As usual I have been crap and haven't posted for ages.

So here is the news in brief:

* With work everything is same ol' same ol', some days up, some days down, usual shit.
* My niece is doing her damndest to stand and talk and she's only six months. We're all scared that my brother might have created a hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional being. Just a theory you understand.
* I won't be playing shards anymore.


Ha Ha! Got you! After a lot of thinking about what I want from LRP and the realisation that finances simply won't stretch to both of us playing I have decided that I shall be crewing Shards from now on. I've cleared this with both major refs and one of the baby refs, [Colin, I have realised that I totally have no contact details for you, this is crap and will be rectified by yours truly] and they have shown heart-warming and ego boosting support for the idea. So from Hair of the Dog onwards there will be a new reason to shit yourselves when Abbot graces the scene with his presence, he shall be the bearer of plotsticks. Buah ha ha ha haaaa. Oh, Pete... beware....

I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone real soon as it feels like an annoyingly long time without much contact. If I was less lame I would be on the phone to lots of you spreading the love but those who know me well know I am rubbish around phones and worse at remembering to phone people. That sentence has nowhere near enough punctuation and I can't figure out how to fix that tonight. I must be tired.

See you all soon.

Jeff

[in retrospect a lot of this post might be grumpiness leading from the fact that due to an out of money error I will be going to neither of the re-enactment fairs today which I have been looking forward to for some time. And due to the same problem and the impossibility of getting time off there will be no LRP-ing for me until April. Bugger.]

Well crap, I think it is finally time to admit that I am not 21 any more.

I make this comment due to the fact that five days after a traumatic weekend I am still wrecked. The weekend of pain was in fact four days of lunacy that started on Thursday with us taking possession of our shop after a re-fit. Four hours late. So from four till eight we had stood around getting in builders ways and moving crap around and then from eight till ten we frenzidly put up shelves and other such shoppy-type hardware to get back on schedule. As usual this meant the three normal staff members (Dan, Dylan and myself) running around like amphetamine laden rabbits while our manager (Jason), our regional manager (Ken) and Charles from Estates argue about where stuff should go.

Come ten Ken declares time and says he will buy us a few drinks and dinner (I had anticipated this and had already told Lucy I wasn't coming home that night). I forget who's foolish idea it was to find a bar after O'Neils closed and after four pints and a few whiskys. I blame Charles. Now, this is the only self-inflicted part of the four days of pain. I went along. This can be explained in many ways, one, I was already too drunk to drive, two, the guy who knew where my lodgings for the night were was going to the bar, three, if you have ever worked in an environment like GW you will know what bailing out early looks like to all and how much crap is generated.

So we went to the bar (We later found out it was a gay bar, this makes Charles' attempts to pick up women all the more hillarious). Things blur after that but I think I can reliably count 17 or 18 units. Once upon a yesterday this would not have phased me in the least. However, I have suddenly discovered that my liver is 27 years old and grumbles about such things. I don't recall how I got to Dylans but I do know it was 2.15 in the morning because I incoherantly texted Lucy. We all had to be at the shop for 9 in the morning.

Nine O'Clock came and Dylan and I are in the shop. an hour and a half later and every other f*cker shows. Jason and Dan would be moving stuff from the storage in Reading to Oxford all day which left a broken Ken and us two to sort out the stock. I will not bore you with details, but it was painful and we finished at, wait for it... 11.30 at night. Yep, a fourteen and a half hour shift on four and a bit hours sleep and a horrible hangover. And when did our crack addled and psychotic manager want us in the next day? 9 O'Clock. We open at ten normally. I don't know how many laws that breaks but it is a lot. Then we all had to work Sunday as well because our days off had been Monday and Tuesday while the shop was closed. Jason left early. We all did the 11 till 7 stupid Sunday shift. Only on my day off on Monday did I realise how much pain I was in, I am still wrong now.

This has raised some annoying points for me, the final realisation that I am no longer by anyone's calculations a young male. The realisation that my energy levels have been shafted by medication and a year off work. And the realisation that I will put up with almost anything just to be useful and busy again. The tragic part is that I am actually enjoying my job, it's just that it seems to be trying to kill me. Also I am working with a bouncy 18 year old kid in his first job with no idea how employers try to screw you and a 21 year old Kiwi who doesn't pull his weight. Ah crap it. I hate whinging on this thing because it seems like all I do. Life is better than it has been for a long time, principally because I am busy, I hate being useless. Some weight is coming off (healthier eating and a psychotic boss will do that) so I am starting to despise my reflection a little less. I just wish I could recapture some energy now, becuase all I seem to do at home is sleep these days. Ah well, it's not been so long. Maybe next month. Good luck to all at the odd LRP event this weekend and hugs to all. See you all soon I hope.

So, Shards is this weekend? Crapola, kit is really going to be an issue for me this time I fear as I have zero time to make any - the only free time I had between wednesday and the event being taken up with a nasty lurgy. Fortunately I can throw enough random pirate crap together to play Bartholemew Groat and I have long declared that Ichabod Crane won't arrive until the new year. The only snag with doing that is that I will resemble Nathaniel Crown II - The Return (he's back and this time he's... competant) which was something I fervently wished to avoid. Oh well, by the time the second event of the new year rolls around (as I shall doubtless be Abbot-ing for much of the Hair of the Dog event) hopefully everyone will have forgotten what Bart looks like so I can drop in new kit with impunity.

New rules are interesting. I think most people when they get over their initial "aaargh, new stuff!" response - which is perfectly natural and human - will get on with them. They need re-positioning into clear sections and dear god some waffle needs to go (I'm told Kas makes a good editor), but what is there is fine. A lot of it I find easier than some people I suspect because I was nattering to Dave and then later Doug rather a lot beforehand so I knew what was in their minds. Clearer editing will solve many problems. I propose that many of us wait until the last minute to make a character sheet. Our characters are already written, the background and personality is what is important. Lets give them a chance to iron out any last wrinkles and fill in the blanks. I can see how some wackier concepts may not fit neatly within the vocations system but perhaps thats a good thing, perhaps having us being more normal is better for the game? Plus, your character can be as wacky as he/she likes, the rules are largely just there to give us all a fighting chance. Incidently some mechanisms - like death count - were already there, this just formalises them and on the generous side. Many is the time (especially when I used to play Crown) that someone like Julie would turn up (inevitably, nurse would be the ONLY one with the skill to save Crown, he just got so very very screwed up) and my response would be "critical to numerous places, my spleen is hanging out and I've been here for flaming ages." Have faith and patience Oh my LRP-ing bretheren and sisteren. And recognise that things will change a LOT between Reunion and the Hair of the Dog. Consider this event a Beta test. I'm sure Andy will not mind if over the winter we junk one character sheet and write a new one with the same name. In fact I shall propose this very strategy.

On the personal front I have been abandoned, t_harris has nicked off with my wife for the weekend so I am all alone on my own (folorn look). This was by means of a last minute hoojit to natter about Rat stuff and paint a house. Beyond that, work continues. I am trying desperately to drop much of my innate cynicism as I am actually finding that I am enjoying the work. Probably a reaction to being able to do any work. Unfortunately my boss thinks I have bottomless energy reserves leading to two back to back thirteen hour days on Monday and Tuesday with an expectation to be in work by the normal time on Wednesday. I'm sure that's whats given me this lurgy. Oh well, have had two days off and am now much better and probably not infectious.

So basically, everything sort of bimbles along. I'm still sore at being forced to miss Dave and Kas' wedding, especially now that I didn't even work the bloody shift through lurgy. I wish them all the best and all the happiness in the world (save a bit that I want to annex for myself). Well, that's all folks, nothing much to report. Just to reassure all those who gallently ticked "friend" on my name, I do read the posts much more often than I post myself.

Today I am feeling deeply relieved, the reason? I have dodged Games Day. For non-wargamers Games Day is when 2,500 serious hobbists try to have fun while 7,500 underaged tosspots scream and run about. It's abject hell for the staff because the people running it think that a game isn't fun unless you are yelling at top volume. It's annoying for adult gamers because there ARE actually a lot of cool things to see and do but you can't get to them because hordes of rude/widely over-excited twelve year olds are always in the way. So, when yesterday Jason took me to one side and said "Look mate, I'm really sorry but I need you to run the shop Sunday, you know how it is..." I had to try really hard to look crestfallen. Naturally I was giggling like a loon inside.

Then, much later, the phone rings, the jobs for Games Day were given out. Everyone from Oxford is on "retail". That means doing your normal job under much worse conditions while all around you cool stuff happens. I had to actually fake a toilet visit to conceal my relief.

In other news, there really isn't any. It's slightly bizarre. Because I am still getting my energy levels up I'm finding it hard to DO anything in the fraction of an evening I get after work and my days off seem to be composed of recovery. I'm guessing it won't be long before all this goes away. Then I shall once more actually have a Life to Journal. Ho Hum.

Hugs to all.

It's official, ten hours sleep and three cups of tea fix all ills.

I'm actually still humming from the event. Playing a no-name seems to suit me and my combat abilities mean I may survive long enough to spend some real karma. For those who were wondering, Ob's death was a combination of spectacularly bad luck and an opportunity to advance plot. I had gone off to do sneaky Baden type stuff as a favour to Connor and secretly as a favour to Creedance (he never asked me to, I know, Ob was headstrong like that). While trying to penetrate the Rozzer lines between South and North Destiny I ran into trouble (double black draw, eep) and it was decided between me and the Ref monkeys that it would be cooler to have me wander headlong into John Pam's plot rather than just be jobbed by nails or rozzers. So, there I was, dumped in the dell with a blooded hand covering the L of a welcome sign to read We Come and a frozen look of terror. Cause of death - heart attack.

Thanks to all of the family for making Ob so welcome, any grumbles I had about playing him were because he was Baden not Family. You need a special kind of mindset to enjoy hiding in a forest all night waiting for crew who may or may not attack. Mike clearly has this mindset, I really don't although my self-discipline kept me out there for absolutely ages on the Friday night. Grrr. Incidently, I cannot stress enough how much of an IC ego boost Reputation is. Having NPCs and even some PCs recognise your name and know some of your exploits is deeply cool.

So, now to enjoy the first real day off since the 5th of September. Aaaand relax.

By the way, if you have not seen this movie on YouTube watch it now, it's a guy who made a credible music video using only in-game screen captures of his World of Warcraft character in action. And it really is funny. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9ODAW_sSIg

Hooray! A post!

The principle reason for lack of activity on LJ from me has been new job. I started it on the tuesday after the weeklong and don't feel like I have seen my house much since! Being out of work for a year has really boogered up energy levels and it has taken till now for me to be able to get up, go to work, return and not fall asleep instantly. This is all the more surprising to me because I am currently at the latter half of working ten days straight in order to get to Crim Req. And in the middle of this insanity was the largest release weekend I have ever seen. So, I'm tired. Yet I do not care. In a few weeks I shall have legitimate money coming in. Money that hasn't been humiliatingly begged from friends or family or grudgingly handed out by people who think the jobless are worse than scum because they are lazy scum. This makes me happy. The fact that dear Gordan will remove a large chunk is an irritation (because of course we no longer qualify to tell our greedy council to sod off) but death and taxes are the only universal constants.

I'm also happy because I am busy, dear god, I had no idea how much I missed just being useful and a part of something greater than myself. The only wrinkle is how much time I'm spending away from home. I leave the house just before nine (lucky git I hear you cry) and return ususally just before eight, except when I am on lates (like tonight) when I see my home at about 10, half 10 ish. Thankfully my energy levels are improving and I might be able to actually acomplish something in my evenings rather than staring at the TV like a thorazine zombie.

There are lots of people who deserve me to answer their posts. I have actually read them all, believe me. I shall content myself with offering large hugs to all who are doing well and much larger hugs to those who feel life is crapping on them somewhat, especial hugs to slappersire who has had MORE than her fair share of bad luck lately. And kazhazzard whose wedding I shall have to miss because of being last in the queue when the holidays were argued over.

Finally, to end on an up, Crim Req this weekend! Hoorah! I have my secondary all mapped out and by a strange confluence of circumstances his kit is all ready well before the event too. Bizzare. Thanks to MrDreadful and Mrs_Dreadful for the new hat, very much appreciated. I have a bad feeling about Ob's chances given the nature of the event and the rather gung ho attitude that has built up in his personality. That coupled with the fact that his bow is not the most efficient weapon against lots of Crim baddies I fear he may well be going down. I'm feeling that the ref team are really finding their feet and that we should all do the most that we can this weekend to feed them things to work from. They really don't need to have finickity points debated with them, broad strokes people! I get a lot of enjoyment out of handing a detailed background to a Ref and saying "do what thou will". It's always more fun than control-freaking the entire process. Gosh, Abbot would have still been tedious otherwise. I'm glad he survived.

Ok, with that ramble over with I have to get ready to go, the late shift can't start without me, for I AM the late shift. Hugs to all and excitable jumping up and down about the weekend.

Jeff

Righto, soon the community centre down the road will be opening their doors so that all of us good people who give blood can be stabbed. So, if I am woozy on Friday, I shall know why.

Oh and if anyone has an accident and needs A+ blood in the next three weeks I shall be doing voodoo... grins malevolantly

Hurrah! After over a year of people going "ooh, classroom stress, I wonder if he can really cope with the rigours of mail sorting...(pause for irony, pause over)" I have a job again!

I start the Tuesday after the weeklong which will be... interesting but I don't care! Finally I can tell the job centre to go forth and multiply. Of course, on a practical level after all the benefits stop we'll only have about £70 more a month until Lucy also achieves this happy Nirvana but at least I don't feel so flaming useless anymore.

My wife is sitting next to me and saying "bounce, bounce, bounce, 1 and a half days to go, bounce, bounce, bounce." If I survive, sane until friday I think a deity will be smiling on me. See you all soon.

I had my interview with GW Oxford today, it seemed to go really well (and given that I've been on their side of Workshop interviews it ought to have really). Sitting in the shop chatting to people and oggling miniatures made me remember that while I put up with a phenomenal amount of BS from these people I also had a lot of rather good times. Then they told me that GW has "never felt so professional", these were guys I knew and had been around a while so that's a good sign (the company used to feel like it was run by a gang of kids). Then they tell me that the job includes an extra £1,250 weighting as Oxford is frighteningly expensive to live in. Hooray, that'll take care of travel expenses and then some (given that the park'n'ride is £2.60 for all day parking and a return bus faire).

So, given all of that I am starting to feel all optomistic and hopeful that this shite period of almost a year and a half might be starting to end. Long way to go yet, but this is kinda the beginning of the end if it all goes according to plan. This is doubly a good thing 'cos my car is showing distinct signs of clutch rejection. I reckon I can nurse the damn thing for another month or so but every now and then I forget and try to actually apply some power and the revs go through the roof without any appreciable effect. Grumble. Ah, well, at least I know what it is. Last time I needed to get anything major fixed I took it to the local garage and said "it might be the distributor". He took three and a half weeks of faffing and poking before realising it was the distributor. These days I walk in and say what it IS, not what it might be. Things move a lot faster that way.

So I go to bed quietly optomistic and really starting to look forward to the week-long. It might be Lucy's intense list making and constant cries of "so, what do we need to do next...". It must be a woman thing, like worrying about curtains or insisting that you take more underware than there are days in the holiday. Bizarre creatures...

This is one of those where if you've ever played guitar you will wince and if you don't then the response will probably be eh?

I am a newbie to guitar playing, only in the last two years or so have I been practicing and it's only been the last six months where I feel I am getting anywhere. Now, one of the processes in becoming A Guitarist rather than someone who fools around is building up toughened skin on the fretting hand's fingertips (the left in my case). This allows you to play for more than twenty minutes without weeping. I had started to build up some good ones allowing an hour of happy practice yesterday.

Toward the end I noticed that I was hurting more than usual and so took a look at my hand. I had managed to slice the calluses off of three of the four fingers on guitar strings. I doesn't hurt too much because it's only really taking it back to "normal" but it has irked me a bit (plus finding chunks of finger is unpleasant).

Does anyone know if this is a) my fingers being poncey, there's nothing I can do about it, stop griping. b) something wrong with technique that could cure this or c) freak accident. If anyone knows how to stop it happening again I'd be most grateful 'cos I'm back to twenty minutes top on the acoustic (higher string hight than the electric so you have to fret harder) and it is bugging me.

Oh, quick coda to the last one.

About three hours ago I was disturbed by the sounds of a pneumatic drill. Then shovelling that sounded extremely close. Upon opening my front door I discovered two burly workmen digging a hole in front of my gate trapping me in the house (from the front at least, hardly the point though). I delicately enquired as to what the flying f*ck they were doing as I had not been informed as to any work at all. They replied that they were fitting a water meter.

Well whoopie. Apparantly our water company feels itself able to perform works on my supply without informing me. Also it's workers feel able to interrupt the supply and cause it to be swimming with dirt for a while requiring it to be run for a while to clear without mentioning that this is the case. I could have had a very unpleasant cuppa if I hadn't been in at that moment. Bastards all.

My wife has already posted quite a succint summing up of our feelings about trying to switch banks (The Co-Op having closed our account for us citing reasons that were of their own making) so I shall not bore you with further rants.

As I say, bastards all.

[edit: many things I said here are no longer true, GW is now a different company and Jason's only flaws are a tendancy to assume you can do three hours work in about ten minutes and then bugger off to talk on the phone for, conservatively, a fortnight.]

Hmmm, developments have developed as no one in particular said. While awaiting to prise my Wife free from Crim Req related frothing at Tony's I got a call from the chap who runs GW Oxford (thats Games Workshop to the uninitiated). He was wondering whether I wanted to work for him there.

This created a rather odd reaction in my mind. You see, GW and I have rather a checkered history. They've shafted me a few times and largely created the financial burden under which I currently labour. On and off I have given five years of my life to this company and they have rarely repaid me with anything approaching respect. However. This does represent money in the bank with a company that doesn't seem to care that I once broke my brain. Given that the rest of the world doesn't seem to grasp the "cured" thing they do seem my best option. Plus the fact that apparantly disloyalty is rewarded as it is genuinely easier to "get a job if you've already got one".

Thus I fear that if offered on monday I will be saying "Yes" to yet another pillock who feels that he can do his job well despite all evidence to the contrary. You see to get anywhere in GW management you just have to tow the line, keep your head down and accept any crap that is thrown at you. Doing foolish things like actually having opinions or feeling that you can run a shop your way gets you demoted and banished from the land. I have considerable experiance of this. Doubtless I shall simply do my job and swallow any part of my brain capable to independent thought. Stimulating indeed.

So, quick straw poll... Am I being stupid to return to a company that I know for a cast iron fact are shit but who will at the least give me a small amount of much needed money. Or should I just quit whining and be grateful that at least someone might employ me?

1. Age:
2. Single or Taken:
3. Favorite Movie:
4. Favorite Song:
5. Favorite Band/Rapper/Artist:
6. Dirty or Clean:
7. Tattoos and/or Piercings:

HERE COMES THE FUN ... ... ...

1. Do we know each other outside of LiveJournal?
2. What's your philosophy on life?
3. Would you have my back in a fight?
4. Would you keep a secret from me if you thought it was in my best interest?
5. What is your favorite memory of us?
6. Would you give me a kidney?
7. Tell me one odd/interesting fact about you:
8. Would you take care of me when I'm sick?
9. Can we get together and make a cake?
10. Have you heard any rumors of me lately?
11. Do you/have you talk(ed) crap about me?
12. Do you think I'm a good person?
13. Would you drive across country with me?
14. Do you think I'm attractive?
15. If you could change anything about me, would you?
16. What do you wear to sleep?
17. Would you come over for no reason just to hang out?
18. Would you go on a date with me if I asked you?
19. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together?
20. Will you post this so I can fill it out for you?

Well, kimono is finished. Given that this was the fourth one I've made it went fairly smoothly - in so far as laying out and preparing goes. Then I spent many painful hours wrestling with my sewing machine trying to make it operate in a manner that I approve of. The bloody thing is an aincient Jones machine - old enough that it was produced in West Germany and doesn't have any plastic componants at all. It's all bakelite and metal. Unfortunately, while I approve of all of the above, it's tension wheel thing is becoming distinctly knackered. Thus it either spools out reams of cotton without my knowledge until I pick up the allegedly sewn garment and discover with a trill of gay laughter that there is a cat-sized ball of thread on the underside. Or it snaps the thread every three inches.

Given that I cannot decide which is more annoying the tension setting tends to stay in the middle and I rely on hope. Eventually however I was forced to give up and beg the use of Iszy's machine which has the distinct advantage of actually doing what it is told. The dying seemed to go all right too (I picked up 10 meters of cheap creamy-yellow polywool from Tewkesbury and have been dying it as I see fit.) with the unexpected bonus of being a little faded and patchy so the kit already looks worn in.

Speaking of Tewkesbury - a camara update. Some people may remember that I foolishly left my camara on the stall of a nice man selling hats and cherries (don't ask about the combination). Well, he did indeed hand it in like a good boy. The marshals put it in the lost property and logged it properly. Then some git stole it along with a bunch of other small expensive items. Bless them, however, the people of the Tewkesbury Fair are going to reimburse us for the loss as it was taken by one of theirs while it was in their care. They were under no obligation to do this and we can't praise them enough. Unfortunately this means that I am camara-less and have also lost all of the shots of the last bloodlines - bloody annoying as there were some good ones - and of the Tewkesbury re-enactment. Fortunately Doug and Iszy have loaned me theirs so I will be able to continue being "photo-chronicle-er" which I enjoy a lot. See several of you at bloodlines.

Riiight.

In the intermening seconds between me posting the first entry and now; my brother has phoned, turns out his workplace is desperatly shifting gear from their labs to make storage space for spangly new server doodads and was throwing out an entire chemistry lab. So he yoinked it for me.

See, now while I really like chemistry equipment for playing with ("what explodes?" is a splendid game) and whilst I will find LRP or home uses for a lot of it I suspect I will be trying to offload a lot of it as £5000 quids worth of Chemistry lab takes up a lot of room. I suspect I will be able to interest a few home Chemists in some cheap equipment. I'll stick a full list of what I intend to get rid of on the Shards boards when I A: Get the stuff at the end of the month and B: When I figure out what I want from it!

Well, first post. I'm currently gearing up for the next Bloodlines event. Once more I shall inflict running around Shining Death upon myself for the amusement of others. I'm also trying to decide whether this is going to be one of those thunders events that requires "Honorable Samurai with a Mighty Sword" type kit or a more generic "we run around being zombies or snot beasts or who knows what" type of kit. Inevitably I will play it safe and take both.

This leads to the second thought. You see the Kimono I used to wear for the irregular events that I could suppress a mad Scottish Monk long enough to strap on a katana was made for a substantially smaller man. My waistline has rather exploded these past few months. Hence I am contemplating making myself another Kimono, today. I will let all know how that pans out if I do so. I'm still a little twitchy about kit making after the disasterous Belgariad "shrinking kit of doom" incident.

Hey ho, this sort of mad rambling is pretty much what you can expect of my posts from here on in. Enjoy.