everything will be alright

I should be sleeping but I slept in super late today due to being up way late last night. I got up early yesterday morning to play some Destiny, then yy cousin came to visit last night and we gamed for several hours, followed by more gaming with a buddy of mine out west. I ended up going to bed close to 3:30am, which is almost unheard of for me these days, and waking up after 1:00pm today, likewise almost unheard of lately. 'Twas a good day though, so much gaming, wow. Destiny by myself, Far Cry 3 co-op with my cousin, and NHL 14 co-op with my buddy. Good times.

Back to work tomorrow and it's the first day with the new lawyer. I've been counting down the days because man am I ever burned out. I may even try to find some days to take off later in October or November to make up for the last month or so, because damn. It's been so hectic. I like being busy but it sucks coming in nearly every day and having someone ask "so who's doing this trial/settlement conference/hearing tomorrow?" or likewise. So much crap kept popping up at the last minute that left my double or even triple booked, it's so damn stressful. With the new person taking off the departed lawyer's calendar that should hopefully come to an end because damn. Everyone's been very nice in accommodating me and my no-idea-where-I'm-supposed-to-be daily routine but it's so tiring and stressful, I won't miss it at all.

Other than that, wondering what to do with XP. The changes to the game are a few months off but we're discussing it now to see where everyone's head is at. I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing yet but I have a good idea, I think. It could change for sure but I think I'm just going to start over altogether. Lots of people seem to be aging people up though and I want to have younger characters so I don't know where that's going to leave me, so I need to think about that too. Don't want to overthink it just yet though, but we'll see what happens I suppose.

For now though I should already be asleep, whoops, so off I go. Only a few more sleeps until hockey starts too, which is awesome. :)

Enjoying a nice, peaceful weekend. Friday started off with a marathon night of Guild Wars 2 with my buddy Brad which was awesome, and I figured that was indicative of what the rest of the weekend would be like.

I was wrong, however. My sister reminded me that earlier in the week I'd offered to come into the city to help her pick out things for my mother's Christmas stocking (she always did ours as kids, heck, still does, so a few years ago my sister started making one for Mom and I help out), and my wife was working, so into the city I went. It meant less sleep, in theory, but even with staying up until almost 3am playing GW2 and getting up at 9 to get ready I still had a great night's rest. The day was really nice too, as my sister and I haven't spent much time together lately with her new job and with me being busy out home. We hung out, got to see Wreck-It Ralph which, omg, I loved. So, so much. Definitely on my must own list once it's out on video. We also picked up her dog's Christmas pictures, then came out home and later last night we did the shopping for mom.

After that I just watched tv with Sara, which was nice, especially the Friday night episode of The Late Late Show. Craig Ferguson is the man and this past week he actually had Richie Sambora as his house band, when normally he has no one, haha. It was a great week, so funny. Then I just ended up writing, finally working on Yuletide in earnest since it's only another 11 days until it's due. How did that happen again? I've also got another exchange due on the 21st but as that's also an Avengers one and only 2k minimum, and I just finished a huge (for me) 11k Avengers crossover fic, I'm focusing on Yuletide for now. I got as far as 1,667 words last night, which was great, at least I'm over the minimum now.

Today I got up early again, around 10am this time after going to sleep close to 3 again after watching SNL with Sara. Most of the day has been devoted to Yuletide again, and now I'm well over 5k words. To say I'm very pleased with this development would be an understatement, haha. I only wish I'd had this kind of wind behind my sails for NaNo but what can you do? I'm just enjoying being able to write again, and really, really liking this fic. I'll link it here in the New Year after the whole reveal and all, but I really hope the person for whom I'm writing will like it. I'm about half way through what I plan to write, so it'll be a nice, long fic for sure. Huzzah!

Back to writing for me, I think, and maybe a quick break to wash the dishes, before I pick up the wife from work. It's been a great weekend, and I hope everyone else's has been just as good or better! :)

Since I started watching TableTop I've got a powerful urge to play me some games. The only problem is I need people with which to play. My wife's interested too, I believe, but other than that the only other person around interested would be my cousin, whose wife isn't interested at all.

There's a tentative plan between said cousin and I to get a game or two as Christmas presents for each other and then play them over the holidays, which would rock and I cannot wait omg. Especially games like Elder Sign and Pandemic, which are co-op and into which I believe I could talk my little sister into joining as a fourth (particularly the latter, being a PhD candidate in biology as she is). I've also picked up Munchkin and want to try games like Ticket To Ride and Settlers of Catan too.

Real life continues to move at top speed, or so it seems lately. Last weekend was my cousin's wedding, in which I stood up for him, and the weekend before that was his bachelor party out in Terra Nova. The party was great, thanks to a rainy day turning decent just in time for 18 holes of golf, followed by a nice night of drinks and playing guitar until the wee small hours of the morning in a private chalet. Very good time indeed, and the wedding went well last weekend too.

I really enjoyed being a part of the wedding, and I've gotta say, the other guys who stood up for my cousin were really nice too. I knew some of them from back in the day, but there were a good many I hadn't met before the bachelor party and I'm glad to have gotten the chance to get to know them. Hopefully I'll see some of them around in the future, maybe golfing with Terry and some of them down the road, that'd be nice. There was talk of having another little get together before the end of the summer (many of them are teachers), this time with significant others invited too, for a BBQ and campfire / sing-a-long, which would be pretty awesome.

I've got another bachelor party and a wedding the next two weekends in a row, similarly involving another 18 holes of golf tomorrow. The last few years I've only gotten out, what, once or maybe twice tops each year, usually just for 9 holes, so this is a lot for me. I have a cheap set of clubs that's fitting for a hack such as myself, though if I keep going out as much as this (and if Terry and I do start playing more often) I may have to look into getting a better set. We'll see, it won't be this summer, but maybe next year. I do love the game; they say you only have to make one good shot each outing to make you want to come back and play again, and so far I've been able to meet that minimum criterion. I usually can drive ok (though I'm known to have a wicked hook a lot of the time >.>) and putting, while not a pro at all of course, I can do ok with, it's the irons that kill me. Getting from a decent tee shot onto the green in only a few shots is what destroys my game. Ideally I should hit a driving range more often (or at all) to work on things but it's kind of far away. I used to go all the time back when I was living in Marystown, which was about a 15-20 minute drive away; here the nearest one isn't too, too much further, maybe closer to 30 or just over, but I just can't be bothered. It helped that my buddy Marcus would come with me a lot of the time in Marystown but out here I don't have anyone, unless Terry and I start going.

We'll see how it goes anyway, I'm looking forward to it. After the first few holes in Terra Nova I started improving and by the back nine I was hooking/slicing things a lot less and hitting the irons more consistency. I even managed to par the 18th hole in Terra Nova, which is just a par 3 but you have to clear a large water hazard to get onto the green, which I did before 2 putting it for par. I was ecstatic though, haha.

Other than that, not a lot of news to report. Most of my free time for the last few weeks has been spent playing Final Fantasy XIII, which I'm loving so much. Sara's been watching me play and has been following the story too, and we're both having a lot of fun. I should finish it some time this weekend, maybe even tonight, but then there's a lot of post-main storyline stuff to work on which I think I will do. I've got the sequel, FFXIII-2, waiting in the wings, but I've put so much time and effort into the first game's party that I want to see it through if I can. We'll see how long it takes to do things, it should be fun though.

Oh, and Big Brother 14 has started, which I've also gotten Sara dragged into I think, muahaha. The drama started pretty early with it this year, which shouldn't really be too surprising I suppose, but I'm glad that guilty pleasure of mine is back on the air again three times a week too. A very busy time but a good time lately. :)

So yesterday I received several e-mails about old IJ accounts that were marked for deletion. Last year I got the same notices, only instead of actually acting on them and saving the ones I wanted I totally let things slide and lost a bunch of them, including the one I used for ficlets and such. :/ I didn't have all that much written there, mind, and most of it is probably still on my hard drive somewhere, but still, that sucked. I also lost a few character journals that weren't such a great loss but I was still kicking myself for not saving them.

Because of that, I made sure to log on and save the journals I got notices about yesterday, though many of them had me scratching my head about why I'd made them in the first place. There's multilayered, one I made for a Paige I never really got to play much since the game died pretty early iirc, feeltheearth, who was an OC in a legacy game that I don't think ever got started, gutshot, a Cannonball journal for an old-timey, Civil War era AU game that... either never got off the ground or I never joined, I can't remember which, and hellotimebomb, a Tabby character for a game that died shortly after I joined. I think it had been dying for awhile but it was a cool concept iirc but didn't last, sadly.

([eta] I just realized all those characters are Guthries (the OC's mother was Melody Guthrie) and Tabby, haha, that's kinda cool. :D)

Looking back at those journals got me looking at some of my older ones too, which brought back lots of memories and got me reading some old fic and logs. Now I'm all nostalgic and inspired to write again, which is great when coupled with the wind in my sails post-Genosha in XP, so here's hoping I can get a lot done this weekend.

In other news, I've been playing Draw Something on my phone which has been fun. It didn't occur to me until now to ask if anyone here plays it, as I've only been playing with my sister-in-law and her hubby so far, along with one random person I found through the random player search. It's pretty fun, I've gotta say, and I've unlocked a few more colours so far which helps with the drawing part. If anyone wants to add me my username there's jeffslade, easy enough to remember I hope.

Lastly, I've been spoiling our cat Simon so much lately omg. I didn't realize how much until we got him these new treats. You see, previously he'd gobble up the odd treat we'd give him every now and then and be happy, but he wouldn't come looking for more or anything. The last time we got him some supplies in town, however, I picked up this bag of natural salmon flavoured treats and he goes positively bananas for them. We'd feed him treats in our palms before and he'd nibble gently at them but for these new ones he'll stand up on his hind legs, reaching up and gripping my hand with his paws (one on front, one on the back of my hand) and pull my hand to his mouth. Seriously, he will just about climb my leg to get them, and he meows and meows and meows for them very often. I used to give him 3-4 of them when I came home for lunch, then again after supper, but now he cries for them almost all the time, it's ridiculous. First thing that happens when I get up in the morning, as he's often asleep with us on the bed, is he sees me moving and "meoooooooooooooow~!" while he stalks me, almost tripping me up this morning in my feet, until I give him some.

It's cute when he's eating the treats, but damn, he is constantly craving them now. The bag does say the recommended amount for his size/weight is 8-10 pieces per serving, and two servings per day, so we're not giving him too many I don't think, but it's just the crying and begging that's getting out of hand. Not sure what to do, other than maybe gradually easing back and staying on a fixed schedule until he gets used to it. Not a huge problem, just very odd how fast it happened. Oh Simon. ♥

So, Diablo III. I'm really enjoying it so far but man, what a struggle it was to install. I preordered it ages ago and had the client for a long time, just waiting before I was allowed to install it the day before launch. I tried to set it up - you were supposed to be able to run the installer and preload things, eventually bringing up a splash screen with an 'Install' button that wouldn't actually install until May 14th, allowing you to play at midnight PST on the 15th, but mine would never let me do that. I thought it might've been missing some files or functionality before the 14th so didn't mess with it too much, thinking I'd get it done on the 14th. Then I spent a good 4+ hours on the 14th and found out I was just one of many having the same problem, it wouldn't install period. I was super frustrated, as were many others, and couldn't even post in the forums about it at first because it said my account was inactive or canceled, even though I'd paid for the game ages ago - it turned out that was because their new forums need you to select an avatar for posting and, by default, mine was an old WoW one which, yes, is inactive. I couldn't make a Diablo III one though because I couldn't install, but luckily I own StarCraft II as well so I was able to use that name to post.

Further wrestling with things on Tuesday I finally got it to work. The cost? Having to completely remove - not just deactivate, which didn't work, but remove - all of my antivirus and antispam/adware software from my machine. Ouch. I haven't tried reinstalling them yet but hopefully I'll be able to do that sometime soon. Thankfully I only use AVG and other assorted free programs so it's not like I'm wasting money but still, wow.

As of right now I'm just glad it finally works and have been enjoying the heck out of it. I haven't been playing it 24/7 for fear of burning out, but have put in several hours per night just getting used to it. Many years of MMO playing have my left hand perpetually hovering over the WSAD keys for movement so that's taking some getting used to but I'm coming around. I've been rocking the Demon Hunter class and am loving it, though I'm curious to check some of the other ones out too. Maybe after I finish it on Normal mode first, we'll see.

If anyone else is playing, let me know so I can add you to my social player thingy. Yes, I'm not that up on the Battle.net buddy system, haha, but I don't have anyone on there now and wouldn't mind playing with people from time to time. :)

It was a pretty nice weekend, I've gotta say. We never did get the monster storm that everyone was predicting for all of last week, really; Friday night saw some snow fall (though none had really started by the time I went to bed closer to 3am) and there was maybe, what, 10-15cm to deal with Saturday morning, but we were supposed to get 10-20cm overnight Friday and then 20-30cm on Saturday I think, which, no. It was windy and freezing cold but not that bad at all, all things considered. Last Thursday had actually been worse, in the morning anyway, though that too had cleared up pretty much completely by lunch (which was good as I still had to drive into St. John's after lunch). Because of the fear of the storm, the grocery store and the mall in general was blocked Friday after work, but I still managed to pick up some wings - Thai and Honey Garlic kinds - and some snacks - this awesome mini cookie cake thingy with chocolate sauce in the middle, sort of like a lava cake made of cookie - for the Super Bowl. Which I didn't really watch all that much but more on that later.

Friday night involved the usual LOTRO raid, which wasn't too bad. The week before I got very frustrated with it, at least I think that was the week before. Anyway, I'd been working on my character and getting my morale (your health in game) much higher so I wouldn't die so much, and I think I've done a good job of that now. The problem with Friday was banging our head against the wall on trying to do the new raid at Tier 2, the hardest setting, as opposed to Tier 1. Tier 2 has better rewards but is much, much more difficult; we've finished the whole raid on Tier 1 (well, I haven't, but the kin has) and now want to move on but it's not easy. We've still yet to get to a boss on Tier 2 yet, the groups of mobs between the entrance to the boss are tricky and we often get through 2-3 groups of them to the last group pre-boss and then can't get that last group down. And on Tier 2 you have to do the entire group before you wipe, if you don't get them all then they'll all respawn. On Tier 1 if you wipe whatever you kill stays dead so even if it's messy as hell you can get through things, not so on Tier 2. Anyway, Friday night we voted to try Tier 2 until we wiped 3-4 times, then do Tier 1. Which we did, we wiped a lot more than that, and eventually the raid leader suggested we vote to see if we should continue on with Tier 2 or switch to Tier 1. I had to speak up and say that, no, we all agreed going in to swap to t1 after a few wipes, and we'd done more than that, so we swapped to t1. Then we did 2 bosses, leaving the one we'd been banging our head up against on t2 open for Saturday night, and then I went to bed. I think some people stuck around and tried again but with no success.

Saturday was nice, I was up well before noon even, and played some more Assassin's Creed 2. I recently came to the realization that I should try and enjoy some of the mountains of media I've amassed over the years before buying any more, heh, and part of that includes video games. Like, last Thursday while in the city I saw that Final Fantasy XIII-2 is out and I was like omg WANT but, um. I got Final Fantasy XIII when it came out, strategy guide and all, and have yet to even pop it into my Xbox. >.> That's just what I do, but I'm not going to do that any more if I can help it. So I'm trying to play through things, watch things (I have SO MANY seasons of shows to watch it's not even funny, as well as movies), read things, etc., and AC2 was on the top of my list. Mainly because I already have AC: Brotherhood and they just released AC: Revelations just before Christmas and I wanted that too. XD So yes, I played more of that, then watched the Bruins lose to the Penguins in a matinee game before playing some more AC2. It was a nice day, relaxed, and I made some of the Honey Garlic wings before the LOTRO raid that night so win. Also had one of those cookie things, omg so good. The raid was more of the same, though people's patience was very raw and oh so thin. We didn't have enough to start it at first until more people showed up or came back from afks, so we ended up starting late. That's not too unusual, but the person who had lead the raid Friday night wasn't coming along because he said he couldn't stay on long. Well, he was on the entire time we were raiding, just playing PvP, and apparently after we stopped (I went to bed when we did) he did the raid with another group of people, just, rar. Something may come of that, I dunno, not cool at the very least. >:| We did more t2 attempts but never made it to the boss and no one wanted to do t1 so we just called it, earlier than Friday night too, people were just unhappy it seemed and frustrated.

Another big thing about Saturday was the amount of writing I did, all in logs for XP, omg. Close to 5k words (I'm keeping count for Get Your Words Out), mainly in one huuuuuuge log that ended up being over 11k words total, which was amazing and still has me smiling today, hehe. It was nice to get back into XP some more, I've had some kind of, I don't know, can you say writer's block for an RP? I wasn't getting much done at any rate and while I still love the game, don't get me wrong, since I went away at Christmas time I'd had a hard time getting much done there. I think I'm waking up from that hibernation however and that huge log was a big part in shaking off my slumber. :)

Sunday I was up well before noon again, which was nice, I like that. It was another nice day started off with some AC2, then watching another Bruins matinee, this weekend was awesome for hockey despite it presumably being all about football, and this time the B's won handily, dispatching the Caps 4-1. Then I played more AC2 for the afternoon, talking to a few people and just relaxing. I did pop out for lunch but then stayed in for the rest of the day. After supper it was more AC2, pausing to watch the Super Bowl when it started, but I actually flipped back and forth a lot because I was getting to the end of AC2, heh. >.> I saw the end of the first quarter, a good chunk of the second quarter, went and had a shower and a shave during the half time show (omg still loving the straight edge razor, SO AWESOME), saw part of the third, and then watched the last quarter and part of the ceremonies. I also made some more wings for the last quarter, which I burned a little, whoops, and another of the cookie dessert things omg. In between there was AC2, and after it was all over I sat down and finished the game omg. Which was awesome, I've gotta say. I don't know if people can still be spoiled for it or not, so I won't go into detail, but I was kinda spooked by the ending which involved some people talking directly to the screen as if looking/talking right at me, just creeped me out omg. x.x So sleep was hard after that. XD

All in all a very good weekend, I've got to say. The only problems with it were the head banging and frustration in LOTRO, which actually wasn't too bad for me, not nearly as frustrating personally as last week anyway, but still a downer. Hopefully next weekend will go better, we'll see, or this week for those who are able to raid during the week anyway. I think I will be trying to get 100% completion on AC2; I've only got a handful of achievements left to get and omg I've never, ever gotten 100% on a game before, so I'm kind of excited. Now that I've finished the main storyline I have full carte blanche to run wherever I want in game and do what I want so we'll see what happens. I think it's mainly a bunch of easy things but I know one will be tough, which is to defeat ten enemies in a row while in conflict without taking a hit. The not taking a hit's not too hard, especially in the earlier areas, but the problem is finding enough of them and not having them all run away on me, heh. We'll see though, will give that a shot before trying Brotherhood, but yay for finishing things I already own for a change, right? :)

Hope everyone else had a good weekend and that you have a good week ahead of you too! :D

Hope everyone had a good weekend and a good Thanksgiving, for all of my Canadian peeps anyway! :)

I had a nice weekend, doing something different in going to Burin for the weekend, which is about a 3 hour drive away, to stay with some friends. My buddy Marc lives there, with his wife Charlene and their two kids, Amy, 4, and Billy, who turns 2 this coming Saturday. They have SO MUCH ENERGY OMG. Which, well, is to be expected, but haha, what a weekend. Highlights include Amy (who remembered me from last year when I was down) loudly proclaiming on my arrival that "I'm going to sleep with Mr. Jeff!" (she refers to everyone as Miss or Mister), instead of her Mom or Dad taking her to sleep, her being very disappointed to hear I was married and she didn't believe it, and her reaction to me telling her Dad she had chocolate on her arm too while he was cleaning up her face against her will - to which she said to me "YOU STOP THINKING ABOUT ME! YOU START THINKING ABOUT YOURSELF! >:|" hahahahaaofjkdalkdmalwawdl,k just wow, adorable. XDDDD So many other things too, too many to list, and Billy was great too but he doesn't quite talk yet, hehe.

I went down after work on Friday, after being stood up for a late appointment I made and stuck around to make rather than leaving early for Burin, rarar, so it was after 5pm before I finally gave up and left anyway. So not impressed, mainly because it gets dark here around 7pm or so now and it's a long, open, barren road with crap reception and many moose, so I didn't want to drive in the dark any more than necessary. Thanks to the no show and me not being smart enough to say eff her and leaving after 15-20m, I drove the last half in the dark or so. There were no moose around, thankfully, and not too too much traffic, so it was ok. I got there after 8pm and stayed until around 4pm yesterday, getting back home close to 7:30 or so. It wasn't quite completely dark but dark enough then too, a tiny bit of light left in the distance, but better than the drive down at least.

Last night I got to get in some beta testing for a game which I shall not name, hehe, and went to bed earlyish for me on a holiday night because I was just so tired from playing with the kids for almost 2 days. x.x Then today I didn't do much of anything, other than watching hockey and playing a bit more of the aforementioned beta, so that was nice. I popped into work briefly, but didn't do much, really couldn't bring myself to it and I may regret it tomorrow but it'll be ok. Tomorrow's a busy day, though, so off to bed as soon as I post this to read for awhile (have a book so close to being finished that I'd love to get through before I sleep) and then sleeeeeeeep. Hope everyone had a good weekend and that you're all off to a great start of this week too. :)

Randomly, I need some How I Met Your Mother icons, hmm. I have seriously become a bona fide bigtime fan of the show, haha, and am anxiously awaiting the arrival of Season 6 on DVD so I can catch up; I've mainlined 1-5 in the last several weeks or so.

Anyway! What's up with me, besides my newfound love of HIMYM (as us fans are oft to abbreviate said show), you ask? Quite a lot, actually! I'll put this behind a cut because lord knows there's likely very few of you who will find all of it interesting, maybe a few who will find parts of it, but that's about it. XD

( Snip snip! )

That's about it off the top of my head, I should hit the hay since I've work in the morning, an unexpected return to court but what can you do? I'm sure there was more I meant to say but it's slipping my mind now, ah well. I can always post again later if I think of anything. :)

Just been questioning some MMO motives lately and it lead to this good ol' test which I haven't taken in awhile. Results are about what I expected. XD