So the company went bowling today. I was on the worst team. I can’t complain though, the teams were made randomly and I wound up on a team with nobody who was very good at bowling. Interestingly, everyone else had a name starting with “Ma”. I called the team “Erik and the Mas”. It was just five pin bowling. On the first round I got 108, then 113, and finally 127. Daunting when the best bowler I saw got 234.
I didn’t go running today. I didn’t even pretend by going to the gym. This is the only time I have to make an adventure for Friday night’s D&D game. I’m hoping to stall the players with monsters. But I feel obligated to come up with a history to the desert so that I can give better encounters with some substance behind them. So I have to get back to work now.

I walked past one of my neighbors’ door this evening. On the doorstop was a catalog from the Running Room. I find this amusing because he is the last person I can think of that will do exercise. I don’t know him personally, but he looks like the kind of person who will always take the elevator to go up one floor. Ah the joy of stereotyping.
This morning I was depressed. Really depressed. I think I was too tired yesterday to realized I had been rejected by women once again. So it kicked in this morning leaving me cranky and irritable over my mortality and the thought of dying alone. I grew out of it by late afternoon.
It is my father’s birthday today. I’ll be honest that I don’t know how old he is. If I knew I would probably get depressed. And think more about mortality. Let’s not go there.
Improv class was good today. I did a number of scenes, with some that I’m actually not embarrassed about. The instructor complemented me on one skill. I’m always realistic. When I was taking a pizza order, I didn’t try and make it weird, but just a double pepperoni, extra cheese and green pepper. This is odd because he pointed out previously, two weeks ago, that I was doing things that were not realistic. I guess I’m progressing as an improviser.
Tomorrow my work is having a social event. We get off of work early so we can go bowling. I don’t really know the point of the social events, but I’m not going to complain. I haven’t bowled in a long time. Technically, I should be running tomorrow, but this will give me an opportunity to give my knee a rest.
At work this morning I was investigating trying to get a compiler to do an automated task. It fought me tooth and nail, and in the end it won. Metrowerks has gotten really complacent with their product. They believe they have a monopoly (and to a certain extent they do) and they have got a good scam going. Every time the Mac OS is updated, you need to get a new version of the compiler from Metrowerks. This is not a free upgrade, but a rather expensive one. Since they practically have a guaranteed income, without significant work, there seems to be no motivation to make the compiler better. Just a bit more Applescript support is all I’m asking for.

Well, I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up on that one girl. I had no matches. The organizers are recommending that I try with a younger group. I agree, but I don’t see any events for younger people that fit my schedule. Plus the whole thing seems like a magnet for killing self-esteem. It was good to know that the women are a LOT picker than the men.
I don’t really care right now. I’m tired, and it is only Monday.

I have succeeded in making myself busy on weekends. I don’t know if that Improv class was the kicker that did it, but this seems to be the first free time I have after the game on Friday.
I use CIBC for my banking, There is one two blocks from where I live, but I consider it a joke. I have never seen it open. In theory it is a working branch, but the hours it is open are during normal work hours, and never on the weekend. So I consider it a vacant store, except for it’s instant teller. Instead I go to one near where I used to live. It’s a friendly place and the financial advisor I see once or twice a year still recognizes me. I did the transactions I needed, then went home. I should have enough to put a serious dent in the amount of RRSPs I can buy. With maybe a thousand dollar difference, which I’m not going to worry about. As long as I don’t allow it to grow too much, I should be able to kill it eventually. (Or is this how deficit spending starts.) If I start earning more it will help more later.
After that I did a bit of personal shopping. Then I caught up with some computer work I needed to do. I still need to figure out what to do for the D&D game next Friday. I should develop the ancient history of a long forgotten desert empire. Or I could follow my favorite phrase: “Throw monsters at the problem.” The problem is usually the players. Since combat is a huge time suck, it lets me stall the game. And the players get a steady supply of XP, which they rarely complain about.
In the evening I went to New City. I’m starting to enjoy that bar more and more. Since I am parasitic on Jake, I get to meet his friends, and it has helped me expand my social circle more. Sarah was there, and I danced with her a bit. I guess my D&D playing doesn’t make me a total pariah. She has an interesting way of dancing, which involves keeping her eyes shut most of the time. I got to know Shay and his friend Morgan. Both work for a tech support company called Convergys. (Sounds familiar.) Shay is also a Mac person who plays Halo on the Xbox. So we got geeky. I left at around 11:30 so I could get up early the next day.
Sunday morning run was 26km. It took about two and a half hours. Then I went to a brunch at around noon. I tried to eat more protein than carbohydrates this time. I’ve been getting sleepy from previous ones, so I’m hoping this helps. Note: I don’t believe in the Atkins diet. If you want to lose weight, exercise. If you can’t drink orange juice, that’s just wrong.
Then after the brunch, I finished reading the newspaper, and then it was off to the Rapid Fire Theater general meeting. I volunteer for this group of improvisers at a casino, giving them a LOT of money. This allows me to attend their annual meeting. I enjoy their works and it’s cool to hang out with a bunch of actors. Especially at a semi-serious meeting. They all want to be the center of attention so there are a lot of… “antics”. The race to see who can forward a motion first and who can second it is quite fierce. Then there is free food afterwords.
By now it was a bit past six. So I was off to the speed dating. This event only allowed men over six feet tall to come in. Unfortunately the age limit was under 38. Mein godt! The women there were a lot older than me. They weren’t all as attractive as the people organizing it had tempted me with. But I still feel good about this one. I was able to say I did NOT want to meet many people. It felt empowering that I got to reject people instead of it happening the other way around. There was one girl there that I did enjoy, who was about my age. I would like to think we connected, but my track record isn’t that good.
I talked to the organizers after. Apparently men usually want to meet most of the women they interview. Whereas the women would pick maybe one or two men. What does that say about them.

So the CN workers are on strike. I have no strong opinion about this, but I’m wondering if that is why the trains were extra loud early this morning. I was having a nice dream when the train-yard let its presence be known.
Other than that it’s been a beautiful day. It was nice enough that I was out on my balcony, in shorts, reading a magazine. My balcony is south facing, so it gets a lot of sunlight, and it seems to absorb heat. So it was quite comfortable.
I cashed in some GICs and closed my savings account today. Both were opened last April when I had extra money and hadn’t gotten the idea to buy a condo yet (with the accompanying mortgage). But right now I need to buy some more RRSPs. I could also put it towards the mortgage, but RRSPs will come first. I’m going to be draining my bank account to a low level, so I’m hoping I’ve gotten my tax calculations right. I would hate to have to suddenly need to pay taxes when I’ve bought all these mutual funds.

It’s been awhile since I updated. I’m fine, but nothing terribly interesting is happening with me.
Monday I went to Die-Nasty. The regular director has come back, so plot development appears to have stopped.
Tuesday I went to Improv class. I don’t think I performed that well. But I’m there to learn.
Wednesday I went running. It was very warm, so I could have worn shorts. But my knee has been acting up so I want to try and prevent undue stress. People complained that they expected me to be in shorts. It’s my shtick. The Running Room was having a meeting, so all the managers from all over North America were there, and they took part in the run. I even met the store manager for the Winnipeg location closest to my parents. She was nice enough and told me about the Manitoba Marathon route. I’m thinking of doing my first marathon there. That way I will have family to cheer me on, as opposed to Edmonton where there is no family. My mother doesn’t think I should ever do a marathon so I’ll need to sneak it past her.
Thursday I sold one of my D&D books to a friend, Jake. I didn’t like the Dragonlance Campaign setting book when I got it. The content wasn’t that interesting, but the killing stroke was the huge illustrations on the sides of each and every page. They took up about 20% of each page. I would have preferred actual content. The best part of the book was the time-line, and I only liked that because it gave a good example of how one should be displayed. I use the same format now in my campaign guide.
Friday. i.e Today. At work we learned that a co-worker was leaving for another company. He had only been with our company for six months, and he seemed able to get away with one day’s notice. As soon as he was out of the cubicle, the vultures descended. People started looking through the remnants for stuff to loot for their cubicle. It sounds grisly, but it is one of the best ways to upgrade your peripherals. It’s hard to get a manager to agree to replace a perfectly good keyboard, for a slightly different ergonomic one. It’s all around easier to just take it from a departing co-worker.
This evening we had another game of Empire Builder. It ended sooner because we were more on the ball of how to play. In the end I won, by a nose. The lowest denomination in the game is 1 million dollars. The goal is to get $250 million and connect six cities. If multiple people are above $250 million, the highest total wins. So I ended with $256 million, while one of my opponents had $255 million.
Tomorrow I’m going to see about scrounging up some money from the bank to buy RRSPs. I’ve squirreled away some in various accounts where it isn’t doing me as good as an RRSP would.
On Sunday I have a run, then an annual meeting of a local theater company. In the evening I have one more attempt at speed dating. Fun fun fun!

I finally got the response from Valentine’s Night massacre.

Hi Erik
Hope you had fun at Edmontondatenight !!!
You did not receive any matches on Feb 14th Valentine’s social.
Many people did not hand in thier cards…boo… Anyway
check out our website www.edmontondatenight.com
for upcoming events that might interest you.  

Thanks for coming we enjoyed having you !!

  As expected. Hope the one next Sunday goes better.

So this evening I was in a local coffee place having a hot chocolate when I wind up meeting Alice from the Improv class. That is the advantage of having blue hair. People are more likely to recognize you.
She was more interesting than the the computer I was working on, so we ended up talking for a couple of hours. She’s Wes Borg’s girlfriend so nothing is going to happen, but she is a fascinating person. She took nine months to go to clown college in California. Although she struck me as confident, she claims she doesn’t have any confidence either. Does anyone in the class have it?

So, I’m guessing my reader(s) will want details of what happened last night.
I get to the bar at 7:00. I wasn’t sure whether it was supposed to start at 7:00 or 7:30 so, as always, I erred on the side of caution. I sign up, pay my money, and hear the spiel. This wasn’t speed dating. This was actually just a plan to get a whole bunch of single people into a bar together, with no age restrictions. i.e. There were some really old people there. They did have some speed dating off in the corner. I signed up for that and met with six women for four minutes each. I hope I was pleasant, but past experiences have proven I’m not charming.
Beyond that, it was just a bar. I suck at bars. If I don’t know anyone, I really suck. All the classic bar experiences were there.
As usual, the girls traveled in packs. I’m not sure they realize how intimidating that is. I did suck it up and talk to a pair of nice looking girls. But I don’t think they were that interested. I confessed being nervous and, in a nice cliche, one said, “Don’t worry. We don’t bite.” I can’t help but thinking life would be easier if that was the worst they could do to me. I really couldn’t sustain a conversation with them, which I take as a bad sign. I asked them questions, but they never asked me questions. I’m probably a creepy stalker in their minds.
They didn’t have any security there, so after awhile, the people who are regulars at the bar came in. So you no longer had the comfort of knowing that everyone was single.
There were some nice girls that I had met during the speed dating portion of the evening. But after that, they either disappeared, were absorbed into their pack, or spent the entire evening talking to someone else I assume they hooked up with.
I did talk to the radio personality that was there, Karly Kincaid. She was nice, but technically not part of the festivities. I sent her a valentine (we were all given one to give to anyone else there) because no one else there seemed interested in me. So I can now say I tried to mingle with a celebrity. I would have sent the valentine to the cute pair of girls, but they left before I had a chance. They seemed to be the center of attention, so I doubt I would stand out.
I actually find it easier to talk to waitresses and coat check girls. There is no pressure talking to them, and I think that I’m actually pleasant to talk to at those times. But all the other women, I just can’t sustain a conversation with.
The newspaper yesterday covered the single people gathered together by the Edmonton Journal. I read some interesting observations. 1) On Valentine’s day: “It’s a couples day. You can be non-Irish and participate in St. Patrick’s Day, but Valentine’s makes you feel left out. 2) “…the best place to meet people is through hobbies or interests, such as running. When they do find someone they like, it’s even harder asking for that phone number of coffee date.”

I just got back from the speed dating.
Self-esteem gone: check
Ego draining away in a small puddle: check
Temptation to go to a prostitute: check
This announcement has been brought to you by the Erik whining network.

So it is Valentine’s Day.
Tonight I go to the speed dating. The event:

“THE NIGHT OF 200 HEARTS”        Saturday, February 14th 
At this special event, 200 singles will meet in a fun, relaxed, and low-pressure environment.  Your $25 admission includes appetizers from 7:30pm to 8:30pm, one drink and your first “heart”.  Partial proceeds of this event will support the Heart & Stroke Foundation.  Edmonton Date Night has reserved the entire premises and EVERYONE will get a date card and a wristband.  We will have opportunities to speed date and you may just meet that special someone you have been looking for!  Located at the NEW south side location of The Overtime Broiler and Taproom (formerly Scruffy Murphy’s) at Whitemud Crossing. 

So far I haven’t been thinking about it much, but it starts in half an hour, so the butterflies are starting to churn. I hope I look presentable. (Yep. Hair is still blue.) I expect my self-esteem will take a major hit by the time this is all over.
I’ll try and post an update when I get back. But remember, I’m running 23 km tomorrow, so I may want to sleep first.

I’ve finally caught up. I’ve been writing journal entries on my computer for the past week and I finally got around to posting them all. So if you are reading this, you might want to check my previous entries in case you missed them. It was hectic and tiring, but I still made sure to enter them. I suppose the more hectic your life is, the harder it is to post entries, but also more important that you do so.
I have no idea how canticle does it. He seems to be able to write massive essays every day. I simply don’t have the time to do that. And all of his entries are thought provoking editorials on today’s society. All I do is whine and complain about lack of self-esteem and girlfriend. Blah!
I’ve got to try and perk up and be more upbeat. I have that speed dating on Saturday.
I got the nose tabs repaired on my glasses. It wasn’t an emergency because they were the ones I used for computer use, but it’s nice to have them stable again.
I’m finally beginning to relax. I guess I was tired from stressing over the project.
It’s far to late now, so I’m going to bed.

This entry was added on the 12th. But I wrote it on the correct date. I just didn’t post it until I had all the previous entries in.
Finally done. At 5:00 today we finished testing and sent the project off to whatever circle of hell it is destined for. I feel less tired, and definitely less stressed.
There was a free lunch at work today because there was a webcast from the head office in Costa Mesa. The announcement was that they were trying to lower R&D costs to be more in-line with the rest of the industry. They were going to do that by moving some operations offshore. The entire time they were saying they didn’t want to, but all the other companies were. (Do we want to be like to cool companies.) They have reiterated that they consider Edmonton offshore. Apparently this city doesn’t pay their programmers much.
I went to improv class today. Everyone was a little mellow, so we weren’t doing zany antics. Instead we were doing characters. First they had everyone tell a story about themselves, interesting or not. Then everyone else analyzed how the person told the story. Then the story was told again, but with suggestions as to how to make it look like a different person had told it.
For my turn, I told them what my Sunday mornings are usually like. They pointed out that I talked with a higher pitched voice when I was telling it. And that I was very “architecturally strict” in my posture. So the next time I had to lower my voice and be in a far more relaxed position. It ended up looking like I actually had just done a run. I was complemented on the severity of the change. I wish I could take credit for it all, but the long breath I took that they liked was actually just me trying to remember what came next in the story.
For the second part of the class, we had to come up with a character and be interviewed as them. I made a character I thought would be very different from me; someone with confidence. Curtis was a bartender at a top 40 bar. I had a few affectations that were good (checking myself in the mirror, being friendly with the girls), but I could have done the posture better. And my hands were doing their own thing. But that is why I’m taking the course, to learn how to be better.
Jenny, another student, said she could use more confidence too. This was odd because she always seemed like a confident person to me. I’d like to get to know her better, but as we have covered, I don’t have the confidence.
One girl, Alice, had a very good character. A teenager who was dating an older boy. What was interesting was that she was chipper with most of the questions. But when she got one that was too probing she suddenly became more intense, ready to snap. Then just as quickly, she went back to cheerful.

Still postdating. It is still the 12th.
We’re still not done. We got hung up on testing to make sure everything worked. Of course not everything worked. So we are still fixing it. We were able to extend the deadline by another day. If we can get it done early tomorrow morning, then we’ll be able to get it to the localizers in Ireland while it is still Tuesday there.
Die-Nasty was great. The usual director was gone and was replaced by someone who understands that things need to happen and plot is needed to move the story forward. It was like the classic Die-Nasty under Trevor Anderson. I’m sure the usual director will be back next week, but at least we got some stuff happening.
I’m really tired by this point. I treated myself to a dose of caffeine with a coke at dinner. I need it. This project is totally draining me.
I need a vacation.

Once again, this entry is postdated. It is actually the 12th for me.
So, functioning on very little sleep, I went running.
Mike is leading the running group I’m in. He was given the job of being leader for the 3:30 marathon group. Before that, I was informally leading. Which was great because I didn’t have to answer to anyone and I could make the others go faster if I wanted. Apparently runners have no backbone and follow orders quite easily. Mike has more restrictions as he actually does have to answer to the person teaching the current marathon clinic.
Anyway, while we were running, Mike was given a lecture by Jason, an actual employee for the Running Room. Mike was apparently running too fast, and Jason knew because he had been running for a long time. We might even have been going race pace. (Heaven forbid!)
But later on, we did some math in our heads (a dubious process at best, but bear with me) and we figured that we were right on the mark. Not going too fast. So I commented “So should we go club that guy?”
Apparently Jason overheard this and was very offended. I apologized and proceeded to feel bad about it for the rest of the run. (I seem to always be able to focus on the things that crush my self-esteem.) That is until it was pointed out that Jason was far too sensitive. We make remarks like that all the time and never mean any of it. That same run we said “Let’s beat him up and take his shoes” about someone who was ahead of the group.
It should have been clear that I was joking.
At brunch later we had the final calculations that showed that over a 19 kilometer run we were off the correct time by eight seconds. So the rest of the meal was spent complaining about Jason. Mike would admit if he was wrong, but was offended that he was lectured when he in the right the entire time. And Jason’s complaint that people were breaking off from the group near the end was silly. All runners speed up at the end of a run. Heck, Jason’s girlfriend did it today.
After brunch I went back to work. Cameron showed up soon after to help. We finished most of the project, but there is still a bit to do. After four hours though, I wasn’t able to focus. I went out for dinner for some sushi, and spent the evening trying to relax. I finally got around to reading Thursday through to Sunday’s newspapers.

Once again a postdated entry. It is still the 12th, and I’m hoping to get up to today… um, today.
My hairstylist at Swizzlesticks is Melissa. I trust her completely. I tell her every time that I have no sense of style and that she should do whatever she thinks is best. (I don’t have to look at my hair.) So if she wants to color it or bleach it, I let her go ahead. Through this all, I’ve always been suggesting the color blue. Five years ago I had colored all my hair blue, and then on to different colors over the next year.
Well my goading of her finally kicked in and I have blue hair again. I wasn’t sure she was going to do it, but there it is. Blue. It isn’t completely blue, but there are small chunks of blue throughout. The rest is natural hair color.
I can’t blame her. I did cross the line when for Christmas I gave her blue hair dye to do with as she pleased. But up until the time I walked into Swizzlesticks today I was sure she wouldn’t do it.
Ten minutes after leaving the salon, and walking home, I had someone complement me on my hair. I’ve missed that. I like having attention. When it was completely blue I could always get a reaction. It isn’t as eye-catching, but it’s something.
In the afternoon, after a half hour of relaxing, I went back to work and tried to finish up the project. I worked four hours, plus a break to grab a lunch/dinner (lupper?) from McDonalds, Then I went home. I’m still not done. I’ll be back in tomorrow.
While I was at work the front button on my watch fell off. I’ve had this one for less than two years. My last watch lasted half a lifetime (at the time that was 14 years). The glasses I use for computer use are eight years old, and the nose tabs have fallen off. I need to get organized and get these all repaired.
After work I went home and tried to relax. I’m feeling stressed with this deadline though. At around 9:00 I went to New City. I met Jake there and again used his table as a home base. I talked to a girl there named Sarah. I believe she was a friend of Leanne, Jake’s girlfriend.
She was nice, but she knew I played D&D. She didn’t have a lot of respect for the game. She said that all the people who play it have no families and… basically she described the stereotypical D&D nerd. What hurt was that I fit that stereotype. I don’t have a girlfriend, and I use computers. I’d like to think I’ve moved beyond it, but it’s hard to ignore the facts. That was a downer for the rest of the evening.
Apparently Sarah knows Monica (the person I used to run with). I wonder if it will get back to Monica that I have D&D as a hobby. It’s a small aspect of my life that I don’t feel the need to talk about constantly. But at least I can give Sarah some evidence that I’m not just a D&D stereotype.
I got home at around 1:00. I have to get up early tomorrow to go running. (Not D&D!)

I entered this journal entry on the 12th. I’m trying to catch up to the current day while still listing all the things that have happened to me. So this is a little weird. I’ll try speaking in the present tense about things that happened in the past.
I worked late again to try and get the product ready for Monday. Thankfully I haven’t been told when on Monday, so I’m hoping for some leeway there. It looks like I’ll need to come in on the weekend to get everything done.
However I had planned my first “Random Acts of Gaming” for the new year today. RAOG is an event I have occasionally where some friends get together and play some games. Not D&D, but anything that someone brings. It’s a fun way to force myself to play all the games I’ve purchased over the years.
So tonight we decided to finally play “Empire Builder”. We started at 7:00 with just three players. From the first turn Cameron was saying he was going to lose. He had made a mistake that essentially made him lose a turn. Of course in the end he won. That’s because I kept drawing disasters that effectively made Andrew and me lose a turn.
We finished the game at 2:30 in the morning. The box said it was a three hour game. After midnight you could tell our decisions were getting loopier. I watched Cameron determine he had to build a straight railroad line to Regina, despite having previously built one nearby, so that he could save a bit of time on one delivery. He probably spent more making the railroad than he did on the delivery.
Being up so late was a problem, because I have an appointment at 10:15 on Saturday morning to get my hair cut.

I’m writing this entry on February 8th, because I’ve been too busy to actually enter anything here. On Tuesday I was asked when a project I was working on would be done. I said it would be on Friday. Since then I found that the devil is in the details. Each little part of this is taking longer than expected. So I was behind schedule, but only by one or two days. Then on Thursday I found out that the “powers that be” decided that Monday would be a good day to release. I worked late on Thursday to try and catch up. I’m sure you can tell what is going to happen based off of when I’m posting this.
I got around to signing up for an Edmonton Date Night. i.e. Speed dating. The event is going to take place on Valentine’s day. It seemed appropriate. It beats my usual plan of going to an Italian restaurant and watching/glaring the happy couples. 🙂 I’m not sure I can attend because the Edmonton Journal event is taking place at the same time, but if they do decide they want me for that, I can cancel this event.
I also mentioned my interest in an event where the men had to be six feet tall. The person who took my appointment said that there were gorgeous women signing up for it, but not enough men. This sounds interesting.
I still have to catch up on the other LiveJournal entries, but right now I’m exhausted. I would put Tired as my current mood, but that isn’t correct for when this entry is supposed to take place. So I’ll leave it blank.

Right, after that disastrous wasted weekend I’ve decided for a change. I’ve come to the realization I’m a boring person. If I don’t have any plans for a weekend, I obviously don’t have enough to do. I know I could prepare for a D&D game, but I’ve got to start living again.
So yesterday I went back to Improv class. I’ve taken these classes every so ofter, but now I’m going to commit myself to taking them regularly. My hope is that it will help me be a more interesting person, help me learn to socialize, and keep me busy. A boost to the self-esteem would be a plus too. It still isn’t giving me something to do on weekends, but it’s a start.
The class was fun, and there were two lines that I wish I had been the one to say them.
1) “Get out of my life… but be back in five minutes.”
2) The last words of a dying man to the woman who shot him: “If you go back in time, don’t touch anything.”
I really have to work on the self-esteem. It sucks not having any. There are friends I have that I really like. I think they are incredibly cool. But in my head I think that they are really just annoyed with me and are too polite to tell me to go away. I feel like the little dog in the Looney Toons who is constantly hanging around the big tough bulldog and saying how great the bulldog is. I’m sure you know the one I’m talking about.
Maybe I should take some drugs for depression? I’ve talked to someone recently who is taking them and they sound, well… groovy. (Clockwork Erik?)
Or I could start drinking.
Anyway, on to less depressing subjects.
I got home from work and saw the temperature was only -4 celsius. That’s warm enough for wearing shorts while running. Unfortunately that was right before the sun went down, and didn’t take into account that within the river valley, the warm air has risen away. In other words, I shouldn’t have been wearing shorts. I think it got down to -10 while I was out there. That’ll learn me
Further updates as they warrant.

So the other day I discovered that my email at work has some filters on it. This came up when I was emailing a friend to see if they would like to see a play. I mentioned that it was at a theatre where we had seen another play. He replied back promptly, but I never got the message. I didn’t even get a warning that there was a message. As near as I can tell it is because the play I had mentioned in passing was called “Pornstar”. An enjoyable work with no nudity. I’m not even sure if there was coarse language. When my friend replied, he included my message in it. So email with the word “pornstar” gets deleted before I see it.
I have another friend who was working a booth at the “Everything to do with sex” show this weekend. I wanted to ask him how the experience was.
I used my home email for that.

Well this weekend has been a waste.
Friday was fine. We even got out of work early because of a snowstorm that was covering Edmonton with snow. So it gave me a bit longer to prepare for a D&D game. The game started out well. the player’s discovered some aftereffects of the power of ancient wizards. Specifically someone had drilled a trough through several mountains. Then the player’s got cranky when they discovered another relic of power that transported them far and away to a desert. So much for that quest. In my defense it was getting harder to make believable challenges for my players in their current stomping ground. If they encounter a monster tough enough to provide them with a challenge, why hasn’t it conquered the small human settlement in the valley. So off to the desert of purple sand.
But the rest of the weekend wasn’t productive. I did the standard sleeping in and reading the newspaper on Saturday. But after that I didn’t do much. I wandered Whyte Avenue a bit, but didn’t really do anything memorable. Then I decided to play an X-Box game (Splinter Cell) and did that until late in the evening. Made myself a quick dinner and went to bed.
The next day I convinced myself to sleep in and not go running. It was -23 so it was warm enough that I should have gone, but I just didn’t have the energy. I slept in, read the paper, ate half a breakfast and then used the Condo’s treadmill. I hadn’t given myself time to digest, so I broke down after only two miles. I went back to playing Splinter Cell and just started feeling blah. At around 3:00 I decided to go to McDonalds and get something to eat. (It’s really cheap if you get the daily special.) It was then that I noticed that I had forgotten to eat the other half of breakfast that morning (explaining why I felt blah). I went to Chapters and looked through some books, before going back to playing Splinter Cell. Then I made dinner (Fajitas) and now I’ve gone to a coffee place to have a hot chocolate and write in my journal. (No I don’t have remote access to the internet, but I can save a file and post it later.)
So, in boring detail, that is what I did. A wasted weekend.
I could have gone to the “Everything to do with Sex” show that is in town now. But it feels kind of pointless when you haven’t had any sex. I’m pretty sure they don’t give free samples. 🙂
I played video games most of the time. I have a problem with them. I think I like them more than I actually do. So I’ll buy a game and never play it. I have to force myself to get around to playing them, which makes it feel like work instead of fun. Then I’ll binge on the game, hoping to get as much done as possible. It does take me awhile to give up on a game. I think I’ve decided that Master of Orion III is not worth the effort and I’m not enjoying it. But I still feel I should play it to get my money’s worth.
I don’t have another D&D game for four weeks, so I think I’m going to try and address some of my other interests. I want to get back into writing a Fractal World generator program. I keep letting that slip in the face of other commitments.
I saw Canticle‘s description of how he would like Dueling to come back into style. I’m sure I’m misinterpreting what he meant, but I can’t think of a scarier idea. Well I can (end of separation of church and state?) but this is the one I’m thinking of. If we started using duels to decide matters, then the skill of dueling becomes more important than ANYTHING. You can just imagine the effects.
“I have just discovered the answer to the Unified Field theory!”
“No! I have discovered it. It involves Twinkies!”
“I find that hard to believe. I have been studying physics for twenty years, and Twinkies are not going to solve anything.”
“Well, I don’t care. I challenge you to a duel to prove who is right.”
“What?”
“Agreed then! Have at you!”
“Wait, No- Ack” Thud.
“Right. We’re all in agreement now. Twinkies!”
Even if we take out the sword requirement, and change it to some video game, it still remains a problem. An otherwise useless skill (useless towards the advancement of humanity) is suddenly given weight it doesn’t deserve. That’s why people hate lawyers. They have taken a useless skill (arguing over technicalities) and abuse it’s artificial power.
In other words, all that would be accomplished would be to replace lawyers with duelists.

I watched the Best Superbowl commercials on TV yesterday. I always want to see the Superbowl so I can see the great commercials. From anecdotal evidence I believe other people would agree with me. So I watched that program. Man it was terrible. They targeted the football people. So they had many football commentaries and very few commercials. Then they treated me like an idiot, explaining in voice overs what was going on.
I hate commentators. They always seem to think they are more important than what they are supposed to be commentating on. This is why I hate disc jockey’s too. Stop talking and play the music!
I am obviously in a cheerful mood today…