Well, Hallelujah!

The Annoying One decided to drop out of my Wednesday campaign. I guess he did understand what I was saying after all. I do regret that I couldn't run a game that he'd enjoy, but I'm vastly relieved no longer to need to make the attempt. I need to send him a polite e-mail saying that I'm sorry to lose him as a player and that despite the frustrations I enjoyed having him in the group. I'll be lying, but… Courtesies of this sort are what keeps society moving. I've got no reason to make things harder or more unpleasant for him. He has sent me another long message about what he thinks his character ought to be able to manage as a non-player character; I'll just ignore it.

Scott called in on Wednesday because he had an early morning doctor's appointment at the Sleep Disorders Clinic and a final exam that night. He went and got the struts on the car replaced during the afternoon. He said afterwards that he hadn't gotten as much done as he'd hoped. That often seems to be the case for both of us. When I got home in the evening after the game, he told me that he didn't do as well as he'd hoped on the exam (taken online and scored immediately). I don't know how that will translate; he wasn't sure how everybody else did. This particular class has seemed unusually difficult for everybody. The instructor knows the material but forgets that there's a difference between what he knows and what he's actually explained to the students.

LunarGeography spent some time over here on Thursday and Friday. I got her to watch some Pretender episodes. I'm attempting to hook her on the series and, I think, achieving my goal. She and I are talking about trying some sort of joint writing project. Neither of us had any solid ideas, but I had a couple of nebulous notions for Pretender fanfics. Hopefully, we'll come up with something that we both really want to write. Right at the moment, we're playing with ideas, waiting to see if something clicks.

Not Quite Satisfactory...

I'm trying to find a good way to tweak a bit of the story I've been working on for the writers' group. I'd wanted to put something in to show that the point of view character was exhausted enough to be distracted but still functional. I chose to have his eyes be irritated. When I get tired, mine tend to itch and water uncontrollably, so I had that happen to the character. One of my readers (my sister-in-law who's doing a surgery residency) commented that she's never seen that happen to anyone. She's certainly observed more utterly exhausted folks than I, so I assume that means that my reaction is idiosyncratic. I haven't come up with anything better yet, however.

I hope to hear soon whether Justin's going to Maryland or staying more or less local soon. Since he's said that he's likely to drop at least some of his gaming (it's that or come over here every Saturday all day) even if he goes to State, I'm going to have to write him out of one game at least. I don't much want to do it, but I'm starting to try to shape ideas. If he leaves my GURPS game, I'll try for some sort of climatic confrontation between his character, Markus, and his enemies. If I can make that work properly, Markus can head off to try to restore a religious order that's supposed to be protecting people from supernatural evil but has lost track of what evil is. If he leaves the Amber game, I think I won't work as hard; we've only played three times so far. I haven't built anything around his character there yet. My selfish impulse is to hope that he not only goes to State but chooses to spend every Saturday here gaming. But Maryland's the better school for what he wants to do.

I've been a bit disappointed by the most recent episodes of Buffy and Angel. I knew Angel was going to be quite dark, but I wasn't prepared for how unsatisfying it felt. They'd attempted to build up to the events in this episode, but somehow I never saw the pieces come together. Buffy didn't work for me for quite a different reason. I'd hoped for something to work right for the characters this season and rather felt cheated. It wasn't that the plot twists were completely unreasonable, but… They'd presented Xander as stronger in recent episodes. Scott has commented that he's not finding Buffy fun any more and may stop watching it if matters don't improve; neither of us take great pleasure in watching the characters being tortured.

And I'd intended to space these entries out a bit, time-wise, but I keep getting socket errors every time I try to do anything except update my journal. Is that normal for this time of night?

Keeping Occupied

We rented Mercury Rising on Friday but didn't watch it until Sunday. I found the solution to the plot rather unbelievable. Actually, I found the whole plot unbelievable. I could accept the kid's being able to read the NSA's code, but the response didn't make sense to me. Killing the kid didn't necessarily make the code more secure since what one person can do another somewhere might duplicate. Also, mightn't he have been a potential asset in dealing with other codes? I'd have wanted to find out. Besides, the danger wasn't that the child could read the code but that someone might find out that he could.

When we returned Mercury Rising, we rented A.I. We'd wanted it on Friday, but all the copies were out. Scott actually fell asleep while we were watching the movie. It was just for a few moments, but it was more than long enough for him to lose track of the plot. As we watched the movie, I kept waiting for utter disaster to strike because the texture of what was presented was so totally distopic. The ending left me with a what-the? reaction. I had the impression that they were trying to manage both happiness and tragedy without quite getting either.

Sunday afternoon, we ended up with the SciFi channel on while they were showing Star Trek VI. There's just something about William Shatner that bothers me. He reminds me of my father (he reminds my sister, Laura, of Papa as well, so it's not just me). It's more true of how Shatner appeared in Generations, but once I'd made that mental connection…

I haven't been doing all that much reading recently. I've picked up a number of books and then put them down again without getting anywhere. I read Simenon's collection of short stories, Maigret's Pipe, and enjoyed it. The stories were pleasant. I'll have to try some of Simenon's novels to see if I can enjoy his longer work. I also just finished Laurell K. Hamilton's first three Anita Blake novels, Guilty Pleasures, The Laughing Corpse, and Circus of the Damned. I think she just wants me to have read Hamilton so that I can participate when she and Matt start discussing the novels. I have a sense that she's sharing the pain. I'd avoided the series before since it didn't sound at all like the sort of thing that I'd enjoy. And it isn't, not really. I'll go on so that I can participate in the discussions; Hamilton's not something that I hate, just not my normal fair. I sort of feel like I'm wading through something that goes on a bit too long.

I've been borrowing LunarGeography's Ruroni Kenshin DVDs. I watched the first eight episodes again last week, and LunarGeography lent me 9-17 at the same time she loaned me the Hamilton book. One of the DVDs was still shrink wrapped which felt very odd when it came time to pull the DVD out to put it in the player.

Communications & Delays

I notice that I'm breaking up my entries differently here than on OD. I'm trying for shorter stuff here so as not to drop anything huge in the middle of someone's listing of entries; I'm not sure why that matters to me, but apparently it does. This is not to say that I'm not posting the same stuff here as on OD, just that I'm subdividing it a little further.

My cousin, Christine, is getting married in a week and a half. We won't be going because it's much too far, but I'm glad she bothered to invite us. We got the invitation after the date she wanted our answer (I'm estimating that the USPS is taking about twice as long to deliver things now as they used to), and I didn't notice and so sat on it for a little bit. I just sent my response today and am comforting myself with the assumption that she wasn't expecting us to attend anyway. I've written her a letter that'll go out tomorrow.

She's a year or two younger than my sister Laura. I haven't seen her since my sister's wedding reception a few years back, and we counted ourselves as lucky that she was able to come. I think I have an e-mail address for her, but I've never tried using it. Laura and I spent quite a bit of time with her and her younger sister when we were all children, but that was before high school. I have no idea what Christine's like now except that she apparently has taken her family's conversion to Mormonism more seriously than, I think, my Uncle Bill did.

I need to spend some time tonight on a homework assignment for my psychotherapy appointment tomorrow. I don't remember exactly what I'm supposed to be writing about (and yes, I'm putting it off right at the moment), but I'll put something together tonight. I suspect that my therapist will be happy with whatever I can pull together. I do remember that whatever I'm supposed to be writing has something to do with my memories of my childhood and my mother (God, that sounds cliched).