Jeff’s Journal

So let’s see:

1) Try not to catch a cold when trying to recover from wisdom tooth extraction. It’s no fun.

2) Pain is slowly fading. Percoset makes me feel like a zombie, but my mouth can only open wide enough for eggs, so…

3) For the amount of bitching I’m doing about this, I’d hate to see how much I devolve into a small child if I ever have to have real surgery. I was a pathetic human being last night.

I’m hoping for a bit of a turning point today. We’ll see.

I’m doing okay.

I say okay because a) the surgery went great, and b) I’m in pretty sizeable pain right now and the percoset doesn’t appear to be doing much for it at the moment. I also have a pollen-allergy-induced headache which is complicating matters for pain, but other than that…

The actual procedure was funny - conked out in 30 seconds, out for about 45, remember NOTHING. That’s what I’m talking about.

The bleeding is weird.

I dunno, that’s it for now - time for some soup and to lay down more.

Ann hit Massachusetts for a wedding and friends and babysitting (oh my), leaving me to my own devices this weekend. Good times!

1) Ann left Saturday morning, and I decided once the cat woke me up at 8:30 that I was going to try and be as unproductive as possible for once. I’m proud to say I generally succeeded - I took a shower and ate, but I was otherwise completely lazy: playing video games, catching up on the stack of CDs I’ve been meaning to listen to, listing some stuff on eBay and Amazon, watch a couple things on demand - exactly the kind of day I ultimately needed.

2) Yesterday was the inaugural of a new D&D group I’m involved with, this time with people I’ve known in various ways for a while. The Fourth Edition is coming out in a few weeks, and a pregenerated campaign was put out to help familiarize/transition to the new rules and such. Having very little experience overall with the older editions, this essentially was starting from square one for me, except that I knew the basics of the basics. So even with some tolerant hand-holding from all involved, I feel like I was getting a pretty good grasp on things to the point where the final battle we faced (and we ran 5 battles over the 8ish-hour period, which was AWESOME) I was essentially able to work on my own without asking too many questions or screwing up to the point of almost getting killed, which was great.

I have to say, though - holy shit did that kick ass. Excuse me as I completely lose any mainstream cool cred, but if I had realized it was this much fun, I would have tried harder to get into a group in high school and not blown Steph off 5 years ago when she tried to get me in on a game back then. As a timesuck, the time flew by like nothing else. I arrived at 1:30 and we essentially dove right in, and I looked at my watch and it was 3:30. Just like that. I was pretty surprised, but hey, that’s how it goes. Beyond that, it’s really great - coming at it from no significant battle experience in my limited D&D encounters before, diving in and nuking some kobolds is amazingly easy. I played a human wizard, and the level one spells are actually worth using. You have your basic magic missile, but you can actually give cold/fire/acid damage early, and have it mean something. Plus, the wizard has a Scorching Burst which is essentially a low level tactical nuke - by the time I got the hang of it, I was able to nuke 5 guys on one spell with the correct positioning, and the one time I was able to use Burning Hands was pretty nifty, too.

One thing I didn’t expect, however, was the fun tactical maneuvers we were able to pull off. Mike (who’s a very fun guy and I’m especially looking forward to gaming with him) worked out a pretty great pincer technique on one encampment that worked wonders (especially since a rogue/warlord battle combo appears to be potentially devastating), and the smooth battle system (which appears to be much smoother than previous incarnations) really speeds things up. In a word, friggin’ awesome.

So the group appears likely to be myself and Mike, Mike’s wife Jenny (who is wonderful), Steph, Mandy, her brother Bill, and Mandy’s husband Bill running the eventual full-scale campaign. I’m very, very excited.

3) I’m also home today, and so is Ann. So we’ll probably do something, whether it’s hit a movie (Young @ Heart is up at the indie theater in Concord) or grab lunch somewhere or just hang out, but another wide-open day isn’t a bad thing before the next few weeks come barreling in…

This is actually serious:

You: Of legal driving age, free on Sunday, 1 June for most of the day. Likes to eat, meet people they don’t know, and can stand multiple hours of me in a car.

Me: Jeff, aged 27, 3 days out of having four wisdom teeth extracted. Likely to be hopped up on percoset, and equally likely to have not eaten anything resembling real food in days. Has good music taste.

Essentially, I’m looking for someone who might be willing to cart me around a bit on Sunday, 1 June. By “a bit,” I mean to Somerville for a birthday brunch, followed by a trip into Worcester for something else, followed by a trip home for me. Payment includes brunch on me and some gas money, plus my adoration and company.

If you’re willing/able, let me know. No pressure - it’s why I’m posting it here as opposed to begging all my friends individually and feeling like I’m guilting them into it.

Please turn your attention to panel four of Questionable Content this evening.

That line by Hannelore (the blond one) about “highly-trained actors?” Totally was something I had convinced myself of in various forms until close to the end of my senior year of high school. In fact, I was thinking about that again today in a short fit of insecurity.

I mean, yes, completely ridiculous, but I have never actually seen it stated elsewhere before. Ever.

…unless my parents paid Jeph Jacques to write this comic…

I woke up this morning feeling a little ill and with a small headache. Given the wisdom teeth situation, headaches are a norm for the moment, but the stomach thing, not so much. By the time I got ready for work, the headache was much worse and my stomach felt like it was going to cause a small-scale revolt.

Needless to say, I went to work, suffered some dizzy spells, my head is pounding, and my stomach hates me, and I’m back home.

Minor flu bug or whatever aside, I’m glad I only have to put up with a couple more weeks of this bullshit.

Jeff: “Ooh! They’re making a Captain America movie!”
Ann: *silence*
Jeff: “…and that’s really exciting! And the guy who played Jayne on Firefly is attached to play him!”
Ann: “Oh, I can see that. I liked the red.”
Jeff: “…huh?”
Ann: “The red. Fire.”
Jeff: “What?”
Ann: “Oh, shit. I thought you were talking about Captain Planet.”

Then a discussion commenced about the following, which input would be appreciated:

1) Is Captain Planet really a super hero?

2) Is Captain Planet simply propaganda masked in colorful animation?

3) Ann: “Would Captain America help his wife clean the fucking kitchen?”

Apparently, my e-mail address gets to be the “sent” address in a variety of spam today. Thus, I’ve gotten roughly 400 undeliverable bouncebacks since 8am this morning with no end in sight.

Ugh.

Mario Kart anyone? 2707-2006-6250

For those of you who don’t wanna play, I offer this:

1) Tiff’s wedding was this weekend. Between the whole “blast from the past” wedding mass with Fr. Madden (former High School headmaster) presiding and the somewhat sketchball wedding band, it was a very nice wedding and a good time. I wish I had more to say about the wedding/ceremony than I do, but I don’t - congrats to Tiff and Rob in any regard.

2) We ended up crashing at my old place last night, and Ann & I slept nearly 11 hours on a futon. I can’t remember the last time I slept 11 hours period, but there you have it. We rushed out to Maxwell Silverman’s in Worcester for a pricey-but-worth-every-penny brunch with Julia, Danielle, Steph and Steph’s sister, where I ate more bacon than I should have, but what else is new? It’s good to see people, anyway.

3) Annoying guitar note - I’ve been picking up my guitar a lot more lately, in part because I’m somewhat obsessed with getting a cover version floating in my head onto some sort of recording, but a problem that I forgot about has been picking itself back up as of late - cramping. My hands are small, but not THAT small, and yet whenever I do any non-open chords, my hand invariably cramps up. Part of it may be that I’m simply using too much force in holding the frets down or whatever, but it’s crazy frustrating.

4) My face hurts. I’m very apprehensive about the removal of the wisdom teeth, but damn will I appreciate not having face/headaches almost daily from them.

All for now…