Home of the Soul Cookie

“But what, I think, stings the most is the absolute lack of acknowledgment for all the time and all the energy I’ve devoted to making the place a success over the last half-decade. That I’m a spectre - unseen, unheard, unheeded - in your recounting of its history shouldn’t really come as a shock; after all, I’ve grown painfully accustomed to having you ‘discover’ previously-rejected recommendations I’ve made. But it exists as it does because of what we - all of us - made it.

“So don’t say, ‘We appreciate your advice’ in that patronizing way.

“Say, ‘Thank you.’ Or, ‘We couldn’t have done it without you.’

“But, then, you don’t really believe that, do you?”

…but it sure kicked my ass.

Spent most of Friday hanging out with people from work at the house of one of the managers, first as an out-of-office work retreat, then as an after-hours party. It’s the last month for a lot of people in the department; with one of our major grant-funded projects ending, there isn’t the money for the huge staff we’ve amassed.

(And I’m leaving! Hee!)

The party was okay. The two activity options of “sit around and talk” or “play video games” got expanded to include a third surprise choice (”swim in the pool”) later in the evening. I, having borrowed Steve’s Xbox, played games all night.

(”All night” is a bit of a misnomer. The meeting broke up at 5pm, and people really didn’t show back up for the party part until well after six. That, and I was one of the last to leave at 9:30ish. Yee. Haw.)

I came out on top in head-to-head Simpsons Road Rage action; I performed decently in a Halo deathmatch until pitteed against someone who’s played on the PC; I fumbled my way to two consecutive victories in NFL Fever 2003. And then came You Don’t Know Jack.

Ah… YDKJ… how I love thee. It’s just such a fun game. Unfortunately, it’s proven all but impossible to get anyone to play with me because, at the risk of sounding a bit hubristic, I’ve not found anyone who can beat me. Well, not consistently, at least: Back when Jay and Kris and Troll would still play me, I lost perhaps two games out of the hundred or so we played. So when I proposed in passing that we break out YDKJ at the party and found the suggestion met with excitement, I thought that meant I’d have a challenge.

Alas, ’twas not so.

I crushed the other players. Badly. Horribly enough that I started reining myself in (which I hate doing - I figure if I’m playing a game to win, I’m going to give it my all and play to win) to give the others a chance to parse the questions.

I wanted an exciting bout of Jack.
      Instead, I ended up with what amounted to cerebral masturbation.
I wanted to share a fun game with my coworkers in these waning days of the project.
      Instead, I felt like the nerdy asshole, outshining the other kids.

That pretty much killed my desire to stay and hang out. Plus, I had to get home and help Jay set up for the garage sale we had Saturday morning.

Oh, yes. The garage sale. That marvelous event where complete strangers who don’t even know that they should be asleep at 6am evaluate large chunks of your life’s possessions and dismiss them as being unworthy of even a single dollar.

So I was up late getting stuff set out and then up and outside again at six with Jay for the garage sale. It’s a fact of life here that garage sales start too early due, in equal parts, to the area’s cultural influences and to the fact that it gets too bloody hot way too quickly. But so that we got some modicum of sleep, I wrote, “No earlybirds, please” in the ad for the sale - if I didn’t, we’d have gotten people knocking on our front door at 4am - I kid you not. It’s happened.

It was a slow start, which was kind of unusual. Normally, there’s a small contingent of buyers waiting for you to emerge and haggle with them. Instead, we had one person at six, and another two about 10 minutes later.

It was a lady in the second or third group, I can’t remember which, that questioned my inclusion of the no-earlybirds clause in the ad when I didn’t even list what time the sale started. Nonsense, I thought, I’d faxed over the exact copy I’d wanted run in our classified ad, and it most certainly had had the date and the time - they were the first things listed, in fact! So Jay and I, overly optimistic despite the early hour, dismissed the exchange as being likely caused by her inaccurately reading the ad.

You see where this is going, don’t you?

That’s right: The ad did not, in fact, contain either the date or the time, ’cause, y’know, those are totally superfluous details!

I’ve spoken with the paper this morning (after leaving a message in my Upset Consumer Voice on their voicemail on Saturday morning), and they’re refunding my money. (Damn straight you are, eeeediots!)

{Sigh…}

The busy weekend didn’t end there! Oh no, it didn’t! ‘Cause, you see, we had another one of our quarterly Magic tournaments in support of the new set’s release. And as with every Magic tournament we’ve had since day one, a contingent of Jay and Kris’ old gaming buddies from Tucson made the trip out to participate. It’s always good to see them, though it does mean the house gets crowded.

So the tournament lasted all day, then the group reconvened at the house after closing for dollar poker (Texas Hold ’Em again) from 10pm until 1am. Out of ten starting players, I was the fourth one remaining when I ran out of chips at 12-something and went to bed. (I still don’t even know who won.)

Sunday was given over to character creation endeavors: The morning I spent furiously finishing the packet of notes and details for the short-run Dark Tower-esque D20 Gunslingers game I’m helping Steve run. It was a lot of work that was met during character creation later that afternoon with reactions ranging from, “Wow! Thanks for all the energy you put into this!” to, “Why are we playing this [stupid] system again?” (I literally had to walk away to keep from again becoming the guy who broke down my sister’s door.)

Then I spent the evening hanging out with Steve and Heather at their place, watching Arrested Development and discussing life, the universe, and everything (in the generic sense, not in the Douglas Adams book sense).

So all of that together has meant that I’ve been behind in responding to email and in doing things like the Friday Five - both of which I shall attend to shortly.

ca·thar·sis (kuh-THAR-sihs)

Light floods in as the lid is removed. A face, peering. Recognition registers.

So I was going through some of the “I’ve moved this how many times?” boxes a few nights ago in preparation for my move to SF this summer when I stumbled upon a box that had the love notes my ex had written to me. All along and even after the divorce I’d saved them. All of them. And there in the bottom of that cardboard cube had they slumbered, unread and unremembered, for the five years since the Long Winter.

Sitting cross-legged. Handwritten notes whisper from orbit in a voice long unheard.

Though I’d looked through many of the physical artifacts from our relationship from time to time over those many months – indeed, I’ve gotten rid of most of them – this was the first time that I had read through all those words, all those declarations of love and hope and fear from a girl that would later deny them to a boy that no longer exists.

Pages float down to a bed of ash. The match springs to life.

These were the last remnants of our time together, unnecessary burdens that I had no need of. So I took them out back, opened the barbecue grill, dropped them in, and burned them. Not out of anger, nor sadness, nor lamentation, nor pain. Just… release.

Memories and dreams, bound to a past unjoined to a present continuity, are liberated by the cleansing flame.

I stood there and watched the paper curl and burn as a slight breeze tempted bits of ash into the night sky and I allowed myself one final reflective smile about the past.

Then I turned, came inside, and shut off the porchlight.

Not sure where I was going with this…:

And, yes, I know that TV breaks down into more than three acts when you factor in the commercial breaks.

…I’m not quitting.

I may not hit 50k words in the month, and I know it won’t be High Literature, but I’ll finish it.

let me out of here
this little box i’m trapped in
screaming
clawing
beneath the calm facade
why won’t anyone listen

wanting my life to start
not living in the meantime

After talking to Zak about National Novel Writing Month and checking out their site, I decided to take the plunge and sign up.

So what’s the deal? From their site:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to share the work-in-progress, particularly given that it’s going to be rushed crap.

Would anyone even be interested in reading it? Comment and let me know.

this is the hardest part:
the time after we meet,
the years since your last word,
the epoch since i last saw your smile.

my heartsong falls flat
now that your voice is gone
from its choir.

i sit, alone,
missing you terribly,
wishing upon a star
to be with you once more.