Tonight was D&D, and another night of playing Officer Quezemphthalous "Bob" Agachak of the Lankhmet South Baracks Guard SWAT team. Quote of the night:

New Sergeant, to watch commander, "Why is he on the team, if you won't recognize how good he is?"

Commander, to new sergeant, "The last sergeant wanted to piss off the captain."

Anyway. I got up reasonably early this morning, and went out to mail packages to lapis_lazuli and mactavish, as well as returning the flip phone to the person I bought it for, at his usual rate for buying used equipment.

I didn't get totally screwed on the deal, and that's all I have to say about that.

Had a leisurely lunch, and as I was walking out, realized I'd forgotten to print out my homework. Came home, printed out homework, drove like a madman to school, where I forgot and left my homework on the front seat of my car when I went in to class.

Fortunately, Verbose Guy was willing to cut me some slack and let me bring it in at break time.

The young woman I have a crush on in the class actually spoke to me, voluntarily, today. She wanted to know what section I was in for the next course. So that she could transfer out of it, I suppose.

Thought a lot about a question asked of me yesterday. The question was, "why does everything have to be about you?"

I have two answers for this question, at varying degrees of cynicism.

1. Oh, sorry, did I spoil your dramatic moment? I forgot, everything's supposed to be about you, right?
   
   
2. It's not about me. Well, sort of, but not really. From my point of view, it's about you. It's about the fact that for months, I've felt like I've been walking on egg shells, trying not to offend you. It's about the fact that regardless of whether what you said was about me or not, I've gotten so accustomed to the thought that I've pissed you off that I perceived it as being about me.
   
   And you know what? I'm tired. I'm tired of walking on egg shells. I'm tired of constantly feeling guilty for offending / pissing you off. If the only way this can be resolved is for one of us to leave, well, then, it might as well be me.

Sometimes, people aren't friends, no matter what they have in common. It just doesn't work. It's not my fault, it's not your fault, it just is.

And that's all I have to say about that.

I'm feeling despondant and inadequate. I don't want to do anything but curl up in a ball and stay that way for the rest of the year.

It started with something Easily Offended Girl said to me tonight. I bought darth_riley a Princeton shirt, and when she found out it was me who'd done it (she'd bought a Smith College shirt for the Pink Lord of the Sith), she said, "It's not like you graduated from Princeton or anything."

Thanks. Would you like to stick something sharp in any of my other soft spots?

In and of itself, it's no big deal. On top of some other things that have been going on, which I don't feel like going into, it was enough to make me want to walk off right then.

Sigh.

Hello, Darkness, my old friend.

For a while, I've been joking about the fact that I'm somewhat cynical and bitter about... well, about many things, really. Particularly about love and romance.

Last night, I went to brennabe's wedding. It was a very nice wedding, but it was odd to me to realize that I really am bitter and cynical about weddings.

It was very strange to be looking at the wedding through sort of two sets of eyes... on the one hand, I could see that it was a very nice wedding... the bride was beautiful, the groom was handsome, the church was nice.

darth_riley was cute as the flower girl.

On the other hand, I found myself thinking cynical thoughts about the nature of weddings, and marriage in general.

Later, lapis_lazuli and I were talking. I was saying that, in the incredibly unlikely event that I get married, I'd want to... it doesn't matter what. The point was that, as I was saying it, I realized that I really think that me getting married is incredibly unlikely.

At one point during the reception, I noticed that several people at the reception had some interesting tattoos. In conjunction with hamner, I decided that it would be a good idea to use the camera on the table to get pictures of the tats.

One of the people with nice tats (and that other 't' word, too) was a cute little blonde girl. After I'd walked around taking pictures of tats, I came back to the table, and found that hamner and emerythegreat had decided that the whole thing was a ruse to hit on the cute blonde girl.

It wasn't. I'm not afraid to talk to strangers. I get strange enthusiasms, and express them exhuberantly.

Yes, it was nice to talk to the blonde girl. Yes, it was nice to take a picture of her tats. No, I wasn't hitting on her.

I mean, c'mon... from her perspective, I'm an old, ugly, fat, unemployed guy at a wedding reception. What a catch I'd be, huh?

Oh, wait... that woud be bitter cynacism again. I'm going to have to cut back on that.

It's Monday, and I'm back at work. Den Herr Boss is here, but I haven't actually seen him... truth told, I've been sort of avoiding him, and he doesn't seem to be in any great hurry to see me again, either.

It's the 24th of March, of the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Three. Before you know it, it'll be April, and then May... and I'm leaving my job in May.

Last night, brennabe and I had a discussion about how mention of large sums of money being owed for this or that made me want to curl up in the corner and wimper. I'm feeling that way right now, because I still don't have sure notice that I'm going to get student aid, but I know I have to leave my current job at the end of the semester.

I can just picture myself having to get an interm job that involves asking people if they want fries with that.

Anyway. I'm back from New York, if you hadn't guessed. Saturday morning lapis_lazuli drove me to the Newark airport, where I got aboard an Airbus 320, and several hours later, arrived at Sky Harbor, Phoenix.

In my bags, in addition to the stuff I'd taken with me, were:

• One and a half pairs of earrings lapis_lazuli had given me. She actually gave me two pair... one of cute little lapis dots, and one of tiger-eye dots... but the back on the posts wasn't particularly tight, and I lost one of the tiger-eye dots.
  
  
• My gameboy, which had sat in a box in Marion's work room for three years. Also various games for it, including PokéMon Yellow, Silver, and Crystal. I gave Blue to lapis_lazuli, and Red was in a box that had come with me when I moved back to Tucson three years ago. I don't have Gold.
  
  
• A picture of kiarrh in her wedding dress. It, too, had been in a box in Marion's work room for the last three years. It's worth mentioning that I didn't plan what to leave behind... I packed boxes, and thought everything was coming with me, but the car filled up somewhat short of everything.
  
  It's also worth mentioning that kiarrh is the only only woman for me.
  
  Hey, kiarrh, you ever use your gameboy anymore?
  
  
• An old paper journal. It's a book I bought in Göttingen, many moons ago. I kind of glanced through it the other night, when I first pulled it out of the box, and was somewhat amazed at how one-track mind some of the entries were... first about my breakup with Trish, and later about a personal problem I was having.
  
  
• A sketchbook. Unlike gen or paka, my sketchbooks contain nothing worth sharing.
  
  
• Half a pound of very cherry Jelly Belly brand jelly beans.

So, as you can see, there wasn't a great deal of shopping done. No time spent in expensive little NOLI botiques. Shucksie-darns.

When I got to Sky Harbor, I went and sat outside, waiting for my parents. I'd been a real dope the week before going to New York, and left a backpack full of homework at their house, and since I was going to be in the same town with them, anyway....

They drove up, and mom hopped out, and gave me the backpack, complete with new Cell Phone. I, myself, can't afford a new cell phone, but mom put it on a family plan account with Verizon, and so I have a phone. She maintains this is selfish; I maintain it's generous.

Though, of course, the case can be made that I'm likely to spend 75% of my time on it, talking to her.

She also gave me dinner (yummi!) and money for the cab I'd need, when I got home to Tucson.

Honestly, I think I might have taken a cab even if I'd gotten in before the busses stopped running... I was that tired. But I rode back to Tucson on the Arizona Shuttle, a bus with seats designed for midgets, and I was all cramped up by the time we debarked in Tucson.

I was also grumpy, because the other passengers and the driver had been listening to the Arizona Wildcats play somebody called Gorgonzola or something, and I wasn't sure if that was the name of the coach, or the name of the school, and I got ridiculed for asking.

"It's a very well-known school from Seatle," the driver said.

To which I responded that it couldn't be that well known, as I'd never heard of it.

Took a cab home, fell into bed, and did not get up until the next morning, when we had another Thanksgiving dinner which could not be beat.

Lay around languidly on Sunday morning, playing PokéMon Yellow. Got up, and discovered the good news and the bad news pretty much simultaneously. The good news is that winter's over. The bad news is, the rat-bastards down at Southwest Gas turned my gas off again.

Fortunately, as I said, winter's over, and I'm unlikely to need the heater again until next winter. Unfortunately, it's not hot enough yet that cold showers are a joy.

I swear that if I owned this trailer, I'd replace the water heater with an electric jobbie, and the same with the stove. Maybe even the furnace. I hate the people at Southwest Gas that much, yes.

Anyway...

Went to sundaygames a little early, because I wanted to show hamner the pictures I'd taken at the Met. I discovered, somewhat to my surprise, that I wasn't the first person there... matterntm had beaten me there, and was already ensconced behind the Game Cube, doing bizare things to toads and wet sprockets.

hamner and I sat down with his computer and the images, and ooh'ed and aah'ed over them for a little bit; we talked about PokéCrack for a little bit, and like that. I talked about seeing if I could still find PokéStadium 2 for the N64, and he agreed that I could borrow his (now unused) N64 for a while if I did.

Then the game, which was run, I think, very differently than I would've... we had an avatar of the god the party's paladins, Campbell and Mathesson, worship, show up and destroy a lich-king and his two vampire buddies.

My personal style of running a game is to make the PCs the most important people they run into, and to throw things at them as they have capacity to take them... not facing them with overt manifestations of gods, for instance, except maybe at the culmination of an adventure.

But I'm not running the game, and it seemed to come off okay, so there you go.

And then home, where I fell into bed, and did not get up....

Sometimes, I get spun up over the stupidest things.

You ask for an example? I shall give you one.

I like brennabe. I really do. She's kind, she's funny, she's even kind of cute.

But sometimes, I get irritated at her. She comes to sundaygames and refers to Riley, hamner and roxietiel's sprout, as "my baby."

I know she's just being cute. I know that. But it irritates me, none the less. Riley isn't her baby. It irritates me that she says that, and irritates me more that she takes a propriatary interest in Riley, as if no one else's attention is good enough for the sprout.

Part of the reason that irritates me is that I like holding Riley.

It's silly, I know. But one of the best depression treatments I've found in recent months is holding Riley, even when she's being a little bit fussy.

hamner and I were joking about her being the best toy he's got, and he's right.

None of this really means anything. I'm just spouting off. Feel free to ignore it.

Look, I'm thinking about giving up this nonsense of posting regularly to a web journal. Who really cares, after all. Does anyone really come to their monitor, breathless to know what drivel cowboy_r has typed today?

No.

Honestly, I doubt any of you would even notice if I stopped writing, if I didn't make a big deal about it.

And it's not like this is any priceless historical relic, unlike Sam Pepys' Diary... first of all, it's written in a completely intangable and perishable medium, and secondly, it's not as if I'm doing something rare and unique... there are thousands, maybe millions of people keeping web journals, and most of them have more to say than I do.

Plus, I keep offending people. brennabe was aparently deeply offended by comments I'd made on our meetings, and that disturbs me. I meant them as comments on my emotional state, not on her. brennabe has never been anything but friendly, forthright, and open with me, and it dismays me that I have caused her any consternation whatsoever.

Additionally, does anyone really care that the only Doctor Who I particularly enjoyed was Tom Baker? That my friend Steph used to say that John Pertiwee was the Cat's Pajamas, but that she was more than a bit of a nutter?

So, yes. Thinking about giving the whole thing up.

Because, really... who cares?

I haven't been doing a good job of making my trains of thought clear, lately.

My statement that I would have to stop having lunch with brennabe had nothing to do with what she said, or didn't say. It had to do with the fact that every time I walk away from one of our lunches, I feel like I have a giant 'L' tattooed on my forehead.

Of course, this happens to me lately, regardless of who I'm interacting with.

It has nothing to do with brennabe and everything to do with me.

I appologize if I gave any other impression.

It's one-thirty in the morning, and I'm still awake. I read the last half of Mercedes Lackey's Arrow's Flight and all of Arrow's Fall.

Had some marvelous ideas for my Orc Wars stories. Had to lie down until the urge to write went away.

I had lunch today / yesterday, with brennabe. We went to The French Quarter, and I had jambalaya that was, honestly, too spicy for my taste.

I complained that I often felt that I only got on with women who were "safe" from me... pre-adolescents, the aged, the married.

She asked if I wanted to hear her thoughts on that.

"Only if it's short," I responded, "And not unflattering to me."

She shrugged, and admitted it was neither.

And this is someone who ostensibly likes me.

I'm going to have to stop having lunches with her....

For those just tuning in, there are some things about Cowboy R you should know.

He's bitter, sarcastic, cynical.

He's angry, lonely, depressed.

He's also essentially kind, occasionally displays flashes of wit, and is generally not as bad as all that.

If he snaps at you, he usually feels bad about it within moments.

Just in case you were wondering.

I went to see Star Trek: Nemisis with Tom and Terry. Jack was supposed to come, too, but as Tom points out, Jack'll be late to his own funeral. (Of course, Tom said it in a much more amusing way, but there you go).

My feeling on the movie was that, overall, it was a pretty good flick.

( However.... )

Then I went off to sundaygames. hamner had announced he was making people welcome early this week, so we could get to work on making characters. I was there at about 15:40; I was the first non-resident to show up... which was actually something of a relief, because I'd been feeling guilty about being "late." (we normally start to gather around 4, with games actually starting sometime around 5, 5:30).

Ran a quick battle to accustom people to how that works, under the Hero System. We had CTR-Man, Ninja Guy, and Screaming Dude squaring off against Bear Girl, Real Estate Man, and Girl With A Sword.

Assault charges are pending against CTR-Man, Ninja Guy, and Screaming Dude for jumping Real Estate Man and Girl With A Sword, who were just out shopping for an engagement ring, when Bear Girl swiped a bunch of jewelry.

Anyway, we also made characters for the new Hogwarts game. I was snide to brennabe, which I regret. Sorry, Bren.

Afterwards, people went off to play Mario Cart on the N64, while I sat at the table with brennabe, great_chthulhu, and hamner's wife, R. brennabe is getting married soon, and any time she and R. get together, talk soon turns to wedding preperations.

Given that I'm bitter and cynical about relationships, hearing about the expenses involved in buying engagement rings wasn't a conversation I was all that into.

So I left, and I understand I might have given the impression I was offended; I wasn't, and I appologize if I gave that feeling off. I was just tired and depressed, and it didn't have anything to do with anything that was said, by anybody. 'kay?

Anyway. Now I'm at work. In a minute, I'll get up and walk around, changing backup tapes, and Den Herr Boss will no doubt ask me to do something menial and tedious.

Sing Oh! for the life of a SysAdmin.

I met brennabe and her Beau, Edwin, at the Waldenbooks at the Tucson mall. They didn't have Elizabeth Moon's Deed of Paks(mumble) books. They also didn't have any of Tamora Pierce's books. So I ended up not buying books, which is better for my budget, anyway.

Mosied down to Big Science Labs, where we parked, and walked over to the street fair. We met brennabe's friend Jenny there. Jenny intoduced herself to me as if she'd never met me before, so obviously, I'd made a huge impression on her the last time we'd met.

We walked on, and Jenny proceeded to demonstrate that she was completely unaware I was there, consistently interrupting me whenever I opened my mouth to say anything.

I ran into my old friend Kristi. I haven't actually seen Kristi in a while, but there was a time when she and I hung out every day. She ran a shop on 4^th, and I'd wander over and talk to her every day.

That was the highlight of the trip. I'd kind of been hoping to find a decent belt pouch / sporan, but the only place that had anything even halfway applicable had pouches that were... atrocious. Poorly made, amusingly ostentacious... atrocious. Not to mention expensive.

Later, we met up with Jenny's boyfriend, Derek.

We had crepes which were pretty good, and then we left.

I probably won't go to the spring one.

Or next year's winter one, for that matter.

4th Ave Street fair is this weekend. brennabe and I are meeting up for it (because I have free parking, rather than because she actually wants to spend time with me), and I was wondering if anyone else wanted to go?

Su, I hed loonch veet brennabe. She-a ves teeseeng me-a thet, insteed ooff gueeng beck tu vurk effterverds, I'd be-a updeteeng my juoornel, und yuoo knoo... I hete-a tu deesepuint a ledy.

Ve-a velked up tu Bruuklyn Peezzeria, und hed sleeces. Telked ebuoot zee SCA, vhy I drupped oooot yeers egu, und vhy I meeght theenk ebuoot getteeng infulfed egeeen, et leest perreephrielly.

Meundered up und doon fuoort efenooe-a a leettle-a beet.

Telked ebuoot clueks. Telked ebuoot zee huleedeys.

I ves teeseeng her ebuoot gooys dueeng huleedey shuppeeng by peecking oooot un epprupreeete-a peur ooff sucks fur zeeur lufed oones.

Zeen she-a gut in her leettle-a greee cer und drufe-a evey, vheele-a I ceme-a beck in tu du vurk stooffff... und vreete-a thees. Bork Bork Bork!

When she went to Southern Crusades, brennabe wanted to borrow a cloak. So she came over to my house with her sweetie and her ferret, and chose, not a cloak I made, but one some other people had made.

Apparently, she got a lot of compliments on it, which doesn't surprise me... I often get compliments on it, as well.

Anyway, she and nicodeamos both wanted to know where they could get their own, and I tossed an URL out off the top of my head. It turned out to be the wrong URL.

So, with no further ado: Half Moon Cloaks.

(I bought that cloak the day that Amy and I went to the New York ren fair. I'd really kind of like to have it back, Bren).

We were discussing the issue of roommates yesterday. brennabe was mentioning that she likes things tidy. I laughed, and mentioned that I didn't.

She laughed, and said, "Yeah, I don't think I could live in a house with you."

Since brennabe has actually seen how I live, I'll take that from her.

---

brennabe has her wedding invitations all printed up, and she brought a sample to sundaygames to demonstrate to everyone what they looked like.

There's a very touching sentiment inside, and I was giving her a hard time about it being prefabricated schlock, because she'd picked it out of a book.

"Someone's bitter," she said.

I'll take that from her.

---

Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small series rocks. It's about a girl in training to be a knight. It's YA fiction, so the writing is a little on the simple side, but at least as good as Ms. Rowling's writing.

---

I took Thumb Wars (If there were Thumbs in space, and they got mad at each other, there would be...) over to sundaygames last night. People seemed to get a kick out of it.

"We are good, and you are bad. Your Badness will be your undoing; our Goodness will be our triumph! Bad is bad! Good is good! Bad, bad, good, bad! Good, good, bad, good!"

---

I'm at work. On Monday morning. Drat the luck.

A bunch of my friends are down at Southern Crusades, an SCA event that apparently takes place anually down in the southern part of the state.

They invited me to come with, but in the end, I decided against it. My reasons include:

• I haven't actually done any of that in at least a decade, and I have nothing to wear. (Though, amusingly enough, brennabe is traipsing around down there in my cloak). And I know how garb nazis can be.
  
  
• I can't really afford to go, after the foolish extravagance of purchasing that kilt, last weekend.
  
  
• I really need to work, anyway.
  
  
• I got out of the SCA in the first place because I realized that too many people who play in it forget that they're playing a game.
  
  
• Did I mention the broke thing?

So I'm not there. I have kind of mixed feelings about it... it would've been fun to hang out with brennabe and her beau, not to mention nicodeamos and sundry others.

Plus, it's in the southern part of the state, where I spent a fair portion of my teen years, and a fair portion of them playing SCA. It's entirely possible I might run into old friends at the war.

It's also entirely possible no one would recognize me, or vice versa.

Oh, well. I really do need to work today.

I had lunch with brennabe, which was nice. We walked over to BisonWitches, and talked. (hamner, she pointed out that I still haven't answered your email... it's not that I haven't gotten it; it's that I'm still thinking about it).

We talked about bitterness (mine) and wedding plans (hers). We talked about vacuous 19-year-old college girls. We talked about game stuff.

After we'd eaten, we walked next door to the candle shop, and poked around at candles for a while, eventually deciding... well, I don't know what we eventually decided. To leave, I suppose.

Walked up and visited Canella's, the oddball shop where they sell things like fuscia camoflauge stretch flocked velvet hotpants, where I demonstrated to her that, should I desire to dress for Hallows, all I need are a long black coat and a backwards baseball cap.

Which she found hilarious.

Then she went back to her office, and I hung out in front of our building for a while with Science Types packing up to go on a field trip to Accomplish Big Science.

And that's my day.

I wasted the afternoon.

I went to lunch with brennabe, which was good. We went over to Pat's for chille dogs (I had chille dogs, anyway... she had a cheeseburger) and I bored her with the wheres and whyfores of Mike and Tom and the Tuesday Night Gaming Group.

Then we talked a little bit about the Star Wars game I'm going to be running for sundaygames.

Then I went back to the office and accomplished ^diddly/_squat. Left work about half an hour early, came home, flopped out in front of the TV.

Watched Gilmore Girls on tape. Enjoyed it. Watched Smallville on tape. Enjoyed it.

Watched Enterprise, not on tape. Enjoyed it. Wondered if it had something to do with the Borg.

It turned out that Birds of Prey isn't opposite Enterprise as I had feared it might be, so I flipped over and watched it.

It was pretty good, and I was amused by the nod to Smallville in the list of how people come by metahuman powers. ("I've heard some freaky things about meteor showers!")

Comics purists won't like Birds of Prey, I think, 'cause it plays fast and loose with the characters, but it was fun, and the girl playing Barbara Gordan is a total babe.

I'd do her.

(He writes, as if it were his choice... or ever would be).

It's Odin's day. To the Norse, he was Odin, All-Father, one-eyed and grim. To the Germans, he was Wodan, and when they adopted the Roman calender, Dias Mercur became Wodenstag, which eventually became Wednesday.

Some people also refer to it as 'hump day,' because it's the middle of the seven-day week... when you've past Wednesday, you're over the hump and heading down.

The Norse gods were rather worldly, but not as worldly as the Greek gods. I don't know how Odin might feel about the inuendo, the double entendre, of having his day called "hump day."
Anyway, as you might guess from the fact that I've started right out being pedantic at the very top of the day, I'm not feeling particularly enthused about the day. I'm still a little bit annoyed about last night's game.

Tom wrote a very nice letter to Mike last night, emailed. He copied me on it, because at one point, I'd kind of defended Mike... largely because Mike's arguement, when you get right down to it, was something like, "Well, I'll just take my ball and go home!"

I pointed out to the other players (as Tom, of course, already knows) that DMing is a lot harder than it looks, and that Mike had said, right up front, that there was going to be a fair amount of combat in the first few games, because half our group is playing character classes they've never played before, and he wanted them to have a chance to work out their tactics.

Tom's counter is that he feels like he's being singled out and picked on, and I can certainly see where he gets that impression. There has been a lot more damage done to Duncan than to anyone else, with the possible exception of Conner.

The difference is that I designed Conner to be a tank... to stand up and take mass damage while the others got their act together and made a magical response... or whatever. Tom, however, designed Duncan to be more of a hit-and-run kind of fighter, and he's not getting to do that.

And I'm unhappy because we've only been roll playing; there's been hardly any role playing.

As much as I occasionally deny it, I am my father's son. I do love acting. I do love being someone else for a couple of hours. I don't persue the stage, or the screen... but I do play D&D. And if I'm not getting a chance to put on my metaphorical greasepaint, I'm not getting what I want to get from the game.

So, anyway. We'll see what Mike has to say, and where this all goes. It's not noon yet, and Mike's been out of work for a year or so, and so I bet he's not even awake yet; hasn't read Tom's letter.

Yeah. So.

I'm at work. Zero motivation, but my butt is here, and I've changed the backup tapes, and read and responded to work-related email, and like that. In a little while, I'll download the new patchdiag file from sun, and probably run some patches.

Oh, and lunch with the beautiful and ever-gracious brennabe. That should be good... we're talking about going to Pat's for chille dogs. Yum.

I guess that's about all the news that fits.

I had lunch with brennabe and her beau, which was good. We met at Austin's so I could hand over the Gilmore Girls tape. Edwin seems like a nice fellow.

Came back to the office, goofed around with the CDROM project I've been working on all week.

Went to the staff meeting. I work with a bunch of scientists; I'm sort of the village idiot of the group. Anyway, Polish Scientist talked. I'm sure that what he said made perfect sense, if you have a master's degree in Math, but to me it sounded like the adults from those old Charlie Brown cartoons... Wah-wah-wah-wah-wah.

Now I have a splitting headache.

I think I'm going to go home and read for a while, and do some serious napping.