I think my cats are legally insane. My mom told me last week that one of our cats, a little gray kitten named Kit, hopped into the clothes dryer while she wasn't looking and was still in there when she turned it on. Once it started going she heard a loud thunk and quickly opened it up, upon which Kit bolted out of the dryer. I think Kit has a death wish, because the dryer incident wasn't his first brush with death. Before we officially made him a house cat (he was originally a stray kitten whose mother abandoned him in our backyard), he was hit by a car in front of our house while running across the street. He made it out of that with just a scrape across his chin and his ear. If cats really do have nine lives, I think Kit owes the afterlife a few extra lives beyond that nine...



And no, Josh, Kit is NOT named after you-know-who. That name is my mom's doing.



Last night I ran out of room in my L5R rares folder. 10 card pages with 9 rares per page and I have 9 rares sitting aside without a home. A sure sign that I'm totally obsesed with this game considering I only started playing in April. At least I'm not playing Magic or some lame game like that.



Speaking of Magic, I HATE the Magic players at my local L5R haunt. A few weeks ago while I was there I had the misfortune of sitting behind a group of teenaged Magic players who were playing some little booster pack tournament. This one kid, who had to have been the youngest one there unless he has some sort of growth deformity, had one of the foulest mouths I've heard outside of #FPL or a teen comedy movie. I won't repeat what he said, but let's just say that if I had a bar of Dial handy I'd have shoved it down his throat then and there. On top of that, the little punk whined for like 30 minutes on how it wasn't fair that he didn't win a booster pack in the tournament despite the fact that, well, he sucked at the game (as far as I could tell at least). He kept on trying to steal away the real winners' stuff with the most inane argument outside of a #FPL "newbies suck because I say so" argument. Anyway... like I said... I'm SO glad I don't play Magic anymore.
- posted by Chad @ 11/22/2002 04:21:00 PM

 
Man... all of the H.E.B.'s, the local supermarket chain, I go to never have Lemon Lime Jones Soda. They have practically all of the other flavors, but they don't have THE one flavor I really like. So I go to the Jones Soda website to see if I can order some of the stuff directly, since I've been majorly craving the stuff for months now.. and they don't even carry it anymore. Talk about a downer. They do have Vanilla Cola now, though... I might just have to try that out.



But yeah... today I went with my mom and sister to Central Market, H.E.B.'s high end, expensive, fancy supermarket. They have some real snazzy stuff there. I ended up buying a $6 bag of potato chips. Kettle Chips, I think they're called. I just HAD to have them since it was the first time I had seen what I would call my Dream Chip Flavor: Salt and Pepper. I'm not big on flavored chips. I can't stomach BBQ or Sour Cream or whatever other flavors I've tried, so I've always just been a plain salted chip fan. But I DO love pepper. I'll put it on just about anything short of ice cream, and I even tried THAT once (which didn't taste all that hot, by the way). To see potato chips that are made with salt AND pepper was like a dream come true. The thing is, they didn't have a price on the bag OR on the shelf they were on, so I didn't know they were gonna cost $6 until we got to the check-out. Of course I was shocked, but I got them anyway, telling my mom and the cashier "They BETTER be good." And you know what? They're the best damn chips I've had since I first tried Zapp's potato chips. Forget Lay's, forget Pringles, these are REAL chips.
- posted by Chad @ 11/20/2002 05:10:00 PM

 
It's 4:45 in the morning and I have absolutely nothing to do but A) Sleep or B) Write in this silly journal. Since a smart person would go to sleep, and since smart is not a word I'd use to describe myself, I'm sitting here rambling about nothing. Time to rant I guess... heeheehee..



I wish UTSA would hurry up and tell me whether I'm getting into the English grad program or not. I hate these waiting games. I'm just so nervous that I won't get in that I want to get it over with. If I'm not good enough for them, I just wanna know and know right now so I can get over it and move on to something else. All this waiting just makes me worry and I HATE worrying.



Not being a worrisome person is something I like to pride myself on. For the most part I'm a fairly care-free, easy-going person with few cares or woes in the world. I have my occassional problem or two, but I'm hardly the sort to dwell on things to what I would consider unhealthy levels. The occassional worry will rear its ugly head, but I do my best to get over it quickly and move on. Situations like this where I have a cloud of doubt hanging over my head just ruins almost everything for me. Major concerns like this just disrupt everything I want to do, like write for instance. This looming dread of not getting into grad school is part of the reason why I've been having a horrible bout of writer's block as of late. When I'm down like this I just don't want to write anything that takes effort like stories of FPL characters.



So HURRY UP UTSA! I wanna get back to my regularly scheduled slacking PRONTO! I have characters to make and stories to write.
- posted by Chad @ 11/19/2002 04:52:00 AM

 
Ok... so I was over at a friend's (Matt's his name) place tonight. He has a small, cramped, 1 bedroom apartment. Its a decent enough place on nights like this one where its just him, another friend (my fellow L5R junkie friend James) and myself, but when we have the whole gaming group over it gets really crowded. Well, we expected tonight to be such a night. Like I said before, a bunch of our friends had gone out of town to the Renn Fest and were due back this afternoon. When we didn't hear from anyone we just figured they got held up with the Fest and were just having too much fun.



Such was not the case.



We got a call around 9 tonight from one of our friends, David. Now David is one of my oldest and best friends. I've known the guy since 8th Grade when we were in Orchestra together. We both played the viola. He always competed with this girl named Ava for first chair in the viola section of the 8th Grade Orchestra. I competed with myself to see how badly I'd botch on the tests for chairs to see how far behind I was from the other 3 viola players. Anyway... he and I go way back. So, we get a call from him saying that his girlfriend's (Kaylynn's her name, although I'm sure I'm misspelling that) father has had a heart attack and he wouldn't be joining us tonight so he could be with her.



Now I obviously feel real bad about what happened, but I can't help but feel the worst for David. As long as I've known him, all of his relationships have been rough, to say the least. His first long-time girlfriend basically dumped him so she could date his then-roommate. His second long-time girlfriend... well... she was a nice person... so long as she wasn't around David. Then she became a possessive, obsessive bitch. And now... Kaylynn's a nice girl from what I can tell and I'm happy that David's met a girl who doesn't seem to be some disaster waiting to happen... but her family has been on the edge or tragedy as of late. First Kaylynn herself was in the hospital with kidney problems that thankfully wasn't as serious and life-threatening as it could have been, but now her father is in serious condition. Despite the fact that David himself hasn't been personally hit by any of these emergencies, I just can't help but feel sorry for him. Sometimes it just seems he's doomed to failure when it comes to relationships, as if there's some force trying to keep him from being happy in that regard. I just want to see ONE of my friends have a happy relationship and give me some hope that such things are still possible in this world.



All of my friends seem to go from one troubled relationship to another. Not one single friend of mine has been able to just settle down and find that sort of happiness, and it just troubles me. Its bad enough that I'm horribly intimidated when it comes to the whole relationship game, but to see this sort of thing happening amongst my friends just kicks me while I'm down and makes me not even want to try and get up. Every time I eventually work up the nerve to try and go up to a girl I'm interested in, I can't help but think back at how all of my friends' relationships have ended and think "Do I really want to risk getting burned like that? Do I want this pain and suffering?" And the answer is always a resounding "NO."



That, and girls are just EVIL. EVIL! E-V-I-L-!



Oh, and I'm VERY happy that I just found one of my long-lost FPL characters. Emily Fairchild. Now that I've found her original writeup I think I might just try to remake her sometime soon...
- posted by Chad @ 11/18/2002 02:50:00 AM

 
Well... I finally caved in and got one of these lame things. Are you happy now?! Are you glad I've sunk into the abyss of lameness that is the online journal?! You better be happy 'cause I'm sure as hell gonna make y'all pay. Pay I tell you, PAY! OOOHOHOHOHOHO!



Anyway... last night was yet another L5R (Legend of the Five Rings) night. Everybody ran off to the Rennaissance Fest outside of Houston this weekend so it just ended up being James and myself cooped up in his garage last night. I may as well have been off camping with the others at the Renn Fest considering how cold it gets sitting out in a garage in the middle of November since I'm feeling pretty sick today because of the cold. I just can't see how people can stand sleeping outside in a tent like that, especially when its barely 30 degrees outside. And all the bugs and dirt and grass... can't you tell I'm a city boy? Heeheehee... It's just... icky. Not that the outdoors are BAD or anything, its just... well... wallowing in the dirt without a bathtub or anything like that nearby just isn't my idea of fun. Stinking to high-heaven just doesn't suit me well.



And ironically enough, just as I start writing this I get a call from James. Gaming night yet again. Now if only everyone is actually back in town we can have a decent showing tonight. They just better not want me to DM tonight. I'm in one of those "MWAHAHA! I rolled a 56! Y'all DIE! DIEDIEDIEDIEDIE!" moods. I already have a reputation for character-killing in my group, I don't want to actually give them a reason to prove it. Heehee...



Man... all this gaming is really cramping my DVD watching. I STILL haven't finished His and Her Circumstances and I have that mammoth 4 disc Lord of the Rings set sitting on top of the TV in the den just SCREAMING to be watched. Sometimes I wish I was more anti-social. I'd get a LOT more done...
- posted by Chad @ 11/17/2002 06:51:00 PM