eddyfate

* Started working out again (now that my body is finally letting me). I counted all the lifting, walking and stair-climbing on Monday as a cardio workout, and I did 15 minutes on Tuesday. I skipped Wednesday to break it up, and got up to 15 minutes yesterday before my ear started to hurt, so I stopped. My hope is to get up to at least 30 minutes by the end of the month, if not back to my original time of 40-45 minutes.

* Saw the dentist. Nothing's going wrong there. The hygienist gave me some suggestions to help with my tender gums, which I'll start implementing.

* Finished draft two of MET: Awakening last night. It clocked in at just under 202,000 words, which is 17,000 over. Over the next couple of weeks I plan to sit down with my personal editor to deal with problems and improvements I'm just not seeing, and maybe tweak a few things to get a couple thousand more words lopped off. Or just delete all uses of the word "the."

* Somewhere in the next week or so, I have to start two new projects: hammering out details for the Origins one-shot LARP, and 20,000 words on another project I'm currently calling Sekrit Project Digital Dirge. I also really need to finish reading a manuscript that's been sitting on my desk for weeks now.

* monkeegoth called to let me know that his second son, Grayson, was born and that they were home and okay. It was good to hear that everything was fine, and I'm looking forward to another opportunity to spend time at Casa del Connelly.

* Played Awakening on IRC last night, and we discovered that three WW freelancers in the same game gives you egg rolls, or possibly spare ribs. I'm still not finding my stride with Chance, but I think that's because I've played him entirely online, which is a medium I'm not totally familiar with (I usually use online gaming to supplement other games). Had to bail out halfway through to pick up dinner, and then got distracted by an OOC conversation about mechanics before I went to bed. There were some disagreements, but I got to flesh out some of my ideas on core resolution and the interaction between rules and story in MET. I may toss it into my notes for a theoretical MET 2.0 (i.e., "shit I considered shoehorning into MET: Awakening").

* I've also been starting to do email scenes with my Requiem PC, since I haven't seriously been playing him since December, and I don't think I've played him in LARP since November. The Gangrel Drama flows, and it is good.

* I haven't played World of Warcraft for a couple of weeks now. I logged in a couple nights ago, started a quest, died, and logged off. My attention will come back around to it, I'm sure, but right now I'm just not into it.

* We got plans for Wrestlemania 23 sorted out, making it as cheap as possible while still getting greebotrill back for classes on Monday. I, however, am taking that Monday off. We've decided that it'll be an early anniversary gift to each other, because we're huge dorks. greebotrill is also debating going to a dig Mexico for a couple of weeks for school (needed for her human anthropology degree). I'm very proud at how far she's come in her schooling!

My head has been stuck in the work/writing/sleep cycle for so long that I realized I haven't actually updated. Here are the high points:

* Car engine (the new car) died last Thursday. We managed to limp it to the Mazda dealership, which has an Enterprise rental kiosk right there. Mazda covered the rental car while they looked at it.

* Saw Ghost Rider and The Prestige over the weekend. I was surprised that I actually enjoyed GR -- I expected it to suck, and while it wasn't great cinema (or even as good as, say, Spider-Man, and had a few plot holes you could drive a truck through), I did enjoy it. The Prestige was really entertaining as well.

* Monday sucked. I had a doctor's appointment in the morning and my boss was off that day, so I just slept in. This resulted in me not being able to find the rental car key, failing to disarm the alarm on the other car, having to dig for the keys and alarm fob for said other car, losing and finding my parking pass, and ultimately having to reschedule my appointment. So....

* ... I went on Tuesday instead, after dealing with an obnoxious doctor (at the med school, not my doctor). My left ear (i.e., not the one operated on) has been hurting for the past couple of weeks. I am on medication to help that, but it flared back up on Tuesday. Turns out the eardrum is so plastered down over my inner ear bones that it's formed a seal over my inner ear canal. He's put me on a short dose of steroids, in the hopes that it will clear up and avoid yet another surgery. He also admitted that my ear is probably the most challenging ear he's had to operate on in his twenty years of practice, which is why he tries to reserve such operations as a last resort. I jokingly offered to be the subject of a paper. He might take me up on it.

* Found out yesterday that the problem was that the oil-change place put the wrong weight of oil in, even though it's clearly listed on the oil cap. Ergo, we need a new engine. Since we're covered and it isn't our fault, we aren't paying for it. I suspect, however, that Jiffy Lube will be paying for our new engine.

* Got the steroid scrip yesterday. These are mean -- I have to take 6 pills today, 5 tomorrow, 4 the next day, etc. until they're gone. If I miss one, it could have serious side effects. Also, I'm more susceptable to illness during this time. So, yes, I'm still not well. At this rate, I suspect I'll be actually healthy about the time MET Awakening is released. Speaking of...

* Got the final rules comments in, and made the last revisions. Now I'm in the edit phase, which is simultaneously easier and harder than I expected. It's easier because I realized in order to keep to my deadlines I have to ignore some of the small-scale polishing I would like to do and focus on larger issues like continuity and flow, proper capitalization of words, consistancy of terminology, as well as cutting unimportant or redundant words. Plus, something I thought I would have to do I might not have to do after all. It's harder because even those things take up a lot more of my time than I anticipated. I could half-ass it and save myself some time, but I don't want to. (Of course, once my final deadline approaches, what I want isn't so important anymore, so that's something else I have to balance -- what edits matter as opposed to what edits only drive me crazy.)

* I will be so happy when my assistant Storytellers can take over some of my paperwork. Seriously.

* I have my weekly WoW game tonight. That's positive.

So I got my copy of Burning Crusade last night. While I have nothing near level 58, there were a few little nuances that I noticed (like changing the intro music, which I greatly appreciated). Of course, to validate the purchase, I immediately made a Blood Elf character on Windrunner and stomped around with cresida and hangmans_joy to go from start to level 5 in about two hours. The Blood Elf city is very... red. Much more mystical and "high elvish" than the Night Elf areas. And red. Apparently even the Blood Elf underpants are red, because every 12 year old had to make a female character and run around naked. Since I won't have a full day open in front of me where I can do more than drool on the couch for the next several millenia, I plan to clock in some serious WoW time today.

I actually have five characters, but I don't play them all the time:

Jashreas (23 Night Elf Warrior, on Gnomeregan): My first character and thus my main one. For a while I gave up on him, but I hit that level 20 break, and now Dual-Wield and Cleave are my friends. I've pretty much exclusively soloed this character, barring the odd grouping with people that happen to be on the same quest as me.

Quaran (10 Troll Hunter, on Windrunner): Made on a lark to run around with a friend of mine from Chicago, this has quickly moved to my number two character, as I find that I like trolls and hunters. I plan to clock in a few more levels tonight, and then probably join up with the Stormrunners guild (at least, I THINK that's the name).

Phaite (5 Blood Elf Hunter, on Windrunner): Again, made on a lark last night, but I'm enjoying it. It's a different flavor. I think the Blood Elf Paladin is the popular combination now, though. Probably will be played just to hang out with cresida and hangmans_joy.

Makizushi (9 Gnome Mage, on Gnomeregan): It started when garchangel decided to make a female gnome named Futomaki. A group of all female Japanese gnomes named after sushi developed. I actually like this character as well, but it's primarily another "social" character I play to hang out with others (since the Night Elves that garchangel and greebotrill play are mid-40s now).

Boneshard (9 Orc Rogue, on Windrunner): My second character, intended to be my "social Horde" character, he just never clicked with me. I'm keeping him primarily to keep the name -- when I feel the need to try a Horde rogue again, I plan to scrap him and immediately make an undead rogue with the same name -- partially because I want to try undead, and partially because the name is more amusing for an undead rogue.

If this looks like I play WoW all of the time, it's not true. For perspective, prior to this week I hadn't played any of these characters in weeks, and some of them had several levels of rested XP when I came back to them. The last two I still haven't played in weeks, and when I logged into to get my Christmas present for Boneshard, he still had a Holloween costume on that hadn't expired yet. Really, It's the fact that this is partly a social outlet for me (and don't we all make up different characters when we're playing in different RPG campaigns?), and partially I get easily frustrated with video games, and find that a change in character helps me to work through my mental block.

Or maybe I'm just spastic. There's always that option.

183,935 / 185,000 (99.4%)

I'm a couple thousand words ahead, but it was pretty easy -- most of the mythic history material is good stuff, and didn't need much rewriting (although I did tweak the Atlantean myth to bring it more in line with material in Secrets of the Ruined Temple). Some initial comments on the playtest drafts are already coming in, but I think I'm going to let those sit for a while and wait for more material to come forth, so I can start comparing feedback. That, and I've been revising and poking and prodding at this material for months now, so it's probably best to let it rest for a bit and come back to it later, to look at it with a fresh perspective.

(As a side note, the reason I'm keeping my 185,000 word goal, even though I'll be well over it, is to give an indication of how much over I really am. The goal bar will dutifully go beyond 100% as I work into extra wordcount.)

Today I'm doing okay, but still a bit on the dizzy side. I'm debating taking one more day of work off, as I slept for eleven hours, so I don't think I'm completely healed. However, my copy of Burning Crusade is coming in a few hours, so I may take my laptop to bed and get that installed.

Work: I spent five hours (roughly 10am to 3pm) working on email, some MET Mage things that I left lingering, and prep work for Origins (thanks to kristnori, banzaigrrl and jesshartley for assistance today). I was pretty exhausted by the end of it, but it was a good kind of exhausted. I don't expect I'll be as busy tomorrow, but now I know that I'm building myself back up to my typical work levels.

Play: After that, I spent a few hours on World of Warcraft. I decided after my surgery that I wasn't having fun with either of my characters, so I made two new ones -- a gnome wizard on Gnomeregan called Makizushi, and a troll hunter on Windrunner called Quaran. I got Makizushi to 8th level today (actually started her yesterday) and Quaran to 4th, and I'm having far more fun with these characters. I'm not sure if that's because I prefer these classes or because I prefer the low-level game or what, but I'm focusing on getting them decently far in the next few days.

On the downside, I did have to take a pain pill a few minutes ago. I have felt a nasty headache creeping up on me. I'm beginning to think I got some kind of crud on top of my recovery from surgery. (Won't that just suck if it's true.)

Right now I have Jashreas (Level 4 Dark Elf Warrior) on Gnomeregan and Boneshard (Level 1 Orc Rogue) on Windrunner.

I took a break from... well, most everything last night, because I just needed a few hours to unwind. I finally caved and decided to use a ten-day trial code for Worlds of Warcraft. Thus far, my typical MMORPG experience (make character, spend forever going through tutorial, get pwned by asshole player, repeat) hasn't happened. greebotrill and garchangel gave me a brief intro, and despite the fact that the wireless in my office kept lagging me, forcing me to change locations, I was soon kicking the crap out of boars, cats and spiders, and other players actually HELPED me and were NICE. And the way the game is set up, it's easy to set it down and pick it back up whenever.

We'll see how the next few days go, but I am impressed with it (especially some of the design philosophy behind it, at least at a newcomer level).

Doing marginally better today. Will get back to work tonight.

Worlds of Warcraft: The Text Adventure. I think this sums up what I find so uninteresting about MMORPGs.