cool like that.

-M

Love me two time girl
I've gone away...

D&D Nerdery: Time Is on My Side and It’s like Groundhog Day without the Cute Girl

2008-06-17T11:35:00.003-05:00

What time is it Mr. Fox? One of the things I have trouble completely understanding is the whole aspect of time in D&D. A combat round takes 6 seconds in game time. I understand that it takes 6 seconds and I can comprehend the time period by comparing it to real world seconds. I understand the idea that battle happens quickly – swords flash and bang against shield, people shift and dodge – so though the rolling of the dice make take 10 minutes, the battle itself has not. Times are listed for many other things, like how long it would take your character to walk to the dungeon from town. How long it takes to perform a ritual. How long a short rest is. How long a long rest is. How often characters need to take a long rest before they begin to feel the effects of strain and exhaustion. How long characters must wait before they can rest again. I understand all these things but I do not quite understand how they apply.

Do DMs count off the time a battle takes? Do they sit there and multiply the number of rounds x 6 seconds to arrive at a figure while they are doling out xp and treasure? What would be the purpose of such a thing? Why would I need to know exactly how long a battle took? Where does this apply?

Short rests are easy enough to understand. Extended rests are a different matter. Earlier, I noted that it seemed a character could just rest as long as they needed until an effect was no more. I was told that one could only take an extended rest once every 12 hours. Couldn’t a character just dawdle in the corridor, or return to town to wile away the hours at the tavern before resting again? Would the DM have to step in and create consequences for taking too “long” to kill the dragon, free the prisoners, or find the children?

I witnessed a DM step in this way during World Wide Game Day, when the adventurers wanted to stay in an inn for the night so that they would be exploring the dungeon during daylight. The blacksmith NPC was distraught over his missing children and insistent that the adventurers must look for these children immediately. He offered to double his payment if they did not delay.

You have entered an infinite time loop. The Keep over the Shadowfell is an adventure for levels 1-3. The adventure continues when the next part comes out and so on until your characters reach 30. The Basic Starter Game Set covers the first couple of levels. There is a bit in the DMG to cover adventures for the first couple of levels. I started to write an adventure, beginning at the first couple of levels.

In an ideal scenario, I would have created a storyline to take characters all the way through their levels with each adventure building upon the last. As it is, I have the information for 3 beginning adventures. What are some ways to handle this situation? Would the players have to create different characters for each set? The Basic Starter Game stops after they defeat the dragon. What next? Say, okay, now you understand some of the basics of the game, roll your character back to level 1 and let’s go play a real adventure?

Moving Blues

2008-06-13T22:06:00.000-05:00

There have been many times when I have missed my husband during this last year. Holidays, birthdays, watching a father hug his son, days at the pool, going to the movies or restaurants alone, and of course shopping for our first house. Those are all somewhat significant moments in a person’s life but in spite of that I miss him most right now.

I have before me the daunting task of tossing out clutter and preparing to actually move. I jumped the hurdle of finding a home, getting a loan, making an offer, hiring an inspector. I am waiting on the seller to fix some of the issues found by the inspector and the official closing day later this month. In the meantime, I have to find these papers so I can write a letter to notify the apartment management that I am leaving. I have to throw stuff out and clean. I have to schedule movers and babysit them (there are probably military protocols that I will also have to deal with regarding the movers). I have to sort out important papers and valuables. I have to notify everyone of the address change. My head is swimming with all the things I must accomplish with a worn disc and not so much as an 11 year old still in the house to help me (he’s off enjoying camp and other summer fun).

Am I whining? I guess so. I just feel overwhelmed right now. We have what I like to term “flea market style” for our décor. People love it when they come over because there is plenty to look at but it means plenty to sort, move and dust. I also do not relish the idea of sorting other people’s things without them present. I think I would go crazy if someone else were to decide which of my things were important to keep and which were not.
I resigned early so that I would have time to do this; however, I need to get motivated fast. I have already tried to think in terms of baby steps and plan to go through 1 room at a time.
I’ve skimmed plenty of unhelpful blog posts and online articles with moving tips. I have come to the conclusion that I have moved several times before (and some of those have been on my own or mostly on my own) and I know what needs to be done. I do not need moving tips. I just need to do it.

WTB [someone to be me until August] PST.

D&D Nerdery - My First Adventure Conversion Part 4

2008-06-13T19:22:00.002-05:00

Momma, are we there yet? In the next room, the original encounter set a trap door. An adventurer trying to open door would get hit by both the trap and a skeleton jumping out of the rubble. Okay, good thing I used minions in the last battle. This guy will be for real – at least as far as a Level 3 Soldier real. This could prove an interesting choice because the PCs could be complacent after the last horde of skeletons went down so easy. I used the False-Floor Trap again with minor tweaks to turn it into my Wicked Blade Trap.

Once the PCs deal with the one skelly ambush, they run into their old friends, the goblin archer and warrior. Next, hello, more locked doors. Next, is supposed to be a Minotaur. Oh no! I have to make another monster? In the words of Al from the show Home Improvement, “I don’t think so Tim.” I’m not that attached to the minotaur and his “maze” doesn’t look like much of a maze anyway. I decided I would stick with the goblin theme but to prevent utter boredom (sharpshooter, warrior much?) we’ll throw some totally new guys in here. I thought a Goblin Hexer and a pair of Blackblades might bring something new to the table. I couldn’t remember if the combo of controller with two lurkers was a no-no.

Technically, I supposed the controller and lurkers all would have preferred to have some muscle in there but I decided to make exception since the controller was also a leader who could incite bravery and there was also the terrain effect of a blood-red stone platform which adds +1 dmg to people hit on it (that I decided to leave as is).

At this point, I realized I needed to go back through and make sure to tally up the xp total so far. It looked like about 625 xp each for a party of 3 (give or take some xp depending on how quickly the altar or coffins were destroyed to prevent more minion skeleton spawns).

The next encounter included a gargoyle. Not again! The first gargoyle listed is way too powerful. Oh no, more math. Too. Much. Math.

At this point, it was late. I was tired. I’d been working on it nonstop for many hours (a little obsessive compulsive). I had no idea if it was roughly balanced. I was trying to follow along with the core books but I was nervous about having to go off on my own and recreate so much – customizing monsters (harpy), hacking traps (Wicked Blade), throwing in minions (I like minions!). Would it be too hard for 3 Level 1s? Had I totally screwed up the whole bloody thing? Was I missing some easier, less crunchy way to tone down the gargoyle?

I did in fact find a less crunchy way of lowering or raising the level of a monster. It works best within 5 levels. Gargoyle is too high for that. So I would have start over again. I scoured the book for a suitable substitute but eventually decided it was going to be a gargoyle, even if that meant math. (I need to make a cheat sheet for monster making because it seems like I have to look in too many different places for the info I need). I started with the standard array because it is, standard, and rolling would mean getting up for dice and customizing would mean…I don’t know what the hell that means. Standard works for monsters.

Gargoyle Level 3 Lurker
Medium elemental humanoid (earth) XP 200
Initiative +4 Senses Perception +7; darkvision
HP 25; Bloodied 12
AC :17 Fortitude 15, Refl ex 15, Will 15
Immune petrification
Speed 6, fly 8; see also flyby attack
M Claw (standard; at-will)
+8 vs. AC; 2d6 + 3 damage.
M Flyby Attack (standard; recharges after using stone form)
The gargoyle flies up to 8 squares and makes a melee basic attack at any point during the move without provoking an opportunity attack from the target. If the attack hits, the target is knocked prone.
Stone Form (standard; at-will)
The gargoyle becomes a statue and gains resist 10 to all damage, regeneration 3. It loses all other senses and can take no actions in stone form other than revert to its normal form (as a minor action).
Alignment Evil Languages Primordial
Str 14 (+2) Dex 16 (+3) Wis 12 (+1)
Con 13 (+1) Int 10 (+0) Cha 11 (+0)

This room also featured a fire skeleton that popped up out of the spider webs in the corner, should the adventurers look there. The fire skeleton felt tossed in there to me. How could a fire skeleton sit in cobwebs? The cobwebs would burn. You see cobwebs, you think spider, not flaming bones. I decided to reward my PCs for being snoops with spiders! It’s a swarm baby! I also used the conversion for raising or lowering by up to 5 levels vs the whole works.

Bloodweb Spider Swarm Level 2 Soldier
Medium natural beast (spider, swarm) XP 100
Initiative +7
Swarm Attack aura 1; the bloodweb spider swarm makes a basic attack as a free action against each enemy that begins its turn in the aura. In addition, an enemy that enters or starts its turn in the aura is slowed (save ends) by strands of crimson webbing.
HP 30; Bloodied 15
AC 16; Fortitude 11, Reflex 15, Will 11
Resist half damage from melee and ranged attacks; Vulnerable 10 against close and area attacks
Speed 4, climb 4 (spider climb)
MSwarm of Fangs (standard; at-will) ✦ Poison
+5 vs. Reflex; 1d10 +3 damage, and ongoing 3 poison damage (save ends).
Alignment Unaligned Languages —

I followed the DMG on raising or lowering monster levels but noticed there was no way to adjust things like strength, dexterity, etc. I wondered how you did that…I also wasn’t sure how to fix stealth on any of the monsters I tinkered with but figured there wouldn’t be much use for it this time anyway – I want to know for next time though!

Nosey PCs get a face full of spider but they are also rewarded for their efforts. Magic Weapon! Mmmm +1 to attack and damage.

It was time for the final encounter. Tusenmaug the dragon! Technically, he is blue. I think he’ll be a young white (statistically) though for simplicity.

Entering the next area, the adventurers find a goblin muttering about treasure. They could use diplomacy or intimidation here to get information about the rest of the area. One set of doors are thick and really locked, which forces (bleh) the PCs into a room with tiled floor. There are runes on the floor, 3 are glowing blue instead of red. The language is supposed to be draconic, so arcane or a dragonborn character will reveal a good bit about the nature of the tiles (summoning). Perception will at least reveal a difference in colors. They can hit them 1, 2, and use athletics or acrobatics to hop to the last. They summon a gargoyle. This one is supposed to only be vulnerable to magic attack. I’m going to have 3 people. What if one does not choose a wizard? What if they don’t find the magic weapon by looking in that room? They would be unable to fight this thing. Chance that they will find the weapon or roll a wizard? No, I need more options. Okay, so maybe the goblin has a magic weapon. If they use diplomacy he’ll run in and help. If they kill him, he’ll be holding the magic weapon they passed up earlier. If they intimidate him, he runs into that room and dies. If they check him out, they get his weapon and kick the gargoyle’s butt. Okay…add in optional fluff about something shiny...done.

They get the key from the gargoyle and they go into the vault. There is…another harpy in the vault. Seriously? No, no. Not another stupid harpy. Not another gargoyle. A guard… I needed a guard. Hello Iron Defender + Skeleton Minions.

Finally, the Young White (Read Blue) dragon. Oof. He looks tough. He’s in a room so he can’t fly. I took away a few of his attacks and debating whether to lower the HP. He is supposed to be the big boss of bosses though so I left it alone.

Young Blue Dragon Level 3
Solo Brute
Large natural magical beast (dragon) XP 750
Initiative +1 Senses Perception +7; darkvision
HP 200; Bloodied 100; see also bloodied breath
AC 18; Fortitude 20, Refl ex 16, Will 17
Resist 15 cold
Saving Throws +5
Speed 6
Action Points 2
M Bite (standard; at-will) ✦ Cold
Reach 2; +6 vs. AC; 1d8 + 4 plus 1d6 cold damage (plus an extra 1d6 cold damage on a successful opportunity attack).
M Claw (standard; at-will)
Reach 2; +6 vs. AC; 1d8 + 4 damage.
C Breath Weapon (standard; recharge 5 6 ) ✦ Cold
Close blast 5; +4 vs. Reflex; 3d6 + 4 damage
C Bloodied Breath (free, when first bloodied; encounter) ✦ Cold
The dragon’s breath weapon recharges, and the dragon uses it immediately.
Alignment Evil Languages Draconic
Skills Athletics +15
Str 18 (+5) Dex 10 (+1) Wis 12 (+2)
Con 18 (+5) Int 10 (+1) Cha 8 (+0)

Finally, finished! I still have concerns about how balanced the fights are and how interesting they are considering there are a number of one vs one fights in this encounter. Of course, I did throw in a lot of extra monsters on some of the fights

Now to wait on my DM Gurus to weigh in so I can tweak as needed.

Oops!

2008-06-13T00:28:00.002-05:00

Oh No! Heather screwed up the layout. Bleh

Update:

I fixed.

I'm sure you'll hear more about this later. M wasn't too happy. He'll likely go on about how the colors were horrible and it was ugly and so on. In my defense I wasn't finished hacking the template but eh...

D&D Nerdery - My First Adventure Conversion Part 3

2008-06-12T20:10:00.001-05:00

The next encounter pitted me with converting a crypt with an altar demon. The altar demon attacked with bolts of arcane magic (in a direct line, something like a trap). It also brought dead skeletons to life and one orc (only goblins in my scenario so far, so, goblin) zombie. Oh lordy, what have I gotten myself into?

Zombies and skeletons seemed relatively straight forward but what the hell to do with that altar demon? I decided that the demon functioned more like a trap, since all it could do was fire bolts from the altar in a straight or diagonal from the two squares in front of it. The Magic Crossbow Turret was a Blaster trap that I thought would suit my crunch needs.

The zombie was easy enough…nice Level 2 Zombie ready to go in the MM. The skeletons gave me pause. I didn’t pause because skeletons are hard. I paused because I wondered whether I should have the skeletons come out one at a time – as in the original – or if this would be an awesome time to whip out the minions again? There were 3 available coffins in the room, for skeletons to pour out 3 at a time. Was I going overboard on minions? I hadn’t used any since the goblin…oh only 2 encounters ago. It seemed like ages.

Altar Demon
Level 2 Blaster XP 150
HP 38
AC 16; Fortitude 13; Reflex 13; Will 13
Attack:
Standard Action
Ranged – straight or diagonal from 2 squares before altar
Target – any creature in blast (saving throw = half damage)
Attack - +8 vs AC
Hit: 2d8 +3
Countermeasures:
Adjacent can deactivate DC 20 Thievery (6 successes before 3 failures)
Can be destroyed

Ultimately, I decided to go with skeleton minions. The room would be utter chaos with the altar demon, the zombie and potentially hordes of minions but I didn’t feel it would be overly challenging. I thought I would try to give a nice reward for this encounter – a Cloak of Resistance (Level 2 Magic Item).

D&D Nerdery – My First Adventure Conversion Part 2

2008-06-12T11:55:00.007-05:00

The original adventure begins outside a dungeon door with the players sent to rid the city of raiders by the Griffonford council elders. It occurred to me that I might like to establish this Griffonford as a settlement in the neighborhood of Winterhaven and Fallcrest (because I can, mwuahahah) so that if all went well on this adventure, the PCs could travel down the road to find new adventures in those established cities.

Once the hook is established, the DMG (for the adventure) lists a serach check and a listen check. These can both be replaced with a single perception check. Hurrah for simplicity! If the PCs forget to check, there is the passive perception check. Nice!

The PCs are assaulted by an arrow the moment they walk through the unlocked doors (the arrow would miss if the check at the door was successful, of course). A goblin archer and a goblin warrior close in on the PCs immediately. Now comes the first real test of the conversion process.

Goblins. Flip to 136 of the MM for the 4e goblin equivalents. There is a warrior! Hurray, that was easy. There is a…sharpshooter. He uses the crossbow so goblin archer is a check.

As an aside, the rumors that the ink is smudgy are quite true. Unfortunate.

I notice the Total XP for the encounter is 300 in the original version. I check my goblins and see I only have 225 xp worth of monster goodness. I have a good 75 xp worth of bad guys left.
Can you say minions? I knew you could. If I threw in 3 goblin cutters we would have ourselves a Level 1, 300 xp monster party.

This is a good time to remind everyone that my son played the first few encounters of this adventure. He will expect 2 goblins. Period. No more, no less. He will expect them in the same spot. He will expect the same attacks. The appearance of 3 minions is going to freak him out. P likes to dominate a game. If he is not dominating, I mean absolutely beating the stuffing out of something, he will storm out of the room to find something else to do. Can you say competitive? I knew you could. I have no doubt it will take some convincing to get him to stay at the table when those goblins jump out of the rubble but if I manage…oh the glee when he starts to see the minions just drop at his feet…he will be mine! Mwuahahah...ahhahah. Okay, moving on.

The adventurers have a moment to rest before the next encounter. Encounter 2 begins with our goblin friends the archer and warrior again but with the addition of a brutish orc mauler. There is also a trapped chest in the room. This original version awards 600 xp. A standard, Level 1 encounter for 3 PCs is 300 xp (such as in the previous encounter). This one is supposed to be a greater challenge but double the last seemed a little high. I decided to try a 500 Target XP encounter.

The sharpshooter and warrior combine for 225 xp. That left me with…oh God, math…275 in my “budget.” Gorg, the orc mauler, appeared to be the boss of this little group so my party lacked a brute/soldier mini boss. The nearest bugbear was a level 5 brute. I had the xp to spend but a level 5 seemed a little high. An orc raider could fit the bill except I would be looking at two skirmisher types. After much debate and page flipping, I decided a goblin skullcleaver (level 3 brute) would make a good Gorg. I still had 125 xp to spend. The original encounter contained a trapped chest, so I thought why not throw in a nice trap? Perhaps a false floor near the chests the goblins were about to search? I could put them out of the way so that the PCs had less risk of falling in before polishing off the goblins.

It occurred to me shortly after settling that encounter that a level 3, level 2, level 1, and a level 1 trap might be a bit much for 3 level 1 PCs, so I removed the warrior. This brought the level xp down to 350.

Lest there be any fridge logic, the chests were placed to lure creatures (goblins included) by the monster hanging out in the next room. In the original version, a nice young harpy was sitting in the nice room waiting to sing the PCs to their doom. First I had to deal with the locked doors. Easily done with a standard DC of 15 for moderate at level 1 + 5 because it is a skill check. The DC of 20 would cover busting it down, or picking the door. Now if the mage wants to scorch it or if they want to set it on fire…I suppose that would pretty much work for those as well, it is only wood after all.

The harpy that was supposed to be in the next room presented another challenge. It was not a simple matter of finding harpy in the MM and rolling with it. This would call for more serious modification because the Harpy I wanted (alluring song) was a level 6 controller (ack!). I needed to tone her down a bit. To do this, I was looking at building a whole new monster…kinda.

Footnote: I've since found the section where you can go lower or higher by about 5 levels without having to totally start from scratch. Oh well, it was good practice because the damned gargoyle I run into later will have to be from scratch because he's too high to just retool a bit.

After trying to make my head explore with math, I created a Level 3 Harpy:

Harpy Level 3 Controller
Medium fey humanoid XP 150
Initiative +1 Senses Perception +2
HP 34; Bloodied 17
AC 17; Fortitude 13, Refl ex 11, Will 12
Speed 4, fl y 6 (clumsy)
M Claw (standard; at-will)
+8 vs. AC; 1d10 + 2 damage.
C Alluring Song (standard; sustain minor; at-will) ✦ Charm
Close burst 10; deafened creatures are immune; +7 vs. Will;
the target is pulled 3 squares and immobilized (save ends).
When the harpy sustains the power, any target that has not yet
saved against the effect is pulled 3 squares and immobilized
(save ends).
Alignment Evil Languages Common
Str 13 (+1) Dex 11 (+0) Wis 12 (+1)
Con 14 (+2) Int 10 (+0) Cha 16 (+3)

Please don’t ask me how I came up with the numbers because my head will seriously erupt. It was a combination of the Harpy in the MM + How to Design a Monster in the DMG + Various parts of the PHB.

I wondered if my harpy wasn’t a bit wimpy when thinking back to those constructs that never wanted to die. It was true that the harpy would be the only thing in the room for the 3 PCs to fight but at the same time didn’t I have to temper that with the fact there was some rough terrain (boulders and icy water which causes damage) and her ability to immobilize? Bad rolls and all 3 could be stock in the icy water while she flew around them clawing their eyes out, right? Right? Of course, compared to the original harpy mine looks rather buff. Maybe too buff? No, no more math right now, onward. I decided to come back to that if necessary.

My Rebuttal to His... Rebuttal?

2008-06-12T09:49:00.005-05:00

A Side:

ChattAssHat, aka Le Bleu, recently left a comment where he did much fist shaking and chest pounding. Now to say that this is typical of the French would be an obvious response but it bears repeating: this is typical of the French! It's made even more comical because he's French- Candian.

What honestly piqued my curiosity though was the nagging feeling that I'd seen him someplace before. I was sure I had seen him before. It took me all day, but I finally placed him. The last time I saw him he was robbing a bank! Luckily Mr Incredible was there, but it got me thinking... just why did he need to rob a bank?

The only reason I can come up with... more face paint.

If there's one thing that all mimes have in common, it's a tremendous amount of white face paint. That stuff has to be layed on with a trowel. There is only one other person who I can think of that has a higher cake to face ratio and that's high praise in the land of face paint. I'm certain that with the amount that they paste on, on a daily basis mind you, the make up companies are swimming in profits that can only be compared to the oil industry. bling bling yo!

Where Le Bleu will strike next, nobody knows. But I shall stay ever vigilant, always ready and shall have Heathers make up under lock and key. Oh yes... lock and key!

B Side:

This is how much of a black hole this place can become. I was scheduled to have four days off, the 9th through the 12th. I just... completely forgot about it until today when I was like... oh yeah! So I'm taking tomorrow through Monday off. Woot!

Now does this mean I really have the days off? Sure... as long as they don't need me for something. We're all pretty good about not bothering people on their day off unless it's really necessary. I managed to not blow the servers up for the month that V was gone, so when he goes on his four day, it'll be no biggie. By the same token, he won't blow up any cell phones or radios, so we're set.

Even though they say you can't make up lost sleep, I shall endevor to try.

-M

Never gonna stop me
never gonna stop
Never gonna stop me
never gonna stop

D&D Nerdery – My First Adventure Conversion Part I

2008-06-11T21:20:00.001-05:00

My first real experience with Dungeons and Dragons was with my 12 year old son, henceforth known as P. I fell into the role of DM mostly because I have more patience when reading instructions and frankly, P just wanted to kick butt, not read rules. Unfortunately, I was so extremely green that I committed all the many sins of a horrible DM. I did not let him spot check because the book didn’t say anything about spot checking! I railroaded him along. Additionally, the starter set box said 2-5 players. We had 2! We were set!

Not quiet so. The box might have said 2-5 players but the adventure had 4 characters and a DM in mind, consequently P often found himself on the other end of the butt kicking and I didn’t know how to adjust things to compensate. It was a shame because the adventure seemed pretty fun and I would have liked for us to see it through.

Soon after, I learned about the upcoming release of the 4th Edition which touted itself as new user friendly. I decided we would try to play D&D again when the new rules came out and I maybe, kinda, sorta, stood a chance of understanding them.

Here we are! The new edition is out! I’m still very green but I’ve learned many things already. I keep wondering if there is a leak in the ole noggin somewhere because I have to keep reading things over and over and still cannot seem to retain them all. That aside I look forward to trying things out with P again, especially after reading this adventure report written by a Dungeon Master playing the new edition with his young son (It’s great, you must read it if you have not already. I laughed, I cried, I cheered!). Their play inspired me to relax. This isn’t a game of rules set in stone. It is flexible. That flexibility is part of what makes it great for players and the DM – the DM may have written the adventure but even he never knows where it will go. There will be no rules lawyers at my table. No contest regulations. No experienced gamers standing at the ready to point out mistakes. It should not be as much about do it right, as do it fun.

(Of course, I’m anal retentive and would like to do it right and fun!)

I am determined to see this original adventure through. We were having fun playing it but it was too difficult under the circumstances. I am going to take another shot at it. Heather’s gonna hack herself an adventure!

(Next up, DM Noobcakes begins to hack)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

2008-06-11T12:53:00.003-05:00

It's the boys birthday today. He's twelve. I miss him so much. We're going to have some serious celebrating when I get back; make ups for his b-day, Heathers and mine. I think a trip to Carowinds, or something equally as fun, is in order.

He's at camp this week, but one of the cool things is that you can leave email messages that they print out for them. I just left him his B-Day wishes. They also take tons and tons of photos which they then put up on their site for you to look through. He's in a few of the pictures and he looks like he's having fun. He's grown his hair out more since I saw him in April. Looks good.

Yes, until I get out of the military, I live my hair dreams through my son with reckless abandon.

-M

Pretty young
pretty pretty young thing
pretty young thing

Nemesis

2008-06-10T23:27:00.006-05:00

A Side:

It has come to my attention that I have a Nemesis! I find this an extremely cool thing as it finally propels me into the league of superheros and villians. With that being said, we now have to define which side each is on.

It has come to my attention, through various secret and thoroughly entrenched sources, that ChattyAssHat is in fact French. Not just French, but French-Canadian! It wasn't bad enough to be part of le bleu, but he's also part of the that great northern wasteland that sits right above America taking up precious parking garage space. And lord knows with all of the rotting SUVs that we now have junking up car dealer lots, both new and used, that we have to have some place to store all of that. Canada fits the bill just fine I would say.

One must also consider, what is Canada doing to help the world? Considering how our friend here is French- Canadian, I can only presume to think that he's directly linked to the continued profession of the dreaded mime!

Seriously, who else conducts psychological warfare like the French by putting these roving bands of mental assasins on each street corner to terrify kids and old people alike?

The French- Canadian version includes a beer in hand; past that, they're the same!

I could go into whole, "Candian video gamers are on the same level as monkeys banging keyboards", but I think the clear evidence that I've already presented shows exactly whos side I'm on. Clearly Superman, Batman and the X-Men will be thrilled to find out I'm showing up to work along side of them come Monday morning. Now to figure out what my costume shall look like...

B Side:

Another one of the milblogs I've discovered is Another Iraq Casualty. It's another fairly well written blog from a fellow ILO (in leiu of) companion. Reason I'm linking it is because todays article harkens back to a time when people actually thought their decisions all the way through. As in, if we do this, then this will happen and we'll have to respond in this way.

The other reason I'm posting this is because I've had a similar piece lined to do, but I've been really lazy about getting it out. The piece is from General Norman Schwarzkopf's autobiography and it says just about the same thing as the Dick Cheney piece. It's eerily prescient and one wonders why we don't listen to people with experience on the subject.

I'll have a post up about in the next few days.

For everyone just waking up, happy hump day! It's almost my weekend and it can't come soon enough!

-M

We got a time bomb, we got a time bomb, we got a time bomb
nah nah nah nah

D&D Nerdery - Kick Em When They're Down

2008-06-10T12:17:00.002-05:00

I am still slowly but surely working my way through the DMG (for the uninitiated that is a Dungeon Master’s Guide – a book about running D&D games). The sections on 3d combat were somewhat confusing to me – most likely because I could not quite visualize what the book was saying about how to track spaces above and below. I read the section on disease and it seemed to me that a diseased person would probably just keep taking “extended rests” so that they could roll endurance over and over until they were cured or killed.

I watched the DMs very carefully during the Game Day event. I studied their every move – analyzing and critiquing so that I might learn how to DM myself. I also watched them for differences in style – how did the same exact published scenario differ in the hands of someone else? Were there things I could have handled differently?

I’ve already noted in previous posts some of the issues I had with these two. Reading the DMG lead me to a few more observations about the way they handled the games. I am not attacking the two gentlemen specifically, as people or DMs. Everyone had a good time. I am simply using this experience as a learning tool.

Kick them while they’re down. The DMG advises the DM to turn the focus of the monster’s wrath to other players when the player they were attacking becomes unconscious. The Fumbles DM (as he will henceforth be named) seemed intent on attacking a player that had fallen. There was a dead PC and three unconscious PCs by this point in the encounter. Two monsters were left (skeleton and construct). I had to race across the room to engage the skeleton stabbing the dying guy. Fortunately, I killed the skeleton in one enraged blow and was then able to stabilize the two dying PCs at his feet before zipping back across for a similar action against the construct standing over the last PC. I have mixed feelings about the kick them while they’re down decision of the DM. On the one hand, I cannot understand why he was set on killing everyone off (except that it was a one adventure scenario, so the events here would not have larger consequences). On the other hand, it allowed for some of my most heroic moments of the adventure where I’d spent much of it tripping over my beard and hitting myself in the head. I destroyed both creatures while stabilizing my friends.

WTF is with the XP? Both DMs (Fumbles and Bumbles) were weird about XP. They awarded XP according to who actually hit the monster. If you took a swing at the monster, you were awarded XP. If you did not take a swing at that particular monster because you were busy flanking another monster, you did not get XP for the monster you did not actually hit. The DMs did not actually track who hit which monster so this method of XP rewarding became rather silly as people had to try to piece together who hit what.

Additionally, there was a lot of complaining about how unfair this type of XP rewarding was to melee characters. Ranged characters could get a whack on all monsters on the field where melee could not. This would give ranged characters a huge advantage. I questioned why you would divide the XP in this way. Each person there helped overcome the obstacle in some way, therefore should be granted equal XP. The players would all advance at the same rate and no advantage would be given to a particular type of player (ranged).

I wanted to say that they were doing XP weird because there needed to be a winner of the scenario so that a prize could be awarded. However, Fumbles and Bumbles tried to explain why equal division of XP would not work – a point I completely missed. I later read the DMG which says “simply divide the xp total for the encounter by the number of characters present” on page 41. In this case, I will thumb my nose at their stupidity because they made a big issue over nothing and in doing so may have warded off a couple people on the fence about 4th Edition.

I'm a Retard

2008-06-10T07:49:00.008-05:00

A/ B Side:

I can't get my Twitter subscription onto the blog as a widget. I tried for about forty five mintues, then just said screw it! I'll have Heather look at it in a little bit. I tried redoing the coding, but it would then over write her Twitter post with mine. I <3 computers!

The Craptain stole my TV yesterday. I have a feeling we're going to exchange fist-a-cuffs soon.

-M

When you see me on your block, call the police
let the motherfuckers know here comes the beast

*Update:

Just so that you know that all is not doom and gloom today, it was favorite food day, Mexican, with the added bonus of cheese sticks! This is how well my addiction to them are known: as the food server behind the counter (he's usually the same guy behind that section of the counter everyday he works) sees me come in the door, he automatically grabs a bowl, fills it with six cheese sticks, pours marinara sauce over them and has them ready by the time I've grabbed my tray, package of platic utencils and plate, and have walked the additonal three steps to get to him.

He knows this even when we don't have cheese sticks for up to four/ five weeks at a time, which is the norm. He remembers me!

This man is my crack dealer and I'm powerless before his fried drug.

**Update #2:

They had cheese sticks for dinner. My dealer was there. Is there a 12 step program for cheese stick addiction?

Hi, my name is Mike. I love fried cheese sticks.

You Don't Get A Title Today

2008-06-09T12:33:00.006-05:00

A Side:

Not much to pass on from the planet of the twin binary suns. Like I said before, we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel (fuck you Andrew Loyd Webber!) and we're wrapping up projects while making sure the Craptain doesn't start new ones. That last one is really hard. He told us last September that he didn't want us starting any new requests, or major ordeals, past June and he's trying his damnedest to do just that. We've reminded him of that several times. I'll keep you updated on how it goes.

We've been told that our replacements have started CST (Combat Survival Training) at Ft Riley a few days ago which is good. Of course we're really worried because we know how much bullshit training they're going to go through, plus the additional worthless bullshit training that the Army will try to make them go through once the get in theater (Camp Beuhring/ Phoenix Academy... those were collosal wastes of time). Couple all the bullshit training time with travel time and we're a bit concerned that we're going to have to spend more time here than what is really needed.

V and I really want to get ahold of our replacement and find out whis his/ her background is like. Notice how I'm using the singular there? Both of us, with our two different backgrounds (radio comm vs computer comm) are being replaced by an admin troop. Yes, an admin troop. We saw the proposal from higher headquarters on how they're retooling these teams into leaner/ tighter groups. I saw who was suppose to be replacing us and I just laughed my ass off. This poor person is going to be so fucked that it's not even funny.

We have a guy like that on our team currently. If I were to sit him in front of my comm gear and tell him to make it ready for the convoy heading out in an hour, you'd have cans with string strung between all the trucks as your "radios". Also, if we stuck him down in the server room and said, the exchange server just took a shit, fix it! he'd basically laugh at you then head outside to smoke, because that would be just as beneficial as him trying to "fix it".

One of the things that the big cheese has tasked us to do is write continuity folders for the incoming team on our jobs. That's standard proceedure, but for V and I it's a rather daunting task. More so on his part because how do you explain server side upkeep/ maintenance to someone that's just allowed to reset passwords and write awards/ decoration/ secretary shit? Mines no small task either, but a lot of mine involving the programming of the radios is simple plug numbers into the computer program and hit enter to program the radio (it's more involved that than; you have to know what to plug in to make it work, but that will have to be in the book too). It's when something fucks up, like radios 1, 3, 6 and 7 talk to each other, radios 2, 4, 5, and 8 talk to each other, but neither group will talk to the other... they'll have no damn clue as to what to do. I can give basic troubleshooting tips, but sometimes it's something obscure that only knowledge of the systems that you have will fix it.

Anyways, we're writing our continuity folders and praying that the taskers somehow get messed up and they send at least one person here who might have a clue. Otherwise the computer situation here for the team after this one coming in will be like the same as we found it when we arrived. And that's just a really really scary thought.

B Side:

I'm glad that V is the super huge D&D nerd that he is because some of the questions that Heather has, not only can Chatty answer, but he can too. He had a buddy scan his 4th ed. books into PDF format and sent them over to us. Yup, we have 4th ed too. He's been pouring over them like they were the last Playboys on Earth.

Which is a good thing because I can't answer the questions she has about this stuff. I'm glad that I have friends who can.

On a parallel train of thought, we're kind of worried about the area we're moving to. Mainly because of the fact that according to Wizards of the Coast, there's nobody in the damn state that plays the game! Apparently they have this LFG board for all the states and no one at our new base, or the surrounding areas has any type of games going on.

So now we're kind of worried. Are we going to have people to play with? Where are we going to find them? The base that we're going to, the town is real small, so who knows? Heather is mainly worried that all this engery that she's pouring into this will be wasted. Yes, she, the boy, my mom and I can all play together, but we were kind of hoping for more people... at least some around our age, or just more knowledgable people who we can learn from.

In other words, prospects look dim. If you know of some people in the Sumter SC or surrounding area that want to fling some magic missles, or eldrich blasts, drop us a line here. We'd like to meet them!

Final Thought:

(this is my Jerry Springer end of show thought killing speech... well not so much of a speech, just rambling)

ChattyDM shall now be known as ChattyAsshat in all subsequent posts of mine. He knowns why.

Be good to each other, quit letting your animals fuck without rubbers and that's... the rest of the story.

:P

-M

Angel girl
in a cold dark world
I'm going to be
your man

D&D Nerdery - Questions

2008-06-08T17:51:00.005-05:00

As mentioned in the previous post, I went to the local game store to participate in the Game Day Event for Dungeons and Dragons. I walked out with some minis, a giant reusable battle grid, and a set of dice (I "won" a scenario which netted me the dice). I also walked out with some questions - questions I did not have the foresight to write down and my still-functioning-on-little-sleep-and-complicated-with-moving-slash-buying-house-details cannot completely recall.

I spent some time flipping through some of the Core set today as well as reading some of the DM Guide for the Keep adventure. My reading answered some questions and presented more. There are currently 3 that stand out in my mind.

Healing Skill - I think I understand now that one use of healing skill is First Aid. I assume that First Aid applies some kind of healing to an adjacent ally. How does this work? Does it use the other players healing surge if the check is successful? Or is there a die roll to determine the number of hit points added to the hurt ally? If so, which die? I assume this can be done while in combat as a standard action? Is there a limit to the number of times assuming the person succeeds in the check? Also, how is the DC for a healing skill determined?
Perception Check - This is a question specifically regarding the Keep adventure (potential spoiler). The kolbolds ambush the players at some point in the adventure. The DM Guide calls for you to ask the players to make a Perception Check with a DC of 25. I understand that you want the DC to be hard and 25 counts as hard but I'm looking at the premade characters and unless I just do not understand how the perception check works, it seems only 1 can possibly pass the check and that is only with a roll of 20. My understanding of the perception check is that the players have to meet or beat the DC. So, in this case, they would have to make a 25 or better by rolling a d20 and adding their perception modifier. One character in the premade characters has a perception check bonus of +5. If he rolled perfect, he would not be surprised but no one else in the party stands a chance. Am I missing something? Am I misinterpreting something? I agree it should be hard (otherwise there is no point in an ambush) but this seems just about impossible (for 4 premade PC people it is impossible).
Fortitude, Will and Reflex Defense - I understand that say an enemy makes a magic attack against a PC that instead of AC it might attack reflex. The enemy has to roll the d20 higher than the reflex defense figure of the PC it is trying to attack. Maybe this was a table rule specific to this particular DM (like the critical failures where I kept hitting myself in the damned head) but there were many times when I was asked to roll a d20. Supposing my Fortitude Defense was 12, I had to roll under 12 in order to be saved from damage. There was once I rolled in order to determine whether I took full or half damage. Is this a save roll? If it is a save roll am I mistaken in thinking that by 4e rules you just have to roll better than a 10 to be saved? My interpretation of the rules thus far have made it seem that the defense figures appear to be different versions of AC for different attacks and the save roll seems to be unrelated to the defense in this edition.

I'm going to make an attempt to write down other questions that come up as I continue to study the information. I am not sure whether to be giddy with excitement or sick about the fact supplements with more confusion will steadily be released just as I get a grip on the basics. 4e is decidedly simpler than the previous edition but there is still a lot of information to be processed and figured in - feats, powers, racial and class modifiers, line of sight and line of effect, triggering actions, attacks of opportunity, flanking, and on and on it sometimes seems.

I guess along with my goodies both bought and given I also took home the realization that it is not necessarily an exact science. One DM was pretty straight forward. The next guy used critical failures which sometimes resulted in an enemy bumbling his attack and inadvertently killing one of his own skeleton warriors. The exploding skeletal bodies created shrapnel which hit PCs (I believe this may have been one of those roll to see if you take full or half damage deals). It certainly made it interesting and I guess as long as the players go for it, the DM can be creative like that on the fly.

Dimble Bumblepants

2008-06-08T02:53:00.003-05:00

If I ever have the misfortune of being a dwarven fighter again I will name him Dimble Bumblepants. I played a dwarven fighter during my first 3.5 edition D&D game. I spent much of the time on my face in the dirt somewhere. First my fighter missed jumping onto the carriage that was about to take off. Then I was later flung from a pursuing carriage driven by a rogue with no idea how to steer. I also played a dwarven fighter during the 4e Game Day Event. I managed to fall into a wall, stand there too confused to attack, and smack the hell out of myself with my own axe. Fortunately, I made a bit of a comeback when I later stabilized the 3 dying PCs before turning around to crit the construct and the skeleton looming over my comrades.

There was a lot of general grumbling. People did not like the amount of hit points and damage of enemies. They didn't like the way crits are handled. They felt the cleric was "screwed." I played the cleric for 2 scenarios and did not feel screwed though it did seem like I was somewhat limited in healing. Lance of Faith = Lance of Failure but that was a dice rolling issue. I seemed a bit sturdier than I expected which was fortunate.

I played with two different DMs during the event. They definitely handled things differently which lead to a little confusion. If there is a passive check for perception, does the DM need to ask you to do a perception check? Shouldn't the passive cover it? I was also a little confused by the way they were doing some of the saves. The save was successful if you rolled under your total save defense number. I was also still a little confused about the way death and dying worked. The time thing was an issue too. The wizard would "stretch" for a couple minutes and then feystep through half the walls in the dungeon, consequently finding himself in rooms full of enemies which would then follow him back to us. I think there were other things I did not quite grasp or maybe I just interpreted the rules differently but I'm too tired to discuss them right now.

It was interesting to see the same thing run by 2 different DMs. Their style was different. I enjoyed both. The difference in style made the same adventure play differently.

In general, I had a lot of fun. I picked up a few minis and I won a set of dice for kicking butt and now I'm going to bed before my computer blue screens me again.

Enter Sandman

2008-06-05T23:08:00.002-05:00

A/ B Side:

I've been up since 7:30am yesterday. It's now 7:09am today. /sigh

Update on MSgt P: he got 5 rabies shots in his hand and 6 in his ass! Think about that the next time you get the bright idea to be helpful.

-M

Sleep with one eye open
gripping your pillow tight

Going on record now

2008-06-04T12:52:00.003-05:00

A/ B Side:

I'm writing this now because I feel this strongly about it. I mentioned how on the plane ride back over to Iraq Heather gave me The Time Traveler's Wife to read and I pretty much fell in love with the book. It's just a great book. It combines time travel with a great plot and very well written characters who you come to care for. I connected with the characters on many levels and Audrey Niffenegger wrote a really good tale.

While reading the latest copy of Game Informer, on their calender of stuff coming out I saw that they had TTTW listed as a movie coming out this year. I was like... what? I had wondered, as I was reading the book for a second time, if they might make a movie out of it. I kind of dismissed that they would considering the all the time travel involved, all the characters and their relationships... basically the entire plot, I feel, wouldn't be able to be contained within a two hour time period.

But Hollywood apparently doesn't share my concerns because loe and behold, here it is.

I honestly don't know how to feel about this. Pretty much to sum up my feelings atm: they had best not fuck this up. I know that they will, but I'm praying that they don't. Anything of decent literary quality they manage to bungle/ mangle in some way or fashion. Most of the people they get to write these screenplays just suck, and after looking at Jeremy Levens screen writing credits, I'm just baffled as to why they'd let a hack like this near it. Seriously, he wrote Alex & Emma and Don Juan De Marco, and did the screenplay for The Legend of Bagger Vance. He takes credit for writing those two pieces of shit and for screening Bagger Vance.

I guess I do know how I feel about this.

It's in post production now, and they say it's set for a Christmas release of this year. God, I know they're going to fuck this up. If you can't tell, for books/ movies/ music that I love, I'm passionate about. I hope this isn't another Starship Troopers.

-M

To see you when I wake up
is a gift
I didn't
think
could be real

Cat Scratch Fever

2008-06-04T05:18:00.007-05:00

A Side:

Today MSgt P tried to do a good thing. He tried to help a poor cat that had gotten tangled up in some netting outside of our building. He went outside, heard the poor thing yowling and did what most of us would do, which is give it its freedom. Too bad for MSgt P.

In the process of cutting the cat out, which had it's right front leg extended straight out and it's head trapped against it, as he cut the cat out, he managed to free it's head just enough for the cat to turn and bite the shit out of his hand. The cat managed to wriggle out after that, but now P has to go and get rabies shots at Balad.

While I can see this incident as a metaphor for our entire time here in Iraq, I'll just leave you readers with this simple moral: this is why they tell us not to mess with the local pussy. Because you end up having to get shots, and nobody likes shots.

B Side:

How do you guys like the poster above? We were sent about twenty four altered posters of famous wartime posters that reflect our current views of the military. I wouldn't say exactly reflected our views, but I honestly laughed my ass off at each and every one of them. Over the next twenty three posts of mine, I'll put a new one in.

I really like the house we're about to buy. I had to send in a bunch of paperwork the other day to the VA home loan people, like my LES (Leave and Earnings Statement- think of it like a pay stub that tells you how much taxes have been taken out, what direct deposits you have, how many days of vacation you took/ still have, etc...) and Proof of Service statement. The person that's working our case with that is a really nice lady and has been really helpful.

The house overall seems to be in really good shape. We're going to have the inspection done here in the next couple of days. The only gripe that we both have is the "pink stink" bathroom. (quote taken directly from Heathers IM messaging with me :P) It's pink... everywhere! It looks like they took Peptobismal, loaded it up into a Wagner power sprayer and just shot the bathroom with it.

While it's an eyesore, it does give me one of the things that I've talked about wanting: a project! While the pink initially burned my retina's and seared my brain, after the initial shock wore off, I started thinking of ways to renovate this area. I started thinking about what I like in a bathroom, the things I've seen before that I like and what I envisoned it could be. That's the thing. It's going to be our house! Our house! So, within limits, I can pretty much do any damn thing I please with it! HAHAHAHA! It feels good to say that

Anyways, I see us redoing it in a very clean, simple manner. Now there's not much else we can do because it's a small bathroom. How small? Well, I know exactly how big this bathroom is just from the picture because it's the same bathroom as her Grandmothers. I saw a pic of the bathroom and I was like... I've seen this bathroom before. Took about a minute of rummaging through still frames in my mind before I found it! Ah-ha! I said. Yup, exact same layout and dimensions, give or take a few feet here or there.

So I've been searching the intardnets for the past few days looking at a number of remodeling sites. We're either going to do tile flooring or install Pergo. The Pergo would be to keep in theme with the rest of the hardwood flooring through out the house. I'm still on the fence with that. I personally would love tile, but I'm open to discussion on it.

The pink tile around the walls? I don't give a shit, that stuff is coming out! Even if we don't retile the walls (which could be a viable option) that stuff is coming out. I'm also toying with the idea of maybe replacing the tub and installing a stand up shower with a sliding glass door, though I haven't sprung that idea on Heather yet (consider the idea sprung now).

I'm sure as you can tell, I'm excited. Heather's excited. The boy is excited. There's a lot of excitement going around here. This is shaping up to be a really good move.

-M

Who's goings to pick you up
when you fall?

Here we have the rare, nicely kept home, isn't she a beauty mate?

2008-06-01T19:00:00.005-05:00

Friday continued to be dismal. I looked at 10 houses, all of which seemed like very little house for the money. I saw 70s orange linoleum. I saw add ons that reminded me of young children with no shop experience trying to build a treehouse. I saw filthy butter yellow carpet. A kitchen with a giant refridgerator. Peeling layers of wallpaper in horrid colors. Though it would be fairly easy to scrape off wallpaper and replace carpet, each of those things would add to the cost of an already pricey home. I went back to my room and resigned myself to the fact the home would be little and probably ugly.

Saturday morning I met with the realtor again. 10 more houses. A couple of those houses had some potential but still did not cry out to me - until we stopped by the little house on a street named for a unassuming bird.

The hardwood floors are in immaculate condition and extend into every room but the kitchen and bath. The bedrooms are decent sized. It has the prerequisite 1 1/2 bath. The kitchen is a little smaller than I would have preferred but I could see where some things might be done to create more space. The appliances look somewhat ancient but servicable until we are ready to update. The house is not full of ugly paneling and grotesque cabinetry. The bath could be updated from little old lady pink but in good condition. There is a sunny den space where I could see myself quilting or knitting. A third bedroom to turn into the library/computers room. It has two carports, one I could see becoming an outdoor entertaining area with some furnishings and perhaps the installation of a ceiling fan to stir the air a bit. There is an outbuilding for storage and one that could be a workshop for M. The house was in a nice little neighborhood centrally located in town. It is in a good school district within biking or walking distance. There is a little lake and a park nearby. There is plenty of neighborhood for biking. It is walking distance to a grocery store and some eating establishments (always good in a time of obesity problems and high gas prices). The yard is somewhat smaller than some of the yards in the other homes but the house was a lot of well kept house for less money than those other homes.

The realtor is going to see what kind of loan we would qualify for tomorrow and we intend to make an offer after we discover that information.

I am excited and nervous. M has seen a number of pictures. I talked to my mother-in-law about it and it has her stamp of approval. I can't help but worry it is kind of small or P and M will not like it. It had a certain charm and appeal that made me so very happy when I saw it. The current owner, and elderly woman being forced to move in with her daughter, was there tending the weeds in the yard though she is moved out. It is obvious she really loved the house.

Saturday continued along those lines when I ran into a couple old friends. I was finally able to make some connections. I decided to stay an extra day in case I was able to sign the contract to make the offer and so that I could have lunch with one of those friends. It was so lovely to hear several people offer their sympathy that I am trying to do all this alone and their help.

Today, I attended a new church. I haven't attended any church regularly since leaving this area. One of my friends is the associate pastor of something something design something - he is very involved in the music, drama, and other art of the praise parts of the service. Our best memories from our previous assignment here involved M's acting in a dinner theater and my work in set production, sound and lights. I can see so many things possibly falling together here.

There are many colleges looking for adjunct professors in the area. I intend to pull my stuff together and start sending them out to all the colleges until one bites. Cross your fingers for me on the loan, the house, and the employment situation.

Howdy, from Podunk USA

2008-05-30T13:43:00.002-05:00

I have spent the last several hours trying to recalibrate my internal GPS system to this area. We were here once before, about 4-5 years ago, give or take a year in either direction. We hated it here for about the first 4 years we were stationed here. Within the last year, we made many friends and became involved in a lot of activities in the community.

Armed Forces tout military communities but I have largely found that not to be the case. We were unhappy until we made an effort to look for community outside the confines of the base gates. Naturally, we received orders not long afterwards. Now, like prodigal sons and daughters we return.

In general, little has changed.

The base housing was scheduled to be bulldozed as we were leaving here several years ago. They were privatizing. I entered the base from the gate next to the housing we lived in during our previous tour and found that most of the old housing still stands in various states of abandonment and disrepair, with the exception of our old block and some nearby. There are no new houses. The only base housing available is the same ratty, doomed housing we lived in before plus five years of wear.

I thought to have lunch at an old favorite but found it to be abandoned. I stopped by the quilting store where I met many friends, pieced many quilts, and bought a nice machine. I intended to have them frame my great grandmother's lace work after settling in this fall. Another empty shell of a building. I searched for the scrapbook store where I taught creative lettering. Nothing.

Disillusioned, I went to a small deli which thankfully still existed. I sat in front of a bowl of delicious veggie soup and a chicken salad sandwich and pondered my fate.

Thus far, it looks grim. I have not been able to reconnect with friends. I was turned down for a job at the college. My favorite haunts are gone. Base housing is the same crummy junk. I think the BX is shrinking when no one is looking. The area midway between the base and downtown looks like someone put a bunch of establishments in a dice cup and threw them down at the ground, building them up where ever they landed. I'm sweaty. My hair is frizzed. My shirt is wrinkled. I need a nap. I predict some complications with buying a house, which includes my current lack of employment. I am allergic to something in my mother-in-laws house so I look like I need to sleep off a bender with my sleepy, red eyes, and the way I keep pawing my face because my sinuses hurt.

Road Trip I

2008-05-28T00:20:00.002-05:00

In about 6-8 hours (depending on how long I sleep), I will be loading the car full of things and making a long drive to South Carolina. The first stop will be the inlaws where I will offload the boy and the dogs. I plan to hang around a day and perhaps lounge around a pool or something relaxing. The next three days will be spent looking at housing a few hours down the road.

/afk

Work: I See Referrals Everywhere and They Don't Even Know They Are Referrals

2008-05-24T14:43:00.004-05:00

It has been a little more than a week since I left my job at the facility. I've noticed that it is difficult for me to look at adolescents without thinking about places like the one I worked. I see a child with behavioral issues and I wonder if this child will be the next referral. I see a child with social issues and wonder the same. I see a child who appears pleasant and well behaved. A child who makes straight A's, or at least A's and B's, and I think the same thing. I think about how many referrals I reviewed where the child was happily moving along when suddenly something happened to change everything. Mom and Dad got divorced. Mom's new boyfriend was abusive. Uncle John decided to cop a feel. Walked in on Mom sleeping with the bus driver and turned to alcohol to connect with grieving Dad. Made a mistake in choice of friends or boyfriends and got slapped with an Axis I diagnosis and a ticket to live in treatment centers, one after another until they are too old to stay or too institutionalized to go.

Passions

2008-05-24T00:51:00.004-05:00

A/ B Side:

I'm doing this real quick before I head off to work, but Vermont continues to sing its seductive siren call to me (and by extension us) on a continuing basis. Our medic here is originally from Vermont and his family still calls that great state its home. His mom still sends him the Vermont Life Magazine and once he's done with those he usually sets them out where I greedily snap them up and start pouring over them as if they held the long lost secrets of God Himself.

As such, I continue to feel that my desire to get into work pertaining to the outdoors is where my true calling is. Something to do with landscaping, enviromental preservation and woodworking. Growing up as a kid, my moms grandparents and her ran a ceramics shop which in turn meant that I grew up around a lot of art/ artists. Call it sort of a hippy/ artsy upbringing. The desire to use my imagination, create stuff, shape things with my own hands was taught at a very early age and it's something that I still really desire to do.

Also taught was that we are stewards of the land. We have a responsibility to take care of the land that the Lord entrusted us with. I've felt this for a long while now, but as cool as my job can be (lots of neat-o toys), I'm wasting my time here. I'm meant for something different. And as I continue to look through the Vermont Life Magazines, I'm getting small glimpses of what that life might potentially be.

While some might simply chalk this up to my year long sabbatical here, Heather can tell you I've talked about this for the last few years. It's an idea that contiues to grow in my mind. I hope it's the right idea and not just obsession.

-M

And everyday we shall have less. And then none.

Would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all?

Console Gaming: Wii Fit

2008-05-23T22:58:00.002-05:00

I have toyed with the idea of Wii Fit since first seeing a spoof of the game on the internet. Recently, I was diagnosed with degeneration in the spine, so I am in the market for low impact exercise. I decided to try the Wii Fit.

I love the way Japanese give personalities and cutsie little voices to objects. The Wii Board (not the board itself but the TV animation) says things like “great” and “step on” in that kind of a voice.

The first thing it does is put you through a body test. The test determines how balanced your body is and gives you information on how balance is important in weight loss and eliminating body pain. It also calculates your weight, height, and age to determine your “Wii Fit Age.” It will give you a BMI and suggest you create a 2 week goal related to your BMI. My Wii plumped up a bit but my body age was exactly my own age.

Next, you are given the option to do different sorts of exercises. There are aerobic, yoga, strength training and balance categories. You have to unlock some of these activities through points you accumulate in your “fit bank” by scoring well on the unlocked activities. The beginning aerobic activities include hula hoops, racing, and a form of step aerobics. Yoga includes the deep breathing, and balance positions like half moon, warrior and tree. Strength training utilizes the board for lunges and push ups to start. Balance exercises include running slaloms, ski jumps, a tilting game and heading soccer balls. Heading soccer balls certainly provided the most entertainment for myself, my son and his friend (though the two player race with them both running in place fast enough to trip over their own virtual feet and each other, provided me with plenty hilarity). The idea was to lean towards flying balls while avoiding cleats and pandas. Each of these activities will increase in repetitions or time as you continue to play and improve.

The game provides you with graphs to track your progress and the amount of training you do. There is a calendar for stamping days you train.

My initial impression is that it can be a fun way to be more interactive in your gaming. I think there is motivation to improve your scores and compete for the highest score against friends and family in various activities. It does provide a low impact work out with a variety of activities designed to challenge your core as you keep balance. I am not yet convinced it will provide enough of a challenge to produce the kind of results I would like to see, or even the kind of results many people saw in Dance Dance Revolution. I also wonder whether the exercises will become tedious after a time once all the activities are unlocked and your scores plateau.

Games like Wii Ski, another Rabbids game, a Cheer Leading Game (I must have this because it just sounds funny to play Cheerleader) and others will also utilize the Wii Fit Board, so it may not be a useless peripheral like some ghosts from Nintendo’s past – they do so love their peripherals.

My Rebuttal

2008-05-20T16:43:00.005-05:00

In response to M's last post:

This is not a political blog. It is not journalistic reporting. It is not tips & tricks for Wow, game reviews, or how to make gold in MMORPGs. It is not how to be a better dungeon master. It is not how to knit fabulous socks. Not literary criticism or book reviews. It is not marriage advice. Not therapy. Not harrowing tales from the front lines. These things are not the focus of this blog, though it can be about any of those things at any given time.

This blog is about the things we carry - in our luggage, purse, wallet, mind and heart. It is the answer to the question "Hi, honey. How was your day?" when we cannot walk through the door and ask. We made it public as a way for our friends to find out how we are doing as well. This blog is about long days at work, dust storms, power outages, dirty dishes in the sink, and what we do to try to maintain a sence of normalcy and connection. Will the focus shift when he returns? Perhaps. He might start a blog just about WOW. I may start one about Nooby DMing or knitting, or teaching, or how much his mother drives me crazy. We may continue this patchwork of our everyday lives. Who knows, someday one of us might do something noteworthy and people will flock to this site as proof we are human and think about stupid things like everyone else.

I would rather he post dumb things and come home with both legs. He is not ducking shells and patching up bloodied comrades with gum and duct tape. That does not make his experience any less valid - any less his. Danger is omnipresent for an American anywhere in that country. They call it "the theater," and he is a stage hand. He might not be in the front making everyone cry but the actors just look like silly people without the proper lighting, sets, props, and sound. He is playing his role over there, just like anyone else. He answered the call of his country.

I'm proud of him. And I miss him.

By the numbers

2008-05-20T08:20:00.005-05:00

A/ B Side:

Heather and I have talked about ways to increase our reader base before. One of the simplest ways she's told me is by going to other blogs and posting there. Just a little, hi, nice blog! type stuff. It's all fine in principle but I can't do it.

I don't really go out of my way to find other blogs. Blogging is still a relatively new thing for me. But over the past few months I've been going to one consistantly. The reason I've been going there is because that's where Maj Ohlmsted use to post. While I don't agree with everything they, or their posters, say, it is a very handy site for good information.

Today though was different. It was a bit of a down day, not much on the plate for me, so I decided to do a little looking around. I don't know, I was in a mood to search. Not surprisingly, I came across a number of good blogs. Some large, some small. All of which prompted me to do a bit of clean up in my Favorites folder. I deleted the few that I hadn't been to/ lost interest in (total of 4... told you, I don't look around) and added a few.

I think the biggest reason I haven't left comments at other places is that I feel that my experience here, versus theirs, makes what I say worthless. I'm out on a training base in the middle of no where. I don't break down doors, I don't hunt IED's, I don't engage in high level talks with local leaders... I don't do any of the things worthy of writing about. I complain about my leadership, I complain about the IA, I write about gaming and bad hajii movies.

In essence, I feel as if I go to other sites, comment and in turn bring exposure back to my own blog, I feel I'll be called out as a fake or FOBBIT. My war experiences aren't the same, nor anywhere close, to what some of these other bloggers are going through. Does that make my own experiences here any less valid? Does that make my time here any less meaningful?

I guess no, but at the same time I can't help but feel unworthy when someone says "Thanks for what you're doing over there".

-M

All ur kneecaps belong to I

2008-05-19T08:02:00.003-05:00

A Side:

Not much to report on. Our team has taken it upon ourselves to dial down the ops tempo by about 80%. We're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and something has returned. I'm trying to remember the word for it... oh yeah, hope! Hope that we're finally getting close to the end of the road here, so we're starting to ease up a bit and try to relax some.

Of course the Craptain isn't having any of that. The good ole idea fairy is up to his usual antics of trying to conceive new ideas and plot for ways to keep us entrenched in work that should never be ours in the first place. It's not enough that we have our own work to do, which is still a good bit, but he routinely looks for new work to throw on us... just because.

Lastest idea concerns yours truely: the Iraqis "network" (loosely doesn't even begin to describe how I use this term) is currently in the shitter atm due to the simple fact that whoever designed the system didn't utilize the correct battery back ups in the system. Power goes out daily here and when it does, the battery back ups kick in so, in theory, the Iraqi compter guys can get to it in time to properly shut down the servers so they don't crash and ulitmately die.

Except they're using two battery back ups for all the equipment in the rack, but they're not powerful enough to keep all the equipment on so after about forty five seconds, the system crashes. It's done this so many times that now the email servers hard drives have corrupted, aka they've died, so now they have no email contact with their HQ, which is something they really need.

That's just two of the myriad of problems they have with this "network".

Anyways, because of this, the Iraqis can't send their daily status reports and other stuff that they need to send (viruses, porn, jokes, pics of them with their dicks in sheep) to their higher HQ. In pops the good idea fairy! This is what he asks me: What would it take to move their servers over to the power plant?

First words out of my mouth were, sir we're not allowed to touch that stuff, it belongs to MoD (Ministry of Defense). He responds, I know I know, but hypothetically (there is no hypothetically with him), what would it take. I then proceed to explain to him the logistics involved with moving it. I also tell him that it's just a rough estimate, that there's probably more stuff needed, but until V gets back from jazza to fully shoot down his plan, that's what I see needing to make this move.

Already major problems I forsee:

1) it's not our shit, we can't touch it

2) the plan to move it to the power station is a joke. The guy who runs the station is crooked and he'll just tap into this system and then charge everyone else for internet

3) the email server is still fucked and MoD won't send someone out to repair it even after we've called and talked to their people

4) if the Iraqis really wanted their system back up, the general could make it happen. He could make the calls and have it fixed, but he doesn't so it must not be that important to him. He's more than happy to keep coming to the Craptain, who's more than eager to help him out in whatever needs to be done, aka continue to use our system to send his reports.

The word has come down from on high to take a more hardline approach and try to make them solve their own problems without reliance on us. That's a good thing. We have to get them from relying on us so damn much. Just the other day they drove an overloaded dumptruck across a really small concrete bridge and in the process, as the truck was going over, the bridge snapped in half. Luckily the driver wasn't hurt, but the dumptruck was now stuck in this ditch. They called us wanting to know... what should we do?

I don't know... I think you should leave it and let the desert reclaim it...

That's what I wanted to say, but I wasn't the one taking the call. We advised them to hook up a few of their other dumptrucks and/ or front end loaders to it and pull it out of the damn ditch. Seriously, they can't think for themselves. Their first thought/ response/ instinct is to call the Amreeki's. That has to stop.

Unfortunately, it seems like the Craptain has yet to see that memo.

B Side:

Heather sent me this D&D character/ personality test. I have to say, I laughed pretty hard at some of the questions answers. But after spending a few minutes answering, this is what character they thought best suited me:

After analyzing your answers with state-of-the-art medieval fantastic psychology profiling tools, Dungeon Mastering is confident that your inner D&D character is a Chaotic Evil Gnome Monk!

I find this hilarious because my mage is a gnome. And as everyone knows, gnomes just fucking rule! Especially chaotic evil gnomes... aka yours truely!

Take the test. Heather and I would love to know your results.

Gnome4Life beotches!

-M

Work it out at the gym
to fit my underwear

I Haven’t a Clue

2008-05-18T22:22:00.004-05:00

What seemed like a brilliant idea with loads of potential, only days ago, has already lost its appeal. I still like a good mystery every now and then but I think I will leave it out of my post format. I will just post without the gimmicks.

_________________________________

Amazon informed me via email that they would be sending my copy of Keep on the Shadowfell and the Dungeons and Dragons Core Rule Book Giftset, separately. The Keep releases prior to the Core Rule Set. The Keep is the first adventure book written using the new 4th Edition rules.

I am excited about the promise of the 4th edition. The prospects of somewhat simplified rules and faster playtime are good things. I continue to be unable to understand the argument that they are making it too much like MMO games because you are still sitting at a table with people who can behave just about any way they please. MMOs are the same way every time you play. You mash a couple buttons. The same monster dies the same way, a couple people get loot, you spend next week farming materials for potions so you can do it again (I’ve lamented about this in a previous post). It also seems to me that less emphasis on how to grapple might potentially leave more room for interaction, creativity, and play; however, I digress.

One of the biggest problems in trying to play version 3.5 was not actually in the rules (though I was horrified that I was breaking 80% of them because I could not seem to hold more than a couple in my head at a time). I do not have the assumed full party of 5. I am not sure I even anticipate ever having that many people playing at one time. Somewhere in the hype leading up to the new release, I could swear I read that there would be information to make it easier to modify your adventures to accommodate the lack of players. Today, I read a review on Musings of the Chatty DM which said: “The adventure assumes that 5 players would be around the DM and has no instructions/tips for lowering the number of monsters if the party is made of less than 5 characters.”

This is a disturbing development but not something that will deter my anticipation. I am certain I am not the only person without the full party. I believe there will be resources available to help me make the changes necessary for the game to be challenging for a smaller group without being impossible. I am disappointed that they did not foresee this issue and build it into the adventure. Perhaps, there will be something in the Core Rules to address this problem.

_________________________________

Zatarain's Jambalaya with Sausage, which comes in a precooked container in your grocer’s freezer, smells like an ashtray. I imagine that should I ever desire to eat an ashtray, it would also have a similar taste. Additionally, there is something my freezer or refrigerator stinking up the joint and making all the food taste funny. But, Heather, you have a head cold, of course it tastes funny. It is true, I have a cold and I admit it could be playing havoc with my taste buds but I am certain something is making everything taste funny in that fridge.

_________________________________

Speaking of colds, I did not go on the white water rafting trip for my birthday this past weekend.
_________________________________

Last Thursday was my last day of working at my facility. I will soon be driving east in search of housing, followed by cleaning, throwing out things, packing, moving. I do not look forward to one bit of it. I’m not overly fond of the process when M is here. I’m especially not fond of the idea of doing it without him.

It will be odd, not waking up for work tomorrow. Not thinking about minutes, referrals, the most recent ruckus in the unit, department of mental health laws, Medicaid, discharge, court documents and so on. There is a part of me that thinks it was a mistake to resign already. The other part of me says do you really want to try to find a new house in a different state and move there in 2 weeks? This was a necessary evil unrelated to my proficiency at being a bum.

Astroids are not my concern Admiral...

2008-05-13T10:09:00.005-05:00

A Side:

It dawned on me today just how much power I really have. Not to sound egotistical, but just my mere presence can effect things in either a positive or negative light (I try mainly for positive). How did I come to this conclusion? Well, I kind of already knew it, was told about it over 10 months ago, but I finally thought about it today and watched it unfold before me.

My engineering contractor for the cell tower came in today. I hadn't seen him since I left for R&R, so greeting him at the front gate was a rather pleasant surpise. As we were exchanging pleasantries, he told me he would be staying for a few days and would need a place for him, and his co-workers that he brought, to stay during that time. I explained to him about how we turned over our temp housing, that he and the guys had stayed in previously, to the IA. He then proceeded to tell me about how at the other sites he's been at (all American run) he's had no problem having a place to stay, yadda yadda yadda.

I empathized with him, but our stand point has always been that we have very limited facilities and resources. We've been turning over more stuff to the IA, and the Iraqi's in general, and as such, we don't have anything for him. I did tell him though that I would take him to see the temp base commander (General is still afk) and that hopefully he would be able to arrange something with him.

We get to the HQ building, find the temp base commander, and the engineer and him proceed to hash something out. This is where my mere being there comes in handy for the engineer. Before, they (the IA here) had been reluctant to help these guys out, even though the project is basically for them and is going to help them out imensly. Seriously, I don't understand it.

But this is what they told us back in training and now it's reality. This is why Iraqi's want to have American friends (or at least acquaitances) is because it's seen as a sign of power. During the entire meeting, I didn't say a word. I just sat there. But the IA wants to please me (us/ Amreeki's) and when I come in with the engineer it's like I'm coming to ask this of him.

It reminds me of ganster movies where just the mere mention of a name is enough to send people scurrying to get things done. If only it was that simple here. But this also could all be in my head, a fabulous story brought on by todays heat and my lack of getting enough water. That and the ever present armpit stink of my terp who washes once a week. Seriously... the man is going to be banned from riding in my truck if he is not introduced to soap/ deoderant soon.

B Side:

Last night I was looking around on iTunes and I found one of my favorite bands had released a new album. They're a brother/ sister combo who started out originally known as Astaire but is now known as Blondefire. Yeah, I don't get it either but I can over look it simply because they're nice little pop songs and the sisters voice is really good. The brother does all the arranging of the music and she just lends this fabulous voice to some really good lyrics. It works pretty well for them.

Now it's not Dylan type lyrical poetry, but that's not what I'm looking for here. I want upbeat stuff, good production, good lyrics and they deliver. If you get a chance, check'em out. Their first album was called Don't Whisper Lies (Astaire). This album is called My Somebody (Blondefire). The strange thing was that just a few weeks ago I was checking to see if they had released anything new. I looked for them under their old name and found that they had switched names. Then I saw that the only thing they had released was that original album back in 2004. Yeah... quite a bit of time in between. But I'm glad they're back in the game. I hope they put out another one... you know, without that pesky four year wait. Also, Weezer has a new song out with a new album soon to follow! Great song! I'll yak about that later in another post.

Moving on, I just saw Iron Man. This time it was a good copy with good sound. I had purchased one of the first copies at the hajii mart and let me tell you, the sound on that... well the only way to describe it is if you hissed, yes literally hissed, for two hours straight while you recorded the movie as you watched it. I have no idea wtf was wrong with the audio, but it was just horrendous. Today they must have gotten in a new shipment because this one was good.

I really like this movie! Robert Downey Jr was the perfect fit for the role. I really enjoyed his Stark character. I'm also glad to see Gwyneth Paltrow is returning to acting. I enjoy her take on characters and she played a good Miss Potts. And if you didn't already know, the next Iron Man is due out in 2010. Yay!

*warning: rant inc!*

Now on to a movie franchise that I love beyond belief but am sadden to see take yet another turn towards the dark side. Some of you may have heard that I'm a huge Star Wars fan. That's putting it mildly, but this is not the time to discuss that particular nerdom fact about me. What is related to that is the fact that George Lucas (the greedy pig mf'er he is) has taken the Star Wars to a new low with his upcoming Star Wars animated movie that he's putting out. I just saw a trailer for it on Yahoo movies and let me tell you... I'm just utterly dumbstruck by how shitty it looks.

How shitty does it look? I do encourage you to go over and check it out, but my take on it was this: some time ago I had seen that they "produced" (I use that word in the loosest sense possible) a CGI animated porn. I clicked on the trailer not so much to watch a computer chick get boffed, but I was honestly curious about how far animation had come as compared to what we were seeing from big companies like Pixar.

My impression was, well it's not Toy Story/ Bugs Life/ Ratatouille, but it's not horrible either. It wasn't bad, but it had no polish and it just looked... CGI. You wouldn't have lost yourself in it like you do from Pixar.

Apparently George was watching the same animated porn flick when he decided to animate Star Wars. It looks the same. It looks horrible. This is not what I expected from the powerhouse production company of LucasArts. While the first three prequels did suck (you can't disagree with me on that; I'll argue any point you even try to bring up to try to redeem those three horrendous pieces of shit. You will lose) the animation in them was tremendous and a huge leap forward. They were a step beyond anything you'd seen with the exception of Lord of the Rings. That was what I was expecting from this announced animated movie. I'm glad George proved me wrong again.

Of course if you think about it, this is the next logical step in his film career with this franchise. Since the original Star Wars (Episode IV), each installment has included more and more special effects. The prequels ushered in a whole new level of CG that was just eye popping unbelievable. Each new prequel had more and more CG included in it until finally we had Ep III that had something like 90% of the entire moving be computer based. It's probably higher, but I don't feel like looking it up atm. I'm on a roll.

But why stop at 90? What if you could make the entire thing CG? Then you could do anything you wanted. Any sort of action sequence, any sort of massive army, literally anything you could dream of, you could do!

Like make your favorite franchise look like animated porn! And shitty animated porn at that! Yay!

Besides the fact that the trailer introduced this already fucking rediculous plot... I mean, I'm at the point to where I will just rent this because I'm so livid that he's still at the directing helm of this franchise. You want to know why The Empire Strikes Back was considered so great (also considered one of the best sequels of all time)? Because LUCAS WASN'T BEHIND THE FUCKING DIRECTORS CHAIR FUCKING IT UP! No, we had the great Irvin Kershner doing this one and it turned out absolutely awesome! Then Lucas comes back for Ep VI and what happens? We get fucking Ewoks! While they're no Jar Jar, they're also not the most beloved characters in the series, and that's putting it mildly. Just mention Ewoks at a convention, I dare ya!

Honestly, how can we get this man the help he needs? How can we take away his directing license and keep him from being involved in this franchise anymore? His directing ability mirrors this adminstrations downhill slide for the past eight years. The longer they're in the game, the worse they get.

Can someone pass along Fetts commlink freq so I can maybe intice him to come out of retirement? Please???

-M

You're the air, that I breath
you're OXYGEN to me

The Case of the Missing Minutes

2008-05-12T16:42:00.026-05:00

Clue #1

I devoured Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, Agatha Christie, and 1 Minute Mysteries while growing up. I was excited by books with titles like The Mystery at Lilac Inn, The Message in the Hollow Oak, The Witch Tree Symbol, Murder at the Orient Express, Cards on the Table, Encyclopedia Brown Gets His Man, Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Midnight Visitor, and short mysteries starting with a murder in the kitchen. I carried around a notepad in which I jotted down the mundane daily activities of my neighbors and so that I could later concoct extravagant motives and conspicuous behaviors.

Strangely, I do not generally read mystery novels as an adult, though I have been known to pick one up on occasion. Listening to a Sue Grafton novel on tape put me off books on tape forever (the reader kept trying to do voices and often ran over places that would have been wry humor had I been reading myself). Though I rarely read them anymore, I still anticipate mysteries to solve and relish the moment when I see the pattern falling into place in movies and book plots.

I have pondered a format for my posts in this blog for some time. M has his music format with the A and B sides and lyric quotes (his quotes are frequently music lyrics though not always). I have toyed with various methods but none of them have been it. The Mystery Notebook, ala Velma of Scooby Doo fame and Harriet the Spy is the latest of my format experiments. It is a fun format. It harkens back to lighthearted days of yore.

The question is whether it will clash with M's format or the overall purpose of this blog. Using the same format he uses would be the most obvious way to stay cohesive. He told me to get my own format, no copycat! So that's out. This format is similar enough that it might work. Consider my next posts a test run.

Clue #2

One of my duties has been to provide back up administrative support to the clinical department. I was supposed to do this Friday. I emailed the rest of my department to let them know I'd be tied up with this. Friday rolled around and P had a fever and required a trip to the doctor. I left a message with my boss, who was on her line when I called, to remind her that they would need one of us to take the minutes for the Treatment Team Meeting.

No one took minutes.

D will be furious with me because I agreed to do it. It does not matter that things came up. This is the same D who is upset that someone else was chosen to replace me. The same D likely to look for people to complain about my replacement and cause trouble. This Thursday is my last day so I will not have to worry about her by 1:30pm that day; however, I have a few problems with this scenario.

I told D I would do it. She was counting on me. This reflects poorly on my ability to follow through with my word.
This will create additional drama for my unsuspecting replacement.
It seems to be in part related to closet animosity between D and my supervisor. I think the dropped ball may have been a passive aggressive move on the part of my boss.

In any case, she was also not there today, so I did take today's minutes. It baffles me that they would just have a meeting and not assign someone to take a few notes so that everything is nice and legal and compliant with our regulations.

Clue #3

I tease that I only came back to Wow to silence M's incessant whining. This is largely true but in doing so, I have to agree with his post in that it just feels right. There is a time of the day when things are okay. We are together. I can see a gnome representative of him running around in front of me. We can talk to each other - granted it is mostly about Wow - in real time. We can do things for each other and even though they are only silly pixelated things, it has meaning for us. One example is the Mother's Day present of a nice piece of chest armor in my game mail box.

I too, regret that my mount is so bloody slow. The mount I was using prior to making my contraption was the same terribly slow speed. I have a bit of a learning curve after so many months absence so I am slow in other ways.

M is definitely a creature of habit. The most notable oddity during his R&R was when he insisted his cereal come from the little boxes because "that is how we eat it!" Okaaaay. Things that took him minutes before will take him longer with me in tow until I can get the hang of things and speed along with him. In my defense, I'd like to say my gear is crap and it takes me longer than him to kill things. Additionally, I spent most of my career as a hunter and rogue alone. Neither have been in more than a handful of group/instance situations. I have to make similar adjustments.

I'll miss the playgrounds

and the animals

and digging up worms.

The title goes here

2008-05-12T06:47:00.003-05:00

A Side:

Today we received some VIPs that are fairly important. Important in that, they're old, they hold a high level position in government and they strike me as all that is wrong with this whole debacle here. Hell, they could be good men honestly trying to work towards a solution, but the feeling/ impression that I get is that of a safely sealed away Green Zone beaurocrat. One of them wore the typical "American in the desert" photographers vest that had all the zip up pockets and shit. Of course I don't think they made a size for him, so he wrapped this poor thing around his fast ass and made the poor zipper take the brunt of this fashion assault.

It was three hours of my life I won't get back. We went through this power point presentation where our illustious idea fairy (the Craptons official title) attempted to explain what the fuck we do here and if the Iraqi's are making any progress in certain areas. Now, as you might be asking yourself, why was the IF (Idea Fairy) doing this and not our OIC? Well, our OIC hopped on a bird out of here a few days ago to head home for his R&R. Along with him being gone, the general of the base was on jazza, of course. Which left this poor Iraqi Lt Col trying to answer shit that he has no knowledge about. The head VIP wasn't visibly mad at him, he understood that he didn't know about a few of the subjects, but still... it's just typical of the Iraqi leadership around here.

I'm just in an overall kind of pissy mood. One of the things really bugging the shit out of me is this new team of contractors that we got in. They're from a company called MPRI. I don't even want to look them up on the web and give them anymore PR. An initial team of them came here in January and let me say that their arrival was preceeded by this list of... well demands is the only way to put it. Give us this, give us that, we have to have this, we have to have that. I'm too lazy right now to dig though old posts, but I mentioned it a while back. We're already stretched this on supplies/ equipment/ items, but what really really rubs us all fucking raw is the fact that we (the US) has hired this fucking company and we're paying them, a fucking boat load, to come do work for us. The fucking least they can do is bring some of their own shit.

But no! On top of giving them a super fat contract, they then task us with providing them with computers, phones, cars and all sorts of other shit that we just don't have to give. These guys are making middle six figure contracts and they're all assholes. That has been expressed not just here, but at other locations where these guys have arrived. That must also be in their contract: Must act like prick, asshole, shithead and douche bag at all times. CHECK.

They've gone out of their way, it seems like, to piss off every one of the guys on the team here. I'm not sure why'd they do that, seeing how they're going to have to rely on us for a number of things, but I've already developed the habit of just adding three to four days onto requests of theirs. Something that would take maybe five mintues to do, I'll respond with "Four days". Doesn't matter. And yes I'm aware that this cyclic petty shit will lead us all to doom.

I don't care.

B Side:

Yes, she's finally playing WoW again. I'll let you read the post below to get her reaction on her return, but I'm going to give you my impressions and reactions.

First: I'm really really happy that she's playing again. Why? Just because it's another way to spend time with her and because it simply feels right. It's not the same as knowing she's physically behind me, right there, but it's the closest that I've felt like that in a long time. I hit a key, bring up a menu and I can see her name on my friends list, highlighted, right there. She's here! I can talk to her immediately. I can whisper stupid things to her. I can try to embarrass her in guild chat, or one of the other public channels (this is a long standing tradition of ours. It works both ways).

Second: I'm excited that she's discovering all these cool little things that they've done to the game. Stupid shit like adding helicopters, cooking quests, fishing quests, more pets... all the things that make her happy and put a goofy smile on her face.

One of the funniest things I think I'll always remember was about an hour into her return, she whipsers me, OMG! Is that guy flying?!?!?! It takes me a moment to realize what she's looking at, but then I respond, I take it you've seen the helicopters? She's like, I GOT TO HAVE ONE! Luckily, she chose the profession that makes those and she did in fact make one that first night back. She was like a damn kid in a candy store, she was so happy about it. But that just makes me smile and think how I'm happy she's happy.

Now of course, all that glistens is not gold. The things I'm about to describe here are my own personal pet peeves that I will just have to get the fuck over. Until I do though, I reseve the right to gripe.

First: that new found flyer? Yeah, it's slow as shit. Considering I just got my epic flyer, which moves at 280% speed, her new flyer is only a 60% speed increase machine. It's like going jogging with Jabba the Hutt. You run up ahead a little bit, but then stop and wait for them to catch up. Run up ahead, stop and wait. Now proceed to do this for the next five minutes on what now normally takes me about a minute to do. It's frustrating. I don't want to leave her alone to fly by herself because I said we'd do all this shit together. But at the same time... damn that thing is slow.

All that means is that I'm going to have to work my ass off even harder to help her get her epic chopper done quicker.

Second: she's distrupted my routine. She can tell you I'm a creature of habit. Over the past six months of playing by myself, and especially in the past few weeks that the new content has been out, I've developed a pattern on what to do. Basically maximizing my time and energy spent to achieve the most fun.

She's thrown a wrench in all of that.

Again, it's not her fault. She didn't intentionally do it, nor is she planning this as some sort of vindictive vendetta against me to steal my fun. It is what it is. I've just been use to doing things a certain way and now I need to adjust my routine some to include her. I'm a creature of habit I tell you. Trust me on that.

But I really do look forward to us leveling our rogue and lock combo together, and I also look forward to gearing up her hunter so she can do more stuff with me in the end game. I'm really glad she's back.

-M

Oakley makes the shades
That transform a tool

2008-05-11T21:17:00.002-05:00

1.

I reinstalled WoW after a little more whining on M’s part.

I am still mixed about my return. I put a lot of time, pretend money, and effort into my horde priest. Countless reputation grinds. Countless gear runs. Countless resource grinding. In addition to the reputation given by NPCs I also tried to grind a reputation among the player community. I do not plan to pick up with her again. The WoW community changes a lot in 8 months and I do not have the desire to start over.

My alliance characters have some resources. Their gear is not horrible but not great. I have spent some time working on reputation but nothing like the time spent hordeside. I played the alliance characters to have fun, relax, and to role play.

I do miss that aspect of the game. It really made it a lot of fun for me. Unfortunately, the role players are a tough crowd. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack in many ways. I would like to return to that aspect of the game as much as anything but again I have to start over.

In my usual Obsessive Compulsive manner, I played a lot of Wow this weekend. They have made several changes over the months which have included improvements to things like bulk mailing and stealthing off the mount. They’ve also added recipes and a quickie money making area to explore. One recipe that stood out was the flying contraption engineers can make. I had to have one. Next stop was a nice pair of mail goggles. I’m working on my turbo charged flying machine next. 60% speed is horrible in the Outlands, particularly when you are trying to race other people to resources.

2.

I accomplished very little this weekend outside of making a pixelated flying machine for a pretend character. P was resting after staying home Friday with a fever. Bella spent a peaceful weekend destroying things : Kleenex, Bounty, pencils, pens, anything resembling a paper or pen in my purse (lipstick, feminine products, money, receipts), plastic bags, food wrappers, drink containers, and empty cans. She really loves to go through bags and purses and leave a trail of half chewed contents all over the house.

I contemplated the two knit purses I have yet to finish. The knitted shrug. The baby cable socks.

I also contemplated finishing Suite Francaise. I contemplated my writing notebook. The application for Reading/English instructor at another college close to our new duty station.

In regards to the last, I think I keep procrastinating because I am hanging on to a thread of hope that I will get the job at the other college. It is closer. It is a liberal arts school rather than a technical college, so I might actually run into people who like English. That is not to say people at technical colleges cannot like English, only that it is less likely.

I rationalize holding on to that sliver of hope because I know the man in charge of hiring is busy. I know they just had commencement, so maybe they can now turn their focus to hiring for this position. He told me I would have to be patient. I figure, if he is so busy, he would not waste his time. If I were not a qualified candidate, he would say so.

3.

It has been difficult to stay motivated at work. I am emotionally divorced from the job. I continue to train my replacement. I shift more of my work in her direction. I feel guilty that I am not doing as much but I’m trying to make the transition. I give the work to her after I show her how to do something. In this way, I can see her work and make corrections/suggestions accordingly. We can both see where she is unclear or where other questions might come up. Last week was trial by fire for all of us in my department when a judge forced our hand by sending us two children without setting up an admission date. He court ordered them, knowing we reviewed their information and determined only one of these brothers was appropriate for placement.

Normally, they have a TB test before their admission. We set up a date so that staff can prepare. This judge bypassed all that and sent them straight to us after court. They were brought to us in only their detention jumpsuits and no other clothing. Grandmother was not very interested in getting them their clothing. We do not make them wear jumpsuits like criminals. It is enough that they are under constant supervision and behind locked doors and fences. Grandmother wanted to hurry up and sign whatever we put in front of her so she could go have the sub sandwich someone was picking up for her. She did stop and refuse to sign the paperwork involving one of her grandson’s SSI money.

She can refuse to sign it all she likes. SSI will be notified the boy is staying with us and SSI will decide whether the people caring for the boy or the grandmother will get the money. The families never like that. Sometimes, I think people have children just to use for generating income through SSI and Welfare Programs. It always cracks me up how indignant they get when the money given them for the care of their children stops coming. “How am I going to pay my rent?” That was not your rent money. That was money to help you care for the child. You are not caring for the child. We are.

2008-05-08T20:56:00.004-05:00

1.

The Nickle-N-Dime Maintenance Plan

We called Bellsouth, now known as yet another reincarnation of AT&T, to repair a line last month. The Internet service - you know that fast access DSL they are always blabbering about in the commercial - was working rather poorly so we called them out to repair it. How surprised was I to get an $80 charge for this service?

I called up Customer Service and asked them to explain to me why I was being charged to repair something that was part of a service I was already paying to receive? Shouldn't fixing their broken crap be part of the service? Otherwise, what am I paying for? Not service, that's for certain.

"Ma'am, you don't have the Inside Wire Maintenance Plan." The what? Why do I need a maintenance plan in order for you to provide me with the service I'm paying for? "It's like a car." No. No, it is not like a car. If I buy a car, I have a car. It may break down and I may pay for repairs but I still have the car. If I buy a service, and the service breaks down, I no longer have the service. Yet, here is a bill for both the service and the fee for you to repair your broken crap so I can actually receive said service. Why is it my responsibility to pay when they are unable to provide me with service because their crap broke? If we want to go back to the car theory, do I pay the mechanic for a new Craftsman if he breaks his on my car? No I don't. Do I have to pay for a "No Breaky My Tools Plan" prior to getting my car fixed?

HORSE POOP.

2.

I read an article about the way men and women use blogs. Men use them primarily to write about money, technology, and politics. Women use blogs as Dear Diaries where they talk about their feelings, their mother-in-laws, and their private lives. The article presented blogs as group therapy. If this is the case, you are all fired as therapists.

FIRED.

2008-05-07T18:22:00.003-05:00

1.

Yesterday, I called my boss to follow up on some things. I had gone home early because the school nurse called about P. I told my supervisor "I have this girl I'd like to drop off tomorrow. She really needs help."

This is something of a joke among intake staff. Parents often call in the hopes that they can have their children committed into a psychiatric facility by verbal statement. They will tell you a laundry list of examples of behavior, often violent and defiant. Sometimes, they list medications and prior placements.

We are not like the drop box outside Blockbuster. You can't just slip them through the door with some clothes and drive away. They have rights. They have to be committed through a court after an impartial evaluation by a doctor who recommends they get this kind of treatment because other less restrictive treatments have either failed or would be impractical for some reason.

I see far too many parents who seem to be looking for a babysitter rather than treatment. One resident has noticed a pattern in her mother's scheduled vacations and her own placement in facilities. One mother was quite upset we would not take her 18 year old because she was supposed to be going out of the country on her honeymoon. We often get children through DHS because they have run out of places to leave these children.

My boss said told me "No, no beds available in the inn" and laughed. We have to laugh. We just have to...

2.

I held out hope that games like Age of Conan and Warhammer would offer fun PVP since that is what they are supposed to center around. I thought, if the game was designed for it, it should be balanced and fun and maybe I can see why everyone gets their panties in a bunch about playing on a PVP server.

Thus far, the report from beta is not optimistic. PVP sounds as frustrating as ever. Additionally, I have watched a couple videos from beta in which fighting seemed rather complicated. There were shields which you could arrange around yourself according to the type of opponent you were fighting. I barely have time to retaliate in a PVP situation. I do not see how I could also switch my shields around. Honestly, I did not see where that would even be useful considering it is rare that you are fighting 1v1 so when you switched them all to one side to counter person A, person B is going to tear up your flank.

One post said: "... is no level protection or anything atm and with the lack of endgame stuff to do theres a serious issue with lvl80s camping spawn points to pick off lowbies even in beta." Oh yes, that sounds like fun. I may as well flush $15 down the toilet monthly.

Combine this information with the guild drama going into the game and you have a recipe for frustration, anger, and no damned fun. I think I'll skip it and catch up on some knitting or reading. Perhaps, I consider a return to Wow for a short while so that I can keep hubby company.

2008-05-06T06:05:00.001-05:00

...

Rebuttal

2008-05-06T01:29:00.003-05:00

A Side:

Regarding WoW, I miss playing with her and I miss us farting around together in game. We usually have a good time questing together and doing stuff, plus I'm a tad bit lonely seeing how the guys I played with here moved servers. Someone needs to convince her to COME PLAY WITH ME!!!!

*and not in the dirty night elf mailbox dancing kind of way either! damn sick-o's, get your heads out of the gutter!

It has also been brought to my attention that if she should land this college teaching gig where we'll be moving, she wants to get a scooter. A little Honda scooter so she can zip around town and "save gas". I'm like... wtf? I don't think so Tim! If anyone is getting any kind of two wheeled transportion, it's going to be me dammit!

I've been drooling over getting a motorcycle for the past five years. Plus two other factors are going to nix this idea of her getting a scooter. 1- Her poor eye sight, coupled with her eyeballs could literally fall out of her head at any time, translates into not being able to see wtf is going on around her. She has very poor situational awareness. 2- This new found arthritis of hers is going to make it painful to ride. Scooters don't have the most cushioning or support. Her back is already fubar, no need to make it worse.

Plus she's already been designated as "bitch rider", so she's SOL on that.

B Side:

Even though she said her new super computer will cover the upcoming Mothers Holiday and her birthday, I'm still going to get her something. I was thinking of getting her this. What are your collective thoughts on this? Also, shhh, don't tell her! I want it to be a surprise!

-M

Step 1... cut a hole in that box
Step 2... put your junk in that box
Step 3... make her open that box

2008-05-04T11:56:00.002-05:00

1.

Speaking of World of Warcraft, M has been trying to talk me into playing again. We originally decided the time difference would make it too hard to play at the same time. I said I could rearrange my schedule over the summer while I'm not working. He said no. I decided that was probably best anyway with Age of Conan coming out and my upcoming house hunt and move.

Lately, he's been talking about me playing again. He wants company. I want to give him this company but those old reasons not to are still valid.

2.

The current diagnosis for my back is degenerative arthritis. I've been reading up on the topic. I'm not pleased to find things like "using canes, walkers, and scooters might be helpful" and so on. I want to go white water rafting on my birthday. I want to take P to ride roller coasters on his birthday. I know these two activities will likely leave me in pain but I'm pretty determined to do it anyway.

3.

I spent Friday training my replacement. I can see where she will have to suffer some political issues. A friend of the director wanted to be my replacement. My superviser does not like this person at all. This friend shot nasty little daggers at my replacement when they announced it during Treatment Team. She is the kind of person that goes around trying to get you in trouble, and trying to coerce other people into saying nasty things about you, when she is upset with you for any slight. She also spends a lot of time talking to the director about things that are none of her business. I'm not sure why she would want my job, where she will be busy, when she gets paid the same for doing nothing right now. This will spell trouble for my new girl though. M thinks I should warn her.

2008-05-03T17:52:00.005-05:00

1.

June marks the release of the latest version of Dungeons and Dragons (table top version). Edition 4 is supposed to make the game easier for the new player to pick up. It is supposed to streamline game play and many other tweaks and evolutions of the game. There is much debate regarding the upcoming release of the rule set.

People argue that the new version is just a way for Wizards of the Coast (WotC) to make more money. Of course it is! They are a business. Businesses measure success by the numbers in the black print. Streamlined gaming with an easier to learn system would potentially open up the game to a larger audience and more money for WotC. What company wouldn't want a larger customer base?

I'm not sure I see how their greed cannot benefit both themselves and the fans of the game. Today many things compete for our attention. Would it be so awful to be able to sit down and start the game before the first evening is over? I admit that I have had few opportunities to really play a game of D&D but on those rare occasions I wanted to bang my head against the table top while waiting for people to finish character creation so that we could actually get to the game.

One of the other often heard arguments against the new version is a comparison to World of Warcraft. I just cannot see how a different rule set could change the essence of the game so significantly. WoW meant standing there in [insert instance] hitting button 1, 2, 3 or 4. No matter who was leading the instance run that evening, the monster said the same thing, used the same attacks, and led to the same result (15 minutes of debating who gets 3 pieces of loot out of 40 people). My options were to heal, heal, heal or heal by pressing buttons. It did not matter if I looked around. I could not talk the monster out of it. WoW is what it is. D&D is what you make it - regardless of which rule books you use.

Another complaint is that the new version appears to focus on the battle part of the game. They say that WotC is making it all about how many monsters you can throw at your players and mass hacking and slashing of foes. Am I wrong in saying that was always an element? Am I also wrong in saying the DM creates the game and controls of the type of game play? I still cannot make the connection where changing the rules means the game is devolving into relentless killing of monsters.

Personally, I look forward to putting away the 3.5 books and cracking open the shiny new ones.

2.

I have refrained from any further comment on anything AoC. I have lost much of the anticipation associated with the game.

Not sure what to say

2008-05-01T13:47:00.005-05:00

I just got back from our medical facility where I helped to patch people together and get them ready to be shipped to better medical facilities because of this:

Officials: Double suicide bombing at Iraqi wedding kills 35

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A pair of suicide bombers blew themselves up amid a wedding convoy Thursday in northeastern Iraq, killing 35 people and wounding 65 others, Iraqi authorities said.

Lt. Gen. Carter Ham says U.S. military commanders are not seeing signs of Iran's pledge to stop arming militants.

The attack took place on a main street in a market area in Balad Ruz, northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province, the official said. A wedding convoy was driving slowly when the first suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest, the official said. When bystanders and police gathered, a second bomb exploded.

One of the bombers was a woman, the official said.

Women and children were among the casualties.

This attack involved the fourth female suicide bomber in Iraq in 11 days.

You can read the rest here: Click for story.

A wedding... a fucking wedding. This makes me so angry that I can't put my full anger into print. I know people want us to leave, but I don't want to leave the Iraqi's to these fuckers. These people refuse to negotiate, will not keep their word and want nothing more than to eradicate us, and anyone who's friendly to us, from the face of the Earth.

How can we leave them to that fate?

-M

Toto... how do we get home?

2008-04-29T14:14:00.007-05:00

A/ B Side:

I was on my way to wash my face because I was heading to bed when the Captain came out of his room (he's moved back in with us, and on our floor... ugh!) and asked if I heard the sandstorm going on outside? I was like... what? I had just got done watching a movie, and logged on WoW very briefly, so I hadn't really heard anything that had been going on around me.

As I turned around and headed back towards the outside door near my room, I could indeed hear the storm going on outside. I also looked out one of the windows and where there should have been lights from the building, not less than fifteen feet from us, there was total darkness.

Luckily for us the wind was blowing against the opposite side of the building so we could go out on the landing. We opened the door and looked out at a very brownish atmosphere. One huge dust storm is washing over us at the moment. It also started to rain... tons of dust in the air followed by lots of water. Hopefully all the water/ mud will be gone by morning. Hopefully...

And while we were standing on the landing, we could hear stuff being ripped apart and see things being blown around. If it wasn't secured, and possibly even if it was, it was being taken and moved, possibly never to be seen again. It's happened before, it'll happen again.

I'll leave you with a pic that I took. I pointed the camera straight out the door and snapped the pic. There was so much dust and sand in the air that the flash had to have reflected off every piece of sand/ dust. Interesting effect none the less:

-M

I hate to be where she is not, when she is not. And yet, I am always going, and she cannot follow.

2008-04-28T12:08:00.005-05:00

1.

The Medical Director is always very interested in the dreams of the residents. I have always been one to have long, complex dreams. They are like movies. I often wish I could rig some kind of machine like in Tommy Knockers, sans the part where your teeth fall out, so that I could harness that power into something creative that does not disappear when I wake.

One recent dream was fairly obvious in interpretation: We are in a home in a bad neighborhood. The house is being broken into. I am fighting, clawing and scratching at the people breaking in while M sits on the couch and looks on in disgust. I am at fault here, for this horrible living environment; therefore, it is up to me to salvage it.

This dream is merely my house hunting anxiety. The idea of buying a house on my own terrifies me. Huge, major purchase. What if no one likes it? What if I make a mistake? What if our neighbors are horrible?

I am still contemplating today's dream. It seemed to have a lot of focus on travel (by plane, which is odd because I rarely fly), trusting a stranger to my things, and having to trust things would work out though they did not look like they would. I seemed impaired in several ways in this dream. I was injured and my head was foggy, probably because of medication for the hurt foot.

It would seem the antithesis of my former dream. I do not know anything about house hunting and I will have to put my trust in strangers (realtor) and some Divine entity to work things out. I was very reluctant to trust the stranger in my dream, so far as to dump the pills he told me I needed to take in the trash. My puppy was a prominent figure in the dream - at the hospital with me, wandering around the place but always returning like some hospital mascot, and the primary item of my things which the man took when he disappeared - and I am uncertain of that significance. It may be nothing more than her scratching about in her bed close to me while I was sleeping being woven into my dream.

M claims to rarely dream, or at the least not to remember them upon waking. He sleeps deeply, so I'm certain he dreams. Sometimes, he has woken me by talking in his sleep while deep in a dream. Usually, he interogates me in our sleep. "Do you have security clearance?" "Do you still want to know about the bunch-of-letters receiver/gun?" "Do you want fries with that?"

Field Mouse in the City

2008-04-28T09:03:00.004-05:00

A Side:

Have you guys seen the new widgets over on the right hand side of the page? We've taken a few out, added one... I think it looks good. Of course I don't manage any of that stuff. I don't keep track of things like widgets, do-dads and thingamajigs. That would require me pouring more effort into this than what I feel like expending at the moment. That's not to say that I don't like providing you guys with extra junk to look at, but hopefully I'm providing you with enough material on my own so that you won't have to check the site just to see if a widget has been updated.

I know that I promised to write about my travels coming home two days ago, but this time it wasn't my fault, honest! Our generator is having some issues and as such, I've had to turn the network off for the past two days. Nothing like racing around shutting down servers and UPS systems screaming at you that they're dying and to rescue them now! The part that really sucks is that V, my boss, left out on his R&R two days ago... yes, the systems conspired against me, waiting for him to leave so that my incompitent self could be left alone with them.

But little do they know that I'm a non negotiating type who'd rather plant a thermite grenade on them as soon as fix them... but hey, that's just my style :)

On to what you're really here for!

B Side:

Ok, we finally reach our destination. It's one of the biggest air bases in the country and it serves as a main transportation hub for most of the country coming into, or leaving, the AOR. We pulled in at night, uloaded all of our bags and started to make our way towards lodging to get a room.

We get checked in and get assigned a room. The rooms are trailers arranged in a set of pods. Our set of pods are all the way on the back side of this housing complex. It's about a mile away. Not a fun walk. But we do it and because we're not quite tired, and a bit hungry, we start to walk around. My travel buddy has been here multiple times before so he knows the lay of the land. He shows me the MWR facility (fucking huge), the gym (fucking huge), they have a Green Bean coffee (not huge, but still) and then we make it on over to the dining facility.

Except this isn't the main dining facity. This is the secondary dining facility. It's still at least five times larger than what I eat in. They had a lot of different things, more variety. Quality/ taste wise, about the same.

One of the thing though that I found myself doing though was just sitting there staring at people. Not in a menancing way, or creepy way, but just looking at this mass of people just eating, wearing PT clothing in to a chow hall and eating, no guns, no worries, laughing and enjoying themselves. We laugh and have a good time, but there was a different quality to this.

This is the one that has never been outside the wire, never had to worry about things like if they're going to get water/ electricity, if they're going to face a riot because they haven't been paid... if it wasn't for all the Army people mingled in with them, you'd swear this was stateside. It's almost as if this was a stateside TDY.

This was my first time off my base in almost seven months. It was the first time I ate with real silver wear, had a real plate and wasn't wearing a gun everywhere I went. For me, it was total culture shock. It was like coming out of the wild and being thrown into the city.

We were there for about two or three days before we flew on to Kuwait. But that and being home will have to wait for later.

C Side:

So a few topics I want to discuss. Lets see if I can remember them all:

1) The pvp server business. I really don't want to. I have very little interest in doing pvp. It's not something that I paticularly find fun anymore. The pvp in Age of Conan sounds even more dreary. You can "build a castle" then defend it, or go attack another groups!

Let me pull out my best Adam Sandler voice and say, whoooopidy dooooo! I do that shit in real life. I don't paticularly want to do it in a game. What's really pissing us off though is the adament refusal of certain people to even entertain the thought of considering a different server to play on, or some sort of compromise. I can potentially see the same things that broke up the WoW group happening here. /shrug.

2) I transfered my warlock today to my mages server. Apparently while I was on vacation, the guys that I play with from work here decided to move servers. Well, let me correct myself. The wife of the GM decided to move to a different server, he moved too which caused the other guy to move. I got back and found out they had left, which basically meant I was there by myself. I didn't feel like making a new character on yet another server, so I went ahead with my original plan and transfered the lock over. I had to change her name, which kind of sucked, but all I did was put an extra character on at the end of her name, so it worked out.

3) Even though I was gone for a month, the same ole shit was going on when I got back. New petty arguments broke out between us, the new small Army team here responsible for Iraqi recruit training and the contractors responsible for other parts of the Iraqis training. The contractors are assholes and the new Army team is just... dumb. Mainly the contractors are major assholes.

4) I very rarely dream anymore. I don't feel that I sleep that deep because I usually wake up really tired. I know that right now I'm still having major problems readjusting my sleep schedule. I've continually woken up at 3am to go pee and then have troubles getting back to sleep. I hope it works itself out.

But with the dreaming... my dad had the same thing happen to him too, or so he says. For a long period of time through his thirties, he didn't dream at all. Most of the time I don't. Sometimes I do and if I'm very very lucky, I'll remember the end of it, or I might remember an impression of it, but past that I'm SOL.

I use to have really vivid, descriptive dreams. I think the reason I don't dream anymore, and the reason my brain doesn't really function as well anymore, is because I don't engage it like I should. I need to get back into school, finish my degree. I need to get back into school for no other reason than to wake my brain up.

Like Henry, there's a lot of stuff I still want to do but I feel like time is already running out.

-M

If you take a life
do you know what you'll give?
Odds are you won't like what it is

2008-04-25T14:13:00.008-05:00

1.

I am retarded. GTA comes out April 29. I have not yet figured what was released April 22 - game, movie, TV show, book? Who knows? The date was glued in my head for some reason. GTA comes out the day after my three day holiday. Naturally.

I will have to console myself with the new hobby in Lord of the Rings Online (fishing) and the new areas and tokens and whatnot.

These two games should get me over the hump until Age of Conan comes out.

2.

I have mentally quit my job. My mind did not bother with the whole x days notice thing. It just threw the mental hands up and said, I'm outta here.

I just typed 10 pages of transcription for the Medical Director. I knew the 8 tapes prior to the one I just finished would not be the last of it. They will milk this transcription out of me until the day I leave.

The new person, who is working as a mental health technician here now, starts in May. For the uninitiated, a mental health tech is fancy talk for babysitter to mean, aggressive children.

3.

Regarding my holiday, I was told that I am not allowed to have the day off to observe Confederate Memorial Day because "you are a damned Yankee." That's okay, I'll take the day off anyway.

It will be spent going to the doctor to follow up on my ER visit Wednesday morning. The rumor around the ER was gall bladder. Just the name of the things make it seem like something you want removed. It also sounds like something horribly inappropriate to talk about - so I'll stop. I'm just getting things checked out.

I get to go to physical therapy that day as well. So all the fun of the day off has been effectively killed anyway.

4.

The great PVP/PVE debate rages on.

One day, I was wandering around Tatooine in the hopes of finding a gun. The folks in town told me about a gun dealer that lurked around in a small ratty town somewhere in the desert. I eventually found him - along with a posse of womp rats with a bad attitude.

Eventually, I fell in with the inhabitants of the run down city. This carried over into Call of Duty and also WoW for a while before the it became impossible to field a single instance run and I went off in search of larger guilds. I left the division, but I stayed in the guild and I have been a part of it for many years now.

It touts being like a family and like any good family, we fight. Currently, we are having a debate over which kind of server to chose for Age of Conan (henceforth known as AoC because I'm lazy). Start calling me a carebear now because personally I see little "pros" to being on a PVP server:

Pro
You learn your character. Okay look, I won't lie. You learn to play your character better on a PVP server when you are constantly having to fight the AI and everyone around you the entire time you play.

In terms of "hard core" the other people on the server tend to also know how to play their character. You are not likely to run into a warrior that says "but I'm not protection spec" when you ask them why they do not even own a shield. In this same vein, the PVP servers tend to be more progressive as far as game content goes because they are so tard core.

Con
The people on the server are generally nasty. They are greedy. They are mean. They use the word Chuck and Norris in far too many sentences - that is if they are even capable of putting together sentences.

You are minding your own business when one comes along and kills you. And then kills you again. After they dance on your corpse they kill you again. Then they bring some friends over to watch them kill you again. Never mind they are 20-40 levels higher than you and it only takes one shot. If the PVP on a PVP server was actually an equal or fairly equal battle of skill that would be one thing. It is not. If you try to tell me it is, you are smoking crack and I want some. If I want to PVP, I want to PVP. I do not want to be ambushed by a huge crowd, nor someone a dozen levels higher, nor someone who hides in the bush until I'm busy trying to fight off something else to notice them stabbing me in the back.

I also do not know how excited I can really be about spending a huge amount of time and resources on building a siege city that I have to sit around and defend. I am not very good at PVP. I do not react fast enough to the unpredictable nature of the enemy. So mostly, I would be busting my butt to blow a bunch of resources on a PVP city which would be crushed.

Note: I understand it can only be attacked at certain times so you do not have to actually sit around all day for days on end waiting for it to be attacked but the idea is the same, sit around and defend (at the appointed time) and watch city be crushed, with the likes of me guarding the damned thing.

My biggest frustration with all this is the fact that it is so Us vs Them. The PVP people do not even want to fathom a world where people would like to focus on crafting or something instead of defending, blowing resources, and getting ass raped every time they go outside a city. They threaten to run off to do their own thing if we do not all go their way. They say it is their money and they will do what they want.

Do they not realize that by forcing me to play on a server where I will be constantly killed(because they certainly won't stand around to protect me or even come to my rescue when I'm being ganked because "oh they'll leave by the time we get there" or "oh well I'm not going to pay a bunch of repair bills just to die with you") is asking me to do the same? What about my money? Is my money not good enough around here?

I have not decided what I will do. It looks like the majority would like to play on the PVP server. I would like to play with the guys again but I know from experience that I will be frustrated and bitter with PVP unless they have done something dramatic to make it a balanced affair.

I HAVE RETURN!

2008-04-25T13:16:00.003-05:00

A Side:

Howdy strangers! I'm sure many of you have been wondering where the hell I've been. I was on jazza baby! I had my 15 days of R&R back in the states! It was really really good. Of course getting to the states was an adventure all in itself which I'm sure you're dying to hear ;) (Of course you are! You're not here for the witty WoW commentary, I'm pretty sure of that)

Lets rewind back to about Mar 23- 25th. If you remember from one of my last posts, we had two huge windstorms back to back here. That coiencided with my getting ready to leave here to go on R&R. Those windstorms basically dicked over the entire air travel schedule here in the AOR. See, not only does it basically ground all flights for those days, but then it creates a back log of travel requirements. Bascially it fucks the scheduling all up pretty hardcore.

That was what was facing myself and my travel companion (because you never travel by yourself, you always have a buddy; plus his R&R was scheduled for the same time). Along with my travel buddy, we had 5 VIPs out here who needed to get back to their bases. Total of seven people trying to get out of here, along with everyone else in the AOR who needed to travel. Can you maybe see where I'm going with this?

The first night that a flight was suppose to come in, we all travel out to the helipad and waited. And waited. And waited... basically we waited for about four hours but alas it never showed. One of the problems with air travel here is that they don't have a good scheduling system in place to let you know when birds are arriving/ departing. They can tell you, Nope, no flights are scheduled for today, then an hour later two choppers land. You're like... wtf? But that's the Army for ya. The more I'm around these people, the more I'm confused as to how they get absolutely anything done, because they can turn the simplest processes into huge cluster fucks. But getting back to my travel log...

The second night was much like the first. Got out there, waited and waited, but no bird. The third night we had two shithooks (that would be Chinooks to the civilians out there) land. But as we were waiting this team of about 20 Army guys, and all their gear/ shit, arrived as we were waiting. Yes, your faithful narrator was bypassed yet again, as were the other six guys with me. Watching those two shithooks take off without me... well, it was a bummer.

Of course what made it not so bad was the fact that during these days that I was waiting to get out, I didn't have to work. So I basically had a couple of days off to just relax and chill out. Very nice!

During these days, the idea of catching a ride with a convoy kept being brought up. Specifically by the person who I was going on R&R with. Travel in and out of here is so hit and miss, mainly miss, that this is about the only reliable form of travel. So on the fourth day, that's what we did. It was either that, or not make it out at all and miss my flight home. Considering I hadn't seen Heather and the boy in almost seven months, I reluctantly accepted.

We hooked up with an Army team that had come in the night prior for a routine delivery over to the Army FOB on the other side of base here. My travel buddy had been in contact with them and made the arrangements. We got over to them at about 6pm along with one of the VIPs, our first sgt. The three of us would be traveling, at night under the cover of darkness, along with these guys. Once I was assigned to a truck I went over and introduced myself to the crew. We all hit it off pretty quick, which was really nice, and it turned out that the driver was a pretty big WoW player before he left for Iraq, so that gave us a good bit to talk about.

The drive over... hmmm, how do I explain it? It was four hours of nerve wracking, constantly being on edge, sharp and alert... it's something I never want to do again in my life. You're in full battle rattle, meaning your IBA (individual body armor), all weapon magazines (7 M4 and 3 M9 magazines), helmet, DAPS (shoulder blast protectors), weapons and anything else you've strapped to yourself. The truck we were in didn't have A/C, so even though we were riding at night it was still hot as shit because you're trapped in all your armor and the Air Force designed one of the hottest uniforms on the planet and then gave it to the service members going to one of the hottest places on Earth (really fucking smart right?).

Of course that was my reaction to the situation. These Army guys though, they'd been doing it for close to fifteen months! They were pretty damn calm, cool and relaxed about it. Very professional, which is really good. We talked the entire time, about WoW, about what my team was doing out here, about stupid things the Army and Air Force does... basically, we just shot the shit for the entire ride.

Part of what made the ride so long though was the fact that we were escorting KBR trucks. Let me tell ya, KBR is making an absolute killing on this war. Just Google them and see what ya bring up. It's disgusting. Anyways, on the ride over two of the KBR trucks broke down. The Army guys let me in on why that happened: KBR doesn't maintain their equipment worth shit. The drivers don't do any kind of checks on their vehicles before they leave. They just get in and go. These Army guys hated doing anything with KBR because of it. I don't blame'em. The two times we stopped, both times it took near twenty minutes before we got moving again. Twenty minutes where anything could've happened. Not a fun experience.

Eventually we did make it. When we got there, they dropped us off, we all wished each other luck (they only had 3o days or so left in country before they left, so I wished'em safe travels, and they did the same for me and my R&R), and my travel buddy and I went and obtained billeting for the night. He asked what I thought of that, doing the convoy (he did convoys for six months right after Baghdad fell) and I basically told him no more... that's something I don't want to do again. He laughed and agreed.

B Side:

No B Side for tonight. It's 10pm and time for bed. But I do have a lot of things that I want to talk about. Things like culture shock at seeing mass people again, being home, coming back... lots of little things. So over the course of the next few days I'll be blogging a good bit and spilling more beans.

Also, I know my writing above may be a bit jumbled. I'm a bit rusty seeing how it's been over a month since I last wrote something, so please excuse me but you'll just have to get the fuck over it and suffer till I get my sea legs back, as it were =)

-M

I've seen angels fall from blinding heights
but you yourself are nothing so divine,
just next in line...

2008-04-21T16:41:00.008-05:00

Something Old, Something New

Work continues to be catch up from the two blissful weeks of vacation. I continue to have to tell my supervisor that the work of someone above her and in a completely different department has to come first over the work that I'm supposed to be doing for her. The rumor is that the Medical Director's transcription will be going to a service sometime this week and that these tapes I'm catching up on will be the last. I will believe that when I see it.

I've come up with a new method of communication with P and so far it is working well. He does not like to be nagged about chores. I do not like to have to tell him what he is supposed to do 500x daily. I made an action list page, similar to the ones I use at work and home. I create a list of things he is supposed to do each day. We go over it the night before to be sure he does not have any questions. He has control over when he does the items provided he does them that day and does not wait until bedtime to work on the list. This clears our conversations for more pleasant things, less likely to create arguments between us.

I'm also trying some new things to get the puppy housebroken (yes, I'm afraid she is not yet housebroken, she is much more difficult to train than my lab). So far that seems to be working also.

I am not so naive that I do not realize we are all in a honeymoon period regarding these new methods. They may fall apart but I will enjoy them working as intended for as long as I can.

Something Portal, Something Cool

I installed Portal on my new computer. I was determined to finish it this time. I played the game from start to finish last night. What a delightful little game. The writing is so clever. The puzzles are fun and challenging.

Tomorrow, I pick up the new GTA game. Somehow it seems wrong for a person working with young adolescents with traumas and mental disorders to look forward to coming home to pimp slap some bitches and outrun the police. It's all in good fun.

Something broken, Something blue

I have hit a wall in my rehabilitation for my back. It is no worse and no better. Sometimes, it feels almost normal. Other times, I can hardly move. I feel old and broken.

The bigger bummer is spending another several months alone. In this time, I have to move our household and find and buy our first house. Also alone. To paraphrase the highly overused quote from Gone with the Wind "I don't know nothin about buyin no houses!" I look forward to having a house and being settled into it but I loathe the process which proceeds it.

I have not heard anything from the college where I have applied for a position as an English Instructor. I called the chair a week or so ago to see how things were going. He was drowning in work (budget to write, 5 jobs to hire for, classes to teach etc) he sounded frazzled. I hope it is only this frazzle that accounts for the lack of communication. He said he would be calling me soon for an interview. I would really like this job. I am ready to work in my field. I will keep my fingers crossed for a little longer before I start to panic.

Goodbye, again

2008-04-17T07:59:00.002-05:00

I am Clare Abshire in The Time Traveler's Wife. In a few short hours, my Henry will go away again. I will not be sure where he is or when I will hear his voice or feel his touch again. I will wake up to the empty space. I will wander through my days, as if asleep.

I think there is something harder about saying goodbye for the second time.

2008-04-07T19:20:00.004-05:00

I am sitting in front of my new computer, sleek and black like a wet dog.

P sits in front of the new TV, also sleek and black resting like a picture frame on top of an unfinished oak credenza. He is playing Halo 3 and luxuriating in the extra space between the TV and himself.

M sits in front of what will become P's first computer. I have my back to him but it is comforting to listen to the click of the mouse coming from somewhere behind me. I know where he is. I know he is safe - as safe as anyone can be in this finite amount of space we have to live.

The puppy is a comet of black soft fur shooting across the room, sometimes stopping to bark at the strange suited men in the new window. She has no experience with television.

The older dog sits at my feet trying to remain inconspicuous in the hopes that the comet will stay out of her orbit for a little while.

2008-03-28T20:18:00.004-05:00

Flipside:

The word is out.

I put in my resignation letter. My last day at the facility is May 16. This also happens to be my birthday. Happy birthday to me! This also happens to be the weekend I'll be going on a white water rafting trip with some co-workers.

I have mixed feelings. Who does not like a break? A vacation? Additionally, I eagerly anticipate moving, well more accurately, being moved. I can live without the actual process of moving. I look forward to the new job I am trying to get. I look forward to having a house or at the least not having an apartment. My leaving the facility also coincides with P's last few days of school, the release of Age of Conan, the opening of Prince Caspian, and the time the new edition of D&D comes out.

I have shipped P off to grandma's all summer every summer for the last several years of his life. It will be nice to spend a little time with him this year, maybe do something nice for his birthday, before sending him. He likes to go and they plan camps and things, so I'll still send him of course.

At the same time, I will no longer have the extra funds I've grown used to having. I'll have to tighten the purse strings. I will not have some place to be or people counting on me. I do not know when I'll get my next job - though I sincerely hope it is at the college.

Flopside:

M is on his way home for his midtour. Technically, it is not the middle of his tour. We scheduled it this way so that P would have spring break at the same time. He convoyed out sometime today. 3 hours of sweaty ride. He sounded tired on the phone.

We're looking forward to his being home. We have plans to go to The Shed, Jeremy's Cafe, and Dough Boys. We'll see about what else. We'll get a new TV (yep, still no TV). We'll build my computer. We'll just hang out and enjoy each other's company.

These kind of things change a person. I've stayed in frequent contact with him while he's been there though so I think I will know the guy that comes home. Of course, what I cannot predict is how he will do in acclimating himself to being home. I just hope he is able to stay patient.

Floopside:

I had the notion to try to find all the random notebooks I've written in over the years. I decided to type each bit of useful writing and categorize it. I have fallen helplessly in love with the Circa/Rollabind system and I have a growing collection of the notebooks for various subjects. I figured that would be the best way to organize and store this information. I hoped that once I pulled it all together, I might have enough of something to work with.

I know there is more...somewhere. I'm not sure where. Pieces and bits. Scattered like stars against the black night. What I've managed to pull together only equals a whole 15 pages so far. Next to nothing. Some of it interesting enough, but most of it just not there. Now that I have it, I'm not sure how to categorize it. Now that I have it, I can see just how much of my time I have wasted over the years.

That's a whole blog (not just blog topic) of its own.

I'll continue pulling stuff together nonetheless. I guess I will just have to start writing things to put in these lovely Circa notebooks.

I've realized I have trouble writing at home. When I am away, I write a lot. When I am here, I write very little or nothing at all. My hope is that I will get this job at the university. I will have time between classes, which I will spend grading papers I'm sure but also perhaps sneaking in some writing while I am somewhere other than home and more likely to do it.

If things do not all work out as planned...I will just have to force myself to work. I have plenty of ideas now...just need to put the butt to the seat as they say.

A Found Journal Page

2008-03-25T23:03:00.003-05:00

Q. Who is measuring life?
A. The person in the booth across from me, staring at something over my shoulder, counting me up in his mind, comparing me beside something else.

Q. Last fall you received evidence that your mathematics of life did not add up. Why have you not recalculated?
A. I am terrible at math.

Q. Please explain the differences between the life I asked you to lead and the one you lead?
A. Your footsteps were too small or too big and my compass broke in the wilderness.

Q. How do you know how long you will last?
A. How do you know how long you will last?

Q. May I change the direction of your compass?
A. No, but you may get your own compass.

Q. Can I designate more than one voice in your head?
A. I'd prefer to evict you all, put you in cardboard boxes under an overpass.

Q. May I change the...
A. Subject? Yes, you may, the weather is good.

Hospitality

2008-03-24T06:03:00.004-05:00

A Side:

I hope everyone had a happy Easter. I didn't get a chance to make it to the Sunday service, as usual I was up to my armpits in work. I haven't had a chance to make it to any services, save two, and those were really early on in the deployment here. But I'm hoping the good Lord will look over this rough patch here with favorable eyes and give me a pass. At least that's the case I'll argue with Him later.

Easter lunch was the same as Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. Ham, turkey, sweet potatoes, instant shit potatoes and cheese sticks. Yes, they had cheese sticks. The meal was complete and Mike left happy.

Something that I forgot about though, was the fact that a week ago, the contractor who I'm supervising here had suggested that we have a feast on Sunday. He had come up to me and broached the subject with me by asking if I liked lamb. I was like... yes, yes I do. He then asked if it would be ok for him to bring in a roasted lamb and if we could all have a feast. I said I didn't see a problem with that. So we arranged to have the feast yesterday.

Fast forward a week. During that time, I got hit with some kind of stomach virus, a big part of the work was done and my steel trap mind rusted shut. In essence, I forgot about it. Well, not totally. It was lurking in the back of my mind, but seeing how he didn't bring it up again and I didn't see him for a few days, I just hadn't given it too much thought.

Which brings us to yesterday. V and I headed over to lunch a bit after noon, hoping to avoid the usual long line and still get some tastey vittles. Tastey vittles check, long line avoidance was a scratch. Didn't have to wait too long, but the temperatures are rising so it makes standing outside not so pleasant anymore. We head inside, eat the above mentioned meal and sit around for a bit to let it digest as we yak with the Aussies.

We finally leave, head back over to the barracks and I'm here for about ten minutes before I get a call from our terp who says that there are two contractor guys here to see me at the front gate. I'm like... jeesh, can't one day go by without me needing to ride to the front gate? *incase the answer isn't obvious, that would be a no*

I find a terp, we hop in the truck and proceed out to the front gate. I get out there and immediately recognize the supervisor and the old man guard. I greet them in arabic (if you can at least speak some of their language and attempt to learn, they respect you more fyi) and ask bascially, what's up? The supervisor then asks me if I remember the feast? It was then that the dam broke and the huge memory wave crashed over me. I said, yes, of course I do! In my head I said, oh shit, I just ate!

After some back and forth banter, the old man guard brings the car up, pops the trunk and unloads this huge piece of lamb. I was told it was a year old lamb and it went from the neck to the back legs. No front legs, but that was fine. It had been stuffed with rice and slow cooked. The included some yummie wheat flat bread.

Basically he gives this to me, thanks me, says that he's glad I'm doing better (last time he saw me was the day before I got sick, then he left the next day) and leaves. Which leaves me with a huge ass piece of lamb in the back of my truck and me not knowing wtf to do with it. But then I have a brilliant idea. Brilliant ideas are few and far between for me, so when they do happen, I latch onto them and run like the wind!

The contractor had left a few of his guys behind to continue work and I thought it would be a great thing to share this meal with them. I didn't know if they'd had a good meal recently, so I thought this would be a great good will gesture and just nice thing to do. Apparently I was right.

When I pulled up, they came out and we all greeted each other. After the greetings, I brought them around to the back of the truck and said, simply, hey, I brought you guys a huge lamb stuffed with rice and bread, want it? Simply put, of course they did. Only condition? I had to stay and eat with them, otherwise, it'd be an insult to them. Not wanting to set off an international incident (really, who does?), I said yes, even though my stomach was like, wtf are you doing numbnutts????

But it turned out to be a good thing. I spent the better part of two hours there while we just sat and chatted. I explained to them, through the terp, that I had just eaten, but I would eat some more with them, which of course made them smile. (I only ate a little... I was stuffed!) After eating, we sat around, had some great chai (I don't think they know how to make bad chai. They can't even if they wanted to) and they proceeded to pepper me with all sorts of questions. Mainly questions about living in the States, the military, personal life... like everyone, they're interested. I in turn responded with my own inquiries which they happily answered.

Then it came time for me to leave. They invited me back for dinner with them later that night, but I couldn't due to the fact that the Army team was leaving out at the same time. The lucky bastards tour is over. Overall I had a great time. They had dinner and lunch for today, and better relations were fostered. Hopefully they leave with a better impression and understanding than when they came. It's all I can ask for really.

B Side:

Not much on the B Side. Heather doesn't want to go back to work this morning, the boy ships back off to school... oh, I hate our new dog. I know she's a puppy and all, but she's starting to destroy valuable things. I understand the teething thing, but she better make a great impression when I get home. Otherwise Miss DeVille might have a new pair of gloves!

-M

Arm yourself because no-one else here will save you
The odds will betray you
And I will replace you

Easter Update

2008-03-23T18:08:00.002-05:00

There are shiny white chocolate bunnies looking across the table with their dopey pastel eyes. They are surrounded by milk chocolate eggs in glistening foil.

It cannot be the same with him gone. I was surprised that M's parents didn't even call much less come down for the holiday. I managed to shake it off and go pick up some Easter goodness and have a feast cooked by someone else.

Happy Easter

2008-03-23T11:46:00.004-05:00

There are no Easter Baskets. No Easter Candy. No colored eggs, pictures of rabbits, nor pastel Sunday best. No ham. No mashed potatoes.

No family.

I feel guilty. I failed at my responsibility. I have no imagination for these holidays without my other half here.

P does not seem overly concerned or even interested in the traditional holiday fair. He says that but will he remember this year as the one Mommy screwed up and the Easter Bunny never came? Was I supposed to pull a rabbit out of my hat? Yes, I probably should have.

If you call it "untitled", is that not a title?

2008-03-19T18:13:00.006-05:00

I want to write an entry. I want to be witty and sparkling; however, this work week has been full of Mondays. My brain is operating in small words and choppy sentences. Misspellings. Broken images. Slow motion. I'm content to just stare.

I thought to vent about various work woes but I cannot find the words. It would take too much explaining and I'm tired.

They have refused to completely approve my leave for the 2 weeks Mike is home. I transcribe all the Medical Director's notes. I do this not because it is my responsibility but as a favor because he likes the way I do it. Then more and more duties get put on my plate and the transcription becomes impossible to keep up with along with the duties of my actual position. My supervisor has been pushing to have the transcription sent to a service so I can do my work. So I was rather unhappy when I learned that it was not my responsibilities they wanted me to come in for in the middle of the 2 weeks but the transcription.

That is just one of the things going on. I can barely wrap my head around any of the others. Just know that I want to strangle a number of people there. I would say something about going postal but I'm not serious. I'm just frustrated and venting. It is sorta sad that in the current state of things I cannot freely say I want to strangle those people without worrying that someone might think "OMG, she's going to strangle them, call the Police, have her phone tapped, send her to counseling" and freak out thinking it is a real threat.

I have been thinking about our next duty station. I put in an application for an opening for instructor of English at a college. I'm ready to do something with my degree. It feels rusty. The chair has not returned my phone call or given me any indication that he even received the thing. I'm trying to balance between interested and overeager in regards to how often I try to call the man. His lack of response has me a little worried though.

Well look who's here...

2008-03-19T07:03:00.005-05:00

A Side:

I've told most of you that I'm a procrastinator by heart, right? Add Heather to that list and you'll find the reason why there's been an absense of posts recently. There are other reasons too... namely I've been tasked with a few more projects to supervise that have kept my attention way too much.

So lets see, anything of interest that's happened. Uhm, I had my 32nd birthday on the 10th. This is the first birthday that I've been away so it's a new experience. Not one that I really want to repeat mind you. Heather sent me a nice $30 iTunes gift card and I've spent most of it on a lot of new tunes. I finished out the "Icky Thump" The White Stripes album, finished out Meiko's debut album (more people need to hear her), Supreme Beings of Leisures fifth album (5 years later!), made a few guilty pleasure purchases and have enjoyed them all.

More of note is the fact that I woke up at 3am this morning with horrendous stomach cramps and having to use the bathroom really bad. Apparently I'm the latest to catch "the bug". Some kind of damn stomach virus that is making its way around and I'm the next victim on the list.

I feel a bit better now, but I still feel like crap. The fact that I'm even writing this as we speak talks to the guilt... err... the dedication that I have to you guys. Seriously, it's all for you.

Quit sniggering you assholes.

B Side:

Last Thursday and Friday we had back to back horrible windstorms that proceeded to blow tons of sand, and other things not secured to the ground, all around. Below is the picture that I took while trying to navigate to the worksite.

Greetings from Mars to the planet Earth! Don't run, we are your friends! =)

-M

Sometimes I feel I got to
run away
I got to
get away

2008-03-05T19:18:00.002-06:00

My maternal grandfather was buried in the same grave yard as my paternal grandmother. Though all the stones were set in the ground, one looking like the other, I recognized the two medium sized trees slumped under the weight of the ice, trees that were bookends to my grandmother's resting place. I went to her site after the service. I pushed the ice away from the placard with my bare hands and ran a finger along her middle name - that was the one she went by. All she was now just a bronze rectangle among the trees.

2008-03-05T08:51:00.002-06:00

We had this beautiful moment last night where we were sitting in the hush watching the snow fall on the other side of the window. He sat in my lap and talked in quiet tones. I have never heard him speak so reverently as when he said "It's awesome."

You must have this many stripes to enter the meeting

2008-03-05T08:01:00.004-06:00

A Side:

So exactly when do I stop feeling like an A1C (E3) and start feeling like a Staff Sgt (E5) again? The senior NCOs and TSgts just had a nice hour and a half long meeting that I had to sit around and wait for in which they discussed mundane things like, PT scheduling, EPRS, agreeing we're not buying anything for the Iraqi's anymore and forcing them to use their own supply chains and other top secret information like that, that if were to be heard by the Staff Sgts directly, would cause the hole in the ozone layer to repair itself... or so my wild imagination tells me.

There's less than a handfull of Staffs and there was really no reason to keep us from sitting and discussing anything. I'm sure you're saying, but Mike, the military is big on rank exclusion and heirarchy and tradition! Well that's all and good, but with such a small team as ours, it's rather pointless to do things like that. You can discuss the mudane shit with us, then for the really super secret stuff (idk, EPRs?) say, ok need you guys to step out, we'll be out in 10.

What it boils down to is that I don't feel like I'm treated like an NCO. Coming from my last base, where I actually did NCO type work, being here is a reversion back to the Airmen grades. That doesn't sit to well with me, but there's not much I can do about it either. Why is my motivation so low to do anything? Ask yourself what you're doing to empower me to succed, then you might find your answer.

B Side:

There's more I want to talk about, mainly some of us are moving to a new compound, while others are staying here in the same building. I want to talk about this, do it in a funny way, but it's been a pretty long day and I'm wiped. I've tried a few times to write about it but it's just not coming out the way I want it to, which is leading me to be more annoyed than I want to be, so I'm simply leaving it at that. More to follow later.

Honestly, I was in a better mood earlier in the day. This is something that's common with me, just flipping from being fine to just being in a super shitty mood. Heather has seen it progress over the years and I fear it's getting worse. It's becoming apparent that whatever the triggering mechanism for this reaction is, it's becoming easier to do. One minute I'll be fine, then next I'm just... seriously pissed off.

And I don't know why. I also have a feeling that I'm going to need to seek out the professional counseling that the military is going to offer me when I get home finally. I don't want to become my dad and my family doesn't need two people like that. Plus I don't think Heather would stick around for that. While the vows do say "for better, or for worse" it doesn't mention "or becoming an exact replica of your raging beserker father."

Seriously, aren't I done yet? Is it time to come home, even just for a short while? /sigh

-M

Fall to pieces, I'm falling...
fell to pieces and I'm still
falling...