jaune_chat | Entries tagged with real life

So, over a year ago my husband invited a couple of his co-workers over to learn D&D, and we've been playing roughly every two weeks. However, despite this reasonably steady schedule (with occasional off-weeks due to other obligations), every single time he has to send out an e-mail reminder to ask, "Are we gaming this week?"

This is because Hubby and both co-workers work at a company where the work availability can be erratic, and both of the co-workers have been asked to stay late, come in early, or take extra shifts. It's honestly not that great a company, but the hours are flexible and its near everyone's house, so they've all stayed on working there. This means that sometimes no one will give a definite answer on whether or not they're going to come to the game, which I am running, until very late in the week. Sometimes the evening before. Sometimes the morning of. It was quite bad a number of months ago, and while they have gotten a little better with their timing, we still shouldn't have to beg them by e-mail every week.

Now, both seem to be having fun, but Hubby did start them on a fairly complicated system (his personal favorite, D&D 3.5), and neither have bothered to read the rulebook cover-to-cover (a must, in my opinion, to get a good firm grasp of the rules, along with to actual play). I have subtly and not-so-subtly hinted that perhaps we could try another system that is less demanding, like D&D 5e (the most recent edition, reasonably similar to 3.5 but far more streamlined) or Cypher System (far less rules, far more role-playing), but Hubby stubbornly resists because he says he, "doesn't want to confuse them" and "wants them to be comfortable with the rules." What he really wants is basically a captive group that only uses his favorite system, because our old group (who has since moved away) stopped using 3.5 when other systems became available, and he refused to learn anything else. He doesn't see any irony or contradiction in this.

I'd like to at least bring in a few more players, so when these two co-workers can't give me an answer as to whether or not they'll show up, we'd at least have a few more people so we could still have a game. But one of the two co-workers is socially awkward and shy and doesn't want to "look stupid" in front of other people. I've been told that if we get other people, she'll probably stop showing up. When it looked like she was going to take a second job that would preclude her from gaming, suddenly Hubby was willing to consider other people for the group. But as soon as the second job fell through for our shy player, he dropped the idea entirely.

I try to draw her out during the game, and she knows by now that I don't bite, but she's more into the combat side of things than the role-playing side. That isn't a bad thing, some players are like that, but despite me trying to direct questions at her, she mostly just sits around until combat happens. It's very frustrating for me as a Dungeon Master, mostly because my old group was much more proactive and all excellent role-players.

Now Hubby would like to try to get some longer gaming sessions with this little group, because normally our sessions barely top two hours. A normal average session is at least four hours, if not more. He'd like to do it on my weekend off, on Friday or Sunday (my Saturday is already claimed by my old group, whom I game with online). When he sent the e-mail out, I did warn them that I was going to need a definitive answer by Tuesday morning if we were gaming on Friday (due to how my days off work and what time I'd need for game prep), or Friday morning if we were gaming on Sunday (again, I need prep time for a long session).

I got a vague e-mail about, "Oh I'd prefer Friday, but the other person will probably want Sunday." Tuesday has come and gone without any further communication, so I'm just going to rule Friday out now for gaming. If I can't get an answer in a timely fashion for Sunday, then I will cancel that too.

Hubby wants to go out for a movie on Friday (apparently he thinks no one will ask for gaming at the last minute this time), but I may have to put the kibosh on that. With gaming on Saturday and Sunday, and my nocturnal schedule because of my night shifts, that means I already have to get up at either work times or earlier on both of those days. If I have to get up early on Friday as well, I will scream. Whenever I end up doing that, I'll end up taking overly-long naps in the middle of the night to just try to make up the huge amounts of sleep that I'm losing. Effectively I will only have a few hours of actual free time if that happens, and that will make me a very cranky person. I want to get some personal stuff done this weekend: writing, updating some online games, watching my TV shows, and that's hard if I can't plan anything in advance.

In summary, I'd like to get more people and more responsible people in the last face-to-face game I have left going on without having to be held hostage by the fragile ego of one player, the collective idiocy of their place of employment, and any of their inability to e-mail me in a timely fashion!

Current Mood: annoyed

So, instead of preparing for vacation, I am now preparing for a funeral. Hubby and I were going to have our 11th anniversary in a nice resort town. Bed and breakfast. Spa. Nice restaurant. Pretty parks. All of that was planned out, pre-booked, the works.

A little over a week ago, we get the news that Hubby's father has had a severe stroke.

( funerals, logistics, general mayhem below )

Minor rant to be filed under "first world problems" - My husband purchased a new computer for me for a Christmas/birthday gift. I was quite pleased to receive it, because while my 5-year-old computer is still okay, no laptop lasts forever and I'd rather have things set up before anything happens to the current one.
However, I haven't yet unboxed the new computer or set it up, because that will require several hours of dedicated attention and I really wanted to use my current free time to take care of several writing projects.

Tonight is part of my weekend off, and we spent several hours together taking careful inventory of our DVD collection. (Hang on, this will become relevant to the computer thing in a bit.) Yes, it's a bit behind the cutting edge of viewing technology, but we aren't subscribed to all the various streaming organizations yet, and when the Internet decides to take a crap on us, at least we can still watch our stories. Hubby likes to take advantage of various deals throughout the holiday shopping season to catch up on expanding our library. To keep things organized, we have separated our films into categories like a movie store, and then alphabetize within that category. Then everything is entered into a spreadsheet with primary (and sometimes secondary and tertiary) tags. (For those keeping score at home, our categories are: Superhero, Sci-Fi, TV, Drama, Animated, Action, Horror, Comedy, Musicals (both musical movies like Les Miserables and Moulin Rouge as well as live band performances), and Sports. We're thinking of further categories like War and Rom-Coms to more easily find things according to our tastes.)

Categorizing everything means first taking all new DVDs and slotting them into the appropriate spots, sometimes having to get creative because some special edition DVDs, in particular the large box sets for TV series, are too large for our DVD-specific shelves. It means some items are on top of the shelves or set off in specific larger slots. To double-check what we have versus what needs to be entered, Hubby checks the database while I read off everything one by one. This also lets us check if anything has changed category, is out of order, or is missing. Sometimes we realize we don't have a season of a show because it hasn't been on sale, or we realize a DVD has gone wandering off. It's a very long process, very tedious, and slightly painful for me because the shelves run from above my head all the way to the floor, and the only way to read the lower ones is to sit on the floor. (I'm quite fat, so getting up again is a pain in the ass.)

After all of that, all I wanted to do was go sit down at my old, functioning computer and tend to several writing projects I had going. I had promised someone I'd beta her fic, which requires a lot of concentration, and I needed to write some risque scenes in other fics I was writing, which honestly requires privacy. Hubby knows I write explicit fanfic (and he doesn't mind at all), but I just don't feel comfortable writing about throbbing rods in front of him.

So I sit down, barely get a page into my betaing project, when he wanders into my den and sees the new laptop, sitting safely in its box, well out of the way. He wonders why I haven't taken it out or set it up yet, and pulls it out and has me plug it in. The new computer has Cortana, which starts talking. Loudly. It needs about 85 pieces of specific information from me, right in the moment. My responses to Hubby get more and more terse, my tone more irritated, because I cannot concentrate with Cortana bellowing for answers and Hubby asking the same.

I asked Hubby to take Cortana elsewhere, gave him my basic setup information, and told him to have at it. I came out of the den ten minutes later just to dash to the bathroom and he was like, "Oh, good, I need you to..." and had another fifteen questions that needed to be answered from Cortana. No. Just no. A quick bathroom break doesn't mean I am at a damn stopping point, it means I just need to pee so I can get back to what I was doing!

This is why I hadn't done the damn setup before now. Because it required 85 specific things from me, and I needed to commit several dedicated hours to doing that. I didn't want to dedicate time to computer setup after spending 2.5 hours updating that DVD database, I wanted a break and to get some writing done. The hours in which I have free time in which I am rested, alert, and motivated are rare and precious to me.

I am pleased he was feeling helpful, but he doesn't always seem to realize how I get when I'm concentrating. When I'm facing a Word document, it's like being in a book; I am not to be bugged. When I have headphones in, I'm not to be bugged. Start talking when I'm wearing my earbuds and it's, "What?!" followed by me hitting the pause button, listening to whatever is said, then going back to what I was doing. Only to have the same thing repeated a few moments later. Sweetie, I need all the information at once, not piecemeal. I am not surfing Facebook or BBC News with you, so I do not need every single reaction to these stories as you're reading them. Wait until you build up some information, catch me between tasks (or at least only interrupt me once), and then you can get my reactions all at once.

Every time someone interrupts me when I've already devoted my concentration, the longer everything will take. My responses to you will be curt, my attitude unpleasant, and I won't be giving you anything more than 10% of my attention. I can't get back to my original task until I'm done with you, which means that original task gets pushed back later and later. Some days I have an extremely tight schedule (I work nights, so sometimes I have my time between waking up and going out the door timed and scheduled very precisely) and any deviation from that means either something isn't getting done or I will be making it up by cutting it out of my sleep hours later. This is why sometimes I average 4 hours of sleep a day during working days.

What I need is one of those MMORPG indicators that show a person doesn't want to be spoken to. Or one of those things from Sims which indicate someone's mood when you try to talk to them. Then I could make it turn red when I'm not ready to communicate.

I’ve just spent about two hours cleaning my garage and my den. And I feel immeasurably better.

I broke down a huge mound of recycling that had been littering the house and garage in the chaos around Christmas (LOTS of boxes), along with just taking out a lot of accumulated regular recycling that tends to stack up around the house. I put some bulk trash items out of the way to save for next day so I actually had room to rearrange things, shelved items that had been stacked on the floor, and swept the garage out so I would no longer track dead leaves into the house. I can’t tell you what a damn relief it is to no longer have just an impenetrable mound of crap cluttering up the front of my garage, and now that I’ve put some lawn/snow equipment in better places, I won’t be tripping over them when I get things out of my car.

My den was cleared of trash, items were organized, I vacuumed to a fair-thee-well, even pulling out my desk to clear it of things that had fallen behind it. Sorting out books and office supplies will wait until later, but at least everything is in the right quadrant of the shelves or drawers.

I also winnowed out every work shirt that has a hole in it with an eye to sewing them up. I work in heavy industry (aluminum rolling mill), and my t-shirts do tend to get ripped or the seams give way under the arms. Since it’s a factory, no one really gives two poops if your shirts are ripped or dirty, but it’s something I can fix and I’ll feel better knowing I won’t be giving anyone accidental peek-a-boos, even if through a dime-sized hole. Besides, if I fix the shirts, then I can spend money on new work jeans instead!

As I find the motivation to do this, I feel better and better. There’s always a correlation between downturns in my mood/resurgences of my depression and my spaces being messy. If I’m on the computer in my messy den, I tend to flutter around the internet, mostly killing time instead of doing some other things I’ve been meaning to do, like write. The garage is generally my entry into the house, and being confronted with a four-foot-high mound of stuff doesn’t really set the mood for being productive.

Every time I’m able to set one of my physical spaces right, even if it’s just organizing one stack of papers, throwing away a few bits of trash, or rearranging a couple of things, I can feel a little bit more of my mind and spirit calm and realign into something other than a mess of simultaneous apathy and restlessness.

I’m kicking my depression in the tail, with garbage bags, brooms, vacuums, and organizational skills!

Current Mood: determined

I am so incredibly stressed out from this election of the one of the most horrifyingly possible people to the office of president, that even the mild additional stress of trying to call my doctor's office and preparing to host a party have me literally screaming at the walls, bursting into tears, and wanting to fling things. I don't know think I'm going to be able to sleep today, and I have to work tonight. I should probably put myself on the line (I'm the shift supervisor, but we're expected to work most of the time), but if there's any possibility of not, I don't think I'd be any good for anything.

Ah... I haven't been keeping up much with all that's been going on with me, so lemme catch people up, for all who are still reading me.

The husband and I have bought a new house!

( The Saga, the Drama, the Furniture Arranging )

There's a reason I have a LiveJournal, and it's because there is some stuff you just can't put on Facebook.

To my friends - I'm glad you're getting fit. It's important for your health to eat right and work out regularly. I'm pleased you're logging your miles, varying your workouts, and getting encouragement from your friends and family to keep on track. I know most of you are fairly decent people, so I know most of your posts aren't humble brags. Yes, of course there's a little of that, because if you aren't self-satisfied with your workouts, really what's the point? But you don't go overboard, and that's very decent of you.

However, I am not in shape. I'm lumpily obese. I weight as much as two of you guys put together.

And it's not because I don't know better. I took classes on health and fitness. I've worked with athletes. I know in excruciating detail what is necessary to do to get fit and healthy.

However, workouts don't make me feel empowered, they make me feel tired, sweaty, and embarrassed. Fat people do not air themselves in public. I do brisk walking most mornings, but there's a reason I stopped going to the YMCA. I just get really damn tired of me trying to walk on the treadmill while skinny people in yoga pants are jogging on the same, or guys with muscles for days are pumping themselves up on weight machines. I detest the bank of mirrors opposite the machines. They really don't help.

I also really dislike a lot of the healthier foods. I have strong textural aversions to several vegetables and fruits, as in I will have a gag reflex strong enough to puke if asked to eat a raw tomato, or certain other foods.

My husband seems to lose weight with no effort, and our schedules are so different it's sort of pointless to ask him to be my workout buddy.

And it's just... hard, when I see people constantly posting on their progress, and I'm not really progressing anywhere. It's not that I don't want to, but I am not just going to be able to leap in with both feet like these people are.

I know you're not supposed to compare yourself, and that everyone gets fit in their own way and at their own pace. But still. It sucks.

To you Health Nuts - Post a recipe that doesn't involve wheatgrass or low-fat ingredients, or maybe make a post about a movie you saw or a concert you went to. Please.

Just for a change of pace.

Or, where Jaune Chat needs to rant about her household, her husband, an unequal division of labor, and just Go To the Damn Doctor, Sweetie.

( It should not be this hard )

Ooooo.... kay.

So... something just happened that was not good. I'd like to talk about it.

( Talking about original fiction writer's club and hubby's strange reaction. )

Current Mood: pissed off

It's my birthday! I'm 32 years old! Huzzah!

Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday dear Jaune Chat,
Happy birthday to me!

So, the other week, Mr. Chat made a lamb roast. And though the lamb was stupidly expensive for being so out-of-season, we rubbed it with herbs and lemon juice, pushed garlic into it, and roasted it, and it was quite good. But then we were left with two meaty lamb bones just chock full of flavor.

I decided this was the perfect excuse to learn to cook with a soup bone. You're supposed to put them in a pot (since mine were pre-roasted, no additional roasting was required) and cover them with cold water, bring to a boil, simmer for a while, pull out the bones and scrape and chop off the meat, and then put everything back and cook it some more. Then you can go ahead and add the rest of the soup ingredients.

I thought I'd do that, and then use the stock to make this beef soup recipe I found (cheaper by far than getting more lamb). Except I decided to use the biggest pot that I own, because I was cooking for six, and it took so much water to cover the bones initially that when the stock was supposedly done, it didn't really taste of much except vaguely lamby, herby water. Figuring I could adjust seasoning as I went (I watch cooking shows, dang it!) I just increased my ingredient amount and made the beef soup (with beef stew meat, yukon gold potatoes, carrots, peas, garlic, and barley).

Alas, when all was supposed to be done, the broth tasted of nothing but a touch of salty, vaguely meaty water.

Crap.

Now I was in full rescue mode. In order to bring the flavor up to par and thicken the consistency, I added the following, one at a time, until I had achieved a richy, flavorful, meaty broth.

8 packets of Swanson's beef broth booster
4 chicken bullion cubes
Many shakings of onion salt
Many shakings of pepper
Heaping quarter cup of flour
A full tube of double-concentrated tomato paste
Using the broth from the pot, I turned two cups of the broth into thick gravy with a packet and stirred it back in
More onion salt and pepper
A handful of flour

The gravy packet and the flour I think were the real saviors for richness and thickness, and the tomato paste saved the flavor and added good color.

The result was the "best beef stew I'd ever tasted," from some friends who have had a lot of stew in their life. Huzzah!

The lesson learned here is, when life throws you watery soup, throw gravy back at it! :D

Current Mood: accomplished

Sorry anons, but the level of spam has just gotten to unprecedented levels. I've tried being patient, I've tried CAPCHA, and now it's gotten to the level of disabling anonymous comments. I swear to Pete, if I have to see one more spamvertizement for Ugg boots, Chanel bags, duty-free cigarretts, or cheap Nike jerseys, I'm gonna lose it.

So, I am a big fan of trick-or-treat. And as I'm too old to go myself, what we end up doing is setting up a big display in the front yard and making the kids work for their candy. "We" being my husband and another couple, and the front yard being my mother's front yard, as she gets five times the foot traffic or more than at our house.

We've been doing this for four years now, and we're starting to get a reputation. People are remembering us and starting to drop by just to see us, which tickles me immensely. We have a whole bunch of fake tombstones set out, two fog machines, a couple of hanging dummies with glowing eyes, creepy music, jack-'o-lanterns, and, this year, a couple of great new props. One was a jumping spider - it's about three feet across, has glowing eyes, and when you pressed the footpad, leapt out about three feet with a terrible noise. I scared a lot of kids (and a couple adults!) with that one; it was worth its weight in gold. The other was "monster in the bushes." It's a pair of glowing red eyes attached to this rattling box. You wired the box to branches of a plant, and whenever it was activated with movement or sound, it growled and rattled and the eyes flashed like there was something there ready to leap out and pounce. Marvelous!

This year, our friends were both faceless, robed black shadows, silent and menacing. (All of us were robed this year, because it's often quite cold and you can fit more clothes under the robes; this year it got down below freezing by the end of the night.) The wife (a small woman) would sneak up behind kids as they had their backs to her getting candy, and freak them out when they turned around. The husband is a big, tall guy (used to be a linebacker in school) who also does swordfighting as a hobby, and brought one of his blunt metal swords. Which looks great, and he can prove it's real metal, but isn't sharp enough to hurt anyone. He guarded the stairs up to the yard (we have the rest of the yard fenced off to prevent kids from sneaking up behind us) and would sometimes follow groups of people a short way down the street, which also freaked people out.

Mr. Chat was the Devil himself, with a scary demon's mask with lots of spikes and horns, red and black hooded robes, and a skull-topped jester's scepter (we couldn't find a good pitchfork and Mr. Chat has an evil sense of humor). I was an executioner. I have this really awesome axe that looks like it's made from bone, gray robes, and this hood and mask which looks like a grid of metal bars over my face. Because you can see through the bars, I added some more scares to it this year. I got this facial appliance (who's been watching Face Off? I have!) that made it look like my eyes were gouged out. My friend got it on me, then painted my face pale and added bloody tears. It was a little hard to see under the bars, but I didn't want to be too overtly freaky because we have a lot of little kids in the neighborhood. Also the edges wouldn't stay down, so the mask actually covered our inexperience with prosthetic application.

We scared the living daylights out of many small kids (and not-so-small kids), and had a lot of fun doing it. Now we just have to figure out how to top ourselves next year!

Current Mood: amused

There are some good things and some bad things about my job. (For those that don't know, I work in an aluminum rolling mill.) I wanted to give you guys the low-down on why I do what I do, and then share some rather sobering news about what happened last Monday night.

Bad Things:

No air conditioning - Which means in the summer it can get over a hundred degrees F on the floor, and hotter in other places (closer to the furnace lines, etc.). And we're literally right next to the river, so we can get some impressive humidity to boot.

12-hour shifts. In that heat, 'nuff said.

Lifting heavy objects - Doesn't happen a lot, because we obviously use the machines to handle the metal most of the time, but because I work in a part of the plant where the sheets of metal are actually light enough for a person to handle, we sometimes have to haul things around.

Wearing full PPE - Personal Protective Equipment. We're required to wear a hard hat, jeans, steel-toed boots with metatarsal protection, safety glasses with side shields, and earplugs at all times. We also wear cut-resistant gloves and arm sleeves whenever we handle metal, and face shields whenever handling certain chemicals (usually denatured alcohol which we use to clean the rolls). In the aforementioned heat, it can get a little oppressive.

Getting Dirty - I have a separate wardrobe of jeans and t-shirts I have for work, because it's guaranteed that those things will become permanently stained with grease, oil, dirt, tar, and/or ink (used the mark some metal for traceability purposes) at some point or another. I can't wear those things in public because they're so stained. If I go to a store after work I tend to garner some odd looks because often I am also stained with same.

But there are also some Good Things:

Wardrobe - Yes, this is in both sections. As long as I'm wearing jeans, and my t-shirt doesn't have something obscene on it, I can wear what I want. My clothes do not have to be up to Corporate Standards. I never have to iron. I never have to worry about getting a stain on my clothing and rendering it unfit to wear for work. If it gets a hole or a rip? No biggie, you can wear it anyway. I can wear something that looks like I rolled out of bed and no one cares. I never have to worry about having a good hair day, because it's all crammed up under a helmet anyway. I have a completely low-stress clothing routine.

Breaks - I remember working as a cashier for a drug store chain for a while in high school. And the breaks we were given there were... almost dehumanizing. In an eight-hour shift you have two fifteen minute breaks (that you were paid for) and one half-hour lunch break (that you didn't get paid for, you had to clock out/clock back in). In a six-hour shift, you only got one short break. At my place of work now? I get four half-hour breaks, sometimes longer depending on the size of the crew at the machine I'm working on, and I get paid for every second of my time. We manage this by having someone who comes by in rotation and does your job for a half hour, then moves on to the next person, etc. Though I can't leave the plant during my breaks, I'm able to honestly cool off and eat my food like a person and not like a starving badger because of a need to clock back in before your pay is docked for being late.

Political Correctness (and lack thereof) - I work in a damn factory. And barring some basic decency that people abide by, and some personal tolerances we respect, we can toss around four-letter words all day long if we feel like it. When it's hot as balls and the machine has broken down six times a shift, it's very freeing to be able to curse when you want to and know you're not going to have your co-workers gasping and clutching their pearls before reporting you to HR.

12-hour shifts - But wait, didn't you just say that was a bad thing too? Well, a 12-hour day doesn't leave much room to do anything else, true. But I work a schedule where I basically go two days working, two days off, which every other weekend working three days and every other weekend being off three days. I only work half the days in any given month. Though I never have the same days off two weeks in a row (it's a two-week repeating pattern), I have a crapload of free time, way more than I've had with any other job.

Money - I am paid well. I have good health insurance. And I can sign up for overtime when I want it with a reasonable expectation of getting some in order to make up for extraordinary household expenses. And that’s more than I’ve had with any other job.

But there's this other thing:

Someone died in my plant on Monday night. ( Cut for death description, it was not pretty. ) I didn't know the man, but this was the first death in the plant since I hired in, and the first in the plant in 12 years.

The company is investigating the crap out of what happened, needless to say. They've offered us counseling for those that want it, not just to us but to our immediate families too. I'm actually doing ok. While the accident was horrific (I wasn't in the plant the night it happened, but I have a good imagination), what happened to the man was not a situation I would ever find myself in. I have an excellent safety record and follow the regulations sometimes to the annoyance of my co-workers. From what information we've gotten so far, it sounds like all the safety regulations were followed during the maintenance repairs, so they're trying to figure out exactly what went wrong. For now, the rest of us are just trying to plug along steadily and safely.

Even with what happened, I'm still going to stay around. Our company is very safety conscious indeed. Having recently been on a trip to visit some of the companies that buy our metal so we could see what they do with them, I was quietly appalled at the lack of safety regulations in these other businesses. Compared with them, my company is a paragon of safety. We have two full weeks of safety training when we hire in, and have regular safety refreshers every month. It's just that when something goes wrong, because we're dealing with equipment that meant to move, stretch, or cut thousands of pounds of metal, the human body basically has no chance.

A sobering thought. And one I consider every time I work.

Current Mood: thoughtful

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I want something meaningful done with it. I'm an organ donator, so, if possible, I want them to use all my parts. Heart, eyes, liver, kidneys, skin, whatever someone else can use, I want it done. Pay it forward! If I live to be pretty old and my bits aren't going to last much longer than I, then I'm going to donate my body to science. I want it given to a local medical university to be used as a cadaver so medical students can learn to be doctors. My maternal grandparents did this, and there was a lovely ceremony in about a year after each of their deaths, where they bury the cremated remains of all the donors were interred. It was very moving. Both my parents have signed up for that upon their deaths.

And if neither of those are possible, I want my bones stripped and my skeleton on display/as a teaching aid!

Current Mood: contemplative

Aren't weekends supposed to be relaxing? This has not been. At all.

It's not like anything hugely bad happened, just many smaller moderately bad or upsetting things that have combined to create a very bad feeling in my stomach.

( Work Meetings of Awkwardness, Dungeons and Dragons Sessions From Hell, and Home Carpentry Projects of Doom )

Current Mood: aggravated

A few random things in the last few days...

Apparently I am the Terminator, and I didn't know it. At work the other day, I was running a crane, controlling it so a co-worker could guide a heavy roll of paper into place on a platform high above the machine we were working on. The pendant control has a bright red light on it to show it's active. And from my co-worker's angle, the light shone off my safety glasses so it looked like one eye was shooting red laser beams.

I am Ah-nuld. FEAR ME!

In other news, I was over helping my dad the other day. Something had managed to get into the upper story of the house and die up there, and since he has arthritis, it was up to me to climb into the attic and see if I could locate the critter. The attic is, of course, not finished, so I was crawling around on a few boards to use as a bridge between the joists (so I wouldn't fall down through the ceiling). Foolishly I forgot to get kneepads before going up there. So I got some bruised knees and couldn't locate the dead beastie. I think it's in the walls, the little bugger. Grr.

In gaming news, I had a lot of fun with an item in my bi-weekly Dungeons and Dragons session. You give out magic items as treasure for the players. Some are items that help them in combat with monsters, some are items that help them outside of combat, like things that help them with travel, or aid magical powers (for those that have them). And some are items that are just fun. I gave the group a Ring of Baccanalia. Its effect? "It creates wine, women, and song." When the female knight put it on and wanted to party, it created a rowdy army camp with lots of good beer, rousing regimental songs, and other female knights to have some friendly competition with. When the fire-happy wizard put it on, there was lots of congac, a bonfire, and fireworks. When the kilt-wearing Highland warrior put it on, there was ale, bagpipes, and women with huge tracts of land.

Does it have an in-game effect for anything? No. Is it funny as hell? Oh yeah.

Current Mood: amused

I have been a busy little bee today. And recently. And will be in the future!

Recently I participated in the

help_japan auction. I was selling friendship bracelets, and letters/recipes for a year. Both got bought, and now I'm making/writing those up. I also won a couple of things, notably letters from a lovely person up north, some very cute cloud pins, a postcard from Germany (which came yesterday, it's very pretty), a hand-painted daruma, and a fic which I hope to be reading in a month or so. A good haul for a good cause!

Today was a day off, and heavens, I got a whole lot done. Usually my days off involve sleeping until 9 or so, watching TV, messing around on the Internet, and then maybe doing some writing. ( But instead, I did it all. Details of everything, including current writing projects, are below the cut! )

Current Mood: busy

Another short list of random songs that have been playing through my head in the last couple of days.

Rollin' by Limp Bizkit

Hit Me With Your Best Shot by Pat Benetar

Castle On A Cloud sung by Cosette from Les Miserables

Peter And The Wolf - which I haven't heard probably since elementary school. Elementary school, brain. That's the late 80s.

Oh, brain, what tangled webs you weave!

Current Mood: confused
Current Music: The Sound of Silence

So, most of y'all know I work at a factory. The following is an excerpt of a completely legitimate, work-related conversation I had with a male co-worker the other day.

"Ram your pole down on this tail so I can slide the head through."

Oh yeah. I went there. :D

-----

In other news, I still have a very strange selection of songs that run through my head at unpredictable intervals. Over the past few days, these have made an appearance in my mental soundtrack:

Jesus Christ Superstar (the title song from the musical of the same name, which I haven't listened to in probably eight or ten years)

The Slinky Song ("It's Slinky, it's Slinky...")

Let's Go Fly A Kite from Mary Poppins

One Tin Soldier

Oh brain, you are so strange...

Current Mood: amused

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Jaune Chat's Life, the Universe, and Everything

Fanfiction and General Musings

Entries tagged with real life

Managing Time and Expectations

Life - Always Throwing Loopholes

The longer you stay, the longer this will take

Organized Space = Organized Headspace

I'm screaming

A House is a Home

To my Facebook friends - Your happiness is not contageous

It's OUR House, Not Just Mine, Dear

...So I should just stay home all the time now?

Happy Birthday To Me!

Jaune Chat's Adventures In Cooking With a Soup Bone!

Sorry Anons

Trick-or-Treat Extravaganza!

Work-Related News of the Sobering Sort

Writer's Block: R.I.P

Thank God It's Monday?

I Am The Terminator... Apparently

So... many... things...

New Music Song and Dance Time!

Legitimate Business!