Beyond the Void.

So last week I left work early to go to a building meeting for my house. On the way to the meeting I was south bound on I-75, and I came across a car fire in the north bound lane. Thinking fast I got a snap shot of it with my phone.

I don't know if any one was hurt, but I suspect they were not. The back of traffic behind that fire was massive.

We had a few condo showing this weekend. My wife had already made plans for Sunday when they wanted to see the house to it was up to me to pack up the cats and stay out of the house while strangers toured our house. I honestly do not mind doing this at all. It lets me listen to a book on tape and I get to drive around in the country.

So as usual I drove to our future home lot, and low and behold they had dug the basement and pored the walls! Which is great news since it means that my house should be done prior to our loan rate expiring. Now its time to start stalking the job site. I told a few pics with my phone but they don’t look all that hot… because they were taken with a phone. I’ll post them later.

In other news, I have started working on the Terrestrial Martial Art targeted for God-Blooded once again. I have new ideas on it that might allow me to finish it. The focus is making this as something that God-Blooded will be able to use. The theme however is bird flavored flyby attacks and hopping defenses. The name of the style is Divine Raptor, with charm names like “Cheated by Feathers”, “Gliding on wings of Yu-Shan”, Whirlwind of Beak and Claw” and “Plumage hides the Talon”

Man I just want out of work right now. I just want to LEAVE!

Not sure why but a wave of depression has just washed over my. I feel like there is so much I need to do, so many things I want to do. I just don't make time for it all. I need to work on my writing. I need to blog more. Part of blogging was to spend more time writing... even if it was just little personal notes. I can't even seem to follow through on that. You should see my computer here at work. It has many documents on it from where I STARTED to type up a rant for a blog, but they never get finished. I think a lot of it is because I do these at work and I can't just start writing until I am finished. I end up losing the steam I had built up for writing it before its finish.

I have tons of Exalted projects that I have started and never finished. Maps, Item Construction Guides, Martial Arts, thoughts on Infernals, Merits and Flaws, yadda yadda yadda. It goes on and on. And when others get breaks and get their "in" or do well, I can't be happy for them. I want to be, I should be but I am not. I am only jealous... and the worst part is I know I don't even have the right to be jealous because they have the talent, they have the time and the will to sit and write.


It just seems like so much, the house, the condo, being sick (still), going back to school, getting a new job, performing well at the job I have. Gaming and hanging out with my wife are pretty much the only things that are therapeutic for me. I know watching TV isn’t normally stressful… but if you try real hard it can be. Any more it seems like I am thinking about the things I could be doing instead of watching TV while I watch. Soon the stress of it all becomes to much and I just have to give up caring… so then I do nothing. Which brings us back to square one.

And since I am just spitting in the wind here, rattling on about everything and nothing all at once… I think gaming has made me dumb. How you ask? Well because I stay up to all hours of the night playing… and because my mind is so starved for sleep… I can’t think as well as I once did. As a child I was very smart. 145 IQ from what I am told. However I don’t feel like I am at that level anymore. I don’t take drugs, I don’t drink very often, and I don’t get my head banged around a lot, so you would not think that I am killing off my brain cells… but I feel much less intelligent then I used too. Things are harder to remember and I how to describe things are harder then it used to be. I really think it’s because I don’t sleep enough. And that should be easy to fix. It just means I would have to give up some of my time gaming.

/sigh

Well if you are reading this… have a good weekend. I hope all is well for you and yours.

I am now 95% healthy and currently back at work. I am happy to be back here because it means I am not cooped up in the condo and I am not hacking up a lung every 5 minutes.

Last night I was reading over the Sidereal book. I have to say, I wish we played Exalted more, and I wish my players knew more about Exalted and were in to it more. I think it would make some of the more subtle things about the game more meaningful for them. Like having a chance encounter with a Sidereal wouldn’t just be “Mob X” to them. They have already met a Sidereal once, although they never knew it, which was fine. It was one of those little things where if they did “X” then more would be revealed, however that’s not the path they took.

Anyhow I read over the Sids book before going to bed and I ended up dreaming about being a Sidereal. It was pretty cool, but it was more about guiding other young sidereals to the Gold Faction then it was about kicking ass.

So this weekend I won $80. I want to buy something with it that I normally wouldn’t buy myself but I am not sure what. I wish “Weapons of the Gods” was already out, I would buy that. Or maybe I will get Nobilis… although both of those are games that my gaming group would never play. Hmm we are talking about D&D in a way that we share the responsibility of DMing. Sounds interesting but the suggestion was for doing this in Ebberon, which none of us own. I could buy that. Its just that my interest in Ebberon isn’t so strong that I would every buy it unless I KNEW for a fact that we were going to play it. It isn’t one of those settings that I would buy just to read.

It’s Valentines Day today. With me just getting over a cold and my wife fighting mine off, coupled with our need to not spend a lot of money because of the house, we are just exchanging cards tonight. Although once we are both healthy we are going to go on a date of some sort. I love the fact that my wife and I after 10 years of marriage still date.

I'm home sick from work today. I SO wish I was working instead however, because this cold is kicking my ass. I can breath fine (knock on wood) but I have drainage that is going down my thoat and I am coughing so bad that my whole body is sore from coughing.

It was not my normal weekend. Friday I went to a party with my coworkers. I had lots and lots of drunken fun. I am not sure why everything seems more fun when your drunk… but it was. We talked and some folks played cards, some folks danced, but mostly we drank.

Saturday was house cleaning and painting. I almost enjoyed the house painting, which is a scary thought since I normally HATE painting.

Sunday we had a house showing. While we are out of the house I went into the new Game Shop I blogged about a few weeks ago. It was HUGE! It calls itself the “Ohio’s Largest Gaming Center”… and I believe it. There were TONS of mini’s there, and the RPG spread was very very impressive. They had all of the current Exalted publications there. They had games that I have had only ever seen at convention. Then in the back they had a number of gaming tables that were big enough to have run whole wars on them or a big RPG group at. I am going to start going there for my gaming needs, this will at least save me the shipping costs.

Then Sunday night, while I watched the Super Bowl I painted my Blood Bowl Orc Team. I didn’t really care who won the Super Bowl. I am really not a fan, but my wife is so we watch. In news more interesting to me however, but Orcs are coming along well. :)

Bundles of A.) Joy B.) Woe


From the time I woke up this morning until the about 10:00 a.m. I had thought of many many things to say in a blog post… however this is what I am left with.

First off, congratulations to my friend [censored]* for his wife’s pregnancy. I doubt this was planned but I am sure things will work out for the best for you. I just hope your little swimmers are wearing blue this time, since you already have 2 girls.

Is it wrong to also feel bad for you? I know it’s the miracle of life and all but I really doubt you were planning this or wanting this, and its pretty much going to FORCE you to move. All fun things I am sure. However regardless of the trauma this causes I know you will still love and care for this child. Like I said… I am sure it will all work out.

* Name removed because I don’t know if he has told many people and well because he is odd about having his name on the net

We are in sort of an odd place here with the house we are building, the condo and the rate we have locked in. Basically we have 24 weeks to before the rate we locked in for the house loan is no longer locked, the house takes 18 weeks to build. This leaves us a 6 week window in which the house must start construction. If it doesn’t then we will no longer have our rate locked in and the cash we put down to lock it will be lost or we will have to pay to extend it. Now lets just hope that we get a string of dry days so they can dig our basement and start construction. And on top of all of that… we need to sell our condo… which needs to happen prior to us closing on the new home.

You would think with all this I would be more stressed. I think I would be if I didn’t have faith in the Lord that this will all work out according to his plan. Besides, what else am I going to do? Stress over something I have zero control of? Stressing over those sorts of things is just not in my character.

Chatted with our realtor Chris yesterday. It was a good little chat, he told me that he was surprised and disappointed that our Condo had not sold yet. I found that to be a cute and naïve sentiment. I on the other hand am not surprised at all. It’s sad to say that but its true. I KNOW however that the condo will sell, in it’s own time.

Getting back to Chris the Realtor. I really like him, he is about my age and he seems really nice and genuine. If I knew him under different conditions I could see being friends with him. It’s a nice way to feel about your realtor, considering all the times I have had issues with people in his profession.

Today Chris is taking a partner of his to our house to see if there is anything she can think of that we can do to help our house sell. I pretty much know what she is going to say. Fix the bumpy carpet, fix the paint (Saturday), get the carpet cleaned. What I would like to do is make part of the sale that we will fix the paint and the carpet and have the place professional cleaned.

On other house related news… I was up till 2:45 last night with a clogged toilet. The worst part was walking into the bathroom and my bare foot hitting the bath mat with a loud *Sploosh*. I was amazed at how much water that thing could hold as it was really heavy. I checked the carpet outside of the bathroom this morning and it was only slightly damp. Last thing I need is mold growing down there. I will have to break out the fans tonight and make sure its all super dry.