So maybe I can get back on track with my computer life. I'm a month behind on most Internet related things. I think I'm going to ditch my message boards until after LepreCon. Same thing with updates to Crusader Citadel. I'll be spending too much time on E-mail and Weblog catching up. It'll be nice to post my thoughts and feelings again while they're fresh and not feel like I'm forgetting stuff.

Monday I paid some bills, mowed and weeded the lawn and driveways, wrote out Mothers' Day cards, and hung out with Bill, Jay, Kim, and Wayne over at Jay & Kim's place. Bill gave me the new Savage Species supplement for my birthday. Not only because I had expressed interest in it, but because he hopes to reap the benefits by playing in yet another of my D&D games (which would, of course, use said book heavily). The gang had so much fun with my Halloween game several years ago, they've wanted something that fun again. It's a hard act to follow. I did everything I had always wanted to do with that particular one shot. But some idle chatter after X2 got me to thinking of a new monsters mini-campaign I could run. However, I won't really be able to focus on that until CopperCon XXIII is over. BTW, feel free to E-mail this address with all new, all different program ideas. My team is stalling out on the new ideas department. Any brainstorming at all will be greatfully received!

Anyway, the gang gathered together to watch the second and fourth segments of The Key to Time season of Doctor Who, "The Pirate Planet" and "The Androids of Tara". Jay has the DVD set for the whole season. We agreed to watch segments five and six sometime soon.

We also ordered food from a nearby Chinese food place. I was fairly impressed. Usually Chinese food passes right through me. But this stuff actually took about twenty hours to process, so there must have been some actually nutrional value in there somewhere!

While there, Wayne showed me his new wand matrix game that he's developing for HPLA wand dueling. It looks interesting. We didn't have time to play, but the basics seem simple enough, while allowing for complex strategy. During the post-X2 chatter the other night, I made the realization that ever since high school I've known people who thrive on game system creation. And they've all used me to critique their systems. I wonder why that is.

Today at work I was given the option of getting paid for six days or taking the Tuesday off after the Memorial Day Observance. That made Debbie jealous again. She got jealous over the Christmas shopping season when they allowed me to take PTO for every Sunday due to my religious belief in not working the sabbath. She felt she was being discrimated against for being a non-denominational deist. She wanted Sundays off to spend with her family as a sign of fairness even though she didn't believe in a sabbath.

This time, she was upset because she is our scheduled helper for the Saturday before the holiday. That means she'll only have a two day holiday. What she doesn't seem to understand is that George, our manager, has also scheduled himself for only getting a two day holiday. Someone has to help George and I that Saturday. She seemed upset that it was her, even though I know the other sales associates have taken the holiday hit in the past. I just luck out because I work the Tuesday through Saturday shift. Because so many holidays are on Mondays I always get the option of working or not. I always take the extra day off. Money's not everything, even when I could use it. It balances out if you think about it. Everyone but George and I gets an opportunity for Saturday overtime at least once per month. We get the opportunity for a sixth day of overtime only when there are Monday or Wednesday holidays (Mondays for me or Wednesdays for George). That kind of overtime ads up. Another way to look at it is that George and I have to take PTO to get a Saturday off, a day on which most weekend events are planned. So while they have to work at least on Saturday a month, we have to work them all or waste PTO time. Yet she doesn't seem to see how it all evens out.

Luckily, she doesn't seem to ever hold it against me personally. We had a good chat today during my break/her lunch. The Arizona Republic had an article on the Faeryworlds Festival in today's Living section. She knew that I had taken PTO so I could attend it this Saturday, so she was asking me about fey. She was trying to figure out what is and what isn't fey. From there we discussed people's belief structures, at first faith in fey versus faith in angles, but later about the power of prayer. She believes that prayers are like votes which God tallies up to decide who to help next. I just can't subscribe to that theory. But we had a great conversation. I wish more people were comfortable enough to discuss the matters of their own beliefs.

So tonight I went grocery shopping. $1.99 for 64 ounces of juice: what a rockin' Bonus Buy. Too bad it's only on one flavour of juice. On the other extreme, the number of tasty and nutrious bread options were staggering! It took way too long for me to decide on cinnamon raisin bread.

Because everyone keeps asking me: The Only Licenced Iraqi 'Most-Wanted' Deck of Playing Cards

OK, I left things off with Friday the 25th last time. Before Jackson's D&D campaign, I bicycled on over to Trollgod's lair to pick up the Earthdawn books I won in a recent Trollhalla auction. Amazingly enough, he lives in the same neighbourhood I grew up in from sixth through twelth grades. Life seems to always be full of these little coincidences. He took me on a short tour of his Trollcave. There's a lot of amazing stuff in there which has been gathered over the years. Why is it that speculative fiction fans always seem to have large collections of unique memmorabilia?

Saturday, after work, Rusty resumed his Blue Planet campaign. Olivia, the deputy marshall, and (I forget Tom's character's name) entered the cliffside caves that the stickmonkey ran into with our transponder device. Meanwhile, the Hanover rep watched the cave entrance with his drone. Both Everetts covered the cliffsides, while Neopolina watched our backs. The intrusion team slaughted all the stickmonkeys they could find before finding the transponder. Meanwhile, we chose not to kill those that successfully fled the caves, in order that we might know where their other lairs where. While they fled, one was captured by a hanging joe. Considering that one of our primary jobs is to remove the indigineous threats on the island, Everett Adam did kill it. After we returned to camp, (Tom's character) decided to tell the Hanover rep and the village elder that the island has rich deposits of longjohn. Most of us thought that was a bad idea, but it has already been done. The rep said he'll have to report that to his superiors, so the world will find out soon. That didn't bode well with the villagers. So I expect that we'll have a council meeting soon over this issue. *sigh* We had originally agreed to finish building the village first before deciding whether to include the others in on the longjohn situation. Apparently he grew impatient. I just wasn't clear as to whether it was Tom or his character who grew impatient.

Sunday, after mass, no one showed for the HPLA conference. We later learned that Lori's computer crashed, and Matt has been swamped with homework. While I was writing the review of the Trollcave, my computer started smelling of smoke. It suddenly shut off on its own. So much for spending last Monday catching up on backed up E-mail from Holy Week. Bill and the gang bailed on our Monday plan to see Spirited Away in the discount theatres as well. So much for my weekend.

Wednesday, Wayne and I met at Metrocenter. I spent some of my birthday money on the HP:CS WS DVD at Suncoast while renewing my Replay membership. I almost bought the DW:The Aztecs DVD, but I remembered that I have computer repairs to make and held back. We ran into one of Wayne's co-workers who apparently also works at Suncoast and Waldenbooks. She couldn't find When Dragons Rage within her system, so no preorders through Waldenbooks. This despite the fact that Amazon is doing pre-orders and Waldenbooks on-line is an Amazon affiliate. Could this be part of the reason why Waldenbooks stores keep closing? We then tried the Beavertails restaurant in the food court, which actually had good pastries and "homemade" ice cream.

Friday Tom finally ran his D&D campaign again. Because I had missed the last session, Tom ran Dennis through a kidnapping sequence. I never did figure out why he was kidnapped, but they definately kidnapped the person they wanted. They took him up to the top of one of the guest towers of the castle, from which he escaped through the drainage. Unfortunately, while on his way back to his friends he witnessed two gentlemen in red robes who had been walking and talking with the king. Intrigued, he tried to figure out what they were talking about in front of the huge invasion forces which now filled the castle. Suddenly, the red robed fellows called down some black lightning from the sky nd killed the king. That's when Dennis fled the castle screaming.

Tom then had us cut to the other characters (our original characters from Cormyr), who witnessed the same two black lightning bolts strike the castle ahead of them. After a few minutes of role playing he then cut to the kid characters who witnessed the thunderclap of the lightning and where blown over by the associated winds. Eventually Dennis found them, but they chose not to believe him when he recounted his story of the king's murder. In fact, apprentice warden and the thief chose not to believe a single thing Dennis said that day. Spark, meanwhile, decided to throw Dennis in the mud and mud wrestle with him. The lack of frienship displayed to Dennis encouraged him to strike out on his own, but the mud wrestling ruined the treasure map. So he stabbed Spark. Then, the older kids who had already accused Dennis of lying accused Dennis of destroying the map. Anway, you can see where this led. Luckily, a wizard with his tounge cut out ran into us, and we decided to rescue him. We took him with us as we fled to find the Harpers which had once been mentioned on the treasure map.

During our flight from the invaders, we ran into some orcs and quickly dispatched them. The older kids took the orc armour, and the next day we washed up everything before heading into the Three Goose Inn. We spent the night there, where some of us had our first real meals and slept in our first real beds.

Saturday after work we saw X2: X-Men United at Centerpoint. What an awesome movie. The reviewer in the Arizona Republic is a moron. I couldn't find a single plot hole in the movie. And I looked after he promised that there were some. Of course, what should I expect from a reviewer who was confused at how Senator Kelly was in this movie when he died in the last one. You'd think that if he remembered Kelly dying in the last movie that he'd remember that Mystique replaced Kelly at the end of the last movie. I expect movie comprehension and retension from my movie reviewers, but apparently I'm expecting too much from the Arizona Republic. Afterwards we went to Red Robin, where I had a Pot Roast Burger with Provolone substituting for the usual cheddar. We all enjoyed our meals, even if service was a little slow on the bottomless fries.

Sunday Rusty and Kitty came over with Jackson's computer to test my computer out. We have the same computers, except I have a 30Gb HD while he only has a 10Gb HD. It turns out that my motherboard, CPU fan, and power supply have all gone bad. Everything else checked out OK. They dropped off Monte's computer and Wayne's laptop so that I could try to use one of those in the meantime. So right now I'm using the laptop. It's working out OK. I'd rather use Mozilla and Win98 Lite than IE and Win 98 2e.

At mass last night they taught us a new bilingual song. It was only a few years ago when the parish was strongly anti-Spanish in any form, so I'm glad to see that they're growing up. The younger staff members just might have something to do with that. According to the bullitin, St. Paul's Cafe will be having a Mother's Day brunch followed by a talent show. My mother doesn't want to go, so I guess I'll just mail her her Mother's Day card. She is interested in the parish picnic the following Sunday, which is weird because she never attended those when she was a parishoner. Go figure.

So last night's HPLA meeting was interupted by Lori's computer crashing again, plus everyone was having Yahoo! IM crashes. It sounds like they're developing the benefits that there will be for those players that attend classes. Luckily, Wayne thinks we're on target as LepreCon approaches in two weeks. We've always used that as an indicator when we were doing PLA. We weren't always on target every year, so I'm happy we are this year. I think the weekly meetings are helping, even as little as they seem to develop on their own.

Which brings me to today where I have lots to do and not enough time to do it in. Wish me luck!