Christopher Thomas' Journal

York Flyby, Assisting, Basics, and Schedule Handshaking.

Per expectations, wasn't at York for long. Made progress on knitting during the commute, though.
Sensei is letting me take time off from the dojo (I'll just be attending on Tuesdays now). My skill level and fitness will go downhill, but at least I'll be able to devote a reasonable amount of time to York. Comprehensive is my biggest worry at the moment.
Assisted without incident. Had class without incident. The class topic was basics, combinations, and a bit of sparring. My sparring still needs work, but at least I didn't make my signature mistake this time (that I'm aware of).

Showed the master of the test-medal to Sensei, and gave a brief description of available fabrication options. The rest is being shelved until New Years or later (i.e., not this tournament).
Plan for Wednesday is York, then attending a knitting gathering I've been invited to (it's just a bit tricky to get to). Plan for Thursday is York. Plan for Friday is York, then Mekton. Plan for Saturday is dojo events, then VP-slack. Plan for Sunday is an earlier-than-usual lunch trip, followed by another knitting gathering I've been invited to. After that comes another work week, with me in panic mode over the comprehensive draft.
Amusement for the evening: Solving a problem by thinking out of the box, and applying violence. (Warning: Gore.) A dungeon-delving party finds a genie of sorts, that answers three questions, but will kill them if summonned a fourth time. And he's way too easy to summon. Fortunately, a solution is found.

Now, puttering and bed.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Yackety Sax

Paperwork Procrastination, Errands, Gaming Prep, and Plastic Casting

Got some paper-filing done at York, but there's still a lot to go before I have my desk clear of everything that isn't comprehensive material. This does not bode well for reaching a milestone by the end of the week (the nominal goal). We'll see. I still have Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday as full or mostly-full days, as long as I take the car in on Friday (for game night) and Wednesday (for a knitting night invitation), and cancel dojo on Thursday. Still haven't talked with Sensei about switching to a reduced schedule, and I'm going to have to do that _soon_.

Tuesday will involve very little time at York, due to a combination of dojo and jet-lag (not sure how I managed to fall even more behind in my sleep cycle, but I managed it).
Ran a couple of errands. I now have groceries until the end of the week, and more sculpting supplies (plastic-casting, this time).

I'd made the mistake several weeks ago of floating the possibility of casting tournament trophies for the upcoming in-dojo tournament. Last weekend, I allocated a bit of time one evening to making a master (it was supposed to be a mold, but I forgot to carve the lettering backwards). Tonight, I'm going to make a silicone mold of it (fast/easy), and try casting polyester resin test medals (more time-consuming). Time permitting (and it probably won't), I'll try spray-painting one of the test medals (I have plastic primer and metallic paint already on-hand).

In an ideal world, I'd be putting metal-dust filler into the plastic resin instead, but a) I don't have any of that, and b) that's a lot more expensive, so it'll be plastic or nothing this time around.

In theory, there's no time pressure for this (it'd be for the next in-dojo tournament, not this one). In practice, Sensei's asked for a test article, so bringing one to Tuesday's class would be a Good Idea.
Heard back from DM-Tony. The Ars Magica campaign is more or less ready for a restart, so we may resume playing in December. We'll see how this goes.

Now, puttering and bed.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "Lost and scared" music (Jurassic Park 1)

Lunch, Mall Slack, Maple Pecan Brittle, and Knitting

Lunch happened. Lunch was decent. Turnout was quite different from normal (regulars weren't there, one set of irregulars was). Marc also stopped by briefly.
Accompanied Beverly to the Eaton Centre. Made the mistake of entering the bookstore. I now have a book on welding, a book on quilting, and a book that will become part of entropicana's Christmas present. His reaction should be amusing (could go any of several amusing ways).
Met up with Shireen and Tito, who also happened to be at the Eaton Centre. Much chatting and hanging out ensued.
Still working on scarf projects. The prototype was handed off to Shireen, and I've made a test pattern using the directions for the store sample. It uses a different type of stitch when making 1x1 ribbing, which makes the ribbing stand out a lot more. I'm still not sure exactly how this occurs, but it's handy. Two or possibly three other people will receive scarves based on variants of this pattern.
Still working on a maple pecan brittle variant of the peanut brittle recipe (this time with walnuts instead of pecans). Cooked it for longer this time. This succeeded in driving off most of the water, but there was nothing left to bind together the brittle. Adding corn syrup and baking it for a bit longer caused it to bind, but swamped the maple flavour. I'm going to have to figure out exactly what's going on if I'm going to succeed in tweaking the recipe. Best guesses are that 1) I need to use a lot more maple syrup and reduce it to the corn syrup's consistency, and 2) I should add more margarine, as it'll be doing some of the binding after the water's driven off (and may even link with the sugar if the temperature is high enough). Main challenge right now will be figuring out the sugar concentrations of the maple syrup and corn syrup, to compare. I can do this by boiling the water out of each of them, if necessary, but that's a pain (and would also require a postal scale for accurate measurement).
Tentative plan for this week and subsequent weeks is to switch to a one-day-per-week schedule at the dojo. Sensei will not be happy about this, and will rightly object that I should be diverting weekend time to work rather than dojo time. The counter-argument, which I will _not_ make to him (because it wouldn't fly), is that dojo time is something I'm actually willing to sacrifice, while weekend-recovery time is not. Hopefully this won't be necessary for very long, but the comprehensive will almost certainly be a marathon, so mid- to late-December would be my best guess for resuming full dojo attendance. We'll see.

Now, puttering and bed.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "Terra's Theme" (Final Fantasy VI)

Slacking, Knitting, and VP-Slack

Got to bed at an almost-reasonable hour, and slept in. This was very nice, and I'll have to do more of it.
Went yarn-shopping. This was probably unwise, but still relaxing. Also picked up a copy of the scarf pattern, which is more complicated than I'd thought. Undecided as to whether or not I'll try it their way or my planned way. I'll probably end up making test swatches to help decide.
Visited with entropicana later in the evening. He's puppy-sitting for avwolf, and the puppy has been quite a handful. The surplus maple pecan brittle got a good reaction, though I still plan to tweak the recipe for longer boiling. It turns out that it shouldn't ever actually caramelize (170 C required), but should reach the "soft ball" stage or later (120 C).
Attendance at lunch on Sunday will be a bit strange. Bryan isn't attending, but two people who don't usually attend, will be. One other semi-regular might. We'll see how this goes.

Now, slacking and bed.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: "Sky Roads" game music

Oversleeping and Incremental Marking

Overslept, again. I'm going to have to start fixing my sleep schedule as of this weekend, because I'm losing an unacceptable amount of time at work.
Finished marking assignment 5-11. This was a nightmare, desk-checking a stack of complciated input-validation routines, all different. Done now, at least. Next up is the midterm, which is long-answer but has a point-based marking scheme that may take the edge off of it.
Plan for Saturday is loafing/unwinding. Plan for Sunday is lunch, per usual. Monday starts a comprehensive crunch, marking be damned.

Now, puttering and bed.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "BM-Rex" stage music

Incremental Marking, Knitting Progress, Lack of Dojo, Baking, and Weekend Plans

Spent the last two days intermittently marking (taking the night off from the dojo to do it). On one hand, made progress (the current horrible-to-mark assignment is about 80% done). On the other hand, I'm still behind (one more assignment and one horrible-to-mark midterm on my plate). I'm going to have to start explicitly time-sharing between marking and comprehensive, because my comprehensive is still stalled, and is growing ever more critical to finish. The students had their minimum fraction of the marks before the drop date, so as long as the rest of the marks are in by mid-December, we're ok paperwork-wise (they just won't be happy).
Knitting project of the week: A scarf, reverse-engineered from a sample seen at my favourite knitting store (they were out of the patterns for it). First attempt worked, took less time than expected (3 days projected, instead of the original 4 estimated), but has a ragged-looking edge. The next one will have a small amount of stockingette edging to reduce the problem. The prototype will probably go to Miss Nadir (it's a colour she likes). Copies 2 and 3 are already earmarked too, and possibly copy 4.
Baking project in the queue: Trying a peanut brittle recipe that an acquaintance gave me over the weekend. May or may not happen tonight.
Normal weekend plans are mostly scuttled due to the VP Crew (who are also the Mekton crew) being out of town for a convention. Sunday lunch is the only plan that's still intact. May spend the time slacking, or may look up other friends (undecided).
Booked the airplane tickets for my own convention trip (in January). Hotel was booked long ago. I should renew my bank-provided travel insurance (don't trust the credit card's travel insurance), but beyond that, I'm set. Now I just have to pay down the debts incurred by/for it (along with the remains of tuition).

Now, puttering and bed.

Update [3:33am]:

Peanut brittle was a qualified success. I'll post the recipe when I've finished tweaking it (it'll end up as maple pecan brittle, among other things).
XKCD "squee!" moment: ( Spoiler cut-tagged. )

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Terran theme (Starcraft)

York Flyby, Assisting, Basics, and Scarves

Made it to York, which is an improvement over last Tuesday. Didn't, however, get much done at York befre having to leave for the dojo. Fixing my sleep schedule would be a Good Thing. I've started moving my alarm slowly backwards, but this only works if I don't sleep through it.

On the plus side, picked up Assignment 5-12, so no more worries about students noticing it hasn't been picked up.
Made it to the dojo in time for assisting. This is good, because I ended up instructing. Class was par for the course (teaching wasn't stellar, but covered most of the material without incident).
Dojo topic was basics. Survived class without incident. Also got a bit more practice in for sparring basics. My mechanics aren't as rusty as I'd thought (just my reactions in actual sparring situations).
Knitting diversion for the day: working through more possible scarf patterns. I'd tried a few back when I was discussing scarf projects with diannaamarich; I still have to write up patterns to send to her. This time around, I was reverse-engineering a pattern I'd seen in the yarn store, and also trying a few other pattern variants. I think I'll go with a straight copy of the yarn-store pattern, and use it for a gift-scarf that's in the queue.

Now, bed.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "BM-Rex" stage music

Marginal Marking, Missed Midterm, and Yarn

Overslept. As a side effect, missed invigilating the second midterm (which I'd completely forgotten about). Midterm still happened, and I picked up the tests to be marked from my mailbox.

Dropped off Friday's marked assignment. Still have to mark the last assignment from the previous backlog, and pick up the most recent assignment to be marked. Midterm marking will be the biggest pain, though, because it's entirely composed of the kind of long-answer coding question that gave me so much grief last time. We'll see how this goes.
Went yarn-shopping. This was a splurge, but an in-budget one. I now have enough yarn for one upcoming scarf project, one upcoming hat project, and about four additional copies of each (overkilled the quantities bought). I'll have space in my storage bins for these, though, because Mom tells me that Dad wants a shawl for Christmas (the same kind as the one I just knit for myself). That'll take a month of subway time, but I'll probably do it (just interleaved with other projects).
Still working on methods of knitting Stargate Replicator-blocks. The best approach I have at present amounts to putting embroidery on top of plain stockingette knitting. The final version will probably use embroidery to do the lines, and Fair Isle to make two-toned blocks (to emphasize curvature; the originals weren't perfectly flat).

Now, slacking and bed.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: "BM-Rex" stage music

Unwise Reading, Pleasant Lunch, Errands, and Knitting

Decided to read another chapter of "Matter" before bed. The rest of the book later, it was dawn. Moral of the story: Read on the subway, not before bed. The book itself was decent, and kept me interested enough to keep reading it, but wasn't one of the best in the series. Still worth reading, though.
Lunch happened. Lunch was quite nice. Sarah and Karen from the dojo joined us, so we had quorum for a knitting conversation. Marc and Bryan were also present.

Learned about an approach to doing coloured patterns via double-knitting (you make two layers, which are the inverse of each other). I'll have to look up the details of how to do this at some point, because it'd be a lot more flexible design-wise than my present approaches. It would not, however, be more flexible fabric-wise, which may be a problem (double-knit is stiff enough that hats made from it wouldn't stretch easily, and scarves might also be too heavy).
Tried to run a couple of errands after lunch. My favourite knitting store was closed, but I did manage to finally pick up some clothes I'd been meaning to buy (bought the wrong size last time around). As soon as I hem them, I'll have cargo-pants that fit again. I should also hem the gis in the queue, and maybe make the curtains I've been procrastinating about. Neither of those are likely if I'm doing it on a weekday, though.
Still poking at Replicator-block knitting patterns. The best approach I've come up with so far is to cheat, and do them as embroidery on top of flat stockingette. Partly this is because it's hard to keep the block-pattern looking nice when you rasterize it, partly it's because a rasterized version breaks Fair Isle rules if I'm switching colours, partly it's because doing it by other methods gives you very big blocks, and partly it's because the rasterized pattern was complicated enough to be an incredible pain in the tail to actually knit (I kept making mistakes). Embroidery lets me use a smaller pattern, and makes it easier to see and avoid screwups. We'll see how this goes.

Now, slacking and bed.

Recovery, Tea, Slacking, and Lunch Plans

Slept in enough to mostly-recover from being up way too late last night. I'll try not to repeat that experience.
Headed downtown to have tea with an acquaintance from online. This was pleasant. Also browsed at Indigo for a bit before heading home. Had originally intended to make a Sears run for clothes-shopping, but that'll be postponed until tomorrow.
Lunch is on for Sunday, and has more attendees than usual. Bryan is confirmed, as are two people from the dojo who may or may not be bringing their knitting. Shireen, Tito, Marc, and my parents are in the "maybe" column, if I understand correctly.
VP-slacking is cancelled, so I'll be spending the rest of the evening reading and/or playing computer games. I'm looking forward to this.

Now, slacking and bed.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: "Total Annihilation" game battle music

Marking, Marking Shennanigans, Birthday Flyby, and Mekton

Marked the second assignment in the to-mark queue. Third assignment will take a bit longer, but can be delayed until next week.
Failed to drop off the marked assignment, due to both keys to the TA room being missing. One person seems to be particularly bad for this, as the sign-out sheet shows them vanishing with the key for half a day at a time, several days a week. I'm going to prod them by email to ask them to Stop Doing That, as it's impacting the ability of other people (i.e. me) to do their jobs.
Managed to visit Mr. MacDuff's birthday party at about the right time. Stayed longer than expected, saying "hi" to a few people and losing a game of pool against Mr. MacDuff (still a lot of fun; I don't get to play very often). Contributed to the group gift, signed the card, and headed to Mekton after that.
Mekton happened. It started late, and it ran late, but a) King Shadow is retconned back to life (the Halloween episode was a non-canonical dream sequence), and b) we have a new and very annoying enemy (high-ranking woman on the enemy team who has some kind of "bad luck"/"good luck" field, making her near-impossible to hit and making it easy for her to hit us). The good news: Trent managed to have another Crowning Moment of Awesome, and performed a rocket-assisted body check that totalled her mech and nearly totalled his. Advantage: good guys.

There was a lot of collateral damage this time around, too. Kei and Yuri would be proud.
Plan for Saturday is sleeping in, a trip out for tea, possibly errands, and then slacking at home (VP-crew aren't hosting that night). Plan for Sunday is a larger-than-usual lunch trip, then more slacking. Monday starts a normal work-week, with the goal of getting at least a little comprehensive work done in addition to marking this time around.

Now, bed.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "Let's Do The Time Warp Again" (Rocky Horror Picture Show)

Marginal York, Grappling, and Sleepcrastination

York happened. Spent less time than desired at York. Making another attempt to alter sleep schedule. Film at 11.
Stayed up way too late, this time due to online chatting. Sleep schedule alteration has failed before it started. Not a good sign.
Dojo happened. Dojo was decent. The topic of the evening was self-defense/grappling. This was a welcome review, and marks the end of the section on self-defense. The next two weeks will be basics (and probably sparring).
Plan for Friday is still a flyby of Mr. MacDuff's birthday party, followed by Mekton. I'll be stopping at home first to pick up the car, and will pick up munchies en route to Mekton. Plan for Saturday is lunch downtown mid-afternoon, possibly errands after that (I still need to go clothes-shopping), and probably not VP-slacking (it'll still be Rock Band season). Plan for Sunday is the group lunch per usual, followed by unscheduled time (which will probably be downtime, though as usual there are things I could do around the house too).

Now, bed.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: "Total Annihilation" game music

Incremental Marking, Poppy Attack, Hat Handoff, and Dinner Trip

Did data entry for yesterday's marking and dropped it off. Didn't get much else done at York today.
Was attacked, twice, by the stick-pin on the poppy I was wearing for Rememberance Day. In hindsight, I'm glad I got the tetanus booster shot a few months back. I am unamused with the design of the pin on those things (and being clumsy doesn't help).
Handed off Kris's hat. Pictures were taken, but won't be online until I process the hat photo backlog (don't hold your breath). Shireen had the idea of pulling the hat over her eyes (it has cat-eyes on the brim). She looks disturbingly like something out of a 1980s/1990s superhero comic book when masked like that. Shireen and I were both amused (Kris, less so).
Dinner trip happened, in lieu of a shopping trip (Shireen's choice; it's her birthday gift). This was pleasant, and was a good chance to catch up. Knitting sessions, on the other hand, are postponed for a while due to schedule getting shuffled. This is par for the course.

Now, puttering and bed.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Total Annihilation game music

Marking, Procrastination, Oversleeping, Assisting, Self-Defense, and Project Updates

Went to York on Monday. Marked the first assignment in the backlog queue, though I didn't get data-entry done. Also procrastinated far more than I should have. Apparently I really don't want to do the marking. I'll attempt to procrastinate with more productive tasks next time around.

The fact that about two thirds of the students tried very creative ways of not quite doing the error checking properly didn't help.
Overslept today. Ostensibly worked from home, as a result. Mostly this consisted of skimming what I'd done so far re. updating the test board documentation. Improving it, will wait for Wednesday or later.

I'm also overdue on working on my comprehensive. I'll be in panic mode about this shortly.
Made it to assisting on time, though not by much. Assisted without incident. Topic for the kids class and our class was self-defense drills, and a bit of grappling. Quite a bit of the self-defense material _is_ grappling, because we're looking at "what if the attacker tries to do X to you" scenarios.
Project update the first: Finally redid the top of Kris's hat. It's now a reasonable length. I'll have to take another couple of pictures before it's handed off (which will in theory be this Sunday; in practice, don't put money on it).
Project update the second: Thought of another approach to sound compression for the Talking Revar Doll. Actually did a bit more than that: worked out the approaches that work in different bandwidth domains for voice/music compression. If you can afford a few bytes per wave-lobe, you can do it by trying to curve-fit the waveform (what I was doing with the first attempt). If you can afford a few tens of bytes per second, you can do it by trying to characterize the sound every tenth of a second (waves change faster than this, speech and music don't). That's the new approach (curve-fitting features in the Fourier transform, more or less). If you can afford a few bytes per second, you have to try to do semantic extraction (figure out phonemes and instrument notes). I've thought of an approach that might work for this, too, but it'll be saved for a later project.
Plan for Wednesday is to finish the first backlogged assignment, and then take a stab at the shorter of the remaining assignments. Ideally, I'd also put away more of the demo stuff, as it's been sitting around for about three weeks by this point. Relatively early in the evening, I leave York and meet Miss Nadir for her birthday shopping trip. After that, the week resumes per usual (with the addition of the party flyby on Friday, which I still need to get a card for).

Now, slacking and bed.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Total Annihilation game music

Housewarming, Recovery, and Fridge Repairs

Feeling much better today. I'm still showing some symptoms, but for the most part I'm recovered. I'll be going into York tomorrow, per plan.
Made it to the housewarming without incident. Board games were played, card games were played, and food and conversation were had. Co-worker's new place is out of town, but very nifty.
Adventure for the evening: repairing my mother's fridge. This wasn't a mechanical fault. What had happened was that in addition to ice buildup in the bottom of the freezer, ice had been building up under the cooling coils in the freezer half. There's a drainage port, and icemelt would drain periodically. End result: water on the floor from time to time, with no obvious sources of leaks. Solution: Unplugging the fridge, emptying the freezer, taking off the inside back panel, seeing the problem, removing all ice, putting the panel back on, and moving everything back into working positions. We'll know for sure whether or not it worked by seeing whether water shows up over the next few weeks. Stay tuned.
Plan for Monday is work, plan for Tuesday is work/dojo, plan for Wednesday is a shorter day at work and Shireen's birthday present (shopping trip), plan for Thursday is work/dojo, plan for Friday is exam invigilation, work, leaving early to fly by a birthday party, and Mekton. Next weekend is for the moment clear, and so in theory will be slack/VP/lunch/slack per normal, but I'm sure something will come up to complicate matters by then. We'll see.

Now, puttering and bed.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: "Building with no conflict happening" map music (Total Annihilation)

Slow Recovery, Errands, Library Niftiness, and Intermittent Slack

Still have the tail end of the cold. This is very annoying, because it means I'll relapse if I don't stay careful. This will persist at least through Sunday. I still need to get to work on Monday if at all possible (three assignments will be in the marking backlog by that point).
Got a haircut. This was overdue, as my hair has looked bad for months now, but I had to let it grow out long enough to cut (shaved my head for a fundraiser on early May). Hair is back to normal for another 6 months, hopefully (as long as I get at least one and preferably 2-3 trims in the interim). If it's possible to bail on getting it shaved next year, I should do so, as it'll be job interview season (postponed from this year).
Also stopped by the Toronto Reference Library for the first time in several years. There'd been a thread on Wikipedia a while back about who had first used the term "antimatter", and one of the sources put forward wasn't available online. One lightbulb-moment later, I'd volunteered to check for a hardcopy in my copious free time(tm). Metro Ref actually did have it (despite it being a journal article from 110+ years ago), and being able to read (and photocopy) it helped quite a lot for clarifying the situation. It turns out that the ideas of negative mass and (to a lesser extent) antimatter were around a lot earlier than most of us had thought, mostly stemming from Aether-based theories of gravity and mechanics (though at least one argument based on Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism showed up too). Interesting times indeed.

The end of the 19th century was a very noteworthy time for physics. ( Geeking snipped. Turns out the present situation looks a lot like it, too. ) Interesting times ahead, not just behind.

Holding a 110-year-old piece of scientific history in my hands was pretty cool, too.
Slacking happened. Slacking was decent. VP-slack sort-of-happened. Game of the evening was Rock Band, so I left early. Groused far more about this than I should have; apology has already been sent. On the plus side, Alex's new puppy was brought over, and is still *made of cute* (despite being four times his original size). I look forward to seeing him on future occasions.
Will probably make it to the housewarming. I'm going to have to print out, and pack, a map and contact info before I go to sleep. Final decision will be made tomorrow morning.

Now, slacking and bed.

Current Mood: grumpy
Current Music: "Total Annihilation" battle music

Sick Day and Weekend Plans

Improving, but still sick. Felt much better in the morning, and not-as-better in the afternoon. This has me worried about the weekend.
Plan for Saturday is a haircut appointment at 2pm, then at least one errand out of the house, then resting, then VP-slack. Fallback plan if I feel lousy is to skip VP-slack (though that'll make be a bit stir-crazy by mid-week next week). Plan for Sunday is attending a housewarming for a co-worker during what would normally be the lunch timeslot, then either heading to a lab lunch, or (if I'm feeling lousy) head home and rest. Either day can be pre-empted if I'm feeling like I'd risk relapse by going out. We'll see.
No significant projects or accomplishments (still too woozy and tired). Did get additional information from revar regarding rapid-protoyping patterns, so in theory I'll try to prepare one or more designs over the weekend. In practice, I may just continue resting. We'll see.

Now, puttering and bed.

Current Mood: uncomfortable
Current Music: "Korobeiniki" (one of the traditional pieces used in Tetris)

Slightly Less Sick Day, Humour Quotes, Gaming, and Plans

Felt substantially better today, though certainly not "well". Sinus cold has the edge taken off of it. Still coughing, still woozy, but less severe than yesterday. Best guess is that this will clear up by Sunday or Monday.
Mini-project for the day: An RPG humour quote generator. The "Things Mr. Welch Can't Do in an RPG" list is very amusing, and can be found online: (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4). I've wanted to make a script that pulls up random individual quotes from this for a while, and today I did. It's now online here.

I'm loopy enough from the cold that I managed to have a Riff moment and spend an hour or two stuck in my own time-sink, clicking for new quotes. It's addictive; be warned.
Game of the afternoon was Total Annihilation, again. Still trying to get a feel for the water-based build tree. Normally I don't bother with it (it's the metal-rich tree, and I usually play metal-poor). You can use the metal-poor air-based tree to accomplish most of the same goals, but the story-mode campaign locks out the air tree on the first water map. So, learning the water tree.
Game for Friday, unfortunately, is off. I can't be there due to illness (still sick), so Angus decided to postpone. Bryan may or may not stop by to do character generation, and this time I *explicitly* handed off handshaking to the two of them to sort out (miscommunication via me had caused problems a couple of sessions ago).
Plan for Friday is more recovery. Plan for Saturday is recovery, and VP-slacking if I'm free of symptoms (unlikely, but possible). Plan for Sunday is lunch, taking it easy, and possibly dealing with some of the at-home chores that have piled up and/or a couple of out-of-house errands. Sunday will be scuttled if I'm not free of symptoms on that day. Monday starts a York week per usual (almost certainly will be better by then). We'll see how this goes.

Now, bed.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Terran theme (Starcraft)

Sick Day

Sinus/throat cold is in full swing. This meant I didn't get as much sleep as I needed. Hopefully this won't go on for too much longer.
No noteworthy accomplishments today, due to being in mind-fog.

Now, puttering and bed.

Current Mood: sick
Current Music: "Ghost Pirate LeChuck" theme (Secret of Monkey Island)

Sick Day, Incremental Improvement, Shawl, and Incremental Gaming

Still sick. Cold is changing from a chest cold to a sore-throat-and-sinus-headache cold. In principle, this means I'm getting better. In practice, this means I'm *feeling* worse. Sinus headache fog has been added to cold-medication fog, so not much productive was done.
Token productive item: wove in the ends for the new shawl, finally. It fits, and is a decent size, but if I were doing it again I'd change the angle of the edging (and maybe tweak the shape as a whole again). Moot point for the time being, of course. It's wearable, so I'll keep it.
Token non-productive item: starting the Total Annihilation single-player campaign ("Arm" version). Fun so far, though I'm playing on "easy" (RTSs are not my forte).

Now, puttering and bed. Tomorrow will be more of the same, and improvement will hopefully happen later in the week (otherwise I'll have to cancel out of Mekton).

Current Mood: sick
Current Music: "BM-REX" stage music

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