October 11th

It is a cool and rather wet day outside of my apartment. One of those days that really tells you to just stay inside and enjoy life. My wife who had to go to work this morning came back inside and confirmed my suspicions, “I am going to avoid going outside”, when she placed her -20 hands on my back.

The way that my day is looking is that I am going to work on my World of Darkness campaign for the show Stranger Things. Right now I am working on how to make it different enough from the show that people who watched the show cannot just insta-win because they know everything.

I am also going to work on some team compositions for my friends who play League of Legends because as a team we would like to do some climbing in ranked. I for one am excited but first we will see if my efforts are worth the time.

More than likely I will finish my day by playing Dead by Daylight and trying to earn some more blood points to upgrade The Trapper because he is only level 10 right now. I need him to be much higher level for the Halloween event that I am hosting.

Kiq a Desire

So a new product came to kickstarter recently and for months the company has been building hype on Facebook. My wife is not a fan of what I think is an adorable toy for a 23 year old adult male, but what does she know?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/241263685/kiq-the-personal-assistant-with-personality-desk-g/description

I am so excited for this that I really would like to pledge the $750 and get all four of these amazing looking things. However I am also pretty sure my wife would kill me if I did that since we are planning on having our wedding reception in February.

In any case if you are looking for a personal assistant that also have a personality I highly recommend checking this out.

Negative Friend

I think many people have a friend like the one I am about to describe. A friend whose negativity is what they are known for. A person who is living a fairly good life but somehow manages to be the absolute catalyst for feelings of negativity.

I have several friends who fall into this category, whether that is just who I seem to attract as friends or simply because I live on a college campus.

There is some variations between them and in how they are negative.

For example I am going to start with J. J is a high functioning individual who has been dating the same girl for five years. He lives comfortably in a house with his girlfriend and best friend. They all work and pay rent no problem. For the most part J plays video games about 30+ hours a week on top of working about 30 hours a week. Logging hundreds of hours into games of course he is very good at them.

Now J thinks that it is fun to introduce his friends to the same games he plays and then proceeds to tell everyone that plays with him how they are “garbage” and “trash” because they don’t know the current meta for every item in the game or the best things to do. The icing on the cake is if you introduce him to a game and therefore you have the upperhand due to practice, the game itself must be crap.

Another type of negative friend are those who have no belief in themselves at all. I have two friends who I see every single day and play games with regularly. S and C both function on this idea that they are worth less than the ground they walk on. C believes that he is incapable of anything and that he really is just a waste of oxygen. S has a little more self confidence then that but she has also started drinking heavily and falling into a different pit of despair.

It is hard being around such negativity all the time and sometimes a person just needs a break. For me I play games with my wife and with the last two people I mentioned plus other friends, for reasons the first person mentioned does not reduce stress when playing games with them.

My Wedding + Some Thoughts

My wife and I got married this summer at a courthouse because we wanted to save money and because it would allow us to live together sooner. Where I work for a University the policy of not having someone of a different gender than you is strict. Though this is being changed soon.

At first our parents assumed that the only reasons were because she must be pregnant and we are getting married for that reason. Not the case in fact she isn’t pregnant. Well now our parents are just confused by why would we get married in such a weird way where only two friends were present for the actual vows.

We are having a reception this coming February where people can come and see us as a sort of way for us to still partially hold to tradition. Though my mother keeps thinking that Tori will walk down the isle at this event no matter how many times I explain it will just be a reception.

With this whole event happening Tori and I are working on figuring out how we are paying for everything and just how much does stuff really cost.

$900 for her dress.
$650 for the rings.
$900 for food.
$600 for the venue.
$450 for everything else.
This comes out to be right around $3,500 and I am thinking to myself that this is a lot to spend on a single day. I then find out from the custodian in my building that her wedding cost $20,000.

That’s Insane!

All I could do was look at her in absolute amazement. Why spend so much on a single day of your life? Arguably one that for the overall scheme of things is not that important. It is an important day but is it as important as the birth of your first child, besides hospital bills I don’t see parents spending near the extravagance for such a momentous event.

I know that I won’t even be spending $3,000 on the day my first child is born, but maybe I should. Why is getting married more important on a single day than the birth of a child when they both are things that you will carry with you for life.

New Desk

Last night I was very bored and just sitting at home waiting for my wife to come home from work. Her average day is her waking up at 6 AM to go to work from 6:30-8:30 AM, then she sleeps again so she can go to work from 3-11 PM. Her work schedule really prevents her from getting to do a lot of fun things with myself of friends.

So last night I decided to stay up way to late and wait for her because we haven’t really seen each other for a couple days. I mean we share a bed but our schedules make it so that there is nothing more than we sleep in the same place.

We decide to make a Walmart run because well why not. We get there and start looking around and one of the things that catch my eyes is a desk that I have had on my amazon wishlist for about a month is on sale in Walmart.

Well I then had to put the thing together at midnight cause why wouldn’t you play with your new toy. At around 1 AM I had my new desk put together and my computer in place on the desk. Now today I will get to take the whole system for a spin.

Moral of the story, “Go to Walmart at 11:30 PM and goodish things will happen”.

All About Cats

Animal

I grew up on a ranch in the middle of nowhere Nebraska. My family has owned this same ranch for generations and is not going anywhere anytime soon. Growing up on the ranch I had several pets and animals that I connected with. From my dog Toots, a border collie mix, who used to help me herd cattle and sheep. To my first bottle calf Izabelle, that used to follow me around everywhere I went. I was always surrounded by animals.

Now you may notice that the title of my post is All About Cats. The reason for this is simple. Despite always having pets and animals that I worked with the only ones that really ever drew my full attention were our barn cats. Untameable, wild creatures that would sooner bite you than come up to you.

One of them, Pickle, was an old orange colored tom cat who I did manage to befriend from the bunch and eventually he became my cat. That stuck with me, the fact that I was able to work with an animal who hated everyone and make it like me.

Later when my father remarried his new wife brought with her a cat named Blink. Blink hated everyone and everything since her right eye had gone blind. She trusted no one except my step mom. Every single day after school I went and found Blink and over time that cat who hated everyone became my pet.

Since moving to college I have not been able to be around pets or animals of any kind. They aren’t allowed to live in the residence halls and since my job requires me to live in the residence halls for six years now I have not had any pet.

My wife thinks it is funny how badly I want a cat but she does not understand the importance that such a pet has to me. She has agreed however that when we can have a pet the first one we will get will be a cat.

Stranger Things

I had been hearing so many things about the show Stranger Things on Netflix. About how awesome it is and just how great the story was. I took a look at the cover picture and I told myself that it looked silly.

*Below this point there may be spoilers for Stranger Things and Neverwhere*

However the people telling me just how good it was would not stop and because the characters in the show play Dungeons and Dragons my friends thought that I would love it.

Eventually I did cave. I sat down and watched the first episode and then the second and the third. By the time I hit the finale it was three in the morning and my head was spinning with all of the information that I just received.

I felt as though so many things that I have wanted just came together and were made into a movie. The show itself felt like someone was sitting behind the scenes running a game of Innocents in the World of Darkness setting. The characters were all actually being played by a group of friends and each episode itself was another session of the same campaign.

Afterwards I just couldn’t contain myself and I had to explain to my wife everything that just happened. Not only in the show but how it made me feel.

One of my favorite books of all time Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman held a similar idea to the show Stranger Things in regards to there being two worlds. For Neil Gaiman it was London Above and London Below.

In the end the show inspired me to pull out my World of Darkness books and start working on writing a campaign version of Stranger Things. Something that my friends can play in and experience, still different enough from the show that it can stand alone and knowing the show will not make it so that they automatically do everything right.