The Hammer Fell – On Me
Okay, I give. I suck so much at Starcraft that I can’t beat the last Terran mission even by using the resources, supplies, map, and quick build cheats. The only thing left would be to hit the automatic “I WIN” cheat, which sort of defeats any residual point. (One of the “Monty Python” CD games included an “I WIN” button at the very beginning, which if pressed, declared the player the winner, presented a fanfare, and ended the game.)
I’m wondering if I ought to bother with Starcraft II after all. Besides, there’s always Diablo III.
Your pain does not concern the Daleks
Well, now. I was awoken by a representative from the US Census confirming this house’s address and habitation. Unfortunately, on one of the top stairs, my feet went out from under me, and I fell halfway down on my butt. Nothing seems seriously damaged, but I am always twitchy about messing up that prosthetic. The warnings from my doctors were dire. So, I’ll be a little later than I’d planned starting the afternoon’s chores.
Speaking of doctors, before I talk about the Trek movie last night, here’s an unrelated costume picture geckoman linked (click for the wearer’s LJ entry):
Now that’s thinking outside the costuming box! Awesome outfits, and dang creative. I have a soft spot for folks who don’t attempt to recreate characters perfectly, but go for something unexpected. Besides, they’re cute!
No More Collisions!
How I Spent My Saturday Night (or, another of many reasons I’m behind on much correspondence)
I dedicated my afternoon to the kitchen and living room, as I’d promised – got them looking pretty good, too. Around 7:30, Starr called to let me know she was on her way home, so I started dinner (boxed stroganoff).
Just before 8, my cell lit up with an unknown number, but I went ahead and picked up. It was Starr – she was calling with a borrowed cell phone from the scene of the car accident she’d just been in. I later found out that someone else had apparently missed a turn; and in confusion occupied the middle lane of a 60 MPH highway, doing about 20. Starr came out from behind another vehicle that was spewing smoke (oil leak perhaps?), saw brake lights, and did her best to stop in time.
All her windows shattered, and the airbag fired. The accident totaled her PT Cruiser’s front end, doing an estimated $8,000 in damage. Starr’s seatbelt and airbag did their jobs, and we later discovered that her greatest injuries were bruising from the restraints. A passerby unjammed her door and helped her from her car, and medical professional that she is, she quickly went to assess the other driver for injuries (no serious issues there either).
I abandoned dinner to spoil, issued a quick Twitter note to the world, and jumped right into the car. I didn’t speed – I mean, how stupid would a car wreck on my part have been right then? – but I somehow reached the hospital before Starr. A number of people replied with support on Twitter, Facebook, and email, and I would later find many phone messages after I left the hospital’s signal interference. Thank you all so much! One of the first things I did was pass along everyone’s messages, and they boosted morale for us both! (Thank you, jsciv, for the “Creeps” recommendation: Starr played that until we nearly killed the phone battery!)
Several X-Rays and five hours later, they decided that Starr was merely bruised, and sent us home. We’ve spent much of today trying to recover from adrenaline overdose and poor sleep. We already have some lines of attack with securing a replacement vehicle. The funny thing is that today’s a happy day for us. First of all, Starr literally walked away from a full-speed highway crash. Second of all, we’ve had our friends pouring out love to us all night and day; how could we be grumpy?
Thank you all!
Shrewlet Update
Cindy’s in Roanoke Memorial, room 906 West, phone (540) 266-5424. She has Internet access as well (no, not including WoW).
They tried to give her a steroid injection to improve the situation a bit, which she describes as “the most painful thing I have ever encountered. I’ve been fighting in the SCA for 20 years and have never taken blows that hurt that hard as that shot.”
They are going to see if the injection helps, but surgery is still an option. At last report, she didn’t have full sensation in either leg.
More as I know it.
Disk Fragmentation
Cindy Arthur – shrewlet – is being transported to Roanoke Memorial Hospital because of a herniated disk.
Rhaps is coordinating her care from down there. He reports that surgery is very likely.
It’s all I know now. Stay tuned.
Power and Con Crud
I appear to have recovered from the sinus infection I had before MarsCon only to walk right into a full-blown bout with the influenza. This is an especially impressive achievement considering that I had the flu shot back in November. Go Me. So now I’m into the negatives again with my sick days at work – thank goodness that they’re pretty flexible – and sitting in bed taking Tamiflu twice a day and remembering what food and drink were like when my sense of taste was functional. Whine whine carp carp bleh.
It’s kinda funny to watch some people acting like Obama has already completely ruined his presidency based on a few choices that I admit I don’t agree with either. It’s even funnier, in a completely pathetic kind of way, to watch “Rapture Ready” Christians glancing impatiently at the sky while wondering why Jesus hasn’t come to rid them of this Antichrist. Y’know, he’s just a man, albeit an intelligent, articulate one with some ideas that, if they work out the way he says, could leave this country in markedly better shape when he leaves power. Which he will do, in no more than eight years tops, because that’s what the laws of the country say. But he’s still just a dude. He’s got four more years minimum to try to impress as many of us as he can, and we really ought to give a fair fraction of that to him before we declare him a failure.
(P.S. He’s also not the dictator of America. Whether the country is any better in four years has as much if not more to do with what its collected citizens do, than with any orders he gives. The most he can do is inspire, positively or negatively. It’s hypocritical to throw our responsibilities as citizens on the President’s shoulders and then be angry him if we don’t like the way things go.)
Okay, enough politics. Sort of. I had an excellent time at MarsCon, it offered me everything I could want from a weekend fan con and I indulged to the practical limit. I’m already in line for next year’s, and I think I may even have contributed to the next chosen theme. I’ve heard a little bit of whining in places, though for the most part I’ve put it down to folks with entitlement issues.
But I’ve also heard quiet murmurs of staff drama. These may be overblown, and already handled, in which case I’m a happy fan. However, as I look at some of the difficulties my favorite cons have hit over the years, I’m seeing a certain cycle. Since it always seems to hit sometime between the con’s tenth and fifteenth year, I’m calling it Con Puberty; after years of success, suddenly the con is hit with massive crises of staffing, programming, funding, and or general personality – an identity crisis, if you will. Sometimes they survive, sometimes they don’t – often the event will fragment and reassemble as a new con with echoes of its predecessor. But either way, unlike normal puberty, in another 10-15 years, it’ll hit again.
RoVaCon survived it once, and was killed the second time; it looks as though Technicon is going to follow the same path. Rising Star rose from the ashes of RoVaCon, then years later survived its own puberty by evolving into a different con with the same name. Sci-Con evolved into a completely different event with a new identity; and now, as I count back, MarsCon has been around under that name for, what – ten-fifteen years?
MarsCon’s a great con. To get all circularly Frankensteinian with my metaphors, if the con’s indeed having any issues, I’m hoping it’s not Con Puberty, but simply a minor, quickly remedied staff infection.
Order of Battle
I’ve been sick for the last two days – sinus congestion, stabbing stomach pain, sore throat, fever… same old same old midwinter bug. Reluctantly, I took Tuesday off, which I think cut a couple days’ duration off this bug; it’s fading away as I sit here, leaving me with a scratchy throat and headache. I should be fine for the weekend; good thing too, as I had to do a bit of finagling to make MarsCon.
On the other hand, it means I’m woefully behind on my prep. I managed to get some studying in for the panels in which I’m involved, but my costuming took the hit, and I don’t know if I’ll have anything ready for the weekend. Since I’ll be leaving directly from work tomorrow, I have to get packed and otherwise ready tonight. Good thing I managed some laundry.
Sometime Friday afternoon, I will have to find time to take a nap if I want to do late night stuff. This is unaviodalbe, as my internal clock these days is currently set to a 5:30am – 10:30pm waking shift, and cons don’t run on that time. Considering that my Saturday panels hover around 10pm and midnight, I’ll probably need to do the same that day as well.
I need to do some restructuring of my life schedule anyway. One reason for my dryness of prose output in 2008 was that I had not made much time to sit, off by myself, and actually write something – the most I’ve gotten done in that regard is hiding in people’s offices scribbling on the Newton while monitoring their OS X Leopard installs. (Up to three hours of glorious undisturbed concentration!) It’s easy to journal in 5-minute increments at work, but I have not yet mastered the art of focusing on plot and character in those tiny chunks.
On the other hand, I’m slightly pleased with my attitude towards the problem. I’m doing better these days with creating plans of attack for my roadblocks instead of just whining about them and using them for excuses. I’m decades overdue on developing this skill.
Effort and Reward
First, let us get the day’s whining out of the way. I am in very great pain: as in, I’m hoping to avoid standing up until it is time to leave for the day. My legs and back are screaming at me, wanting to know what kind of idiot I am.
The good news is that almost everything is out of the apartment – one more evening’s work, tonight, should do it. We’ve made a deal with a friend to give the place a professional cleaning tomorrow, and this should leave me clear to turn over the keys on Friday or Saturday. I’ll be relieved!
Last night, my gaming group threw me a late surprise birthday party. Two separate awesome cakes, and some excellent clothes from Jesse. (Starr’s reaction to the clothes: “Squeee!”) Everyone did insist on wearing black to this little event, but heck, that’s hardly unusual for my friends anyway! Thank you very much, guys!
Tetris Achievement
Nice, nagging back pain today, the result of moving boxes. I’m packing everything into those folding white “banker’s boxes” so that they’ll fit easier in the cars, and so there will be more of them safe for me to lift; but it doesn’t mean my body’s used to it, oh no. The funny thing’s that I didn’t do any lifting at all yesterday, because I was simply out of energy. Why does my body keep waiting 24 hours to start announcing muscle pain?
Also, sore throat. Yay weather changes.
Starr and I continued to run around Azeroth for a while last night hitting the candy buckets at the inns. I have the feeling we’ll be spending more time before the expansion collecting Achievements than attempting to level, which is absolutely fine with me. The more ‘ways to play the game’ Blizzard can add, the happier I’ll be to keep forking over my subscription, especially since I’ve never exactly been a speed leveler, and just am not really sold yet on the whole raiding thing.
After I went to bed, Starr got recruited by a group shooting for the Leeeeeeeeeeeeeroy! Achievement. Seems it didn’t work out; but I’d have been mightily amused if it had.
