thebitterguy

So, yeah. Weekend was spent on the road, mostly. This past weekend was CanGames, which is at this point the oldest gaming con in Canada.

I drove up to Ottawa on Friday. I left later than I'd planned because I was arguing for a while with UPS about getting Cynra's replacement phone delivered. Some of the quirks of the delivery: They could not deliver it to my work location in Mississauga. They could not leave it if I signed the form. It could be picked up (by me only) from the Hamilton depot.

Thankfully, one of our neighbours would be home in the afternoon, so UPS was directed to leave it there. I'm gonna be writing a letter about this.

So. Friday was my Buffy game, set in 17th Century France. I was the watcher. We fought demons. Or Hessians. It kind of blurred after that.

Saturday was a game of Savage Worlds with the same GM. He was a very good GM, in spite of being occasionally somewhat under-prepared. And we didn't use minis in the Savage Worlds game, which felt strange since I'd always viewed it as a minis heavy game.

Game three was Desolation with jkahane. It ended in a total TPK because of a riddle misinterpretation, which is a bit more Play Dirty than I'm used to.

After con I met up with Gabe and his gf for Shwarma dinner. I had no idea about how Bank Street was completely torn up for repairs. We made our way down to Shwarma King, and I got the platter, which turned out to be a wee bit beefier than I thought it would be.

I'd done some shopping that day, and had picked up a bottle of the Life Potion energy drink. Since I didn't have lunch (but did have a delicious breakfast of huevos rancheros) I thought I'd try it. Bad idea. Kept me up until almost two.

Got up and checked out of teh hotel, but got to the con a little late, and found out that the GM (who I will go on record as saying is a douchebag) had given my spot away. Sure, as is his choice, but Mother Fucker, it's Sunday morning 9 a.m. Some of us gotta check out of our hotels and were up a little late the previous evening. Even if it wasn't doing anything fun.

I spent the rest of the day kibbitzing with some dealers and some possible guests. One of the dealers told me the story of how he'd gotten a box of used D&D modules that included a copy of the mythical "Up the Garden Path".

Also got Final Flight of the Santiago from Mongoose. Been looking for that for a while.

Back to work tomorrow. Actually looking forward to it for a change.

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I am a lousy philanthropist.

I donate a portion of my paycheck to the United Way here at work each year. I do this for a number of reasons.

The first is because the United Way does a lot of good in the community, helping the less fortunate. That is the good reason.

I also do it for tax purposes, since I get a portion of that donation back each year. The past couple of years, we have also gotten Angel Days at work, which are a bonus vacation day that we only get if we donate a certain amount of our pay to the UW each year. I think it's equal to a single day's pay.

I appreciate that day, and wish they'd offered it to us earlier.

I also do it for the convenience. It's $20 off my pay each pay period, no muss, no fuss, don't even see it. I do nothing on my end, except having an actual opportunity to tell those less fortunate that I gave at the office.

Cynra & I also give to charity during the holidays as a gift. Usually the local food bank, but also to the Heart & Stroke foundation and the thing where you buy livestock or immunizations for people in the third world.

Man, it feels really weird to talk about this stuff for some reason.

Enjoyable weekend. Cynra & I attended Seedy Saturday, which was... not remotely as fun as it's been previously.

While I have joked about it being wall to wall hippies before, this time it was literally true. The room was packed full. I don't know if it was a victim of success, an improperly used new venue, or poor planning, but it was way too full.

Cynra got some seeds and some seedlings and catnip. More on the catnip later. I managed to see anidada and her little one as well as Cats & sassy_fae for very brief stretches. I was pretty cranky by that point, as I was slowly braising in my coat.




Then, we headed downtown to pick up our tickets for The Wright Stuff, the showing of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz hosted by Edgar Wright. He took a picture of the crowd at the end. You can't see me too well, but I think I'm in there somewhere.

I love the guy in the front row who appears to be in Glabro form.

We grabbed dinner at the Pauper's Pub first. I headed out to get our spot in line while Cynra finished her dinner (and, yes, I am not thrilled by the fact I now go by the name "eight toes"). We were met by Ali & hazyone101 and we all headed in for the party.

It was a load of fun. He had some trailers in there too, including Robocop, a neat Lee Marvin film called Prime Cut, and Hard Target (was it as bad as I remember? Because I remember it making me think that this new Chinese guy wasn't all he was cracked up to be). He also showed the trailer for Don't, which remains great.

I kibbitzed with the guys from the Silver Snail during all that, which was a shock as they were friendly, which is not my general experience with that venue.

Wright also said he was proud of Mike Myers for taking a chance on The Love Guru. Isn't that nice.

It went late. The Q&A finished well after midnight, and Cynra & I got home later. I grabbed a slice of pizza at the Pizza Pizza at Queen & Bathurst, getting accosted by hawt drunk teenz. "You seem very serious, sir" are probably the most hurtful words ever said to me by a girl in a shimmery shirt.

This morning was breakfast with some friends, and then home for some laundry and relaxation.

I got Fight Club out of the library. She's watching it, oh yes. I also got a book called The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, which I will read at work. OH, NO REASON.

Holidays are well planned this year, somewhat. I've got a few rollowers from last year that I got because my Christmas vacation got turned into a bereavement period, and I've got march break off (Hey, Ottawans! I'm coming for YOU!). I've got the two days prior to FanExpo off, and I've taken the Monday afterwards, too, so I can just relax. Maybe we'll stay for dinner after show and stay at the hotel an extra night.

I'm still trying to arange for the other few days of the year, and hoping I'll get holidays (Thanksgiving and Victoria day and Canada Day and all the other great holidays they don't celebrate in the Holy Republic).

I may just apply to get the Friday of Toronto Trek off. And maybe the Monday.

( Five Questions below here. )

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"Oh, crap."

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Wow. A non-sucky question (although one probably bought and paid for by DKNY).

My work's uniform is very lax. There's no shorts allowed (although men can wear capri pants), and no sandals, but other than that it's just clean and intact.

Which is good, because I've got all these damn t-shirts to wear.

Geez, these things will eat up tags like a mofo. I had to delete like five of them on this one alone!

On the plus side, the weather has been so gray today that I'm kind of glad that we weren't able to go to the Ex.

Someone suggested going on Sunday, but there's also a suggestion to go to Centre Island. So probably gonna get to do something sometime.

Today is the wife's birthday, so I guess I should get her a card, eh?

• 21:22 @monsura Yeah, loud and clear. #
• 10:05 Fire drill! #
• 13:10 I got my Sinestro Corps Anti-Monitor! #
• 13:17 Is it a little sad that my cell phone recognizes the word 'Sinestro'?. #

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Whisper of context:

Seriously, though, I wouldn't think my cell phone, which can't recognize a lot of words, would know Sinestro. Maybe I taught it to it somehow?

The Fire Drill was brief today. And getting back in was a little TOO painless. It should have taken a little longer than that.

And Cynra got me some stuff from SDCC. Now to play the waiting game.

I was contemplating just going around and gathering humorous reactions to the OSBP (which at this point has neither a Wiki page nor a fandom Wank listing, for shame!*), but that's annoyingly close to actual work, and you probably also have a dozen people on your fl who have already done that.

We've been moved around at work, so I'm getting used to my new desk. They keyboard is hinky (shift key angering me), but the armrest on the keyboard is better, since it is not openned and exposing me to sticky stuff at every opportunity.

I gathered up my courage to the sticking place and tried the scale in the changeroom and have found that I have lost 7.5 pounds, which I guess is good. I'm not looking for dramatic results or anything, although I'd like to be able to do as much with a shoulder press as the incline, unless that's impossible.

Today is NCBD, but I got no notifications, which means that either I have nothing today or the Facebook utility that sends me notifications has decided not to work.

I wish my FLCS would do an email notification, but that requires either lots of work or a highly sophisicated program.

*edit: Although Unfunny business does have a very in depth post, thanks to meallanmouse for the heads up for that.

But back to work. Hope that isn't a really bad idea.