I'm 36! Never thought I'd make it this far.

Oh lord that was so much fun!

Come home from work to find that *Gasp* I've hit 1000 page views! That's awesome. I'm not sure why so many people have come to my humble little page but hey, I'm not going to argue. Not being an artist, I can't exactly post some picture to celebrate such a milestone... so I figured I'd break down the number 1000 and compare it to how long I've been around.

So, July 27th, 2007. That makes this 13 days shy of five full years. Let's go ahead and call it five years for the sake of more simple math. That's a good 200 a year! Woo, still a decent sized number... Now how about a day? Well that's roughly... .56 people a day. Hrm... Well okay now it just feels weird that I get visited daily by body parts instead of entire people. Ah well!

Cheers!

I've been tossing around the idea of writing from time to time again. Mainly this is an outgrowth of not having much to do at work from time to time, and so the best way I can occupy myself is by thinking about various little scenes or scenarios, plot points, etc etc.

Anyway, the question is, if I were to work on a story from time to time, what sort of setting would be most interesting out of the three I feel I'm the most comfortable writing in? There is a medievalesque setting that is particularly inspired by the Exile (Later redone as the Avernum) series, the post-apocalyptic setting particularly inspired by the Fallout series, and finally the Industrial Dystopia setting that is, well, pretty much a cyberpunk type thing.

I can't promise that I'd come up with chapter after chapter at a regular and swift rate, but any input would help me focus on something, and I could come up with stuff every so often.

Twenty six years and still rolling strong. Might need a tune up or a part or two replaced, but still in good condition all around. Another year under my belt and who knows how many more to come~ Here is to this year lending me to meeting even more awesome people and to greater successes at school!

As an aside, vacation is going wonderfully, the JD distillery tour was great and today I'm off to the Shiloh battlefield!

That's right! I'm on my first vacation in... four years! Granted it is a bit of a mini vacation but still! Going to cruise around Tennesee for a bit, go to Shiloh Battlefield, and go to JD distillery for a tour on saturday, my birthday :D so have fun everyone! I will!

I have officially become the unofficial Assistant Manager at my store. Officially this means I grt more work with no pay boost. Buuut, considering it's work I'd rather be doing over dealing with customers, and I got a pay increase last month, I'm actually pretty cool with this.

So I come home from running errands today to find my pets outside and the front door to my parent's house wide open. Surprise, someone had broken in. Among the things I noticed were gone off the bat was my school bags with my text books, because that's the best way to kick a college student isn't it? The backdoor had been kicked in, cabinets open, draws rummaged through. I was surprised by what was still there however. The only electronic thing stolen was my xbox 360. The Laptop, the various PC stuff, the TVs and disk players were all still there. So I call the cops, I let my parents know, and then I wait.

When the cop arrives, the first thing she asks me is what did I know was stolen. I told her this and that, and she seemed to not take too much notice until I mentioned my Flintlock pistol had been stolen. She looked up immediately and said "I believe we've already caught your Burglar." Bloody fricken amazing that. I was floored. Before I even got home and reported it they had pulled the guy over for a traffic violation and he had sped off, after a twenty minute pursuit they got him. I couldn't believe it, and I was damn happy, since I had definitely not noticed everything that was taken.

So next I go to the police station, I'm writing out a statement and they want me to identify the items. This is were I get to see just how much he'd actually gotten off with. Not only had he taken my flintlock pistol, but he took a rifle of mine as well (which turned out to be the worst mistake he made :3), he stole my great grandmother's silverware, my 5 gallon jug that I keep coins in (only had about $20 or so), my parent's medicine box, my mother's make up box (which I guess he thought was her jewelry box), some miscellaneous nicknacks which I can only assume were either interesting to him or just happened to be dumped in the container he was using to haul shit out on accident, and, this one I just CANNOT understand, our smoke detector. Seriously, what the fuck was he going to do with that?

Anyway, the items he stole from me alone valued enough for him to be charged with felony level burglary, and on top of that, having taken my rifle he was also charged with Felony in Possession. :3 He's going to be sitting in a rotting hole for a long LONG time. I'm just happy my pets were okay, and we got the stuff back. I didn't get a chance to see him so I don't know if he was a customer of mine at work, or just someone who randomly chose our house. Either way, it doesn't really matter too much I suppose.

Now, just to preface, I don't hate my job. Considering the many jobs that came before it, it's quite nice.

Things have just... changed since I've started... and not exactly towards the better. In short, one of the owners decided that they needed the person who oversees their chain of pizza restaurants needed to also oversee our store. Immediately words start getting tossed around like "Employee theft" and "we will be monitoring the security cameras remotely" as well as "store is no longer making enough profit" and "we need to raise prices on the customers." Because, in a bad economy, that makes complete sense.

The atmosphere of the store went from very calm and relaxed to very tense and paranoid. My manager decided to do what way too many people do when they get paranoid and tense. She began to drink. A lot. One day, one of the owners came in and the manager was on the clock, so drunk that she didn't even remember talking to said owner the next morning.

As a quick aside, I'm sympathetic towards my manager, but I don't agree with her desire to drink her problems away, nor do I agree with her having been allowed to keep her job after this. She's a nice lady, don't get me wrong, but she could have gotten the store shut down.

Back to the tale. Two days later new security cameras are being installed in the store. ALL OF THEM, in the backroom just to watch little old us. Now. I'm not unused to being on camera where I work. Most of my jobs involved at least a couple cameras in the back room to make sure employees weren't... well I don't know Peeing on the walls. But, this is absurd. There are five total cameras watching the sales floor (The store is quite small) ... There are EIGHT total cameras watching the back room. Some cameras are redundant just to ensure that every inch is being monitored. There is even a camera in the backroom cooler where we keep beer chilled before moving it into the cooler on the sales floor.

To top it all off, the cameras on the sales floor have holes in coverage, and the coverage is lackluster. Honestly, if I get robbed, I need to lure the person into the back room if the police want a picture of his face instead of the top of his head. I wish I were kidding.

This is just... well... ridiculous.

There was one thing about it all... The day after all the cameras were hooked up and turned on, the hub for all the cameras fried from being overloaded. =3 I giggled.

In some ways it's a shame that I've devoted myself to a double major in the sciences, I would have really enjoyed the time in my schedule to dive back into the musical side of things. This required course I'm taking in musical arts this semester is really fueling that desire.

I spent 10 years of my grade school life in orchestra, and I haven't given my Viola much attention since. It's a damned shame. Perhaps now is a good time to pick it back up during my free time. It'll be hard to find solo music for it, but I could always just transcribe solo Violin pieces if I need to.

By the way, Greensleeves has always been a favorite piece of mine, and I was lucky enough to get a chance to play it during my Orchestra years. Yea, just thought I'd share.

Ah the joys of dredging up good childhood memories by listening to things like the theme to Jurassic Park.

The subject tells it all, and it's AWESOME.

Tell me, who among you would share with me a bottle of Amontillado?

Getting ready for bed, all tired and sleepy and happy to be going to sleep. Then, out of nowhere, a two inch or so long spider goes strolling across my room and hides in my sandal... I can't tell if it's a wolf spider or not! Wolf spider = fine, not going to do anything but flee from the pets and get back outside when it realizes that there aren't any good bugs to eat in the house. Something else? Well it could be a danger to me, my pets, and my family. So I grab a shirt, and sneak up on my sandal. No luck, it darts out and runs into the living room where it hides behind the entertainment system. Great, I have a massive spider loose in the house and I can't sleep now because of it.

I've been doing a lot of "research" to get Chapter One of the story juuuust right. And by "research" I mean reading and playing some good ol post apocalyptic stuff. Many people would call that being lazy and just making up excuses! Nay I say!... uh yea... Just Nay!

Trying to start writing again. I've got the story in my head, but those first words are always so hard to come up with.

Yesterday was quite a fun Sunday. My father and I headed deep into the scarier parts of the state to meet up with an old college friend of his. From there we found ourselves a nice little secluded spot, hidden inside a valley, on said friend's father's land. That's when the fun began.

For three straight hours of wonderful decadent pleasure that would cause most of my liberal comrades to shun me or simply scare them away; we blew away targets with mostly military grade weaponry of the Cold War era and World War 2. Between the three of us, we had gathered two modern AK-47 clones, two WW2 circa Russian Mosin Nagant 91/30 rifles, one WW2 circa Russian Mosin Nagant M44 Carbine, one Russian SKS with a sniper grade barrel, one Yugoslavian PAP M59/66, one preWW2 S&W HE Revolver, and one reproduction 1858 Remington New Army.

Mmmm x3

They make me chuckle.

How do I keep meeting nice, charming, talented, awesome women who are in relationships? Seriously, I must of stomped on Buddha's grave in a past life or something. XD

1) Get back into college
a) Finish college without any more interruptions

2) Save money
a) Resist buying more historical firearms (On a side note, if you would like to know what I have and see some pictures =D Let me know.)
b) Resist buying random Live Arcade games

3) Lose Weight
a) Continue drinking water (Sugary drinks, you are and will continue to be missed!)
b) Find a cheap, 24 hour gym
1.) Barring that, always the gym at the college

4) Stop being so antisocial and shy

Oh yea, this will all be easy as pie... Start time: 8:00 this morning. Got the alarm set, time to get out of this rut!

Is it weird that I feel like the fact my xBox 3 light RR'd today isn't such a bad Bday present? Afterall, it gets replaced for free now!

So I did a weird and crazy thing, and picked myself up a small tablet. Now, I don't expect pure talent and awesomeness to come flowing out of this thing, but I expect I might be able to post a couple of things at some point from it. =3

I get some of the craziest ideas when I'm bored at work... such as how awesome it would be to rampage down Main Street, laughing manically, while riding a steam powered, mechanical Utahraptor that fires lightning bolts out of a mini Tesla coil in its muzzle.

It is so cold in my house right now that my cat is shivering. Now, I originally was going to post that part about the cat as a joke... but then she seriously started shivering. I have plans on stealing my neighbor's fireplace until the furnace is fixed.

Edit: I am warm again!

Rest in Peace Peabody.

1997-July 10th 2009.

Every day for ten years you showed me why the best pets are the those mutts of two unlikely breeds waiting in a shelter for someone to rescue them.