The Thessaliad Redux

Dear LazyMoo,

Thank you for taking a message for me while I was away yesterday. It's a terrible shame that the GP's query was delayed because you couldn't be arsed to take five minutes and look up a fucking letter. But of course, such things are not your job and you should not be expected to do any such thing as being remotely helpful.

That said, the things that are your job should be done by you, and while I have been nice and quiet about a lot of the stuff you've stuck me with, that is where I draw the line. This is why you found a pile of letters on your desk this afternoon - they have your initials as the typist, therefore it is your job to put them in envelopes and post them. I am not giving up bits of my day to stuff envelopes full of your letters just because they found their way to my desk while I was on lunch.

Get stuffed (along with the envelopes),

Your annoyed temp co-worker.

Seriously, why does she even have this job?

Beyond that, I'm actually not doing too badly, as these things go. I took a mental health day yesterday and feel rather the better for it - my shoulders will still not completely unhunch but at least they're not up around the level of my ears anymore. Plus I have the weekend to recover from Week o' Hell - that'll be good. Though admittedly, I have plans in that area already so it's not like a total relax-fest exactly.

First of all, must get to the post office. I've got a few books that I have to send out for BookMooch. Given that I've already received Stephen King's Insomnia and have got A Feast for Crows coming in from Japan of all places, it's about time to start reciprocating. I would have started last week but my paycheque was teeny. Now it's not so teeny so I will send bits and bobs out. Huzzah for the post office? (I'll have to nick some big envelopes from the office before I leave tonight.)

Then there's my FFXI content IDs, which cry out for renewal. It's about time I started levelling again, really. Besides, my linkshell probably thinks I'm dead or something. I hadn't logged on in awhile because I hadn't been feeling well and then the IDs expired when I was on low paycheque rations so... Anyway, it'll be therapeutic, and something to do.

I also want to get back into doing DDR more regularly. It might help alleviate the stress - I just haven't had the heart or the energy to go bouncing around on the dance mat the last week or so.

Finally, the writing. I'm sort of in a state of perennial waiting for NaNo. It's like Waiting for Godot, only marginally less pointless. The NaNo forums are interesting this year - they've got a forum section specifically for MMO players. Vana'diel gets very little love but it's nice to know I'm not alone anyway. Oddly, because it's a 'virtual world' forums section, a lot of the conversation turns towards Sims 2. Turns out I'm far and away from the only person who uses Sims 2 as a character/setting design tool. Good to know.

I suppose I really should get back to work now but I'm taking my time, frankly. I have no intention of reaching the state I was in on Wednesday ever again, if I can avoid it.

Up before midday on a Saturday. Something's wrong with the universe.

Anyway, here's the plan for today:

1) Grocery shopping, more or less. I think what we mainly need is large amounts of pasta, potatoes, couple of meaty-bits and assorted odds and ends. For instance, I need conditioner.

2) Kick Sims 2 into submission. I'd like it to get past the neighbourhood screen, thank you very much. This much writing - it's time to redesign the characters and Home Base, I think.

3) Drabble. I finally know exactly what I'm going to do with "...like a retard on pudding day", so there's that one, and I honestly want to get at least two done today. I still want the lot done before the 15th, when I ask for the next batch of prompts.

So that's my day - out into the wildernesses to get groceries, then in and punting the computer for awhile. That and probably watch Doctor Who again in preparation for tonight's episode.

There's actually a life in here somewhere...

So it looks like my weekend plans are entirely cancelled, which is probably a good thing considering that I still feel like utter crap. I was supposed to be going out to lunch with Mum today but I didn't think I could cope with that, what with the snurfling and the hacking and the rest of it, so I cancelled with her yesterday morning and we're probably going to end up doing that next week. I'd have still considered at least trying to get to mitchy's to fix her computer, but she asked for a postponement on the grounds of being busy and stuff, which I don't mind because I'm not sure I could handle the train journey. As it stands, it looks rather like I'm going to have to hie off to the doctor's on Monday if this doesn't improve, because pounds to pastries I've got the same chest infection kinda thing that dodgyhoodoo's got and ... well. Yay.

So now I need to find alternate Things To Do this weekend. Of course, having no energy to speak of scuppers a lot of what I could be doing, but I've never really mastered the gentle art of sitting around doing absolutely nothing. I have a couple of errands to run anyway, so there'll be the killing of various birds with the one stone, I think. Then I'm going to be as sedentary as my low boredom threshhold will allow.

One of the things I was considering was picking up the new(ish) Sims 2 Kitchen & Bathroom Stuff Pack. Amusing thing about that particular Stuff Pack is that it turns out that EA didn't set up the new fridges to do any of the neat stuff that comes with Seasons or FreeTime. Of course, now that I've sat down and thought about it, I can kind of see why - it's not like everyone even has the new EPs. But instead of providing a downloadable patch on the Sims 2 website, they left it as it was and let the Sims 2 fan community fix it themselves. So one of the motivations to get the new Stuff Pack is to finally get to shut down the Firefox tab I've got devoted to a fan-patch that allows one to use the new fridges fully. On the whole, while I get that not everyone has all of the EPs, and EA's busy working on Sims 3 (which looks really awesome, by the way), I wonder if making the fans do their own patch-work after making them pay for the product is really the way to go. Fan-created content and stuff is one thing, but maybe fan-fixes are going just a touch too far?

So the running - change into a T-shirt that's not stained from the inside out with Vaporub. Pad out to do a bit of shopping, because if nothing else, we need dinner fixings, I need to top up my pre-pay cellphone credit and I'd like to try to find some cough syrup that doesn't taste like aniseed-infused tar. Possibly get some lunch. Come home and collapse.

I kind of envy dodgyhoodoo. He's at least got the energy to try getting into the city proper to go take pictures of stormtroopers at a sci-fi con. I struggle to get farther than the front door.