John Zeitler

I recently had occasion to deal with someone who believed that, just because I happened to be looking for a job currently, I had all the free time in the world to do, well, pretty much anything I wanted. Naturally, between the three trips out I had to make today, some cleaning that I’d been putting off, and phone calls from a dozen different administrative tasks left hanging after last week, this obviously isn’t the case for me. More to the point, it’s caused me to a) revert to college-bachelor cooking (ie instant mashed potatoes mixed with tuna and some leftover shredded mozzarella), and b) made me so tired that even though I’m getting up later in the morning (read: 6:30a instead of 4a), I’m dead on my feet here at 9:30p.

I understand it’s gonna take time to adjust my sleep schedule, but dammit, this is just not fair to me right now, because now is when I have the ambition to do all this cool stuff.

So, yeah… I got sick. Like, seriously sick. The kind of sick that begins with coming to on the kitchen floor and ends with three nights doing nothing but huddling in bed waiting for the NyQuil to knock me out.

I’m better now, of course. But the writing has kind of stalled. Um, completely. So that’s my big plan for the next few nights, at any rate– to get back into working on the book. Tomorrow I should have an update on where I’m at with that.

Later, folks. Don’t catch what caught me.

Self Aware Games: “Make up a word that describes Word Ace. Can’t be a real word.”
Me: “QUYZYXY. Not only is it pronounceable and has a quasi-sensical answer (‘possessing the quality of quyzyx’), it is also the single highest-scoring pronounceable word in the game (10+1+4+8+4+8+4, bonus 2+5+20 = 66 points) and stays within the letter distribution (uses all three Ys, the single Z, X, and Q, and one of the four Us).”
Rest of the Internet: “You’re a damn nerd.”
Me: *sobs in agreement*

I would love to say that today was normal, but when I didn’t get home until 12:45a last night and didn’t get to bed until almost 2a, one could easily say that I needed the rest. So I did.

Catch you folks tomorrow; hopefully the world will go easy on m– sorry, I really thought I could get through that sentence with a straight face.

The weekend is starting off in a good way. I had a fun time at an extra Smash session, then had a chat with Rick for a while. And now I’m off to bed, with nowhere to go in the morning. I can dig this.

(Yes, I know the lyric is actually “Situation: no win.” It just makes more sense as it’s misheard for the context… plus, it’s too peppy of a song to have such a depressing phrase as “no win”.)

This weekend has been… let’s not talk about it. It’s been frustrating. However, I’ve found the source of the trouble. See, every time I’ve needed something to happen, I’ve used the phrase “With any luck…”, forgetting one very important point.

My luck is, traditionally, horrible.

I would love to tell of the festivities partaken of over this past weekend. I would tell of grand adventures, heartfelt conversations, and an epic quest not soon to be forgotten.

But a) I’m really, really tired still and b) getting to the merrymaking was a journey through several levels of Hell.

On the bright side, I did get a lot of reading done. So there’s that.

Sorry I don’t have anything better to offer tonight than an excuse. Tomorrow I should be more able to be coherent.

Okay. Really, I’m going to bed early. Fortunately I have someone who can take calls in my absence tonight…

…uh, on second thought, maybe you’d be better off e-mailing me, and I’ll get you back in the morning.

Looking at me, many people assume I’m either younger or older than I am. When I say I’m 29, people look at me incredulously. The problem is, though, that the aphorism “Age is just a number” is a total lie. I’m almost thirty. Most days I still feel like a little kid, but sometimes I start to feel the weight of that “mere number”.

Case in point. Last night, after getting everything taken care of for the next morning, I decided that I wanted to play a little bit of a game to unwind. I started playing around 7:30p, and I selected a puzzle game on the Xbox Live Arcade– Yosumin Live, which got some mediocre reviews but is still an engaging game (I strongly recommend waiting until it becomes a Deal of the Week title, and also getting the $1 Adventure Mode DLC). My first goal was to grab one of the more interesting achievements: clear a stage in under 8 seconds. After managing that, though, I decided to keep going as it was only 8p or so and I was still a little wired. So I kept playing through the “Endless” mode, since there are achievements for reaching 100 million points and for completing Stage 50.

This was both a good and bad idea. It was good because I wasn’t aware that the score achievement was cumulative (the description doesn’t say so), so I got that somewhere around Stage 40. It was bad because I got to Stage 40 around 11:00 and didn’t stop then. I knew I should have stopped. I even saw the clock, and said out loud, “I should be in bed.” But I didn’t stop. I reached Stage 50 around 11:45. Fatigue really had started to set in, though, and even though I banged my head against it for about half an hour longer, I could not clear that last stage (even though I got a luck-based achievement during the course of that assault). It should be noted that the requirements to clear that stage were far beyond Stage 49’s requirements (49: “Clear 10 square sets, and a total of 600 pieces”; 50: “Clear the entire board four times and a total of one thousand pieces”). And I came within 32 pieces of finishing before time ran out on my best run. I’ve learned a few tricks since then, though, so I should be able to get through it the next time I give it a try.

Which would be a Friday night, or sometime when I don’t need to be awake in the morning.