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Last night – or rather earlier this morning – I dreamed that I was back in college, sharing a gigantic dorm room with a former co-worker. The room was so big, we had two toilets – except one wasn’t hooked up and functioned more has a heavy ceramic bedpan. My room-mate had filled it with water and then used it – and then left it behind when he left the room. I was about to dump it into the other toilet when a neighbor walked in and poured the contents of the toilet on the floor. I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and – displaying more violence than I actually get to do in real life – I shoved him out the door while swearing profusely.

In the seconds it took to get him outside the dorm room, two things happened. One, he managed to tear my shirt and scratch me – resulting me being literally covered in my own blood from an injury I couldn’t even feel. And two, the police showed up along with the hall manager who then prompted arrested the toilet spiller and from their tone – sent him straight away to a gas chamber somewhere.

As a result – I’m suddenly a hero with a bloody shirt and my stupid former co-worker room-mate and I get a room upgrade. A crowd of well-wishers were called in to move all our stuff to an even bigger room with windows and two working toilets. Apparently, the room had been set up as a reality show, but it was decided that it would be a poor idea to actually turn them on. Or so we were told. The hall manger presented me with a new shirt, filled out all the room-change paper work and bought my books for the semester – and sent for a doctor to take care of that nasty scratch that was finally pointed out to me.

All in all – a good dream, I guess, other than the odd focus on toilets.

that’s it for now… later….

So, I head over to BP yesterday to get some gas and decided to use my new BP Credit Card. I pull up to the pump, insert my card but instead of the “select fuel type” option – I get a terse message suggesting I “see the attendant”.

Great.

So, I head inside and wait for the guy in front of me to finish getting his fritos and his beef jerky sticks, then talk to the attendant. He asks how much gas I’m getting – I reply that I don’t know yet. We estimate $20 and I try my card again at the register. And he tells me that my card has been declined and that I’ll need to call the company.

Great.

So, I thank him and tell him I’ll use my debit card. Which I do and which works fine.

I head on home and try to make the call – but the digital phone isn’t working just then.

Great.

Now I’m pretty well steamed up with both the card and the phone – so, I’m not captain happy-pants when I finally call them again and get through this time.

I put in the last four digits of my card when instructed and a woman comes on the line with a thick accent from Somewhere Else. She proceeds to ask me a series of multiple choice questions to verify my identity.

Which is dumb – if I really wasn’t who I said I was – would I really be calling the credit card company?

From her tone, I’m pretty sure that if I’d gotten any of them wrong – homeland security would have been at my door in 5 minutes.

The accent makes it very difficult to understand the questions and on one of them I simply couldn’t figure out what she was saying. She started to loss her temper with me, but I finally figured out she was asking if I had my card with me. Which is also dumb since she’d just asked me my card number 30 seconds before that.

Finally, with the questions done, she “clears my account”. I tell her that I’d just activated my card the day before – and asked if it was really activated. She says yes, but tells me that sometimes they put a hold on the card so that they can get more information from me.

Wait, what?

So, it was activated – but locked. I ask try to ask her about that, but she tells me to have a nice day (which I know she didn’t mean) and hangs up on me.

End result? I’m still not sure if my card even works. I had half a mind to call them back and just cancel the damn thing – but the lure of fuel discounts still has me in it’s grip and I’m eager for savings. If it fails me again, I’m going to cancel it in a heartbeat.

So, I did some dishes and had some tea – both things that help calm me down a bit and I got on with the rest of my day.

I’m still, obviously, cranky about the whole situation – mainly because I did everything right and still got treated like a bad-credit criminal or something. Annoying.

That’s it for now – busy day ahead of me. later…

I swam a mile yesterday – 36 laps in the pool. Took me a little longer than my usual swim, but I got it done and felt okay afterwards. Slept really well last night too.

Worked on my costume yesterday – section two is coming along nicely.

Talked to my parents a bit last night – shared a few good laughs about work. I’ll be headed to see them for my mom’s birthday in about a month.

I got my BP credit card in the mail yesterday. I had to call to activate it – and instead of just doing that, they had to put me on the phone with someone trying to sell me a credit protection plan. By the end of the conversation I was running short of patience – but I got through it.

Otherwise, pretty quiet for me – time to get back to work…

At the recommendation of my cousin, I recently fired up the game “Runescape”.

I didn’t care for it.

For one thing – too crowded. As I logged in, people were “fountaining” into existance in the same spot. The game was also kinda clunky and hard to control – which is a little typical of a java-based platform.

And it was… mundane. One of the first quests once I got off of tutorial island was to pick some wheat to grind at the mill to make flour so that the baker could bake a cake.

Wait, what? Where are the orcs? Or rock trolls? Or demon zombie wizards?

So, I logged off and headed back to the solo adventure of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. I’ve played countless hours with all the characters and I still enjoy the game – but why?

For one thing, in the real world, if I was to bake a cake – I’d go to the store and buy some damn flour. If I’m playing a game, I want to get in there and play, not do a half-assed life simulation in the guise of a dungeron crawler.

Two, other people annoy me. I hate to say it and I’m really trying to work on it, but unless the doses are small, people get on my nerves. And strangers are worse. I was only in Runescape for a few minutes when someone started following me around. They finally got my attention in the endlessly scrolling chat window and asked if I was new. I said I was and they asked if I knew about the “wild lands” – which I’m pretty sure is a player-vs-player area. I said yes, but that I was still just checking things out and get the feel of the game.

They then said “wome!” and wandered off.

Were they trying to lure me to the PVP area so they could kill me? Did they want me to join them in a quest? Hello? I’m at the lowest level and no good to anyone in any kind of non-baking quest.

A solo game of diablo is heart pounding. Me vs. evil. I might have a minion or two backing me up, but it’s essentially one guy against the forces of darkness. No baking or farming – just big swords and chain lightning. As nature intended it.

In other news… I watched “alone in the dark” last night – a movie based off of a video game. Umm… it was pretty lame. The fire fight against the monsters was kinda cool, and the song in the ending credits was good – but the rest was a mess.

that’s it for now… later….

First, I have to set the scene a bit:

1. I’m at the computer at home. In front of me on the desk are a cup of tea on the left and an open can of mixed nuts on the right.

2. It’s my habit to either:
a. Pick up the cup of tea with my right hand (thus reaching across the desk) and take a drink – or
b. Pick up the can of nuts with my right hand and shake a few into my left hand – then toss the mixed nuts into my mouth.

Now that’s set up, we’ll begin…

I’m playing a computer game and have been doing so for a while. Every so often, I’ll take a drink or get a snack. And then, for some strange reason and clearly without paying close attention, I picked up the cup of warm tea and poured most of it into my left hand.

Pause for a moment for the swearing.

Once that was done, I began the clean up. The desk and keyboard tray were easy to clean up – but the throughly drenched keyboard was a loss. I shut everything down quickly and then unplugged the keyboard and tried to rinse it out. I then let it dry in the sun – but I don’t fully trust it. So, I went to best buy and bought a keyboard and mouse set. They’re pretty cool and have more buttons, but it was still a waste.

I can laugh about it now, but it was pretty bad when it happened.

New rule… Either drink or snack at the computer – but never both.

later…

I swam 30 laps today, despite being a bit tired and getting a late start. Felt pretty good and could have gone further, but ran out of time.

Had another bomb threat today on campus – someone wrote a warning on the wall of a bathroom stall. How lame can you get? I hope the bomb sniffing dogs are getting some good treats out of all of this – they’d be the only ones who might benefit from it.

It’s been a few weeks since I had my last coca-cola – I think I’ve finally gotten the addiction beat. Drinking a lot of water to make up for it, but that’s better anyway.

My Halloween costume is coming along nicely – had a make or break moment last evening and things went better than expected. No hints, so don’t even bother asking.

Played a little Final Fantasy again last night – and got my ass handed to me. I literally ran away screaming like a little girl. It was sad and pathetic.

Finally, I’ve been working on not biting my nails anymore. I’m making some progress, but it’s taking a lot of concentration.

6 random topics and I’m outta here. Later…

Went to a football game with my room-mate over the weekend – WVU in morgantown. The drive down was boring on Friday, as was much of the evening. I did a bit of folding and read a book.
On gameday, we head out early and then had some issues with the optimum route. My room-mate and his sister had different ideas on how to proceed and I sat in the back and wondered if we would ever get there.

Finally arrived and found a parking space – and waited for his other sister and her family to show up. They finally did, and we set out to find them in the lot where they said they had parked. He and his sister started out, I told them that I would catch up after visiting the port-o-let. They were long gone when I emerged, but I figured they wouldn’t be hard to find. I went to the correct lot and with a little logic, found his other sister and her family. A number of cell phone conversations and my room-mate and his now deeply cranky sister finally arrived. Apparently, they thought I had gone back to our car for some reason. Anyway, we split up once in the stadium and found our seats.

My room-mate’s niece had what they called “a meltdown” and the rest of his family left the game just before half-time. My room-mate started to overheat and needed to borrow my hat – though it was only a stop gap measure as he had to leave before the 4th quarter.

Ironically, I wasn’t really in favor of going to the game at all, but ended up being the only one who could have stuck it out – though I left with my room-mate since he was driving.

Once back at their homestead, his niece threw up due to her migraine and my room-mate pretty much passed out from the heat exhaustion. I ended up with a sunburn.

Oh, and WVU won the game. (we heard it on the radio as we left)

I had a headache most of the day and went to bed early. The next day I was ready to leave at 8:30 but we didn’t get on the road until around 12:30. I went into a low-power mode to help get though the intense boredom – it helped a little. And despite a relatively innocuous visit – there was a comment made right at the end that burned me up. I kept quiet about it, but I have to wonder what holding all this stuff back is going to do to me. Nothing good, I’m sure.

In other news… our university President did it again and gave a commencement speech that I enjoyed reading as I posted it on the web for him. This one was about Time and he quotes Penelope Corfield as she describes time as:

“one long never-ending Now.”

I like that – fits in well with my own personal philosophy.

On the flip side is a quote by Ariel from the video game Legacy of Kain – one of my personal favorites. I played through that section several times so I could write it down word for word:

‘All I can do is watch and remember.
Ceaselessly conscious as this wretched world’s history unfolds.
Ghastly past, insufferable future – Are they one in the same?
Am I always here?”

At the point in the game where she says this, she’s a prophetic ghost. So, it pretty much sucks to be her.

I can identify with that to an extent – in a way, she reminds me of cassandra from ancient greek myths. Blessed with visions of the future, cursed so that no one will ever believe her.

Man, I feel like that all the time. Things would work out so much better if everyone around me would just listen to me and then do exactly what I tell them to do. I’m seriously going to have to break out the mind control drugs one of these days.

Well, that’s it for now. Gotta get back to the grind.

later…

I got a bill a couple days ago for my credit card – the one that I’d thought I’d paid off and canceled. Apparently, I’m being charged interest on the amount before my check got to them. $2.83 cents. Wankers.

I also got a bill from the hospital for my stay back in February. For $50. Not bad. I suspect they’ll be more, but it looks like my insurance paid about $4000+, so I’m not complaining.

Got a call from the red cross, encouraging me to give blood. Which I’m not allowed to do anyway since I just gave within the past couple of weeks. Not sure what’s up with their records.

The strep throat has had one good side effect – I think I’ve broken my coca-cola addiction. It hurt far too much to swallow the carbonated soda, so I found myself not drinking it at all. It was rough going for a bit there, but I think I’ve gotten stopped at this point and I’m drinking a lot of water and a little bit of tea. We’ll see how it goes.

that’s it for now… later…

While still fighting my sore throat, I bought some grape flavored cloroceptic (sp?). It was the children’s strength, but still did the job and tasted better than the cherry flavored adult stuff I’d been chugging.

This is important to note since I have also gotten into the habit of using a spray cleaner that I got from my eye doctor for cleaning my glasses.

While in Illinois I grabbed the spray bottle and the lens cloth and hit my glasses, once per lens on each side. And even though the bottles are nothing alike other than that they spray liquid, I managed to grab the wrong one and doused my glasses with grape cough medicine. I even started to use the lens cloth to wipe off the grape liquid before the color and smell stopped me.

I got the lenses washed off with water and tried again. I also shared this incident with my family, who got a good laugh over this.

And I am very glad they didn’t get mixed up the other direction – otherwise, I might have poisoned myself.

That’s it for now… later…

Well, time to catch up a bit.

1. Went and gave blood recently. Went pretty smooth, except the woman that took the donation kept talking about how she wouldn’t take blood from another employee as they would be too critical of her work. Well, turns out there would be good reason to be critical – she didn’t do a very good job. Not the end of the world, but not really precise.

2. Went to a christening for the couple that stayed with us while waiting for their surrogate twins to be born. It was a nice service and the church would make a great place to hide from vampires as it was covered in crucifixes and had holy water on tap. Handy. The service made mention of an exorcism, but it was not as interesting as it would have seemed. I got to hold one of the twins afterwards and told her she was my buddy until she pooped. Instead, she spit up on me.

3. That same weekend, went to a pretty cool block party. Stayed late, talked to a lot of people, ate some good food and did a little dancing. Also participated in the potato race – which involved holding a potato between one’s legs and attempting to run. I wasn’t very good at that.

4. Went to a wedding late weekend for my cousin. She looked radiate, her groom was in a kilt and there were bagpipes playing. The service was outside and only lasted about 10 minutes – justice of the peace running the show. The food consisted of snacks and I hung out with some my extended family. Had a nice time – though the drive to Illinois and back was really long.

5. In and around all of this, I’d been fighting a sore throat. A bad one. I finally went to the doctor and got a prescription – which seems to have finally done the trick. I thought I was going to OD on menthol for a while there.

6. The middle son of my former room-mate contacted me recently – he’s college age and starting at UA. Which is pretty cool – I’m hoping we can get together for lunch one of these days.

7. I finally went to a chipolte recently – and that was some of the best food I’ve ever eaten. I ate a burrito that was the size and shape of a brick like it was nothing. Man, that was good stuff.

Guess that’s about it for now… back to the video games.