Lorem Ipsum

So part of why the week's gone by in a bit of a daze is that I've been dealing with spam; along with setting up the new system, I've deleted literally tens of thousands of old spam messages, with tens of thousands more to go.

But another part is that I've been sick. Tuesday late afternoon I very suddenly developed a sore throat, to the point that drinking orange juice was actively painful (too acidic); some sniffles came along and joined it on Wednesday (I already knew that NyQuil was my friend; on Wednesday I also learned about the wonders of DayQuil); Thursday I was feeling much better, but still not great.

I would've loved to have taken a couple of sick days from work, but I have two major deadlines this coming Tuesday, so I couldn't. Wednesday I drove down to Los Gatos and worked with Mary Anne in a cafe and then later at Kevin's parents' place; Thursday I worked at home; Friday the Rabbi slept late early Friday morning I got kinda punchy as I was writing most of this entry; after some sleep, I spent about 13 hours on Friday sitting in my room in front of my computer. (Feeling somewhat better, but still a little under the weather.) Ended up having a remarkably focused work day--probably about 12 solid hours of getting actual work done--but am now (late Friday night) totally wiped out. Too much so to do any of the magazine work or social planning that I need to get done very soon.

It hasn't been all work. Tuesday evening I finally went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and bought a nice cookware set. I've been meaning to do that for over a year now; Arthur E even did some extensive research for me on what brands were best for various things, just about a year ago, but I never followed through. I finally decided that high quality was more important than my visual aesthetics, but then ended up buying a set that I pretty much like the look of anyway--Calphalon Contemporary Stainless. Also finally bought a set of silverware to replace the old second- or thirdhand silverware I've been using for the past ten years or so.

As You Know, Reader, I don't have any time for anything. I've got deadlines at work, and continue to be way behind on important magazine stuff, and have (though this is hardly a complaint) too many fine social opportunities to keep up with, and have been neglecting various friends who I'd like to be in better touch with, and failing to reply to emails, and so on. And so when Mary Anne asked the other day if I would consider running a roleplaying game while she's in CA, I laughed. Like so: Ha! Ha! Ha!

And I explained that although I would love to, and that although I had recently noticed that it's been over six years since I've done any serious roleplaying (much to my dismay, given that before that I hadn't gone more than six months without a game since high school or earlier), there was no way I would have time to do it.

And then I went home that night and stayed up way too late taking notes on a possible game.

Which is totally silly, of course. But my justification to myself is that I've been looking for a plot for the first in a new series of stories I want to write, set in an approximation of my homebrew gaming multiverse, and if I don't use this plot for a game I can use it for a story.

And it's been really fun being in creation mode again. Going through old gaming notes to remind myself of various things, but also just picking up anything that comes to hand and adding it. I often do this when I'm first developing either a story or a game: everything I encounter (news articles, blog entries, random websites, obscure historical facts, NPR stories) goes into the mix. I'll generally throw together three to five disparate major elements, and half a dozen minor ones, and mix thoroughly, and then as it starts to gel I throw out anything that doesn't fit any more.

So I've been in that fun "Oh, hey, I could use that in the game" mode. [Added late Friday night: that only lasted about 24 hours, but it may come back after my deadlines pass and I have a little bit of breathing room.] It still seems unlikely that there'll be a game, but it sure would be fun.

What else? Kam headed off to Burning Man today (I think today). Earlier in the week, we watched a few more episodes of Enterprise; we're partway through season 2 now, watching only the episodes that look interesting or that got high ratings at Trek Nation. I like Phlox (despite feeling that he was totally misguided in the episode he's figured in most prominently so far), and T'Pol is growing on me, and there are often really interesting temporary minor characters (usually Vulcans who don't behave like Vulcans), but I don't really like any of the other major characters, and the storylines tend to annoy me. And it's remarkable just how many episodes they've managed to have in which Sato and Mayweather manage to have nothing at all to do or say. But I think we're gonna give it a few more episodes.

We also watched last week's Dr. Who; sadly, it continues to be disappointing. But I hear the next several episodes are extremely good. But I promised Kam I would wait 'til she gets back to watch them with her. Even though one of them is just sitting there on my TiVo. Calling to me.

I've been reading Susan Elizabeth Phillips romances (thanks to Twig and Sonya), and a couple of relatively slight old Arnason books that Diana and I found in a used bookstore a few weeks back. Fluff and semi-fluff are about all I have the brain for at this point.

And tonight, not even that. I really really ought to spend the next couple hours reading submissions, editing stories, sending out responses to stories, and planning social events, but I can barely keep my eyes open. It'll have to be tomorrow. I'm gonna go fold some laundry and then go to bed.