Games, Gifts and Gauls

The word of the week is convalescence.

December 24 - Rags to Riches

It's always been inspiring to me to hear stories about how people have picked themselves up from nothing and made themselves a success in life. Not that I've come from an impoverished background by any means as a child, but I can definitely identify in the last fifteen years with people who have had to struggle to attain what they wanted in life. My own situation right now is rather tenuous and I'm looking at some hard, hard choices in the next few months if things don't improve. So keeping in mind that some people only found success through adversity is definitely what I need to hear right now.

Read about Twenty Inspiring Rags-To-Riches stories here. Take a guess as to which one I identify with the most of all of them. Hint: it's not about the money.

 

December 25 - A Quiet Christmas

I'm still feeling very tired while recovering from my battle with pneumonia these last few weeks. Today I just spent putting about the apartment, shuffling papers and reading books under my sunlight-lamp. My sister was away as of late afternoon, out with some friends for the evening. I don't begrudge her that at all, as I think it's fabulous that she has such a big social circle here. Me, not so much… but then I've always gone for quality over quantity, I'm content with that.

My place doesn't QUITE look like this...

I didn't mind being alone for half the day. It's not much of a Christmas this year, as my dad's working all this week until Friday and so we're not doing 'Christmas Dinner on Christmas Day' because of that. To be honest, I'd probably sleep through a good part of it. I'm still exhausted and have VERY little energy to do much during the day; it's all I can do to job search and work on resumes and cover letters. There's half a hundred things I'd LIKE to be doing, but the days tick away with very little else getting done due to my lack of focusing ability… at times I can feel my concentration slipping away and I just fall over into an impromptu nap. It's frustrating, but at least I'm not missing work while I've been recuperating these last few weeks…

December 26 - No Boxing Day Crazy for me!

I perused all the sales flyers this year, as I always do, and very, very little that piqued my interest… and not just because I can't afford a much at all right now.

No, there's other factors at play. For one, I don't NEED anything. Sure, a new PC or bigger, fancier TV would be nice, but that's just my inner tech g33k speaking; I have a great TV and PC and many other gadgets that work just fine, thanks. The thrill of the hunt has also waned for me; I know the cost will have to be paid, in various ways, for far longer than the thrill lasts. 

So I contented myself with going out later in the week( not today, are you nuts? )and getting several Blu-Rays for myself at Best Buy for a deep discount. I picked up Super 8( 70's nostalgia! )and The Man With No Name Trilogy of Sergio Leone's films starring Clint Eastwood, which I've always loved. Nothing much else appealed to me, especially for the prices that I thought were still too high for recent movie releases. On the bright side, I saw that all three seasons of Arrested Development were on sale for $9.99 each, which I hope will entice more people to watch that wonderful show. New episodes are coming in 2013!

I did spend a few hours in the evening at an 'online' christmas party with my NWN friends. We ran a short adventure and hung out in a holiday-themed special area designed just for the occasion, complete with the gifting of presents! Guess what my long-lived character Nich got? Have a look:

Sure, it's the same gift as last year, but this time it's PERMANENT!

 

December 27 - Family and F.lux

As I'd mentioned, my family did Christmas Dinner today at my parent's place on Bear Mountain. It was rather low-key, with my sister taking over the making of said dinner deliciousness and doing a fantastic job of it! We watched several animated Christmas TV specials that my mom had recorded this past month, including Merry Madagascar which definitely made me laugh. It was a great time spent with my family just relaxing and enjoying one another's company, which really is what the holidays are all about. As a bonus, my sister spent quite a lot of time cuddling her cat, whom my parents have been taking care of for her as our place in the city doesn't allow pets. It's a great arrangement for him, as he has a balcony and ever-present retirees to take care of him. My sister does miss her cat a lot, though.

The fireplace is off... but there's a fire log on the TV! zzZz

I also discovered a neat little program for the PC today called F.lux - a play on the word 'Lux' or lighting. I've found that as the day goes on and turns into night, I have to constantly adjust the brightness on my screen so that my eyes aren't seared by levels that are fine when the sun's shining in the windows but is WAY too high a brightness level for typing at night. It's a little annoying to have to do this every day, so I was thrilled to find f.lux, which is free! You just set it for your location and what type of lighting levels / colour temperatures you prefer, then it does the rest automatically. It's been great so far, a nice little Christmas bonus!

December 28 - An Interview... sort of?

Wow! One of the emails I sent out earlier this week came BACK as a response! The local community center here in Cook St Village said that they'd be pleased to have me in today to answer any questions I had about their posting for an Admin Manager at the end of the day today. So I put myself together and went down there in the late afternoon to talk to the Board VP about the job. She was very nice…. but very busy. I only managed to get in a few minutes of questions before other matters called her away from her office, leaving me to fend for myself until I realized she was going to be busy until well after the place closed for the day. I was pleasant and hung around for a little bit to make a good impression, but then I excused myself and headed home, wondering how all that might turn into a call for an interview. I hope it does, as it's the first positive response I've had in almost a year of looking…

On the bright side, my 'personal' business cards arrived today from VistaPrint! They look amazing: all black with sharply-defined text, VERY professional-looking. I'm all set to network with people and do more than a few walk-in introductions in January, to help get me over the no-callback slump of the last six months. Now, when asked for my card, I'll be all set!

December 29 - Asterix!

 

As I've mentioned in a previous blog entry,  Asterix The Gaul was a formative influence on me as I was growing up. Its sharp sense of humour and engaging stories made it a perfect read for me in my early years and the fact that there were dozens of full-colour comic softcovers to read kept me entertained quite satisfactorily. 

Most of the characters who appear in the series. Oh, the NAMES they have!

Many other people must love Asterix as well, as there was a recent article on io9.com espousing the many good qualities of the long-lived characters and the world they inhabit. In fact, a group of neurosurgeons recently compiled a cheeky study of all the hundreds of head injuries that occur in the Asterix comics. It's worth a read for their conclusion alone!

December 30 - Games

A lot of today was spent fiddling around with my PC's games, after tossing a lot of game boxes I'd been hanging onto earlier today in a 30-minute burst of energy that didn't last. Seeing as my Amiga didn’t sell despite being listed on eBay three times, I've packed it away again - at least until the next auction, whenever that is. One of these days I'll be able to tidy and organize my things the way I've been meaning to… call it an early 2013 resolution.

I have at least twice as many games as this. Minus the boxes, now ...

No, what I did was move a lot of games around on my PC to make space, after installing an 'extra' drive I've had in another linux-based PC that's not being used. This allowed me to move a ton of stuff 'around' on the PC to clear up some room; it's an odd truism that no matter how much space you have, stuff always expands to fill it. At least now I have room to install a ton of games that I've had hanging around on the shelves for a few years, though some of them will need tweaking in order to run under Windows7. I'll also have to MAKE the time to play them, as my habit with my games is to play them for a few hours and forget about them again for months, even years, at a time. Even NWN has been seeing a LOT less playtime in 2012; maybe 2013 will be the Year Of the Game for me?

Nah. I'd rather 2013 was my Year Of The Novel. Now THAT's worth making some room for!

I'm feeling almost normal again, except for the lack of energy, but that's normal from what my doctor told me. It will be at least a month before I am 'back' to my old self again, so I'm taking it easy and not pushing myself to do much each day. The coughing's completely gone now and all I have left to heal are the muscles in and around my right side, which complain whenever I pick up anything more than a paperback book. Seeing as my tendonitis does the same thing now and again of late, I'm not doing any lifting of any sort for a while. It's rest and recovery from the pneumonia for most of January, with job-searching and, I hope, interviews in the meantime.