Avast, Matey!

Well, it finally happened. I got out my Pirates of the Spanish Main set (which I mentioned on here a looooong time ago) and challenged my brother Dan into a game. His kinderlings Jonathan and Caitlin joined us, and we held forth on a merry four-way battle. It was a complete and utter blast, and when Dan tells his wife that it's nearly done for the better part of an hour, you know he's having fun. Jonathan was the first to go down, having first made a pact with Dan concerning some disabled ship and then breaking it. Revenge of the Daddy can be cruel indeed. I, on the other hand, went after Caitlin. She fought valiantly, but my lightning slash attacks left the entire board severely afraid of a little three-masted schooner named Boston - even when there were mighty five-masters around. Gotta love the combination of speed, daring, and good cannon rolls.

Caitlin for some reason decided I was a threat, probably when I pounded one of her ships into submission and left it stranded on an island for the rest of the game. She managed to fight back and capture one of mine, but a fierce retaliation managed to sink the captured ship before she could tow it back, then tangled the rest of her fleet up in a nasty little battle that I eventually won. In the meantime Dan finished wiping out Jonathan, then at Caitlin's urging sent his fleet in my direction. His ships were heavier, so I finished fixing up Caitlin's boats and made ready to use my maneuverability and the nearby islands in my defense. The final showdown was in its first stages with me at the advantage when finally Denise reclaimed her family. We did a quick count-up of the points, and Dan won 71 to 67. If I'd been able to count my own ship that I sank, it would have been different, but fair's fair. And I quite probably would have lost the big battle anyway.

Anyhoo, this is probably the best fun I've had doing anything with Dan in a long time. I'm hoping that someday I can get up to Boise so we can get Thom into a game of PotSM with us. With the sheer amounts of table space available at Dan's house, we could very well spend a whole day rampaging all over each other... Ahhhrrrr!

POP goes the DSL!

This week I got DSL, after years and years and years of wishing I could afford it. As is typical for all things technical and involving me, it's taken pretty much the entire week to get it working right (insert a great deal of knocking on wood here). Still, ah laaaahhk it! All the guilt of tying up the phone line is fading fast, and now I can download stuff and check out all the weird videos I want to. Thom, while I kinda agree that metal rockers dressed like demons is not my thing, I must say that they did pick a rather cute girl for that LORDI video. Still, blonde demon cheerleaders... Ick.

I'm skipping the market today, but only because it's raining. It's a nice steady rain, the kind that will last pretty well the entire day. I love rain, I never feel like I could get enough (and this region definitely doesn't), but I wish it'd waited til this afternoon. Well, I did go down there for a few minutes to say hi to folks and sell a few bags, but Dan and clan are gonna be stuck with the odious task of helping me eat the rest. The horror.

Work seems to be going okay. The head cook had to take a week off to go visit family, and decided to take another half-week without telling us. She's fired now, oddly enough. I don't know if the boss is going to be looking for a new cook, but I'm definitely not going to apply for the job. I've got all I want with the shift I'm on, doing prepwork and dishes. I'm not an ambitious person anymore, or at least my ambition is to keep the job I have rather than stretch for bigger and only theoretically better things. I'm hoping that over the next few months I'll get used to having a job so I can let go of some of my worries and unblock my creativity again.

In the meantime, I've got a half-loaf of foccacia spread with garlic butter, ham, and mozarella baking in the oven for breakfast. Mmmm.....

Stout-Hearted 'Meh'

Well, the blog has escaped the guillotine, mainly because I can't rustle up enough emotional energy to want it gone. Emotional energy seems to be a real scarcity these days, I can't build up enough of it to really do much of anything. I have my job, and I do it well (at least I'm not hearing any complaints), and I thoroughly enjoyed the opening week of the Farmer's Market on Saturday, but aside from that I have all the ambition of a garden slug. When Thom came to visit, I got him interested in putting together a PBEM strategy/empire-building game with me, and since then I've done little but mentally poke at it every now and then. Even the poking doesn't accomplish much. It's hard to be mad at myself about it, though, that requires emotional energy. So instead I feel like a loser. No, this is not a plea for "it's okay, it's not that important, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera" ::King of Siam voice:: I know I'm hard on myself, and I know that putzing around on this game is not the end of the world, but I miss the person I used to be. Once there was a time when I could focus on something and get it done. These days... ::shrug::

I'm planning on having a long talk with my counselor about it tomorrow, I hope he can shed some insight on it, and maybe even direct me toward a way out of this lousy place I'm stuck in. The coffee shop's having its grand opening tomorrow, and that should keep me busy tomorrow. I'm baking some of my Ogre's Den cookies for the boss, since the main cook is busy with everything else. If she likes them, perhaps we'll work out a regular deal.

The Farmer's Market's gonna be my main source of egoboost for a while, though. Work is work, and I'm trying not to invest my self-worth in it since my own insane personal standards would drive me into a tizzy - which is not good for keeping jobs. The new Market location has its bad points, like freight trains that rumble by, but there's a lot of good too. The biggest change is that we now have space! There's two or three times the amount of possible booth space this year, and that much and more parking. I can't see one end of the market from the other now, which is pretty darn cool. The season opener went fantasticly, with a free pancake feed that brought in people by the truckload and a Dixieland band that's always great at putting me in a good mood. Let's face it, "Tiger Rag" is nearly impossible to remain depressed through. Anyway, the market has twice as many vendors this year, and the place stayed packed pretty much the whole morning through. All the food booths, including mine, sold out and it looks like everyone else had a great day too. I really hope we can hang on to this level of interest from the community, that could really make my summer.

Even without the monetary gains, it felt good to be somewhere where I was known for something I wanted to be. I'm the Cookie Ogre, and a very fine Cookie Ogre I am, too. Kids actually dragged their parents all around the market looking for me. My Ogre Laugh brought smiles to people of all emotional ages. My cookies are very yummy. This is a reputation I've built for myself, and whether I feel like hell the rest of the time or not, I have every right to feel proud of this.

Now if only I can get to where I actually DO feel proud of it...

The Year of Our Discomfort

This weblog just turned one, and in retrospect it's very aptly named. Discomfort has been the watchword for the last year of my life, first in gaining a business, panicking about it, then burying it, and then in looking for a new job and Dad's all-over-the-map health. Things have been up now and then, but it feels to me like they've been mostly down. I'm not as strong as I used to be, that or I'm more aware of (and therefore worrying about) the pressures that surround me. The Farmer's Market starts this weekend, that'll hopefully be a major boon to my tortured spirit. It'll be good to hear Jim Keezer's Market Band blowing out the cobwebs with "Tiger Rag" again.

Was there a point to all this maudlin nonsense? Not really. I'm killing some time before my Italian cooking class starts, and trying to decide what value this piece of electronic fluff has for me. I read Thom's because it's a way to keep up with him and because he occasionally writes and/or links to some really interesting stuff. Mine seems to be self-consored ranting and very occasional updates on my life. I have no idea who reads this thing, but I guess if they want (or at least don't mind) self-censored ranting and occasional updates, then who am I to deny them?

As a side note - If I ever take up religion again, I've found the one to join: The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Originally begun as a piece of absurdism to sway a Kansas school board away from mandating Intelligent Design in science class, it seems to have since become an excuse for people all over the country to dress like pirates, wave really bizarre signs, and use the words "noodly appendage" in actual sentences. In short, it looks like great fun and seems to be rather harmless. My only point of contention with their doctrine as far as I can see is their view of the afterlife. In the Pastafarian (yes, that's intentional) heaven, there are beer volcanos and a stripper factory. Since I really don't have a use for a beer volcano or a stripper factory, I wonder exactly where this would leave me in terms of eternity. Also, I find myself wondering what exactly the factory uses for raw materials, and what would happen if the supply ever exceeded the demand. Also, is there a production line for male strippers, or is it a misogynistic afterlife?

At any rate, given that I'm cooking Italian tonight, it's gonna be REAL hard not to crack FSM jokes in class...