So today was Maddie's second birthday. Well, not really. She won't actually turn two until the 7th but it's obviously easier to celebrate on the weekend. I hadn't been sure what to get her or if to even get her anything. We're not all that big on giftgiving in general in my family as far as birthdays or other occasions go. After all, it seems kinda whacky to get someone something they might not need or want just because it's a gift giving day. As far as Maddie went, I didn't really have much of a clue what she would want in the first place.

I ended up heading to Toys R Us last night and wandered around in there for 30 or 40 minutes looking over the possibilities. What I've really wanted to buy her for a While is one of those kid easels which have always looked like lotsa fun to me. Some of them even come with chalkboards and magnetic boards so they're multi-use. The only thing is I'm not sure she's old enough for that sort of thing and there's a concern that it'll just teach her to start drawing on the walls. I'm pretty sure neither Connie nor Jeff would appreciate that.

After a couple of circuits and a lot of indecision, this is what I got.



I like to think of it as striking a blow for the patriarchy and gender roles. It was about the pinkest and girliest thing in the store. I'm pretty sure my testosterone output dropped just from having to carry it around. I already know she likes playing with Little People and so I figured it couldn't really go wrong.

So earlier today after a nice meal at a restaurant known for ribs (which incidentally gave me a case of heartburn) and cake back at Connie and Jeff's place, Maddie opened her presents. My gift was pretty much overshadowed by the fact that her parents got her a motorized bigwheel which she proceeded to ride around the house, banging into walls and furniture. Turning isn't her strong suit. Still, she did seem to like the castle for as long as it lasted. In addition she also picked up a buncha matchbox cars, a motorized self-steering dump truck of some sort, and a picture book. She seemed happy with it all and even got to eat her cake by putting her face in it. There could certainly be worse birthdays.

I should be sleeping right now. We're supposed to be going out for lunch today to celebrate Shelley's birthday. It's not actually her birthday until the 25th but she's leaving in a week to go to Mexico, despite my mom's repeated pleading for her not to. So, we won't get another chance to celebrate her birthday if she goes and ends up dying from Pig SARS. Even if she doesn't come down with Pig SARS right away, we'll have to keep her away from my grandmother and Maddie for at least a week or two just to be safe. Neither of them can risk catching anything. Kids are always at risk and my grandmother is in her mid 80's so it's best to take a pass on any communicable diseases whenever possible.

Anyway, I've been watching youtube clips of West Side Story and I'm feeling sorta dreamy and nostalgic. Every time I see the prologue and some other parts of the film, I wish that I had been part of some street gang when I was a kid. I'll admit that sure, it's unlikely that real street gangs do a lot of ballet but I always feel sorta wistful about the choreography and camaraderie. Maybe it's just me but I think the world might be a much better place if more of our street gangs sang and danced together. Hell, I would join if I could.

Sometimes people do something really nice for you and it makes you wonder if you even deserve it. Brian and Jessie invited me over to their place last night and actually went out of their way to have a little birthday party for me, knowing that I've been feeling sorta blah lately. There were balloons and streamers and even a carvel ice cream cake. *sniff* It was really sweet. It's always amazing to me when people are willing to do things like that. My social circle isn't exactly expansive and things like this really mean a lot.

We spent a good chunk of the night playing cards and that was also fun. I don't get all that much of a chance to do things lately and while it's often hard to get my tubby ass moving, it's always worth it in the end. Besides, I ended up walking out up $10, and that looks pretty impressive in nickels, dimes, and quarters.

I have the sads.

I guess that's hardly to be unexpected. You could hardly find a surer bet. Things hurt and things suck and I'm just tired. Normally, I would choose to spend my birthdays in bed and preferably unconscious. I've sort of come to expect that nothing good can come from the day and it's best to just get it over with as quickly as possible. Despite all of that, there are certain obligations I can't really avoid. My mom wanted to take me out to a local Japanese restaurant that just opened a few days ago and so she, my sister, and maddie made the trek over there for lunch. The restaurant was pretty nice and reminded me of a seafood version of Fogo de Chao. I've never been a big fan of sushi but my mom seems to have enjoyed it. Maddie spent most of the time there spitting things up. About the only thing she would eat was the bacon off of the bacon-wrapped asparagus. Everything else got the blah treatment as she stuck out her tongue and let it dribble out.

I told Shelley about my exhaustion and she thinks it could be linked to the blood pressure medications. Like it or not, these pills have probably decreased my heart rate and cardiac output to a degree that my body is unused to. That means that the weakness will continue until everything finds a new equilibrium. Unfortunately, she thinks that could take up to 2 weeks which would put it smack in the middle of my trip out of town. I guess all I can do is see if and how I manage to adjust to it. If I can't, then I might just be forced to discontinue to meds until after it's over.

Oh, and thanks to those of you who sent happy birthday messages via LJ or facebook or email or smoke signal. It was probably a case of spitting into the wind but the sentiment is appreciated.

I feel like I was trampled by a marching band.

Despite that, it wasn't a bad day. I just feel all sore and exhausted. I fell asleep pretty early last night but woke up a little after 2am and wasn't able to get back to sleep the rest of the night and morning. When noon came around, I went with the family out to lunch with a family friend. The guy is a police officer who used to come into the restaurant all the time with his family. He helped us out by giving us a ton of those get out of jail free cards that all officers have access to. They're like the PBA cards, but better. In my wallet right now I've got this metal card that claims I'm the relative of a cop. That means that if I'm ever pulled over while speeding, running a stop sign, or popping a cap in someone's ass, I can just flash the card and they'll let me go.

I actually haven't had a chance to use the darn thing since I haven't actually had any altercations with the law since picking it up. My mom, on the otherhand, has been pulled over twice and managed to dodge both bullets. As a show of appreciation, my family always comped their meals and now that the restaurant is sold and gone, my uncle charlie invited them out to another place for lunch. I spent most of the meal chatting with the guy and it was a pleasant conversation. I was feeling a bit dizzy/nauseous due to the lack of sleep mixed with my usual cocktail of meds but I made it through the meal without any problems.

After lunch, I headed over to the Bills for Bill M's birthday party. I actually got there a bit early and was actually laying back in the car, trying to soothe the unpleasant feeling inside my head. The party itself was a lot of fun as usual. It was the same general crowd and by this time, it's a very comfortable group. The only ones really missing were Randy and Bob. According to facebook, Bob's birthday was the day before and I figure that they just didn't feel up to making the trek down.

Oh, and I have to mention this. Andrea made some of the coolest cupcakes I have ever seen in my life. I took a picture that I'm way too tired to try to upload now, but I'll hopefully get it up sometime tomorrow. They were little works of art. I snagged a couple with me as I left and they're sitting downstairs right now and I'm looking forward to biting their heads off. There were also plenty of other dishes and a plethora of food that people brought. Arthur made some really nice pasta, Bill S made samosas, Bernie and Karen brought meatballs, etc.

A few board games were played during the event and I spent a lot of time just chatting with people. My meds held up pretty well, though by the end of the night things were starting to slip. The lack of sleep was simply getting to me and it was time to stagger home. I probably looked like a drunk person lurching my way up the driveway. It was all I could do to take a shower and tap out this entry. It's definitely time for bed.

Nothing much of interest happened today and I spent a good chunk of it bored. About the only upside was I managed to pick up another Amazon gift cert off the amex wishlist. I then took both certs and converted them into Wii's. Now I'm hocking the Wii's and if I'm lucky and don't get ripped off, it should be a spiffy christmas for everyone.

Frankly, I can't believe people are still swarming over the Wii. It's been like two years now. You'd think that anyone who wanted one would have it now, but there are still people paying huge amounts over retail for them. Frankly, I don't even want to make any money off of selling the ones I got. I'm just hoping to break even and not end up involved in some sort of scam situation. The discounts from the wish certificates more than make up for the time and effort and I'd be happy enough just to pick that up.

I guess I should mention that Maddie turned one or is turning one. I'm not exactly certain but I think her actual birthday is the 9th. If I were really curious I guess I could scroll back through the LJ archive and find my entry from the day she was born. Anyway, Connie and Jeff had a birthday party for her at their place this past saturday. I decided to pass on the event but most of the rest of the family showed up. It's just not worth the effort for me to show up at family get together's for the most part. Besides, I usually see the kid a couple times a week on average and it's not like she'll ever remember I skipped out on the party anyway. The only thing that I am sort of disappointed about is that everyone forgot to bring my gift along with them. I could have sworn that I made a LJ entry about it, but searching back now I can't seem to find it.

I bought her a Fisher-Price Rock, Roll 'N Ride Trike



Pretty spiffy, eh? I liked the design of it which is supposed to accommodate kids from as young as 1 up to 5. It starts off as a rocking horse, which is how it looks in the picture. The next stage takes the 'rockers' and attaches it to the back of the trike as a handle. It gives the parents a means of pushing the kid along like a stroller of sorts. The last stage removes the handle completely and it's ridden as a tricycle. I figure it'll last her years as long as she doesn't somehow destroy it.

Connie has said that she already has a rocking horse of some sort but refuses to play with it. I was sort of curious if she would actually use the toy or if it would just be a useless piece of clutter. Oh well. I guess I can try putting the thing together the next time she's here and we'll see how it goes.

So in the previous entry I didn't actually talk a lot about the party itself. I was feeling a bit more freaked at the time and there were some severe pain issues. My meds have kicked in a bit and I'm a little more even keeled. That's not to say the night wasn't very difficult from a functionality point of view. I found it impossible to stand up straight and ended up limping about or more often leaning on a chair.

It was nice to get a chance to see everyone again. As things have gotten worse, I become more and more of a shut-in, and I don't get to see friends as often. I try to still make a couple of events every month but it becomes harder and harder. The usual suspects were at Randy's party along with a couple of people I've never met before. I spent some time talking with another guy there who was also young but on disability as well. I'm not sure that I ever found out what his exact medical issue was but functionally, he has some similar problems where he can't spend a lot of time walking and has problems with pain. He was probably younger than me by around 5 years and I felt sort of ambivalent about the whole thing. On one hand, it's nice to see someone who's in a similar position to me of having to be on disability while still relatively young. On the otherhand, I always feel a bit...envious? disgruntled? when I find someone who seems to be in boat but is more functional than I am. I imagine it's sort of like having a quadriplegic being sort of pissy about a paraplegic. It's just hard not to feel sort of Job like.

There was a lot of different types of food at the party with many people bringing various dishes. That's also something I sort of feel bad about. I'm pretty much a moocher when it comes to events like this. I don't cook and I seldom end up bringing anything. I almost never end up leaving the house and so my opportunities to pick something up is always iffy. About the only thing that would work would be a drive-through on the way there and I just can't see bringing a sack of hamburgers as being anything other than ridiculous. I really should contribute something more to these events and it sort of gnaws at me sometimes when I think about it.

As for Randy's birthday, I picked him up a copy of Dragon Quest IV for the DS. He had posted in the evite that the only gaming system he didn't have was an Xbox 360. Unfortunately, he was thinking about consoles only and not portables. So it turns out that he doesn't have a DS, and my gift ends up being a flop. I guess all I can do is try to get it swapped somewhere. With black friday coming up, a lot of stores are easing up on their exchange/return policy. That should make it easier since I bought the game from an online store and exchanging it there would not only take a lot of time but require return postage. The nice thing is the game is still very new and the retail value is high so he can probably end up swapping it for close to whatever he wants.

I haven't been very active on here lately in either writing or reading. It's not exactly that things are going badly, but there's a lot of transition. When it's good, it's quite good and when it's bad, it's pretty damn bad. The problem is that the situation changes at a drop of a hat. That means that I don't tend to plan as much and end up doing more spur of the moment things. Certainly I've put off the gencon recap for weeks now for the very reason that I'm not sure I could finish them if I started it and then the whole thing would hang over my head like a sword.

I should also mention that this past Sunday was Bernie and Karen's birthday party and it was pretty spiffy. We ran through yet another game of Agricola, which I won this time though I'm still not sure exactly how. I just don't know what to think about the game. It leaves me in a state of bewilderment each time I play it. There's just never enough time to do everything you want and you feel like you're constantly trying to keep ahead of the mudslide that's about to consume you. Maybe that's really part of the appeal for me. I can't pin down one single strategy or figure out how everything is supposed to work. That's why I keep wanting to play it again and again as if it were some sort of complex machine I could break down and understand if I just see it running enough times.

Anyway, back to the party. A lot of people ended up showing and we all got to meet Karen's sister who was a barrel of monkeys. She's preggers so everyone made sure to share with her all the intestines popping out and anus explosion stories they had about births. I couldn't figure out what all the shrieking was about at first. I had been in the kitchen at the time leaning on a kitchen stool waiting for my second round of meds to kick in.

When things had mostly died down that night and many people had left, I got to play a final game with Lori, Randy, and Karen which was nice. I don't get the chance to see Randy all that often since he's usually MIA at the panera events and some of the Bills' parties as well. The same usually goes for Lori and I haven't attended one of the meetups since around half a year ago. It's just too much of a price to pay in pain and discomfort for an experience I might not even enjoy. Plenty of people at the meetup are great, but it doesn't take too many shortbus-riding spazzcases to ruin the event.

I <3 cupcakes more than life itself. This reflects not only my love for cupcakes, but also my general dissatisfaction with life in general. Still, on a morning where I'm getting to scarf cupcakes, things don't seem all that bad. Surely it could be worse.

Despite my love of cupcakes, I don't actually get the opportunity to eat them very often. The only reason I have some now is due to a mini quirk of fate that started yesterday. It was another generic gameday at the Panera and I made the trek over hoping to give Agricola another whirl. It turns out that the Bills were hosting a birthday party for Andrea at their place that night but had forgotten to send out the evite invitations. That meant that everyone would\e cutting out of the gameday around 5:30 or so and there wouldn't be enough time to run through the game. Brian had also invited me over to his place that night but the lure of getting another Agricola runthrough at the Bills won out. When I went to call him to let him know, I discovered that I not only had forgotten my cell phone as well but my bottle of pills as well. The latter didn't turn out to be as much as a problem as I feared as the patches were working okay supplemented with some borrowed advil.

The party went over pretty well. I spent a good chunk of the evening getting that second play of Agricola and got my ass handed to me. We had a small rules snafu in the beginning that just ended up domino'ing into a disaster for me. Andrea had made a big mess of cupcakes as well and normally I would have been all over them but my stomach felt a bit off. I ended up snagging some and bringing them home with me and it ended up being a good decision. I'm not sure exactly what was the cause, be it medication or lack of sleep or something else but I was feeling nauseous and ill on the drive home. I didn't eat much at the party, only trying Bill's somosas as I was heading out the door and I ended up distributing it all over the street outside when I got home. I ended up with a stabbing headache interspersed with more nausea until I finally dozed off.

Still, all's well that ends well. I woke up feeling better and I have a plateful of cupcakes to eat. I just have to remember to give Brian a ring sometime today and apologize for last night's snafu. Karen and Bernie are holding a joint birthday party at their place today and if I'm lucky, there might be more cupcakes.

Ya, so I had nothing better to do so I mixed it together and popped it up. The videos are a bit out of order, but it's not worth the effort of going back and fixing it.



I would much rather be asleep right now but I had a pill popping wakeup call this morning and I'm waiting for them to kick in. Pain is really an insidious sort of thing. It just pokes at you and pokes at you and pokes at you until you do something to get rid of it. Sometimes I feel like I'm the universe's pavlovian bitch. I sometimes wonder if one of these days I'll just go stark raving mad.

I guess I should mention that the birthday whozit went okay. Went to a Korean BBQ place with the family. Partway through the meal though I started having some pain issues that I wasn't able to lock down with meds. That made the rest of it less than stellar and pretty much carried through the whole cake whozit. I've got video of it on the flip but I'm sure none of you care and I can't be bothered.

*sigh*

It's my birthday this Sunday just thinking about it gives me a case of the sads. It's not like I've ever been happy when birthdays have rolled around in the past, but that's combined with the fact that there seems less and less to be happy about each year. At best, I'm treading water in the great sharktank of life and I'm missing a limb or two. Sometimes I just wish that Chompy would get it over with already.

In other news, according to the tracking information the Flip Ultra arrived in Jersey City yesterday. That's not very far and if I'm lucky, it might actually get delivered sometime later today. That means I'll have it around to document the Smirk and Dagger tournament as well as my birthday. If the latter goes according to form the video will consist of 24 hours of me huddled under a mess of blankets and whimpering occasionally. Yay.

Weee. Look how industrious I'm being. Another attempted recap within a day of the last installment. Of course, there's no telling when I'll actually get this done, only when I convinced myself to start it.

( Birthdays and no Renn Faires.... )

One thing that I haven't gotten around to mentioning about my birthday is I received a phone call friday night from Joe. If we step into the way back machine, we'd all recall that he was the guy who had contacted me out of the blue a year ago about a card game he had designed. I had received a few emails from him since then but there hadn't been any contact for over 9 months. So imagine my surprise when he called up to wish me a happy birthday. It turns out that he had remembered me mentioning to him last year that it was close to my birthday and after putting it together with my email address with '323', he put it together and decided to give me a ring.

Now, I'm a pretty cynical bastards overall and it sorta baffled me that someone would call me up to wish me a happy birthday, ecspecially someone I barely knew and who I had only mentioned the date in passing a year ago. Immediately my brain starts churning trying to calculate what seemingly made no sense. I would have sooner believed he was calling to tell me about some wonderful money-making investment in Nigeria that he had wanted to let me in on.

We chatted for a bit and I hung up feeling sorta confused. It's not like it was any huge big effort on his part, but it's still not what I would expect from practically a stranger. I feel like I'm having a grinch "heart grew three sizes" moment.

Things have been better over the past day and a half or so. No clue what caused it but all of a sudden the pain receeded to a more bearable level. It's at the point now that I can stand it without the need for opiates, though it's never pleasant. Popping one when I need to sleep is certainly better than having to take them just to get past every moment of the day.

My birthday is this friday and it's hard to recall a more horrific leadup to it. It's been a horrific past few weeks and there's no telling how long this little window of relative calm is going to last. I'm still feeling sort of jittery and strung out, not in a drug sense but just emotionally. I imagine it'll be a while before I manage to crawl my way up to a more stable equalibrium.

So today is my mom's birthday and I was in charge of ordering the cake. I carried out this duty a couple days ago, ordering a 'number' cake in the shape of a '6' and a '0' since my mom is turning 60 today. Someone went to pick up the cake a couple of hours ago and found that though I said I wanted a 'number' cake, someone obviously thought what I wanted was a 'bunny' cake with 60 on it somewhere. Obviously my mom wanted no part of a $70 cake which looked like a freaking easter bunny so we declined to purchase it.

I get a call from the bake shop around 15 minutes later saying that since they screwed it up, they would let us have it for $20 dollars instead. Now, I'm thinking here...mmmm, I get to eat cake and who the hell cares what it looks like and it'll only cost me $20! That's a winner. I talk to my mom and my sister, both of whom are flat against taking the cake. So I call to let them know that we're going to pass on it, just as the person there says 'oh, really? I was just about to call you and tell you that you could have it for free'. Doh. So not only do I not get cake, I don't even get free cake, which as far as I'm concerned is just about the best kind of cake there is.

Feh.

Someone bake me a cake now. I want a cake, damnit.

I'm not sure if I even posted about what I did for my birthday but I've got some pictures of it. Nothing overly exciting but I finally got around to resizing and uploading them.

( The big 3-oh )

Well, it's over and it didn't kill me. Or even more surprisingly, anyone else.

The dreaded 3-0 is just around the corner and it sucks. At least I know I can console myself with the fact that vala_amaris will always be a few months older than me and will fall into decreptitude first while I maintain the full blush of youth. Still, it's a small consolation. I don't have any birthday plans lined up, having shot down the idea that my sister floated of taking a trip to France for a few days. You'd think she were being ironic, but she actually thought the idea would be fun. Ya, that's just how I would want to spend a birthday. Stuck in an entire country full of frogs with no belt-fed machinegun in sight.

In other news, Lunacon starts tommorrow. I told Matt Lee that I would give him a hand running the boardgames there and setting up even though it's really a litterary con more than anything else. I don't see the point but apparently people get together in panels and seminars to discuss aspects of writing sci-fi and fantasy. I assume it's all things like how big should my princess character's breasts be or trying to determine how much comraderie between two oiled-up muscled barbarian characters can exist before it starts to seem gay. There's also some sort of giant raffle where you can win....BOOKS! "Our Book Exhibit will have a selection of the latest books in the genre plus other classics donated to the Society." Damn thing sounds like a librarian convention. Still, I've been promised there will be a gaming track so off I go to whore myself for playroom entertainment and neca.