(no subject)

Was up until 4 am writing. I really got into a state of mind that I don't think I've visited for years, feeling mental stimulation from the awareness of things coming together just slightly faster than the gradual drop of the deadline pendulum. The last time I remember giddiness and motivation coming from that particular race condition was during the summer of 1995, when I worked as a freelance writer for The Weekly, a free Bangor newspaper (in biz lingo, a "shopper"). I covered the Hampden Town Council meetings, and twice that summer managed to spin this off into separate feature stories that focused on strange and interesting things brought up at them... one about a horrible intersection with a highly expensive and highly broken stoplight, and another about the residential outcry against curbside recycling plans (cuz that would mean closing the drop-off depot, which lots of people used as a social hangout while pawing through each others' junk).

(Hmm... I wonder if I still have those stories on my hard disk? I'll have to check. The other day I came across, in my piles of stuff, a Xerox of one of my best pieces of student journalism, a feature about the University of Maine "drunk bus", a volunteer-operated van that shuttled party kids home from their party-kid parties, written "Cops"-style, talking to the drivers while riding around with them and witnessing a night's worth of shenanegans. And somewhere, unless I threw it away in my destructive stuff-purge before my move, is my portfolio of all my proudest Maine Campus clippings. I suddently hope I still have it.)

The bad news is that I'm gonna miss Mostly Looney Game Night tonight. Too much homework to do... gotta finish chapter 8, and edit chapter 1 (the latter at Linda's specific request, which is nice... schedule is too tight for Erik and I to combine talents within each chapter, like we were originally hoping, but she specifically wants me to help punch up this introduction that Erik wrote.)

From 4 am email to Erik and Linda:

I have never felt such recurrent short-term violent mood swings about 
anything ever as I have about this project.

---

Met with the Lab prof today. Very quick meeting, just chatting on a couch in The Cube for a bit before he had to run off to his next appointment. I think it went well, because he gave me some homework to do, and told me twice at the end of it to stay in touch and follow up with my opinions about such-and-such once I get a chance to play with it. Very cool. I have to say that I find encouragement in his statement that the sorts of projects I'm interested in pursuing address things that he feels are lacking in one of his group's major projects. (He also invited me to walk with him to his next appt. so that we could finish our conversation, which I also interpret as a positive sign.)

A side-effect of the meeting was that my preparation for it (which took the form of talking to myself (over coffee) during the half-hour walk between Chez Chestnut and the Lab) forced me to finally draft up a list of the projects I'd like to pursue, were I a grad student there. It turns out that many of the projects simmering on the back burner are perfect candidates for this list, once you realize how they might apply to the Lab's goals (or more specifically the goals of the specific research groups within the Lab that catch my interest). This is, in fact, awesome, and saves me a lot of worry, because I have no trouble talking at great length about all this stuff, to say nothing of the fact that viewing these personal projects in a new light spawns off all sorts of related ideas. Yay

Tolkein Sarcasm

I am pleased to see that the Tolkein Sarcasm Page still exists. Reading the rules to the original Lord of the Rings board game is quite a pleasure. (See also the other fine products by Melkor-Bradley. I want these reified! Well, maybe not...)

Some of the LotR event cards:

64 Bill Ferny.
Sam insists on going back to punch him.
Go back two squares the way you came.

65 Smeagol's Birthday.
Give this card to the player of your choice.
They lose a turn.

66 Pipe-weed.
Roll the die immediately and interpret the result thusly:
1: You're out of pipe-weed. No effect.
2-3: You have a very refreshing smoke. Take an extra turn.
4-5: Coughing fit. Lose a turn.
6: Severe coughing fit. Merry gives up smoking. Gandalf
continues to smoke nearby. Merry gets short-tempered, goes
berserk and tries to kill him. Lose two turns.