Lots of Monkeys

You never realize how much of a homeowner you are until you are riding in a car with your friends, having a conversation about oh, World of WarCraft–when suddenly, you shout, “Oh hey! Is that a new kitchen store?”

And you really are interested.

I spent the entire day Sunday with the Condo. Near the end of the day, my hands smelled like old cardboard. I moved boxes to make room for the bookshelf, then assembled it. When that was done, I unpacked books, and put those on the bookshelf. I considered putting them in some sort of order, but doing that would have taken me away from my primary objective, which was “make floorspace in family room.”

Finally, I stacked the remaining boxes on the far wall, making a large patch of floor in the living room. I’m quite happy with the result. I may even put down the carpet tonight, I don’t know.

Don’t want to go crazy. You know, like talking to yourself when you’ve been moving boxes for almost eight hours straight.

This part is always the toughest. Returning to work after the holidays. It’s like you’re out of shape after not doing any physical activity for a while. Going back to work for five days straight is going to be like running 300 feet without stopping to catch your breath.

One day down. Four to go.

However, Macworld Expo is just over the horizon, and I’m loooking forward to the announcements. Rumored to be announced are the new iLife apps, some sort of word processing productivity suite (and maybe the end of Appleworks), GarageBand 2, and a sub $500 entry level OSX machine. Oh, and that Tiger thing that we all knew about already.

We’ll see what surprises they’ve got in store in about 7 days or so, but I could use another machine for some low impact video editing.

Well, I spent almost the entire day today in the apartment. I can blame that on the boxes that I have to unpack. I think I’m ready for work tomorrow, but I’m not entirely sure. Five consecutive days of work sounds like a bit much.

Welcome to 2005, all.

To be honest, I never thought much about the future. I never tried to predict where I would be in 20 years. I’m a horrible fortune teller, and I’ve always been a day to day sort of person.

One not so much driven by dreams, but by the near-sighted everyday needs. Blinded.

I’d show you pictures, but I kinda promised these girls that I wouldn’t post them.

In any case, time to let my throat and liver recover. As well as my moral fiber. Got a little loose again.

Ah well.

Well the Giftmas season is officially underway. Having participated in “Buy nothing day” was particularly rewarding. On the other hand, I did walk into Best Buy (it was on the way home) to look AT things to purchase, so I don’t know how well I acted in the spirit of the protest.

I did, however do my good deed for the year. I helped some parent find a video game for their child. Then again, their child asked for a DragonBall Z based game, so I don’t know if that counts as a good deed or not.

In my heart of hearts, I wish that the child had asked for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. This is so I can tell the parent what the ESRB is and what the game is about. When I worked in retail, I lived for those moments. Educating a parent and crushing a teenager’s video game dreams at the same time? It almost makes me want to work at store 176 again.

Almost. Actually, no. What the hell am I thinking? Oh yeah, the miniscule discount. So. . . No. Never again.

Thanksgiving was spent in the company of friends, if not family. I’m thankful for them.

NaNoWriMo has been a complete disaster. Two years ago, I had an outline of a story that had been in my head for years. This year was a cold start. In all, I think I managed about 12,000 words of scenes of this novel. Which isn’t bad, but it’s still far, far short of the 50,000 needed to make it to the goal line.

Ah well. There’s a lesson here, which is write with a plan in mind.

The other lesson is don’t play lots and lots of video games to “clear your head.”

I’ve beaten Halo 2, Half Life 2, and have two characters up to level 12 in World of Warcraft.

That’s a lot of head clearing. And headshots.

On the other hand, it’s not like I haven’t accomplished anything.

What?