Circling the calendar

The doctors have scheduled my surgery for November 11th. I’ll go in in the morning – no idea how long they’ll actually be rooting around inside me.

Man, it’s weird knowing that someone’s going to cut me wide open – with my permission, yet.

Upcoming events

VTSFFC has announced plans to hold a Technicon in 2010.

I realized this morning that the first part of my last post could be a bit impenetrable if one doesn’t know at least a little gamer slang. Luckily, there’s not many people reading my journal who don’t… and the rest are sharp enough to work it out from contexts.

Thanks to everyone for the support! This is weirding me the hell out, but I have no intention of getting all drama-queeny over it (even if sometimes I want to). Having you folks watching my back helps an enormous amount.

Poorly-copied DNA

GM to me: “Roll your Body dice, target number 5, and we’ll see what the doctor says.”
Me: “Okay, that’s 3d6 – ”
GM: “Inflating your stats a little?”
Me: “Shut up. I rolled a 4, a 3, and a 1.”
GM: “No successes, huh? Checking the chart… okay. You have kidney cancer.”

Unfortunately, the GM isn’t talking about my game character, either; looks like I’ll be going in next month for surgery after all. The surgeon’s very optimistic, and I should still keep the unaffected portion of that kidney. That’s one of a long list of ways I’m fortunate right now, but it’s a little hard to focus on them with that word “cancer” rattling around in my head.

Two ways to tell that I’m really stressed: I start stuttering a bit, and my sense of humor gets really twisted.

Sahn ticha lay. Manitampitach manichita.

Randomly landed on “A New Hope” on Spike HD. Wow, that movie never gets old. Shame about the unfortunate editing error in this copy during the Greedo scene.

Maikeru Hasshin!

I filled in a quiz meme: “What if LiveJournal Were An Anime?” and got the following:

The performer of the opening theme: southernsinger
The magical girl: tango
The talking animal: nviiibrown
The lecherous old man: stephaniesmom
The teenager who uses ancient magic to win games: aylinn
The fifteen-year-old Japanese girl with blond hair and a D cup: rubinpdf

My only comment is that I really want to hear Keith compose and perform an anime soundtrack. I’d buy copies to give to my friends.

Still woefully behind on my anime watching: I’ve got all of Fullmetal Alchemist and Macross Frontier to get through. Sometimes I consider setting up a designated “anime half-hour” after work on weekdays, but that makes it a bit like a chore, and that’s no fun. I think I’m probably giving up on Chobits for now, I read the manga and that will have to do.

Y’know, my evenings are showing a tendency towards “recover from work, catch up on email, make dinner, do laundry / chores, cuddle with Starr, go to bed”. The Starr part is nice, but otherwise, it’s a bit of a rut. I need to look into this.

Here’s the whole quiz, if you want to do it yourself

Telperion’s Flower

Friday morning on the way to work, I listened to an Astronomy Cast show on dark skies: areas far from cities where one can still see an amazing number of stars plastered across the sky. My own most amazing dark sky experience occurred on a 1am drive from Roanoke to Bluefield: it happened to be a perfectly clear winter night, and as I looked up through the windshield for a second, I saw more stars in the sky than I’d seen in my entire life. Darn near wrecked the car, I was so transported by the sight.

At any rate, last night on the way home from an errand, I saw a brilliant, clear moon hanging in the sky over the house. Suburban Chesapeake is far too bright for many other stars, but I suddenly decided that this would be the perfect night to assemble and set up my Galileoscope. It went together easily, though I’m not 100% sure I assembled the optional Galilean eyepiece properly. I’ve since found a PDF with more detailed instructions, but the basic setup worked well enough.

As the instructions mentioned, we had to find a tripod: this is no spyglass. But once we got it focused and aimed, the moon was gorgeous. Starr and Celia and Chris and I all took turns looking through the eyepiece – a little tricky because the moon was quite high in the sky – and initial complaints about the setup time vanished. Even this simple observation with a basic ‘scope made the evening memorable as hell. I think that soon we’ll have to find a dark sky and a cool night and set up the Tasco Novice that Starr gave me a couple of years ago. Awesome stuff!

And then we went in the house and played Star Munchkin.

Company… march!

Yesterday, I had to take a replacement keyboard to a customer. The weather was great, so I figured I’d just walk the keyboard over. I ended up having to go back to the same building for another customer, and out of curiosity I checked the Google Maps Pedometer site; the round-trip was a half-mile walk, so I figured I’d gotten my mile in for the day.

Turned out I had to go back to that building 3 more times yesterday, and in a spirit of stubbornness, refused to drive for any of the trips. Ended up with 2.5 miles of walking, and was quite pleased with myself for being able to handle that with no issues. I hadn’t walked that far while keeping track in a long long time. Unfortunately, it really wiped me out, and I was dead for the rest of the day, going bed early on a Friday night.

So, now that I know I can do it, the next step is to get that much walking in without exhausting myself!

Protected: Somewhat displeased

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Writer’s Block: Life is a masquerade

I am, though I’m not yet sure what I’m going to wear. A lot of the costumes I’ve been wearing to cons lately just aren’t especially appropriate for work (though I got away with one of them at my last job, years ago). Last year I wore a Starfleet uniform to work, and it went over well, but I’d hate to repeat the theme.

If a costume has to be made, I plan four or five months in advance – the more lead time the better. If I’m planning to buy, more like a month. As I’ve sucessfully (if sloppily) constructed my first garment on a sewing machine, I have the option of making my own from now on, but it turns out that’s nearly as expensive as a commission or a purchase, these days – who knew!

I do like to surprise folks with my costume choices when I can. What can I say? It’s the thespian in me.

EDIT: Just noticed that Halloween’s on a Saturday this year, so the whole “dressing up for work” thing is moot. 🙂