A late-night post because while I'm tired, I can't sleep. A little bit of QQ here, although I feel entitled as 1) this is my blog and 2) I haven't done all that much whining here recently, except about how much I hate my job. I was reading through some of my old entries, looking for something, and I started thinking about how it seems like my creativity has become all but non-existent lately. I know I was never one of those people who posted tons of fic or whatever, but I do have a sizable collection of fragments of things, almost none of which have been written in the last two and a half years. And part of my problem, I think, is that along with feeling increasingly zombie-like, all the time, I've also been losing my ability to focus on things. One of the reasons I haven't been blogging much is that while I have things I'd like to talk about, I can't string the ideas together in a way that's coherent (heh, even this post is getting a little garbled). It's frustrating, because it makes me feel useless, and so far, there's no medical reason for me to feel this way - I've had a ton of tests done, and everything has come up totally normal. The next step is trying out a few possible meds to deal with the tiredness, one of which is used off-label to treat ADHD, so I'm hoping that works out.

...I'm not even entirely sure why I'm posting this. While frustrating, I'm not actually massively upset about this (particularly as it will change nothing, other than making me feel more like crap) - guess I just feel like talking.

I meant to post this about two weeks ago, but I finally finished crafting and gemming Alixia's Frozen Shadoweave Set - I wanted to thank everyone who helped me out with it <3<3<3<3

Also, I finally finished the Cipher of Damnation questline, which means next on the list for the Champion of the Naaru title is heroics. However, I've never tried any of the really hard heroics, and I have nooo idea if my gear is up to spec - any knowledgeable mages who can help me out :)? Amory page is here

So I haven't talked about my garden recently - time to change that!

At the beginning of summer, I had my doubts anything was actually going to grow. We had a really long, cold, wet spring, and a lot of the stuff I planted looked all sad and wilted in June. However, we've had some really nice days in the last few weeks, and it's exploded with growth - the downside to this is that it has also exploded with weeds, because I am a lazy slacker :< This year was sort of an experiment, too, as it's the first time I've ever done a garden entirely by myself. I've learned a few things for next summer - more compost in the soil, plant tomatoes farther apart, figure out some way to keep the strawberries off the ground so the ants don't eat them all.

The last two weeks have marked the first major harvests from my garden - I had a few strawberries in July, but less than a handful total. My tomatoes are starting to ripen (and nothing beats home-grown tomatoes picked ripe off the vine), and my zucchini have gotten massive.

Jon and I cooked the one above up today, along with some steak I had in the freezer. We did half of it fried (egg/milk dip then cornmeal/flour/salt and pepper dip), which was tasty, but a little too greasy when paired with the steak. The rest we turned into a sort of baked parmesan zucchini-thing. The topping is breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese, oregano, chopped basil (also fresh from the garden!), fresh crushed garlic, and some salt and pepper. They turned out really tasty, even though I added a little too much salt - all the seasoning was a nice complement to the less seasoned steak. Unfortunately the topping is really crumb-y - I was hoping when I baked it the cheese would melt and make it all stick together, but no such luck. I think next time I'm going to add either a more melty cheese, like some mozzarella, or some beaten egg to the mixture to get it to stick better.

So I finally ran my very first game ever last week - the first (hopefully of many) Shadowrun session with this particular group. So by way of introduction, here's a quick run-down of the team members:

Harlequin: Human social adept, and the team's face. Cultured, handsome, and above all, better than you. Team member most likely to get killed by a pyschotic immortal elf for stealing his name.
Life Goal: To be loved get filthy rich and retire.

Ace: Human elf-poser rigger and mechanic. Has long blond hair and a gold lamé bomber jacket. Can drive almost anything (or so he'd have you believe).
Life Goal: To own his own airport.

Predator: Troll cybersam. Obsessed with late 20th and early 21st century science fiction. Spends much of his time running around with an optical camo suit on, and a monofilament sword. Team member most likely to get the rest of the team killed doing something silly.
Life Goal: To become the Predator (or at least as close as plastic surgery can get him).

Jenkins: Human technomancer. Arrogant know-it-all, and the team's matrix wiz kid. Team member most likely to get killed by the rest of the team for being too irritating.
Life Goal: ???? (Profit?)

iPhansi: Seattle-born South African elf (in SR, there are black people in Johannesburg), and a Zulu shaman. Could make a fortune sitting around enchanting all day, but has dedicated herself to iradicating the nasties of the spirit world - in Earthdawn terms, she'd be a 1st circle Nethermancer/Horror Stalker, and questor of Death.
Life Goal: To stop the next Scourge.

For the first session, I ran one of the pre-built into adventures, which worked out okay, except the troll is a killing machine, and I didn't do enough prep and kept having to look things up in the book >.> It's an encounter with some gangers in a Stuffer Shack (basically a 7-11 on steroids), and ended with the troll forcing one of the gangers to buy him a new Slurpee after his first one got shot in the fight (the team's only casualty).

I now have a 52oz insulated Slurpee mug, and the strawberries in my fridge have turned, and will assault me with propaganda should I open the door (as they are dirty red Commie bastards).

Dear Catalyst Games Lab, please stop taunting me with Unwired previews. It looks sexy and awesome, and you guys said it as going to be released in the second quarter of '08. And, well, it's the middle of June now.

Also, while many of the posts on Dumpshock make me wish I had a machine to punch people through the internet with (typical fanboy attitudes of 'because I like it, it must be right, and anyone who disagrees with me is an idiot), I am occasionally reminded of how awesome it, when I come across things like geneticists debating the method of expression of metatypes.

The managers came down from their offices on high and decreed that there shall be a firing in the grocery store this week. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth by the firee, but it was done, and there was much rejoicing through out the produce department.

In other words, Problem Child is no longer a problem, and apparently caused a bit of a scene on the way out, which I missed. Now if we could only get J to stop showing up to game, life would be good indeed XD

In brief WoW news, I hit Outlands on my mage this week, so in my excitement, I've been spending more time staring at my computer screen than I probably should, especially because Outlands is a pretty weird place, and the surreal is getting to me. On the other hand, Outlands also fulfills my desire to run instances all the time, because I can find groups for the Blood Furnace and Ramparts pretty much all the time. So I've run Ramparts four times, and Blood Furnace twice, in the last four days XD;

I know I don't usually blog about work, but this last week has been crazy-town.

Saturday: We have a new girl in the department. We'll call her Problem Child, as that is what she is - shows up late, impossible to get her to do anything, wanders off and talks to people in other departments for half her shifts. She spent the first fifteen minutes of her shift talking on her cellphone, and I, not having had a good day up to that point, was a bit short with her about how she needed to get her ass in gear. She flipped out, and the ensuing rant included the line 'Do you wanna take this out back? I'll take you on'. Seriously, who the hell says something like that?

Monday: A Murphy's Law of days - one opener calls in sick, Problem Child calls in 'too stressed out to work'. One of the afternoon people thinks she's closing, and comes in two hours late. The closer himself is forty-five minutes late. The tubing of our cooler system pops off, and sprays water all over the floor. I slice my hand open with a box cutter (not very deep or anything, but it was pretty annoying). It was a laugh-or-cry day - we mostly chose to laugh.

Today: Saturday's incident is firmly in the hands of the managers, and I got a promotion. Small one, with no real increase in power, but it's nice to know that the managers think that highly of me.

We'll see what new adventures tomorrow brings...

I bought the last two volumes of Transmetropolitan last week, and finally got around to reading them tonight. Awesome, as usual, and I have to give Warren Ellis mad props for pulling of an amazing ending. Endings are always tricky, and endings of serials exponentially so - this one was satisfying, conclusive, and not actually a total downer.

And it got me thinking - Transmet, on the surface, is a very cyberpunk comic. At it's core, though, it starts to transcend genre - it's a story about the power of words, and of The Truth. The Truth is not always good, and not always nice, but it's still something to strive for.

And coming in on a similar vein, an entry about the reasons and nature of blogging. I find a lot of what Sam says there ringing true for me - I blog, both to share my news, opinions, and tirades with the world, and to keep a record for myself. That record is seven and a half years long now, and still chugging along. I know I've been negelectful, recently - some of it is a habit born out of last summer, I think, when I had very limited internet. I got in the habit of not posting, and never really broke it. Life has also become somewhat routine as of late, which has far less potential for interesting or amusing things to happen, particularly as I tend to forget them when they do - work, for example, is good for at least one nutbar customer a week, the current one being the woman who insisted that our Yukon Gold potatoes were in fact overgrown White Rose potatoes, and she knows this because she's a horticulturist, and grows potatoes and writes for magazines. I did a great deal of smiling and nodding.

But I'd really like to pick myself up out of my journaling slump, and maybe get some new graphics up eventually.

I know I'm going to regret how late I'm up tomorrow morning, but I couldn't sleep, and blogging is better than lying in bed awake. Term is over, most of my marks are back in - I did...well, crappily, to be honest, this term, although I didn't fail anything. My average is hovering on the the C+/B- line, which is a little disappointing, as it means most likely that I'll be denied admission to my first choice of major (cell bio specialization, which is full of cheating keener pre-meds), and will have to settle on general bio - I can take an almost identical course load, though. Of course, I could always wuss out and switch to Arts and get great marks, but while I love English (and get all As and B+s in it), I don't really want an English degree. Still, I really need to pull my shit together this fall - while UBC is actually a really tough school (Canadian students basically need an A+ average to get into my faculty), I'd like to have at least a solid B/B+.

In nerdy news, my little gnome mage in WoW hit 40 this week, which means I got my first mount ever - an Unpainted Mechanostrider, which is really cool, although kind of smokey. I'm also running my first tabletop game ever - Shadowrun, for Rosie, Justin, and Jon. So far we have a Japanese elf technomancer, a troll Predator fanboy, and a social chameleon, who will probably be changed because the party doesn't have an actual mage. I'm nervous as hell, because I have no self-confidence, but I'm also pretty excited about sharing a setting I like so much with friends.

Had a brief end-of-term party which was actually more of a sit-around-and-talk-about-Shadowrun party, because those were the only people who actually showed. If I want to throw a party in the future, I think I need to first make more friends, and then invite three times as many people as I want to show on the principle that two thirds of them won't, as this is a re-occuring theme for me. Or possibly I should stop trying to have parties and sit around eating chips and playing video games by myself XD; Yeah, I'm a bitter antisocial freak. This is why I love Transmet - I want to be Spider when I grow up (well, okay, except female and not a journalist).

Speaking of video games, we have Brawl, and it is awesome. I have been pimping out Jon's Wii, as it is set up here on my 'new' big tv (36" CRT, hand-me-down but still in great shape) - I think I might cave and buy some virtual console stuff for it, possibly after I buy another GC controller and a GC memory card to play some Zelda with.