Aug
18
Wow, August is halfway over. Where did the summer go?
Yeah, I know where it went. Same place it goes every year I suppose, just it never seems to hit you until it’s the middle of August and you’re doing back to school shopping with your children. As summers go, this one really didn’t have the trademark summer defining moment which summers tend to have. Although I suppose the lack of a trademark summer defining moment is the trademark summer defining moment for this season. I dunno, just seemed like something more exciting should’ve happened. Oh well, although school starts in less than two weeks, summer technically isn’t over for another month, so there’s still enough time to have a true trademark summer defining moment.
Along with the back to school shopping for the kids, we’ve also did some back to school shopping for the wife this year. She’s heading back to the classroom (as a teacher, not a pupil). It’s a part time-ish teaching position for this year since our youngest is still a year from kindergarten, this way we won’t have to pay for childcare besides her regular half-day preschool. For the past three years she’s been tutoring at home to help make ends meet (those ends being the bills and the on time payment of them), but she’s been itching to get back into the classroom for quite some time now. She’s both excited and apprehensive about the prospect since she’s not sure how her body will react to returning to a regular work schedule. She usually has an MS relapse every Sept/Oct, though the past couple of years have been milder since she’s been off work. Always seems to be the changing of the seasons that gets her. She’s recently switched doctors, and her new neurologist has changed her meds a little so hopefully the changes will help her weather the fall a bit better.
Last week was a new beginning of sorts for me over at The Dimmer Switch. Well, yeah I did start publishing again after a two week hiatus, but last week’s column is the first in over two years that I didn’t syndicate over at Gather. I’ve decided to move on, I suppose. I flirted with the idea of quitting the site back in April but was persuaded to hang around to see how a few new upgrades would pan out at the site. Can’t say I was too pleased with the changes made, plus after reviewing my traffic data against the pageview counts over at Gather I realized the site really wasn’t increasing my exposure by that much. Sure, I get a lot more comments and the occasional gift card, but that’s really not my goal.
(Speaking of goal, we will not discuss progress toward said goal. Let’s just say my procrastination and propensity to find diversionary activities are my biggest hinderance these days.)
I haven’t nuked my profile yet, so I’ve left the door open to potentially reviving the Gather presence. I’ll probably still read and comment over there (though the recent changes make it much more difficult to find anything new), but I have no plans to publish anything over there again anytime soon. Unless they pay me. 
Speaking of diversionary activites, I just finished reading “Bite Me” by Christopher Moore. Up until now pretty much every book I read that wasn’t a class assignment were verbose, 800 word tomes (I cut my teeth reading Stephen King and Tolkien). It’s one of the reasons why I gave up on writing fiction (well that and my previous admission of being a procrastinator and seeker of entertaining diversionary activities). Maybe I’ll give it another try.
Speaking of entertaining diversionary activities, I’m flirting with the idea of returning to WoW. Yeah, I know, I killed myself off many months ago, but WoW is like the old GI Joe cartoon from the 80s; despite all of the war and violence, no one ever really dies. My characters are in a virtual stasis, waiting for me to re-up my subscription. Although if I do return, I’ll probably start fresh on a new server. I made the mistake of joining a PVP server the last time, and after hours of getting literally stabbed in the back by random members of the other faction I finally decided it was no longer worth the hassle. But then a guy I worked with mentioned the server he was on was listed as PVE (player vs. environment, for those of you who don’t speak the lingo), plus he was a member of an adults only guild which piqued my interest. Besides the random stabbings, the maturity level of some of the other players was also a drawback to the game. Younger players tend to have lots of Ego-Armor, which is quite annoying. I mostly solo’d when I played but I would occasionally accept a random guild invitation from time to time only to find out that everyone else in the guild was 15. Awkward.
As of this post I haven’t signed back up yet, although I did begin re-downloading the game to the new computer. It should finish downloading by Tuesday (3.9 GB, the game isn’t tiny). Of course getting back into a game like this would greatly eat into my writing time, so I’m taking that into consideration. Well, that and I have to talk it over with the wife.
Well, that should do it for now. See you later (Thursday at the latest).
(I hope)