Weird weekend

Before I get into my scheduled topic, I need to give credit where some credit may be due. Remember that girl I told you about, the one with the 3 year old and infant who has a really high Halo rank? Well, since the first time we played together, she hadn't gotten online again until last night. I was probably a little too quick to judge. Sorry about that.



This weekend felt...off. Not sure why but it just seemed like I was only half there. Like there was something I should have been doing, but couldn't remember what it was.

In a nutshell, it was a lazy/quick/expensive/windy/boring/painful/entertaining/lonely with a dash of productive weekend.

I hung a magnetic knife strip to clear some space on my counter. That was the extent of my productivity. I may have cleaned a dish too.

Expensive because I picked up the Kinect and a couple of games.

Entertaining because that's pretty much all I did...entertain myself. Books, movies, games, music.

Windy...well...because it was windy.

Painful because one of the games I picked up for the Kinect is Your Shape Fitness Evolved. It starts you out with a fitness evaluation. Which kicked. my. butt. And it seems I was trying way too hard because it suggested an 'advanced' level for the training program. Dangit. My legs are still sore. Gotta work those toxins out I guess. I'm going to stick with a 3-4 workout/week regimen and aim for an hour a day. All this means is that I decided to skip the gym and go with the Kinect workouts. I also got it because I would really like my girls to do more active things than watch movies when it's 20 degrees outside.

Lonely because I didn't really interact with anyone once my girls left on Saturday morning. Skipped church because I was lazy. I did jump into a room with my regular group of gamer friends in the evenings. So maybe I wasn't a total recluse.

Entertaining in all sorts of ways. Still reading through Lee Childs' Jack Reacher series. Almost finished with the 15 he's written so far. Played some Kinect games, including Dance Central. You are welcome to laugh out loud. I certainly did. My girls are going to get a kick out of that. Went out to see The Green Hornet. Funny movie. Cool car. Stayed in to re-watch GI Joe and Hancock.

Quick because it just seemed to fly by. Part of it may have been because I had the girlies on Friday night. I usually have them on Thursday evenings. Sleeping in until 9 probably didn't help.

Hope your weekend wasn't as disconnected.

This song has nothing to do with anything. I just browsed to it in the Dance Central marketplace.

Oh, and if you know anyone that has a Kinect and hasn't been naked in front of it...they should. It's hilarious.

Blogfrog review

I've discovered blogfrog. (Through BlokThoughts, in case you were wondering...)


I like the concept. It gathers bloggers into communities where most of them focus on a particular topic. It could help me with my blog hunting. 'Blog hunting' is just browsing through follower lists looking for something worth reading. The success ratio is horrible. 6 out of 10 don't even link to their blog (assuming they have one.) Most of those that do link are about things I'm just not interested in, like fashion, mommyhood, crafts, or porn. The crummy thing about that is my interest is piqued only by either the profile picture, description, and/or blog title. Probably not something the average writer focuses on developing to encourage visiting.

It looks interesting. Interesting but intimidating. The estrogen practically oozes out of my monitor when I visit that site. The intro video doesn't really suggest that the site might be for guys either.

There's a live coffee chat thing going on now too. Sponsored by International Delight and hosted by Girlfriendology. Yeah, as much as I like coffee, I will not be joining that chat.

I'm half tempted to post one thing, "are guys allowed in here?" Just to see what would happen.

They'd probably assume I'm homosexual.



Wait! I was just browsing and found another guy!

Oh my goodness. He has another guy on his followers list!

And another! Woohoo!

Ummm...darnit. Not really interested in the content of their blogs. *sigh* One was ok, but it seems he only posts quotes. Huh.

Some cute girls following him though. *clickity*


One cool thing is the homepage, which has 3 panels, scaling left to right, from community, through hot discussions, all the way down to new posts. The last one just continually updates with the latest replies. Never seen that before but it looks useful.

Like I was saying...there is one guy featured in the Hot Community panel. One. And he's probably part of the site development team.

Yeah, I think I may have to slowly back out of that room...

Too much time...on her hands

This is me:


No, really.

Ok fine. It's what my Halo: Reach character looks like. Bungie.net finally got around to making the character picture on my service record page look like the one I built in the game.

I wish it showed off the larger shoulder pad on the right side. Looks professional to have more armor on the leading shoulder.

Yes, I know. I've thought too much about it...


A couple of nights ago the matchmaking system paired me up with another player for some Firefight. (It's a certain type of game...in case you were wondering.) The system was acting up a little. There were 6700 players playing just that game. 6700 people either playing or looking for a game. Even with that many people the system was taking a long time to find people to match up.

Anyway, after waiting 15 minutes (way too long) the system paired me up with one other player. It was supposed to find 3 other players, to make a foursome, but the system recognized how long we had been waiting and just started the game with the two of us.

Both of us had our mic's and headphones on, which doesn't always happen, and we started chatting. Come to find out she lives in the same city I do.

You may not think much of that, but considering the fact that there were probably more than 100,000 players in Halo at that moment, 6700 in that gametype, and the city we live in only has around 60,000 people in it, it's fairly remarkable to get matched up like that.

I started the conversation with a "so where are you from?" She answered with the state she is in and I countered with the city I am in. She didn't say she was from the same city right away, but rather with a "No way!" She thought it was pretty freaky and thought I was creeping on her. Of course I wasn't and she eventually deduced that because she didn't have her location in her bio, it was highly unlikely that had I known her city beforehand.

It's like a 20 minute game so we had plenty of time to get to know each other. Found out a few things. One thing in particular that made it difficult for me to not stereotype her.

- She's married (no problem there)
- moved here 12 years ago from a little podunk town of less than 4,000 people about 70 miles from here (the way she asked her husband, it sounded like they moved together. Ok.)
- has a 3 yr old and a 1 month old (congrats)
- works part time at a local 2nd hand store for kids clothing (one I've been in a few times)
- lives in low-income housing (I was looking for that too)

So after learning all that I really have no stereotype set yet. There was one thing that kind of bothered me though.

She's a General.

Whahuh?

Halo: Reach has a ranking system, similar to the US military. To put it in perspective, I'll compare it to my rank, Colonel Grade 1. To get to Colonel Grade 1, it takes 960,000 points, which a player earns by playing.

It takes 2,000,000 points to get to General. Over twice as much. And she's probably not gaining any more points per game than I am. Maybe even less because she's not any better than I am. That means she's spending a lot of time playing Halo. A lot. How does she do that with a 3 year old and an infant?

Makes me wonder.

Letters from the Editor

Hey belly,

I took my first step in destroying you. Bought a new pair of running shoes. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Yes, I know I had chili cheese fries for lunch. Yes, I know you're not very afraid. Shut up.

Yes, I know I also had a chili polish dog. I said shut up.

Next time,
Mmmmmchilicheesefries



Dear IT guy,

You know I love you Michael. You're a very funny guy and I'm looking forward to a ski trip with you some day. But when I ask for suggestions on how to improve my new awesome spreadsheet, I don't want to break one function just to improve another. And your ending to the conversation, "Well, it does what you want now. You can figure out the rest." What? That just pissed me off.

Sincerely,
Nevergoingtoaskyouagain




Dear building contractors.

Get to work would ya?

Sincerely,
Boredtomoretears




Dear Sid the Science Kid parents,

How much have you spent on batteries in the last month? That kid never puts that microphone down and it always works. And dad, what do you do for a living? You leave the house the same time Sid goes to school and you're there when he gets back. I want that job.

Sincerely,
Dadtoavidfans



Dear Gigapan photographers,

Those pictures are awesome! Not a huge baseball fan, but I really like the World Series....series. To have a combined picture as large as the stadium, yet still be able to zoom in and see the catchers eyes is pretty amazing. I wonder who the unfortunate lady in the game 4 picture is. The lady to the right of the batter, bending away from the camera. Hmmm...who could I FB tag that as...? Hee hee. I'm going to see if it caught anyone picking their nose. And tag them.

Maybe I should start attending baseball games. There are a lot of cute girls in that picture.

Sincerely,
Picturelookeratter




EDIT: I'm neither Fat Bastard or a skiing sumo wrestler. Just sayin'.

The gears are grinding...

Oh, what to post...what to post.

I seem to be going through one of those lazy blogging periods. There are 2 incomplete drafts (not counting this one) setting in my posts list and 193 unread blog posts in my reader. Even trying to comment on posts by my regular readers is falling by the wayside. Sorry about that.

Part of the problem is that I have a lot on my mind. Thoughts about my spirituality, my girls, the stbx, my job, finances, health, and just life in general. I suppose I'm having some trouble with directionality right now.


It's proving difficult to stop thinking of the stbx. We have regular contact. Not every day, but pretty close. The weird thing is that the 'feel' of the interactions alternate between flirting (from her only) and anger or frustration (from her only.) I know what I think about it. I've known for a while that she has some real issues to deal with, but it's hard not to think about it when they rear their ugly head again. It's kind of interesting in it's own sad way.

The worst part of it for me is my reaction. It's hard to ignore it and I've found myself retreating into entertainment (gaming, with trash novel reading coming in a close second) because I don't really want to think about it. I should have something more productive to preoccupy my mind.

Then there are my girls. With my decision to not fight for custody, I'm thinking a lot about their interaction and relationship with their mom. Unless something drastic changes on her end, I suppose I'll be doing clean up for a long time. She doesn't protect them emotionally and it bothers me. It bothers me a lot and I can't talk to her about it. I know this is all for a purpose, but I hate that they have to deal with this.

There's a concept I've heard about. It's called 'breaking the cycle' and in this case it dealt directly with emotional problems and abuse of all kinds in a family. A good friend of ours and I talked about it a long time ago. We were talking about how we thought my stbx was doing just that, breaking the cycle of failed marriages and instability in her family. Thinking back, that was very presumptuous. We presumed she recognized the problem and was dealing with it. We presumed that I would be able to help her take care of the issues she brought to the marriage. We presumed she would be willing to accept that help, if offered.

You know what they say about presumptions....

What about my girls? They're part of the cycle now. The advantage they have, that their mom never had, is a father that recognizes the situation for what it is and is willing to support them. I also recognize that 'willingness' needs to translate into a plan and active engagement.

More stuff to think about.

Just the other day I asked a coworker if he'd ever had one of those days were the mental gears were grinding from shifting too much. He laughed.

I was totally serious.

Hear! Hear! ing

Well, the hearing went as I expected. I'll have to pay a whole $23 more per month that what we'd originally agreed to. It was obviously not what she expected. She almost started crying. I felt kinda bad. We didn't discuss it afterward, but we both think they overestimated her income. It's not that she doesn't make what they figured, it's just not a stable income.

She had the chance to contest it and she didn't. The attorney made it sound like there really wasn't much point, which may have been true, but she may have been able to make a case for reduced income on her part. I almost advised her to contest it and let it go to the judge. Almost. I'm quite surprised how little the child support amount changes because of income changes. For her to see a $100/month increase in child support, her income would have to be half of what they calculated with originally.

I'm guessing that she's not going to get approval for state aid either. Maybe a little for child care and food stamps, maybe.

I just wonder what it's going to take for her to find a cheaper place to live. Her new landlords dropped her rent, which is pretty good for her, but because of the way she mishandles her money it's still more than she can afford. She could get into a brand new apartment and cut her rent almost in half. It's all because of the dog that she stays where she is. I've already suggested the dog stay with me and she can have her whenever she wants. It's not like I really want the dog anyway, but she's such a sweet dog that I'd hate to let anyone else have her.







So that's about it. Nothing's really changed for me except that the hearing's over, which is something of a relief. Now I just have to save the pennies for a divorce.

Randomonday...again

- I know, I know, my last post was a Randomonday. And no, it's not because I've been terribly busy. Mr Lazyass is rearing his ugly head.

- The pipes to my kitchen, washer, and toilet froze early on Friday. -20 windchill will do that. Didn't get everything back until late afternoon on Sunday. It was ok. Had to do some dishes in the bathroom sink and fill the toilet tank with the shower head, but it gave me an excuse to not cook.

- I'm glad I forgot to give the caterer her jalapeno bbq sauce back. That stuff is pretty good. Could use a little more heat though.


- Along with a co-worker, I'm a Champion of our first annual Ping Pong Tournament. Not a bad tourney either. We had eight 2-man teams in a single elimination bracket. If the design manager had drawn a better teammate, or hadn't played us earlier and gotten eliminated, the championship game would have been far closer. As it was, we stomped them. We played to 21 and I don't think they ever got into the double digits.


- When that little voice tells you not to heat the meat up on the sandwich bread, listen. Soggy bread is gross.


- Went to bed around 10pm on New Years Eve. I had the girlies and unless I'm invited to a party or throwing one of my own, I very rarely stay up to ring in the new year.


- Woke up this morning and absolutely did not want to get out of bed. Finally got up about 10 minutes before I had to be at work. I was late because I took my sweet time getting ready and now you know how my year at work has started. It's month end and I have no assistant. Fun fun.

- The hearing to establish child support is tomorrow. Hopefully everything goes smoothly and nothing changes.

- I raise my glass and wish you and yours a fantastic 2011. May you get that big raise (without the promotion) or go on that dream vacation. Cheers!