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You won't believe this, but last night on the actual Tour of Terror, the same cat followed our group again! So freaky weird!

Oh, and all you strange-oids who observe Daylight Savings Time: here's hoping you had tons o' fun setting all your clocks.

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!


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I was sick yesterday. I woke up with some kind of stomach thing that was just plain unfun. As a result, I didn't go to work and I ended up sleeping most of the day. When I woke up in the afternoon, I felt better.

As time wore on, though, and bedtime approached, I noticed that I wasn't tired. Not even a little. So I played some of the games I'm supposed to be reviewing. And I played some more.

It was around 4 in the morning when I realized I wasn't going to be getting any sleep, so I just stayed up. I showered and got to work at my regular time.

Now, though, it's been about 30 hours since I woke up. It's time to hibernate. My brain keeps making odd logic leaps that I can't explain, and I think that means I should go to bed.

So - good night, all.
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If you can believe it, this review is finally up.

I have the hardest time writing reviews for games that are mediocre. A really bad game makes for an easy review. A really good game is also easy to review. Games that are "okay" are very difficult to write about.

That, compounded with me not really liking real-time strategy games made this one take forever. I'm glad it's done.

Next up: The Dukes of Hazzard: The Return of the General Lee. I wish I was kidding.

Labels: game review

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Tonight I went on a walking tour of some famous (and not-so-famous) crime scenes in Lafayette. Why? I felt like it.

Okay, not really. This weekend and next weekend, the Civic Theater is hosting the "Tour of Terror," and one of my friends from improv is a tour guide. It would be more correct to say that a couple of my friends from improv are tour guides, but this particular friend is doing this for the first time and wanted some practice. So a few of us followed him around for about two hours and listened to stories about:

• a big, big fire
• a stabbing
• street shootings
• (attempts at) mob justice
• two separate beheadings

Not bad for a night's work, eh? The stories actually range from through Lafayette's history, from 1836 up to 1983. Kinda creepy, kinda spooky, and very interesting.

The coolest thing, though, was that about halfway through the tour, we saw a grey and white cat sitting in front of a house. That in itself is not so interesting, but the fact that two stops and several blocks later, we noticed the cat was following us from about a half a block away is a bit more interesting. It would sneak under cars and around trees to avoid detection, but it was very clearly following us. If only it had been a black cat, it would have been so much cooler!

I'm going on the tour again next weekend, but it's sure to be much scarier, since it's at midnight. If they can swing a black cat this time, I'll be very impressed.
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I just had my first nosebleed of the season.

Didn't know there was a nosebleed season, did you? It's not as much fun as football season or as pretty as the fall season, but it's a season nonetheless. For me anyway.

I've always been prone to nosebleeds (except when prone! ha HA!), but winter is worse for them generally. I've been told it's the dry air. If so, my getting one today makes no sense, as it's raining like the dickens today.

I hate getting nosebleeds for the simple reason that they are messy. Yuck. I hate messes.

After I get one, I generally feel weak for a while, and it's best if I can sit down. Headaches are another aftereffect usually. Whee.

No, I will not be adding a nosebleed counter to the site.
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My new van has a driver's side airbag, and I've become hyper-aware of it. It makes me nervous. I know it's there, just waiting to go off. Sure, if I ever need it, it might help save my life, but I'm suspicious of it. I imagine it is hiding in it's little cave, just waiting to suprise me by going off while I'm talking on the phone or eating something. I have visions of the airbag going off, slamming the straw through my nasal cavities and throwing my drink to the back seat.

When airbags are used for comedic effect in TV shows, they're always kind of pillow-y-looking, but that's not reality. They're more like burlap bags waiting to etch your face with their design, if I understand them correctly.

They tell you that if you have an airbag, you need to drive differently, too. No more of this one wrist draped over the top of the steering wheel driving - if the airbag went off, you would hit yourself in the face with your own hand, and that is definitely not cool. It's all about the "10 and 2" hand positions, or even "9 and 3" more recently. And forget about taping pencils to your steering wheel anymore - that's right out.

I know there are several safety features built into the airbags so they don't go off unless they're supposed to, but they still make me nervous.

"Welcome to McDonald's, may I take your order?"
"Yes, I'd like a Filet o' [WHAP]"
"Sir?"
"Ungh....."

I can't deal with this pressure. The airbag is freaking me out.
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I finally broke down and bought a Barnes & Noble discount card. Generally I am against these sorts of things because it assumes you need to buy a bunch of stuff to make it worthwhile, but I was driven to this decision by Starbucks' recent decision to raise their prices across the board.

I should mention at this point that the Target Starbucks hasn't gotten the price increase yet, but it isn't convenient to get a hot chocolate from Target and then drive to Best Buy and wander around.

So I decided to get the discount card from B&N. It was $25, which is a ridiculous amount, I think. While I will occasionally purchase books from B&N, I got the card specifically to get discounts on hot chocolates there.

So how many hot chocolates will I have to buy to make this card worth its cost, you ask? That is a good question. With the price increase, a hot chocolate cost me $3.02 (also a ridiculous amount). Using the discount card, the hot chocolate cost me $2.71 (still ridiculous, but not as much), so I saved 31 cents. Thirty one cents goes into $25 80.645161290322580645161290322581 times, so I need to buy 81 hot chocolates to make the purchase of the discount card profitable.

So I thought it might be fun to keep a counter on the ol' website to see how I'm doing on that. I won't count book purchases, only hot chocolates. If I do this right, it should show up right under the picture to the right there. Since I've already bought one, I only have 80 left to go. I'm not sure what my weekly average is, but this might take a while.

This won't be roller-coaster-level fun, but it should beat watching paint dry by a light margin.
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If ye be American: Happy Columbus Day.

If ye be Canadian: Happy Thanksgiving Day, eh?

If ye be otherwise: Happy Day In General.
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Never am I so industrious as when I am shirking some other responsibility. I am supposed to be finishing a review that I've been "working on" for over a month now, but instead I'm cleaning up around the house and doing the checkbook. I mean, I'm even dusting for crying out loud.

It'll most likely all get done, but I found it to be an interesting phenomenon.
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Things are looking better over at the THorum. Tom runs a tight ship and made a few changes. Looks like things'll get better.

Starbucks raised their prices. I went in for a hot chocolate last night and it was 16 cents more expensive. Jerks! The Barnes & Noble discount card works with their in-store Starbucks, so this might be what gets me to get one of the cards.

I turned the heat on in the apartment for the first time this morning. I've been waking up to 61-degree chillyness and decided that was just about enough of that.

The unused-for-the-most-part cat tree has been moved to a more out-of-the-way corner. I can't bring myself to dismantle it, though I might as well. The cats never go higher than the first level on it.

That's all I got for now. I'm trying to get back into a regular posting schedule. We'll see how that goes. You might get a lot of these sorts of posts along the way.

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So what have I been doing instead of blogging?

Not much.

I've been doing Improv and working and going out to eat with friends. In fact, I've eaten out waaaaaaaay too much this past month. The budget is hurting and so is the waistline.

I've been hanging out at the THorum, of course. I think sometimes I get all my words out over there so I don't have any left over for here. Any rambling thoughts I have get posted in one of the threads over there, and I know most of my readers here are from over there, so I don't like to repeat stuff.

Lately, though, I've felt kind of displaced from the THorum. The current dynamic isn't sitting well with me, and I feel ... well, like someone hanging on to something that's not there. It's hard to explain, I guess. It's the nature of the Internet for things to change, and sometimes rapidly so. I've had a lot of great times over there and met a lot of great people. I chat with several of them online frequently. I chat on the phone with one of them almost every other day, and I've talked to a couple of others on the phone. I've met three of them in person. I consider a lot of them to be friends.

But something lately has been weird, and I can't put my finger on it. Interpersonal relationships there have taken some weird turns, but that happens. Random nonsensical posts that never bothered me before are starting to irk me. People take strong stands on things it is evident they know little about. For some reason it bothers me that newish folk haven't taken the time to get to know the THorum before diving in - there's no sense of history there, and that bugs me, even though I know it's irrational of me to think that people should read the whole board before joining. I think I'm maybe just getting crankier.

Maybe it's the lack of respect. It's the little things - insulting a guy who's been there a year longer than you, not taking the time to read a thread before posting in it, not taking the time to punctuate and capitalize correctly - all signs of a lack of respect for one's fellow readers. These things happen all the time all over the Internet, but the THorum's been pretty good about being different in these areas. It's been growing, though, and some of these things are starting to become more frequent.

I know if I wait it out things'll get better. I'm just bugged about things as they are right now.

Thanks for listening.

(Maybe now you won't be so quick to beg me to blog, eh?)
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