Shift Change

I enjoy staying up late. I’d read in bed until (gasp!) 8:30 or 9 as a little kid, with nothing more than a red night light (one reason I think my night vision got pretty good, and why I have to wear sunglasses a lot during the days). As a teenager and young adult, my preferred sleep schedule was 2am – 10am, with the occasional 4am – noon if I got into something really worthy of my tunnel-focused attention.

These days, though, I’m up between 5:45 and 6 every morning, and just being able to drive to work without major injury means I’d better be in bed by 11. 10 would be better; 9:30’s been known to happen. It made this year’s New Year’s Eve a little duller than I’d planned, let me tell you.

Well, my quasi-conscious train of thought upon leaving REM sleep this morning went as follows:

Voice 1: Dude, why on earth did we put the clock where we can’t easily see it without moving? It’s gotta be about 5:40, the alarm’s gonna hit any minute.

Voice 2: No, no, this is our semi-regular 3:30 Brief Moment of Pseudo-Lucidity. Just roll over and go back to sleep.

Voice 1: Yeah, you’re probably right. But let’s wiggle over and get Line-of-Sight on the clock just to be sure.

Voice 2: Uh-oh. 6:30? We didn’t set the alarm, did we?

Voice 1: Dude, and you were the one who wanted to go back to sleep.

Funny thing is, since I awoke naturally, I felt much better this morning. And I still managed to get to work on time.

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A VTSFFC Party, Day Two

I slept quite late Sunday morning; I’d not had enough rest in the last week, and a five-hour drive is still draining even when it’s pleasant.

shrewlet fixed a big breakfast for us. I was starving, I honestly ate too much. I spent a few minutes checking e-mail and trying to log onto WoW – I’m trying to earn enough quest tickets to win a prize in-game – but I couldn’t get a good connection. It wasn’t long before I had to give up and get dressed for yubbie and colleenk‘s wedding.

Wile dressing, I amused myself by considering the far greater number of times I’ve worn a Starfleet uniform than a suit, but it’s not as if I’d forgotten how to put it on. Dwight and I left the Arthur digs early, for we had stops to make – I picked up a cute card for the happy couple – and we arrived pretty much on time.

Listing the LJ and fan folk who were there would be quite tedious, so I shan’t try. The wedding was wonderful. Colleen was gorgeous and Ron looked great. I saw people there I hadn’t laid eyes on in years!

That sad part was that I couldn’t stay for the reception – we had a 5-hour drive back (6, really) and Dwight had to be home in time for an early work day. So I didn’t get to pass on my congratulations in person. But the pictures prove I was there!

Home now… I had a great time, and wish I could have spent more time at that end of the state. The Roanoke and New River valleys need to be brought at least 2/3 closer to Hampton Roads (or vice versa).

Furious slacking

I accomplished very little this weekend, which I think my body and soul needed badly; this morning I went into work quite bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, clearing a lot of tickets over the course of the day. Actually, I slacked a bit too much, as it was my turn to do dishes, dinner, and laundry this weekend, and I only managed 1.5 out of three. Have to do better on that.

I did have a social obligation Saturday, which was nice – got to see some old friends – but the weather had gifted this little cookout with 90-degree temperatures and 90-percent humidity. I was still chugging glasses of water all day Sunday trying to rehydrate myself.

Don’t know if it was related, but I had a weird dream Sunday morning. Someone had physically wrenched the display screen completely off a laptop, and it was my job to fix it with nothing more than a roll of Scotch tape. The dream ended long before I found out how best to approach this little issue.

Mirandala dinged 61 Sunday night, with shrewlet‘s invaluable assistance. Soloing quests in Outland is less practical than in Azeroth, though simply grinding wandering monsters can be good for XP. My last level was in February: at 5 months per, I should hit the level 70 cap around the time they’ve raised it to 90 🙂 Hardcore, yep, that’s me. (Okay, I’d move quicker if I played alts less often. What’s your point?)

Speaking of such – WoW fans are agitating for personal housing in the game. Can the FFXI and SWG players chime in here and tell me what’s so interesting about that? What can you do in your house? Can you watch the magic bard-in-a-box for extra resting credit, or cook special meals for +25 Health bonuses. or throw a party for your friends to get Diplomacy XP? Or is it just fluff? (I like fluff fine, mind you.)

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Trick or Treat!

I was working on a journal post this morning, but my USB 2 expansion card freaked in the middle of that, ruining an iPod update and crashing the computer. So no post.

That’s kinda the tone for the whole month of October. Good things certainly happened, but it’s been pretty rough. My workload’s been amazing – I netted almost 120 hours in one 2-week period. As well, a carefully-arranged Halloween costume failed to materialize; then sickness killed a carefully-planned Halloween party trip.

On the other hand, I was too lazy to put together an interesting outfit for a later party, and wound up just attending in my Enterprise uniform… winning First Place (Men’s), to my surprise!

I’m really bummed about missing Rising Star this year. It sounds like they’re gonna have some fun! But we’ve dropped $700 on car repairs this month, and holiday gift-giving’s on the way, so we have to watch the budget like a hawk. (Here’s hoping I don’t have to replace that PCI card.)

Questionable Content – one of my favorite webcomics, and worth reading through from the beginning – is selling a t-shirt which proclaims, “She Blinded Me With Library Science!” which keeps bringing to mind a certain Yeager crew member.

I did in fact begin NaNoWriMo this week. I have no expectation of finishing in time – the demands on my time are manifest right now – but I’m starting it anyway. This is the closest my head has been in years to having a complete plot and interesting characters lined up, and I’m not giving up now. I may even get around to reposting my WARS stories to elfie, just for my own inspiration.

Taverncast – a WoW podcast – did a Halloween episode called “War of the Murlocs” this year. Despite the fact that I listened to it during the day at work, am closely familiar with the old Orson Welles broadcast, and caught many of the in-jokes, they still managed to creep me out a tiny bit. Maybe it’s my overactive imagination: judge for yourself at war-of-the-murlocs.mp3 if you like. I’ll be having fish for dinner tonight as my own strike back against the slimy rampagers.

Best-laid plans gang aft agley

This last weekend I missed the Fire for the first time in years. I was pretty darn disappointed, though we managed to spend our time here in good ways. But as Friday night came closer I had to confront the reality of the situation: the engines couldna’ take the strain.

For the last two weeks, 2 of the early-shift typesetters have been absent from work: one on vacation, and one on family emergency. Doesn’t sound too bad, except I’m the only other one! For those 10 work days, my shifts ran from 10-12 hours apiece.

I kinda rate my combined mental, emotional, and physical energy levels as “main power”, “reserves”, and “emergency”. Reserves is a subjective 25% of capacity – enough to supply me comfortably for an hour’s drive home at 3am after a good party. Emergency is about 5-10% of capacity – if I expect to do anything useful in that state, adrenaline or caffeine should be involved (preferably both).

Well, I’ve been working on “reserves” since two Wednesdays ago, and all I was getting from a night’s sleep was back approximately to that 25%. After a 10-hour Friday shift, I was running at close to emergency levels again. Oh, technically I’m sure Rain and I could have made it to Blacksburg. We’re tough. But did I really want to attend an event with my friends while I operated in total zombie mode? No. That was more fun when I was 18… which was some time ago.

So, we stayed home, and did some cool things around Norfolk and Va. Beach, which I’ll talk about later. Kind of a mixed blessing, to be honest; while we had enough fun to make up somewhat for missing our friends, it was still energy-consuming fun. Even by Sunday evening, I didn’t feel recharged much past 30% or so.

Last night, OTOH, I came home from the shift, nuked some very tasty leftovers, and plunked myself down in front of WoW for about four hours. Say what you want about gaming too much, this was 4 hours of physical rest, endorphin production, and frankly not too much challenge at any point. This morning? Why, I may be up to 40-50%.

Just in time to go to work…

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And he looks *dang* good for 68, too

Halloween’s a holiday dedicated to things that aren’t what they seem, so it’s a bit appropriate that George Takei is choosing it to come publically out of the closet.

http://www.frontierspublishing.com/features/feature_second.html

Good for him! I can’t help thinking that some of the people involved with RoVaCon way back when would have been less excited about inviting him had they known… but that’s far in the past now.

I haven’t decided yet what to wear to Mandy & Krys’ party tomorrow night. I do wish VTSFFC Halloween wasn’t 5 hours away. I also wish Rain didn’t work Saturdays and Sundays, making a 2- or 3am Rocky Horror evening this weekend a bit impractical.

In good news, Rain welcomed me home last night to a spotless living room lit by candles, served me an excellent dinner, and snuggled down with me for a romantic evening of TiVo’d MythBusters. (Hey, mad science is too romantic.) It was a good way to wrap up the day.

Written while waiting for hot water

Busy life these days… I haven’t been taking time to slow down and write lately. I’m hoping to do more of that this weekend.

Went to Rising Star last weekend, and had lots of fun. I showed off the new Utilikilt on Saturday, and it went over quite well, though I have to think more carefully about the process of sitting down while I wear it. raininva and I scored over 20 PS2 games for around $100 or so at the auction – of course, lord knows when I’ll play any of them. With WoW on the computer, I have to poke myself to make time for my new copy of We (Heart) Katamari.

I missed meiran, ranchonmars, and madwriter… maybe I’ll see some of you at Marscon, and if not, there’s always T-Con.

We listened to the audiobook of “So You Want to Be A Wizard” on the way up and back. The narrator does good work with the voices, I’d recommend it. We bought it from iTunes, and while I understand this is not Apple’s idea, the process of getting the audiobook onto an MP3 CD for my car player was unpleasant. I hate the freaking music industry.

Three movies I want to see soon… Serenity, Mirrormask, and Curse of the Were-Rabbit. I haven’t been to see a movie in a while – no idea if I’ll make it to any of these.

I’ve been offered a ride to VTSFFC Halloween, and heard about another H’ween party in Richmond I’d like to go to, but either way, Rain can’t go because of her work schedule. This bites in great measure. OTOH, Trans-Siberian Orchestra is coming to Newport News in November, and that I might be able to see! There’s something about “Xmas Eve / Sarajevo” that makes me tingle when I hear it for the first time every season… it’s so angry and beautiful at the same time. Elton John’s “Funeral for a Friend” is the same way.

Tried “Second Life” last night. Lousy framerate and poor responsiveness were my first impressions… and this is on a Mac that does WoW quite tolerably. We’ll see if I go back.

More on my mind, but I gotta go to work.

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