Jeff’s Journal

In somewhat chronological order:

* Karaoke with dodgeballers. I sang Meat Loaf’s “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” and then Rickrolled the bar on a dare. I surprised them because they don’t know that I sing. Much more fun than anticipated. Liz, I thought of you about a dozen times - you must hate people like me.

* The Andy Warhol: Pop Politics exhibit at the Currier Art Museum. The whole art museum was great (it may have actually been the first time I’ve actually been to an art museum), but the Warhol exhibit was maddeningly wonderful. Ann has a very visceral, negative reaction to Warhol which is interesting and fun at the same time. The rest of the museum was great, too, but the Warhol exhibit was what brought us in. Also, free Saturday mornings at Currier? Awesome.

* Dinner with Jackie and Matthieu, followed by a maddening game called Bananagrams, which is like your own personal Scrabble with a race against other people. Strange, but it worked.

* Fried chicken. I really fried chicken. About that whole losing weight thing…

* Being done with my amoxiciillan. And without hives!

* D&D today. First game with our campaign in close to 6 weeks or so, and it was nice to get back in the swing of things. I don’t like trolls anymore, though. Or my dice. Stupid dice.

* Weeds. We’ve watched 5 or 6 episodes over the last four days - surprisingly fun and addictive show.

* The library. Because no matter how hard I try, I always have roughly 17 books out at once. I brought 8 back and thought “finally, I won’t have a ridiculous stack.” Whoops. As we were checking out, I saw a book I wanted across the room and sent Ann after it. The woman behind the desk gave me a look. I can’t blame her.

* Football. Who cares if I was 0-4 in my NHL predictions? The Colts are out in the first round!

I’m not a resolution guy, but I am a goal guy. I like words. So, beyond the stuff I can’t yet discuss publicly:

1) Write more. While the Kroger Babb bio is my priority, that doesn’t mean I can’t do more other stuff:

a) I’ve always talked about writing a novel, I’m a NaNoWriMo failure 6 times over - a 120k word novel requires about 330 words a day. I think I can force myself to write a paragraph or two a day on most days, right? At the very least, just be able to say I’ve done it. The fact that I have zero faith in any of my ideas or ability to execute them can be dealt with later.
b) I need to get moving on this Babb bio. The window of opportunity is closing on a few things, and with the various life changes that are inherent, if I don’t get a lot of legwork done now, it may hamper my ability to get anything done later. At the very least, I need to get more significant research done - locate prints, locate people, maybe locate an agent/publisher where I can get some help? I dunno.
c) Blog more consistently. None of this “life is depressing and so I need to stay away from my keyboard until I want to explode and then get everyone angry.” It’s no good for anyone, and keeping my mind sharp and informed is important to me.

2) Get healthier. I don’t eat great, and I don’t exercise enough. The federal government thinks I’m 5 pounds away from obesity, which is somewhat ridiculous, but the fact remains that I could stand to lose 15-20 pounds. Dodgeball once a week ain’t gonna do the trick, and my diet is unlikely to change because I simply have too many food issues, but I was at 155 in college and that was fine, albeit when I didn’t eat period. If I were at 165, I’d be pretty happy with myself, to be honest. The other roadblock, though, is that writing about it is pretty much the extent of my significantly caring, so if I really want to lose some weight, my level of caring has to increase.

3) See better movies. I’m actually considering a self-governed project where I’ll watch all of the Best Picture winners in order, but then I fear eventually having to watch The Greatest Show on Earth, never mind Titanic or Crash. But, while it’s fun to throw on Harold and Kumar for a diversion, that’s 90 minutes I could put toward, say, Kicking and Screaming instead. I only watched 30-something movies last year, that’s something I’d like to improve upon.

4) More gaming. Hopefully, this will be easy once Mike’s Genius game gets off the ground, but I would like to feel comfortable enough with things to possibly run a one-shot near the of the year. It’s a goal, hey.

5) Be a better husband. I don’t pull my weight enough, and I know it and Ann loves me for it anyway. I need to stay more aware of it, though, and make a better effort.

6) Be more creative. I haven’t recorded a piece of music in 2 years now, for instance. Even if I’m writing 300 words a day, maybe doing some short stories might be fun. Why hold back?

Actually, I think that may have to be my mantra going forward - why hold back? I’ve become too concerned with my own perception of myself and, as much as I hate to admit it, my own perceptions as to how others see me. I know what I’m capable of. I’m going to be 28 this year. Why hold back?

I say “weekend” as if I’m not just feverishly trying to recap life in general since I’ve had no desire to write much of anything. But that’s slowly going away, I think. But anyway, less Sox talk and more real life…

1) I went to a children’s library conference on Thursday, and I’m amazingly glad I did:

a) It was held in Bethlehem/Littleton, NH, which is about 2 hours north of Manchester, through the White Mountains. I’m not a “ooh, nature” guy, but holy crap was it gorgeous. It was a pretty crappy day, but as I got to the mountains, you could see the clouds and fog rolling off the hills and mountains, and the foliage was pretty, and I could honestly pick up shop and move up that way for good if things were different in my life right now. Just such a perfect, gorgeous, beautiful area.

b) The conference was enlightening, both personally and professionally. I’ve gotten a bit of a reputation from other librarians with the authors and events I’ve been able to get, apparently, which was a very surprising and nice thing to hear, but each panel was just as interesting as well - one on autism and dealing with autistic kids in the library was great, but my favorite was the Native American materials presentation, which really spoke to my personal vendetta against bad nonfiction in children’s collections. The whole day was really great in that regard.

The whole thing was a very uplifting experience for me.

2) Dodgeball didn’t go so well in week two, but I did nail someone in the babymaker, so that’s worth something.

3) I took Friday off, and went to meet the wonderful, amazing Jon Scieszka on Saturday:

It’s always wonderful when a guy you’ve admired for 20 years ends up being even more awesome than you could have thought. In the picture is fellow librarian friend Jackie, who joined us on the excursion. We got to talk to Scieszka for a good 5 minutes before he spoke, and he signed a couple things for me and posed for a picture. Wicked down to earth, amazingly funny - he has a Norm MacDonald-style delivery which is just hysterical - and really someone I’m happy is cool, and makes me appreciate his work that much more. Really wonderful stuff.

4) Yesterday was D&D, first time in a month. Wow, did I miss it - a really crazy battle with some undead dragon newborns, some crazy challenges, and the afternoon really flew by. Every session becomes more and more fascinating, which is great. Two more weeks? Really?

5) Currently obsessed with the following:

a) 30 Rock. We’re all caught up, finally. Talk about a wickedly funny show. Anything that can make Al Gore fun is fine by me.

b) Anathem by Neal Stephenson. A less talented author wouldn’t be able to make me care about monks who study math and philosophy, but there you have it. Rick has been trying to get me to read Snow Crash essentially since the day I met him, and I may have to bump that up considerably.

c) Mega Man 9. No video game hates you quite the way MM9 does. Yet I can’t stop torturing myself.

d) Acid Tongue by Jenny Lewis. The CD isn’t anything special, except that every song feels as if it’s better than the song before it, and you’re disappointed when it’s over. That means something, right?

e) E. L. Fudge cookies. The double stuff variety. Yeah. Cookies shaped like elves are my anti-drug.

This weekend, too my knowledge, we have nothing planned. I’m looking forward to a late-night High School Musical 3 and a lot of sleeping.

In no particular order. Ann went to visit Boston, so I largely had to make do on my own, which was cool.

1) Seeing Lee Anne. We were trying to figure something out all week, and finally she just decided to come up to Manchester and hang, which was great. We hit the local bar/food joint of choice where I had fried pickles for the first time - they were AMAZING. We also wandered around Manchester proper a bit and hit an Arena Football game, which was all sorts of weird and awesome all at once. Even without all the fun stuff on the side, spending an afternoon with Lee Anne is always a good thing. Adding fried pickles to the mix just makes it that much better.

2) Nerd Alert #1: Civilization Revolution came out this week. I love the PC series, and they made a console version which is pretty great, if not a little flawed in places. But I did pick it up and was able to save $20 on it with some skillful eBaying, so that’s good.

3) D&D yesterday. I’d say that the rounds we had yesterday were probably my first experience with some significant grinding - a couple tough battles combined with some difficult preparation for a confusing magical item. It was the first time my relative newbieness really reared its head, as I was both trying to do things that didn’t work, made things a little more complicated than they needed to be in some places, and didn’t quite catch onto another idea Mike had in one battle where we were getting more than a little punished until it was almost too late. Still a fun afternoon, but yikes. Still, the whole episode opened up a few cans of worms, and has completely opened up a new idea for my character I hadn’t thought of. So that’s something.

Ironically, the punishment debacle in the second battle? My character didn’t take any damage. Granted, I’m playing a wizard controller-type, which means I’m not supposed to get into the melee, but there was something annoyingly amusing about that - annoying for everyone who nearly died, amusing to me. Then again, if any of my dice rolls decided to work properly in that battle…

Easter is my favorite time of year for candy. I’m not a huge candy person overall - a few cookies after lunch is good, the occasional candy bar, but I’m not a big sweets person. With that said, Easter means SweetTarts and the Easter version is “Chicks, Ducks, and Bunnies.” They’re a tiny bit more chalky than their round cousins, but are also larger and thus more flavorful. I love them.

This bowl pictured represents the contents of my bag of chicks, ducks, and bunnies today. ALL blue, orange/red, and purple. No green. No yellow. I don’t even like the blue ones, and my two favorite flavors didn’t even make the bag. Absolutely ridiculous.

I hate today.

1) If I was one to do those “Do 101 things in 1001 days” lists like everyone else I know, I would have crossed one thing off my list today: The Baconator.

I don’t generally eat fast food. It’s one of those things that used to appeal to me, but just doesn’t anymore - I go to a Burger King or McDonald’s or something maybe twice in a given year, and usually out of convenience rather than desire. With that said, around 12:30 today, the craving for two huge burger patties with six strips of bacon overwhelmed me, and since Ann is out for the day and there’s a Wendy’s less than a mile down the road, well…

The verdict? Good, but not amazing. With that much bacon, it should be amazing, but alas, it was only good. What it definitely was was amazingly greasy, though - I’ve washed my hands twice since lunch and I still feel gooey.

2) I’m overdue regarding music and stuff, but I’m so addicted to Kathleen Edwards’s new album it’s not even funny. It’s quite good, and Ann feels threatened by her, so it’s win-win.

3) Any technologically savvy people want to help me figure out why embedded flash videos (YouTube et al) just freeze without sound after about 2 seconds? I can’t figure out if it was an update, or clashing programs, or something else, but it’s completely weird. Never had this problem before, and I never realized how much I actually use YouTube until recently.

4) Speaking of YouTube, if every Celtics game was as exciting as this moment, I’d probably be on the bandwagon:

More later, I suppose.