Ravings of a Textual Deviant

Tomorrow I’m off to help my friend move. This is the continuation of the move that didn’t happen last weekend. That’s probably what triggered my bizarre dream last night.

I dreamed that I was moving into a townhouse at Knightridge apartments, in Bloomington. (I lived there when I was in graduate school, as did several of my friends.) I was going to be rooming with my friend Heather M., because we were both going back for MLIS degrees. When I got there to check the place out, the previous occupants hadn’t moved out yet–they were in a mad frenzy of packing. I kept trying to call Heather on my cell phone, but couldn’t reach her. As I was wandering through the chaos of the previous tennants moving out, I kept finding more rooms with stuff in them every time I opened an interior door.

I hate moving.

So, for the past several weeks, I’ve been trying to (finally) lose my grad school weight. It’s kind of scary to think that I put on 45 pounds without noticing, but grad school can do that to you. I haven’t felt really healthy or comfortable for far too long.

Anyway, I don’t like the idea of a high-protein diet, not because it doesn’t work, but because you end up eating a lot of fat and it’s rough on your kidneys. So, one day it hit me. What if the point isn’t to eat more protein, but less simple carbohydrates? Following that line of thought, it seemed that the way to go was to substitute more fruits and veggies, rather than protein, for the the bread, rice, sugar, etc.

Well, for me, at least, it seems to be working. It’s not as fast as a high-protein diet, but I’m OK with that. I wouldn’t want to stay on a high-protein diet forever, but I can’t see any drawbacks to what I’m doing now. Ironically enough, I’m lousy at dieting, but not bad at changing my diet.

Ed has been hired to teach an A+ certification class for one of our local–and highly reputable–career centers! Woo-hoo!! It’s only part time, but it’s got a lot of benefits that have nothing to do with the hours or the money. Best of all, it’s something that he’ll actually like doing.

And the icing on the cake is that he also has a good lead on another, better, full-time job.

Good

Ed’s been contacted about a part-time teaching position. It’ll take up a couple of evenings a week for the class, plus prep time, but it’s a great oppotunity and he’s going for it.

My brother’s surgery went well enough for him to leave a positive, nearly coherent message on my answering machine. Here’s to a quick recovery!

The Document of Doom–the one we’ve been working on since May of last year–is done, in the mail, and out of my hair.

Bad

Ed’s still not feeling well; he’s so congested I’m surprised that his brain is getting enough oxygen.

I’ve had a migraine on and off since Monday.

Ugly

One of the board members for the company that operates the aforementioned lab discovered that she had terminal cancer–when she went to the hospital with a broken hip. She’s driven me nuts occasionally, but she’s a very nice person and a valued contributor.

It’s been an E ticket emotional roller coaster.

Ed’s sick and I’m tired. And frankly, both of us are sick and tired of being sick and tired.

It looks like Ed has come down with yet another cold. His doctor says that it isn’t uncommon for people who’ve recently quit smoking. Apparently, once the cilia in the lungs start working again, they grab everything…including lots of germs. So, once more, he’s got a couple of different meds and a big bottle of cough syrup.

Meanwhile, I can’t seem to get enough sleep…or good, restful sleep anyway. I’m not sure why, exactly, but I wouldn’t be surprised if stress had something to do with it. Or maybe I just need to learn how to hibernate.

Apparently, it’s going around.

Dorothea has hit on one of my pet peeves–proselytizers. I don’t care what your cause is–childbearing, vegetarianism, Mormonism, (non-)smoking, or alien abduction. It’s rude–unforgiveably rude–to break into someone else’s conversation for the sole purpose of telling everyone else that they are wrong and you are right. Not to mention the fact that very few people convert to a cause because of a shouting match.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with some co-workers a while ago. We were talking about ways to avoid discussing God with people who knock on your door. I said that I don’t understand why they bother proselytizing in the first place; you can’t force belief on someone. One woman said “Well, every religion proselytizes.” Not true, I contended. “Name one,” she countered. So I did–Judaism. “So how to you make converts,” she asked. The answer is, we don’t. If you want to convert, you have to take the initiative yourself and ask a rabbi. Otherwise, we leave you alone.

Get the point?

Just finished: Morgan Llewellyn’s Bard

Going back to the library: Joe Haldeman’s Forever Peace, Rosalind Miles’s The Child of the Holy Grail

Now reading: Rosalind Miles’s I, Elizabeth, Mark Kurlansky’s Choice Cuts

Jusr reserved: S. M. Stirling’s Conquistador, Keth Robert’s Pavane, William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, Judith Tarr’s Devil’s Bargain, Robert J. Sawyer’s Humans, and many more

Still waiting for: Midori Snyder’s Hannah’s Garden, Gavin Menzies’s 1421, and Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Bites.

Normally I’m not one to complain about the cold. My idea of room temperature is 62 degrees F. I don’t even put on a coat until it gets down into the 20s. In Indy this morning, it’s below 0 with wind chill, and just humid enough to make it feel worse. (Why is it that humidity makes hot weather feel hotter but cold weather feel colder?)

I just checked the weather, and it’s over 30 degrees warmer in parts of Antarctica than it is here. Of course, it is summer there, and they’ve probably got more snow…though not for lack of trying on our part. We’ve moved up to the third snowiest winter on record, with yet more snow due tomorrow.

Antarctica is starting to look good.

We got eight inches of snow on Saturday. On Sunday night, I had to go downtown, and the roads, while not great, were navigable. Some were even dry. Last night, we had less than two inches of snow, and the roads are a mess this morning, despite the fact that there were plows and salt trucks out all night(according to the local news). I wish the Department of Transportation would get its act together.

Role Call asks if we like genre-mixing in our games.

As a player, it depends–and what it depends on his how well it’s done. Plenty of great concepts with poor execution. For example, I like the idea of Deadlands, but I’ve never been able to find people who actually wanted to play it.

As a GM, well, I’m torn. On one hand, it’s a great way to throw curve balls at your players. On the other hand, it’s a pain in the ass, game-mechanically speaking. I suppose that The Lunar Ellipse could be considered a cross-genre game, it being Victorians in Space and all. (Whatever else you think of GURPS, you have to give them credit for providing plenty of source material.) And I suppose that’s what it really comes down to, from the GM POV–if I am going to run a cross-genre campaign, I don’t want to have to convert anything from one system to another.

The one statement I will make without reservation is that comedy goes with everything.