Andrew's Journal

3:56pm: Sick

On Monday night I became inexplicably and horribly sick. I learned on Wednesday night from an ER doctor that I had cellulitis in my lower left leg. It was a large, painful red mass wrapping around my leg from below my knee to just past my ankle. It was swollen, and resemble nothing so much as uncooked Mexican sausage. I of course had the other symptoms that went with it, fever, chills, horrible vomiting down to the yellowish green bile with black streaks. Until my roommate Chris drove me to the hospital I thought I just had a bad fever that was clearing up and a painful rash.

While at the hospital on Wednesday night they gave me two antibiotic shots, big ones, one in each hip. Then Dr Eric prescribed some pain medication and two different pill form antibiotics I needed to take for the next ten days. Go Septra and Cephalexin. Today in the morning I went back for a follow up, where a new doctor who looked at my leg extolled me to come in immediately if it got any worse, as a case this advanced he would ordinarily hospitalize for. Now I get to go back on another follow up on Sunday.

Ahh, the joys of being sick.

8:41pm: World of non-elitecraft

At the beginning of the month my roommate Chris paid for my first month to play World of Warcraft again for Christmas. I haven't played seriously in over a year. I'm enjoying being back in the game. We're on a new server, yet again. This time we're playing Horde on Bonechewer, which is a Pacific time PvP server. I had my first BoP epic drop on my 33rd level blood elf warlock today.

11:04pm:

Tonight was the first time back at the gym for me since April. Just some stretches and bike riding for cardio. It felt really good.

I also bought two pairs of shoes tonight, which puts me ahead on shoe purchases for the next year or so.

I'm at work now, but between work and the gym I went out on a quick date with Laura. I enjoy spending time with her.

5:44am: Weekends

My first experience with Poker occurred this last Saturday night at Dan's place, playing with Dan, Tyler, Jude, Tim and Dan's girlfriend. It was limit hold-em. I can see where the math comes in with limit. No limit scares the shit out of me.

We also watch the new Battlestar Galactica movie on SciFi, "Razor". I believe the phrase "meh" sums it up best. It fulfilled my Battlestar Galactica urge, but little else. Watching the little summations that they ran right before the commercials made me feel as they SciFi thinks their viewers are retarded and need to be told what they just watched. More importantly, not enough plot was there to warrant the length of what should have simply been an episode.

On friday night I went on a date with Laura. We saw "Beowulf" at the Rohnert Park Stadium 16 theatre. Oddly, in line with my previous statements on the new Battlestar Galactica movie, "Beowulf" felt as though it was a stretched out episode of some television series. The director of the movie seemed far to pleased with himself over the character animation, which was good, but not enough to carry the movie.

Last night, before work, Chris, Ben and myself went over to Nicki's for a special Thanksgiving party with perhaps three dozen people. Good times, and good food. I ended up helping to carve and serve the twenty five pound turkey.

1:54am: Politics and Space Travel

I have nothing against extra funding for education in this country. I do however, strongly disagree with any proposal to fund education by cutting money from NASA. Barack Obama has done just that in recent speeches (Obama unveils $18B education plan (USAToday.com)). NASA is already running on a shoe string budget for what we ask them to do.

Cut our military budget first, not our space exploration budget. This country would be better served if we trimmed our military budget by half and split the savings between fusion research and development and NASA. I would like to see a NASA with a budget in excess of $100 billion a year, assuming they are given rational and useful mandates to pursue. The Moon and the Solar System beyond await us to exploit them. I would like America to be the country exploiting those resources and not China.

2:56pm: Thanksgiving

It is looking as though I will be spending this Thanksgiving at my Uncle Chuck and Aunt Janet's place in Healdsburg along with my stepdad Mark and my brother Daniel. There had been quite a few offers of places to go after Mark had initially canceled his usual Thanksgiving celebration. I was gladdened especially by Christian's offer to have Thanksgiving with his family in Windsor.

Mark and Daniel had planned to be up in Humboldt County this whole four day weekend working on Mark's house. I'm not sure why they canceled, but I am now looking forward to spending quality time with my own family for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is my favorite among the many holidays. All it requires is that you hang out with family, eat good food, drink good wine and enjoy pleasant conversation.

12:54am: Car

I had a flat tire this morning coming home from work. This neccesitated a tire change, which I've never done. Not having had a car for most of my adult life I remain rather ignorant of most car maintenance issues.

I ended up buying four new tires for the car, not really worth buying only one.

7:45am: New year, same stuff

I easily slide into ruts. They are usually comfortable ruts, otherwise I would more eagerly seek to deviate from them, but ruts I am stuck in nevertheless. I'm not doing badly in life, in fact I have a steady job, excellent friends, dpon't lack for food or shelter, I simply have a feeling that something could be different. That could be changed for the better with straightforward steps. I get this feeling on a recurring basis, usually when I'm about to enter a new rut.

8:19pm: Working Holidays

Off to work. I'm working Christmas Eve, overtime at that, Christmas and New Year's Eve. Funtastico. That and I need to find time to go get another car.

I've been ruminating over my Long Vale campaign for a while now I definitely want to start up a new game set just after the awakening of the Ogres.

9:24pm: Interesting year so far

I have a driver's license. I had a car and wrecked it. Damn raccoon. Aim for the raccoon next time. I'm working at the Marriott Courtyard in Santa Rosa now. Still polaying World of Warcraft when I can. Spending a couple nights of week gaming table-top style.

11:08am:

I still have the migraine. I have also exceeded my daily limit on excedrin for well into the next week. I hate liver damage.

5:31pm:

Having reviewed lists of symptoms at webMD I feel confident in saying that either I'm in the midst of my first migraine, or my first stroke. I can't quite say which would be preferable, as both run in my family. The strokes are on my dad's side, the migraines from my mother's.

The worst part is that I there is not much of anything I can do to stop either of those two conditions right now.

I think I'm just going to go have dinner with someone and try to ignore it.

4:38pm:

I dislike it when anything goes wrong with my body, especially as I'm uninsured. It's a rebellion on my home soil that I can do little or nothing about, other than wait it out. I can possibly improve my diet, or take pain pills to alleviate my agony.

I hate sounding like I'm whining, which is odd given how often I whine, but this hurts alot. I have a spot on the top left side of my head, on the outside of my skull that flares up in pain every so often. If the every so often was ten to thirty minutes I think I could deal with it. However, its interval varies from 10 seconds to 30 seconds. I feel a sharp pressure build up, then pain that pulses down to nothing.

I read way to many of my mother and stepmother's medical books, and visions of all sorts of horrible things that could be wrong with me float through my head between the thankfully brief flashes of pain.

5:19pm:

Last week I volunteered to be one of the assistant RPG coordinators at KublaCon this year. I get my room paid for, as well as a cool purple pin. For all that I get to help gamers run their games smoothly, which I don't mind doing at all. A win-win situation for me. I've been pimping out KublaCon like crazy as a result.

11:03am: Reminded I have a journal

I was just reminded that I have a journal and I should try to keep it up.

I've been thinking alot lately of who I am and what I want to be. For many years now I have always pictured myself in the future as some sort of computer programmer. More and more I'm not entirely sure that this is what I want. I love computers and programming, but not enough to make it my primary passion in life. I guess that's becuase I already have a passion in life, one that consumes me from within, though not always from without. Gaming is my passion, but finding a way to make it my career is not a straight forward path.

The more thought I have given to this the more I have realized that I should pick a career that will make me comfortable enough and yet allow me enough lesiure to pursue my passion. A recent thought of mine has been to step onto the trek of being in business. By being in business I mean going back to school, getting some sort of technical degree, then pursuing an MBA.

7:52am:

I'm working again. The money will be nice, but now I have to keep a regular schedule. Oh well.

10:50am:

The group of us who ran the MegaDungeon at KublaCon this last weekend were invited by David, the RPG coordinator of KublaCon, along with the Drow Slavers group to organize a large Live dungeon game this Labor Day at ConQuest (www.con-quest.com). Awesome, its nice to have people ask for help.

4:05pm:

It's getting to be crunch time. Paul and I need to really strive hard to get clients, get them what they want, and get money out of them. Like, soon, and get a good income stream out of it. Right now we're doing little penny ante shit, slow and little mulla.

11:47pm:

I feel uncomfortable at times writing here. I probably shouldn't, but I do care what other people think.

2:11pm:

Slowness on the job front. Pauyl and I have started earning some money, but it's not much.

5:42pm:

I've been at Paul's since Sunday, working with him on web design stuff.

12:06am:

Today was surprising. Not an hour into the Star Wars I run with Shane a disturbing incident occured. One of the characters, Jonq, played by my friend Jason, was having a talk with another character Cale, played by Dale. Jonq was trying to explain where he had gotten his hands on a medium-sized transport without paying for it when Cale told him that Cale would have nothing to do with illegalities, and that if asked Cale would tell no lies for Jonq. At this point Jonq pulled out his blaster rifle and shot at Cale. Jonq rolled a twenty on his initiative, beating out Cale there. He next rolled a twenty to hit, and then a nineteen to confirm the critical. His damage came out to a fourteen, more than enough to drop Cale's wounds below zero. It was quite disturbing. It was the first player character death in the campaign, as well as the first player character killed by a player character. The game was quite slow after that. It doesn't quite feel like Star Wars to me anymore.

In other gaming news, Shane and I were players in Tim's new Stargate game. True to the long tradition that I have with Stargate games, my scientist character who is a horrible shot racked up the body count while Shane's character, the hard-core soldier, was dropped like a bad habit by the enemies.

In the non-gaming end of things, I will be going over to Paul's later today to get some work done.

4:51pm:

Lazy day today, about to get showered and ready to head over to Dale's for his Greyhawk game in which I, joy of all joys, will be a player.

5:03am:

No one showed last night to play in the RPGA game. When I got there I discovered that the event was not listed on the board by Arthur. Naughty boy.

2:30am:

I gamed with Shane, Scott, Jason and Billy today at the place I share with Scott and Billy. It was our reverse dungeon game, and while I felt that a great deal was accomplished by the player characters, an awkward feeling hung over the game. An awkward feeling imposed mostly by Scott. I certainly was doing my passive agressive best as an unresponsive gamemaster that requests that Scott kept making and I had already repeating mentioned needed to be dealt with out of game at a later date. Not an unfun session, but not the best I've ever had.

</p>Afterwards Shane and I dropped by Paul and Maureen's place. Paul has some possible web design jobs for me, and we spent several hours talking about the jobs, outlining what needs to be done, and what software Paul and I will need to download and learn. Paul is quite stressed at the moment, as he seems to have way more work than he knows what to do with. Fortunately for both of us, I am good at web design and database management, and need the work as much as he does.</p>