jdotmi | Remind me never to share this much again

So, I have things I actually want to post about, so I'm going to type this all up in notepad so I don't close it and get pissed off like I did on Thursday. Yeah, I know, no actual content post from me Thursday. Now you know why. :-p

Administration:
Oh good lord... did I miss anything? *goes to look*

...

EEP!

Happy belated birthday to

thetalldude!

Home Furnishings:

satyr_mi and I meandered on out to Meijer yesterday to get groceries. In theory. In reality, we didn't get much in the way of groceries. We got some milk, some bread, some grated parmesan. The real purchase of the day, however, was a dresser.

I. Finally. Have. A. Dresser.

I have been without one for a year and a half. My underwear and socks have, theoretically, been living in the linen closet. In reality, they've been living in carefully arranged piles of clean clothing sitting on the recliner that was in my bedroom. Now they have a place of their very own. This is a good thing. Especially since said recliner is in two pieces stored away in my closet now.

It was a total pain in the ass to put this thing together, though. It took us a good two and a half hours to do it. The instructions were just slightly less useful than a hole in the head. We sorta screwed up one teensy tiny thing, but you'd never really know it. It works. It's sturdy. It's drawers to put my drawers in. :-p

Home Decorating:
So, it could be argued that I am lazy. It could be strongly argued this. Well, other than the fact that I actually do work at my real job and there are a small handful of things I do regularly and I have something resembling ambition in my life. But, well, in all honesty, when it comes to housework it pretty much takes an act of God to get me to do anything. Well, that or the threat of company who I don't want to think I am a total and utter slob.

Sadly, neither of these things happened. Instead,

satyr_mi went on one of his semi/quasi/almost/bi-yearly cleaning binges and, well, cleaned my bedroom. I have an incredibly clean room now. And stuff got moved to make the room look bigger. This is how said recliner wound up in pieces in my closet. There was no room for it back out in the living room, after all. Now all I have to do is keep it clean (hoping, but yeah right!) and all will be well in the world. The dresser is a step in a good direction for this.

See, the thing is, having a clean house makes me happy. It improves my mood greatly. It even makes me want to do something resembling housework. Like, you know, cleaning up all the leftover shit from putting the fucking dresser together in the first place. I really truly sincerely hope that this mode stays for once. I would like to have an apartment that is livable.

Now, the reason for the cleaning fit was that there was the possibility of random apartment inspections on the 15th. The management was bringing the HUD through to show off or something. Probably because they can't fill the thing to capacity to save their lives at the moment. The problems that arise when the tries to go the way of the Dodo. Well, needless to say, said random inspection didn't hit our apartment, but the side benefit of cleanliness makes me happy. I would feel better if I had caused any of it, but I can at least try to do my part to maintain it now.

Self Decorating/Self Image:
Bought some new jeans while at Meijer. I need to return one pair since a belt loop ripped when it got caught on a door. Probably just exchange it for the same type. I like the jeans. They fit comfortably and don't make me feel like I should buy a man-corset or something. :-p

The problem with being fat my entire life is that I don't have any real concept of what my body looks like. For example, once upon a time 42's were baggy on me. I just bought 46/relaxed fit jeans. I can do 44 relaxed, but, again, man-corset. Basically, the problem was I had three pair of pants that fit. Out of 10 in my closet. I seriously need to lose some inches, not because of the clothing, but because I so totally don't fit in places. I fit in my car nicely. I do not fit in most chairs nicely. Especially at restaurants. I don't fit in several bathroom stalls nicely. I constantly hit doors on either side when I walk. Ok, a large part of that is exhaustion, especially today.

In all honesty, I hate my body right now. I don't mind being overweight, per se, but I'm at a size that is just not working. In a perfect world I would fit into 36s or 38s. I'd prefer to fit back into the 42s I wore in high school. Maybe 40s if I get really lucky. The big hurdles for me to overcome are, quite simply, my jobs. I work two jobs where I sit on my ass all day and stare at a computer screen. I go home and stare at a computer screen. I am very rarely physically active. This is a Bad Thing™.

No,

dianak, I'm not going to start working out with you again. I will admit that was great last year, but I am too frazzled from my schedule right now to throw in anything else that's "scheduled" to occur.

So, yeah, I'm going to complain that I'm fat and ugly. I'm not going to go exercise right now, though. Later I want to. Not now. Now I'm going to go back to that thing I did before I started exercising last year: eating like someone who hasn't taken on the proportions of the Goodyear Blimp.

And before anyone tries the "but you'll feel so much better if you exercise" spiel, save it for someone who won't bitchslap you into the next decade for it. Yes, exercise "relieves stress", but when the stress is that I don't have hardly any time to myself that I can do whatever I want with, adding in another scheduled event will just piss me off more. I almost love my Fridays right now. I almost like my Saturdays right now. If my full time job schedule hadn't changed to this assbrained event that has me working 18 hour days on Sundays I would be a lot more likely to do the exercise thing.

Worky Worky and Other Bad Time Ideas:
I often get people saying "wow, I just don't know how you do it!" in regards to me working two jobs, sometimes both of which are on the same day. One lady I work with here at Borders does something similar, only both her jobs are full time. I remember asking someone to imagine that they were working two jobs. They said they don't think they could do it. I said to imagine that they were doing it anyway. For four years. That is the mental place I'm stuck in right now.

Interestingly enough, there is one group of people that don't really say that. Parents. They have themselves two full time jobs if they're working. They got work, they got the kids. Fortunately, one of those provides way more ups than downs in most cases.

I will admit that I have been making free time for myself. It's kept me up way past my usual bedtime of 9:30, but it has definitely been worth it. It's actually relaxed me enough to the point where I can write this. Sadly, the thing that's been keeping me awake at night has not been hot sex. Completely the opposite, actually.

EverCrack. Er, CrackQuest... Wait, that's not right either...

EverCrackQuest:

That looks right. :-p

I've been playing EverQuest off and on since February of 2000. Mostly off, I'll admit. I got dragged in kicking and screaming (ok not really) by

templar_rose because he was playing it all the time and was starting a guild. Well, actually, when he got me into it he was not yet starting a guild. However, I played for about 2 or 3 weeks, got bored, and quit. He then started the guild thing and I got sucked back in and became an officer. I played pretty regularly for over a year after that, although not truly because of that guild. I found The Fourth Wall and joined them and they really got me hooked on the social aspect of the game.

So, I played for a while, made lots of characters. Deleted them. Made them again. Did that a few dozen times. Finally, at the very end of July 2000, I made Ruann, the halfling druid. In all reality, I think she was made before that, but she got a few remakes before settling in. I played and played and played and soloed and soloed and soloed... and got up to level 10! I had never been to level 10 before! I knew I wanted to keep going to at least get 14 so she would have SoW, cuz, you know, that's when the money starts to come in for Druids. I got bored around level 11 and started playing as many alts as I could make room for.

I did eventually make 14. I was so happy. I could travel!

Well, I stopped playing shortly after that. Came back several months later. Pushed myself to level 19, because I wanted to be able to port myself around for even faster travel. Then I wanted my surname, so I made it to 20 and then 21 before finally giving up and saying "this game sucks elephant testicles, I'm going home". I still stuck with Fourth Wall, though. I would drop in from time to time to do some level building, hoping that maybe I would get a spark of interest again in the game.

Well, expansions are what kept bringing me back. SoV I could have cared less about. I mean, hello, so not anywhere remotely resembling 30 here, folks. I bought it anyway cuz it had purty graphics and new armor models. I managed at this point to get my Via Sanguinius characters some nifty gifts and had a lot of fun Roleplaying with a couple people. In particular,

kageneko and

gaelis My co-main, Kalleesta, even managed to hit level 20! So, I stayed for a bit and then left again. SoL was interesting enough to warrant me buying a copy because I wanted top lay a kitty bard. Albeit, it turned out to be unnecessary, but that's beside the point. I enjoyed that. In the between times, I had managed to get Ruann up to 25. Mostly in HighKeep and in South Karana. I managed to push to 26 several months after SoL came out.

I then quit. Totally. Oh, yeah, I hopped in now and then to give someone a heart attack, but I was done. Planes of Power came out and made me just laugh.

See, one of my dreams when I was playing EverQuest had been to get to at least level 34. I wanted to be able to port other people. Back in the day, Druids and Wizards made bucketloads of plat doing that. SoL started to screw that up by creating portals to the Moon that anyone could use. They could also get to any of the major player-home continents from the moon. This was cutting into my dream.

So, the next expansion came around. Planes of Power. Now, this one was just funny, because now each city had a portal to the Plane of Knowledge, and they could portal back to any city from there.

Ah well. Such is life.

Legacy of Ykesha came out and barely registered on my caring meter. I was vaguely amused that they were too lazy to make an actual new starting city so opted to eject an entire race from their own. Of course, it was a completely downloaded expansion, so I suppose they got points for effort. I almost came back for it just for the new race, but never wound up playing.

The latest expansion to come out is Lost Dungeons of Norrath. Because these places were hidden so well right underneath the feat of every frickin person on Norrath for centuries or something.

Now, here is a little more back story on my involvement in MMORPGs. EverQuest is not the only game for me. For a while, several members of the Wall meandered on over to Anarchy Online. We LOVED it. The game may have sucked ass when it first came out, but now it was playable and fun. For me, one of the biggest draws was the missions. You know, you could go into an area and be the only one or only group in there killing stuff and picking up loot and there was never a problem. Sadly, an upgrade to my PC and a patch killed my ability to play for a while and I never really got back into it. I also played Dark Age of Camelot for a time. Very fun. Still think about playing it now and then, but less interested in that of the three games that I play.

LDoN took a page from Anarchy Online and gave you adventures that only one group could do. Only one group would be in the zone.

This kind of thing should have been available all along.

It has sucked me back in and made me play.

When I got Lost Dungeons of Norrath and returned to EverQuest, Ruann was level 26. I started playing again a week ago Friday. Ruann is now level 31.

I haven't had this much fun in EverQuest since the days when Via Sanguinius (my other guild) was just starting.

So, I'm back in. I'm enjoying it. It's relaxing for me. It's exciting. It's fun. I need more fun in my life.

Sorta like sex. Only, I'm not getting any of that.