Foodathon: It begins!

Last night, we started the actual cooking.  Luiz expressed his desire to really be involved with the baking this year, so he can feel like he's giving out gifts, too.  He loves all our friends and family, and really wants to contribute.  It was sweet, and boy was he handy!  Irv always helps, he's getting to be better in the kitchen than I am, but to have both guys working dilligently at my side really sped things up.

We started with making one test batch of lemon cookies.  I used a new soft sugar cookie recipe, and it was my idea to add lemon essence instead of vanilla, a splash of lemon juice, and roll the cookies in lemony sugar. When I made the first batch, I boggled at the quantity of butter (sure as shit, I predicted it.  4 lbs of butter is NOT going to be enough) but they came out so amazingly good, rich and lightly fragranced with lemon...they are definitely going to be my go-to sugar cookie recipe, and maybe competing with the molasses cookies as my top favorites. They're not so lemony that I even want to call them lemon cookies. They're a subtle buttery sugar cookie with a vague lemon aroma.

Awesome.  Batch 1 of the lemon cookies.  That's the homemade Kahlua in the back.

While those were going, we made all the rum balls. I made and chilled the dough, and the guys rolled, rolled, and rolled...and rolled...and rolled.  These are a no-bake easy as hell crowd pleaser, and I don't think I could have a Christmas without rum balls.

Check out that flurry of motion!

Somewhere in the middle of that, I whipped up the Kahlua, so it'll mellow before I give it out as gifts.  We get a bottle of it every year from the neighbors, and we love it so much, I did some research and figured out how to do it myself.  It's pretty well received by the drinkers among us.  We do homemade Baileys too, but I decided against it this year.  As far as booze goes, at some point, I want to get into infusing liqueurs, and maybe doing some lemoncello in the future.  It's fun.

At this point, I was hitting a wall, but still had some energy left...so we did all the chocolate chip M&M cookies.  Didn't get a pic of them in progress, because I was really stumbling through, but they went fast with the help, and came out excellent.

Those are all done!

I didn't anticipate getting those done, but since they're an annual favorite, making them is like clockwork.  Cue faceplant. I didn't even have the energy to upload the pics, or update this blog.

Tonight, we're doing the fudge, and the other two batches of cookies.  Then, we *should* be all done baking.  Tomorrow, once the fudge is set up, we'll assemble, or we'll start.  If we have extra time tonight, I want to make a batch of macaroons, maybe if they come out awesome enough, I'll throw some in to the buckets.

Ups and Downs

I've been stressing a bit.  I've got bronchitis, and I have zero energy, but I've got this cookie thing to do, and Aunt Lynne's food.  I've been taking care of myself, and trying to rest and store up energy for the bursts it takes for marathon baking/shopping/cooking.  All I really want to do is sleep, though.

I had a bad dream last night, that paired this whole Gawker thing with my cookie stress.  I dreamt that someone hacked into some database on my machine and stole my Triple Ginger Molasses cookie recipe, and that was the only incarnation of said recipe ever. Which is total bullshit, because I have a few copies printed, there's a similar recipe available online that's like mine but with tweaks.  But, in my dream, I logged on using DOS of all things, and accessed my special secret recipe storage, and it was gone, and I knew it was because I'd been "Gawker'd".  Disturbing, because that's my favorite cookie, and I limit myself to making them over the holidays only.  So, something I've been looking forward to for a year got taken away from me, by some scary phantom internet war that I got caught in the crossfire of.

The Gawker thing upset me more than I let on, I think.  I was one of the lucky bunch that had my password and email exposed, and even though I don't use the same password for many things, I used to use one simple pass for all my forum accounts and social stuff.  One for more important stuff, like online shopping, and another even more elaborate one for innernet banking.  Now, I use a program called KeePass, and have like 10 different passwords, all with 15+ characters.  Having my email out there on Piratebay, and my old basic password exposed left me with such a strange feeling.  Like when we had out house broken into, essentially.  My FB account was hacked into immediately, and my Amazon account showed weird stuff.  Everything's fixed and restored now.  There was nothing major, but it's like if someone broke into your house, and just moved shit around.  Drank a beer, ate some leftovers.  You feel somewhat violated, and really questioning "security".  Like, my door locks aren't enough, but thank god they didn't take the TV.  This will be the 4th time this year that my identity was somehow tampered with.  It's been a shitty year as far as that goes. My iTunes account got hacked, and some asshole bought a bunch of shitty pop and hip hop music, to the tune of almost $400.  I stopped all the charges, but I had fees to pay for all the stop-payments.  Then my debit card got compromised twice in a month, once online and once in a store.  Now this. It's enough to make anyone a little paranoid.  

Enough bitching.  Yesterday was an incredibly good day.  I slept very poorly the night before last, and was feeling gross in the morning.  Initially, I wasn't going to go out, but it was Luiz's and my Wednesday, and we had plans.  He was sweet about it, not pressuring me to go out, like we'd planned, but I dragged myself out, just because I'd promised.  I'm so glad I did. We had a lovely morning, and got loads accomplished.  After we got home, Alden's progress report came in the mail...and he's getting As and Bs!  For the first time since like...second grade!  I seriously wept tears of joy.  I showed him, and he cried too.  We all had a crying, snotty hug fest in the kitchen.  It was awesome.  Hopefully he'll remember how overcome he was, and I was, and the guys were, and keep up the momentum.  I was exhausted by evening, but I was on a roll, and started with the baking.  Got way more done than I planned, then crashed into sleep before midnight.  It was a great day.

Foodathon: Shopping

It's done...ish.  Tomorrow we're going to the huge discount liquor store, to get rum for the kahlua and rumballs, but otherwise, we *seem* to be done.  I have to say seem, because you know, it's never accurate.  Inevitably, I will have forgotten some piddly thing, or miscalculated.

The final list of stuff going into buckets:
Chocolate chip M&M cookies
Triple Ginger Molasses cookies
*Soft lemon sugar cookies
Rum balls
*Cappuccino fudge
Cookies and Cream fudge

Homemade Kahlua to a lucky few

*new recipes for this year.  The lemon cookies are standing in for the snickerdoodles, and the cappuccino fudge is standing in for the amaretto and rocky road.

I wanted to also include coconut macaroons, dipped in chocolate, but Irv is hesitant, he thinks lots of people hate coconut.  He's silly.  I'm making one batch anyway, even if I eat them all myself.

So, the shopping haul looks like this:

15 lbs of flour
10 lbs of sugar
12 cans condensed milk
16 lbs of chocolate chips
6 lbs of white chocolate
6 lbs brown sugar
6 jars of molasses
3 lbs of lemons
3 lbs confectioner's sugar
6 boxes of vanilla wafers
4 lbs holiday colored m&ms
4 lbs butter (I know we're gonna run out. I really just know it)
36 eggs
1 gallon of rum
3 lbs raw sugar
misc. amounts of various extracts, powdered ginger, fresh ginger, candied ginger, dark cocoa, espresso powder, regular instant coffee, nutmeg, cinnamon, corn syrup

Also:  27 large and small tins and buckets
500 sheets of white tissue paper
2 rolls of parchment
6 cookie sheets
6 cooling racks
miles and miles of plastic wrap

Should be fun.

Tomorrow, if luck and all that shit is on my side, I will start making doughs.  Tomorrow night is one batch of each dough, just to make sure everything's going well.  I might make up the rum balls all together tomorrow, if time permits.  They need to hang out for a week to mellow.  If time *really* permits, I'll do all the chocolate chip cookies tomorrow.

Jasper's all like "get your shit out of my bed, this sucks"

That was a quick picture, of all of it gathered together in the living room. You don't see most of it, because it's hidden in the bags alongside the cube.  Irv brought more stuff in after I took the pic.  

Foodathon: Meh

Finalized making what I call "the kit" which is really a stapled together booklet of lists and recipes.  I do it with every great cooking feat, planning for parties, multicourse dinners, etc.

Top page is a shopping/ingredient list, this way, I can look at a glance and see that for the four kinds of cookies all require flour, how much etc.  Also on the first page is a final list of what I'm making, exactly.  Second page is a list of how many buckets and who they're going to.  The rest of the packet is the recipes.  Now I have a master list to cook and shop from.  By the end of the holidays, it's normally crusted over with molasses, egg, and sugar.  I still have the ones I used from previous years, but I'm making some changes this year, so I made a whole new thing.

We cleaned out the corner baking cabinet, and began organizing the box.  During the baking session, I keep a huge rubbermaid box in the center of the kitchen holding all my baking supplies, for efficiency's sake.  Nothing halts a good flow like having to hunt for something. I hate that shit, so before I even start, I go through the house hunting up the baking powder, ground ginger, sugars, flour, extracts and toss everything in the box. Really saves time.

Now I have to put together my big shopping list, find all my cookie sheets and cooling racks, buy the gift containers, parchment, and wrapping supplies.

This almost didn't happen today.  I feel like I'm coming down with bronchitis.  I feel mildly shiteous today, but overall I'm fine, if it gets any worse, I'm going to have to postpone or cancel Foodathon all together.

Last Malodor, I promise

So, today I got to see the last girl, Jeanie, and she's still on the Malodor panel, too.  According to her, Jeff said there she made a lot of small mistakes, but now that she knows what to do, she can continue improving and working on things.  Crazy, right?  I make one good mistake, and maybe a few other tiny discrepancies, but nothing Jian or Nima would bat an eyeball at, and I get cut.  He said to Christine that they'd be cutting a lot of people after the new year, and screening for more, which is a minor comfort, if it's true.  Chris said she'd keep me posted.

I think this is still in my mind, because I really felt like my data was good, even if the panel wasn't exactly my favorite thing.  I am really wondering how can I have perfect results in dose, his words-not mine, damn good results in taste (even the smelling part of taste, if that makes sense) and still bomb this enough that I was the only one that got kicked off. Did he go on raw data?  Was he going on longterm data, or just last Tuesday's test? Did he go on some other trend or observation?  I hate this not knowing why feeling.  I hate the feeling of really trying, and coming up short, with no real explanation.

This is fertile ground for the whatifs.  What if he just didn't like me?  What if it was some other reason?  What if he glossed over my mistakes, and I well and truly shitted it up?   Then there's the sense of discomfort I felt moving around people.  Being fat, edging down a hallway moving in and about 4 postage stamp sized rooms with nine other women at the same time, made me really uncomfortable, but I stuck with it, overcoming my awkwardness.  My solution was simply to hang back, and let everyone go ahead of me, so I was most assuredly not blocking anyone or in anyone's way.  What if he observed that, and was like "this girl is a clumsy mess."  Because I felt like a clumsy mess, trying to dodge and weave, and still do my actual job.  Being judged on something besides my raw numbers is enough to send me spinning back to middle school anxiety.

Now that that's all off my chest, I'm going to move on from this. I have a lot of unanswered questions, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter.  I'm going to keep my ear to the ground, to see if any more panels come up, like blotters, flavor, skin, or diffusivity.  I still feel like, in spite of this, I'm good at my job, and I still have a lot to offer.

Bad Fit

So, Malodor.  It's over.  Had the one on one interview, today.  The pure "malodor" and the pure "not malodor" jars both came up a little wonky, and by a little, I mean maybe a 6-10 point spread (out of a possible hundred), for my data accuracy.  Of the 24 entries, I could only see one that was really erroneous, and three were sort of off.  I don't think it was an enormous discrepancy, but it was the big screening, and I didn't nail it, period.  With him showing me that, and leaning on how WAY OFF those few things were, while only glancing over my (from what I saw) fairly accurate other entries, I think he was just looking for a reason to cut me.  I think he doesn't realize that because of all the feedback and data analyzing we do on Jian's panel, that I know how to read it probably as well as he does.  He only let me view the raw numbers for a minute, pointing out quickly "this, this, this, this, see here, this thing, and this" and talking fast, using jargon.  Only, I know the jargon, and I can read super fast.

He alluded to the fact that Nima just sort of crammed a bunch of us into the panel before she took off for Loreal, and now he was stuck with sorting us out.  It was crystal clear that there were way too many of us on the panel. Hell, he didn't allude, he said that directly.  It feels political, and I feel like the four of us were sort of used as pawns.  Nima told us, before we left, to really stick it to Jeff if we can.  Jeff's said repeatedly, "if anything went wrong, it's obviously because of Nima."  Animosity much?  Frankly, I dislike both of them, and the less Jeff the better. He's still my boss on Dose, but he's never around for that.

If Maureen and Christine were both perfect, and mine was even a little off, I can see why he'd shed me.  I think Jeanie got cut too, for the same reason.  I feel like it was a bad fit all around.  I complained earlier.  The only thing I'm sad about is the money.  It would have been nice, at least to have it through Christmas break, then do the screening stuff after the new year.  I still have my two regular panels, though Dose and Taste.  Overall, I'm not upset, but the few minutes walking through the building after the meeting, back to the rest of the panel was a little anxious, like having to go back to a group and say "well, it was nice working with you, briefly, I'm not on this panel anymore, so seeya' round" After I walked out the door into the parking lot, everything was entirely fine.  One nice thing was, during the interview, he was like "it's strange, because your data for Dose is dead on. Like, your stuff looks like the control. It's perfect."  So...whatever.  Politics.

On the very far upside, I have my Wednesdays back, and losing them for a month really made me appreciate having a day off, midweek.  It was more important than I'd initially thought, as a day to spend where both Luiz and I have off, together, the one day we can spend with each other alone, normally.  Also, a day to get personal things done.  Or not, sometimes, as any mother/wife knows "weekends" are about the craziest time, so Wednesdays are my quiet mid-week break, in lieu of a real weekend.

WoW Post: Musing on Character Shuffling

So, Cataclysm is in effect, joy.  I've got a dilemma, though.  I have three characters on Twisting Nether, and since the time of our departure, the server has gone from a 2:1 to a 4:1 Horde:Alliance ratio.  On a PvP server, this is disastrous.  I attempted to play some of the new 80+ areas, today, on my 80 hunter, Arachnae. It was a sea of Horde, and maybe 10 Alliance.  I couldn't click anything, do anything, go anywhere, without getting murdered, accidentally or on purpose. The numbers were just so unbalanced.  I'm not exaggerating, by the way, I have screenshots of Ara swimming in a sea of red.  It's almost scary.

Shadow Council is my "new" home, and it's not a PvP server.  I have some choices here.  Choice one, continue on with my main characters there, and try to get them as well geared as the TN "big 3" meaning, Ara, Dawna, and Una.  Hunter, pally and druid, respectively.  Those three are equipped head to toe in purples, but judging by the stuff in the new areas, it more than doubles the stats of the old "epix" so, like with every expansion, stepping in to the new stuff means overhauling all your gear and starting fresh.  My SC chars are well...struggling.  I have one 80, my poor long suffering mage.  Her name used to be Gossamer, she was on AD from around retail, where I got her to 60.  Then I moved her to TN, when Burning Crusade came out, and got her to 70.  Then, when LK came out, I moved her to SC, and just recently got her to 80.  She goes through phases of "I'm doing ok, I have some good gear, and I can hold my own in a fight" to "omg, I just stepped out of the door and I'm dead."  But with just a bit of preservereance, I can get her well geared, I think.  Soloing as a mage is a study in agony, though, when you're gimped.  Then I have my paladin and hunter on SC, and they're 71 and 61, and again, with a little dedication, they can be 80 and moving into the new stuff in a decent amount of time.  I already created my druid worgen, to play the new content, from level one, and I'm really looking forward to that (or a priest.  Still on the fence, but I definitely want to heal).

The second choice is, immediate gratification.  I could transfer one of the "big 3" over to SC, which is a much better environment, and have one of my "old mains" on my new server.  It would cost money, which I'm saving, and would duplicate one of the character classes that's already there.  As in, if I move TN Ara over, with all her awesomeness, why bother to keep playing SC Ara?  I'd probably delete her, and have just the one high level hunter.

Playing on TN is no longer really an option, I don't think. Not right now, at least.  Someone said over General, that the ratio might swing back in favor of Alliance with the Worgen influx, but right now, it's a sad state of affairs.  It's sad, because the last vestiges of OOH are over there, in spirit.  There's still a "guild bank" and we have a guild name, and tabards.

As I mull it over, I think I am going to go do some general account maintenance, and maybe check out the new profession.

Foodathon: More prep. The hidden stuff.

I was just informed, just a few minutes ago, that "we absolutely HAVE GOT to clean out the baking cabinet in the kitchen, as well as the pantry, before we EVEN THINK of cooking a THING."

Well.  Okay then.

I admit, it's pretty bad.  I cleaned out the pantry solo, last time, though, in a fit of ire.  I spent four hours digging and flinging, sweeping and tidying, while Irv, Luiz, and Alden stood around trying to be "helpful".  I refused to do it solo again, and am leaving it up to someone else to take the initiative.  The baking cabinet, however, is a real fucking mess, and I know for sure that there's at least three open bags of brown sugar lurking in there, so it's a priority.

I think I might actually blog the Christmas Foodathon, this year.

Every year, I do a lot of baking and candymaking for Christmas, to give out as gifts.  I decided a long time ago, that a bucket of fudge and cookies goes a long way giftwise, and it's a lot more appreciated than yet-another-candle or yet-another-ugly-picture frame.  So far, I think it's true.  I get a lot of compliments, and I truly enjoy the whole act of planning, shopping, and cooking.  The BIG cooking gift is for my Aunt Lynne, and her brother Bryant.  She works long hours, and he's in ill health, and they have lots of money, and they're about the hardest people to shop for in the universe.  I make them about a months's worth of meals packaged  individually in heat and serve portions.  I try to get all their favorites together, plus a few new things.  All of this truly is a labor of love.

So, because I think it's a whole interesting process that genrally takes up my whole month, I plan to discuss,  and document it here with words as well as photos.

It's December 6, and my progress so far:  Listing everyone getting a bucket, this year. Or, starting to, at least.  There's 24 people on my list, down from 36 last year. I know some people aren't around, or whatever, but I've added a handful of new families, and I am absolutely sure I'm still missing some.  This is why I make half a dozen unlabeled buckets. Unexpected guests, people I've forgotten.

Figuring out what to include in the bucket.  What cookies are absolute "musts" every year, and what would be a nice change of pace.  Absolute musts include: Chocolate chip M&M, Triple Ginger Molasses, and some sort of sugar cookie.  Last year, it was snickerdoodles, this year, perhaps I want a sparkly lemony sugar cookie.  Also, the fudge.  Cookies and Cream is the big one, everyone's favorite. Last year we had rocky road and amaretto, along with the cookies and cream.

New stuff for this year:  I found a coconut macaroon recipe that's got like 4 ingredients, and it looks so delicious and easy.  Kicking around two new flavors of fudge, too.  Definitely going to do something with mocha/espresso/cappuccino flavors.  Currently, I'm crowdsourcing, too, to see what would be more popular, cheesecake or peanut butter fudge swirled with chocolate.

I haven't even started thinking about Aunt Lynne's stuff yet. That's going to start with an email, to them, seeing what they want.

So, from here on out, any posts about this annual undertaking are going to be headed with "Foodathon"

Asheron's Call (subtitle: Don't bother reading this, no one cares but me)

I got bit by some weird nostalgia bug, yesterday.  I could chalk it up to drinking, but I really wasn't.  I think I just needed a taste of old times, or something.  AC was my first MMO, well before ever discovering World of Warcraft.  I began playing for one reason only, and that was to mess with my friend ArtEChoke.  I was buddies with him and a guy called Shralp on an old forum for (of all things) Baldur's Gate players.  Arte was anti any interpersonal relationships online, so Shralp and I decided that I would make a sexy female by the name of Eye Vannah, and attempt to flirt with him.  I have no recollection as to how that turned out, because I failed at flirting across the board, and the minute I stepped into that game, all my cynicism was gone.  Till then, my attitude was "I will NEVER pay a monthly fee to play a game, when there's hundreds of awesome games out there that don't charge."

Long story short, that kicked off a pretty serious habit.  Addiction.  AC was the first ever game that featured in my dreams. I still even remember some of the dreams. That period of my life was both rather beautiful, bitter, and ugly at the same time.  Irv hated that I played, so I wouldn't even log on till he was asleep, around 11 at night, and I sank into it with joy because at the time, he and I weren't getting along too well, there was so much RL stress, unrelated to the game.  I really needed that escape.  I rarely played during the day, because I was going to college at the time, and it was during Alden's infant/toddler-hood, so I was extremely busy trying to get through school and motherhood.  I was doing it on 3 hours of sleep a night.  I'd play from 11 till 3 or 4, then get up at 7 am, and do the mommy thing.  It was pure hell, to function every day, but I got straight A's, didn't shirk any real life duties, and managed not to piss anyone off.  But that time in game...it was my first MMO! It was so filled with wonder, and such a great social outlet. I made so many friends, plus Arte, Shralp and I had become inseparable, all sworn to a patron, who became something of a father figure to me, in game, and taught us everything there was to know, a guy who called himself Bruce the Darkknight.  He was a good dude.  Lived in Fl. and took really good care of his vassals.  I made loads of game friends, Flaming Tiger, Itself, Aelwin, Cepolgara, Fiery Lady, Gordon, Okami Wolfpack, Kissel, Seven Birds, Mina, Ace, KO Kid, and my own adoring vassals, Lance, Ex, and many whose names I've forgotten.  Then later, my little brother Chris joined me, and that just really made my whole game.  I've never experienced such joy in a game, as when playing with him.  Helping him get his cottage, bequeathing him my armor, and my quirky "first one in, last one out" playing style, rescuing him, teaching him, getting him into trouble, bailing him out.  I really wish he joined us in WoW, back when he was younger.  That would have been so nice.

WoW had some "golden years" for sure, but AC left such an indelible mark.  I had to go back and play, a little.  It doesn't suck.  I signed up for the free trial, with a new account.  Fresh, new char.  I canceled the minute I signed up, so that when the free trial is over, I won't be charged, and I have a solid two weeks to play.  WoW is still my main game, I guess.  The mechanics of AC seem downright prehistoric, in comparison.  I'm learning, though, that user friendliness and sweet graphics do not a game make.  Comparing WoW to AC, WoW is by far way more shallow, and borrows heavily from established concepts and ideas.  AC...totally original.  No elves or dwarves, or silly dragons.  More like living shadows, zombies, and broken dollbabies, walking lightning, big metal giants, demons, tropical islands filled with exotic birds and apes, aliens, huge walking mushrooms, tribes of lizard men, towering pilliars of deadly and prismatic diamond golems, and just tons of bizarre races. It borders on sci-fi.  There's no happy quest givers, with little symbols over their heads urging you to pick 7 flowers, and kill 12 tigers. You want to go on a quest in AC?  Go running through the woods, stumble across an abandoned logging camp with a crumpled note in a backpack, seek out the writer of the note, find him dead in a basement three towns over, and go from there.  AC is complex.  AC is *hard*.

There's very few players, these days.  Out of sheer goofiness, I added lots of my old friends, to my list, in the off change that one will log on.  We used to joke that Bruce would endure, even when Turbine had long since lost interest in maintaining the game.  He's not there anymore, I guess.  No one is.  Wintersebb, my old server, is a total ghost town.  I got to level 20, and went to visit my old haunt, the lovely Sho town of Hebian-to.  It was completely empty.  Heb was my favorite trade center, and hangout, besides our mansion lawn.  I went back to my old lifestone, which was a gathering place, and a large pretty blue rotating crystal.    I would joke about it, that had a dent the shape of Vannah's ass, because I spent so much time sitting on top of it chatting.  Dancing, fooling around, playing with the toys in the game, scheming, resting, venting.  We staged a mock wedding, for Flaming Tiger and I, with a bunch of dudes in purple dresses as my bridesmaids.  It was touching and hilarious. My patron/sugar daddy "gave me away", there were fireworks, the whole thing was on top of a stunningly beautiful waterfall, and at the end of the ceremony, we all dove off and killed ourselves.  Like, over fifty formally dressed corpses piled in the water, all at once.

To go back to that lifestone, where most of my great game memories are, and see absolutely no one there, made tears prick my eyes a little. I don't even know why.  It was just so weird, I could almost feel people's presences.

I have to write about it, because no one, literally no one understands.  When I let slip that I was back playing, Irv had an "are you fucking kidding me?" sort of attitude, which I expect, because he was always a little bitter about it.  I could write to Shralp about it, but he wasn't as emotionally invested, as I was, I don't think. He quit pretty early on, and so did Arte.  I keep mumbling to Luiz about it, but he doesn't understand, and gets tired of hearing me go on, in my own language about people he's never met, and a game he's never played.  I understand, though.  He loves to go on and on about his old school days, and all the games and stuff he would play with his brothers, and I try to listen attentively, but after a certain point, he loses me. Still, I get the importance of being able to walk that memory lane.  I think I'm writing this as a similar outlet.

Oh, you poor kid.

It seems like every day, I feel bad for Alden, for some reason.  Lately, he's been bringing it on himself.  I do feel bad for him today, as he sniffled and snuffled through getting dressed in his work clothes, to go do leaf cleanups with Irv and Luiz.

He had it fairly easy, this morning.  He was supposed to go with them anyway, that was part of the deal, surrounding this report card.  They felt bad, because it's rather cold today, and left him at home.  Well, he started in on his bullshit early.  He wanted to go visit a friend of his, and hassled me about it.  Every time he'd say her name, I would say "chores."  Then he'd come back with some smart answer.  Something like "I KNOW!" or, "I'm ALMOST DONE!"  with a huge 'tude.  I shrug.  I know he's being kind of a little shit, but whatever, he's not going anywhere.  Kendra, his friend, wasn't going to be home till after 2, anyway, so no rush,  We watched a movie together this morning, and I had him helping me tidy up the house (with more fucking 'tude).  It's kind of a slippery slope, with his mouthing off. I ignore it, and he gets worse and worse.  Well...Irv and Luiz come home for lunch and he turns the mouth on Irv.  Irv does not ignore it.

I got a call from his teacher, Thursday, and among other things, she said that he was mouthing off to her, which really surprised me.  It really is a slippery slope, with him and his mouth. He gets away with it to his grandmother, then he talks shit to me and Luiz, and we mostly ignore him...then he butts heads with his father.  Irv's like, major league.  Alden bitches at him, and now the kid is freezing, crying,  ass deep in leaves.

To make a long story short, Alden went from having a warm and peaceful morning, with him helping me idly around the house in between reading his book and watching a movie, anticipating going to see Kendra...to getting press-ganged into going out in the cold windy weather and do leaf cleanups with the men, all hopes of hanging out with his ladyfriend out the window.

I do feel bad, in a way, but what are ya gonna do? As he was weeping, and putting on his layers, I said "this could have been prevented, you know.  It's pretty simple.  Someone asks you do kindly do something, and you do it.  Without the blast-off commentary.  Then, we'll do nice things for you.  Without any bullshit."

Something stinks in Mal-odor.

One thing I noticed about my old blog, that I fail to do here, is daily little notes.  It's a good way to get me writing, and think about stuff.


So, all the complaining about Mal-odor panel, and maybe it was all for no reason.

Jeff the dude that runs the panel, took us four new panelists aside and said "ok, this is your last panel, next week come in on Tuesday at 11:30, and we'll get together and do some screening.  Then, when the data comes back from that, I'll call you, we'll meet again, and go from there.  But as of right now, today is your last day doing this."  What the fuck?  Ok, so we get tossed into a panel, with no training, screening, or orientation, aside from a 30 second "this-is-what-it's-all-about-follow-along-with-everyone-else" extremely rushed battlefield peptalk in the hall on the way in to our first day...and we've been asking every day "how's our data?  Will we get some sort of orientation?"  With nothing but vague answers...  Well, NOW we get the screening after doing this 3 days a week for a month straight...and now he doesn't even think we're good enough?  Fucking hello?  No training?  No ANYTHING?  We've been in the dark for a month, struggling along grilling the other panelists for a "how to" some feedback, are we doing this right, ANYTHING.  And now we're not good enough?  Boss Jeff is new.  Something tells me that he doesn't know shit about shit.

Imagine, going to your first day of work.  Your boss points down a hallway, says "your office is down there, good luck".  And...that's it.  In a month, when you finally found your place, learned what the nature of your job is, exactly, and are maybe just beginning to get the hang of things, in spite of many power outages, computer screwups, freakish scheduling, and nasty colleagues...NOW they say "well, you're not going to make the cut, probably, but we'll train you anyway."  Boggling.

I really like the money, but I also kind of like having my Wednesdays off.  In the grand scheme of things, I don't mind dropping it.  The first two weeks, when we were really struggling, I thought I would anyway, just to spare my own embarrassment and the sanity of the existing panelists.  But, it really bugs me how it's being handled.

Here's hoping this turns into one of those bitchfests, for no reason, and we screen well, and get to rejoin the panel.  Shit, the way I feel right now, if that happened, I might just drop it to be a jerk.

A WoW post? All the way out here?!

My old blog, Epiphany was rife with them, in later days (starting around fall 2004, when I started playing, in fact) and starting this one, I thought to myself "at least I won't be blogging about World of Warcraft all the time, I am so done with it!"

I am so not.

Ran the guild for five great years.  Quit for months, the guild came apart with a fizzle, and then one day, I decided to play again.  Solo.  Or, more importantly, with Alden.  That was near the end of last year, and I've been steady since.  Solo, though. No guild, no schedules, no raiding, no social obligations, no chatting.  Just me, and occasionally Luiz, and when Alden's allowed to play I love guiding him around.  No real fever for the game anymore, just idle clicky time when nothing's going on.  A few hours a week, if that.

The third expansion is coming out in less than a week.  They're fixing everything about the early game, and adding a bunch of stuff.  The fever is back.  I've been playing whenever I get a chance, and feel enthusiastic about logging on.  All the old stuff I loved, the idea of questing, leveling, and being self-sufficient, has been examined and updated.  Last two expansions focused on end-game high level stuff, not geared towards casual players. This update is for me.

I'm still not joining a guild.  I play this game with eleventy billion people, like it's a single player.  It was kind of awesome to run a guild filled with friends, old and new.... but it took up every spare minute of my time, and the game drama...oh the in game drama, it always became real life drama.  All the scheduling, the arranging, the worrying about game stuff, then maintaining the site, and the cost of upkeep.  For five years, WoW wasn't one of my hobbies, it was my hobby.  It's kind of awesome now to not have that obligation.  I do miss the "good old days" sometimes, mostly when I'm lonely in game, drinking, with no one to talk to.

It's nice to look back over my playing style and levels of addiction over the years, from the manic "seek help" Asheron's Call days around 1999, where I'd play for eight hours straight, and sleep two hours a night. (because I'd never cut into family time...I would just play like a junkie after everyone went to sleep), to my "I hate mmos" phase, to my now casual "I can play AND have a life" phase.  It's nice.



Postscript:  Holy shit, I am such a flaky creature of habit.  I just clicked on Epiphany, to use the link up there, and the very last post, almost two years ago to the day, is about WoW, and it sounds almost identical to this one.  I am such a bizarre creature of habit.  I almost deleted this in one fell swoop, out of embarrassment (to who, myself, of course!) but I mentioned it laughing, to Luiz, and he was like "you better not delete it"  So, I'm leaving it.  I guess I need a mental check every two years, along the lines of "I am a thirty-something year old woman, and I play video games, habitually, and I am okay."  Maybe I ought to make this a theme.  Every two years, do a state of the union post about my life and gaming.  Riveting.  I'm rolling my own eyes, at myself.  I need to get new material, or something.

So! Important!

So, I started another panel, a few weeks ago.  Just to keep up to date, now I have Monday and Friday's Dose Response, Tuesday and Thursday are Taste, and now Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, Research and Development Mal-odor.  It went from "manicure money" to an official job.  I'm there five days a week.  That's not what this is about, really. I mean, even though I'm about to bitch on the small scale, I really love it, and the money is outstanding.

I've been doing Taste for a few years, and just picked up Dose last January.  Both of those involve a group of panelists, but both are way more "individual" than  Mal-odor.  Like, if I show up late for Taste, I get a "look" from our boss Jian, but I won't ruin anyone's whole damn day.  So, it's my (maybe bad) habit to show up a la minute.

Mal-odor is a whole other ballpark, I'm discovering. It doesn't really have to be, but the mentality with that group is really different.  I've been trying to figure out why, and I saw it today, I think.  It's been an ill fit, with the three of us that are "new" for starters.  The group has been together for years, and are the cattiest panel there, as far as I'm concerned.  There's a lot of backhanded girl-snark, which is sort of a change for me.  This panel already challenges my social anxieties, by forcing me to work with a group.  To explain exactly how would take a lot of space describing minutia, but in other panels, I sniff or taste, and rank on a computer or on a piece of paper, in Mal-odor, it's fundamentally the same, only we go in a hallway lined with small rooms, as a group, and the subjects that we're smelling are distributed throughout the rooms, and instead of being stationary at a computer, it involves running up and down a hallway in a choreographed dance.  It's weird, and involves a lot of bumping into each other, waiting in line, apologizing, holding others up, trying not to...

Ok, that's still not what I came here to bitch about, I mean, that's one element that I'm forcing myself to deal with, but the women and their personalities...  Just. Rude.  Not all of them. Some are quiet, some are friendly, the two other girls that are on Taste and Dose with me, the two I started this panel with, are great, but others...  All I ever hear about is how "we're only getting paid for an hour!" and no joke, if that panel runs over the hour, it's fucking mutiny.  Once, the three of us were late, from Jian's panel, running to that one, and we got there FOUR minutes late, and the bitching...oh my god...they were murderous.  "If you plan on being this late all the time, maybe you should drop one of the panels. I mean, we're only getting paid here for an HOUR."  This is not my boss speaking. This is some bitch named Vera who thinks she runs the whole goddamned show.  This is not the only woman with this attitude, just the most outspoken.

Today, one of the servers went down, and you'd think someone took a shit in the jars we were about to smell.  The complaining! The outrage!  We're supposed to be there from 11:15 to 12:15.  Normally we get done at 11:55.  By noon, half the panel were on the phone griping to someone that they would be late, or just complaining in general. In fact, I heard the oft repeated mantra "we're only getting paid for one hour!"  Dude.  We get paid $25 an hour, under the table.  I'm just happy to be there!  Sure, I'll wait for an extra few minutes, while the computers get online.  In fact, I made it a point to let everyone go ahead of me, because...what the fuck have I got planned?  Probably the same as the rest.  Get home, eat some lunch, tidy up the kitchen...Guess what time I got out of there?  12:10. Still five minutes early, even pointedly saying "No, after you, you have somewhere important to be."  The irony was lost on them all.

Life's way too short to get fluffed about shit like that. But, I suspect that a lot of these self-important bitches on this new panel of mine really honestly can't put it into perspective.  I'm ok with that.  I'll go last, still get out early, get paid for my hour, and smile, knowing in my heart that I'm not going to be on blood pressure or anxiety meds when I'm 40.