Posted 8:10 PM by Tim
More news!

Today was a nice day. Bren and I went out for the day by ourselves. It was really nice. I've missed doing those things with her. We're usually too busy to really get a chance to be together.

Being home has been nice, but it will be good to get back to my own place again. Besides, I haven't played any Magic or Vampire since I've been down here, and I've got to get things ready for tournaments!

And now, a quick moral dilemma. I've been using a public computer system while I've been out here. They're not too good at remembering to shut down all of the running windows. This means that I've come across some rather interesting windows, and on this system, there's even a gambling window open. Someone's account. It's got some 94,000+ tokens (whatever that means), which can be used to make entries into a draw for some cash. I could rather easily cash out their tokens, reroute the money to my own account and simply profit off of the fault of others. It would teach them a valuable lesson, but I know that it is not the right thing to do. Gah. Morals, what are you to do with them?

Posted 6:46 PM by Tim
News from the front!

I'm still on my vacation east. It hasn't been too bad, but there has been a bout of strep throat. Gah. That sucks.

There's apparently some interest in my novel out here. My mom's friend wanted a copy, so I printed her one. She's apparently loving it - especially the minor characters for some reason. Another person has said that they're interested in it, and someone else has gotten hold of my working copy to read it over. I'm hoping that she likes it too.

I had a nice visit last night with a friend of mine. It's rather nice to be able to hang out with people again. I was saying that it would be very nice if all of my old friends were in the area. We could make these kinds of get-togethers more regular. It's a pipe dream of course, but it's a nice thought.

Only a few more days of the vacation time left. Oh yeah, the sweater is starting to come along nicely.

Posted 8:03 PM by Tim
Gah! Today hasn't been a good day. Wait, let me revise that. This week hasn't been very good overall. I have got some good work on the sweater. It's still going to take me forever. At least, it seems that way.

I've been mulling a relatively minor decision for a few days now. This is, what clan to play for the VTES league here in KW. Not a huge choice, but I'm a little over-competative with these sorts of things.

Posted 10:37 AM by Tim
Ok. I'm applying for jobs now. Are you happy for me?

It seems like the first thing that I apply to has to be so far off the mark from what I've been doing, that it's almost not worth bothering with. Sure, the company is working in cell culture, and genetics, but I haven't done any of that in years. If I got hired, I'd be going in there like a newbie straight out of college. No idea what half of the machines do, or how to get them to work properly. Well, I'm not expecting much from it, but it might be a nice job. It's very close, and all that.

I've got some work started on the sweater. Yep, it's going to be a long job.

Posted 6:15 PM by Tim
Well, I decided to start on building up a little bit of stock for possible sale. I've decided that the first project will be a sweater. I asked Brenda to pick out something that she liked, so that it could be for her in case nobody else wanted it. I originally figured that the work might take me all of 3 days to do. Given the rate that it is going, I'm no thinking that it should only take me about 2 weeks to get done, and that's working 4 hours a day on it. Still, you have to start somewhere, right?

Posted 7:46 AM by Tim
Vampire Demo day went well. We didn't get any new people showing up, but we did have some fun. Eight people showed, so we were able to break it into two tables of four. This made the games faster, though I'm still finding the play to be a little slow. I'm not sure why, that's just the way it is.

This next bit will be boring to all who do not play the game.

I'm finding that I don't tend to discard as much in the early game as some of the other players. I'm not sure if this is a fault, or if I just seem to have a hand that requires me to wait. I'm definately thinking about shoving a copy of The Barrens into the deck. Still, the Malkies are doing well. My table was me, with Sneak and Bleed Malks, Dave with Tremere, Stewart with Sneak and Bleed Chainsaw-wielding Malk/!Malk, and Robert with big fire Tremere. Both of the Tremere decks are very scary. It was, of course, very neat to see so many things that were both good and bad if there were Malks on the table. There was a rather heavy bit of bounce at the table also. Very fun. I somehow managed to take the game, with my biggest swing being for 6, and getting several hits for 5. Only one hand jam of preventative bleed stuff, and that eventually got cleared out by Dreams of the Sphinx.

That's all the Vampire stuff for now. Back to our regular programming.

I'm headed east this Saturday. I'm looking forward to it, and to seeing all of the friends that I haven't seen for 2+ years. It should be a very nice, yet hectic vacation.

Posted 8:12 PM by Tim
I've been forgetting my keys in the car lately. I've got half a mind to go out to the car with a second set, lock the first set in the car and just get the event over with. Stupid, I know, since it'll happen or it won't when it's going to happen, but it just seems like I'd be being proactive about the whole thing.

I've been thinking about the novel again (the NaNoWriMo one) again. I've got a vacation out East planned next week, and my mom wanted me to be sure to bring the novel along. I've just got to do another printout. The editing version is simply unreadable to anyone but me.

I've been looking at a crafting place lately. Part of a possible plan to get some cash into the house. The deal is this: You let them sell your stuff for you, they get a precentage of each sale. They also make you rent the store space to showcase your stuff. The cheapest store space is about $53 a month, and they take 11% off the top of each of your sales. Not the best way to make money. I've probably mentioned this in an earlier post, but I'm bringing it up again, because I'm still mulling over how long it would take me to make enough stock to fill a space.

Maybe I should be making something.

Posted 4:53 PM by Tim
Tupelo.

That's the word of the day. It was stuck in my head, trying to get out. I had to say it out loud, and it still wouldn't go away. After wondering about it for a while, I suddenly heard it on TV. Tupelo, Minnesota. One of the girl's TV shows said it (no, not a tape either). I have no idea why it came up.

Just another reason I'm me.

Posted 2:44 PM by Tim
It's time for personal improvement. I figure that as long as I'm at home during the day, I might as well be working to better myself. I've been doing a bit of exercise every day, and trying to work on some of my creative outlets. So far, it's not been too bad. The cleaning and such is crimping the progress a little, but that's just because I'm easily distracted. Hopefully it'll all work out.

Posted 12:13 PM by Tim
I need a digital camera.

Wayne and I are still playing with Stikfas. They're so cool. The trouble is, we end up with all these cool poses, and then we have no way of showing everyone else. Digital camera would be nice.

Posted 8:44 AM by Tim
Sometimes a lesson just doesn't stick. I've been trying to impress on my children that putting anything on, over, or near their box heaters is a bad idea. They don't have the idea yet. I was upstairs today and smelled someone ironing. I know that there is no way the girls are ironing clothes. This means that one of the heaters has something on it. Blankets probably. I was right. My oldest daughter had thrown her comforter over her heater, and it was merrily heating it far too much. No fire, but I wasn't happy. I'm not sure what I can do to teach them. I'm hoping it's not going to have to be a fire.

Posted 6:26 PM by Tim
Irregular posting. That's something I'd like to change. Daily posting is a dream of mine, but it's not too practical. My life isn't exciting enough for things to change that rapidly. And I'm not inventing enough to keep things fresh.

Next week looks nice. I've got a tournament at the end of the week (Vampire), hoping to get a game or three on this week (hoping for 3+ players), and I might even manage to get something constructive done.

Let me tell you about the Vampire thing. I've been a big Magic player for a while now. Shortly after I got into Magic, someone showed me Vampire (then called Jyhad). It was very different from Magic, and very cool. While I was in the US last year, I bought out a stores supply of Vampire cards and tried to get a few games on. I wasn't terribly successful. Just before Christmas this year, I found a group that played Vampire. They're just getting started with organizing regular tournaments. It's nice to be able to play.

Lemme introduce you to the game. The box describes it as modern gothic horror. Which is reasonable accurate. The players of the game play as ancient vampires, trying to control vampire society. Coverty, of course. So, they recruit younger vampires and coerce them into doing things for them. Usually these actions are against the other older vampires (called Methesulahs in the game). So, you're trying to eliminate a specific player, and one of the other player's is trying to eliminate you. There's combat, politics and strategy involved in the game. Playing well can take a lot of learning.

I like the social aspect of the game. It's an area of my life that needs work. It's nice to win now and then too.

The tournament is coming up on the 19. It'll be at Yggdrasil Games in Waterloo, if anyone is interested in going. $3 entry, and it's a demo day. Prizes, free stuff and more. I'm really looking forward to it.

Change of topic. Walking around shopping today I saw a 64 Mb memory card that was about the same size (and probably weight) as the Barbie Talking Townhouse plastic ID card. This is a tiny bit of plastic that you stick into various places in this Barbie playhouse, which makes it say different things. I'm seriously impressed by the miniaturization of memory going on. I was mentioning to Wayne that it'd be very cool to have something like that that I could stick into my phone. Of course, the Treo phone/messenger/palm already does that. Fusion of technology. I love it.

Posted 4:28 PM by Tim
I've been trying to think about how I can make a little cash on the side and still stay home. I've thought about what I could do or make. There's a place in KW called Crafter's Marketplace. They're an interesting operation. Basically, you can rent a small amount of space from them, and they will sell your stuff for you, and take a comission. So, if you don't end up selling anything, you still end up paying for the space. The contracts at 6 or 12 months. That's a fair commitment. The smallest space is $85 a month, so that's means a minimum investment of $510. Making that back based on the sales of my crafts seems risky to say the least. No matter what I sell, I'd have to make at least $95 just to break even (didn't I mention the 11% comission??). I just don't have the confidence that something that I make can sell for that kind of money. Even if I sold several small things.

Posted 11:38 AM by Tim
The snow-castle is melting. But that's alright. I knew it would when I built it.

Got the cleaning bug on today. Gotta get some laundry into the machine. Such a busy and exciting day, eh? Well, that's the way it is for Housedad! King of the wild laundry frontier.

It's almost time to get rid of this Housedad stichk. I've got to start with the job and work and such. That'll be nice in it's own way. I've started to have some thoughts about "how am I going to pay for this?" There's a few things that I'd like, and I just can't justify them with our current income. I've got a few ideas about making money from home, but I have my doubts that they're going to work out.

Posted 1:34 PM by Tim
I was bitten by the muse today. The weather has made the snow (we got quite a bit recently) perfect for snowmen. Of course, I'm not really good at snowmen that aren't human sized (and we didn't have enough snow for that). So, I got the shovel out and made a pile next to a tree on the lawn. From that pile, I began to sculpt. Snow-castle. It's great. The girls loved it (even though it wasn't finished when they came home for lunch. I figure that the whole thing probably took about 2 hours to make - in two bursts.

My youngest (joined by a friend) helped me for the second part. I got some food colouring in a spray bottle and put a little bit of colour into the castle. I figure that the colour will help it stand out. It was fun to do. See, late summer in 2001 I borrowed a video about how to make sandcastles. It was an impulse loan from the library. Of course, we never got to the beach again that summer. It didn't snow a lot during the winter, and I had a job that kept me late, so it was kinda pointless. Summer 2002 had me at the beach about twice, and I built a sand castle on one of those occasions. I got burnt pretty bad because I didn't pay attention to the time and the sun. A lot of people come and look when you're doing something like that.

So, the muse to create bit me today, and I had to express it as a snow-castle. I'd take a picture, but I don't have a digital camera. I gotta find a way to get me one of those.

Posted 9:22 AM by Tim
Gahr. First day of school again.

Trying desperately to remember the routine. Last night was interesting, as my dream brain was on. Pretty much all of my dreams are lucid, so that means that I don't get a lot of rest when I can recall a dream. I must say that I had a pretty strange one last week - but I'm not going to go into the details now. Let's say that it was a recurring dream (with a really slow recurring loop (about a year)), and that it's always strange, yet intriguing.

I've got to get this house in order again, and start getting the routine in place.

Posted 4:59 PM by Tim
I'm getting back into the daily routine. Slowly. Waking up early wasn't on the menu the last week or so. I've got to get used to getting up earlier in the morning again.

Bren brought home a chocolate fish today. A Christmas bonus of some kind. It's going to be interesting to eat.

Posted 12:57 PM by Tim
Happy New Year!

There wasn't much celebration here last night. Bren, Wayne and I sat up watching some TV until the countdown hit. That was pretty much it. The girls had been sent to bed earlier, so they weren't up.

I've had some people give me funny looks about the way that the girls are being taught about holidays. Mainly, they're not all freaky about them, like most children are. That's because Bren and I aren't all freaky about them. Take Christmas, for example. Most children are all freaked about Christmas for weeks beforehand. Starting just after the stores start to put up Christmas decorations. We don't really get that way. I suppose that's because we do very little shopping. We don't see all of the decorations too early. Our girls are excited about the holiday, but they're not obsessed with it.

I may hvae relayed this already, but it illustrates my point. I was at the mall with one of the girls, doing some last minute shopping. It was the week before christmas I think. We're standing in line when a lady starts talking to the girls. She asks them "How many more sleeps before Christmas?" or something similar to that. Neither of the girls knew. Hell, I don't think I knew. They gave her the look - the one that you give to people who ask you crazy questions. She looks at me, and I tell her, "They don't know. We haven't told them." That's when I get the look from her - the one that makes me check if my horns are showing. I dont' see the problem. So we haven't told them how many days are left. It wasn't like there was only one or two. We let them know when it got to that point. I just don't see the reasoning behind getting the children all freakishly excited about something like that.

We're the same about birthdays and New Year's and Easter. Holidays are important, but they're not something that needs a week of focusing on them.

Let's change the subject back to today. It's the start of a new year. Once again, I'm unemployed. See, last year, I was unemployed also. I found a job pretty quick though, so it wasn't a huge problem. This year is starting the same way. I'm going to start looking for work again, but I'm not sure how I'm going to find something suitable. If Bren gets a few more minor raises, then I won't really need a job, but I'll be able to work on something with a longer turnaround time than a few days.

I'm sure that something will work out.

Here's looking forward to the new year, no matter what happens.