Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Well, I attended my first "annual" Homeowners Association meeting last night. This after having lived where I am for about a month shy of two years. It wasn't even my fault. They actually didn't have one last year, and in 2003 I was somehow not on record (thus didn't receive notice) even though I was perfectly settled in by the time the meeting happened in December. The complex has 23 units. 7 owners were present and several had written in, essentially making our property manager their proxy. As far as organization goes, things were very laid back, barely following any sort of protocol. The discussion, however, did get a bit heated. Mind you, no one was directing that at anyone else present, but there were still some strong feelings voiced. The big topic, taking about two-thirds of the hour-and-a-half meeting: dogs. By the rules, dogs are not allowed. In the last month, there have been increasingly blatant violations, including a quartet of pit bulls in one fe...

Part of yesterday's strangeness was a trip to the local shire meeting. I haven't been to one in... a long time. Heck, I haven't been to an SCA event in years. More than anything, it made me feel lost. There was a time in my life when the SCA held great appeal. I wanted to be a light weapons fighter. I wanted to look good. I wanted to do well. And somewhere in there I stepped off the path. Yesterday, I listened to an explanation of many of the Society's awards. I heard a duchess say, in essence, "If you do what you enjoy because you enjoy it, the awards will come to you" and "If you're doing something for an award, you're doing it for the wrong reason." To me, that's common sense. It reminded me, however, of how I felt when I unofficially 'left' the Society (that is to say, I gave up trying to participate). I felt as though nothing I had done had been recognized. And while I had not be doing those things for recognition, I had ...

Yesterday was one of those days that reminds me of what my life is not and, in turn, what it is. Some people thrive in the city. They go to clubs. They party. They look for adventure in 'everyday life.' ... That's not me. I don't feel comfortable at large social functions. I feel worse about the bar/club scene. I don't feel a need to 'do something' every night. While other people have fled this town and cursed it as boring, the pace and feel of it suits me just fine. So now I wonder about that. Some of it is simple choice, but I think some of it comes from seeing the world differently from those people. Why? I could point to several experiences in my youth, but I don't know if I can truly assign all blame there. My mother and I moved a lot in my pre-high school years. Does that really explain why I seem to bond with people so differently that what seems to be the 'norm?' Does that explain why it's *work* for me to find proper anecdotes fo...

I have an obsessive side. Usually, this manifests in my consumerism - I see something I really want and getting it will become a quest of sorts. Thankfully, we're usually talking about a video game or a book rather than, say, a car. Most recently, I was inspired by Revenge of the Sith to start thinking about a Star Wars RPG. Picking up a couple Jedi Knight video games probably didn't help. I already had the core rulebook and a couple others. That didn't feel like enough for running the sort of game I was envisioning (and since no one else seemed likely to do it, I figured I would be GMing). I decided I really wanted two other books - The Dark Side Sourcebook, and Power of the Jedi. What's Star Wars without the Force, neh? Normally, this would be a simple matter of hitting Amazon.com and ordering the books. This time, that failed. After a couple weeks, the estimated ship time went from 2-3 weeks to "out of print and unavailable." A couple people were sellin...

So I had lunch with my dad today. He and my stepmom recently celebrated their anniversary at the Grand Canyon. They had a couple unexpectedly (and undesirably) interesting days. Camped out at the North Rim, they decided to head off and visit some of the lookout points even more off the beaten path. Something like 12 miles off the paved roads, the truck started pulling left. Sure enough, they had a flat tire. After some variation of the 'fix-a-flat' can that gooped up the damage okay, but didn't inflate the tire sufficiently to drive on it, my dad started the process of putting on the spare. Like so many people, he'd never had to do that in his current vehicle, and the jack provided was probably best described as "wimpy." It took about two hours, but he managed to get the spare on and start back. After covering about half the distance back to pavement, the truck started pulling right. Yep, two flat tires in the space of six miles. After considering options,...

I just wrote up two pages of setting information for a D&D game, including coming up with a slight variant on prestige classes. Of course, I'd rather be putting more thought into the Midnight game I'll be running tomorrow rather than defining stuff for a campaign idea I bounced around a while back as "maybe a neat idea to run sometime." Go figure.

Yay. So after waiting a couple weeks and nagging through the "chain of command," it looks like I may see some results. I've been told the general manager spoke with the HR director today and agreed on a pay increase for me that amounts to about 20%. That doesn't make me one of the highest paid network techs or anything, but it's better. Most importantly, it's *consideration*. So, assuming that information is correct, I'm happy.