everything will be alright

Keep meaning to do this but keep getting side tracked, so in the interest of time here's a little update by way of bullet points beneath the cut.

( Stuff! )

It feels weird being at work so early. I got here at like 8am when we open at 9am and my first appointment's not until 9:30am but I figured I might as well come in early after dropping my wife off at work so here I am. It's actually 8:37am as I start to type this but it's been nice and quiet, allowing me to get to writing letters I've been meaning to get done for a while now.

By way of a general update, I finished Diablo III a little over a week ago now. Only on normal, though, and I think my character was just level 33 (the cap being 60) so there's lots left to play, especially if I try another class, but for now I'm content to give it a break. It's fun, don't get me wrong, but see my earlier posts re: difficulty in just playing it for a short period of time and needing to allow for more time than I usually want. I'm presuming that will only increase with the harder difficulty settings, or at best stay the same with a new character, so it's on the shelf for awhile.

Writing has been going well, thanks in no small part to the humongous task of logging in Genosha in XP. That's been extremely fun though, definitely, and it's helped me get back into the game somewhat too. Before that I was slumping a little post-Christmas, not really doing all that much, but now I'm right back into logging again which is nice. Aside from that I've got a cool little crossover fanfic story idea that I'm slowly but surely working on, which is about the only other non-RP thing I'm writing at the moment, but I'm happy with that for now.

Music has been great lately, with a whole slew of new albums and artists having caught my ear: Jack White's new solo album, Blunderbuss, is pretty good (though I need to give it a few more spins), been loving the latest by M. Ward and by Rufus Wainwright, downloaded the new Garbage album and like it so far after a couple of listens, picked up the newest offering from The Hives yesterday which is just as short and intense as ever, and listened to all of Fun's album, the band with that big hit We Are Young. The rest of their album's not too bad either, though we only gave it one listen so far on the drive to Burin this past weekend. And the new Metric comes out in less than a week now, I'm very excited about that, not gonna lie. I pre-ordered it and will be getting one of the 500 limited edition box thingies, not sure what to call it, but it'll be signed by the band and everything, pretty stoked. :D For lack of a description, here's their site, and apparently it's called a stereobox. Neat. :)

That's about it on this end for now, back to work for which I'm still early even though I've already got a bunch of stuff done and still had time to post this. Nice. :D

Wow, it really has been ages since I wrote anything here. I could've sworn I'd done a post since I got back to Newfoundland but it doesn't look like it, huh. Well, where to start? For the sake of brevity (and also because I've likely forgotten a lot of details / things) I'll do most of this in bullet point form.

· We saw Bruce Springsteen play in Philadelphia at the Wells Fargo Center back on March 28th, and wow. Just an amazing show, can't even put it into words, at least not in any form that'd do it justice. The theme for the night was changes, very fitting for us, and they were in top form. The tributes to Danny and Clarence brought tears to my eyes, and the tribute to the Big Man during 10th Avenue Freeze-Out was a religious experience. Heck, the whole show was, to me anyway. So very happy I got to see them live, and even happier I got to share that with believeitup.

· We left on Monday, April 2nd to drive back to Canada. The 10' U-Haul truck I'd reserved wasn't available so they bumped us up to a 14' one at no cost. It was for the best in the end, even if it was hella intimidating to have to drive a 22' long vehicle that far (the storage was 14', truck and all was 22' total x.x), because we had a bigger cab and that meant more room for Simon in his carrier and us. It was a great trip, getting to see friends along the way and lots of scenery, though it was rough on poor Simon who consequently made it rough on us, heh. But we survived, and so did Simon, who's pretty settled into his new digs now. :)

· We arrived in NL on Good Friday and have been steadily unpacking and straightening things away ever since. We're getting there, though there's always going to be something else to do; such is the nature of home ownership, or so I'm told. It's been going so well though, getting government IDs and programs set up, a new car for the missus, all that administrative stuff has gone very well and honestly faster than expected. The unpacking too has been nice, though I don't know if it's that from this weekend or a touch of the flu that has me so so so congested this morning, ugh.

· We have HD set up at home now, woo, and a lightning fast internet connection that omg I am so happy with. Both I guess, really, because HD rocks. So nice to finally be able to use the TV we got so long ago. Getting used to the PVR too, I've set up a few shows to record, it's great. Hockey in HD is awesome too, though it made watching my boys bow out of the playoffs tough. >.> In truth we had gone to bed for overtime of Game 7 of the Boston/Washington series and both of us had nodded off and missed the OT goal that clinched it for the Caps, haha. Alas. We have mainlined Community and are now caught up and watching it in real time (last week's Law & Order one was omg amazing), and are now making our way through Parks and Recreation. We've also watched a lot of Storage Wars and Pawn Stars, as you do.

· Writing has been horrible for me, sadly, and I feel like a total failure in that vein, because I really have been. I've been so slow and absent for XP the last month, though I'm hopefully turning the corner on that one. I bowed out of the two Big Bangs I'd signed up for because I couldn't write anything, and I have a little story due today for a 1k fic exchange that I really need to tidy up and send off by the end of the day. That'll be about the only thing I've accomplished in the last month or more, which is pretty sad, but it'll be ok.

· In gaming news, I've preordered both Diablo III and Guild Wars 2 and am looking forward to them both. I've had trouble installing the former which I should work on tonight, as it goes live on May 15th, but there was a beta for the latter this past weekend that was pretty fun. It looks like a great little MMO, and I haven't really touched LOTRO in so long, so we'll see what happens I guess. I've also been toying with proposing a D&D campaign by mail to people in XP but honestly I've been so absent lately I don't think it'd be proper to throw that out there all of a sudden, haha. "Hey guys, I'm not rping much at all lately but let's do something else where I can fail you! :D" I know, I know, too negative, but I am messing around and making characters so once I've done that (and once I've been better at tagging logs and such) we'll see. :)

That's about it really, I suppose. There's likely more to post about but it's almost lunch time and I'm staaaaaarving, so if anything else comes to me I'll make another post or something. And hopefully I'll be posting here again more regularly too, that might help with the whole writing thing, you know, actually writing and all. XD

Stole it from writteninsable:

Comment to this post, and I will list seven things I want you to talk about. They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

( My 7 things! )

I wanted to write this entry when I got up yesterday morning, at around 10:30am, but I never did. That kinds sums me up lately, I think; inertia, aspirations with no follow through, wanting to do a bunch of things but not doing anything. Ok, well, I can't say I didn't do anything because I did mess around with some graphics, did a lot of writing for RP, got a bit of work done today, etc. I just didn't get to a lot of the bigger picture things I had in mind, I suppose.

It was a very quiet weekend, but not that bad overall. Friday night saw me sitting out to give someone else a chance to raid, helping out a friend with some real life issues, then getting tagged back into the raid later in the evening. We made some great progress which was nice but I stayed up entirely too late and there was more kin drama to deal with before sleeping.

Yesterday I didn't do anything, really, aside from watching hockey as it was Hockey Day in Canada. Funny enough, though, the game I enjoyed the most was the Boston/Nashville matinee, which saw my Bruins come back from a deficit late in the game and win in a shootout. This was the day I played around with Photoshop and played a lot of Eternal Sonata. I've been trying to live up to my self-made promise to finish older games, watch older shows/movies, read older books etc., before buying more. On the video game front I've finished Assassin's Creed 2 and am now onto this RPG which is a pretty fun game, gotta say. I'm about 1/2 way through it now or so and really liking it, it's got a very cool theme to it, with Frederic Chopin being on his deathbed and you're playing these characters in his dreams. The music is beautiful, real Chopin compositions are included, and all the characters/locations are named after musical terms. More info here for those so inclined to check it out further. Later in the night I was feeling sick so I went to bed before 12 for a change, only to get up again for awhile to engage in some XP group chat that was pretty cool. :)

Today I got up and went to work pretty much right away, getting a few things done. I played more Eternal Sonata after that and after supper, and now I'm just watching the Grammys. Disappointed that Kanye isn't there, since he's up for 7 awards and I was hoping to see him and Jay-Z maybe do a number, alas. Bruce did the opening though which was pretty cool, can't believe it's only a little over a month until I get to see him live omg. x.x

And on that note, back to watching the show. It's 11:30 now and tomorrow's going to be a long day, ugh, but this week will be better than the last several, it will, it has to be, right? Right.

Hope everybody had a good weekend! Mine wasn't that bad at all, despite not really doing what I would've liked to have done. It being my first full weekend at home since returning from the US, I have a lot of books, movies, tv shows, etc. that I was just planning to immerse myself in but instead I had other obligations to fulfill.

Friday night was nice and relaxed. I think I had a brief nap after work and then started in on watching season one of Flashpoint. I picked up seasons one and two in the city last Wednesday and I'm pretty excited about it, and have been really enjoying the episodes I've seen so far. After that I puttered around a bit, putting in some time on SWTOR, and then I did my first bit of raiding in LOTRO in awhile. I finally got to see the new raid, and more than just see it, we did what I think is all four of its wings (albeit on tier 1, the easiest level of difficulty) in one go, in just over two hours. That was nice, even though we had to stop and couldn't do the final boss that evening. Still, I hadn't even set foot inside it before then so that was pretty awesome, getting to see almost all of it like that. Of course winning is nice too, so doing all of those bosses without any wipes (except for one non-boss pull that got us twice, hehe) was nice. The only downer to the night was me making an announcement that I'll no longer be looking after the kin's SKL, which is how we keep track of loot, because I just can't be around all week. Somehow a new schedule got set for raids (still no answer on how/when that came down, but it's set now anyway) and I won't be able to keep up with it, so that's all you can do. I'll still be around when I can, mainly on the weekends, but we'll see how that goes. Regardless, Friday night was a nice time and I even got in bed at a decent hour, around 2am, though Kristen Bell was on Craig Ferguson so I had to watch that haha.

Saturday was the day I wanted to stay home and absorb all the new things, but instead I had a party to attend. Which, well, I knew I'd have fun, and I did, but I was a little reluctant to head in for it. Maybe that makes me a bad sibling, because the party was a birthday get together at my sister's place for her and our friends Jackie and Chris, since all three of them have their birthdays within 4-5 days of each other. I slept in pretty late, because even though I had a decent-ish bedtime I was pretty tired from my first week back to work post-vacation. When I did get up, I pretty much showered and got ready to hit the road asap, getting into the city before dark. I went to my sister's first to drop off some things Mom had sent in for her, then I went to the comic book shop where I picked up the Schism trade, a D&D supplement (I have plans!), and some dice. Next was supper at Quiznos, mmm, toasted subs, and then a quick pop into Chapters where I only walked out with a new magazine (PC Gamer that covers Diablo III, SWTOR, and Skyrim ftw) and a Starbucks coffee. I went to J&A's place then where we hung out for a few hours before going to my sister's place. It was a great little party, so many people showed up, and I picked up a little flask (375ml) of scotch that I polished off over the entire night, haha, complete with a large can of this yummy German beer. I haven't drank that much in a long time and thankfully somehow I avoided a hangover, though I was pretty drunk. Those of you who follow me on Twitter could probably tell that. XD I went home with J&A because the stupid parking ban is in place now and I can't really park at my sister's place (not without a lot of fancy maneuvering but it's too much of a hassle and really only works with two smaller cars and my Sorento's too big I think) so I left the car at J&A's, since they have a double driveway with room for more cars on the side, and A was driving anyway since he was feeling under the weather. We were home by 1:30 or so, so another earlyish night out, and I slept like a champ until 10:30 or so. I was afraid I'd have a horrible hangover so I did have something to eat and a lot of water before passing out and it appears to have done the trick. \o/

Sunday was nice and quiet. I woke up and hung out with J&A some more, having lunch with them before stopping by my sister's place around 1pm or so. She was up and about and cleaning up from the night before, and apparently everyone else at the party had stayed until 3am. A good time was had by all and she said the landlords upstairs got home at around 3:30 and mercifully they were only stomping around for 10-15 minutes before sleeping themselves so Jen got a decent night's rest. I hung out with her for an hour or so before heading back out home. I got back around 3pm and spent 30-45m at the office, sending out a quick letter before I went home since I knew I wouldn't want to come back over once I was home, hehe. Then it was a lovely evening at home by myself, which is what I'd planned for Saturday, but I still had a fantastic time so it's all good. I had a little nap, then a nice supper, followed by a relaxing shower and then a good shave with my new straight edge razor and oh my. It is so choice, if I may borrow a line from Ferris Bueller. If you have the means I highly recommend it. And I didn't even cut myself this time, woo! I think I need to sharpen it though, as there was some tugging and such, but it shaves so nicely and is just a relaxing process, I dunno. I'm so glad I gave it a shot, it's an investment I'm happy that I made. Plus I shaved with it last Sunday and yesterday when I shaved again, the first time since last Sunday, it felt like I only had 2-3 days' worth of stubble, so it cuts way better than an electric razor. Plus it makes me feel all grown up and manly, haha. I wonder when I'm shaving with it if this is how Hemingway felt all the time or something. Shh, yes, I'm weird.

On the writing front, I have a lot of plans but need to sit down and actually write. Last night I meant to but then pre-shave I put on last week's Sherlock episode and then post-shave I watched some more Flashpoint. I keep seeing all these big bangs being advertised, as I joined a channel that pimps them here, and I keep wanting to sign up for them ALL, haha, but I can't. I did sign up for one (an SPN crossover one), and have another ambitious fic plot started that may or may not fall under one of the other big bang categories, so that's more than enough for now. It's exciting, though, gotta say, I'm enjoying what I've done with it so far and hopefully there'll be much more writing done as a result of it all. :D

Lastly, in general as well, I've been listening to Watch the Throne and really, really liking it. Which is so weird because normally the only rap I listen to is the Beastie Boys. I got turned onto it from another rap album, by Childish Gambino which is Donald Glover's rap name. I love him from Community and follow him on Twitter so when he put this album out I gave it a listen and loved it. He makes lots of references in the songs to many things, as most rappers are wont to do, and it lead to me checking out the Kanye/Jay-Z album and voila. Weird, I know, but hey, I'm proud of my wide spectrum of musical tastes. :)

And today I'm back to work. The boss is away until next week and I've no court at all, so it's a nice, quiet week, or so I hope. Next week and most of the week after will be crazy busy so this week is for prep work and such, so I'm enjoying the quiet while I can. Hope everyone else has a good week!

So, so busy with work lately, omg. And when that's not happening I'm now working on NaNo and RP, or away in the city for work the next day. It's been about as hectic as I can ever recall, and I'm hoping it'll calm down soonish. Not tomorrow or Friday for certain, but after next week things kind of lighten up a little. I hope.

Other than that, not too much else to talk about, I suppose. Saw a few movies lately, In Time and The Three Musketeers, mayhap I'll do a review of them later (under cuts to avoid spoilers!) but they were ok. Have fallen behind in tv watching again, which was to be expected each fall, but will try to catch up on that as time allows. Again, NaNo is going to be the main occupier of my time now, along with RP. RP makes me so happy, omg. Layla/Sarah logs especially have a special place in my ♥. XP in general is awesome and I'm happy that Sam is fitting in better than I worried he might, I was worried with all his previous history I'd mess him up but I think it's going pretty well. Need to look into logging more stuff with him though, I think. Which reminds me, crap, need to tag something before sleeping!

Lots of new music that I want to write about too, including Foster the People, who I'm loving at the moment, and some new cds I got yesterday that I've yet to properly absorb yet - Lights, Lou Reed & Metallica, and Maroon 5 albums. Will listen to them when writing - I always seem to get more music during November to help with the writing, it seems - and post more later.

So yeah, will try to write a better update in the near future, but the bottom line is busy busy busy, omg, hurry up weekend. XD

So, long time no post! I've been insanely busy with work lately, and then I come home and bury myself in something else to forget about it. Last week LOTRO put out its latest expansion, upping the level cap from 65 to 75, so you can guess what my latest time sink has been, heh. Well. Same old time sink, I suppose, just in a different light. Now instead of just raiding on the weekends I'm leveling up most week nights. I did take most of Saturday and Sunday off, though, after a very frustrating Friday night, but I've been working on it again lately. I'm still amazed at how past some people are burning through it, though; I saw people in the game hitting 75 the effing day after it came out, just, why? And people in kin are flying too, we have 4-5 75s now, and have for awhile. To each their own, I guess.

In the new music category, so many good new things lately. Namely the latest Jim Cuddy album, Skyscraper Soul, and the newest Wilco album, The Whole Love, both of which I've already given several listens and both of which I am fond. I've also been playing the accordion a little, haha, mainly because of a traditional song I downloaded on .mp3 back in my law school days (when I lived away from home and was nostalgic) that comes on after the Jim Cuddy album on iTunes. I heard it the other day and realized it was in the key of G, which my folks' accordions can play, and I picked one up and messed around with it until I figured it out, hehe. Need to transcribe it, as it were, for Mom since she asked. All their songs are in simple notation, not sheet music, i.e. there's a row of buttons for each key and the songs they play are written out with button numbers, with a stroke over the number if it's a pull out note instead of a push in, hehe. So that was kinda neat. :)

What else... hockey starts soon, which reminds me, once again I've failed to call my buddy Marc about that, whoops. I'm guessing we'll pick our teams either tomorrow or Wednesday night before the season starts, though due to people being away and/or busy we've picked teams after the season has started in the past, it's just not preferable. We'll see, and I also need to talk to him about potentially visiting him this weekend, if I still wanna do that, I dunno. On the fence but leaning towards going, I think.

I'm also reading a lot more again, thanks to some various books I've dug out of the "oh hey I forgot I had that!" pile, haha. XD Mainly a Christopher Hitchens one I started months ago, and an Elminster book I should finish since I've already gone and bought the next one in the series on hardcover for some reason. ^_^;; I'm horrible like that, I know, I know.

I also finished a Resident Evil marathon of sorts tonight, though I suppose since I started on Saturday night it's not really a marathon, haha. XD I watched the first two movies Saturday night, then the third on Netflix last night, and tonight the latest on Blu Ray. I bought it in the US ages ago when it first came out but kept meaning to watch the first ones before seeing it, and finally broke down and did just that this weekend. I meant to awhile ago but couldn't remember if I owned the third one and couldn't find it if so, but finally realized it's on Netflix so that solved that. I'm watching season 6 of How I Met Your Mother too which is awesome.

Speaking of tv, I also finished Supernatural season 6 and have started watching season 7 now, and am attempting to watch many tv shows this year: The New Girl, Survivor, Supernatural, The Ringer, Community, and Archer to name a few. There may be others that I'm forgetting, but yes, am trying to get back into the swing of things.

Alright, off to bed for me now, trying to get back to a better bedtime since it's been helping with work when I do, so it's something I should keep up, yes? :)

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. :)

Not a bad weekend, really, and it's not quite over yet but planning to work and such tomorrow. More on that later.

Last night I got to watch a heartbreaking loss in Game 5 by my Bruins, mreh. Such a weird Stanley Cup Finals, it's very odd. Games 1, 2, & 5 in Vancouver? 1 goal wins, all by Vancouver, but could've went either way. Games 3 & 4 in Boston? Epic blowout wins by Boston by 8-1 and 4-0 scores. Game 6 is Monday night in Boston, so we'll see what happens. A Vancouver win gets them the Cup; a Boston win gets them one more kick at the can in Vancouver. Obviously I'm hoping for the latter. XD

Then we raided last night, using a new loot rule system, managed by yours truly. That was a bit frustrating at first, since we literally got our first boss down and had to use it for the first time just as the Canucks scored. Was hard for me to pay attention and stay calm. XD It works well though, I think, and I'm glad we finally got it instituted. We got 2 bosses down, one in challenge mode (which equals more/better loot), so that was good, then a somewhat decent bedtime for me.

This morning I got up at a little after 10am, which is great for me on a Saturday, hehe. Showered, had breakfast, then drove to St. John's, where I hit the mall and stayed there for 8+ hours, haha. I picked up tickets to see 3 movies: a 12:20pm showing of Super 8, a 3:10pm showing of X-Men: First Class, and a 6:00pm showing of The Hangover 2. In between I picked up some other things: a copy of Transformers 2 on DVD for cheap (saw the first one but not this one, and hear it's GODAWFUL, but in case I want to see 3 in July I figure what odds?), Elvis Costello's Secret, Profane & Sugarcane album and Season 2 of Spectacle, and after the mall made a quick trip to Chapters for a book on learning music theory (wanna learn to read sheet music) and on writing.

Movie reviews/summaries behind the cut for potential spoilers, though I don't really go into much detail just the same, but to be safe. :)

( Movie talk! )

Came home from town and raided, which, mreh as well. Just been frustrating lately, and tonight was the same as the last several weeks, with us banging our head against the wall for hours at a time on this one fight. A few weeks' back the banging was mainly over clearing the trash to get to him, but we have that down pretty well now. Now it's the actual boss fight itself, which is just frustrating, and we keep trying for the challenge mode that's just preposterously easy to blow (we lose it less than 30s into the fight every damn time and it's a long fight to win, if we ever do win it) and resetting when we fail. It takes the wind out of your sails to spend hours at that, especially when you die a lot while doing so, ugh. So yeah, just a frustrating night, kinda sucks to end off the night like that but it is what it is.

Tomorrow I have plans to get some work done because I'm way behind on a lot of routine things, mainly because my assistant, Nancy, was out of the office most of the week. The sad news, though, is that she was out of the office because her mother, who'd been ill for awhile, was in palliative care and took a turn for the worse on Wednesday, and then died on Friday. :/ The funeral will be Monday afternoon, so I may be able to make it - have court Monday morning so it'll depend on how long that lasts, but would like to be there - but at any rate will be going to the funeral home tomorrow afternoon to pay my respects.

For now though it's off to bed, after a good day of movies and shopping followed by a long night of frustrating raiding. Think I'll try to read a bit first and end off the day that way instead. :)