The Dangers of the Addictive Personality

The last few days of NaNoBloMo were missed, alas, and with it the last few days of thanksgiving. I don't really have a good excuse for this, besides being busy and/or lazy. Both of these practices have gotten me into the habit of blogging again, however, for better or for worse, so I thought I would start off the month with a few things that are bringing me joy right now.

Happy belated birthday, first of all, to seamusyote, an awesomely good fellow who's become a really close friend these past few months. It's safe to say that there's really no one like him, and he's helped a lot with the process of coming out of my shell and finding ways to face the world as it is. He's a frighteningly intelligent guy, and I'm really grateful that he's in my life.

Happy early birthday to reahkitty, who's hitting the big 3-0 tomorrow! I hope that everyone's getting her the necessary amounts of Metamucil. :D She's come a very long way in the time I've known her, and now she's happily married with a child who's her life and joy. You should be happy with your progress, Mamakitty. You're living up to the name. :D

And happy birthday to the loveliest dragon, toob. What can I say? I wake up every morning, and my first thought is how happy I am that I'm beside you. Usually, my second thought is how to get out of bed without waking you up. :D You've helped me grow in so many ways I couldn't begin to describe them, and I'm grateful for you showing me every single one. More than anyone you've shown me how fearless love can be, precisely because it *is* so scary to open up that wide, to make yourself this vulnerable. You're amazing, no matter how much you think you might not be.

I've been writing every day for the past few weeks, which I feel pretty good about. I don't want to toot my own horn too much, though; I'm still quite obviously a novice, but it helps that I can take pleasure in the small progress that I'm able to make. Just getting some kind of consistent practice is a huge feather in my cap; being able to do it often makes sure that I'll get better at it. One thing that I've been trying to pay attention to specifically is making sure that every scene moves the action along in some way, and that each character who's involved is...taken care of. Before whenever I've written something I've had an idea of how the characters are supposed to act or what was supposed to happen, but no idea of how things were to move. Now I'm getting a rudimentary idea, just by writing scenes so close together and keeping the question "What is this supposed to accomplish?" foremost in my thoughts. It's kind of neat to watch the story gaining momentum, one thing leading up to the next.

In my spare time, I've had the occasion to get addicted to a couple of video games. Oh dear! There's the always-present Brain Age and Brain Age 2, where Ryan and I have a friendly rivalry going. I haven't been able to get my age below 26 yet because I keep having the great misfortune of pulling Number Memory for one of my tests. Trying to memorize twenty-five numbers in completely random order is a lot more difficult than it sounds, and I can never do better than 15.

The other is Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga for the GBA. It's a neat little game that's simple enough not to be too frustrating, so there's a mild sense of accomplishment for figuring out the puzzles on my own. I've only needed the walkthrough twice so far, and that was because there were these details that I didn't notice. I've been trying to make Luigi buffer than Mario, because poor Mr. Green gets the short end of the stick so often, but they don't make it easy. ;) That's stalled a bit, actually, because I'm using the bus rides to work and home to catch up on Fables and to read John Gardner's The Art of Fiction. If you ever catch yourself using mass transit early in the mornings, a word to the wise: comic books are a lot easier to stomach before coffee than demanding writer's guides.

Finally, there's Virtua Tennis 3 for the PS3, which rikoshi was kind enough to throw my way. :) There's a World Tour mode where you can build your own player and take him through a 20-year career on the Sega Pro Tennis tour. I've built as my first player a giant, 6'8.5" Australian who tends to use a big serve and ball control to throw off his opponents. He's only on year 2, but he's ranked 154 in the world (you start at 300) and hasn't lost a tournament he's entered in. There are a few things I haven't figured out (serve control is really horrible, and I can't hit a drop shot to save my life), but he's progressing nicely. I think the interaction with other tennis players is completely random, but in my world he's good friends with Lleyton Hewitt, his arch-nemesis is Gael Monfils (read into that what you will) and Venus Williams has a healthy respect for him. :) Sad, yes, I know. Next I think I'll see if I can turn smileydanq into a pro tennis werebear. :D

Speaking of good ol' Dan, I've been seriously thinking about reviving his LiveJournal. The trouble about that is I would need to come up with a story all on my own, instead of piggybacking on arlekin's W:tA game. That's not a big deal really, but it does mean there's extra work involved. I'm wondering how much I would need to change his story to make things work; before he was an Inuit from Vancouver, BC, but seeing as how I know next to nothing about the Inuit and even less about western Canada, I'd have to do a little bit of research before I get started. Still, the idea of writing a regular journal completely in-character is an appealing one. I might want to see about updating this one a bit more regularly first, though.