My rainy day craft box

Subject line has nothing to do with either calling in sick on a Monday or a certain song by New Order, brilliantly covered in the late 90's by flash-in-the-pan industrial goth act Orgy. No, I call it Blue Monday because the color of the outdoors today was about two shades off from that blue filter ubiquitous to horror movies these days. Naturally I loved it. I planned to go for a walk in my new neighborhood but of course it started raining and hasn't stopped since: the kind of fat, gloppy, poisonous drops that are a hallmark of autumn days in the Midwest.

The lack of a walk was disappointing but not defeating. One thing I have not been today was bored. I have done a ton of laundry, started running our boxes of dishes through the dishwasher, and finally started cleaning the kitchen shelves to place said dishes upon. It is starting to feel like we actually live here. I had wanted to get started on the painting we are required to do but I can get away with putting it off a few more days.

About three years ago I bought myself a stack of Playstation 2 games for Christmas and never played any of them. I've made it a goal to start digging through the stack. Today I started on Kuon which is an interesting little survival horror game you've probably never heard of. If you've played Fatal Frame it has a similar premise: young woman with psychic powers goes to investigate a haunted mansion where someone close to her has disappeared and must defeat ghosts in unconventional ways. I think it even uses FF's graphic engine. Difference is that it's set in feudal Japan instead of the modern era and instead of a camera you use exorcism strips, which if you're not familiar with as a Westerner, watch anime for a couple of hours and you will be.

I really like this game. It's got an intricate plot that's as good as anything in the genre, plenty of jump scares, beautifully rendered graphics, and unlike Silent Hill the controls don't actively fight you. Although since your protagonists (you switch characters during the game,) are frail teenaged girls who've never had to hurt anyone before they're still only marginally more effective in hand-to-hand combat than the shambling, mindless undead they run up against. I'm sorry I waited so long to play it but I can't wait to see where it goes.

After gaming it was time for bass practice. Finger style is getting easier finally although I'm still a long way from mastering the gallop. I want to practice the six string more but this gallop business has me obsessed.

So now I've finished job hunting for the night and I suppose finished the day as well. Thankfully it did not go the way blue filtered horror movies usually do.

It's Labor Day here in the U.S., a day we celebrate the fact that we have jobs by not going to work. Unless you're me, because it's my job to be at work when no one else is. But I love it because not only am I getting paid time-and-a-half, but I have the whole building to myself.

Kind of hard to get too happy though, considering that I'm basically sitting here watchng New Orelans get hit by Hurricane Gustav. It looks like more people evacuated this time so it won't be as bad as Katrina, but who knows what the flooding is going to be like.

This weekend was very good. It was just what I needed, except or the most boring World of Warcraft raid ever. It's pretty sad when you're seeing endgame content and wishing you were running low-level dungeons on your level 25 priest instead. Otherwise I did a little reading, a little writing, a lot of eating, and even got some exercise. I might even be getting the hang of ironing my shirts, although I'm always going to be a little wary about that.

Hopefully this will be a much better week. Hopefully I won't be jinxing it by saying so.

Apropos of nothing, why am I on a 90's music kick lately? Last week my inner soundtrack featured Soundgarden, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Nirvana. Now it's the Gaelically-styled banshee shrieks of Dolores O'Riordan. Why is it in my head? In my he-e-ead? Zombie, zo-AHM-bie, zo-AHM-bie-ie-ie...

Like I've been saying to people all day, if this is what two hours of sleep feels like it's no wonder Heath Ledger took too many sleeping pills. I'm right at that point of tiredness where it starts to feel like a really good buzz. I think that's the point where you have to be extra careful...

And it's cold too. Watching the theromometer on my car while driving in to work at 3:20 this morning was like watching a time bomb tick down. 4 degrees... 3 degrees... 2 degrees... The part of my job that involves being outside was nice for keeping me awake. Now I'm inside for the rest of the day sitting in a chair. I don't think I'm at risk of nodding off yet. Yet.

Anger is the best caffeine. I'm still furious over the article I linked to in the last post but I don't trust myself to write coherently about it in the state I'm in. I could barely write coherently about that at the best of times. I'd like to take all the Christian bullies like the ones described in that article, put them in an arena with all the sadistic little atheists you find on the internet who scream about how religion is for fools and everyone who believes in anything is moron, arm them all with rusty kitchen implements, and let the mayhem ensue.

This is why I shouldn't talk when I'm this tired.

This morning it looked like the weather forecasters had done to our city what men have been doing to women since the dawn of time: promising eight inches and not delivering. But I think we're going to make up for it today. We're getting our first big fluffy snowfall of the year. Much nicer than the sheets of ice we had earlier in the week.

The bad news is my friend's bellydance performance tonight has been cancelled... and right after I found it was tonight too. So I guess we're reverting to our original plan of staying in, watching movies, and ordering pizza. Not as fun as watching dance, but there are worse ways to spend a winter night.