139 "Friends"

Quick check-in on my goals for the year:
1. Play more story gaming tabletop games.

I got to go to some Saturday story gaming and play Metrofinál, which I've been wanting to play for over a year now and playtest a new story game about the garden of Eden. I think it's far enough along in the year to expand this goal to include all tabletop games. 

2. Taking hip hop classes Run a 5K.
The last four set of hip hop classes didn't go as well as the first set...I only went to one class. However, I've decided to take up doing 5Ks and am doing a training program! So I'm also going to modify this one as well. I'm not going to change it to "exercise more" because it's too vague. If I can get in some pull ups along with my running, great, but that's not the goal.

3. Going camping.

No progress on this one. I went to Antigua and they had lots of mosquitoes. It's starting to get warmer though, so I'm expecting to be able to go camping a lot more.

4. Doing the dishes after I make them dirty.

I have my pot and steamer in the sink right, but I think as long as I do them before I go to bed, it'll be fine. I think this will be more of a challenge once I move and we start cooking more.

5. Getting rid of stuff.

I'm pretty much going to be forced to get rid of things here soon, but packing up what I definitely want to keep still hasn't happened yet. I don't feel especially unmotivated to do it, but I haven't done any sorting yet either. I think the sheer mountain of a task that is going through all of the things that I've acquired throughout my life so far and taking less than half is pretty daunting. I have gotten rid of a lot of clothes and dishes so far though.

6. Playing more video games.

I've been pretty unsuccessful in this, I was going to play more Walking Dead tonight but ended up writing this blog instead. I'm also at this exact moment coordinating with W on playing Borderlands 2 next week.

7. Blogging more.

I've suddenly developed an interest in slam poetry and poetry in general. So I might do some of that here.

8. Being less jaded.
Related to the previous one, I fell out of writing poetry at some point in college, I'm not sure why anymore, but the sense that it was silly nonsense that stuck-up people wrote to be obtuse was kind of how I felt. But I've always loved e.e. cummings poems. The playfulness, the breaking of all the rules, those aspects of poetry appeal to me. And who am I to judge someone's creative outlet?


I feel like I'm in a holding pattern right now. I have this looming sense that I should be getting ready to move and am trying to spend more time at home to do whatever tasks that come with that, but so far, haven't actually done much that feels "move-y".

I've been burning off most of my moodiness with the running (though I think I'm going to need to start doing "real" runs outside at least once a week or so) but have been losing some sleep. Not because I have a hard time falling asleep, but because I've taken to lying awake, mulling over my life before I'm finally too tired to keep on thinking.

My life is full of people. Awesome and interesting people. And I count myself lucky to be included in the circles of these people. I'm constantly surprised by the insights that my friends have about me. Apparently it doesn't take long or much to realize certain truths if you start hanging out with me. Like the fact that I have a mild competitive streak. That I can be reckless. That I'm blunt, sometimes to the point of being cruel. And that I like being on the go and going to weird events, but that if I really like you, I will make time for you. Does that make me loyal? Or just good at managing my time?

Either way, I'm on the cusp of meeting a lot more people that don't fall into any of my current circles, and I'll have to think carefully if I want to spend more energy trying to merge circles, or if it's fine to naturally segregate. Mostly, I wish all of my friends got along and that way, I could hang out with everyone all the time. But alas, most activities cannot handle more than six or so people, and often even less. If everyone I knew wanted to do everything that I wanted to do, this would be a problem, but luckily, everyone has their own lives and can't be bothered to let me dictate their free time, as delicious as that would be.

Additional Chances

I was going through my GReader (soon to be RIP) and was reading Patrick Rothfuss' blog and his post on second chances inspired me to finally get something down.

But first, I should probably come to terms with the fact that this blog has disintegrated into a personal re-hashing space. I originally started it with the idea that it would provide useful commentary on the interesting things that I do and experience. And it still could be a sort of review spot, where I list all of the events, books, movies, and games that I've gone through, but since I have a bit of a completionist streak, I'd want EVERYTHING to be put down. I read six books on vacation last week, which is more than I've read in the last six months. I spent a lot of time in planes and a lot of time lounging by the pool/beach and I am so glad that I got a Paperwhite to make reading in the bright sun possible. I'm sure I could lump the book reviews into one post, and there are a few in there that are worth mentioning, but some of them were pretty lame.

Probably the one I liked the most was called To Have and To Code, which is a completely stupid title and had a somewhat confusing alt world where witches existed. And yes, it was a contemporary romance novel, but several times it hit me right in the feels. Which is probably why I continue reading them for fun.

Okay, back on topic. Originally, it seemed like a cop out to just write about personal stuff, especially since I don't go into specifics and use initials. It's like VagueBooking. But I've come to grips with the fact that this blog is mostly for me and always has been. I'm someone who doesn't usually think about things too deeply, but I'm a careful writer, in the sense that I re-read what I write, multiple times, and spend a lot of time thinking about what I actually want to say. So when something's been kicking around in my head with half formed opinions and ideas, the only way for me to muddle through it is to write it down, sentence by sentence, the way I used to write my school papers. Otherwise I just can't let go of it. It makes me feel better when it's been written down, documented, analyzed, and it feels final, something "physical" I can point people to. One of the reasons why I like having SOPs, I'm offloading my knowledge and never have to worry about forgetting some key step because I've written it down. Also, I love when someone asks me about a process or has a question and I can point them to a SOP I've written months and years ago. Now that's efficient.

But I haven't really openly advertized this blog. I somewhat recently went through and added it as a link to a few of my profiles, and while yes, I'm an attention whore and like compliments, it crosses some line for me to actively try to get people to read about what I'm thinking. But I would be the first to say that I love reading about other people's lives, especially those that I know. The little window to get inside their head is always interesting, which I guess, is a small part of the reason why I keep this online instead of offline.

My old blog from my college years was full of angst and lots and lots of posts on random stuff, I truly used that as more of a journal, since that was kind of back when Facebook was just starting up. Now I can document the funny or interesting things that happen to me on a daily basis in chunks, which pretty much just leaves this for introspection. I always think I'll go back some day and re-read posts from that era, but I tried that with a journal I kept in elementary/middle school and omg I just wanted to burn it. It was so embarrassing. I think luckily, since then, my writing has improved and I'm a lot less whiny and even more surprisingly, some of the things I've re-read I've been shocked that I actually wrote it. Which then begs the question, am I a worse writer now than I was back then? Has the creative and interesting writing been smothered by lack of writing/being too efficient? When I write creatively, I find I have to go back over and over again to fill in details and flesh out moments. Writing in a torrent has never been my style but I'm worried that I've forgotten how to make a piece of writing fun and interesting to read. Structured writing is clean and has its own style of beauty, but it's also not usually easy and fun to breeze through while on the beach. Anyway, the solution is probably just to write more creative pieces and then getting into that mindset of being loose and easy with my words will come more naturally.

Now, back to what I originally wanted to write this post about - having additional chances that I don't deserve. I find that recently I've been constantly trying to remind myself of how fortunate I am and imagining what my life looks like from an outside perspective. Some things just look better in print you know? But it's hard for it to sink in because it's not something that I feel in my heart, but that I know in my head. The one thing that I have been grateful for is additional chances. Times when I've been able try again and use the past mistakes to be better and do better instead of having them hold me back.

Adventures and vacations end. They must, and you know from the beginning that they will. It's easy to know in your head that there'll be other adventures and other vacations, but it's difficult to know in your heart that you'll ever feel the same thrill or sense of contentment that you have. I think that's what makes letting go and coming back to routine tough. No matter how many pictures you took, or souvenirs you acquired, you can never have that exact feeling. The memories are there, the impressions of how it felt, but the raw emotion...that is fleeting. All we can do is strive towards the next moment and savor each moment and the feelings it brings.

Or until technology catches up and we can have feelies.

Filled Weekend

I really didn't expect this weekend to be as full as it was. Immensely enjoyable and productive, but hardly any sitting around.

Friday

Went to Echo Base to screen Primer, which was incredibly confusing but after talking for half an hour or so after the movie with everyone else, most of whom had seen it more than once, things started to become at least a little clearer. Reading the Wiki page on the movie is still on my list of To Do's.

Saturday

Spent the morning catching up on email and writing a bit of the write-up for the A Penny For my Thoughts that I had played on Thursday. Then drove down to Seattle Center where I got signed up for Snow Day, had a bacon cheeseburger with sweet potato fries at Quincy's in the Armory, and then helped out the Emerald City Comic Con with their snow fort for an hour and a half. Snow Day was completely not what I expected. I didn't stay very long at all, about two hours total, including eating, but it was a very satisfying experience. It's been a while since I've been part of an organized work group, and the physical exertion of shoveling snow and working together with strangers made me feel really good. I wore way too much for it though. Even though I wore a fairly light jacket, a thin long sleeve shirt and a thin sweater, I shouldn't have worn my warm waterproof boots, nor the long johns with snowboarding pants. That was overkill. I don't know why I expected to be crawling around on the snow or something. It did make me want to go snowboarding though to actually put the pants to use.

Afterwards, I went to the grocery store to buy supplies to make food for the Important Person Dinner that night at C's house. I made three dishes. The food was good, I had fun chatting about TV shows and movies and games with some of the people there and getting to hang out with C and meeting her brother and sister-in-law. There was also some lovely singing and singalongs and dancing.

Since Z didn't come with me, I had the option of going also to my friend K's place where they had just finished watching Hackers and we ended up watching the pilot episode of Adventure Time and Johnny Mnemonic. Both were entertaining and it was fun seeing K's place and the other three people that were there were very easy to get along with and it was super relaxed. 

Sunday

Went to Toulouse Petit for brunch and it was delicious as usual and it was great to hang out and chat with R, T, and S. Then afterwards, Z and I killed some time by getting his hair cut and then hanging out at Starbucks, where P met us and we went to see Holy Motors, which was a fantastic film. I really enjoyed it. It was fabulously weird and thought-provoking in a "I see what you did there"-type of way. Z did not like it. He thought it was esoteric and that there was a bunch of weird to be weird things. Which is exactly how I feel about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, though maybe I should rewatch it and try not to see it from such a jaded perception since so many people liked it.

When I got home, I put together dinner for myself and lunch for Monday and Tuesday, and did the rest of the dishes from cooking on Saturday. Z, A, and I figured out how I'll be using my 15 days of vacation for the year and solidified some travel/vacation plans:

April 8-12 - Antigua

May 16-17 - St. Louis

Aug 31 - PAX Prime

Dec 26 - Day after Christmas

1 Day for Shi Shi Beach Backpack Camping

5 Days for Japan

I finished the write-up for A Penny for My Thoughts and once I'm done with this blog post, I'm going to play some Walking Dead.

I'm really looking forward to next week. Even though I have something planned every night of the week, I don't feel like I'm overly busy. What I feel is filled and enriched. 

Not Quite the Post I Was Expecting

Before I set off for China, I envisioned being able to get on the internet on a pretty frequent basis, and I wasn't wrong there, but what I forgot to take into account was the Great Firewall. Being unable to access Blogger took the pressure off of documenting my travels, but now, there's so much to document that really, the picture that I'm going to paint for you is a finger painting using only the primary colors. But that's not the subject of this post, so you'll have to continue to wait for that.

I could have gotten the China 2011 post to you earlier, but then I got hung up on having pretty pictures to show too. I created a Flickr for my co-workers and put up all the typical ones. I put all of the other pictures I took on a Facebook album. The problem now is privacy. How much do I want RoughDreamer to be tied to my name and is it already so tied that it doesn't matter anymore? I've been pretty laissez-faire about my online footprint but I have some pretty paranoid friends, and while Zach (who is also pretty paranoid) is the only person I mention by name on here (that I remember anyway), conceivably, this little web I'm spinning implicates a great deal of people.

But then there's the whole, really, who gives a fuck? Do I really think anyone important or malicious enough is going to put in that much effort to stalk me in order to ruin my life or the lives of people I know? I've been meaning to Google myself and do some self-stalking but keep on forgetting...but mostly I think I won't because there's large part of me who really just doesn't want to know what's out there. I have been pretty non-discreet. But how non-discreet do I want to continue living my online life is the question.

I'm not as whiny about my personal problems and issues online as I could be. None of my status updates/tweets are about how [insert emotion/physical ailment] I am, unless you count the ones a few weeks ago about my foot. But those were special. They had pictures! Speaking of pictures, I have grown increasingly fond of taking pictures using my phone and immediately sharing them. I love the fact that because of the wonders of the Internet, I can be doing something or looking at something cool and then BAM, by the power invested in my phone and technology, you too can practically stand right next to me and experience the same thing. It's the timeliness and immediacy of the interaction that makes it awesome.

For example, Wednesday night I saw Neil Gaiman and his wife, Amanda Palmer do a little show and dance. It was much more awesome than I expected and it actually kind of just felt like we were sitting around and they were just telling us stories. It didn't seem like a big production thing at all. Jonathan Colton was even there. But anyway, I knew some people would have been interested in the fact that this show was happening, so I took a picture of the billboard at the Moore and was going to tweet about it, but the network there was terrible or something and the tweet didn't publish. So instead of doing it way after the fact, I just deleted it. No point in letting people know about it now. It was just some thing that I did. The picture wasn't even that interesting.

The reason I don't post about negative stuff is because I dislike pity or even people feeling like they're emphasizing with me. Not specifically because of the whole "fuck you, you have no idea what it's like to be me", but mostly because I am ALL about managing how I appear to others. Yes of course I'm just as fucked up as the next person, but why should I advertise that? I'm happiest when everyone else thinks I'm happy. And luckily for me, I have a great group of friends that go out of their way to make sure that I'm generally pretty happy, so it's not really smoke and mirrors. Also, I hate dealing with my problems/issues/concerns/whatever over and over again, so if no one even knows to ask, then it's one less rehashing I have to do.

I'm Leaving On a Jet Plane

It's been a while since I've made an international flight. Not super long. Two and a half years?

One of the differences I feel this time is not so much the "I'm going somewhere!", but more the "I'm leaving." aspect of traveling. This isn't the first time I've felt jaded about travel and I'm not sure why the aversion. I kind of like doing touristy stuff and browsing the little kitschy shops. What I dislike is the pressure I feel to take an obligatory photo of said landmark or landscape with someone in the foreground. I like the feeling of being far far away from everything familiar and being able to adapt and test my limits of going with the flow. I dislike constantly worrying about forgetting something, whether it's when I first leave, every time I leave the hotel, switching transportation, or leaving from a restaurant or event. I also don't like being super paranoid about things like money (is that guy going to rob me), the water (being sick on the go sucks), the time (don't want to get left behind).

I think for once in my life I'm kind of feeling like a vacation where I don't actually do all that much and I spend all of my time sitting in the warm shade reading and all events and food and water are perfectly safe. Like an all-inclusive cruise. Mmmm, food buffets 24 hrs/day! Now there's something to get excited over ;).

Also, taking a longer vacation caused a lot more organizing and training of back-ups than I anticipated at work. Everyone wants to get their shit out the door on Nov. 1st. So slightly bad timing. But I'm sure everything will work out. /supersincere

One thing that I remembered though that will make this fun is that Zach and I will not need to drive anything anywhere. So we can drink at any time!  All times! Vacation is awesome! However, I have no idea what kind of alcohol is available in China. Are there cocktails? I don't remember drinking much when I was in Japan either. I'm again glad that Zach talked me into bringing another and bigger check-in luggage because I'm going to need something to bring back the booze. Foreign, exotic booze is so cool that we don't ever drink it (case in point, the rum that we brought back from Jamaica two and a half years ago).

2008 4th of July Weekend in TC

We drove down the night of the 3rd and it was pretty uneventful. We listened to the Beatles Love CD, which was pretty cool with the scenery going by and it was somewhat inspiring.

On the 4th, my whole family and Zach went over to the neighbor's at around 9 because they were having their annual neighborhood potluck brunch and flag raising. The food was pretty good and it was nice and sunny out but it was fairly boring with no one to talk to (mostly everyone there was really white, suburban, and/or Mormon) and after the flag raising, Zach and I left to go down to Columbia Point where Zach's bro and family were holding down a BBQ spot. It was pretty chill since Zach's nephew and nieces weren't there to actually do stuff in the park, so we all just sat around and ate and I knitted a bit. It was pretty windy out though. Then we packed up and headed back to Zach's place where I got to try out WiiFit. I got 313 on hula hoops! Then we played some Rockband and sat around and chilled. Zach and I walked back to my house at around 6:15, and after some deliberation about what was going to happen on the 5th, we decided it'd be best to walk back to Zach's so I could drive the car back and use it tomorrow morning. Then I had some good home cooked grub. Afterwards, my Dad, brother, grandma, and I played some Mahjong. By the time we quit, around 10:30, I was pretty ahead in chips. I headed back to Zach's where it turned out that they had just left for Home Depot or something and I sat around with Zach's dad and brother, who was doing calc homework, and ended up sort of starting his English essay and writing down some writing points/focuses. I stayed until midnight and then went home to sleep.

On the 5th, my mom, grandma, and I went to the Pasco Farmer's Market. I didn't buy anything, but we got some cucumbers, squash and snow peas I think. We finished a bit early, at 10:30 and needed to kill some time, so we went over to the Asian market and got a few items there. By that time it was around 11 and since we didn't have anything else to do, we headed over to the Hawaiian restaurant around the corner where we had all agreed to meet up for lunch. We ended up waiting there for like an hour and a half since my brother didn't get out of volunteering at the hospital until noon, but then my dad was at Wal-Mart getting the oil in the car changed so by the time they had gotten there, we had already ordered and pretty much finished eating. My brother rode in my car and we went home and then I immediately left to go to Zach's and we were supposed to go to Casa Mia to see if it'd be feasible to do the wedding reception there but Zach had called earlier and it didn't seem like it'd work out. So I just tagged along with his whole family as they went to Some Bagels (a super delish bagel sandwich place). They even had gelato. Then they dropped me off at my house and my brother drove me to Smoovies, this smoothie/food place that has several game systems and other stuff to do. His friend was there and one of my friends came by as well and we all sat around and had a good chat and then played some card games. Then my brother and I went over to Zach's where we played some more Rockband and WiiFit and ate some yummy grub that Zach's mom cooked up. Zach changed the oil in the car in the meantime. By then it was getting pretty late and we needed to start on the drive back to Seattle so my brother and I went back to our house where I packed everything up and then we sat around playing cards until Zach showed up. The drive back to Seattle was pretty uneventful too, except that there was some heavy fog at one point. We got home at around 12:30 so it was pretty much unpack the stuff we needed, email my parents to let them know I got home okay, and then crawl into bed.

It was a short trip but I got a lot done, saw a lot of people, and I guess got a tiny little bit further along with the whole wedding plan things :)