Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Breathe in for luck, breathe in so deep...

...this air is best, you share with me...

Not a hell of a lot going on here in J-land, just thought I should write... trying to keep in the habit. Sorrowfell continues to toddle along, never quite dead but never as alive as I'd like... differing schedules, my own random approach to updating, and the slow pace of online roleplaying in general all combine to make a frustrating morass of the storyline, as events that take only seconds in the game - and would probably take a few minutes to play out in real life - go on and on for weeks or months.

But whine, whine... if that's the most I've got to complain about, then I'm doing well indeed, hey? Took today and tomorrow off from the ship to try to get some personal business done, and ended up spending today being a lazy bum - big surprise to everyone, I know. I've done a little laundry and spent some time burning myself at the beach, but other than that I've been right here, doing just this - glued to my computer, snorting frantically to get my internet fix. This is our last weekend in the shipyard, and probably our last weekend in Virginia for some time, coming up; I'm looking at working it, as my 'vacation' in San Diego set me back a little bit, and I haven't been working anywhere near the overtime I should be. I suppose it's pretty cheap to take two days off during the week and then work the weekend for the extra money, but you kinda take these things as they come to you.

The weather's taken quite a swing for the warmer - I'd almost gotten used to the late fall temperatures rolling through the area, and all of a sudden summer rears its ugly head. I've always been a cold weather kind of person, although New Jersey in February of this year came close to freezer burning that out of me; it doesn't help that the pier we berth at in Earle stretches about two miles out into Sandy Hook Bay, leaving us to the tender mercy of a biting wind. Still, I'm most comfortable when the temperature is in the 40-60* F range, and the recent surge into the high 80s has left me miserably overheated... an unwelcome, teasing taste of what we're going to be dealing with in a few months. And I'm planning on sticking around for the next trip to the Gulf, in the summer, where the temperature has been known to reach 120*...? Clearly I've gone crazy.

A random post on one of the NaNoWriMo forums triggered the kewl gadgets lust forever lurking just one small step below my conscious, this time for the very cool looking NEC MobilePro 900c, a handheld PC. Yes, I did just purchase a new laptop, but this one's smaller. I've got something of a craze for tiny computers which my current laptop and its 15" screen just can't handle... I was able to get the 900c for a song on eBay, but now I'm trapped in that horrid sargasso that is the wait for shipping, and the hours - don't even get me started on days, or even weeks - drag by like years. As Carrie Fisher once said, "Instant gratification takes too long."

But with luck, my next update to this blog will come from my new, tiny sidekick - which I like to imagine myself carrying everywhere, ready to spring into writing action at the very moment of inspiration, but which I will probably use in the same manner as I do its much larger cousin, currently comfortably settled into my lap. Now, I just need to think of a name for it...

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