Friday’s Delayed Grind

I didn’t get yesterday’s post up because we didn’t get home until about 2 in the morning, and I wasn’t feeling hardcore enough to post a blog that late. It was a good day though, so I’ll give it its own belated post before getting to Saturday’s adventure.

Work stress was low yesterday. I was given the office recognition by another co-worker and asked to do a special project to help with the office costume idea for Halloween. I don’t do costumes. It’s always fun in theory, but I’ve never been able to pull off a good one, and let’s face it…I’m lazy. I have no ambition to prepare and dress up in a possibly uncomfortable costume. I’m okay with helping out. I’m going to keep this project a secret until Halloween so as not to ruin the costume surprise. I picked up the supplies for the project during lunch and have already started on it. Now I just have to make time to finish it.

Jon and I went to Hastings after work to buy new headphones for him before going to the gym. The headphones he picked up broke almost right away, so we had to go back and return them.  I’ve theorized a thing called Hastings Law: one can’t go to Hastings without something going wrong. This stretches to things like certain drinks or food not being available or the bathroom not working. In true form, Hastings Law didn’t let us down (even though I do realize this one should be blamed on the company that makes the headphones, but it still seems fitting).

From there, we went to Terry and Erica’s for gaming. We got a late start, using the first few hours to visit. I did some knitting and we ordered dinner. The game was fun.  This one is Jon’s fourth edition DnD campaign. Our party solved a puzzle, beat up some giant bugs, and took a secret passage to a room where we had to fight some big bads. They almost killed our entire party. There was a good chunk of time where we pretty much figured we’d all be rolling new characters before the next session. But we managed to survive and can now take our current characters with us to the next adventure.

Besides having a late game night, we decided to try to find a cache in the area before heading home. We had no luck. There were a few late night muggles around, including a group of girls who asked if we were looking for something. I just said we were goofing around and that seemed to appease them. I suppose we could have told them what we were doing, but they were staggering a bit. It could have turned into a long, weird, conversation.  We might go back to that one some early Sunday morning, but I think we need the daylight to give it a good go.

We finally got home and crashed out, deciding to set a later alarm instead of the super early one we generally set for weekend adventures.

A.

Planning for Oz and Closing the Cafe

This work week is seriously intense. Today was another busy day. However, I got to train the UK ladies. Not only did it give me a chance to do something out of the norm, but it was fun. Also, we worked it out so that tomorrow, I get to take them to the Oz Museum after work.

Jon and I took a rest day today with the plan to double up on Sunday to meet our exercise goals. He went to the game store, and I met a friend at Hastings for some talk time. The cafe has their fall drinks out, so I had an autumn harvest breve. Later, I got adventurous and tried a Mayan mocha. It tasted good, but the spice gave me a touch of heartburn.

We ended up closing the place. Then I picked up Jon and we came home. Overall, the day wasn’t “blog exciting,” but it had some nice moments. We had lunch at work, I got things accomplished, and I got hooked up with some much needed accessories for the BOW weekend from the person who introduced it to me in the first place.

Exciting day? Not really. But satisfying and fun? For sure.

A.

Long Monday, Hot Apartment

Tonight is the first night in a week that we’re back in our apartment. It feels good to be in our own place again, even though I enjoyed the good air conditioning and cable at my friend’s house.  As expected, our place was hot when we got here since we turned the AC off for a week to save some energy.  Now it’s going to take a few hours for things to cool down again, but I’m okay with that. I just wish the fall weather would hurry up and get here. I want a nice cool apartment, and I want to start walking outside again.

Today felt like a pretty intense work day. I accomplished a lot, but it seemed like the work flow was never ending. This is good, because it makes the day go by fast. But by the end of it, my brain was tired.  I still managed to get some con stuff done after work, though. Jon had a test tonight. This will be a regular Monday occurrence until the end of the semester. While waiting for him, I went to Hastings to “work.” It’s become a game to see what I’m going to want that Hastings does not have.  Tonight, it was both cream cheese and butter, so I ate a plain wheat bagel since my lunch didn’t stick with me and I was starving. I also ordered an iced mocha and forgot to give the size I wanted, so they defaulted to the largest one they have.  I drank it, but at least there was no question why I felt nauseous before going to the gym.

Jon got done much earlier than I expected, and the gym was our next stop. He played the role of motivator tonight, because I would have found an excuse just to go home. But we went, and I’m glad we did. I felt much better for having gone, and I finished Eternal Sunshine. I also started Brick, which is already not what I was expecting.

After the gym, we walked to K-Mart to grab lunches for the rest of the week, then came home. The air is on and the fans are going, so hopefully it’ll cool down before too long. It wasn’t as unbearable as I expected, but it’s still not as comfortable as I would have liked.  It’s already late, and I did nothing in the way of cleaning or putting away stuff, but I’m not too worried about it. It’ll get done. Truthfully, I’m just trying to get through this week so I can survive TengaiCon.  Then I’ll be ready to survive the Being an Outdoors Woman weekend.  Maybe around that time I’ll be ready to institute normalcy at home.

For now, I’m off to peroxide my grass splinter, do some editing on a friend’s novel, shower, and get some sleep.

A.

 

Noodles, Sharks, and a Little TMI

I’m feeling much better today than I was last night. When we got home, I crashed hard. I had some really weird dreams, but I’m assuming that meant I slept well.  I’m having a little bit of pain tonight, but the day passed in relative comfort, so hopefully this will run its course. I think I’m at the mercy of a UTI/possible bladder infection. I get these every once in awhile. They don’t stick around long, but they’re pretty nasty when they hit. This one has gone on a little longer than usual, so if it’s not cleared up in a week, I’ll be seeing the doctor about it.

We slept in a little today, but not too late since Jon didn’t get the extra Friday off.  I took him to work and went to Hastings to work on some con stuff. They didn’t have regular coffee. I guess their brewer was down, which is to be expected. I like Hastings, I like the Hardback Cafe drinks and the baristas…but anymore, I pretty much just expect something to be broken.  However, I did have an Americano and liked that okay, so it was all good.  I managed to get some stuff accomplished, though I did sit underneath the TV and listened to the news, which was depressing.

I did two hours of work before heading over to my friend’s house.  She started her vacation yesterday but had reminded me that she was home today so we got to hang out. We went to Best Buy and to Noodles and Co. for lunch, then we went back to her house and watched Sharknado since she hadn’t seen it before. Most of the day was spent just chatting. It was really nice. I was surprised how fast the day went when I realized it was almost time to pick Jon up from work.

Today was supposed to be our C25K day, but we opted to go to the gym instead. One thing I’ll say for the walk training…it makes the gym seem that much easier. We’re still getting a good workout, but we did 45 minutes today and it didn’t seem as difficult as it used to. I watched Monsters on Netflix and may or may not finish it tonight. It’s okay.  Another thing we did today was buy the Zombies. Run! app which is on sale this weekend for two bucks. We’re not going to start it until our current program is over, but I’m really looking forward to doing it. I have eight weeks to come up with a playlist for it.

After the gym, we opted to just come home and relax for the evening. I played some Riptide and Jon did some css code. For fun. Which is why he’s the graphic designer. It’s been a nice, chill night. Going to end with a shower, some more water to keep flushing this infection out, and then either a movie or sleep, depending on how tired I am. Right now I’m sleepy, but sometimes that’s just a false alarm.  We’ll see.

A.

Kicking Things Into Gear…Or Not

Not a whole lot happened today, to be completely honest.

After work, I was supposed to get together with a friend from work to do some writing and editing, but she wasn’t feeling well by the end of the day, so we rescheduled for Friday. This means I’ve jumped off the “Should we go to the rodeo?” fence into the “Not this time” field, but I’m okay with that. It’s about 20 bucks we’ll save towards Gencon ($18 if you consider the coffee I’m going to buy Friday evening). However, I still ended up Hastings. I’m here with a hot decaf sitting next to me, chess players to my left and a really nice barista to my right.

I hope I’m not giving off a sweat vibe. I hit the gym before coming here. Instead of harder, shorter workouts, I’ve been doing some paced, longer workouts while watching Netflix on my phone. Tonight was “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” and 75 minutes of exercise. I feel good. No complaints.  I may also have a stray hair or two hanging around because I finally went and got a haircut.

I was going to chatter about some of the things I’ve been doing at work to increase productivity and organization, but then I read about something else, and the only reason it struck me was because shortly before I even knew about this, I was formulating a bit of a paragraph on something very closely related.

Let’s talk about Kickstarter. Specifically, let’s talk about the recent debacle over a game “The Doom That Came to Atlantic City.” Not sure if debacle is the right word. Maybe disappointing mess to a mass of internet is a better description. The above link is the post/update that Erik Chevalier at The Forking Path sent to backers of the Kickstarter, a project that needed $35,000 and earned $122,874 by over a thousand backers.

Here was my initial response:  Aw, I kind of feel sorry for that guy. He bit off more than he could chew and completely screwed himself over. I kind of feel sorry for him. 

The internet, though, can be tricky. After reading more from that greatest source of news ever known as Twitter, I read more about it, including this post by one of the actual creators of the game, Keith Baker.  I also read the comments to see what the general consensus was. The answer? Fraud across the board, and after reading Baker’s post, I’m inclined to agree. The first post, seemingly apologetic, feels rather empty once one of the actual creator’s of the game comes forth with more details, a real apology, and the promise to try to make it up to the backers even though this wasn’t their fault and they will ultimately lose money on this.

I’m sure this isn’t the first time this is happened, and I don’t think it’ll be the last, but it’s sad. When people are victims of fraud, it sucks. It’s a crappy thing to do to someone and it leaves the individuals feeling vulnerable and naive. When it’s done through a Kickstarter, the only comfort is that as a backer, you’re not alone. But you’re still out the X amount of dollars you spent, and the situation becomes a dark mark on a program that I believe has done good things for people.

About ten minutes before reading those posts, I had read two of my own Kickstarter email updates and had been struck by the fact that one of them involved a profuse apology for a delay in printing.  I wondered, “Do people really get upset by something like that?” I don’t know. Maybe they do. And maybe they’re in their right to be as such.

Jon and I have Kickstarted many things, and I can’t think of anything we backed that didn’t happen or that we didn’t get our backer rewards for. When I back something, I always do it with a wariness that what I’m supporting may or may not actually happen. It’s with the knowledge that I’m making a decision that might not pan out for me because stuff happens.

That doesn’t mean I think anyone should just casually throw money at whatever. Part of the reason I don’t get overexcited with delays is that I don’t kick in a huge amount of money to any of the projects (the exception being Reaper, but we felt that the company had a good reputation before the Reaper Mini Kickstarter). If I did, I’d probably have more anxiety over the whole thing.

I completely support that backers of this project are taking action, because dude needs to be held accountable. It just sucks that so many people are having to deal with it. It especially sucks for the creators of the game who put trust in a gaming company to make their work a success, only to be told “Sorry, guys. I screwed up. Deal with it.”

Regarding those Kickstarters I’ve helped fund, I’ve never had a problem. They’ve been very straightforward and honest and have delivered on everything they promised. I’d like to think that most of the people looking for funding are the same way, and that the bad apples are few and far between. I sincerely wish all the backers luck in getting their money back and I hope the creators continue to create and that something good comes out of this for them.

A.