Voices in my head

A much belated Aralis post:

I survived the insanity that was my schedule - having the timing of certain major points of several plots converge at the same event means for a grueling time. Having your baby at the same event? That makes for a special kind of nightmare. Of course, in many respects, it was a learning nightmare, but still, my love should get some sort of medal for her efforts.

Hopefully next event, I'll be able to delegate more and to be sure, my plot load hopefully won't be as insane. Equally hopefully, we won't get sick from our efforts like this time. Mercifully, the duration of said illness was extremely short It took us both just under two days to recover and ze babeh didn't get sick at all, so yay! For the rest of you who are still sick, I wish you a speedy recovery.

In other news, apropos a conversation I had this morning, I figured out the one thing I dislike about staffing larps. To explain it, I'll have to use the Jello analogy, since it works: Picture, if you will, a pile of Jello which represents the PC base for a larp and a person standing over the Jello, poking it with a finger, which represents the staff. Whenever the person pokes the Jello, the reverberations are felt throughout all of the Jello. Sure, they are strongest where the person initially poked it, but even the extreme edges feel them. Conversely, the person only really feels the impact where they touch the Jello, although they can see the effects with their eyes, they don't feel them the way the Jello itself does. Simply put, due to their external status, the staff doesn't get to experience the larp in the same way that the players do. While they do see the fruits of their labors, they typically never quite know just how far the reverberations of their contacts with the PCs reach.

Now, this isn't really a big thing in the long run, it is just sort of something that bothered me and I was having trouble articulating. I think a lot of this has to do with my love affair with immersion in games and how hard it is to gauge how well you are doing on that front when you are looking down on the proceedings instead of wiggling with the rest of the Jello.

And now, I must get back to dealing with the backlog of emails in my inbox.

Day 11 of the experiment our new life, as it were, and we're all still alive, although with a colicky baby, this has been a near thing. Not helping things is that our lil' one is either a vampire or just likes the night life. Whichever the case, the baby is typically most wakeful between 11 pm and 6 am. If any of you out there have any shred of human decency any favors owed you by the powers that be and feel like blowing them to preserve what little remains of our mental health, I'll give you my first born love you forever.

This is all not to say that things have sucked big donkey balls 24/7 - there have been a few low points, what with the lack of sleep, learning what all of his cries mean, and the diapers (DEAR GOD THE DIAPERS!!!), but all I have to do is see those little eyes gaze up at me while holding the baby in my arms and my heart absolutely melts.

I'd still like to get 8 hours of sleep a night, though. The idea of going back to work today is making me a sad panda. Thank god I'm only doing 20 hour weeks for the next two.

Soooo, my last Madrigal...

It is funny, since Madrigal 2 started, I had been having a really hard time getting invested in the ongoing plotlines - I felt a huge disconnect between Krengal and the world (and PCs) around him and had been questioning continuing playing since before we found out Little Bobby Tables was on the way. Still, I kept on coming back, all the while trying to figure out the why of my issue before making the choice to either continue playing or drop the game. In the end, I realized that it was that my needs as a player had changed. The lure of doing mighty deeds and fighting epic battles so that the world would be safe for the common folk once more, had lost some of it's shine. I still believe in those concepts and still celebrate their existence in the games that we play, but I've begun to value more and more the little deeds, the ones that, when all was said and done, didn't mean anything to anyone other than those involved in the scene, and weren't needed to be accomplished in order to win the day. Those moments where everyone involved got to explore what made us humam (or elf or shoathri or whatever), those were the moments I craved. Ironically, when I stumbled into the things tashewolf and cointeach are running, I had already realized that I wasn't going to be able to keep playing once the baby arrived. Yay timing!

I'd have loved to have seen where the things Krengal was involved with would have gone, but I have to say, that his exit was wonderfully fitting for him. In the end, there was no explosion, no blaze of glory, just business as usual as he picked up his hat and headed out the door for yet another adventure.

Apropos a conversation I had today about radio as an oracle*, I was wondering if y'all out there have had any experiences along those lines.

* I'm referring to those moments where a song comes on the radio that is so right for a given situation/moment that you notice it and, in retrospect seemed to be foretelling the future.

Probably of interest to none of you but me, it would seem that I'm fully healed up from my rotator cuff injury as I'm back to my old tricks of picking up on the emotional & physical output around me. I find it funny that the only times I'm really flying 'blind' as it were, are when I'm injured - something about my own pain overriding anything else coning in. Its a mercy, I suppose, as the idea of the pain I was feeling with the cuff injury coupled with the serious amount of back pain I've been experiencing on the behalf of others would seriously have made the baby Jesus cry.

While I won't make resolutions at new years (doing so is, in my mind, akin to telling my wife "I love you" on Valentine's day because Hallmark told me I should), there are some things that I feel I should work on in the coming months, and if all goes well, these will become habit in the coming year. This list is for my own edification, so if you don't care then stop reading now.

1. Stop finding excuses to work from home every day and stick to my 3 day / 2 day every other week schedule. Having a consistent schedule is good for me, dammit.

2. Run at least twice a week and do floor work at least three times a week. Also attend Monday practices. My shoulder is healed at this point and I always feel better when I'm consistently exercising and I look hawt when I'm ripped. Besides, having a consistent schedule is good for me, dammit.

3. Find a new mode of being. Having dealt with depression for so long, I continue to interact with the world the way I always have, even though I've got the whole depression thing in control for the first time ever. This will be a hard habit to break, but I know I can if I'm just mindful of how I'm behaving.

4. Be more social. even if it just means calling an old friend or IMing someone. I am a social creature and I always feel better after hanging out with/talking with friends.

Apropos a conversation I had today, I was reminded of the last time I ever saw my father alive. In that hour the my mother and I spent talking to him, there was for, if not the first time ever, then for the first time since I was a very small child, a feeling that we were an actual, honest-to-goodness close-knit family. For the first time in far too long, we put down most of the baggage that we'd been carrying everywhere and spoke to each other (okay, it would be more accurate to say that mom and I spoke to each other and dad and he, for his part, dutifully listened without interrupting) and actually heard what each other had to say. There is a level of frankness that seems to only ever manifest itself in people when they truly know that they will never speak another word to someone and we both said things that never would have come out in other circumstances. To this day, mom and I have never spoken of that last visit; I don't think we can - the masks we wear for each other prevent it.
I don't know as I quite appreciated that moment in time as fully as I should have while I was living it - I think if I had, I may have kissed him and thanked my father for that last gift. But I was still too close to all the turmoil of what had been our family dynamic for most of my life and definitely still reeling from the shock of having felt him dying when I touched his hand to have done other than I did that night. I think he knows though, or at least the part of him I still carry in my heart does.
I found myself talking to dad while I was getting off the train tonight, which I don't think I've done for maybe 5 years at this point. This time, however, I spoke about what I had done with my life since he died instead of telling him to fuck off and leave my family alone. After all, we are the ones who need to leave him alone and get busy with the "keep on keeping on" thing. My fellow passengers must have wondered at the young man walking past them, talking about his hopes for the future and where he'd like to be in five years, but I guarantee that none of them found the spectacle as curious as I did. 12 years ago had you asked me how I felt about my father and I probably would have said I missed him. 10 or even just 2 years ago, if asked the same question, I would have told you how much of a manipulative and controlling douchbag he was. Now, I'm not quite sure how to answer that question. I have all these pieces of a puzzle that add up to our life together, and every time I try putting them together, the picture comes out a bit different than it did the last time.

Gods help me if my mother or mother-in-law ever read this, but I seriously dislike NYC. Comparative to the relative calm and politeness levels of Boston, I'm happy to leave the Big Apple behind. That said, I was sad to leave my love's folks, since I have such a great time traveling with them. Now for a leisurely jaunt down the railways to S. Station and we'll be home free. I'll probably have more to write on our adventures at that point, so stay tuned, true believers.

I'm out.

More for my edification than anything else. Feel free to ignore.

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 - How you manage your relationships with others is very crucial at this time. Unexpected events can twist your day inside out, but if you are willing to be flexible this can also free you from something that was previously holding you back. Your power of reason is a bit clouded now, so delay big decisions for a day or two.

Hoo boy! I'm so not as young as I used to be. Three late, as in 3am, nights in a row and I'm a tired monkey. Still, I've had a great extended weekend-like thing - I got to see a lot of people I like, had some quality hanging out time, had a ton of fun playing the complete asshole in DV, aaaand got to spend a bunch of time with my Love.

Lessens learned from the past few days:

• I'm out of shape, but not as out of shape as I thought I was.


• I need more sleep that I did back in highschool.


• Caffeine and adrenaline don't mix well for me.


• My wife is hawt.