Happy

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Today was an awesome day full of surprises and happy.

First surprise was finding out I got a promotion at work. I’m glad people are happy with the work that I’m doing.

Second surprise was coming home to a box from Keith containing these awesome and amazing cups:

Third surprise was trying to make cakepie and having it turn out actually really tasty. It’s double-strawberry with strawberry glaze instead of chocolate cherry because the cherry topping was $expensive and Em didn’t have any chocolate cake mix. But om nom nom nom anyway.

There was also Notre Dame with Tim and Keith.

Whee!

At some point I should try making piecake (which would be the inverse of this… a pie baked inside a cake) but for some reason it doesn’t sound as tasty.

Consumerism fail

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Stumbled across this today and for some reason it’s really pissing me off.
What kind of society are we where the message “You must get your wife/girlfriend/prospect diamond jewelry for the holidays/her birthday/an anniversary or she will be upset with you and hate you and exile you” is an acceptable one?
Are Americans really so materialistic that there are people out there who expect jewelry (cost being irrelevant here) or even any gift at all on holidays and would be upset at not receiving anything?

If you watch the video, there’s a guy that got thrown in “the doghouse” for giving his wife a gift of RAM with a note, “Thanks for the memories.” This is a far better gift than jewelry… not only is it cute and punny, but it’s likely he also noticed her complaining about her computer’s performance and wanted to improve it. It’s thoughtful.
What about the guy who got his wife an abmaster? His speech seemed to indicate that he had listened to the fact that she was worried about her weight/size and wanted to help her out. Perhaps his speech itself was overdoing it, but the gift itself was thoughtful.
What about the main character? He got his wife a very practical gift: a vacuum cleaner. Maybe she’s been complaining about the performance of her old one. Maybe the old one broke.
These are all gifts that I personally would be happy to receive, and that anyone I would consider dating would likewise have to be happy to receive… because it’s not the gift, but rather the fact that they got you something that isn’t a horribly generic gift means that they took the time to think about you and what you mean to them.

I don’t know. I understand that it’s just a stupid marketing message for JCPenny, but I still think it’s disgusting. This past Christmas, I didn’t ask for anything and didn’t want anything. I got some gifts for people because I came across them and thought of them, and only chose Christmas as the distribution time for convenience sake. The best parts of my recent birthdays have been spending time with friends/loved ones… indeed, most of the last few have been devoid of gifts (the last one involved a few small gifts, but meant a lot primarily due to the effort involved and the thoughtfulness of it, the hand-baked cake waiting at one portion, and the person waiting at the end). It bothers me that there are people out there who can’t be content with this and insist on materialistic things instead*.

*Except for kids, who may be too young to appreciate the time spent with family over the shiny new fire truck. But kids should be taught to appreciate sentiment and thoughtfulness over the material object, and in general to appreciate people more than things, so this should disappear as they grow up.

Liek ZOMGZ cards!

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I feel like listing all the different TCGs I own here, just for the sake of doing so. Alphabetical order, for ease of searching.
A (Yes) next to the game name indicates that I have played the game at least once. Plusses indicate how much I play the game (beyond “once”).
A (C) indicates I own additional cards for the game (i.e. bought more than a box of starter decks) and plusses indicate large additional purchases of cards.
A (ND) indicates a game that I don’t have decks for (usually because starters are randomized and I haven’t built decks yet).

  • .hack//ENEMY TCG (Yes+++) (C+++)
  • Austin Powers TCG (Yes; but it was so bad we didn’t finish the first game)
  • Babylon 5 TCG
  • Battlestar Galactica TCG
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer CCG
  • Case Closed TCG (C+) (ND)
  • Clout Fantasy CTG (Yes)
  • Dragon Ball Z CCG (Yes+) (C+)
  • Dragon Ball Z TCG (Yes) (C++)
  • Fullmetal Alchemist TCG (Yes)
  • Genio Card Game
  • Gundam War CCG (Yes)
  • Harry Potter TCG (Yes)
  • Hecatomb TCG (Yes) (C)
  • Inuyasha TCG
  • Knights of the Zodiac TCG (Yes)
  • Neopets TCG
  • Pokemon TCG (Yes+++) (C+++)
  • Rifts CCG
  • Spycraft CCG (Yes)
  • Star Trek CCG (Yes+) (C++++)
  • Star Trek CCG Second Edition (Yes+) (C)
  • Terminator TCG (Yes)
  • Tribbles CCG (Yes)
  • UFS (Yes) (C)
  • VS
  • WARS TCG
  • X-Files TCG (C) (ND)
  • X-Men TCG
  • Yu Yu Hakusho TCG (Yes)

Additional games that I’ve played but do not own:

  • Magic: The Gathering TCG
  • Redemption TCG
  • World of Warcraft TCG

Given that my goal is to play every TCG that I own at least once (what would be the point of buying starters otherwise?), anyone up for some of the ones not marked with (Yes)? I have all of them here with me in SF with the exception of X-Files and X-men.

Additionally, games that I’ve created:
(C) is how much I worked on the game, lack of one means I’ve only hammered out basic rules for the game and haven’t actually created cards.
(ND) indicates that I don’t have printed decks.
(I) indicates that the game was never finished to the point of being playable.
(P) indicates the game is still in the process of being created.

Descriptions of the older ones can be found here.

Christmas and Life

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Christmas this year was amazing. I think it was the first time I’ve had a real (where “real” implies a tree and presents and various Christmas-y things) Christmas since early high school. It was nice just being able to do nothing all day and play games with people… and there was lots of tasty tasty food and wine (the kind I like) and sweets.

I also got presents: a nice t-shirt, a photo album with sticky pages, a ton of tasty gummies, and one giant spherical squishy shark (which is quite possibly the best thing ever). His name is Cat because I have a blue stuffed dog named Poop, and Greg suggested the name so I could tell him to “Eat Poop, you Cat”.

I also bought myself another $70-ish of card games. There’s starter decks for WARS, Rifts CCG, Buffy (the Vampire Slayer) CCG, and Babylon 5 TCG. There’s also a standalone Tribbles CCG box (which got some play over Christmas and is a very simple, yet surprisingly fun, game), a box of Hecatomb starters, and 5 boxes of .hack//ENEMY booster packs (one of each of the five sets; mainly because I love opening and sorting cards and these were cheap, since I already have a nearly complete set of all 5 expansions). These games should get played at some point, if anyone around here is interested.
Also, I think I am now getting hooked on Nertz–a variant of Solitare that involves players playing on each other’s Ace piles–after playing lots of games of it over this past week.

Also, someone sent me a fetus-shaped cookie cutter in the mail. This is probably the most bizarrely awesome present I’ve ever gotten, but I don’t know who it’s from. Who sent me this? Thank you!

Tomorrow I have work again. This is going to feel really weird.

Tomorrow after work will be grocery shopping. I need to get some spinach and mushrooms to make frittata with my remaining eggs. I’ll probably get some chicken to marinate and bake too.

I still need to post photos from Big Basin and the PPL Potluck party. They’re batched and processed but I’m being lazy in transferring them over to this computer and uploading them. I’ll try and do so tomorrow.