The Bottle Had Robbed Him

Ever have one of those days where you just feel stupid and uninteresting? Like all of your ideas are garbage? That all of the people you admire are talking about way more interesting things over your head? Yeah, I'm having one of those days.

On the bright side, I did get to see a good chunk of Buffy, Season 2. I like Kendra despite herself.

The Sound of One Shoe Dropping

Good things:

+ After some six months of trying, I've finally managed to get an appointment at the Free Clinic about my wisdom teeth. I suspect they unplug their phones on the first Wednesday of every month, which is why I was never able to get through. Getting the appt. there wasn't the madhouse I expected it to be, but there were a lot of people there. On Thursday the 16th I get the x-rays done, and the teeth are actually going to be pulled on the 23rd. Hopefully, I can get someone to work for me on Friday and Saturday; I really don't think I'll be in much of a place to work after getting four teeth pulled.

+ Over the weekend I finally won my first FMCL Tournament match (on-line cribbage league thing). I put Starpanther down 3-0 in the wild-card round, giving me a seat in the actual round of 16. I'm up against a fellow named Stormbadger, who's the No. 2 seed, and so far in this tourney none of the seeded players have fallen. I'm not expecting the upset, but I'm not going to roll over, either. With Starpanther I mainly won because she couldn't let go of bad hands; after a particularly strong hand of mine or a crappy hand of hers she kind of resigned herself to bemoaning her fate. I don't think she was really into the game past a certain point and just wanted it to be over with. I've been there, but usually when I lose the games are really close, and the only reason I'm on the losing end is my opponent pegs out first, something like that. Even when I know I'm going to lose, I'm always fighting for *something* (like not getting skunked, or making the score as respectful as possible, at least), so just 'giving up' happens a lot less with me. I just like doing my best these days, is all. ;)

There were a lot of things I could have done better with Starpanther, speaking of; I set myself up for a lot of traps as far as pegging is concerned, so I need to play better defensively. I take too many gambles with pegging and it bites me in the ass more often than not. If I can keep my opponent from pegging too much, then maybe I won't find myself in those situations where whoever pegs first wins nearly as often. I'll see if Stormbadger's ready for a game or three this weekend, and until then I'll be practicing as much as possible. :)

+ I learned quite a bit about myself and my playing style through Odis' game last weekend. Namely, my biggest fear, in gaming and life, is the feeling of being useless to my environment, of taking more than I'm contributing. And one of the reasons I feel a twinge of jealousy or concern whenever other party members get stuff and I don't is I feel my viability is being threatened. In this particular game, one of the party members is quite overpowered compared to the rest of us; I had to stop and ask myself why that concerned me. I came to the decision, eventually, that I really don't want more stuff...I really love my werebear the way he is. :) What it came down to was the idea that I might not be useful any more to the party and the idea that the character might...start going dark with all the power he's gained. The *player* delphinios is one I trust wholeheartedly, though, so I doubt anything terribly assinine will happen. Still, it *does* make things more interesting.

Anyway, with this little bit of insight I was able to stop possible resentment and envy before it started. It's like this big giant door has been unlocked, and I got to clean out another room inside my head. That gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. :)

+ My boyfriend rocks the party, and so does my best friend, and so does my other best friend. No matter what else goes down in my life, these people make everything all right. I feel like singing "Thank You" by Dido to them all the time.

Bad things:

+ I need to be more on the ball with things. There are so many things I want to talk about, but every time I see a web essay from, say cargoweasel or joshuwain I feel acutely aware of my own inadequacy and paralyzed into silence. Also, time makes it difficult to work on too much sometimes. I would like to talk about my take on the core tenets of Buddhism, why I take to existentialism so readily, my views on gaming and oral storytelling and why they're so important, my lunchbox philosophy on mythology and *its* importance, and so much more. Most days I really don't feel capable of explaining all of these things to my satisfaction, and then...why should I? Who's gonna listen, anyway? Most people I know are apathetic about these at best, rudely opposed and 'superior' about them at worst. The desire to communicate and be understood is too frequently choked by the despair I feel in other people's unwillingness to listen and understand.

+ Speaking of a fear of uselessness, I really wish I could do more for my friends who are having really tough times. One's all the way on the other side of the world, and finds it painfully difficult to talk about what's going on to the point of being unable to express himself, so it's really hard to do much beyond sitting and being available...and that's just not adequate to me. Then there's Tube, and Mom, and Ryngs...I feel more-or-less helpless to do anything, because of physical or emotional distance.

+ I have no Krispy Kreme doughnuts any more. :(

+ And work is batshit as always. Charles and Heidi are going to be gone all of next week, which could be really good (we might get the chance to do things we've been meaning to do for months now) or really bad (we might get stuck at the desk while only Don is inundated with way too many books). I guess we'll see when it happens, won't we? Either way, I'm likely going to have to put extra time in, which I don't mind so much but might futz with Odis' game this Sunday just a little. And given his mood...well, I'm not sure how big of a deal that will be.

Speaking of work, time to go stack the books. *eyes the big ass pile of cookbooks and folds his ears* <:|