Dwelling of a Heartland Newt

1:00am: Pretty proud of myself for successfully building a computer for myself and Camille. They're pretty and fast! Also looks like I'll actually have enough players for my IFGS larp team for the game on July 19th, which is good. I'd prefer to not utterly fail in my first lore master role. Also successfully sold a few wow minis loot cards on e-bay. Recouping losses and/or earning profit off a hobby is always good.

5:13am: mmm, tasties

No, not really. I've been sucking at cooking the last few days.

3:04am: man, I made some super-custom random calezone type stuff. Lemme say, those fresh ginger bits are a SURPRISE when you hit them. It's like "chomp, chomp, yum, yum, mushroom, tomato sauce, ground beef, bacon, GINGER, OMG GINGER"

1:48am: Today during group time I said I had an announcement, and told the kids that I was getting married. Then I told them April fool's, and they started saying I was probably marrying Mark (one of my coworkers).

Later I called my dad and told him I was getting married and he was going to be a grandfather. I got him too. Mwahaha! It's just his just deserts for telling me in highschool when I had a concussion and couldn't remember the year that I'd dropped out of highschool to support my girlfriend and baby.

I made Pad Thai tonight, and it was really good. I used real fish sauce, chili sauce, fresh squeezed lime juice, tamarind, hand crushed peanuts, and fresh (ly store bought) basil and bean sprouts. All that along with some good rice noodles, eggs, chicken, and mushrooms, was superb.

I'm kinda sad, because Hector's probably moving back to Minnesota. He married a friend of his family's who lives there. At first the idea was that she would move out here and live with him. But I don't really want to live with some 30-some year old mexican lady I don't know who doesn't really speak English, and Camille's roommate is moving out so I would like to move in with Camille. So I told Hector I would be moving out to live with Camille. He said that was cool, and it wouldn't change anything, and he'd still live in Oregon, but now he says he will be moving back to Minnesota because of it. On the other hand, I don't think I would want to live with his wife anyway, so I think the whole idea of him living in Oregon may have been screwed from the moment he married her anyway.

2 months is just such a very short amount of time.

1:02pm: Two days ago I made Collard Green soup. That was pretty good, but something made the liquid in the soup look like brown sludge, which was a little confusing. I thought potatoes didn't aerate while being cooked in water?

And yesterday I made german potato dumplings. Actually followed a recipe for once. Good, but you'd better like butter and sauteed onion flavor if you're gonna eat them.

Recovering from non-sickness. My nose is pretty much better, throat is only a little sore and head hurts only a little.

Should get to go to Nightfall Games and play some wow minis tonight. We'll see how that goes.

3:13am: "Fochin"

"you will dip.
nexd Deselby"

My job really is pretty great. *grins*

1:19am: Donated a bunch of magic cards to kidscorner today. Was fun playing magic with the kids!

Also very much fun putting up my posters in new apartment place.

Trying to decide if I should buy Fallout 3 or not. I've had a growing lack of interest in video games lately, aside from IN, because I like me some political intrigue, role playing, and economic strategy with other people.

Still not certain if I must acquire a second job for myself or not ... hrm. Still as unsure as ever about what I'd like to do with myself long-term. Hrm.

1:53am: Ack, scary!

Anyway, I was a little surprised by how much I like this test. It's a "what chess piece are you" test.

http://www.helloquizzy.com/results/the-chess-mess-test/?fromCGI=1&var_Energy=-5&var_Reason=35&var_Choice=15&var_Action=35

1:48pm: I find it unbelievably amazingly cool that when I google "CorayThan" on ... well, on google, it suggests "Corinthian" for what I might've meant. Since, you know, Coray is a name I chose so I could be Coray of Corinth in the 5th grade greek project.

6:33am: Things can be so confusing sometimes. I need to find a new apartment for Hector and I, I need to decide if I want to / can buy a new computer, whether I want to play WAR or not, and that's not even the beginning.

But I liked eating tositos today. And the couch isn't as uncomfortable as some people might think.

8:52pm: I made the best meat loaf ever last night. I was very very hungry, having eaten practically nothing the whole day, and had just gone for a midnight-run of undefined mileage, but enough to get me to a major road and a Safeway. This run also included reaching the top of a dead-end hill in a residential area in south-west Portland, and finding a crazy view and the most ramshackle old paint-chipping over-grown house I've seen close to the city. Then I ran down a steep (at parts almost cliff-like) grassy slope, and found myself in a circular labyrinthine parking lot going around a strange mystery-building and encircled by a frisbee golf course. After running in circles for a while, I managed to find the parking lot of an apartment complex, and from there a road which led me back home, where I cooked the unbelievably super-amazing meatloaf of love.

I think the meatloaf was made extra-good by virtue of

1. No measuring of ingredients, as per usual
2. Replacing steak sauce with chipotle tabasco sauce
3. Replacing ground beef with
... 3a. Cottage cheese and
... 3b. pork steak tidbits marinated in korean bbq sauce and then sauteed
4. ketchup + brown sugar sauce for the top
5. Other random improvements to the base recipe, like extra eggs, spinach, capers, oregano, and other stuff.

Not only that, but I've finished the overhaul of the LARP game I'm writing. It's now 65 pages long (although some of that is repeated stuff), and in my personal opinion I think it's going to be pretty damn good.

1:43pm: I like Pandora, but it frustrates me to no end how often they replay the songs you've thumbed up. If I wanted to listen to the same song once every two hours worth of time I listen to a station, I'd listen to one of the 100 worthless pop stations around Portland.

1:39pm: Stuff I've had is bold, stuff I wouldn't try is strike throughed.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

12:59am: I start my new job tomorrow. I should be asleep now, but I'm not.

I'm working on writing a game for IFGS (the LARP I do here in Portland). It's called "The Cursed Bond of Trust." I think it will be a fairly good game, although I wouldn't say it's anything unusually spectacular. I spent most of today procrastinating on working on the first major overhaul, instead of doing it like I wanted to.

I almost quit Imperium Nova today, but I guess I haven't. It's depressing when a GM makes ridiculous bans without giving forewarning. The player needed to be punished in some way, definitely, but not to that extent.

I want to sleep and not have to wake up early.

2:28am: I believe that truly being a LARPer increases my geek rating by a nearly disturbing factor.

I got hired for job! I'm going to be a teaching assistant in an afterschool teaching / care program for K - 5th graders. Apparently I was wrong when I said in my immediately previous entry that the job would probably not be any more interesting or useful.

11:07pm: Well, I've lived nearly a year in Portland so far, and in a very short while there will be sad farewells to my too-oft neglected roommate Robin. After that, I will be moving in with Hector and my girlfriend Camille, who are currently living in a two-bedroom apartment. Said apartment is, of course, on the opposite side of town from where I am currently working, which will most likely finally force me to find another job. Sadly, I doubt that the new job will be any more interesting or useful.

Right now, I'm thinking that I should go back to school to get a more career-oriented post-bac. This appeals to me because

A. I like school

B. I don't like what I perceive to be my job options without more school

C. I don't like what I perceive to be my job options with more school that builds off my english major.

Specifically, I'm thinking about getting a computer science degree. This may seem like a radical and strange change of course to some who know me from Carleton, but really, I think it will be me finally playing to my strengths, instead of just doing whatever seems most academically, intellectually, and impractically appealing to me.

2:54am: Upon deep contemplation, I think it's obvious that there are only a few jobs that I could see myself doing long-term. Working for a (vague and ambiguous) non-profit in general, working as a social worker, a teacher of anything from elementary up to college, or something creative along the lines of writer, game designer, or something like that.

Alternative--worthless stupid job where most of the time is spent sitting around reading. Although I'm having difficulties thinking of any like that where they wouldn't get mad at you.

I think security jobs and hotel front desk jobs etc. think of things they want you to appear to be doing.

12:42am: Yep, like I thought. 6 new messages in the past 11 days. Every single member of my immediate family has called me and wants a call back. ALL of them!! I didn't expect Sierra to call me, though. And she wanted help ordering a book online or something, which makes me more genuinely sad I didn't listen to my messages earlier to call family back.

12:21am: I think it's ridiculous that elementary school children are expected to walk while in the halls at school. They're excited! Happy! In a hurry to do the random useful and fun things they do at school! Why do the old crabby ladies say, "Now walk back over there, and then walk back over here." I think they've forgotten the point of existing.

Probably why everyone thinks they should walk places. Walk. Ridiculous. I would be much happier if I could simply run everywhere, for example in malls, without it making people suspicious and unhappy.

But at the same time, I think it's crazy how obsessed our culture is with timeliness. You ought to just be able to work when you need money. Let necessity be your impetus, rather than stupid clock-in machines.

I think I really ought to find myself a job where I make more money than I do right now, because that way I could save tons more money, thereby expediting the time at which I can simply stop working entirely.

Reading to the little kids is definitely one of the best parts of my week every week.

I get to play Arkham Horror thursday night (night night, like starting at 4:00 a.m. or so) with Camille and a couple of her friends. I've been so busy hanging out with Camille and playing Imperium Nova and other stuff I probably haven't even really mentioned to anyone . . . I have a Camille.

Tonight I mixed roasted mackeral in hot sauce in a tin can in with pasta roni white shells and cheddar. It was pretty good. I got it at Food 4 Less, which is my new favorite place. Eating is nice. Eating food is even better. Especially when that food lived in the water and comes in a spicy little tin.

My pink cell phone lies on my desk, neglected and afraid.

My parents are probably have left distressed messages on there that I haven't talked to them recently.

Progress, what I want to do with my life. I now have some GRE study books in my apartment (thanks to Camille!) which I ought to make use of. All I really need to do is make use of myself. I'm very good at working at Kinkos . . . but it is not for me. Boring. My co-workers throw away paper all the time. I need something challenging that I actually can care about.

12:08pm: What an incredibly accurate quiz. I'm amazed!

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

1:28am: *murders the nerdy star in his sleep* *the nerdy star's sleep, that is*

11:45am: If I were a squeer I'm confident I'd be squeeing.

I sent Joe an instant message that read, "collapses nigh-unto death," but apparently he misunderstood my meaning.

1:38am: .

What philosophy do you follow? (v1.03) created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Justice (Fairness) Your life is guided by the concept of Fair Justice: Everyone, yourself included, should be rewarded and punished according to the help or harm they cause. "He who does not punish evil commands it to be done." --Leonardo da Vinci “Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.” --Dwight D. Eisenhower More info at Arocoun's Wikipedia User Page... Justice (Fairness) 85% Utilitarianism 70% Hedonism 60% Existentialism 60% Kantianism 30% Strong Egoism 25% Apathy 10% Nihilism 0% Divine Command 0%

7:23pm: I am  on the computer at work.

It has a black line across its screen. 

My head hurts. I should go somewhere and read.

1:21am: Writing, but I don't want to write. Even though it's exactly what I should be doing. Writing not this, but the other. Twiddling my thumbs, wanting to talk. Want to read, but I know I shouldn't read. Even though I know I shouldn't talk, I know it wouldn't stop me from talking.

The colors conspire against my brain and I, hand in hand like disco partners.