Blog of Magic Cheese

My afternoons lately:

"Boy, South Bay sure has lovely weather. I'm going to make a sandwich and a mug of tea and go outside and enjoy the sun. Sit on a grassy knoll, have a little sword practice in the abandoned parking lot next door, sounds like a happy lunch hour over all. I wonder why no one else in the office goes outside for lunch? It's such a waste, with the beautiful weather.

"Mm, toasted cheese on whole grain bread and peppered turkey breast. Some crunchy sweet pickles, a mug of hot Scottish breakfast tea-hey! HEY. Why are bugs flying into my tea?! Argh get out get out! Climb onto this leaf and I'll save you, little bugs! What are you DOING?! Stop swimming away, I'm trying to save you!

"I know! I'll scoop you out with my hand! OW OW TEA HOT argh what are you hornets doing eating my sandwich? Get away! My turkey! I paid for it! Hate! Why are bugs so obnoxious the season right before they die?! Whyyyy?"

I don't care. I'm bound and determined to enjoy the sunshine and fresh air no matter what.

So as part of my new job, I get to write and run events for the beta testing community (we haven't opened for beta testing yet, but I'm writing up the events for when we do.)

One of the events I want to run is a poetry event, based on the great fun I had years ago when I was part of another early game community. I went back and looked up old forum archives from 2004, and holy crap. I wrote sonnets on the spot when I was taking part in that poetry event. They're not very good sonnets, but still.

I kind of have a girl crush on myself now. I'd like to say I'm impressed at my literary prowess, but truthfully it's just a testament to how much of my brain was languishing in disuse while I was in school, because I sure as heck don't think I could write a darn thing now. (:

Sorry about that! The photos actually went up shortly after I got home, but I never got around to posting the link here. Pictures from my trip to Brazil can be found here on my Flickr. Enjoy!

I'm still alive, just busy and somewhat sleep deprived. I'm working in Santa Clara now on a game, and the people at my new company are really nice, but the commute means I'm getting less sleep than I'm used to. Until later!

I did a rather teenaged thing last week: I snuck out.

I was raised by my father, but my mother, possibly because she didn´t see me grow up, is insanely, illogically overprotective. She flips out whenever I propose doing anything.

I once rented a moving van to help a friend move from CalTech to Northern CA. Massive fight. It ended with her in tears.

So as you can imagine, she wasn´t thrilled at the prospect of me going traveling alone. Which is why I didn´t tell anyone in the family I was going.

... greetings from Brasil!

Rio de Janeiro was pretty crazy. As soon as I´m home (my friend does not have ´net so I´m in a LAN house) I want to read about the economy of the place and the favelas (slums) now, because the city is a mix of gorgeous old buildings, the smell of sewage, and graffiti everywhere..

I´m staying with a friend I´ve known for years but finally got to meet for the first time (thank you Internets!) and we´ve been cooking together and trying out recipes and comparing customs. It´s fantastic. We´re in Cabo Frio and I went swimming in the ocean. Can you imagine trying an insane stunt like that in Northern CA?

Pictures and the like forthcoming when I return.

Yesterday I was having a good day.

I got my work done, some cleaning finished, chatted with some friends via the internets, and headed to my weekly crafting circle. I was ripping apart a cheap hoodie to make a jacket lining when my father called me.

He spoke to me for seventeen minutes.

I closed my phone and went back to what I was doing, and then I became aware that in those seventeen minutes I had lost the will to live, and that a Staind song was playing in my head.

'cause it's always raaaaaaiiinning in my head
forget all the things I should have saaaaaaaid

And that, in a hilarious (if you know my father, it really is. trust me.) and horrible nutshell, is the relationship between me and my father.

I have both wrinkles and adult acne, and have thus moved beyond the point of merely resenting life and am now declaring war on it.

A recent CostCo trip has proven to me that there are more horrifying things than having a face like a bullet-ridden leather wallet however, namely organic batter-inna-can.

Of course the main factor in the tragic Winnenden shootout was video games.

The Chronicle spells it out for us: "Teen in bloody spree a fan of video games." It's all the games. It always is. It wasn't that he was socially maladjusted, had a history of mental illness, had dropped out of counseling for depression, or that he had access to a pistol that his father kept lying about in the bedroom. The pivotal factor, and the only one worth repeatedly pointing out, is the video games.

Before evil capitalistic game companies started cranking out violent video games with no regard for society at large, young people never committed violent crimes. If this young man hadn't had access to video games that helped him plan and act out his violent urges, this never would have happened.

I'm naturally not a fan in general of violent games, but I do remember enjoying the fatalities in Mortal Kombat a lot when I was in high school. Giant pixelated gobs of blood flying across the screen? Woo hoo! Unfortunately the game made me arm myself with a large semi-circle of sharpened metal and filled me with violent urges to attack my classmates and random passers by at a Volkswagon dealership, so I had to stop going to the comic store and watching it.

I hope that we ban video games altogether so that violent crime can finally come to an end.

In my ongoing whoring of myself out to Facebook, I've discovered a handy RSS feed application that imports things like Flickr updates and MovableType entries

Unfortunately, all of my formatting vanished when imported to the Facebook, so now my attempts to update friends and uninterested acquaintances on the minutiae of my daily life are in vain. Trying out explicitly putting all of my formatting in html instead of being lazy and letting MovableType do it for me.

There needs to be a term for that awkward transition phase when one is going from one style of dress to another.

I'm in it now, because last year my brother pointed out that none of my clothes quite match or, as he put it, "I wonder if you'd grown up with Mom if you'd be more feminine. Right now it's more like you've accepted that you live in a woman's body." I realized I was still wearing the clothes I'd worn 10 years ago, so I bought some nice looking used clothes off of the eBay, and now I'm in Fashion Hell (hey, I may have just come up with the term I was looking for) because I picked up individual items because I liked how they looked and I have no idea how to arrange these items to form An Outfit.

I couldn't notice the difference between pairs of shoes and purses I see on the street if beaten. I hate impractical shoes like the ones with spiky heels and cardboard soles that have the same comfortable effect as stomping barefoot on stone with the balls of your feet, and I carry a little backpack because I think that having a one-handed bag will eventually mess with your alignment.

I also don't like the idea of purses because you have to change all of your stuff from bag to bag whenever you carry a different one, and I have tons of things in my bag and if I need one thing, such as sunglasses on a super bright day and it's not there, I will flip out and destroy the purse.

I am a giant, giant, uptight dork and nothing will likely ever change that. ): Unfortunately, nice shirt, pretty skirt, and extra wide New Balance running shoes do not An Outfit make.

I might be tempted to give up and live in my old comfortable monochromatic wardrobe, but the fashion industry is cruel and cunning, and they're out to get me. I know this because this year everything is "military cut." You know, military inspired. Clean lines, practical as well as nice looking, made for people with broad shoulders, narrow waists, and athletic builds? I LOVE military cut clothing. Make your trousers military cut with plenty of room in the thigh and you'll win the undying faith and adoration of athletes everywhere who can't find pants that fit.

So now I have some nice shirts and jackets, and for the last two weeks I have been trying, largely without success, to master "layering." Layering is where you wear more than one shirt and they look good on top of one another. Two great tastes, great together, etc. It probably started out as a way for stores to make you buy more than one goddamn shirt at a time, because trying to layer shirts that you got in different places is like trying to find a charger for your phone from a different brand. The ads make it look effortless and urban and faded and cool, and I hate them almost as much as I hate myself for still buying tank tops I can't wear and that I now can't layer. Hell.

My father ate 8 years expired almond butter. This is after he fished it out of the rubbish bin, where I had dropped it with a horrified shriek shortly after discovering it in his refrigerator. This is a new refrigerator, meaning he had moved the jar from the old fridge into the new one and not thrown it out then.

He is still alive.

It's good to be home.