0060: Monday gone..

One might say that I wasted my day. However, I do not. mfsfreak showed up around noon, and, together, we went to Horn Lake, to pick up strieson for a much-needed (on his part) pick-me-up Hooters visit. (What can I say? They have great.... wings. *wink*) Seriously, he was really down Sunday night, so mfsfreak and I felt that this was what the doctor ordered. It really seemed to brighten his spirits, especially since he wasn't expecting it. Yay. Go us!

After we dropped strieson off, we headed back to my house. It was around 4pm, though, so we knew we couldn't take I-240 by downtown. Heading to Airways via the highway, we got off at Millbranch, because the highway in that direction was backed up, too. From there, it was an uneventful trip, filled with talk about computers and his character for my upcoming Dragonlance game (heavily modified by Iron Heroes!). It occurred to me that Holy Orders of the Stars, a priest sourcebook for Dragonlance, might be out, so I suggested going to Comics N Collectibles. I didn't have to twist his arm.

Going down Chelsea, we turned onto Hollywood, then Jackson, then some random neighborhood road to get to Holmes (which is in Nutbush, too, in addition to being down at the state line), then Summer, then Graham, then Walnut Grove, then Perkins (non-extended), and finally some backroads to get to our destination. (Yes, I had to list it. For some reason, I remembered the trip.) While we were headed there, mfsfreak told me of his upcoming campaign idea, set to run on the weeks when I'm not running, which is based on Earth in a post-apocalyptic, post-alien invasion future. Real cool stuff. I hope I get a chance to play in it.

We spent about an hour browsing the shelves at the store. Alas, no Holy Orders of the Stars. I did see, though, Castle Zagyg by Gary Gygax for the Castles & Crusades system, as well as a new adventure for Castles & Crusades. I also picked up Lore of the Forsaken and Predators for Werewolf: The Forsaken. I may never get to run or play a World of Darkness game, but I have some fantastic reading material. (I, for one, LOVE game books that read like a novel, rather than a user's guide.) (Mr. mearls, if you could pass this on to the folks at WotC, I would be forever in your debt. Not that I'm not already, with the quality that is Iron Heroes. I miss books like Silver Marches and the PlaneScape line, if only for their presentation of the rules.)

Coming home, I learned that there was supposed to be a chance to see the International Space Station tonight. At the appointed time, I went outside, and lo and behold, I saw it. It was a very bright "star" just cruising across the heavens, running from approximately the Big Dipper to the eastern horizon, on the far side of the Summer Triangle (Vega in Lyra, Deneb in Cygnus, and Altair in Aquila). Quite a sight, even if we just looked at it with the naked eye.

mfsfreak and I then just talked about the game, and what rules I was using. We decided to create new "Mysticism" and "Academia" skill groups for casters in D&D, since we felt that the existing ones either gave too much, or too little. (Sorry, mearls. I love the skill groups, but I wanted to run 'em with D&D, and I gotta modify what I gotta modify. I am keeping how you handle Knowledge and Craft, though. I love those!) While I was doing that, I was ripping CDs to go back into my iTunes playlist. Unfortunately, I decided to plug in my iPod to charge. This wouldn't be an issue, since I have the power cable sitting out, ready to go, but I plugged it into my computer. By the time I was able to stop iTunes, it had removed all of the songs from my iPod, because none of them were in my library anymore. (I was just not going to connect my iPod until I had finalized my changes.)

He later left, and I've spent the time since, ripping CDs as quickly as I am able, so I have SOMETHING to put on my iPod for work tomorrow morning. I'm not doing too bad. Heh, I was only at the Es, but skipped to the Ns to get my rather expansive Nightwish library. (With eleven CDs ripped already, I have six more to go. Yes, this includes singles, and variations of singles from other countries, but each one has some unique song.) Once I am done with this, I'm going to bed. I'll update my iPod in the morning, before I leave for work.

Now, to find the time to read my World of Darkness books, plan my Dragonlance campaign, and finish ripping what I want out of my CD library (which, as of an inventory on Saturday, is 314 CDs big*).

Over all, it's been quite a nice day. I got to hang out with a friend who I rarely spend time with, I got to see the ISS, I got new RPG books I wanna read, and I am reripping my CD collection for my lovely iPod. Trivial things, but it's the little things that make life worthwhile sometimes. :)

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* - That's CD collections, not individual CDs. I have a six disc Tchaikovsky symphony collection, for example, but I only counted that as one in my list.

0061: A rather pleasant day..

Perhaps because of a new outlook on life, I had a rather nice day at work. Even though I was late (again), I finished in a timely manner. I got things done I've wanted to get done for a while, and I even came up with a solution to a problem that's plagued our store for a while (we had no one who could fill the Big K machine out in front of the store, so it sat empty most of the time). The one problem I had was a till that was not balancing quite right. I counted it before I left, and all was well.

Upon arriving home, I read a new section in a book I'm reading, and typed up my thoughts on it.  After half-dozing while doing it, I finished and thought about making dinner. Unfortunately, I thought of a set of shelves that are in makeshift_guru's old room, that used to be mine before I moved out originally. I thought about the RPG books I got yesterday, as well as the ones that I want to have handy for reading material, and decided that I wanted to put those shelves in my room.

This was not as easy as it seemed. I found new brackets (which I'd bought last year, in the hope that I'd get a chance to put a shelf around the ceiling of my room, above the door, so I could have ALL of my books out, which is a rather impressive number, to be quite honest. I'll have to catalog them one day, and let you know the number. Heh, knowing me, I'll sort them based on the Dewey Decimal System, so they're "in proper order". I could even check out the Library of Congress's online card catalog to get the actual numbers for each book. (Gah, am I stoopid, or what? :) ) At any rate, when I tried to compare the brackets to the shelves, I somehow tried to cut a chunk of right middle finger off (and only succeeded in making a deep incision). Blood was running out at an alarming rate. I had to get a Band-Aid for my booboo. XD

I got them up, but it took closer to an hour than the fifteen minutes I originally expected. Afterward, I put my RPGs on the bottom shelf, and my DVDs on the middle and top shelves. It looks really nice, though I have since discovered that I have some trouble reaching the top shelf. Oh well, how often do I watch movies anyway? (And the Nightwish DVDs, Sin City, and Neverwhere are on the middle shelf, so it's all perfectly good.) While I was working on this, strieson called. Things are going just fine for him now, for which I am profoundly glad. I hate having to worry about my friends. (I hope you know what I mean..)

I've ripped most of my favorite bands' discs now. Given that I'm ripping every CD by an artist that I have (and really want on my computer), I have 17 Nightwish, 10 Helloween, 4 Edenbridge, and 6 Vanessa-Mae albums on hand. (And yes, I own ALL of those. I do buy music, despite loving mp3s more than is healthy.) I still have to go through the rest of my collection, but the biggest hurdles have been cleared.

Now, I'm going to go to bed, and get some sleep for once. (I didn't go to bed until 130am last night, due to an accidental iPod wipe [plugged it into the comp's USB, instead of the firewire power adapter at the wall].)