It's Been A Long Time...

If the evidence laid out before me is any indication, it's not been nearly as long as I thought it had, though. Sure, I haven't blogged in a month and a half, but it feels like it's been faaaaar longer than that. To be honest, I expected something a bit more like this when I came back:

(Source)

Imagine the surprise when I see that I had visited more recently, and hey.... I still haven't died in Dungeons and Dragons! Avoiding death in the real world, the D&D world, and the internet world? Hot damn, I am doing way better than I thought! So, want the short, short version of the last almost-two-months? Here they be:

• I'm going to be seeing Jynni and her daughter in the days before Thanksgiving!
• We have a TARDIS in our D&D campaign... sort of.
• Money stuff still sucks. No surprise when you're a wage slave.
• I'm still alive, despite my body's attempts to drown in illness!

Starting with the least awesome: Money sucks. Well, no, the lack of money sucks because people want money, for some strange reason. And I've had minor medical issues since blogging last, including a trip to the hospital to have an infection taken care of... again. Argh.

Now, for the good stuff: we have a PYRAMID that can travel through space and time! I didn't get the significance of what Steev was doing at first, until Daniel put it in words that I care about, and have wanted to hear for so very, very long -- "We have a TARDIS". Our time-space machine can't fly, but it can otherwise travel through space and time, so I'm actually okay with us not getting out of the pyramid. It looks like we'll be traveling back in time to try and save Bahamut from being killed as a baby dragon... which is sort of confusing in retrospect, since the dragon who gave us her eggs to protect called herself a wife of Bahamut. Timey-wimey?

What beats a way to travel through time and space in this fictional world? What could possibly be better than that?

Well, it might not be as cool to some of you, but Tony and I are going to be road-tripping to see Jynni, as part of my attempts to find (more?) lucrative employment over in her part of the state. We'll be there the three days before Thanksgiving, which means that I get to have a mini-Thanksgiving with my future wife and future in-laws, and that I'll hopefully come back from this trip to put in my two weeks' notice at my current job.

As much as I'd love to type more, and regale you with detailed stories of my adventures over the last month+, it will have to wait, dear friends. It's 2am, and my typos are getting more and more frequent as I get more and more tired. Additionally, there's that whole "work" thing tomorrow. You know, the one where I have to put on a stupid work uniform and pretend to like people for 8-ish hours. Bah humbug!

See you soon, internet!

When does "addiction" cross over in to "serious problem"?

Wherever that line is, there's a very good chance that my D&D habit is approaching it, if not leaving it choking on it's own dust miles ago. Here's a warning for you: this post will feature a lot of geekspeak. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here....

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For over a year now, I've been part of a D&D group with a mostly-continuous membership. We have Steev as the DM, and the only original players left are his fiancée Megan, and me. When we started, there was another guy, but his girlfriend's joining-and-then-getting-pissed-about-the-rules caused him to leave. Still, they have a statue of an auguste clown that kind of looks like him, so it's like he's still in the group!

I've mentioned them before, but our other two current players are Beau (someone I didn't know initially, but who joined at the same time as the departed player's girlfriend) and Daniel (an old friend who is probably a little more nerdy than me), and that's been our group for a while now. Close to half a year, I think. Our quest is going awesome, even if our players have been in the same area FOREVER -- part of that because we didn't play for a couple months.

If you're a D&D player, especially if you know much about 4e (fourth edition), here is our character layout:

• Megan: Githzerai Psion, Time Bender paragon path. Her whole idea behind the character was wanting to go all "timey-wimey". She's sort of become an adoptive mother to what might be a five-headed killer dragon goddess.
• Me: Longtooth Shifter Avenger, Hammer of Judgment paragon path. I've always liked wolves/werewolves in fiction, and longtooth shifters are descended from them. Plus, Avengers are like a (more) violent version of paladins. They exist to smite their god's enemies. My character worships Bahamut, but Bahamut might have died during our adventure so far. I'm not 100% sure.
• Conrad (the lost player): Dragonborn Paladin of Bahamut. Our DM threw in a variant of his character as an NPC since we all miss him, but he's been gone for a while now.
• Beau: Tiefling Swordmage, and I don't remember what he went for with his paragon. Tieflings are descended from demons, and so Beau's character is similar to mine: high HP, and some pretty significant damage potential. We refer to ourselves as the tanks of the group.
• Daniel: Razorclaw Shifter Monk, hasn't hit paragon yet. His kind of shifter is descended from werecats, so we have some fun like throwing him in to large bodies of water. And while his monk is very much of the "must be up close" type, he still gets some pretty decent damage in. Plus, he forces enemies to move a lot.

That's what is in store for me tonight. We are working our way through the Pyramid of Shadows adventure that Wizards of the Coast put out, and having a lot of fun on a regular basis. We always keep in mind the essentials for a fun D&D session: we bring/make food and snacks, we keep it light between players and serious between characters, and Steev makes sure to remind everyone of the most basic rule of D&D: "You can always kill Justin."

Attack of the Laundry!

This is my day today.

Well, this and a mountain of laundry. Yes, folks, as has become the norm, I am blogging from the laundromat! And, since I'm working on there being less clutter and junk in my personal environment, these notebooks came with me today. I've ripped out the pages that have things written on them, and today is all about putting them in to my laptop.

Did I mention that I have a new one? Probably not, since I haven't written on this blog since getting it. It's another Acer, and because I'm affectionately continuing my trend of naming computers after fictional technology, I'm naming it the "Holly-Hop-Drive". Now, the question is if any of you will get the reference!

Things finally came to the point with my old netbook where I could no longer tolerate how badly it was falling apart. When the wrong button-press bluescreens it, and tilting the display wrong renders it gray until a restart, you can only do so much -- and there was the unreliable WLAN, which would sometimes stay connected for two hours, and other times for two minutes. So when I saw a good deal on a better one on Amazon, I couldn't pass it up.

Now it's time to swap out to the dryer, and get to work on typing up all this crap. Hopefully I'll put up more uselessness soon! I've got a few post ideas that I'm working on, so the next post might suck less than this one does!

Be awesome

I think I've started close to a dozen different posts in the just-over-a-month since I posted last. There's always been an issue, whether it just feels wrong, or I'm trying to blog from my phone and lose my train of thought, things like that. There's been a theme popping through a few different things I've watched/listened to/read lately, and that is this: Do what you want to do. Or, to put it how the 'book' I read yesterday said, "if you want to be awesome, do awesome shit".

Maybe not an exact quote, but it'll be pretty close. You can thank my soon-to-be brother-in-law for that one, as he's been telling everyone on his Facebook to read the free 15-page book, The Universe Doesn't Give A Flying Fuck About You. The author likens existence in the universe to the existence of a beetle in Times Square. Nobody is out to get that beetle, but nobody is out to help it out either -- because the universe doesn't care, and if you want to do something, just do it.

It kind of kicked me in to "why the fuck am I putting off my writing" overdrive, so last night I started re-plotting Project: SAMSON. Heck, I even brought it to the laundromat with me today, so I have no excuse to work on it when my laptop's dwindling battery reaches 1% and I still have time left on the dryer.

Speaking of my rapidly dying craptop, I decided to give Linux a shot, and I think I might switch over entirely. I'm enjoying the feel of Linux Mint, and the whole command-line aspect isn't nearly as frightening as I thought it would be.

Time to switch out the laundry now. I'll try to not take another freaking month to put a too-long spiel of uselessness up again. :)

Happily Ever How?

Since announcing the engagement, I've noticed a few questions that I get asked a lot:

1. How did you guys meet?
2. When is the wedding?
3. How did you propose? Did she see it coming?

Well, today, I've got internet access while I'm doing my laundry, and this is as good a time and place as any to put answers to those questions all in one post! Sure, it could be that I want to post something and am drawing a blank on anything else to post, but... I doubt that.... =D

How did you guys meet?

      Actually, it's all Jim and Wendy's fault. Jim and I used to work together out at The Hotel, and formed a pretty solid friendship. When he moved away to live with Wendy, we maintained our friendship by hanging out at least once every few months -- whenever I could get up to their area for a day or three.

      Some time during all of this, Jim and Jynni started talking again, after a long time apart. In May of last year, one of my visits coincided with one of her visits, and I got to meet her and her then-roommate. We exchanged Facebook info and numbers since we got along, and then Jynni and I proceeded to talk as often as possible for almost two months. I fell hard, that's for sure. We were talking before we went to sleep, with me calling to wake her up for her graveyard shift job before I went to sleep, and her calling to wake me up for my swing shift job before she went to sleep.

      Then, I took the plunge. We arranged to both take a vacation and spend the week with Jim and Wendy (her dad and his wife), and began dating at the end of July. After an awesome week together, we both went to our separate homes, knowing we were committing to a long-term, long-distance relationship.

When is the wedding?

      July 19, 2014. When we started planning, she asked if I wanted a July wedding or a December wedding. I said December, and she promptly told me I was wrong. After a logical explanation on her part, we agreed to a Saturday in July, and due to family birthdays/occasions on my side, we decided that the 19th was the best Saturday to have it.

How did you propose? Did she see it coming?

      She didn't see it coming, and I proposed in a wholly nerdy way. I bought the ring almost a month before I went over there, and spent the whole time trying to think of a clever way to do it. We'd both talked about wanting to get married and have a life together before, so I knew that this trip over there would be the perfect time to do it.

      I was hanging out with her while she was smoking (and her daughter was asleep in the house), and she was talking about ideas she had for when we "eventually get married". I excused myself, went back in the house, and got the ring out of my laptop bag before coming back outside to join her. She raised an eyebrow at my quick trip in to the house, and I sat down on the couch (in the carport) in front of her.

      "Jynni, I've been trying to think of how and when to do this for weeks. I want to make it memorable and didn't know how, and realized today that there was no time like the present." Following that line, I got off the couch, got down on one knee in front of her, and pulled the ring out of my pocket. "I can't imagine my life without you and your daughter, and I would love for you to be my companion as we travel through time and space. Will you marry me?"

      Like I said -- pretty nerdy, right? She came close to tearing up and was completely surprised by it, and said yes. I know I'm a spaz for referencing Doctor Who in my proposal, but I got her addicted to the show, and for us... it made sense. Now, we're planning a Doctor Who-influenced wedding, complete with TARDIS blue as our main color.

All of time and space is ours, and I can't think of anyone I'd rather explore it with than her. I love you, Jynni. :)

Thoughts on Father's Day

This morning, I woke up to a Facebook notification from my future mother-in-law, wishing me a happy Father's Day, and telling me I'll be great at being a dad.

I hadn't thought about it until yesterday, but by the act of proposing to Jynni and really making her and her daughter the start of my own family, Father's Day now applies to me.

This holiday has always been a bit weird for me, as has it's counterpart last month. I was raised by my grandparents (on mom's side), and for whatever reasons, my parents weren't always active. They had split up when I was very young, and while I don't fault them for it now, they weren't always the most reliable when I was growing up. Sure, my sister and I would go spend a couple weeks in the summer with my dad, and there was one summer we went to Missouri to meet the rest of the Barlow side. But, for the most part, my grandparents were the only parents I needed. Sometimes it hurt when mom or dad made plans to visit and then flaked, but I had grandma and grandpa to get me through. All was well.

I miss you, Grandpa David. And to my biological dad, I forgive whatever grudges I might have from my youth. You both did the best you could. Happy Father's Day.