Redwolf's Journal (continued)

I'm... confused. Baffled, maybe. And I don't want to go counting unhatched chickens and all. And yet... My dad and step-mom stopped by today. They were in town to visit friends and take a trip down the river. It's normal for us to meet for lunch of, at least, pass by and say 'hi' and all. This time, they actually had something else to discuss. Apparently, Susan's mom, affectionately known as Grandma Bea, put away some money for me. A CD that started at 10 thousand dollars and is up to 11. It's reaching maturity and so she wanted to see if I'd rather see it reinvested or cashed out to me. It's the sort of thing she'd want spent for a major thing (a new vehicle or paying principle on my mortgage were mentioned) rather than just as spendable money. If this had happened a few months ago, I might have waved off and said to save it. I'm not really shopping for a new vehicle, as old as my truck is. Worst case there, I can still get where I nee

Something I wrote up recently. Applies to Furryfaire, really, but I'd probably adopt it to other fantasy settings if I had any active. Excerpt from speech by ArchMagister Ralyn before the Convocation of Arcanists held in Nycthanlinth, circa 700 AE Good afternoon. While I make no claims as a demonologist, Magister Sellik has asked me to speak today and share what I have learned from my personal experiences. As most of you are aware, I have spent a number of years studying the Infernal Realms directly. Now, many of us have been taught that demons are the opposite of angels and archons - beings in service of dark gods. By and large, this is untrue. There are exceptions, of course. The rukshasa might be called "demons" and operate in the name of Ravana. Most of the entities we classify as demonic, however, do not serve divine powers. Rather they are more akin to elementals. The primary difference lay in that while a sylph may be a being of air, demons are representativ

It comes and goes, but recent events in online roleplaying have got me thinking about faith. Mostly, it's in a fantasy game world sense, but in general, too. I find I don't have my basis for real religious faith. My own thoughts on it vary from day to day, and very few people around me in my life show signs of strong religious beliefs. Thus, I really only get to think about it through roleplaying and then it's often in a fantasy setting of some sort. Now, in real life, subjects of worship appear to be hazy. The percentage of people who hear their gods seems relatively small, leading other people to question their reality. My own experiences have been rather odd. I was not raised with any real religious beliefs, and I suppose I picked up traces of Christianity mostly by osmosis from the very few times I went to church and cultural bias toward "God." I have never heard Him or any other divine power. And yet I actually have had a couple prayers that I can recall a

... dark movies, Batman! Just got back from watching The Dark Knight . Wow. All the recommendations and rave reviews were right. Dark, but amazing. Heath Ledger made one hell of a Joker. Let me try a relatively simple and spoiler-free approach here. What's bad about the movie? I have serious doubts about the ability of any sequel to follow this intensity. Seriously, I don't know how they can make a sequel without falling flat in comparison. And... yeah, I think that's about it. Oh, I might be able to nitpick a few things here and there, but it's a comic book world. You overlook things like villains being able to set up a scene perfectly in advance. My socks have been suitably rocked, and that was definitely worth a little entertainment splurge.

Getting by in general. Financial concerns weigh in my mind, but they're not overwhelming and ever-present at the moment. Dr. Horrible was a fun watch this last weekend. I saw people outside with ladders today, though it seems early in the process for any start to the siding repairs as money hasn't been collected in general, so I'm not sure what to think. I finished out the night feeling okay, certainly better than I had been feeling, and started the morning better than average. Little shades of inspiration upon waking are nice. Yet, such moods can be fragile - it only took one off-hand comment foul my mood and set a different tone for the day. Which probably just means the point it struck was one already weak in my emotional makeup. We've all got things that set us off more than others. For me, most are points that I burden myself with. Self-inflicted guilt or worry make little fracture planes. Sometimes they hold up to some stress, sometimes they're poised to

I don't want to get stuck paying for another MMORPG: http://kotaku.com/5026492/yep-next-kotor-is-mmo And in even more depressing news, it sounds like repair costs are going to be $3800 or $4100, depending on which approach we pick. Gee, that's only 50%-100% higher than we discussed at the meeting. And that's... a @#$%load of money from where I sit.

Brief bit of inspiration today, even if it doesn't answer the question the Storyteller of our Exalted game was thinking. What follows is in-character thought from the game. No interest in that and you can safely ignore this post. Who am I, and who have I been? It's a question I wonder about at times, for we Chosen of the Incarnae are gifted - or perhaps burdened - by past lives. Ourselves, yet not. I am Alexandra. Alexandra of Creation, the Tripartate addressed me as, and perhaps that is as accurate as anything. I might have been Alexandra of Nexus, but though I remember my youth in that city, I do not truly feel it anymore. Nexus is no more my home than any other city. I carry no sobriquet of renown, for I have no great deeds to claim. Truth be told, I'm not certain I ever will. Oh, I will be a part of great things, but I think few will be so much mine. I might once have claimed a connection to the Cult of the Illuminated in my name, but that feels increasingly distant

Note to self: mixing a lack of good/enough sleep and heavy reading of a Kushiel's Legacy book can put me in a very, very odd mindset. I spent most of yesterday feeling more loopy than the few occasions I've been anything approaching drunk. In a way, it was rather fun. I felt borderline giddy and poetic. But then, I may have overly worried a friend online, too. Edit: I'm told I've been lax in my (limited) chronicling of . So let's see... I left off with the arrival at Gem and "discussion" over plans on how to deal with the First and Forsaken Lion's aerial fortress. That became something of a moot point. The group set the Five Metal Shrike down a safe distance away and closed to the battlefield on foot. Selina, Kujath, and Symphony went stealthily to find the undead army's leadership while the rest split up in such a way as to make use of those few characters with a War ability over 1. This meant a couple people were acting as "special&qu

I watched Wall-E (good and enjoyable) and had a generally nice 4th of July. Then my mood deteriorated over the rest of the weekend. While I'm leaning against continued gaming with small children present, I was expecting people to show up Sunday as I was fairly sure that was agreed upon a couple weeks back. They didn't, and it was simultaneously annoying and relieving. I managed to (after much struggle)get new brake pads on my bike for the first time since it was bought for me over a dozen years ago and get them tweaked to where they seem fully functional, but I haven't really gone for a ride yet. In the week since, I've had plenty of little highs and lows, too. Some fun RP. Some frustration at work. Some sense of accomplishment. Some progress through a couple enjoyable books, Small Favor and The Name of the Wind . But tonight I've had a fair weight added to my thoughts. We (those of us on the condo association board) had a little meeting about the status of th

Hmm. Expected a couple people who didn't to pipe up to that last post. Ah well. Seem to be simmering at a low level of frustration currently. Even with the holiday at the end of the week to shorten it, the week already feels long. I'm getting fed up with password issues at work. When passwords get changed periodically, even after a new employee is set up, we frequently have situations where they get locked out under their new password. Repeatedly. In a practical sense, this manifests as a sudden inability to access network drives or printers. But this doesn't happen all the time to everyone who changes their password, just frequent enough to be a pain in the ass, and eventually it seems to remedy itself. As far as I've been able to tell, there aren't any scheduled tasks, scripts, or programs connecting to anything using the old passwords, so there's no reason for this that I've been able to discern. And yet it still ends up driving me nuts for two or thre