Listening: "Bold Femme" playlist
Mentally Replaying: narrative explained in e-mails and AIM conversations
I'd rather be body surfing
Considering: a budget that encompasses holiday presents, attention to my car and a mini vacation that leaves me enough to live on
Desiring: an ability to budget well
Physical Aches and Complaints: None

I'm currently dealing with some stuff in the Cam that makes me feel frustrated, primarily at my inability to just roll with it. I'm not in it as a player, so I should just ease up and play it cool but I don't want to find out later I or any one of my players was a victim of Cheese. It's happened before and I'm desperately trying to keep it from happening again.

But the player in question is playing it perfectly cool and keeps telling me not to stress. And he's right it's just....

There's something about Vampire that sucks every ounce of creativity from me. It gets so that I feel triumphant when I remember some arcane rule rather than create a story that lives and breathes independent from the mechanical constraints of its world. That's so depressing.

I spent the weekend gaming, no vampire this time just two mage games and two garou games. I really should have stopped after Saturday though. I can only make through so much gaming before my brain quits. Or maybe they should have put the longest game at the beginning of the week. I am completely incapable of staying with more than six hours of gaming in one session, let alone after three previous games (especially when I ran one of them). On the upside I don't have to run any more games this month. The downside is the same as always if I want to avoid more games and not feel like a hermit I have to convince someone else to drop all of their plans and hang out with me.

I had a really good night last night once I got home. No one was available and it was nice to be forced to stay home and hang out. Happily I curled up under a blanket with a cup of coffee and reread a chunk of The Two Towers, idly scoured a few gaming books, had some rainbow sherbet for dessert and turned in.

Maybe if I keep having nights like that I might just save some money.

In completely unrelated news I've been thinking more and more about switching jobs. Not anymore pressing, really, I just have less and less reasons to keep me wanting to stay where I currently work. The work itself is mindnumbing, the people that I got along with well enough to confide my personal life with already got out and pushed on with their life goals (even as they took on a new batch of hefty loans). It's hard to see the point of working when the primary load of my paychecks go toward paying bills (nearly a third of my take-home goes to my rent which is cheap for LA), loans and savings and stock purchasing plans. All the rest of it is sucked up by the regular need to eat and feed my car. Supposedly the savings and stock plans will make it so I have money later on but it's barely of any use to me for the two years before I'm exempted from paying income tax on the stocks I have and may divest. And in the six month periods between stock purchases I essentially live from paycheck to paycheck.

There have been vague rumblings from management that the next performance review period will be favorable for all of us. But I'm not sure just how favorable. The last review that I had with my manager was frustrating because the hard data said that I'm a straight up average worker. Funny, it doesn't feel that way when I bust my ass day in and day out. I tried to point out to her that all the "hard" data she had at her disposal was the product of one of three systems that had been discredited as an actual measure of our effectiveness. She said she understood after all we were graded on attendance and it looked bad if we took our (alloted!) sick days, and the productivity numbers were under great debate as a sure way to determine how much on the ball we are. Then there's quality scores, for which the manner of determining our actual precision has changed so many times it's a wonder any of us can remember what our job's goals are anymore.

So I don't feel good about my own chances for indpendent advance. If the rising tide that's been rumored to be coming our way actually hits I hope it does raise my little boat, but it's not likely to put me ahead of the game.

Switching gears again: the weather has been at it's SoCal best. It packed in a bunch rain at the end of last week, scubbed the air clean and Sunday was one of the most gorgeous days I've seen in a while. There's just something about looking at downtown in the evening when the air and the sky is so clear the skyline just sparkles. Of course the other side El Niño is that when it's not raining it's very warm and slightly windy making it very dry and slightly staticky.

And finally, some day I need to remember to switch my party affiliation. I'm not sure whether I'll go Green or independent. Currently I'm Reform - I had registered during an off year and some of what the local party members resonated. When the next presidential elections rolled around the whole Pat Buchanon-thing got the drop on me and I disassociated myself from them but never got around to actually changing my affiliation. Not that I mind if some of the powers-that-be take my membership to mean I support dismantling any institution that is in any way associated with abortion or supporting gay and lesbian rights. Nor do I care if they think I'm all for jailing doctors that provide abortions and shaming women who get them, oh yeah and all queers should be locked up and there should be a fence along the southern border of the U.S. manned with armed marshals that will kill anyone crossing the fence in either direction. And heck while we're at it let's collar and ID all dark skinned people and people who speak any language other than or in addition to English. And kids can only speak English in schools. If they can't do that then obviously they don't deserve our schooling. And don't even get me started on the evils of premarital sex or the dangerous people who get divorces. And religion? Duh, all non-christian people will be banned from this country.

OH, wait no, as it happens I do care. *sighs*

I'm starting to figure not only why people don't vote but why most people choose not to keep themselves particularly informed by the world around them. It's gotten extremely annoying to listen to grown men who were given the trust of their constituents act little better than children on a school yard some taunting "nyeah, nyeah!" others crying, "But he started it, he wouldn't give me the ball and it was my turn to play!" It gets so everytime NPR feels the need to air an extended version of Dubya's latest speech I am compelled to change the station. I just can't take him anymore, on any level.

I used to think it was dumb to willfully avoid the news, but more than once in the past week I've found myself listening to the idiocy that is Kevin & Bean just to get away from the nonsense that comes from the Hill.

Anyone else notice that we might be at war by the week's end?

I feel more than a little bit at a loss for what to do. And I fully understand that most people *never* believed that there has ever been anything they could possibly do to change the course of their country. I don't entirely blame them. The powers that be have a vested interest in keeping this as the status quo. So long as the ordinary plebeian doesn't realize that he has the option of voting for someone else, nothing will really change. Both Republicans and Democrats are fighting tooth and nail for control of the middle range of voters, moderates of all colors, it is believed come together in this unchallenging, vanilla range. Rather than having bold new ideas and believing in them wholeheartedly and getting the voter to inform himself and make a decision, pundits are trying to get ahold of the ideas that masses of people have put together. At this rate we're not far from having permanant mob rule over this country.

I can understand the need to get more votes than the other guy and therefore going to where the votes are. But let's investigate where the majority of these votes are, shall we? The bell curve theory states that the greater number of things will come to rest in the middle of a given range rather than at either end. Where do we see this? Well following this theory of averages, an average schoolkid gets grades that range from B- to D+ and ten percent of the time gets A's and F's. Average people come up with average ideas. They are of average intelligence and average creativity. Mix this all together and you get an average approach to every situation in life. If every situation in life is about how to get a job and earn a living and maybe create and maintain a family (average things, all) then the average person is set. But I'm hard pressed to believe that's a good idea among our leaders.

While I'm not espousing that the electorate be limited to individuals of above-average intelligence, sometimes I worry that the pundits that get elected to represent don't think beyond representation to a level that is a synthesis between their constituents, the Constitution and creating a new process for governance that doesn't labor on in the traditions that have been repeatedly found lacking.

I don't think it's ok, or even cool that our president is an ordinary, regular guy. I don't know his actual intelligence range; the media makes it hard to see a complete picture. But based purely on the actions that have come from his various offices don't give me a good feeling. Being an ordinary guy shouldn't be a qualifier for the most important office this country offers. Likewise not being ordinary, and in fact being very intelligent shouldn't be a disqualifier.

So yeah, I'm good at stressing over things I have little control over.