How long, on average, is a baseball actually in play during a ballgame?

Tonight premiered one of the best shows in the history of television.  If you did not watch Heroes, you should watch its encore tomorrow night.  NBC has "Must See TV" for the first time in more years than I care to count.  If I could only watch one show a week, Heroes would be it.  The writing was brilliant; with excellent pacing, great uses of foreshadowing, just enough surprises, a wide variety of personalities and interpersonal relationships, and an overall brilliant introduction to the theme and characters of the series.  I could go on and on, but then I risk building up people's expectations.  I went in with no expectations and am now hooked!

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago Rudy was moving in his girlfriend and her daughter and was kind enough to donate his desk and several bookcases to me so long as I helped move them over here.  Easily done.  So now I no longer have boxes of books stacked around the house.  Nor do I have stacks of gaming books on various coffee tables.  These will go a long way into making this house more habitable and friendly to visitation by others. 

The choir director at my church would like me to join the 09:30 mass choir, as he is desparately in need of tenors.  It'd be a major commitment, with choir practice every Wednesday night after work and attending morning mass every Sunday.  I'm not that big on morning masses, as I'm not usually fully awake for them.  Although, I surprised myself last weekend when I was fully cognicent during the entire 08:00 mass.  My voice cracks when I sing, but he's convinced that I'd do well based upon my lectoring abilities.  We'll see. 

This past Sunday was Confirmation for many of the preteens, teens, and adults in our parish.  The vicar general prosided on behalf of the bishop, and did a great job of tying their Confirmation into his homily.  Before mass my mother and I visting the grandparents who surprised us with a delicious spaghetti diner before playing games and watching the Diamondbacks lose another game. 

The previous Sunday (after that 08:00 mass) I went to the Alternate Shield of Alamor meeting to play a couple of Living Arcanis modules set in Freeport.  The original version of my character was from Freeport, until they made it campaign illegal.  I think it's campaign legal again, but I've invested too much into his current background as an Altherian to bother with it now.  The original Val was gentry from Freeport with the val'Inares bloodline powers.  Now he's an Altherian gentry with val'Abebi bloodline powers (bloodline powers being tied to the god from whose stock your lineage comes).  I understand the campaign world a lot better now than I did then, so I think this character is better anyway. 

Maio, our GM for both mods, said that he's enjoyed running for me both then and at Phoenix Con Games.  Sanders said that he always has fun with me at the table.  He still can't believe that I took stomp for my psychic warrior.  Aparently no one takes that power.  It works in about half of the mods that I play him in, which always surprises everyone else at the table.  Eventually I'll be playing mods with a high enough APL that everyone will be able to make the save DC, but in the meantime I'm having fun.  That's what I tried explaining to them all.  I'm there to have fun, not min/max my characters.

That said, if I ever play another intro module I've made myself another character.  My val psywar made sixth level at the end of that day, so he won't be eligible for any low-level only mods.  Stanley wants to run through Taboo, which is a levels 1 and 2 only module.  His character is only a hundred or so from third level so he's jonesin' to do it soon.  My new character is a gnome shaman.  Gnomes are the twisted and deformed offspring of the dwarves (former giants cursed by the gods into their current form) and humans.  The curse of the dwarves manifests itself in the gnomes with horrible physical deformities, so I chose mine to be a twisted spine and partially webbed fingers and toes.  Gnomes are the lowest of the low in any and all societies, so it'll be a fun change of pace from my gentried val (val being the offspring of the angels of the gods and humans created for and charged with the defense and leadership of humanity). 

Sanders was bragging about my MSHAG campaign again.  People really loved that campaign.  Every once and a while people ask me to start another MSHAG campaign, but I'm just not reading comics like I used to do.  They cost so much money, the only comic I still read isn't even a super hero comic.  I could probably reimmerse myself, but right now I'm enjoying immersing myself into Dark Sun. 

In fact, we've resumed play.  I was a little disappointed in myself that I never got my printers working so I could print the combat maps and monster tokens.  I think it really detracted from the play experience, but everyone seemed to have enough fun that we played well past our usual cutoff time.  I was rather unhappy with it all, but that's my perfectionist nature. 

The same thing happens when I lector.  When I feel that I could have done better someone comes up and thanks me for doing such a wonderful job.  Meanwhile all I can think is that they must be mistaken.  Yet it happens often enough that I have to assume that I am doing adaquately.  I don't get any negative feedback, despite requests for constructive criticisms. 

There's good news on the job front.  We've been terribly understaffed, and with some peoiple sick and others having motor vehicle troubles, it's only been worse.  Luckily, rumour has it that they'll be hiring another person in October.  Yay!  Maybe then I can get caught up on all the side projects I'm supposed to be working on.  Not too likely, but I can dream. 

"It will not matter how well I prepare my head for the experience.  The moment will belong to God."  ~Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!:  The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients

Finally, months after the Chocolate M-Pire dark chocolate M&Ms disappeared from the market, I saw new normal packaging Dark Chocolate M&Ms at the 7-11 near work. Instead of being labeled "M" they are labeled "M" with a smaller font "DARK" underneath.

I had the strangest dream this morning. Normally I don't journal my dreams. Oh, sometimes I think about it, but to actually do it? That's very rare. Anyway, I was living in a world that was an amalgam of the Desire and Fashion House soap operas (despite never having actually seen an episode). I doubt it was factually accurate, but it had the actors from those shows playing characters who were trying to commit adultery all over. Meanwhile, while I avoided various advances, I came down with the strangest affliction: trilobite shapes crawling underneath my skin. It felt like a traveling bruise wherever they were. While I tried desperately to the attention of someone in a doctor's office, eventually the nurse came by and thought I was delusional, not seeing where the trilobites were. Luckily, the doctor finally came and knew of the affliction, having suffered it before. He suggested that I had been at my work, as that was the last place he had contracted it. The only way to get rid of them was to squeeze them out of the pours of the skin, just as they had made their way in when they were much smaller. It was pretty gross, squirting guts out of my pours like a fist-sized zit. Then I woke up to start another day, and I decided that was bizarre enough to journal. I hope you enjoyed it.

Just to be fair, I should point out that their idea of "gamer" is computer and console gaming without board or card gaming:

Your Geek Profile:

SciFi Geekiness: Highest Internet Geekiness: High Academic Geekiness: Moderate Movie Geekiness: Moderate Music Geekiness: Moderate Gamer Geekiness: Low Geekiness in Love: Low Fashion Geekiness: None General Geekiness: None

"Every Christian needs a half an hour of prayer each day, except when he is busy, then he needs an hour." ~Francis de Sales

Sledge Hammer, Season One is out on DVD-Video. That was such an awesome show. It should be required watching for those with access to a DVD-Video player and monitor.

Wow, yesterday's entry was rather incoherent.  I started it in the afternoon with the intention of doing a month recap, then after diner and mass with my mother it turned into a Sunday recap.  Sorry about that. 

I did go to CopperCon today.  There really wasn't much left of the con, but I got to see the Dealer's Room, ConSuite, Opening Gaming/Computer LAN, and the Art Show (after it had closed and was being torn down).  But I got to play four games of Shadowfist with Ken and 1 six player game of Star Wars Epic Duels with Sean, Ben, Wayne, Ivan, and Gilead.  It definitely wouldn't have been worth it had I not already earned a free membership from running Shadowfist demos and tournaments last year.  Unfortunately, without the opportunity to run Shadowfist this year we've probably lost momentum.  I totally need to ensure that a Proving Ground starts here in the valley and soon.

Thanks to felgild for this quiz:

"You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing."  ~Michael Pritchard

Arizona State has more Catholics than Notre Dame according to this video.

So, where have I been?  My leg has been healing over the past few weeks.  The freezing tip seems to be working.  The other Saturday I lifted a heavy box without thinking, but otherwise I manage to avoid having really bad days anymore. 

At mass today I made a mistake during the Prayers of the Faithful.  I said, "Let us pray to the Love," instead of "Let us pray to the Lord," at the end of one of the petitions.  Oops!  My mother said that it was a Freudian slip.  I guess I could have said something even more embarassing.  As usual, Father Milt gave another great homily, so hopefully people will remember that more than my slip up. 

Well, I'm falling asleep here at the computer, so maybe I should go to bed.  This episode of SG1 is a repeat anyway.  I think I might go to CopperCon tomorrow.  We'll see.

Thanks to felgild for this quiz:

 

I finally retyped my review of Friendship Sunday as I had promised.

Thanks for the return welcome similar_stranger, felgild, and bassaf. It's nice to be missed. I miss reading my subs, and hope to return to reading my online friends' exploits soon. But for now, I thought I'd finish up posting my thoughts on .

So, normally when I am sent a link to an online comic I'll go read it. If I liked it or am otherwise intrigued, I'll attempt to start from the beginning and read up to the current entry. Short archives I'll usually make it through if it's a quality comic. Long archives usually defeat me, as I eventually lose interest or run out of time. Yet I'll bookmark the site and promise myself that I'll read the rest when I have some spare time and inclination. QC was so engrossing that I couldn't send myself to bed, instead reading hundreds of comics a night until I couldn't concentrate on reading another. Then I'd crash on the couch, too tired to go to bed.

In two nights I completed 650+ comics, so when I woke up the morning of the third day I finished the rest. Then, craving more, I decided the best thing to do was blog it out. And unlike other things which I have wanted to blog about in this past month, I finally did (and still am several days later). I think the main thing is that I empathise with the characters.

As a pre-adolescent I was verbally cruel to those who were closest to me and I was totally unable to allow courtship between myself and interested parties. Faye has these traits due to the trauma of seeing her father commit suicide, while I had these traits following my parents' divorce. Luckily, therapy did help me out of that.

As an adolescent I was able to hang with the ladies and fit in as the nice, safe guy, just as Marten does. I think that stems from many of my family activities growing up being with my mother and grandmother. Since college I've been unable to get a group of female friends like I did in high school. Most of my female friends these days are in mixed groups, and paired off with someone. I did have a lot of fun earlier this year when Kim, Lisa, Trevor, and I hung out to clean Lisa's old apartment before she turned over the keys to the management. There's something special about the group dynamic when hanging with ladies that isn't there when hanging out in mixed gender groups or all guy groups. It's definately something I miss in my life.

I recall when in college my friend Nich warned me that our friend Sheila had designs on me. I totaly dismissed him. Yet, a few weeks later we were seeing each other. The obliviousness of myself and the suddenness of the relationship reminds me of Marten and Dora.

The cast's desire to not be caught up in societal norms is definately something which anyone who knows me knows has always been a part of my personality. Marten's willingness to take things slow with women and wait for them is definately a trait of mine. His willingness to take physical harm without vengence in mind when said violence was not intended in a negative way is also a trait of mine. (I winced at the threat to his shins!)  I, too, have a crazy cat and a penchant for black clothing without being goth, as Dora does. 

I've always enjoyed angst in my literature and music whether it be horror stories or unrequited love songs. This comic has a great mix of angst and levity, all with a healthy dose of reality. It features amazingly well-crafted foreshadowing. character development, and continuity.  Although I have absolutely no indie cred, no emo cred, no gothic cred, no interest in alcoholic beverages, et cetera, I "get" QC. It's joined Onna Chance as one of the only two online comics I check regularly.

Now that I've journaled it all out, I feel a whole heck of a lot more whole.  :^)  God bless y'all this Labour Day Weekend!

Your Quirk Factor: 75%

You're so quirky, it's hard for you to tell the difference between quirky and normal. No doubt about it, there's little about you that's "normal" or "average."

"The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think." ~Horace Walpole