The Weird Day it Was

Yesterday was Saturday and I had nothing to do but clean my apartment and waste time on my computer. I sat at home and gamed for awhile but became bored after blowing so much time so I decided to get out for awhile. Getting some fresh air is so very necessary, in my opinion, to one's health. I started to feel a little light-headed after heading out on a brief walk that I found myself daydreaming about the computer game I had been playing earlier. My thoughts wandered to and fro, never stopping on one subject for too long and I lost count of how many random ideas floated for a fleeting moment to the front of my mind.

Lack of sleep. It was definitely caused by a lack of sleep. Though I tried to stay in bed late yesterday morning, I couldnt sleep past 9:30am. So, yesterday I just wandered through the day, never truly taking note its existence other than that I was awake and lucid and only noticed my surroundings on a cursory level. [Note: This morning, I slept much later and am feeling more coherent today, though sleep is still nagging at my eyelids.]

So I cant really explain but to say that my mind took a vacation and I had an enjoyable time daydreaming the day away on into the evening hours. Weird weekend.

A post about nothing...

Several days have gone by and I haven't posted anything new. I was just thinking to myself about what I should post here. I mean, should I wait for something extravagant and interesting -or- should I make up something that sounds like a good story -or- should I just detail the exploits of my RPG character? Where to begin? And I again wonder if it matters at all. I know of a few people who check out my blog and have left kind remarks in the comment section. But aside from entertaining those three or four readers, what does it really matter if I just blah, blah, blah and drone on for pages about how I tied my shoes this morning?

Now, if i had caught my finger in my shoelace and been unable to remove it, then drove to work with my finger in my shoelace because I couldnt get it out... then a police officer stopped me and asked what the hell I was doing... then he tried pulling my finger out of my shoe but it wouldnt come loose... then he called for back-up to get my finger out of my shoe because he didnt want the whole police station talking about his inability to untie a shoelace knot... then, after an hour of trying, they call in the fire dept. with the "Jaws-of-Life"... but just before they were about to start cutting, the knot was loosened just enough and my finger came loose, but the noise from the "Jaws-of-Life" was too great and the face shield the fireman wore was too dark for them to see that they didn't realize that my finger had already come loose so I broke loose and started running down the street and was eventually caught and arrested for trying to escape from the police. And so that's why I was late to work this morning.... Now THAT would be an interesting shoelace story...

But that didn't happen and I have no story to tell for today. However, here is a mini-story written by CCTX:

***
00C
C: I'm reading a bulletin board the students in my highschool in BJ write.so. the bulletin board is so funny. they're talking about all the bad stuff about our teacher. making fun of them. unn. they were talking about my English teacher too

D: were they making fun of him too? and cici got mad? and cici got a gun? ...and she shot all those people who were making fun of her favorite english teacher? and then she ran away and hid in dave's water bottle? Thats a great story cici!
***

So, if you've read this far into the blog, you must be truly bored. Anyway, hope you enjoyed this blog about nothing.

Money! Money, baby, Money!

An alternate title for this post would be: Captain of the Guard.

Finally, after weeks of trying, I have ascended to the status of Captain of the Guard of Vault City. At times it seemed and impossible dream to achieve this honor and privledge but I perservered.

But I hear you asking, "What is Captain of the Guard?". Captain of the Guard is a status one may achieve in the game Fallout 2. Fulfilling quests for one of the towns in the game, namely Vault City, and properly kissing their leaders ass will get you this status. Now, I've played this game too many times and I know just about everything in the game. I could, if I wanted, start and finish the game in about a half an hour...skipping all the side quests, of course. But I digress...

Because I've played it so much, I just whip through it and have never been named Captain of the Guard before now. So, I decided to go back to the beginning and do it right. It became an obsession and I was staying up way too late, letting my apartment get cluttered and generally turning off the rest of my life (outside of work). Since things need to be done in a very particular order to achieve this status and since I had never accomplished this task, I began to think that the Captain of the Guard status was in a different version of the game than mine. However, all those thoughts were banished when Vault City appointed my character as Captain of the Guard yesterday.

I was really surprised at how happy I felt afterward. Relieved, elated, joyous... these words begin to describe the feeling. And I wondered why it was so. Why should success in an RPG affect me so strongly. I realize now that it wasn't success in the game, per se, that caused my happiness but the accomplishment of a task I hadn't at first believed I could perform. But now, here I sit, Captain of the Guard, with everyone around me saying things like, "Sir, yes SIR." -or- "Nothing to report today, Captain." and so on.

Ah, its good to be king.

Drowsy Day

Just reading the title of today's blog weights my eyelids with sandbags. But such is the day. I had a bit of an adventure or, more appropriately, an exercise in patience yesterday which led to this post. So, here is how it all went down:

I was working a bit late last night, finishing a monthly status report for the boss-man. After wrapping things up here at the office, I headed out to Quiznos for some dinner to-go. From office to home took about 45 minutes. That pot head over at the sandwich shop is fu**ing slower than a dead snail. Anyway, I got home and was in the process of removing my dinner from its paper encasings when the whole thing fell apart on my floor. Not pleased was I. I proceeded to curse and beat the table while imagining that damn fool sandwich jockey's stoned out face. But I must pause and calm myself...

Afterward, I ate the remnants of my sandwich and headed out to the store. I was in such a mood that, in addition to the international phone card I sought, I bought a 12 pack, a high-caffiene energy drink and a gallon of milk. You know, the basics. Though time kept speeding past, I drank that energy drink and called CCTX. To get the days events off my chest.

Then I played Fallout2. Oh, yes. I played Fallout2. In fact, that energy drink gave me so much energy that I played until 1:30 am. This would normally not be so late for me. I am, after all, the guy who used to regularly stay up until 2am before getting up at 7 for work at da Bank up in Seattle... But I must be losing my edge. Having gotten 6 hours of sleep the night before, I woke up a 7:55 am this morning yet made it work only 15 min past 8. Not that hours are strictly adhered to in my company. Basically, we work as long as necessary and no one holds us to any time card. There are, however, guidelines. And since I'm still an intern I really need to be showing my best. Lucky for me, the boss (boss' boss, actually) is out of the office this week. So I slipped into my cubicle at 8:15 this morning with fresh, black bags under my eyes while wearing the same shirt I slept in last night. As you can probably tell, dress code is also a non-issue here.

So far, things have been going well today. I've gotten an e-mail of appreciation from my boss regarding the work I've put in this week and am ahead of schedule on my project. As poor an employee as I may sound, I truly do a kick-ass job at my work. I'm just fortunate to have an employer to let me be myself while I'm out there kicking ass.

So now 5pm thither winds its way toward me and I accept the invitation to get the hell out of here. Time to go home and hit my pillow nice and hard.

Zzzzzzz....

Who's Scruffy Lookin' ?

Well, I let myself get pretty scruffy lookin' this past weekend. It was an awesome three-day weekend spent lying around and, of course, playing Fallout 2. I finished the origingal Fallout a couple of weeks ago and have since moved on to the sequel, Fallout 2. Fallout 3 is scheduled for release in about a year, so there is indeed hope for the future. For now, though, I'm into the second installment of the series and loving every minute (except when the game crashes and corrupts my saved game files...).

So, this past weekend I sat at home and just vegetated in front of the computer, totally messing up my sleep schedule. Friday night I went to bed at a decent hour but Saturday I was up until about 5am, waking up at 10:30. Sunday night was even better (or worse). I finally went to bed at around 6am with the alarm set for noon. Didn't happen. I woke up around 2pm on Monday and couldn't go to sleep the following evening. Gee, I wonder... Anyway, Im doing fine this morning at work and we'll just see how this day goes from here. The boss' boss is out of the office this week and my boss lives/works out of state. So, no one is here to quiz me on the bags or the dark circles under my eyes.

What made me so scruffy lookin' over the weekend, you ask? The beard. It was the beard. I hadn't shaved in about four days before I finally cleaned up this morning and the growth was substantial. In retrospect, I wish I'd taken a picture for the blog here. Anyway, because I was just sitting at home doing nothing, I wore the same T-shirt for the weekend and didnt shave. I showered once after working out on Saturday, but that was all. It was fun, especially now looking back on it from a clean and shaven perspective.

I've GOT to tell y'all about my progress in Fallout 2, though! But... It'll have to wait until next time. Gotta go. Gotta work. Gotta ... Zzzzz...

end

A Story

What? youre on a mac? youre breakin ....p c..ci I ca..t hear yo.... CSsshShhhhshhhshhh .............. ............ ........... .......... ......... .............. ............ .......... ............ ........ .........
Haha! Just kidding!

Savvy says: Wanna hear a story?

CiCi-battle field says: yes

Savvy says: Yesterday, when I was getting ready to leave work, I put cici in my pocket as usual. Except when I went out to my car, I realized that she was screaming!

CiCi-battle field says: ....

Savvy says: So, i took her out of my pocket to figure out what was wrong, and I saw that she had fainted. So I splashed some water on her from my water bottle.

CiCi-battle field says: x_X

Savvy says: She woke up a little and said in a very dry and rough voice, "need... water..." So I let her drink from my water bottle. it was a very hot day, so I thought she must have been overheated. Anyway, when she was drinking from my water bottle, she fell inside! I thought, "Oh no! my cici is going to drown!"

CiCi-battle field says: >.<

Savvy says: But then I looked more closely, and I saw that she was ok. She was swimming in my water bottle! And she looked really, really happy.

CiCi-battle field says: T.T ^^

Savvy says: It was, after all, a really hot day...

THE END

CiCi-battle field says: yeah!

Seafair in Seattle

Friday, August 5th, 2005. I left work a bit early and drove up to Seattle with no place to stay and no plans other than a loose agreement to meet up with some friends. But this is nothing new. My Seattle friends are notoriously poor at planning things beyond the current day's activities and they are hard pressed to do even this much. So, I arrived in Greenlake at around 8pm and pull up a chair at the Greenlake Bar & Grill. A half-pound burger and two Mac 'n Jacks later and I'm off and up out. The phone rings:

"Andy. What's up man? Where are you at?"
"'Sup Savvy, I'm at home. Have you talked to Silas yet? I think we're going out to the Georgia Dragon later on. You should call Sean. We might meet up at his place to pre-func."
"Sounds a'ight. I'll get ahold of the guys and call you back."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll call Mario and Bruce."
"A'ight. Later."

My friends, aka the Seattle Contingent, always play this telephone game:

"I'll call you then you call her and she'll call me. Then I'll call you to tell you she called me. If she doesn't call, then I'll call her to call you to tell you she hasn't called yet."

So, after this, I eventually met with the crew and we went out for a beer. It was great seeing them all again. Hard to believe that 4 months have passed since I last made it up there.

I stayed out until around 3am both Friday and Saturday night, getting no more than 5 hours of sleep each night. Now here's a story within a story. Did I mention that I slept in my car both nights? Saturday morning, I had to shave in the bathroom of the restaurant in which I ate breakfast. I slept pretty well, though. Friday night was spent out west of Ballard near the marina. I parked in the lot next to where all the houseboats were. I figured that no one would care if I slept there because they were all on their respective boats anyway. Quite right! No hassles, no issues. Still, I woke up around 7:30am for no good reason. Anyway, I spent the better part of the day sightseeing. I went up to Queen Anne, where I had an apartment back-in-the-day; I spent some time walking through the neighborhood remembering some old times. It was all good.

Then, evening rolls around and the crew is getting together for an outdoor movie showing in the Fremont district. "Goonies", that old '80s movie, is projected onto the side of a building. The lot is packed; people are sitting in the middle of the road to watch the movie. I am among them, with the crew around me. We sit and watch and chill, then head back to Sean's place for a beer... but wait! Is that the end of the evening? No! Another member of the clan mentioned something about going to Rick's (a strip club in the Lakewood district) and before I knew it, we were there... sightseeing.

This is where the story gets wild. Mario, one of the honchos at T-Mobile, went big daddy pimp master style and bought $300 worth of chips (like poker chips, to be spent at Rick's) for the table. He had no cash, just the card, so I had to front dude's cover. Hence, I was the first to help myself to the bucket 'o chips. Let the lap dancing begin! It was nuts! The chicks were drawn to the chips like flies. At any time, we had at least three girls with us at the table. Pimp master Mario (But I still call him "Sooooooper Mario", after the old Nintendo game). But five minutes before we were outta there one of the girls tries to get her full game on and get me to stay out. I was just looking around, enjoying the scene, when I spotted one of the dancers walking our way. I had just turned back to the table to get my stuff together and head out when she sat on my lap and asked "What were you looking at???" Long story short, brushed her off and made my way to the exit. Ah, Rick's. Don't think I'll be going there again. It was a cool experience being seen as Mr. High Roller, though.

So, a couple of hours later, I was back in the car for another nap. Woke up around 9am and headed back to Portland. A nice LOOOONG shower and then met with a friend for lunch then crashed super hard last night. It's now 8am on Monday morning, I'm back at work and feeling fine. A little sleepy, but fine. Good times were had indeed.

Attack of the Pear-Shaped People

The greater part of my day is spent in a cubicle with four carpet covered, metal frame walls that sits in a virtual sea of other such dividers. In my time, I've noticed that people who work in an office tend to lose some of their natural body shape. In essence, the longer one sits in an office, the more closely one resembles a pear.

My cubicle neighbor is definitely no exception to this rule. Her body is almost entirely a fruit-shape of the pear kind and her idea of exercise seems to be getting up to hit the vending machine. I can hear the rotund, office chair wearing, cow of a woman munching chips at regular intervals throughout the day. Its amazing she hasn't chewed off her own fingers. I know she hasn't because she also pounds her keyboard strenuously (as if the tonnage of fat straining within the skin of each of her stubby hands did not provide enough weight; as if this were the only other form of exercise that cow gets in between munch breaks...). Ok. So, I hear the woman grazing and shifting her fat ass in her squeaky chair all day long. So what? She has a right to be here too. I know this. But knowing this doesn't make it any more tolerable.

Oh, if you could hear her on the phone! Her job is almost entirely tele-conferencing. From what I overhear, and that's a lot because she has one of those fat-bitch voices, you know the kind that seems to come from a large, hollow, bellowing cavity somewhere in between her head and feet... she simply facilitates these meetings and offers NO advice or support to her attendees. She repeats the same low IQ phrases, speaking in a pseudo valley girl/hillbilly accent, day in and day out. "So, what I'm hearing is [for ex:] that you ... you are still working on the project?" Or, "Ok, is everyone ok with that?" And my TOTAL favorite, "Let me make sure I understand. What you just said was [for ex:] you have another meeting in five minutes?"--as if the person on the other end had randomly forgotten his/her own statement OR as if she has trouble comprehending simple English.

I'm making this woman out to be a real simpletion, I am well aware. But to some degree, she truly is a moron. Her daughter as well. On rare occasions, her daughter visits with her in her cube. The daughter, young but big and undoubtedly growing, sits there looking like a sack of jelly with her drooping jaw resting on her neck and staring into the void. Guess it runs in the family.

My point here is to Beware of the Pear-Shaped People! Once they invade the office they begin to infect all around them with bitterness and ill temper. And for those who align with the PSP, you may soon find that your office chair "fits" you a little too well; that your hips and thighs are more than double your shoulder width; and, that your arms hang listlessly from a body that has come to resemble an old, flabby T-Rex. If you notice any of these symptoms, RUN! RUN AWAY! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!

By following these simple instructions, you too might survive the Attack of the Pear-Shaped People.

Retro-fitted

This post is of an old email I'd forgotten to send from about a year ago. It details the completion of my first term back in school, the acquisition of a cell phone and so on. Pretty boring stuff on the surface, but underneath those mundane subjects runs a vein of creative writing I haven't shared but in private emails. So, here is an archive of those times.
****
Hello my wonderful siblings I shall now chronicle my weekend of adventure so that my peeps in Japan will know that the Dave still be down. Final exams ended one week and three days ago. Of that hell-spawned time not too much can be recalled. Let's conclude, however, that it was stressful and challenging and let's call that explanation good enough for now. For the week following exams, I had no plan other than sitting around my house and doing the odd chores here and there. I sewed, vacuumed, did laundry, et al. All such that when Thursday rolled around, I jetted without hesitation. First stop: See the fam in Portland and invest in a cell phone. Yup, Im all digital again baby. It could easily be said, though, that my trip didnt really get going until Friday. Friday began usually enough. I woke up late, ate breakfast/lunch, showered n shaved, all the goodies. But the day grew strange and ominous as Portland faded into the smog behind me and the Emerald City unfolded in the distance ahead. Seattle. Friday evening I met with a few friends from my undergrad uni days for dinner and drinks. I rolled back into Eugene last night and just crashed. After a weekend of couch surfing and random partying I finally slept -for 12 hours- last night. I was so inhibriated that I could barely think! Oh, pls tell Krista I said "wassup". She and I were supposed to do something on Sunday, but I was too out of my mind. I remember calling her, but dont remember what was said, though, I think I left a message... Anyway, ... It was a good weekend. I got to see and do things I hadnt seen or done in a while and that experience was so necessary to help myself relax. Ill do what I can about coming up to see Holmberg. Winter term will have just gotten underway and I dont know what kind of workload they will have me on. Either way, Ill be in contact.

Fallout

There's an RPG I used to play from about five years ago and before I went to Japan. It's called Fallout. Its a post-apocalyptic nuclear aftermath game that places the main character in a world where radiation has changed humans into mutants. I've just repurchased the game and have dived right into it. I was going to write about my exploits in the game, but first I think a brief introduction is necessary.

Ok. Here's the short version: The main character, called the "Vault-Dweller", comes from a nuclear fallout shelter large enough to support a community. In the game's beginning, a part essential to life in the vault (the water chip) fails and leads the "Overseer" to request the Vault-Dweller to leave the vault (temporarily?) to get a new one. After finding and retrieving the chip, the Vault-Dweller learns of a whacked-out group of religious sketchies called the "Children of the Cathedral". Their leader is an insane character called "The Master". The Master has developed a virus that changes humans into super-strong yet really dumb mutants. The Vault-Dweller is ultimately tasked with finding and destroying The Master before The Master finds and "dips" the other vault dwellers into the "vats" containing the virus (thus changing the humans into super-mutants). As well, there are dozens of mini-tasks within the game and one can choose to be either a nice-guy or a bad-guy type character. Anything goes, as long as you kill the Master.

At the moment, I've found the chip, destroyed the vats and am now just wandering the wastes (the desert now covering the shells of former cities and the wreckage of buildings and cars now defunct) searching for more experience and complete the myriad of sub-tasks the game has to offer.

So, with the intro all understood, the way is paved for diatribing on more detailed exploits in the future.

Nuff for now.