Current NaNoWriMo Word Count: 34,587 words. It's the home stretch my friends, and of course I'm getting nervous as heck about whether or not I'm going to make it all the way to the finish line in time. I'm still behind in terms of the estimate daily quota by at least another 3,000 words and given the work week is already starting, I know that I'm going to have some challenges with squeezing in enough writing time before the month (and thus he "competition") ultimately ends.

Gaming day was good, as always. It also helped that Adrian and Nabs were okay to stay a bit longer this time around so even if we started yesterday's session rather late, we still covered a lot of ground and got a fair amount of gaming done. Plus Mahar had come from a wedding and brought along some fortune cookies and buko pie to help make the game day a lot more...flavorful. Or something - I'm sure there's a better word for it, but it fails to come to me right now.

Today has been largely light. Tobie and I woke up in the afternoon and that gave us time to check on online stuff, prepare some more for the upcoming Trinity game that we'll be starting soon with other gaming group and eventually a nice dinner of munggo while watching George Lucas' THX 1138. It was a pretty impressive movie that had me thinking about similar films like A Clockwork Orange and even Equilibrium but with an entirely different level of mind-fucking. And here's me thinking that Lucas was just a good conventional storyteller who sticks to movies with more mass market appeal. It now almost seems like a disappointment that he doesn't make more movies similar to THX.

On a bit of a side note, I got into an interesting IM conversation last night with a friend of mine about developments with his ex. It's odd to think that I can now more directly relate to such conversations since I've actually been through the transition from one relationship to another. I'll not go into details in terms of what was discussed, but in summary it was more of the usual observations of how people behave after a break-up, especially in a social-networking environment. It's perfectly understandable for the most part but at times it certainly doesn't make things any easier to deal with but that's life and all that. Funny - I've gotten so used to giving relationship advice over things I may not have had direct experience with but at the very least now the post break-up routine is something that I have better insight about.

So there.

Work looms on the horizon and I still want to experiment with this Sew No More fabric glue to see if it's any good. Wish me luck!

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I love the guy with a hat - as far as recurring xkcd characters go, he's a genius!

First, a very Happy Birthday to the Julia Child of Gaming - Adrian! A very Happy Birthday, "James"! I look forward to the day that we meet again and I get to dismantle your evil domain! Nyahahaha!

I'm feeling pretty beat - this work week has felt somewhat longer than others. I guess one could say that it's been busy and just leave it at that. But perhaps its more about it being rather "heavy" in many aspects and that's what has really taken its toll on me. Then again, that's the working world for you and you just need to keep rolling with the punches as they say. To cap off my weekend, tomorrow morning we'll be hosting this quarter's Best Practices Forum. It's one of the bigger ticket items that's part of my area of responsibility and as much as I know it'll go well, I still get nervous.

I imagine yesterday's post was a bit confusing (and perhaps even unnerving to a limited degree) and I suppose it all is. It's a lot to handle but it's not something I can't deal with, don't worry. It's just fairly big and longer term readers of this blog will know that I've always used my writing as an output. Rather than go nuts with dealing with the gravity of things in my head, I've always found it to be helpful to try and take it out of my head, place it it on a space where I can allow letters and the dictates of language to help better define it and subject it to further thought and consideration. It's like creating a scale model of something for scientific purposes in order to give you something that can be better used for experimentation.

Okay, this is getting nerdier and geekier by the minute. So sue me.

The bottom line is don't worry, I'm okay. Or at least I will be. Besides, I have Archer in my life and as always he is being the amazingly awesome guy that he is and tells me all the right things that I need to hear. I'm serious when I say ALL of them, even the darker ones that hide in the recesses of my mind. That's just the way our life together is, I suppose. That's how things go when you more so completely in sync with another person in so many ways. Ah life.

Now it's time for a quick dinner before work. I cooked the usual buttered mixed veggies and pork chops while Tobie has prepared a rather hearty salad. Yes, yes, I'll be taking photos. =D

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Now that's truly being smart about the, err, shall we say "Narnia Phenomenon"? =D

Current NaNoWriMo Word Count: 26,726 words. I would have made more progress had I not gotten obsessed about recreating the Aeon Trinity character sheets in Google Docs for my other gaming group. We're preparing to start a new game using this system and I'm pretty excited - it's time for some science fiction gaming action! But yes, I will keep working on my story, too.

Work continues to be rather interesting and busy in its own way. I still haven't gotten back to the on-going physical exam proceedings - when I took mine, the optometrist wasn't present. I hate the fact that I still need to go back to finish things, but then it's just one more step then I'll be in the clear. The only thing more than undergoing a annual physical exam at the office is to get a memo a month later if I didn't get it done. Bleh.

Today was another FAIL in terms of trying to wake up Tobie after shift. I got home close to 09:00am and ended up falling asleep beside him while trying to read the Trinity source book. We fully woke up hours later at around 02:00pm, which meant (1) I had pretty much met my quota in terms of sleep for the day, (2) but I was doomed to getting sleepy in the middle of my shift later and (3) we scarcely had enough time to get our original errands done for the day. After some consideration, we opted to push through with things and made our way out for the weekly grocery run.

Originally, the first step was to pass by the bank to deposit money for our respective accounts but given how all of this was very outside our normal routine, I stupidly forgot to bring my money with us when we left the Sietch. So scratch the bank ran, at least for today. Then it was off to Shopwise to restock our rather sad-looking larder and we ended up getting a significant amount of meat for the day. Normally we get a lot more veggies, but then they didn't look too amazing plus it wasn't discount produce Tuesday. Given the contents of our cart though, it might have been a wee bit better to have gone on discount meat Thursdays, but too late for that now.

At least we got that major errand finally out of the way.

So now we're back to full operating capacity and I'm already in the process of cooking some pork afritada for our pre-shift dinner. See your cabinets and the fridge full of food again is rather comforting and it definitely ranks up there with the feeling of satisfaction after taking a shower in a bathroom you just cleaned yourself.

Yeah, I guess I get a little weird that way.

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All of us geeks in the working world have probably felt this more than once in our careers by now. Meh.

Current NaNoWriMo word count: 13,155 words. Still under the daily quota, but a lot better than expected. Tobie's challenging me to reach 20,000 words by the middle of the week and I haven't a clue how I might manage that. Still, this whole NaNoWriMo exercise is definitely invigorating and I'm glad that Tobie convinced me to try it this year.

Yesterday's game was pretty awesome. After not playing for two weeks, it was definitely a welcome return to geekery plus the story continues to get more and more complex. I narrowly escaped death while trying to negotiate the surrender of the Seasonal Courts, made Maleficent fall in love with me, which became a distraction for Captain Hook (who now has the powers of the Tooth Fairy) to go all red hulk on her and ate her. I escaped to Wonderland and made Peter Pan's crocodile fall in love with me in order for the Mad Hatter to prepare some tea. That's the best synopsis I can write, and that's just for my plot thread. That hardly factors in Adrian dealing with his new godhood, Nabs coping with her evil twin and Mahar trying to figure out what to do with his twins, one who is now human and totally forgets his character because he made her forget and the other who looks like Ian Somerhalder, but blond.

Yeah, just another typical gaming day because of Tobie. And don't get me started on Sora and Kairi making an appearance.

I spent the rest of the night managing my recently downloaded files, writing more of my novel for NaNoWriMo, enjoying a late night meal of friend giniling with potatoes, carrots, peas and some egg on the side and eventually sleeping earlier than I'd have liked. Today was getting the laundry done, making chicken tinola for dinner without the ginger (since I ran out), watching two more episodes of Community with Tobie and taking photos all the while. I'm definitely getting back into my photography groove but definitely aching for a much more powerful camera again. Ah well, I'm sure I'm bound to find a good camera sale in time for the holidays or something.

Current gadget wish list: a nice mega zoom bridge camera like the Sony Cybershot H50 or HX1 and a netbook like the Asus EEE 1005HA. Ah credit card, you'll get your chance soon enough...

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It's strips like this one that really remind that (1) I'm such a geek and (2) I love xkcd.

First, a very Happy Birthday to fellow geek, mistress of New Worlds website and member of the 501st, Rej! When are we getting drunk? Where's the party? LOL

Current NaNoWriMo Word Count: 9,727 words. I was hoping to have broken the 10,000 word barrier before bed, but then I was more tired than I realized today and fell asleep a lot earlier than expected. The last thing I remember was having McDonald's for breakfast with Tobie while catching Tomb Raider on HBO, then a detour to the bedroom, then nothing. Argh. And now Tobie has surpassed me and the 10,000 word mark to boot! Insidious!

I'm definitely looking forward to the weekend. Tobie and I had been talking about a potential trip to the spa today since we've both been feeling minor aches and pains throughout the week and we could definitely use a good massage. This'll probably mean a trip to Wensha later tonight after Tobie's finished with his work for the day. Then tomorrow our gaming sessions are going to resume, and this marks the beginning the start of our second "season" of sorts since we've already finished some pretty major story arcs across 13 "episodes". Yes, we've been gaming for THAT long now, hehe.

Other than that, I have a LOT of writing to get done this weekend whether in order to queue more entries for the Geeky Guide or to get more writing done for my NaNoWriMo story, The Interrogation. I'm well into the second chapter, which has a completely different tone compared to the first. I chose to write a more action-driven story this time around compared to the first segment if only to make it more interesting and hopefully to drive me to write more. I definitely think it's helping and with luck I'll be done with this chapter before the day's over. Here's to hoping!

I'm hungry.

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It's funny when one webcomic (for example xckd) inspires another webcomic (case in point, Bunny). Oh, and LEGO!!!

Happy Wheelie Day!

After a day of working on it on and off, I only have 4,519 words and one Geeky Guide review to show for it. I guess I'm still getting distracted by other geekery plus it's taking me a while to get the writing juices flowing in my brain. The story, which I'm now calling The Interrogation, is starting to come along a little better and it's starting to make more sense in my head. I could probably do for going back and adding more descriptions or elaborating on certain scenes to flesh things out more, but for now I'm just focused on writing as much as possible and pushing the story forward. It's weird to be writing this determinedly again, but it's also quite invigorating. Blogging is one thing but fiction writing is a completely different ball game. I'm just glad to be back in the game.

I'm taking the holiday today in the hopes of getting as much writing done as possible and to spend quality time with Archer. Today is a Wheelie Day after all, and that's always a cause for celebration. Tonight we're thinking of staying in and sort of recreating our first in-person encounter. This means ordering Shakey's pizzas for dinner (which I just did before starting this entry) and playing a few rounds of NetRunner. Flirting and / or playing footsie may be involved in order to attain true historical accuracy, LOL

It's funny how we've come to celebrate this pretty much every month. It's sort of a monthsary celebration, but it's a lot more than that since technically Wheelie Day wasn't the day that we agreed to be together. That came like a month or so later, depending on how you interpret the complicated chain of events that led to me committing to Archer. Normally Archer finds ways to make Wheelie Days special, even if it's just dragging me off to lunch somewhere nice in case Wheelie Day falls on a work day or we think of nicer things to do in general.

I'll cut this short for now. I need to devote more writing time for my story and keeping the Geeky Guide updated. Here we go!

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These are just totally AWESOME!

As always, birthdays first! A very Happy Birthday greeting goes out to one of the most dedicated Training Supervisors that I have the pleasure of working with, Nestor! Enjoy your vacation...you know the work will always be waiting for you when you get back! LOL

I've resumed my regular tours of duty at our QC site every Tuesday night, which can be quite a drain in its own right. I'm seriously re-thinking my decision to ride with the company van heading to the site given the trip itself has the random potential of becoming a very long and arduous journey depending on who's coming along. Last night our normally 30-minute drive down EDSA became a practically 1.5 hour nightmare that just left me feeling tired and unproductive. One and a half hours is a fairly long amount of time to be stuck in a vehicle and I can't help but think about all the other things I could have gotten done in that time.

So the rest of my time at QC felt a little cramped and rushed, and thus I was feeling a tad more stressed than usual and rather pressured. I ended up spending some time entertaining a client who was visiting the site, screening a trainer applicant and getting a weekly coaching session done. Miraculously, I was also able to get caught up on my work email and squeezed in a little time to get some actual food in my system. My time at QC isn't really all that bad when you get down to it - it's just the travel there that can be a real bitch.

I'm getting a little tense about November given my earlier commitment to attempt to write an actual novel in line with the upcoming NaNoWriMo event. Given all the different things that I get into, I'm thinking I'm going to have to consider temporarily giving certain things up in order to allot sufficient time to the novel-writing venture. If I consistently write daily, it still means I'll need to write an average of almost 1,700 words a day! That's clearly no simple feat and a certain degree of dedication and discipline is definitely in order if I stand even a remote chance of accomplishing this goal. I haven't even really considered the full outline of the plot - then again, I'm not even sure if such pre-work is considered part of the writing process that must take place within the month of November and not outside of it. I know, I'm probably over-thinking all this, but then it's how I get through life. Besides, I plan on taking this fairly seriously and I really want to make a good showing this year.

I don't mean to sound defeatist thought, but I highly doubt that I'll be able to finish an actual novel in time, but I know I'll definitely get a lot done in terms of the piece and so the effort alone has to be worth something. Plus if I fail my November goal, I'm still going to attempt to finish the book at least before the year ends. One way or another, I'm going to finish a novel, even if it kills me.

I think the obvious things to sacrifice are all the Facebook applications I waste time on like Mafia Wars and Castle Age. I'll revisit the game once November is over, perhaps, if only to free up more time. I hope I don't have to give up Geeky Guide blogging time in favor of NaNoWriMo, but that's a very real possibility. Or on the flip side, I could probably just write shorter entries here on LJ to also free up more time. I'll have a better idea of how feasible all this is perhaps a few days into November once I've truly given this a shot.

Wish me luck folks!

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Well, well, it looks like a lot of us learned a bit too much from the 1960's Batman show, hahaha!

Today's the birthday of one of the more recent additions to the team of people that I handle at work, Niña! Happy Birthday to you! Hope you enjoy your day off.

I'm awake past 2 in the afternoon on a Monday, which of course is theoretically a bad thing given I work nights. Then again, it seems to happen fairly often enough given that we spend Sunday gaming most of the day and thus end up sleeping Sunday night, all beat from the day.

Yesterday's game was essentially a "season ender" in TV terms given it was our 13th episode for this particular game and the holidays next week prevent us from gaming for that particular weekend. A lot of storylines were tied up fairly neatly while even more were set up and left as cliffhangers, naturally. There are a lot of unanswered questions that we're all going to have to deal with when we finally get around to gaming again, so in the meantime we're left to strategize and attempt to figure out the best course of action moving forward.

Today has been fairly light and thus it still feels like the last moments of the weekend. Tobie and I woke up fairly late (past 10am) and only got out of bed closer to 11am. Given the time and the grumbling of our stomachs, I decided to whip up a quick brunch with the limited ingredients that we had left in the fridge. This resulted in some mushrooms fried in olive oil, oregano, peppers, garlic and onions, some pork steaks seasoned with butter, garlic, onions, salt, pepper, rosemary, oregano and basil, and some steamed okra and sliced tomatoes on the side. It wasn't anything amazing, but it tasted pretty good. It was my first time to experiment with mushrooms in that manner and I was really happy with the results. It's certainly something worth repeating, perhaps in greater quantities in case we ever entertain guests.

Over lunch and a little afterward we watched Proof, which I had never managed to see over the years. Apart from the geeky eye candy that is Jake Gyllenhaal, the movie had a pretty interesting story and I liked it a lot. Plus I can see why Gwyneth was nominated for Golden Globe for her performance in this film since she was pretty stellar. You spend most of the movie wondering whether or not she was starting to go crazy like her father or was just that brilliant. The movie had me feeling the urge to bring out my Calculus book (TC7) and solve some equations for the heck of it. I know, it sounds pretty lame but I do find solving math equations fun at times. It's a nerd thing.

Oh, and there was a nice Archer moment earlier today. Archer and I was just lazing around on the mattress that acts as Sietch Creare's pseudo couch for now and we were just all quiet. As always, the silence was filled with various thoughts running through my head and of all things I started to think about defrosting the fridge since it was looking a little icy, but also somewhat empty and thus defrosting wasn't unrealistic. Just as I was forming the words that I would say in my head, Archer blurts out that he thought we needed to defrost. Seriously. The whole exchange between my thoughts and his words just had me laughing out loud and tearing up at the same time. No matter how many times things like this happen that seem to be too frequent to be coincidence, I don't think I'll ever get totally used to it. The whole thing just reminds me of one of the many, many reasons that I fell in love with Archer.

Ah life.

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Now THAT is truly tactical gaming! LOL