A Window, A Light...

I realize that I've been largely incommunicado, which I largely attribute to playing MineCraft or New Vegas whenever I wasn't engaged in some kind of larger revel. You know. Christmas, then Brent and Val came in town from Seattle, and we generally celebrate these things in the traditional way - via instituting a policy of mandatory alcohol poisoning.

And that leaves me with Thursday, where Brent and Val dropped me back off, and I pretty much immediately took a nap until, like, 3:30. It was super fun, but it's also super exhausting. There was a point during a role playing session of Burning Wheel that I literally just kind of blacked out and went over to sleep on the couch. I hadn't been aware it was happening until it happened. I woke up in time to watch The Blues Brothers, but I was still pretty out of it. Everyone else had finished the game and booze. Of relevancy here is the notion that I wasn't really engaged in that particular drinking process. I kind of phoned my boozing in - something I've more of less made of for the following night. At this point, my lack of interest in alcohol is palpable.

If you want to know how Fallout : New Vegas is, and you haven't played it, you can get a good idea by having played Fallout 3 before, because it's the same thing, just in Nevada. It's more or less stolen my life and is now driving my animate corpse around by firing neurons in the VATS system. In all seriousness, I often sit down to play it for a while, decide I've played enough, then try to think of something my time would be better directed with. Without external stimulus, and barring food, sleep, and sanitation, I almost always fail to do so.

In addition! I've got a close friend who spent some time collaborating with a few friends of her own for the purposes of what's basically a geek pin-up site, plus blog. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, it was put on long term hiatus and is making a come back in the next few days. They had politely asked if I'd write a column for them, and it's likely to be posted on Friday. They asked me to tell my friends, so I am telling you.

That site is here : geekoutgirls.com/
They're very nice people.

Now I am going to make some delicious fish for dinner and play Fallout in my pajamas. And tomorrow, I will be talking to you about Mage and Exalted, if you're interested in that kind of thing.

Of course! The back to work update! 'Back to work' means more then sitting in a cubical answering calls, though that pays the bills and I'm paid by the hour, so I'm surprisingly pleased to be back on the job. It also means regular work on gaming, both Mage and Exalted, and a more serious focus on my personal projects. I had plenty of time to do that back in St. Louis, but I was also on vacation trying to see as many people as possible, so I was pretty busy. Sometimes I feel compelled to rationalize my abject Fairview-oriented laziness, but then I am like, 'Everyone, I was takin' a break!' and I had a good one, so that makes me happy.

My favorite bit, and I never get tired of this, is how I can get on a large metal machine in St. Louis and it takes off through the air, no less, and lands 1700 miles away in Washington state. In between, I guess comfort is important somehow, and they give you snack treats and you can be served drinks. Does anyone else find large scale commercial transportation interesting? I don't know. The infrastructure is immense, all so we can visit family members and things. Then we get cranky when our planes are late. =D

Actually, I did get in kind of late. The plane was supposed to touchdown at 9:35 PM, and it ended up being 10 before we connected to our gate. It was 11 by the time that I got home, and the fact that I got home so early was no doubt thanks to the valient effort of Brent and Val, who certainly did not need to pick me up and did so anyhow. I had almost forgot that I had no working lightbulb in my room, which was fun, as I rooted around in the dark for my cellphone charger before I gave up and pulled all my luggage out into the living room to search. But today, all the work I did packing was worth it. I have all the clothing I bought and I get to drink tea out of my Rat Mug, which is close to my heart for bizzare reasons. Tea does not taste better out of it though. The Rat Mug is not magic. It just has rats on it.

I am lead to understand that I escaped Seattle just in time. The town is not known for its ability to function coated in even the thinnest layer of snow, and it looks like the pile they've got now has caused them to go somewhat haywire. If the town wasn't basically closed before, it is now, and I heard that someone pumped de-froster into a vent at SeaTac because they mistook it for... god, I don't even know. This isn't the type of reaction that I am used to, re: snow, because it happens all the time here. To me, it almost plays out like an Asops fable, but it's a major deal for them. Luckily my own preperations were enough.

Regarding Christmas, well, it's really something else this year. Unlike last year, there is no concentrated misery or expectations of such. Both my dad and his roommate have better jobs and so do I. It's interesting that even a year after, we're all still somewhat in recovery mode, but that feels great compared to another Christmas where things are even worse then they were the year before. That was a fast spiral down, and its cause was clear in retrospect; we did not hand out many gifts this year, but the gifts that we did exchange did not cause us to look over our collective shoulders at the totals of our accounts as if this paltry collection of DVDs would cause us to dip into the red. Well, perhaps my mother did. It's difficult to say.

The holidays are a season of togetherness, or so the television has told me. Being so terribly hyped, it's no wonder that for those people in difficult circumstances, it is the most stressful time of the year, as we scrabble to erect a semblance of the expected yule-time results. My brother is out of jail, and my parents have just finalized their divorce, but both my mother and brother made it over on Christmas Eve to eat, drink, and play a terrible game of Scrabble before she escaped to a gay bar in downtown St. Louis, taking Brandon with her. My father was a little dissapointed to be ditched at 10 PM for electronic dance music, but there's really no surprise there. The surprise was that she came at all, and a little greater was that she continues to trust Brandon with her car. It would be worse if he had a long history of wrecking cars...

So, now it's Christmas day. I'll be spending it at my uncles, and it's almost always a very nice time. We spend most of the evening eating and talking, but historically I can finish a small novel up there as well without much difficulty. Then the holiday will be over, taking its expectations with it. That's about all I can really expect, and then it's all about the days between here and the first of the year.

Everyone's back to work today. I clearly prefer my time off, but I still need to pay for my extravagant lifestyle, so I don't really mind being back. There's some confusion to the point where I spent several minutes debating with my roommate as to how many days this quarter I've taken off in regards to when I'll stop qualifying for my bonus, but I don't really need to worry about it since I absolutely still do, and it only becomes an issue if I go out of my way to take more time off before the end of the year.

It's December, so I've grudgingly accepted the Christmas themes that I've seen sprouting up all about. Unlike in previous years, it is surprisingly easy to ignore for me, if I so choose, which serves in some way to remind me that difference between retail and non-retail work. On the surface, one might suppose that it is just an issue of income, but the difference is more along the lines of schedule and feelings towards consumerism. During holidays, the retail worker is supposed to live Christmas and crap tinsel, which is about as uncomfortable as I suppose it sounds. Every year, thousands of innocent retail workers are hospitalized for taking their holiday instructions too literally.

So, anyhow, don't eat tinsel. I'm trying to help, here.