DVDs ready to be shipped this weekend!

UPDATE (Sept. 25th) : I have received the DVDs and I'll be shipping them out this weekend! :) De, can you send me your postal address?

:)

So, I'm getting bored, translating and working and being a good girl (shush, I am _too_ being good! lol), and I feel like doing something random.

A couple of years ago I sent out a few copies of The Corporation to 10 readers who wanted one. It ended up being a fun exercise and lauched some interesting conversations.

This time around, I'm moving away from the serious, environmentally-conscious realm to the geeky, goofy, world of D&D. Just for kicks.

To bring a little chaotic good into this world and to support a great bunch of creative people, I'll send a free copy of The Gamers: Dorkness Rising to five people who reply or email to tell me that they want one (I'll email you privately to get your postal address).

I just saw this movie last night and I couldn't stop laughing. I don't know if people who have never played D&D at all will get as much out of it as people who have, but I suspect so. Just imagine your geeky friends of any ilk (technodorks, sci-fi nerds, anime convention-goers, etc.) and you'll see: these people are for real... lol And very lovable!

(I'm more of an eclectic geek rather than a "specialized" one myself... just a beginner at D&D, but huge film fan, sci-fi, urban fantasy, knowledge of all kinds, social causes and idealistic pursuits, nature, books, lists... LOL So many geeky interests, so little time!)

Any takers? :)

P.S. It's not like taking candy from a stranger, really! Although I am but an anonymous blogger (who wants to remain nameless in this forum, thank you very much), I am not a psycho... Ex-girlscout's honour! ;-)

Mana up!

Thanks to procrastinating, I stumbled upon the blog of a fellow tiki lover and found out about these amazing drinks offered at Think Geek (one of my all time favourite stores).

I am soooo ordering these! (they'll probably taste like sickeningly sweet windshield washing fluid, but hey, I'm buying them for the look!)

They look very much like the mana potions favoured by my World of Warcraft paladin and shaman characters (Alliance and Horde, respectively - hey, I tried the "dark side" because my only "real life"friend on WoW had a toon on that side... honest, I'm a Good Guy at heart! LOL) and that my undead alchemist mage creates too (undead are fun: they can cannibalize the corpses of enemies to restore their own energy! Perfect for a zombie fan like me! hee hee!)

The Layers

Daughter of opinion posted it, and I found it quite relevant to my train of thought these days. I wanted to share it with you guys too :)

The Layers

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising windthe manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me: "Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

- Stanley Kunitz

Or then again...

Looks like my boyfriend might be out of a job at the end of the month.

Long story short, nepotism at work, he got replaced by some boss's nephew or something, and is now pretty much redundant (even though said nephew knows nothing of the business and has already cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in big mistakes). My BF has a new job title, but they'll probably get rid of him (one salary less to pay) by the end of this month, from what he's been told (he just told me, though it's been brewing since "nephew" got hired).

My plans to slow down have suddenly gone down the drain.

On the plus side, if he is let go, he won't be stressed about his job anymore. :p

Pfft. One day at a time, right?

Focus for tonight: lots of freelance.
Focus for tomorrow morning: cleaning, shopping & setting up for BBQ.
Focus for tomorrow after the BBQ: more freelance
Focus for tomorrow evening: quick appearance at a friend's boring b-day party (not all parties are boring, but hers really take the cake in the yawn department), before working the night away. Ditto for Sunday, then the regular "work week" starts again.

I can do this, I still have lots of Red Bull, coffee and tea! :)

Easy fix

So I'm lonely. Big deal. Easy enough to fix:

Once this big translation contract is done (Sept. 16th), I'll finish that accounting stuff I needed to do to create a better budget. Then I'll know how much freelance I need to do, and I can stick to that (not taking on too many contracts).

Then I'll contact my friends and figure out their schedules, and invite them one by one (even though I know it's hard - from experience). My issue, my job to fix it!

And anyway, my best friend has been saying she wants to spend more time together, so even if all the other friends are too busy, or find me uninteresting due to my lack of "mom status", then too bad. Quality over quantity. :)

All I want to do this year is have more time to fix up the house, see friends, and spend more "couple time" with my boyfriend. Surely, I can manage that.

Lonely? Yes.

I just realized last night, as I was talking my head off to my poor Best Friend who lives nearby, as we went on a walk which I couldn't really afford, time-wise, but couldn't afford not to go on, friendship-wise, that I'm kind of lonely after all.

I mean, I don't get to talk a lot. Physically, I mean, using my voice.

I work from my home office (which is great, don't get me wrong) and conduct all my business by email, don't see my boyfriend much in the morning or even at night (he goes to bed early), and I can't talk to him about his stressful work (he asked me not to) or my own stuff (he's too stressed about his own problems to _really_ pay attention to what's going on with me - other than a "are you ok?" last night to which I could see he didn't really want to hear the answer), and I'm not much for pointless small talk.

And on the weekends, frankly, the girls are always there since their mom hasn't been taking them for the last year (the oldest always clinging to her dad and manipulating him, which irritates me to no end) so I retreat in my office and close the door to work (mostly).

Strange. I always thought I'd do well (better) as a lone wolf. Guess not. As more and more friends move away (either physically or isolating themselves due to family, work, etc.), I am increasingly feeling... esseulée.

Now my sister is talking about moving to Québec City with her completely awful boyfriend (out of work, cruises the Internet dating sites to chat up gay men (!), is violent with her during fights...). My parents moved to a different time zone. My best friend is moving to a rural area in less than a year.

I miss physically talking to someone. Emails just don't cut it.

Some real life friends found me on Facebook, but seemed to have lost interest once they realized that I wasn't in the "mom club", or once I "confirmed them" as friends ("friends collectors", I guess).

My "mom friends" can't/won't find a sitter to go out.

My single or childless friends are working/partying hard (or in one case, not working enough and always too broke for a cup of coffee) and don't have much time for just going out with one friend (movie, restaurant, brunch, walk, outing of some sort).

If it weren't for that monthly women's group that I started... 3-4 years ago, I'd never see female friends other than my best friend.

I live in a house full of people but I feel lonely. My Facebook page is full of "friends" who found me, but I feel lonely.

I _am_ lonely.

I'm guilty too. I don't have much free time. I work too much. Out of necessity. But I am taking steps. I'll be slowing down my freelance in the next month or so (for real). But that doesn't solve the issue of me feeling like I am standing still on a highway with people zooming by on the road of their busy life. Look who's talking, I know. I'm aware of the irony. I plan on figuring out a better balance in my life in the next month. That's how I deal with things: identify a problem/need, investigate possible solutions, implement the best option. Review and adapt as needed. ;)

But anyway, I digress. I mostly wanted to write how surprised I am at realizing how little I actually talk these days. I hadn't noticed how little I get to use my voice nowadays.

Cat House on the Kings

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwM6f0liHpo

What an awesome woman! :)

If I ever win a huge amount of money, my crazy dream is to offer free spay/neuter clinics all over the province, in order to drastically lower the amount of unwanted/abandoned/suffering animals.