5/9: What I Accomplished Today

1. I was awakened today by my Co-Vivant hollering, "Who'd like to take me to lunch?" This means that she has figured out I have no particular place I have to be, so I should get up so we can go to lunch. As I was sort of groggily waking up, she said, "You shouldn't start my days by dismembering me."

Hmm. I don't remember that. "Huh?" I mumbled.

"You woke me up by saying my arm was falling off."

Hmm. "Okay, lemme think. I woke you before I'd turned off your alarm, so I said, 'Your alarm is going off,' hoping you'd hear it and it would wake you up." This has never worked in ten years, but I live in a beautiful dreamworld with marshmallow somethings and marmalade skies.

"I checked to see which one, but it turned out they were both fine. I didn't think sounded very concerned for someone whose Co-Vivant had just lost an arm while sleeping."

So we went to lunch. At lunch, we discussed various gift possibilities for our May occasions (one of the Fellas has a birthday tomorrow, Mothers' Day for both our mothers and my grandmother, a friend's birthday and my grandmother's birthday next week). She was going to go shopping while I went to my office.

2. I didn't have to give a final today (My Monday-Wednesday class took theirs on Monday), but I went to my office and graded three sets of papers. If I do that again tomorrow, the grading portion of the semester is over.

3. It looks like the assessment thing is going to resolve itself. Good. I still have no idea where Arthur stands.

4. When I got home, I was looking in the fridge for food and saw that we had the kind of yogurt I like. "Oh, the Yogurt Fairy came!" I said. "Oh, and look, there are cupcakes, too!"

And then later I was reloading the soda, and I saw that we had several boxes of Shake-in-a-Can. (I don't really pay any attention to the weight-loss thing, and if you don't carefully follow the shake-well-and-drink-very-cold directions, you will be uncomfortable all evening, but this is the way I live on the edge--I sometimes drink shake-in-a-can recreationally. I think the Chocolate Royale tastes kinda good, and I like the idea of a chocolate shake in a can.) So I hollered to thank the Shake-in-a-Can Fairy.

As I opened the pantry later this evening, I saw that the Poptart Fairy had come, too.

And then as I was in the restroom, I saw that not only did I have the toothpaste I'd asked her to get me, but there was also another little dispenser of bubble-gum foamy soap. (Bubble-gum foamy soap just makes me giggle. I like the smell, and I like the texture. I am only 42.)

So then I said, "All this, and the Bubble-gum Foamy Soap Fairy to boot! You are so much nicer to me than I am!"

"What?"

"When I go to the store, or when we go together, I might get one of these little treats in a given week, but all of them at the same time? It's a veritable embarrassment of riches!" (I love that plural of "riches," like "a murder of crows.")

I guess, in our own different ways, we spoil each other. I am apparently spoiled by material goods. I should probably be embarrassed by that (hmm; I wonder if that's where that word came from), but my hands smell like bubble gum, which makes me smile, and I refuse to be embarrassed about that.

5. Television. Lemme think. We started the Ted Koppel program Living with Cancer, but frankly, we've both coped with that situation and its variants several times, and after about 15 or 20 minutes, we said to each other, "Have you learned anything new?" And neither of us had. "Are you particularly enjoying this?" So we decided not to watch anymore. Again, this probably makes us bad, non-empathetic people.

So then we watched three episodes of Mad About You.

6. New Badge Day at Pogo. I got my badges about 20% done.

7. No reading today. (Still grading finals; reading isn't fun right now.)

8. Here's how incredible self-indulgent I am. Instead of just saying, "Got Night Elf Druid to level 25," I'm going to tell you how I did it.

I started this evening about halfway through level 24 (you may recall, since I'm sure you're tracking this closely and await each day's adventures with bated breath, that I've been at level 24 for a day or two). I got Tailoring to 148. I then completed Covert Ops: Alpha and Beta and turned in Further Instructions and both Covert Ops thingies. I then finished Kaela's Update, which took about ten steps to complete, and accepted Enraged Spirits and Wounded Ancients. I worked on those until I was just about to be killed, and then I turned and ran away and went back to Ashenvale. From there, I made my way to Forest Song, where I completed Kayneth Stillwind and Helping Hand. I accepted quite a few quests, but I abandoned some because I wasn't going to get to them for awhile and I was going to need quest space; I only ended up keeping Lost Chalice and Report from the Northern Front, which I then finished. I was then close enough to 25 that I didn't want to start a whole nother quest, so I ground Thistlefur until I dinged 25. Then I hearthed to Stormwind and accepted the Dead Mines quests from the Dwarf in the Dwarven Quarter (Oh, Brother and Collecting Memories). I also swung by and picked up the Color of Blood. I then got my Tailoring to 150, so I could make Small Silk Packs, and my first aid to 21 (this is a tailor, remember, and I've just decided she's not likely to need the linen cloth anymore).

At that point, I parked this character by the Stormwind mailbox by the bank. Until it is her turn again, it will be her job to collect silk and make 10-slot bags until everyone has 10-slot bags in every bag space. When it is her turn again, she will do Dead Mines. I've decided everyone will do Dead Mines at 25, big enough to be useful in a group.

I then recorded all her stats and did a mail check of all characters so that tomorrow I can begin the Level 20 Night Elf Hunter.

(Good grief, I am the most egotistical person ever if I think that will interest a soul who doesn't live inside my head.)

9. The new BigFishGame is called Monkey Business. It's not bad; it's essentially a sorter. Not a bad sorter, but I don't know if I need a sorter.

Apparently the maintenance they performed two nights ago was to install a new interface for downloading and retrieving games from the site. I don't know yet how it's going to work or if I'm going to like it or not.

10. I saw on their site from a few weeks ago something that hadn't registered because it wasn't relevant at the time: I could become a BigFishGame affiliate and, whenever I download a game I like and say nice things about it and people read them and decide to download it, they could click my link, and I'd get a piece of whatever they pay. I also keep looking at that AdWords blurb.

It's all totally academic now, because my audience consists entirely of me; occasionally my Co-Vivant will read it, but this isn't a genre she's going to be crazy about, so she's not going to read it every day, and nobody else is ever going to find me, and that's fine. I'm sort of enjoying this; I seem to feel more productive when I can list several things at the end of the day, even though I'm perfectly aware that most of them don't count as "productivity" at all. My mood has been better since I've started doing this.

It feels a little dumb to do the whole affiliacy-and-ad thing for nobody. On the other hand, maybe someday, somebody will find me and will see that my very strange taste in games exactly dovetails with theirs, and since I tend to check several game sites regularly, maybe they'd find my little mini-blurbs useful. Maybe.

I'm a little concerned about AdWords because sometimes I use the word "lesbian." I try not to talk about it all the time because frankly, I don't think it's all that interesting--but on the other hand, I don't not talk about it. When I was in college, I found that the teachers I often learned the most from were the ones willing to give personal examples from their own lives, so I do that, and I don't wanna play Fun with Pronouns. I'm concerned that the word will appear often enough that gross ads will appear. There's probably a way to decide what rating you want to be; I'll have to check into that before I make that decision.

I really, really have tried to understand Porn. Really, I have. Back in graduate school, I dated several guys who seemed to find it important that I be interested in porn. (I spent much of graduate school trying to prove how gay I wasn't. Didn't work out that way; the primary thing I accomplished was the humiliation and emasculation of several men I cared about as much as I'm wired to love men, and I wouldn't have hurt them for the world, so I decided it's probably just better for the cosmos if I act with some integrity and love the people [well, person] I actually love and not the ones I felt like I ought to.) Anyway, the whole "naked stranger" thing is just embarrassing to me; it is pleasant (I'm being euphemistic because I'd rather be euphemistic than gross) to see a particular person we love nekkid because we love the particular person, but it's just embarrassing to see a stranger nekkid, like you opened the door to an occupied stall in a public bathroom. There's just no graceful way out of that situation.

I'll see if there's a way to specify "no adult ads" (in my opinion, porn isn't for adults anyway, but that's just my opinion. Nothing wrong with it, and it shouldn't be illegal because what a dumb thing to pay cops to do when we already don't have enough to solve violent crime and robberies, but I don't want any Porn).

11. SandlotGames has a new game, Burger Island. If you played Burger Rush recently, this is similar, but it has a little more variety; sometimes you make burgers, sometimes fries, sometimes shakes. (Actually, the game this most resembles isn't Burger Rush, but the Chef subgame on the PS2 game Play, which is an EyeToy game that's supposed to encourage movement. I found the EyeToy too tetchy for that to be a fun game, but the layout and action are similar to this one.) The straw placement on the shake levels was a little problematic, I found, but it was a fun game. I might buy it.

12. I don't think I did anything useful around the house. All the Treat Fairies came today, and this is how I repay them.


I had more to say tonight; I guess being able to see the end of Finals' Week is good for morale.