Friends

Things to think about:

Why are businesses allowed to do things that the government is not?
Invasion of privacy, face recognition attached to our personal accounts, Facebook, ...

why are companies being allowed to genetically experiment with the food chain where the worst case scenerio is that they release a strain that sterilizes the very food we need to eat? Even losing a variety at a time causes irreversible harm to the system as a whole.
Are humans incapable of seeing this?

I've been watching a lot of those hidden camera shows that target theft and I'm amazed at how much my coworkers get away with.
I even see some things that I do that could be "caught on tape".

I was looking forward to pub night tonight, but some scary storms are moving this way up the Turner Turnpike. If things don't settle down soon, it may be a night to stay close to home.

Wow, I went a whole day without updating.

So here's some stuff.

We saw Gatsby on Friday. Hrm. The whole story made a lot more sense now than it did as a high school student. I had both more sympathy for the characters, but also more contempt for some. On the whole, I thought the stylized nature of it worked really well, and I didn't mind the rap music in the soundtrack.

I've been playing a little Persona 3 Portable and finding it charming. Is it because all the stuff I disliked in P4 is fixed? Nope, most of it's still there. But it's a little different on a handheld, and I guess I know what to expect now.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm not a little bit like a cat in that regard. While there are exceptions, cats generally don't care for change very much, and it takes them a while to warm up to new people or new things in their environment. Sometimes I feel like I don't especially trust new things, either..

But I have been changing stuff up lately. New vet, different eye doctor, very different approaches to organization and thinking. Is it working? I dunno, I only kinda fell to pieces once during these incredibly busy, stressful weeks.

I'd like to start my GenCon costume soon. I am most likely going to do Street Fighter Ken and/or Amon, provided I am in good enough shape. The last week hasn't been great on the diet, due to people visiting and giving us tons of junk food. We had steak two nights in a row! Which was delicious, but I don't actually even like eating red meat so often. I was missing my greens and my smoothies. I've found doing low-carb Asian dishes surprisingly easy - just leave out the rice. Bam. Done. My craving for bread has been down, too, so I've been eating less simple carbs.

I initially wasn't so crazy about those costumes, because I wanted to do something a little less anime-influenced and a little more complex in terms of the costume itself. (Not that Amon won't take some work.) But, I dunno, suppose you did a perfect Anders or Geralt - you'd still look pretty similar to a lot of people who are dressed in Ye Olde Medieval Style. And well, I'm on kind of an anime kick lately anyways, soooo.

My parents visited this weekend. They had this savings bond from when I was .. Hm.. 11? 10? I guess I won one of those Young Author contests and the prize was a savings bond that would mature to $100 in 18 years. I had, of course, completely forgotten about it. It feels like sort of a present from my tiny self to me now, but the sense of continuity with something I do not really remember is a bit strange. I feel like I should do something kind of special or fun with it, but I'm not sure what.

Most of my non-food, non-essential spending this month has been on cats (vet visits, water bowls, etc) or organizational stuff (plastic bins). I'm hoping to get to the next stage of my master house organizing plan, which involves returning some stuff to Lowes and dropping off scrap for money.

Speaking of money, I'm still kinda torn on the Exalted kickstarter. The prices are a bit higher than I was hoping, but it is a "deluxe" edition. And when comparing the Print on Demand prices for their other books, it's not quite as bad. But, man, I've been burned on Exalted before. But this is a mostly new group of writers, who claim to be putting a lot more thought into the mechanics. But, I still haven't seen enough of the mechanics to decide for sure. On the plus side, it still has 20 days left, so there's no real pressure to decide until they cough up the combat mechanics at least.

But if it was good.. Exalted pirates.. or doing ridiculous werewolf games using the Lunar set-up.. argh.

Hrm. Since kickstarter really became a Thing, it's been my main RPG fix. And not a huge amount - mostly $10 here for a pdf, and $10 here for another one. It's a lot like Steam for RPG writers, I think.

But like I said, I haven't been dropping much money on Steam lately, either. Part of my more recent outlook has been trying to avoid getting new stuff unless I have really exhausted my resources when it comes to old stuff. So Wii U? Don't really need it, still have Xenoblade and Last Story. 3DS? I have P3P, 999, and a whole slew of other games I've hardly touched.

I have had to get a couple books from the library because I couldn't find my own copy and didn't want to buy another one. That is really grating, though I guess the author gets the original sale and the benefit of a library checkout too.

Like the cylons, I have a plan*. Unlike the cylons, I am actually executing mine instead of hoping the audience will forget about it later..

* I am not sure the plan of cleaning up the house, attacking yardwork, and getting in shape is really novel, but I've made a lot more progress lately - and for whatever reason, I believe that I can complete the rest of it, where I think that conviction has been lacking before.

It's a working weekend for me, of course.

Last night, after a delicious meal prepared by my beloved (40 clove garlic chicken!!!), I put on a Netflix disc of a "documentary" called Tchoupitoulas, which follows three boys from the towns surrounding the city who hang out in New Orleans overnight. forestcats and I saw things that we recognized, and things new to us, as the three young men went a'wandering. Cool stuff.

Remember to show up for Dungeonmaster today. For more information, look up www.the-dungeonmaster.com or find it on Facebook...

So... We tried. We tried to give the mallards the idea that this is not the ideal location. We even lit a fire to show them that yes, sometimes it gets smoky around here.

Instead, they took a long parambulatory tour of the garden. All around the deck, through the alium, through the creeping hydrangea, the beds of poppy and bellflower, and the squill, taking care to trample everything to decide on its suitability for nesting material. They took all afternoon.

Or should I say SHE did. He, like males everywhere, had already decided on the best place (behind the peonies, and in the shade of the water barrel). He sat there for half an hour, quacking for her to join him. As she parambulated some more, poking her bill into everything and sampling what was there. She eventually looked in on the spot he'd chosen, said "yes, very nice dear...", sat for a decent interval, and then moved on.

Eventually, she decided on a place, no doubt cementing permanently her hubby's impression of her wacky impetuosity idiosyncratic charms. Where else would a duck build a nest than on a peaked roof? Right here:



Yep. In the honeysuckle, right above the arch that bridges from the shed to the pool. Right next to where one set of grackles was already setting up shop.

As you can see, Mrs. Grackle II took one look at the new situation and has been considering relocation. Here she is, arriving with new nesting material, just in time to meet the new neighbours:



We are now considering getting hold of a used kiddie-pool and dumping the contents of the pool cover into it, should ducklings be the result. That is, if the eggs don't roll off.

But seriously. On a roof? What was she thinking?

from: ozzfest ohp

“Plans are nothing; planning is everything.”

--Dwight D. Eisenhower