Well, as of sometime tomorrow afternoon, sheri and i will be heading up to IN and OH to see family for the holidays. It's been a while since i've seen most of them - in fact, when a couple of them stopped by last weekend (which i now realize i forgot to mention in the blog), it had been a nearly year since i'd seen one of my sisters. Should be a fun trip.

Hope everyone else is having a good time this christmas and that everyone arrives and returns from their various destinations with no trouble.

~PS

There may well be some confirmation bias going on here and my sample isn't exactly clean, but: have you ever noticed that, of the people you hear speaking more loudly than would be considered socially appropriate in a public place, a dispropotionally large number of them aren't speaking english?

I have wondered about the psychological reasons behind this. I think that maybe this is so because people who are speaking a non-native language are used to people not being able to understand them and thus, being largely ignored by the rest of those present. They've probably seldom been asked to be more quiet because people hearing them may suspect/assume (perhaps subconsciously) that they cannot understand english and so would not comprehend the request. Speaking a language not understood by the majority also mostly negates the need for to be quiet to keep one's topic from becoming known to those around and to keep others from butting into the conversation.

What's really funny (and annoying) is when you hear people nearby speaking very loudly in a foreign language and then, when the switch over to english, they get much more quiet, only to get loud again when they go back to whatever it is they were speaking before. I witnessed this the other day in Target. This behavior indicates that they are, in fact, conscious of the fact that there are people around them, but they just don't care - using the fact that most people don't know what they're saying to keep their conversation private without having to bother with being courteous.

Just because i don't know what you're saying doesn't mean i can't hear you.

~PS

Well, yesterday was my birthday. I'm now officially 26. We got to play The Penguin Ultimatum for the first time last night. That's a fun little game.

The next couple of weeks are, as expected, going to be pretty much taken up with holidayish stuff - finishing shopping, traveling, etc. Things probably won't return to normal till the beginning of next year. Fun times.

~PS

A few of us had a little christmas gift exchange last night. This is one of those times when you can tell out just how odd we can be.

Ginger gave me legos! Yay! No, really. I got legos. And this makes me happy. I've been saying i wanted some for a couple years now. Legos are fun times. I spent a good while building a little house last night. I think i need some more...

Tony gave me a game called The Penguin Ultimatum by Eight Foot Llama games. It seemed appropriate. It looks like lots of fun - what with the bass-playing seals, dancing sheep and polar bears on unicycles. I'm looking forward to getting to play it, and i'm so bringing it to the coffeehouse.

Sheri got Mario Party 2 for my n64. She now has 3 games for it, while i still don't have any. She also got a Veggietales Christmas double-feature dvd. It has penguins on sleds. :)

We gave Ginger a collage frame so she can put up some more of her pictures and a cloth draft-blocker for her apartment (hindsight check: what's with the practical gifts?).

We gave Tony a stuffed llama and a Shel Silverstein book called Lafcadio - one of my favorites. It's about a sharp-shooting lion. It seemed like something he would find amusing.

~PS

As was mentioned on the forums, last thursday was Sheri's birthday. We had a little party complete with cupcakes and yoshi. I got her a d&d player's handbook. I would say i'm a dork, but it seems that that's the present she's been most excited about.

Friday was coffeehouse night, but Sheri went caroling with some other ladies at church, so i spent most of the evening with Ginger and Tony. Ginger came over to the Rabbit Hole after work, where we proceeded to be not at all exciting for a couple of hours as i worked on some stuff, she played AOE and we talked about nothing terribly important for a while. From there we proceeded to the Lair where we met Llama. I won't say that made us more exciting necessarily, but it certainly made us more random. The three of us went out for dinner and discussed such deep questions as why ginger is unable to eat chicken nuggets while in our company (and if we could get a federal grant to research this), and how one would operate a usb toaster with passing references to our degree of normality.

On Saturday Sheri's choir had a rehearsal for their christmas program and then we came back here to game. It was great fun, though some of us are a little concerned that the pizza delivery guy may report us for conspiracy to commit arsony. Don't ask.

Sunday was the usual "stay in erwin day". This week, it was even more "stay in erwin day", since it was the 3rd of 4 possible trips to erwin within 4 days. We went to Wendy's for lunch and it was freezing because their heater had been broken for 3 days. I was amused to notice the marquee on their sign said "stay warm with a chili".

Sunday night was the Carol Sing at our church for which Sheri, Sam and I played Christmas Carols of the Rising Sun. We had quite a few compliments on it. Joel gave me a look that i interpreted to say "I really shouldn't admit that i enjoyed that, but i enjoyed that".

If you ask me, a great weekend.

~PS

You ever have one of those days that's kinda slow and relaxed and there's nothing terribly pressing all day and you're taking things one at a time and then, out of the blue, suddenly everything wants your attention at the same time and your brain, which is horribly lathargic from the lack of stimulation, goes into conscious synaptic convulsions?

I have. I think i freaked poor ginger out when i started mumbling frazzled, exasperated comments through my cheese crackers while gesticulating wildly.

~PS

Something's been going around. Kind of like a cold, i guess - only, instead of making you cough and sneeze, it makes you tell your whole life story in quintets. Only, I've found that there's too much that's left out in the in-between times, so i'm gonna include a few other little notes.

It seems that i got hit with this one because the EP was short of targets.

Here goes.

*cough*

10 Years Ago
I was a sophomore at Brown County High School in Nashville, IN. This was my first year in the public school system since the 2nd grade. I discovered public school was way easier than home schooling. I didn't have many friends at school, but I met a kid named Casey in my gym class who introduced me to Battletech. I mostly hung out with some friends from church and camp. I was living at home with my parents and two sisters and rooming with my brother, who tended to annoy me the way little brothers tend to annoy teenage kids. I was starting a band with Justin Booth (whom I met at camp) and Scott Cvelbar (whom I knew from church), mostly playing some old songs by the Beach Boys, Eric Clapton and Billy Joel. I started writing a couple of songs of my own.

Rob Rigsby from our church eventually joined our band which would be called Stained Glass. We played a few shows at the camp and a couple other places. I decided that I wanted to go to Milligan College mostly because i wanted to go to a christian college that was NOT a 'bible' college and that's the one my minister (john sichting, who is awesome) went to. I met my first girlfriend, Kelley Fox, at a crysalis flight my senior year in highschool. She taught me a lot about relationships in the clumsy learn-through-trial-and-error sort of way. I went to Milligan, where i met Kevin who taught me a good part of what i know about anything technological and introduced me to things like IM, Quake 2 and music made after 1983.

Five Years Ago
I was a junior at Milligan College, TN. I had changed my major from CIS (because i hated the CIS classes) to Psychology and started taking more psychology and sociology classes - which i enjoyed. My band from IN had just had what would be our last show to date the previous summer (which rocked). I was listening to Jets to Brazil, The Get Up Kids and the Juliana Theory. I was living with Nathan Henry in Webb Hall after Kevin moved to Quillan. I had started dating Sheri the previous year, and we spent a lot of time together. I was reintroduced to roleplaying in general and introduced to D&D by Rich Riddle (whom i miss gaming with a lot) and i proceeded to spread this evil (hehe) to several Milliganites.

I graduated from Milligan in 02 and moved back home for part of a summer before moving back to TN with Kevin in the Yellow Subroutine. Kevin was a 5th year senior and i was having a bad time looking for a job (or being motivated to do so). I was pretty depressed most of the time. Ginger and Amber had graduated with me and moved back to their respective home states. Sheri was also a 5th year senior at Milligan, and I spent a lot of time at her place in MSA. I finally got a job at the Dawn of Hope. Sheri graduated and moved back home to IN. Kevin graduated and moved to Tampa, FL the next fall. Both of these depatures made me sad. Thankfully, Ginger moved back here that summer and Tony was still around when Milligan was in session. Massive friend shuffling. Sheri moved back here the following January. This made me very happy. She began working at the Dawn of Hope and as a choir director at First Christian Church in Erwin, which we started attending. I proposed to her in February of 04 and we were married that July.

One Year Ago
Sheri and I had just been married for a few months (:-D), and we were still trying to figure out the best way to live with all our stuff in this tiny little apartment. I was working at the Dawn of Hope in Johnson City, but had recently been approached by Brian West about a Web Developer job. I was still running games for my gaming group every other week or so. I was still playing guitar quite a bit and was trying to start to write some new stuff, since i hadn't in a while. I was listening to Guster, Weakerthans and Alkaline Trio.

-End Life Story-

Five Yummy Things
-uber spaghetti
-sheri's chili (speaking of...)
-lemonheads and redhots (that is one thing)
-cream soda
-strawberry raspberry cinnamon jello applesauce

Five Songs I Know by Heart
-Bright Eyes - "Bowl of Oranges"
-Jets To Brazil - "Wish List"
-Our Lady Peace - "In Repair"
-Simon & Garfunkel - "The Boxer"
-Thrice - "The Melting Point of Wax"

Five Things I Would Do With A Lot Of Money
-buy all the stuff i need to record everything i've ever written. (i fully intend to do this when i can)
-buy a really nice set of condos, apts, houses, whatever and convince all my friends to come/go live there. (i think Kev had a dream about that once)
-help everyone i know who's having a bad time any way i can.
-help as many people as i can that i don't know that are having a bad time; most likely by finding some good charities. Ginger could probably help me out on that.
-Travel with Sheri. Take the EP as a guide and anyone else who wants to come.

Five Places I Would Escape To
-I'll go along with Narnia, during the reign of the Kings and Queens.
-Australia - or somewhere thereabouts.
-Antarctica - but only after they invent some uber keep-you-warm-no-matter-what clothes
-Machu Picchu - or any number of ancient civilizations
-the distant future

Five Things I Would Never Wear
-women's clothing (any)
-clothes that are uncomfortable
other than that, pretty much anything works. Now, if you were asking what i would wear in public or what i would buy, that's something different.

Five Favorite TV Shows
(I don't watch TV, so i'm going to have to stretch on this one)
-Stargate SG-1
-Any cartoons. (even spongebob, which i used to hate)
-Gilmore Girls (the sheer volume of dialogue cracks me up)
-Old sci-fi shows like Twilight Zone & Outer Limits
-Any of the plethora of redecorating shows

Five Favorite Films
-The Gamers
-The Princess Bride
-Lord of the Rings
-Harry Potter
-My Fair Lady

Five Favorite Toys
-Lain & Moro
-Guitar(s)
-Gaming stuff
-Game console(s) (outdated though they be)
-Digital Camera

Five People Who Get This Meme
Well, Ginger gave it to me. Kev got it from Heard like Ginger did. Llama doesn't have a blog. Punkie hasn't been on my site for a while and has probably done it 6 times already anyway - so i don't really have anyone to pass it to :(.

~PS

Ok. I've had some very strange happenings today. I think the concrete physical and the somewhat abstract technological information-flow spheres of existance are mingling a little too intimately for my taste - to the point that i'm getting confused as to what belongs in which.

Occurance Chi:
I recieved a letter today from my mom. It contained a print-out of an email. The email was about computers.

Occurance Psi:
About thirty minutes ago a received a spam on my cell phone.

Between the snemail, tele-spam and the fact that my yogurt this morning said on the label that it was custard style but was, in fact, regular yogurt, I am having the distinct feeling that something is unmistakably amiss in the world today. If a traveling insurance salesman comes to my door and asks me if i want to buy some Ethernet, i'm going into my room and i'm not coming out.

~PS