Weakened Update - uh, yeah...
Ooooff, what a month it's been. I was looking forward to a good ten days off during the Xmas-New Years bit but halfway through it Body thought it should get even for all the stress Brain had been placing on it all fall and I fell ill from a terrible cold that's going around. That was over two weeks ago and I'm still an exhausted, brain-dead snot factory, at least for the first couple of hours until the night's accumulation of phlegm has dispersed.
I hate being ill, I mean there are a few perks like sitting in bed most of the day watching crappy movies, preferably on VHS (Saturday I saw Back to the Beach, Master of the World, Tunnelvision, and two Andy Kaufman TV specials - gave up on After the Fall of New York because of a headache). But there are always obligations, even when sick, and that's not much fun. Worst is the tiredness, of not feeling up to doing all the things you want to do, or starting something and tiring after just a little while.
Anyway blah blah poor poor pitiful me... otherwise December wasn't bad, I made progress on a couple of projects including the Naval Postgraduate School-related project, and finished the year with the information that one of my new(ish) games, Third Lebanon War, will be included in a new game magazine to be launched this August (but "my" issue probably won't be out until 2013 or maybe even 2014), and two other games, Greek Civil War 1947-49 and Balkan Gambit, will finally come out in the first half of 2012, four years after handing them in to the publisher. At least, that's the plan.
I cooked and baked a lot last month, my mom was sick (with that same terrible cold, don't think I got it from her but she has COPD so it's not good) so we took her turkey and I roasted it and it came out pretty well... and I made ten fruitcakes, a kilogram each, that's an awful lotta fruitcake but they made nice gifts (mostly fruit bits stuck together with buttery cake batter), and I made "Ginger Dead Men" - I found a 10 cent metal cookie cutter in the shape of a playing-card spade at the thrift store, and a moment's work with a pair of pliers turned it into a skull outline - couple of dents for eyes and teeth, and you have ginger cookies that will stare back at you, along with all the other people staring at you for bringing a box of these weird atrocities into the office!
Lianne went all-out for Christmas, she wanted a tree (we got an artificial one, I don't see the point of killing a tree, or rather buying an already-killed one, just to have it inside for two weeks while it drops needles on the carpet) and put up all kinds of lights and decorations. Her Mom died near last Christmas so this is the first time we'd all been together for the entire holidays. She gave me a nice little Toshiba netbook for Christmas, the one thing I would find quite useful but would never buy for myself. It's nice to carry around and I think I will brave the DHS goons and take it on trips, it also uses Skype so I can call folks on it for free - Akito calls his mother every week on Skype, and often talks to his friends that way. Wonder how much longer it will be before that little bit of convenience gets shut down or overrun by ads - yeah, you can talk as much as you want for free, but your call is interrupted by a 15-second ad every 45 seconds.
Akito is 17 now. Yikes, once there was this little baby I could hold in both hands and now there's this man living in my house who calls me Dad. He went to a school semi-formal dinner and dance, so we got him some nice clothes - he does clean up well, and he had fun, so that's all to the good. He has been accepted into the Mechanical Engineering Technology program at Camosun, it's a good two-year program that offers a bridging semester right into 3rd year Mechanical Engineering at the University. It's an intense program and the bridging semester is tough but the classes are small and the instructors seem to care about the students, so I hope he will be all right.
Uh, what else - last night was another Circuit Breaker, the one-year anniversary. Here's my setlist:
Nash the Slash - Reactor #2
Cabaret Voltaire - Spies in the Wires
Severed Heads - Dead Eyes Opened (spooky remix)
Skinny Puppy - Far Too Frail
Chris and Cosey - Lost
Hilary - Kinetic (remix)
Numb - Theme to Mr. Roger's Neighborhood
Encephalon - Rise
Die Sekto - Accelerant
Laibach - Alle Gegen Alle
AD:Key - Lass Mich Los
And One - Wet Spot
Digital Poodle - Head of Lenin
Soviet Radio - Love is a War
Covenant - Leviathan
Eco - Hass und Liebe
So that's that for now!
You know, Livejournal has not collpased as I thought it would four months ago - I'll be here for a bit yet, but will still maintain my game-design related blog on Wordpress: http://brtrain.wordpress.com/
So, Happy New Year to you - not going to bother with year-end memes this time. Heck, I did not even observe the 13th anniversary of my accident, save for riding over the spot I got hit in the bus home, but I do that half the time anyway....
I hate being ill, I mean there are a few perks like sitting in bed most of the day watching crappy movies, preferably on VHS (Saturday I saw Back to the Beach, Master of the World, Tunnelvision, and two Andy Kaufman TV specials - gave up on After the Fall of New York because of a headache). But there are always obligations, even when sick, and that's not much fun. Worst is the tiredness, of not feeling up to doing all the things you want to do, or starting something and tiring after just a little while.
Anyway blah blah poor poor pitiful me... otherwise December wasn't bad, I made progress on a couple of projects including the Naval Postgraduate School-related project, and finished the year with the information that one of my new(ish) games, Third Lebanon War, will be included in a new game magazine to be launched this August (but "my" issue probably won't be out until 2013 or maybe even 2014), and two other games, Greek Civil War 1947-49 and Balkan Gambit, will finally come out in the first half of 2012, four years after handing them in to the publisher. At least, that's the plan.
I cooked and baked a lot last month, my mom was sick (with that same terrible cold, don't think I got it from her but she has COPD so it's not good) so we took her turkey and I roasted it and it came out pretty well... and I made ten fruitcakes, a kilogram each, that's an awful lotta fruitcake but they made nice gifts (mostly fruit bits stuck together with buttery cake batter), and I made "Ginger Dead Men" - I found a 10 cent metal cookie cutter in the shape of a playing-card spade at the thrift store, and a moment's work with a pair of pliers turned it into a skull outline - couple of dents for eyes and teeth, and you have ginger cookies that will stare back at you, along with all the other people staring at you for bringing a box of these weird atrocities into the office!
Lianne went all-out for Christmas, she wanted a tree (we got an artificial one, I don't see the point of killing a tree, or rather buying an already-killed one, just to have it inside for two weeks while it drops needles on the carpet) and put up all kinds of lights and decorations. Her Mom died near last Christmas so this is the first time we'd all been together for the entire holidays. She gave me a nice little Toshiba netbook for Christmas, the one thing I would find quite useful but would never buy for myself. It's nice to carry around and I think I will brave the DHS goons and take it on trips, it also uses Skype so I can call folks on it for free - Akito calls his mother every week on Skype, and often talks to his friends that way. Wonder how much longer it will be before that little bit of convenience gets shut down or overrun by ads - yeah, you can talk as much as you want for free, but your call is interrupted by a 15-second ad every 45 seconds.
Akito is 17 now. Yikes, once there was this little baby I could hold in both hands and now there's this man living in my house who calls me Dad. He went to a school semi-formal dinner and dance, so we got him some nice clothes - he does clean up well, and he had fun, so that's all to the good. He has been accepted into the Mechanical Engineering Technology program at Camosun, it's a good two-year program that offers a bridging semester right into 3rd year Mechanical Engineering at the University. It's an intense program and the bridging semester is tough but the classes are small and the instructors seem to care about the students, so I hope he will be all right.
Uh, what else - last night was another Circuit Breaker, the one-year anniversary. Here's my setlist:
Nash the Slash - Reactor #2
Cabaret Voltaire - Spies in the Wires
Severed Heads - Dead Eyes Opened (spooky remix)
Skinny Puppy - Far Too Frail
Chris and Cosey - Lost
Hilary - Kinetic (remix)
Numb - Theme to Mr. Roger's Neighborhood
Encephalon - Rise
Die Sekto - Accelerant
Laibach - Alle Gegen Alle
AD:Key - Lass Mich Los
And One - Wet Spot
Digital Poodle - Head of Lenin
Soviet Radio - Love is a War
Covenant - Leviathan
Eco - Hass und Liebe
So that's that for now!
You know, Livejournal has not collpased as I thought it would four months ago - I'll be here for a bit yet, but will still maintain my game-design related blog on Wordpress: http://brtrain.wordpress.com/
So, Happy New Year to you - not going to bother with year-end memes this time. Heck, I did not even observe the 13th anniversary of my accident, save for riding over the spot I got hit in the bus home, but I do that half the time anyway....