Ebooks

Another early morning thanks to a small kitty who was determined that I should get up. I tried to tell her that it was Sunday, and I could sleep in, but nooo, I had to get up and feed her. She sat on me and yanked on my blankets with her little claws. She's very persistent. After I fed her, I tried to go back to sleep, but that wasn't happening. I was now Awake and Annoyed about it. So I got up. Now I'm sitting in the living room, just kind of relaxing. Jess and I may go out for lunch today, but that's the only thing I have planned.

Work yesterday was a blip. I took three calls in 4 hours. I spent most of the time chatting with friends both work and non. By the time 12pm rolled around, my phone was down to 50% from me being on it so much. Fortunately, I did get a new charger for my desk. I was charging it off my computer, but I'm paranoid about getting dinged for a security risk, so I just got a plug.

I was ready to murder my sister. Our freezer is full. She's seen me do the fridge tetris. So why in fucks. name would you order a bunch of non-essential frozen shit? Most of it is residing in the fridge. In trying to Jenga, she was making a ton of noise, dropping shit, and cussing. My desk is literally less than 10 feet from the fridge/freezer. I was working. What the ever living fuck?

Once I finished work, we relaxed for a little while while she showed us every cute dog and baby on her feed. I don't object to either, but as I was trying to watch a video on our cruise ship, it was moderately annoying.

Finally at 2:30, she went out and silence descended. We watched the last four episodes of Hazbin Hotel, which was great. I really enjoy the character in my profile pic. He's going to be a big. bad one of these seasons. His name is Alastor and he's amazing. Snarky, full of himself, and utterly hysterical. He was kind of the hero of the season, by being a manipulative, scheming little asshole. I'll be sad when I'm supposed to root against him, but for now, I love him so. He is my blorbo. No more episodes until 2027 I think. So that's sad, but I want them to let their animator's sleep and have a living wage, so I will wait. Amazon as already ordered the next two seasons, so that's awesome.

After that, we had dinner and watched some of the Ghost Rite Here, Rite Now concert. Unfortunately, about a third of the way through, the dog wanted to be taken in the bedroom and snuggled, so we laid in there and watched all the clips of the concerts as shown in Ghost's Ghoulbanger's Ball. It was nice, and we snuggled the dog and watched videos.

Eventually, my 5am morning caught up with me, and I had to go to bed. My sister got home soon after, so I'm glad Jess wasn't up until too late.

I was out for Comic Con the day they asked for volunteers for January Saturdays, and I didn't bother on Monday whe I got back, so I have no Saturdays in January. Honestly, the money is nice, but it's not so much that I'll miss it. Our bills are fine on what I get normally. It'll be nice to have the ability to sleep in on Saturdays.

I got a really sweet compliment yesterday from summerstorm about one of my homebrew worlds. They're helping me with their graphic design skills, making some maps for my next campaign. The world is barely fleshed out, with some of the basics worked in, but they were very complimentary, and that was really sweet. Totally made my day.

This is the game that I'm considering putting on Drive Thru RPG once I finish writing it, so that people can buy it and run it for themselves. It's nice to have someone who's not involved in the campaign that I can use as a sounding board. (They are of course, getting credit and profit sharing!)

Maybe I'll work on that this morning some. Part of the challenge is that I'm working on tying this into the players backstories, so I need to strip that out, yet still make it compelling. I think I can do it, but it'll be a lot of work. It cant be worse than some of the premade modules that Wizards of the Coast has put out.

And on that note, if I'm going to work on it, I should do that. Everyone have an awesome Sunday!

It's Saturday! I just need to do 4 hours of work and I'll be done and can commence...whatever it is I want to do today.

I was thinking that I might make cinnamon rolls, but we'll see how much energy I can dig up to do it with. Right now, I'm very sleepy and want to take a post-work nap. There's a possiblity I can do it tomorrow, depending on game, but I don't neccessarily want to risk that. I'd rather do it today if I have the energy. We'll see.

My sister is going over to friends to exchange presents, so we'll be at home with the dog. Hopefully, she's not out too late. I would like to go to bed early, since I had game last night and was up late, then got up early for work. I've done it, before where I had a game Saturday night as well, but I prefer not.

Last night's game was so much fun. December has been a wasteland for games. People have actual lives, so it's thrown everything into a tumult. Today was our first campaign game in closer to a month. And while I love one shots, there's nothing quite like a campaign. Especially one that's been going for a little while. The characters kind of slot together and work as a team, and it's a lot of fun.

I'm not sure Vecna was the thematic game to play at the holidays, but oh well.

Work was fairly slow, though they kept me busy calling people for sooner appts.

Today, I'll watch the cancellations and try to get in as many people as I possibly can.

I got an email on Wednesday after I'd left from out big cheese. I went to reply today and realized that she'd only sent it to the Head manager, the assistant manager and me. May I just say WTF? How did I end up in this email chain? It's about getting a patient in sooner for a Cardiac, so it makes sense, but it's always a little disconcerting when the head of your department knows enough about you that she's addressing "lets get this done" emails to you. I mean, I absolutely will get this dude in. No issue there. But if I'm going to be one of the point people, I am definitely going to need more money.

I was looking at my calendar and realized that our vacations are creeping closer. First up is next weekend in Philly. Looking forward to it. We're going out for dinner with our friends on Friday night, then we're going to the zoo on Saturday. We may go back out to the zoo in the evening for their holiday lights, and then Sunday we shall have brunch and head home.

Then, on Feb 7, I ended up getting tickets to see Bianca Del Rio's comedy show. She's a drag queen who I loved on RuPaul's Drag Race. I'm not really a festival type of person, so when I saw that she had a solo show, I was interested. We got really good seats for not too much money, so I'm happy.

Then, April 18th, we head up to NYC for the Lost Boys musical. I'm looking forward to my 80's nostalgia binge. I'm debating between the train or getting us a car for the day. I'm going to check with the car company I use to see how much it would be to do that. If not, train it shall be, I'm just lazy and spoiled.

Then in May, the big one. Alaska. I truly cannot wait for that one. I'm really looking forward to it. Bucket List trip, first class all the way. I know it won't be perfect, no matter how much I want it to be. But hopefully getting there will be seamless. I can't plan it any more, for sure.

After we get settled in, I do want to run down to the Neptune Lounge and speak with our Concierge. I'd like to put in a standing order in the mornings for a pot of coffee and a plate of pastries to arrive, so that I can drink coffee and sit on the balcony to watch for whales and dolphins and seals.

We have a coffee maker, but a nice round of pastries would be nice. I'll probably head to the Lounge for my second, esspresso drink.

Breakfast will either be in the Club Orange dining room or the Lido Buffet, Lunch early at the buffet, and then dinner in the Club Orange Dining room. I'm going to come off this cruise so spoiled, having everything delivered to me or being waited on for every meal.

In between, Holland America is big on enrichment talks about the areas we're going, and there'll be bingo and pre dinner smoked old fashions in the ocean lounge.

And of course the ports! Juneau, we shall explore and do whale watching. Skagway, the White Pass Scenic Railroad and Ketchikan we shall have a crab feast and tour a brothel.

I want it to hurry up and get here! But alas, 131 days.

Which of course, means I have 131 days to get the dog acclimated to a sitter. That should be fun.

Okay, time for me to get myself together. Everyone have the very best Saturday!

It's Friday! One day of work! Then, I do work tomorrow, but that's okay. I may yet see if someone else wants to work it, because the extra $$ would be nice, but so is sleep. Plus the dog has his day of beauty tomorrow, so then I could take him. The sleep would be especially lovely, since we do have a game tonight.

Christmas went very well. We got up and opened presents, of which there were way too many. Everyone seemed super pleased with their gifts. I got so many shirts and leggings, it was great.

Jess really likes their teapot, which I am happy about. After work, I need to set the table up, so that they can use it for game tonight. My sister seems to like her earrings, and slippers, so that's also good.

After that, we relaxed for a while, and my sister went to the in-laws for lunch. I prepared the rib roast (so big) and put it in the oven on low. Then we watched two episode's of Hazbin--I'm up to episode 4/8 in season 2. Sadly, season 3 won't be out for a long while. The problem with animation.

The roast was done early, so I went ahead and made the Yorkshire pudding. It did not puff up the way it should have, instead being a little dense pan of bread. It's okay, it was still really tasty.
Then, I started the mashed potatoes boiling. Once they were done, I pulled out the garlic confit, and put a handful into the steaming potatoes while I mashed them. Add a little half and half and a bit of salt, and viola! Creamy garlic potatoes. We had leftovers of them, too. I saved them, because they were damned good.

Fortunately, the sister and BIL got home around that time, and so we got ready and had some dinner.

It was really good. Everything turned out well, and we had a lovely dinner. I had gotten a big serving platter, so I did tableside carving of the roast, which was the perfect medium rare temperature. It was truly delicious (A+ for Alton Brown) and tender, so I was very pleased. We had horseradish cream sauce and horseradish aoli to go with it.

I ate way more than I needed to. Afterwards, I was very tired. I went to bed a bit early, and slept like a log.

Today we shall have work, which is unlikely to be terribly busy, and then we shall have game.

Tomorrow, Yoda gets groomed, and then, we shall relax. Maybe go out for dinner. We'll see.

For now, I shall go forth and get myself together. Everyone have a most excellent Friday!

It's Christmas, y'all!



I have been waiting and preparing for this day for weeks, yet I'm still waffling on what time to start my culinary machinations. I'm thinking that I'd like to have the roast in the over by 11, so I'll need to prep everything around 10:30am. I'm thinking it takes about 4 hours for the rib roast to cook, as it will be low and slow, but I want a little extra time built in, just in case. The Yorkshire pudding will be done last minute, probably around 4. The potatoes will be on at 3:30, so I'll start chopping at 3. Peas take 7 minutes in the microwave, so they're last. Then I'll add a bit of olive oil and some chipotle seasoning to make them pop. Dinner will start no later than 5. At some point in there, I'm going to watch some more Hazbin Hotel, and we'll open the frankly ridiculous amount of presents in the living room (we all went overboard a bit).



Yesterday was utterly dead at work. I think I got three calls between 7:30am and 2pm. It was painful. I was so utterly bored. I did put in the garlic confit on my lunch break, which turned out amazingly well. I'll be adding that into the potatoes when I mash them to give them a nice garlic flavor. By the time I got off work, I had a bit of a headache, and my sister was being super interactive, so I went and laid down for 45min until it was time to take her to the inlaws for Christmas Eve dinner. I had a helper for most of it.



Boodle insisted in sitting on me and pulling the covers away from my head so she could smack me in the face while Yoda sat outside the door and cried because he couldn't get to me.



Once my sister was safely at the in laws, Jess and I sat on the sofa and watched Hazbin for a couple of episodes.

I continue to enjoy the hell out of that show. The songs are really bangers, and the plot about sinners trying to find redemption in hell is pretty compelling. I love the idea of horrible people finding found family.

Tomorrow, it's back to work, probably for another relatively quiet day. Hopefully, it won't be quite so boring.

So however you do or don't celebrate today, I hope you have an stupendous Thursday!