Of Serendipity And Breakfast Cereal

There is actually a reason for that peculiar title, I'll be getting to it soon.

I need to update more often. I know. I know. I'm just having a lot of difficulties at the moment, lots of demands on my time, and for some reason, my mental health seems to be chipping away at the edges. Can't think why - I'm not under any particularly large amount of stress or anything, but it appears that my mind seems to slowly be fragmenting into a million shrieking pieces. Concentration is becoming more difficult, procrastination is becoming more extreme than usual, even for me...But I overdramatize.

Anyway.

I successfully pulled off my D&D campaign that I've been building up to for a good number of weeks now. With extensive help from my new deus ex machina-esque friend Chuck, who differs from me in that he actually knows what the heck he's doing, I got the castle drawn up nice and proper. Then I shoved the players into it and basically said "The castle is taken. Go." Lots and lots of interesting - what's that? You want to know why I described Chuck in that fashion?

Well, it's very interesting. He popped into my frame of reference Friday before last, seeing us playing a game of D&D and asking if he could join. Apparently, he was starved for a good game, as he hadn't played in a long time. He quickly got into the group, and appeared for next Friday's session, wherein we mistakenly awakened a mighty god-dragon, only to discover that he was not exactly as godlike as he claimed he was, whereupon we hacked him to pieces for trying to destroy us. It was weirder than it sounds, trust me.

I mentioned that I was having difficulty with the castle, and Chuck mentioned that he had designed many castles before - that, in fact, he did so for fun, as a hobby. Stunned by this turn of events, I quickly accepted his offer for help in the design of the castle, and his assistance and sketching was absolutely instrumental to the complete blueprint of the castle I turned out the next day. I call him a deus ex machina not to imply that he's a poorly-written literary construct, but that he seemed to appear from nowhere with the specific skills that I required of someone to help solve my problem. Life is truly a marvel sometimes.

So the game of D&D was grand. My character, a warforged, was mistaken for a gondola by a character who didn't appear to like the fact that robots could talk and have free will now. (He was frozen for a thousand years, I cut him some slack.) Upon the other characters' decision to attack the so-called dragon-god (we didn't quite know he wasn't a god, yet), my character chose instead to surrender and make no action. This later resulted in the others berating him for cowardice. Oh well, I'm not going to apologize for what I see as good roleplaying.

As for my dungeon, whoa-ho-ho, what a game that was. The players spent most of the time shuffling around between the basement and the kitchen, but some of them infiltrated the barracks (to break the siege) and one of them actually got a hit off on the enemy king. This is perplexing, because I had been prepared to cheat rampantly to explicitly not allow this to happen that early on in the campaign, and didn't even have a set HP or Armor Class or anything. But, he played well, and rolled well, and made the hit. Didn't kill him (even an old man has more than 15 HP), but he spooked him enough as to force a major plot change.

Speaking of major plot changes, oh, those players won't know what hit them. I've got a couple of real nice curveballs ready for 'em. But I don't wish to spoil anything.

The week proceeded all right, I suppose. Due to the fact that I'm not going to stay on over the summer, Harry Guscott, the radio guy, said that I should come back in the fall, and we would resume trying to get me on the air then. He said he liked my progress, but it was too late in the year to consider giving me shifts if I wasn't staying for the summer. Oh well. The fall awaits, with plenty of time to build my confidence and skill between then and now.

Tonight I was in the dining hall, and that was a lot of fun. Several things happened that were interesting. First, I ran into a friend of mine, who I have been seeing around a lot recently, despite the fact that I don't share a schedule with him at all beyond the one class a week we have together. I mused on this as I moved towards the cereal.

I must explain that in the rare cases that I have an internal narration, thoughts in words, that is, that I often randomly switch from thinking things to saying them quietly, and back again just as quickly. This resulted in the following monologue:

Ran into Mark again. I do admire... "...the serendipitous nature of the universe. Ooh, Cinnamon Toast Crunch."

That line made me guffaw. I don't normally laugh at my own jokes, but I have been known to laugh at absurdities in my monologues. Such was this.

Then later, a girl stopped me as I was walking to grab a spoon and commented that she really liked my shirt, the one with Red Mage from 8-Bit Theater on it. We had a brief conversation, then she hurried off, without either of us ever so much as learning the other's name. Oh well. Breaks up the monotony of things, certainly.

I've been trying recently to go running every day. The wisdom of this is in question, as I don't know whether or not that's actually bad for you, but I'm going two miles or so at a time, so it's not as though I'm running a daily marathon.

Updates have been sparse. I am sorry about that I promise an update tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday. And very soon I will post the short story I've been working on, about a man who travels through time.

The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day may, for the first time ever, be a repeat. I doubt it, but I honestly can't remember if I've linked to this before. If I have, I'm very sorry. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMZwZiU0kKs It's "Weapon of Choice" with Christopher Freaking Walken dancing to the music. I love it.

REPLIES.

Kelli: Possibly, possibly, but elections are still ahead. I may yet withdraw my nomination. I'll try and find out exactly what the job entails. It might just be general apathy as opposed to specific antipathy, though: several other positions were not exactly full of applicants either. And hazing seems unlikely.

Vaughn: Hoo boy, this is gonna take a while.

I can commisserate with the lack of gaming, because that happened to me for a significant portion of my freshman year. It was a mere fluke that had me realize where the gaming people met up.

I've never heard of "Dr. Detroit," but I'll look into it. And I'd say that your advice is amazing and well-spoken - but I honestly have no plans to go to graduate school at all. I'm majoring in journalism, as you may know, and graduate school for journalism majors is really only for those who wish to teach it. I do not. Technically, some high-muckety-muck journalism grad schools exist for those who want to take high editorial positions at prestigious papers like the New York Times and such, but I don't have any interest in that either.

Mom: I anticipate that it'll be a challenge, and I think it'll be fun. Yes, Picard is what we in my field tend to refer to as "a colossal pillar of ownage." Kirk was cool, and Janeway has a specific brand of awesome, but Picard just owns people's faces until their faces are just completely owned into oblivion. I checked out zombietime, and I liked it.

Jake: Er, I guess. And I did check my email. And I don't like it.

Dad: Maybe so. But honestly I'm beginning to get a bit discouraged. A long string of nothing seemed honestly preferable to a couple of prospects that were swiftly snatched away. Good point about the social chair position and the club I started. Maybe I should mention this to them? More trips to Orlando are always good. I think. And the Gathering of Eagles was indeed great.

Steve: I'm trying desperately to work the whole thing out. And yes, Transformers is awesome. I downloaded the movie recently. Frankly, I'm quite surprised that anyone besides my circle of people I actually know reads this blog. Pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless. My irregular update schedule isn't helping things there...I'm going to try and fix that.

Boxing? Boxing? You? Ha. And perhaps another 'ha.' No, maybe the second isn't necessary. And as I already said, I main Meta-Knight as well. He's neat. And fast. Really fast.

Adios.