The week has not been too bad.  Last Tuesday, gaming was canceled so I decided to create a character for D&D Encounters.  I started the Character Builder and was disappointed to see there was not an update.  I searched the forums and discovered there had been an email sent out to some subscribers saying there would be no update in September.  I became even more disappointed, but given that the update had already been pushed back 2 weeks, it was not completely unexpected.  I half expect not to get an October update either.

The new season of D&D Encounters started well--we all survived.  It was a lot easier than Dark Sun. 

I went and played games on Friday instead of going to the club.  We played the new D&D Ravenloft board game and Catan Histories: Settlers of America.  Both games were a lot of fun. 

Saturday I went to the Social and there were not that many people there.  On top of that, there was no music playing yet.  Needless to say, there was more eating than dancing.  I was kind of let down, but I didn't jump up and ask women to dance.

Next Sunday I am taking the lead in SOR.  We are doing the Rosary.  I have been doing some research and found out Pope John Paul II added the Luminous Mysteries so there are 4 sets of mysteries instead of 3.  There are also a couple new prayers that can be said at the end of a decade.  We are going to keep it as simple as possible--the kids are after all only 3rd graders.  I have a large rosary that was my grandfathers that I am planning to ue for demonstration.  I have looked  for some of my others, but I can't find them.  I am not sure if I still have them or if they are in my parents house somewhere.  I am excited right now and I hope this goes well.

I have applied for a couple of jobs and put more effort into my resume and the cover letters.  I probably still won't get a good response, but I am improving my side and I plan to continue.  I am trying to be upbeat about my job search going forward.

Now I need to practice my rosary and go to bed.

I have only been posting once a week lately.  I am not sure if that is because I am feeling better or because I am sliding into old patterns.  My sleep schedule got out of whack last weekend with all the activity and I still haven't gotten it back together.  I really didn't do much of anything this week at all--and that is way too familiar.

Wednesday was the last night of the Darksun D&D Encounters.  This week we will start Keep on the Borderlands.  Hopefully Wizards of the Coast will get the updates to the Character Generator out tomorrow like they have indicated.  They already pushed back this months updates by 2 weeks.  I am hoping to make a character for the game instead of using a pregenerated character, but that is all predicated on whether the updates are out or not.

Wednesday night we played more Thunderstone.  I like the game, but I also like to play a variety of games.  On Thursday we played Dominion.  Thunderstone's game mechanic seems based on the Dominion mechanic.  Of course a big part of the whole experience is playing games with my friends, so that makes itworthwhile.  Saturday night we played a couple of games of Settlers of Catan and a game of Shanghai.
I did get some laundry done this week and was able to run the dishwasher once.  I also made Pineapple Salsa with Cream Cheese to take to the Catan game.  They ate it up.  There was some discusion of large pinneapple chunks versus crushed pineapple pieces.  It probably should have set up a little longer in the refrigerator before I mixed in the cream cheese.  Alsom I didn;t put in a jalapeno pepper that was suggested and the ginger I put in was not grated but minced, so I don't htink the flavor fully got out.  I keep wondering if I should have sauteed the ginger with the peppers and onions,  That would take away the crunch that I did not particularily care for.  Several people liked it, but there was some dissension. I wish there was an opportunity to show it off to my dance friends. 

I am fading as you can see. I took an Ambien to help me sleep and get my rhythm back on track.  I seem to be a little light headed and I can't focus quite like I am used to.  I don't really feel tired, but I do feel like I am going to fall dead asleep in a minute.  I will post if anyone has an opinion on my salsa.  Tomorrow is volunteer day at Harvesters and I an very excited..

I am feeling better about my life these days and you can kind of tell by how infrequently I am posting.  I am having to force myself to update after several days.  Of course, I feel like my life has been getting busier--even if it is not.  On Wednesday, I was still a little tired from getting up early and going to Harvesters as well as from all the activity on the weekend.  Even though I had planned to do a bunch of things, I ended up barley getting to the bike store to pick up my bike before going to play in D&D Encounters.  We have one last encounter in this session.  For some reason I wasn't as excited about the session.  Afterward we went to a friend's house and played a couple of games.

We played Settlers of America: Trails to Rails. It is part of the Catan Histories games from Mayfair Games.  Klaus Teuber is definitely getting a lot of mileage out of the Settlers of Catan franchise.  I was a bit confused as to a strategy in the beginning and that proved fatal in my end game.  I started to slow and was not able to catch up later.  Of course luck was a part of the problem since it still had the dice roll mechanic.  Unlike the original Catan game, to win you had to deliver all your goods.  In the original you collected victory points which could come from multiple sources.  To win Settlers of America you must place all you cities in order to free up all your goods to be delivered.  To deliver the goods, you must build a train and move the train along rails you have built or pay to ride on an opponents rail.  It was an interesting game and I wouldn't mind playing it again.  I don't think they have left an option to extend the game to 5or 6 players nor do I think they will be adding any expansions.  The hexes are a fixed map with only some of the numbers being randomized.  The interesting part is that the random numbers move from hexes in the east to hexes in the west as settlers move west.  I did not win the game and I believe I had the most cities left to build and the most goods left to be delivered.

I was up too late on Wednesday and therefore got up late on Thursday.  I packed up some folding tables and met my friend from up north so that his wife could use them in her garage sale Friday and Saturday.  I then met some ex-co-workers at Panera and played some games of Dominion with the expansions.  I actually won a game, which generally doesn't happen.  When I got home I went through my DVDs so that Icould take them up to the garage sale the next morning.  Again I was up late and to make matters worse, I had said I would be up north around 9 AM.

Friday morning I went up north to help with the garage sale.  My friends had to work and another friend of theirs was watching the garage sale.  She had brought some stuff of her own, but she had never had a garage sale before.  There was a constant threat of rain so we didn't pull very much out into the driveway.  There was actually more traffic than I expected and Friday morning went pretty well--what I didn't know ahead of time was that it was a city wide garage sale weekend.  I didn't pull the DVDs out on Friday and I had to leave a little afternoon to go see my psychologist.

It was probably one of the better appointments we have had.  He asked how I wanted to proceed and gave be three basic options.  I explained to him how I felt all three options related and I talked more about my social life.  We discussed intimacy--not from a sexual context, but from a personal context of not letting people in.  He related this to vulnerability and trust.  Vulnerable come from a Latin word that means "I wound".  When you extrapolate to the noun form, you loosely come up with "able to be wounded".  Anyhow, we tend to think of vulnerability as a weakness in today's world, so I didn't want to be vulnerable.  The discussion was about my not wanting to be vulnerable and therefore not having any intimacy, therefore I was unhappy with my current lot where I wanted to be more social and wanted to feel more connected to people.  I probably am not doing the discussion much justice, but it makes sense in my head and I am having problems putting it into words, because there seems to be some feelings tied up in these concepts for me.  This resulted from me pointing out that even though I seem to have a rich social life, I am either standing back watching the action, standing behind the bar serving drinks, or engaged in playing a game.  I am still not very open.  What I have come to realize is that I tend to be more open with women than men and I think that may be that I feel I can not show any vulnerability around other men.  I even am unsettled when I am talking about personal matters around my best friend.  The other thing the psychologist brought up is that he thinks I have a lot of wisdom.  For some reason, this bothers me--I like to think I am insightful, not that I have wisdom.  I need to ponder on the difference and decide why I feel that way.

I stopped by Sam's on my way home and bought some food.  On my way home I called my older sister because I hadn't heard from her since I talked to her on her birthday the Friday before.  I was talking about the garage sale and she pushed me to take some stuff up there and try to sell it.  I spent the evening going through CDs and collecting some things from around the house.  I pulled out some luggage and a few small things from here and there.  I was once again up way too late, but I knew if I didn't do it then, I wouldn't do it.  I even put everything in the car before going to bed.

6 AM Saturday morning came entirely too early.  I managed to get up north by around 7:15 AM.  They were still pulling some stuff out of the garage.  I pulled most of the stuff out of my car--there were a few things I left.  I priced everything a little high for a garage sale--but still a good deal, so that I could negotiate down a little to make the sale.  A lot of people came by, but they weren't buying the CDs and DVDs at first.  Later in the morning, they started selling.  I made a few deals, but mostly they paid the price I marked them at.  I was disappointed in the luggage.  When I left around noon, only an old black suitcase my sister had given to me when I flew back home from her house in between Thanksgiving and Christmas last year had sold.  She told me to just throw the suitcase away, because she didn't want it an more.  I ended up making 5 bucks off it.  It was an absolute beautiful day for a garage sale--it was sunny, but the a cool breeze was blowing and the temperature was in the upper 70's/low 80's.

I left around noon to go to the D&D Game Day for D&D Essentials.  One of the regular encounters players brought a group of her friends, so I ran one table while the coordinator ran the other table.  I had a blast and I hope the people at my table had a good time.  They really had not played a lot of 4th edition it seemed like.  I am really enjoying running the game.  I am a little upset the coordinator does not want to do the Gamma World Game Day, but with the booster pack cards and stuff, I can see why he didn't.  I think it will cost more than it is worth.

After the game I went to the Showcase dinner. I had missed all the dancing during the day, but I went to celebrate at the dinner.  The food was good, but I was so tired.  I ended up leaving a little early and going home to go to bed.  I had a busy Sunday morning ahead of me.

Sunday morning I woke up, but stayed in bed a little too long and didn't really prepare for the Sunday school class.  Of course, I really didn't need to do much preparation since the other teacher was going to take the lead for this month.  The kids were actually well behaved.  You could tell a couple of the kids are very bright--I don't think there is a one with any type of learning issue, but we will see.  Since they are only 3rd graders, their attention did wander at times.  I was very nervous the entire time and still am even now.  Hopefully, I will be better next Sunday.  I went mass after and finally got home a little after noon.  I fixed a lunch and started to catch up on things on the computer when I got really tired.  I ended up sleeping for a couple of hours in the Lay-Z-Boy and being somewhat groggy the rest of the day.  I was ready to go to bed on time when I decided to update this blog and now it is almost 2 hours later and definitely not early.

Today was this first day that I volunteered at Harvester's.  I didn't get that much done because I was getting to know the lay of the land.  I had a good time and the time went by very quickly.  I kind of don't want to wait for two weeks.  Afterward I went to DirectBuy for their little spiel.  I signed up on the internet last week sometime in order to get points or something.   I didn't win the grand prize, but the gave me two $100.00 gift cards to restaurants.com.  I went out there and I was a little disappointed that not all locations of a restaurant were in their database.  I wanted to get a gift card for The Melting Pot in South Carolina where my sister is, but that location wasn't an option even though my local Melting Pot was in the database.

I actually had a pretty good holiday weekend.  Friday I took one of my cable boxes back and cancelled part of my cable services to try to lower my bill.  After my psychologist appointment, I went to the DMV and waited forever to return the tags on my car I had sold.  Afterward I went to some friends' house and played Settlers of Catan (by Mayfair games in the US).  I won the first game and I haven't won in a while.  We played with Seafarers, Cities and Knights, and Fishermen of Catan and Habormaster from Traders and Barbarians.  It can be a pain to set up, but it can be a lot of fun.  Saturday after I skyped (I htink Skype is a wonderful thing) my little sister and saw my new niece, I rummaged through the basement to find the bungee cords to secure my bike to the carrier.  In the end, the bungee cords were in the garage and the bike carrier did not fit on my car.  I have two carriers and one fits on a small car (I bought it for a Miata) and the other went over a spare tire on the back of a SUV.  Since my current car is neither of these, I ended up putting the bike in the trunk.  I took my mountain bike to the shop for new gear shifters right before they closed.  I then went to Sam's Club to do some grocery shopping.  Later I swapped the TV in my bedroom with a small flat screen I had on the wall in one of the extra bedroom.  The TV in my bedroom is like 20 years old and the remote no longer works.  This was not a problem when I had it connected to a cable box.  The new TV is larger, but without the cable box I am not watching it too much.  I really miss the on screen programming, but it is keeping from staying in bed all day.

Sunday was the big day.  I got up early to go to mass and then went to some friends' house for a pool party. Of course I didn't get in the pool, but it was enjoyable to talk with some of the other there.  At one point we were reminiscing about the good old days when memory was sized KB and you had to manage the memory using HiMem for some things so that Windows could run.

I left the pool party early so that I could go to some other friends' house where we played Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot (by Playroom games).  Since we haven't played in a while it took some time to remember the rules.  We played with blue, yellow, red, violet, green, twilight white, perfectly pink, and stainless steel decks.  I wanted to add in wacky khaki, but the others were against it.  I am hoping we will add wacky khaki and ominous onyx in the near future.  It really depends on when we play again.

Monday I ended up sleeping most of the day.  I was tired on Sunday because I got up early and so I slept a lot on Monday.  It was good to sleep, but I did not get anything done.  I still am not getting much done, or at least I am not getting the things I want to do done.

I talked to Mom Monday night and she was trying to book tickets to visit my little sister and her new baby.  She was having some difficulties and once I got her to share her screen on Skype (see previous comment), I was able to help her get what she needed done.  It did take a very long time, so we didn't talk much about what was going on, although I did talk to Dad for a while prior to talking to Mom.  He seems to be doing well.  They had a small party for my older sister who turned 50 at some point in the weekend.  I hope she had a good time, I haven't talked to her since then.

One day last week I woke up and wrote down the dream I had.   I was back in college, but the campus was nothing like the college I went to.  The other odd thing was that I looked as I do now and not as I did when I was younger.  I was looking for my friends after having an argument with my little brother (who did not go to the same college as I did).  Everyone was partying and having a good time.  I am not sure what exactly was going on--there was just a lot of people carousing and some were even dressed in costumes.  I was trying to participate, but was not getting a positive response from the other people so I continued on.  At some point I started dancing with a beautiful woman who did not know how to dance.  It was a bit difficult because we were dancing outside on a large expanse of grass.  I was leading her in a waltz, although I don't remember any particular music--we stopped to talk to some people who were in our way.  I don't remember the conversation, but it was brief and I was explaining the steps and what I wanted her to do when I woke up. 

I am not sure if I truly dreamed this or if this was what I was thinking in that time when you are in the process of waking up.  Normally, I think about all the things I have to do and imagine how well I am going to do them in the mornings.  Of course, I am always disappointed because things never go that way.  Anyhow tomorrow is another day and maybe I will get something done.

I can't believe I haven't posted since Monday.  I have been using this blog kind of like a personal journal and the posting has been kind of therapeutic.  I have gotten a few things done this week:  I sold my second car, took my bike to the Trek store to get the shifters fixed, deposited some checks, and waited in line at the DMV for a refund on the tags from the car I sold.  I did some things on-line, but I still haven't worked much on my resume or finding a job.

Unfortunately, I am very tired so I am going to bed.