Quick I Need ALL the Charisma Buffs!

    Today has been a lot of life's stupid rearing it's head.  I don't know how or why but despite all of it I'm actually hopeful and optimistic.  That's definitely been happening a bit lately.  I mean I know there's underlying stressiness BUT, it hasn't been prevalent enough to actually affect my day for very long.  Between all of this, I think I ultimately am realizing that the end of the badness is truly at hand and I will look back in a year and be able to tell people that the year started rocky, as is the case when there's huge change coming to begin with, and ended decently.

    It looks as though I'm not the only one who is moving on to another adventure here at work.  It is somewhat sad as this was one of my allies here.  But I really can't blame him, just means that he's winning his battle against this dungeon and getting to move on with his personal quest.  Which makes me happy!  Because at least I know he won't be here repeatedly wiping on the boss and his minions for much longer!  Hopefully I'll not be far behind!  Making as many charisma checks as I can to bulk up for tomorrow so I can amaze and enchant my potential new bosses!

    I do think it's a sign about this job however.  This guy was the manager of residential sales and he's been doing this for around two years now.  I hope that it's not a sign of worse things to come, because from my experience it's not really a good thing when management starts to jump ship.  As I have been talking to people here it's becoming apparent, that many people before me have had this exact boss fight before.  Despite all of the badness I've dealt with here I don't wish anyone to be forced to find a new adventure.  I have been there it's not an easy thing at all.

    It also is sounding like this place is more of a speed  bump on the way to better adventures and personal quests.  I just found out today also that a whole new boss fight is about to begin with the whole office.  It seems that all of the minions, except sales and field guys, that have been here for a while will be made part time and have hours cut.  So I have a feeling more will follow in my co-worker and my wake to find a new path once that happens.  I had no idea when I took this job that I'd be beating my head at this dungeon for close to seven months and be flustered and attempting to move on in life for five of those.

    When I do unlock the "Dungeon Complete" achievement for this job I can assure you I'll be ecstatic and seriously looking forward to whatever's next.  I do know that there have been plus' to this dungeon.  It's helped me with writing, as I've gotten a LOT of that done with nothing else to do here.  It's also given me a lot of awesome inspiration for these random babblings about how life relates to gaming, and you all keep reading...bwahabwaha...I mean, I said nothing.  It's also helped me hone some of my less used Rogue abilities.  Which has been interesting and new.  I mean come on, if you can't learn from the bad things how can you appreciate all the good things when the come!  So as of posting tomorrow I'll be able to have a better idea if that achievement will be unlocked or not!

Looking for One More for Dungeon, Tank Needed!

    The Peepening was fantastic on Friday, there was much fun had and MANY different creative things done using Peeps as a medium for art!  I absolutely can't wait for more of this to come in future!  I am happy to have helped out in the ways I can as well!  

    So this week I'm waiting for two big things that might turn into possible "Achievement Unlocked" moments.  Or so I'm hoping.  Been a lot of fighting through the crazy of winter this year.  But it seems like spring is finally bringing about the change and good things that a bunch of us are waiting on.  Wednesday is the first of them, I'm anxiously awaiting it.  I have a face to face interview for a better job, out of this dungeon of evil.  It seems I would be able to stop rolling my stealth rolls constantly and not having to roll willpower to not laugh in the face of the stupid that calls in.  Or wiping entirely by arguing in my boss battles and causing a blow that would cause him to go down below 30% health pride wise and bring about his enraging.  In other words getting myself fired BEFORE I get the new job.  

    Today's battle here at work actually didn't involve the boss battle which has been raging for months now.  I swear I'll defeat him eventually!  It was with a possible new minion for him.  He came in for a meeting with the boss to see if he was a good fit to be a minion (i.e. a job interview).  As he came in to tell me why he was here I could see he never learned the art of subtlety or just kept failing his rolls.  After the initial hello his gaze ended up somewhere that I was not comfortable with.  So I handed him the pre-screening paperwork and told him to go fill it out.  Glad to not have him staring at me any longer.  When he came back to let me know he had finished the paperwork, he did it again.  So I told him to go wait again and called the boss to come get him.  As he walked out after meeting with the boss he kept turning to stare at me as he walked out the door.  Sometimes I REALLY wish I could make this stuff up, but it truly happens.

    From what it sounded like after the interview was done, I think that he may actually have been approved of as a minion so it means he'll be working with us as well.  I'm not so ok with this.  Because I know for a fact that as the boss believes I don't have too many points in intelligence, he will never believe me if the minion continues to be a creepy old man.  Don't get me wrong, I know people look at those they believe are attractive, but when it gets to the point of making someone else uncomfortable, it's just not cool.  I seriously wish that more people would put points in tact or even at that point willpower NOT to be a jerk!

    I really wanted to say, "Dude, I'm a daddy's girl, I don't have daddy issues!  Keep your eyes where they belong!"  I don't usually get this way either, as I do usually know people look.  But this was excessive and not in the, I'm laughing because that dude just walked into the door staring kind of way that enables me to give popcorn to my friends at Con's.  But in the way that I noticed it and it made me feel like a piece of meat.  I shudder to think of what this guy is like on a daily basis.  Sometimes in life I just call out in my head, "I NEED A TANK!!!"  Because that way at least it won't be just little squishy, cloth wearing me dealing with a particularly bad pull.  

May the Peeps Be With You....

    Today is Peep day!  Yes I do mean the little marshmallow birds, bunnies and other such fun things.  For the past few years my good friend and owner of Strange Child Productions and the person who runs Pioneer Valley Dishcrawl has had a day after Easter where she would get a bunch of Peeps, and bring them to her work and they would have fun with epic battles, designing different scenes and in general just having a day of fun with Peeps.  Now I have been hearing about this for a few years now.  Well tonight in Easthampton, MA she's having and event...The Peepening!!!  I for one am ecstatic, because it means that for the first time I too will be able to help with the battles of epicness that is Peep Day!

    I know to some it may sound silly, but really if you think about it, we all do silly things sometimes with our friends that are exceptionally fun and weird sounding to those who don't do them.  I mean how many times have we all sat there with friends cheering each on or trash talking on a video game, hanging out rolling dice while our little armies of miniatures battle to the death, or even all gather together to go to a specific movie (sometimes in costume even).  To some those things would seem strange of silly as well.

    As a gamer I'm used to the things I do to be somewhat different from society's view of normal, and I'm not just ok with it but proud of the fact I am just that.  Do people think some of the things I do for fun are strange or crazy, sure.  But honestly normal is WAY too boring for my tastes.  I came to grips with the fact that I'm not going to fit into the mode of normal a LONG time ago.  But then I'm the first person to admit I am in fact crazy.  The key is that I've found some folks who's crazy works with mine so being myself is a LOT easier!

    So if you're in the mood this evening for something silly, fun and just a LITTLE bit geeky and find yourself in the Easthampton area, stop on by!!  I can assure you it'll be a blast and seriously, it means you're actually allowed to play with your food for once how often can you really say that!  Plus you know you might find something that you'll be excited for every year!

Dreams Do Come True...Sure, If They Do, Let Me At 'Em

    Dreams are funny things.  Sometimes they show us what our heart truly desires and sometimes they show us what our deepest fears are.  Then again sometimes they show us just how crazy we really are.  Now I am no stranger to dreams.  I'm not one of those people who is able to forget them upon waking either.  I'm wondering if that's because I have hidden dots in dream or if I have the flaw "Nightmares," perhaps it's someone else who has many dots in Dream causing it.  Either way lately there's been a lot of them.  I mean at least they're not usually the night terrors of my youth, as I learned how to fight back and wake myself up usually before it gets to the point of waking up that way.  Yay for having an extremely active imagination!  Not always a bad thing, but at the time it wasn't so good.  Granted I do believe that it has given me HUGE amounts of creative juice over the years and allows me to have put many things down on paper or through dancing that I may not have been able to without it.

    Last night was particularly weird.  Now like I said it's been AGES since I've had a full out night terror, which this didn't even qualify as such.  However it did qualify as something more then just a bad dream.  I know that fighting something big and evil in your dreams is generally a sign of inner turmoil in your own life, but honestly, this week has not been horrible and has left me in a relatively ok state.  I mean life isn't perfect, but I've been plugging along, fighting the good fight and rolling my dice to make all my checks, and using my points in things to continue my adventure and keep going forward.  So you can imagine my surprise when I had a FULL night of bad dreams and nightmares.  Kinda made me wonder if there were Nightmare Court Sylvari hiding in my room somewhere, but I couldn't find them anywhere and I definitely wasn't running from Freddy, so, who knows.

    So in the first dream that I can remember I was being chased by something bad, like REALLY bad.  I was with my crew, and suddenly we knew something was about to happen.  The sky darkened and suddenly a portal opened from what looked like a very evil place and something came out.  Even though I never fully saw it, I knew it was something that I had to fight to protect people I cared about.  I pushed my friends to run and I began to do things that would prevent it from getting to us.  Finally it gained on us.  So I did what I had to do and started to ready myself to fight it.

    I was able to get my friends out just before it got them, stopping it by somehow producing a ray of some sort of bright energy.  It then pounced on me and I started kicking it.  Apparently I wasn't just kicking in the dream as I woke myself up physically kicking at this creature of badness.  Fighting for the side of good apparently in my dreams and in reality.  So I rolled over and attempted to go back to sleep.  It took a while and a bit of tossing and turning.  Which caused my cat to decide to keep her head against mine and just purr to try and help me relax.  That part was adorable.

    Finally I was able to sleep again.  This one wasn't bad, per say just EXTREMELY weird and some what of a bad dream.  I was at some sort of Convention, though not one I'd ever been to before.  I was even dressed up in a very cool cos-play of Lady Mechanika who is an awesome comic character.  Everything was unfamiliar except some of the people I was there with.  Going to a specific panel, which was dealing with aquatic animals (other then penguins I don't know very much about them), they had a  contest for people who could answer the most trivia about them.  Now my friend, it was a friend who I refer to as my big sister in real life, encouraged me to go up as it was something apparently I knew ALL ABOUT!  I went up and one other girl went up against me.

    Now this was someone who I don't know in my waking but in my dreams, I knew her well and couldn't stand her.  So of course I had to beat her.  Even her costume was something that irked me as all she ever did was try to one up me.  It was a very close call, but I ended up beating her and winning in the end, which is when she decided to attempt to fight me in full girl fashion, going to pull my hair and all.  After a bit of dodging a couple of my friends came to stand by me.  Which was when she pulled a sword from somewhere which she then went after someone who'd come to help me.  I used her distraction to disarm her and hold her hands behind her back until security took her away.  Then I woke up a little disoriented but right about the time I should have as my alarm went off right after.

    All in all a very weird night.  Though it really does prove that I try to be my best even in my subconscious, anyone every questioning whether or not I have a generally good alignment, well my dreams would say differently.  It's not like I'm siding with the bad things and I'm generally going down fighting for people and goodness. Perhaps these dreams should have clued me in to the fact that I am a fighter in a fight of flight situation a little bit earlier.  But never really thought of it like that.  Either way, despite the weirdness and the badness, it hasn't even affected my mood.  As my optimistic, generally happy outlook that has seemed to be returning finally.  Either way, strange night was strange and in many ways amusing.  Darn mages poking at my psyche to see how I'll react.  I swear, if I knew who it was, I'd have to I don't know, do something.

"Take Me to Jail, Please! A Klingon is After Me"

    Seeing the boss has decided to not be in for the last couple of days, pretty sure he's away at a trade show or something, I've not had to deal with more sneak attacks and today even the biggest add which he has sent my way is also out.  So I have no new stories on the subject of work, though I'm sure there will be more to come.  Oddly it is a quiet day in the life of this little adventurer.  I can see the sun and blue skies through my windows to the outside of this dungeon I call work, despite the ridiculous amounts of stupid people calling in, it's a pretty good day.  Kinda glad for that as there's been a lot of not so good days lately, so yay for the good ones!

    Today I want to talk about cos-playing and character choices.  As I'm about to pull out a whole new character to dress up as I find myself thinking about all of this wondering if a lot of the other cos-players do what I do to prep for it.  It could just be my OCD and all of those years doing theater of some sort, I really don't know.  But when I decide to dress up as a character, I do my research.  Not only so that I can get the costume right, which is relative as I am a big believe that when you're dressing as a character you need to make it your own while sticking to the basics of said character, but I do this also so that I can see what makes that character tick.  Getting their back story, how they treat other's, and basically trying to get inside their head to see how to portray them properly.

    Most of the cos-playing I have done has been on comic characters which means there's LOTS out there on each one.  Which is good in the long run, because that makes my research MUCH easier.  Not only does it mean lots of info and generally lots of fun reading (oh darn having to sit and read comics occasionally) and some very cool pictures which give great later ideas for costuming as said character.  I guess it's kinda one of those things like with actors where they sit, read their scrip and ask, "what is my motivation" with each character they play.

    The other thing I sometimes wonder is if people will cos-play someone because they connect to a character or if it's strictly just because they think that character is cool, looks neat or they kinda looks like them.  Because I know sometimes you just have to find a character that is awesome and do your very best to be that character.  I can honestly say that I have done all of the above.  Though lately I've been trying hard to find something I can relate to with each character I portray.  I don't want to be that person who dresses up in something fun and in turn knows NOTHING about the person I look like.

    I know with Ivy and myself there are ways I COMPLETELY jive with her, she's hyper intelligent, she's very protective of her own (it's portrayed over and over with how protective she is of Harley and how many times she comes to her rescue), loves nature and plants, and has been screwed over by the opposite gender A LOT (actually it was a HUGE betrayal from the man who seduced her, originally it was to help him steal an Egyptian artifact filled with herbs and was revised later to be her mentor another botanist, causing her to go from the botanist Pam Isley to the dangerous beauty filled with poison).  These are all things which make sense to me, am I a person who would be lead to a life of crime due to all of the things I've been through, maybe not, but it doesn't mean I don't understand her and perhaps if I had her powers it may have been a different story.

    So let me ask, what motivates you with your costumes?  If you are indeed into dressing up as other characters that is.  Because that is always something I'd LOVE to hear about!  Let me know!

Real Life Stealth vs Perception/Alertness Ready, Roll!

    Seeing there's still a lot of chaos going on in life right now.  Which includes but is not limited to the whole CISPA bill that the House passed.  I am going to say if you haven't please sign the petition and call your senators, I have and honestly every voice helps, because it would be seriously infringing on what little is left of our own privacy here on the interwebs and I know I for one don't want that and I'm sure that MANY of the people who read this blog wouldn't either.  Now that I have gotten on my soap box about that.  There really is a lot going on, so today I'm going to go into yet another amusing story about the evil super elite boss that is the owner of the company I work for.  To attempt at providing an amusing break from the crazy in life right now.

    After yesterday I have come to the conclusion that the boss is trying to all of a sudden use stealthy things to fight me.  On three separate occasions yesterday he attempted a sneak attack on me to see if he could catch me doing something other then waiting for the phone to ring.  As apparently he has decided that nothing more is allowed.  My direct boss, his minion who jumped me last week has informed me now that all I need to do is just get better at hiding it.  Because she does know I get bored, of course this was after she had already come up here and yelled at me about everything.

    So due to having been yelled at about this already, I have been actually using my rolls in perception/alertness whenever anyone comes walking up the hallway.  No way am I going to get in trouble for that.  Also I've been staring at my computer screen on the email sight and customer data entry sight a lot more just to keep myself safe on that.  Now my boss isn't a very quiet guy, nor does he have ANY ranks, dots or levels in stealth.  He also doesn't have any sort of vanish abilities to make him not been seen, heard or anything else.  So between my high dice rolls and his lack of ability.  I caught him actually peeking around the corner to check on me.  I both heard him coming, and saw him peek out of the corner of my eye.  I was left shaking my head and really glad that I am in fact working on the achievement "New Full Time Job"

    Talk about making your employees uncomfortable and paranoid.  It has been stated previously that I have yet to beat this particular dungeon and get past him as a boss.  But it makes me laugh that he keeps trying to switch up his tactics and take me out in other ways.  What did you not get about the fact that I'm an intelligent, stubborn, little Celt?  Just because I'm female doesn't mean I'm a push over, or a lesser person.  I am in fact someone who's been through worse then this and come out the other side, not always unscathed and completely the same, but everything causes growth.  If he wants to fight, he may want to get ready for the fire because I refuse to give in and leave until I have actually gotten my achievement.
   

Can't I Just Use My Real Life Dot's in Time to See What's Next?

    F.O.I.G (we pronounce it like it's spelled to keep it simple, yay made up words, or something), or find out in game, is a phrase that which those of us who've been gaming or larping for a while know.  It's basically when the plot writer, GM/ST/DM informs you, just wait, you'll find out as the plots unfolds.  It's a term I find myself using for my players in larps that I have or currently write plots for and I definitely use it for players when I run tabletop games.  I just don't want to give away too much information ahead of time.  I don't like giving things away, because I'd much rather allow them to have the experience when it happens in game.  I know that I'm just as bad about it when I'm in a game or playing at a larp as well.  I know, I know, patience is a virtue and good to practice.  But, when a plot is good, you want to know EVERYTHING EVER!!!

    Lately, life has been kinda like that.  Usually I'm a fairly patient person, letting myself just relax and let life come when it comes.  But there's been a few things right now that I just, don't want to wait to f.o.i.g, I want to know now!!  Things dealing with the mess with my car, I'm starting to work on and try to get through it, but I'd love to have some sort of vision to the future to see what I decide to do.  Things with new jobs, I'm still in contact with, but waiting to hear from a couple on whether or not they are definitely going to happen.  Things with my living situation, I'd REALLY like to know SO RIGHT NOW!!!  If I'm going to be able to achieve my goals with that.  I'd really much rather know before I get to that particular plot line so I can have a heads up then wait and f.o.i.g.  I know that's not how it works, and I need to allow my patience and optimism that are part of my nature to take over.

    Though I do know that one of the things that does make it tougher is the fact in today society we have a very, instant gratification mindset.  Not many of us have the patience to wait something out.  Though honestly if something's truly the right and a good thing, it's worth the wait.  But we as a societal whole were not always taught that about life.  We want it and we want it now!  Now I definitely stand by the thought process that it isn't just nature or nurture but rather both.  However, the learned behaviors sometimes do create these ideals that ignore the fact that we have very different natures then that.  Eventually we come back and remember, hey wait...that's not me.  But for a time, we have hiccups and don't want to wait to f.o.i.g.  But honestly I promise, if it's worth it, down the road the wait will seem like the smallest things in the world.