I was too optimistic
Jul. 10th, 2006 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lyornNot about winning the lottery, though I didn't, but then, I do not really expect to. It's just that a tiny chance is better than none.
What I was too optimistic about is not getting woken anymore by the sound of drills and hammers. This morning, five past seven, someone was attacking a nearby wall with a pneumatic drill. They were still at it when I left the house at 8 am. At work, "current music" is a circular saw cutting stone. What is it with me and construction? Is it following me around? I get paranoid on too little sleep.
To make up for that, I spend most of the weekend asleep. The heat is making me drowsy and tired. Other than sleeping, I watched "For a Fistful of Dollars" with some friends (loved it), had too-salty Chinese take-out (liked it, but drank two litres of water after), decided to live on fruit and yoghurt the coming week and bought lots of beautiful strawberries, cherries, apricots and peaches, a gigantic basil plant in a too-small pot, and tomatoes and cheese for variation.
I read Joanna Russ' "We who are about to..." because it had been referenced in some obituary to Jim Baen and had sounded interesting. I liked it more than I thought I would. I basically read it as a parody of all those "people stranded on an alien planet, form a colony and make exciting discoveries" books (which I also like). The means of the parody is the reality check. Alien plantes are unlikely to be really conductive to human life, living in the stone age is pretty hard, and how many of us can even survive "out in the wilds" without their meds and tinned food? And won't you just hate the people you end up with? After half of the book, everyone but the narrator is dead, in the second half the narrator slowly goes crazy, but she is remarkably cool about it the whole time and had a voice I enjoyed. Best exchange, paraphrased from memory:
"We need to keep civilisation going!"
"Civilisation is doing fine. Only, we are not where it is."
On Sunday, the choir I'm in sang in some pretty little palais out in the countryside. It being the day of the World Cup final, and, as I said, out in the countryside, the audience was small, but nice. We were far better than we have been with the same programme eight weeks before, but I hadn't had breakfast (or lunch - I overslept), and it was hot, and my knees were wobbly, so I didn't notice much of it. One more gig and it's off into summer recess, and in autumn we'll start working on a new programme and I'll be singing soprano, which is good, because the low alto notes are out of my range.
I worked some on the SF role playing game I've been writing on and off for years and still haven't decided on a dice engine. Straight Stat+Skill+1D10 vs. Target Number? 1D20 vs. Stat+Skill? 2D10? 3D6? Something entirely different? Then, the usual unbalance in a Stat+Skill-System, when a talented newbie is better at a job than someone with average talent and years of practise. I do not like it, so how do I best work around it? Or do I depart from the Stat+Skill pattern, which I like for it's versatility?
That's what I'm doing on Saturday nights when it's too hot to do something useful. I'm such a geek. And I like it.
What I was too optimistic about is not getting woken anymore by the sound of drills and hammers. This morning, five past seven, someone was attacking a nearby wall with a pneumatic drill. They were still at it when I left the house at 8 am. At work, "current music" is a circular saw cutting stone. What is it with me and construction? Is it following me around? I get paranoid on too little sleep.
To make up for that, I spend most of the weekend asleep. The heat is making me drowsy and tired. Other than sleeping, I watched "For a Fistful of Dollars" with some friends (loved it), had too-salty Chinese take-out (liked it, but drank two litres of water after), decided to live on fruit and yoghurt the coming week and bought lots of beautiful strawberries, cherries, apricots and peaches, a gigantic basil plant in a too-small pot, and tomatoes and cheese for variation.
I read Joanna Russ' "We who are about to..." because it had been referenced in some obituary to Jim Baen and had sounded interesting. I liked it more than I thought I would. I basically read it as a parody of all those "people stranded on an alien planet, form a colony and make exciting discoveries" books (which I also like). The means of the parody is the reality check. Alien plantes are unlikely to be really conductive to human life, living in the stone age is pretty hard, and how many of us can even survive "out in the wilds" without their meds and tinned food? And won't you just hate the people you end up with? After half of the book, everyone but the narrator is dead, in the second half the narrator slowly goes crazy, but she is remarkably cool about it the whole time and had a voice I enjoyed. Best exchange, paraphrased from memory:
"We need to keep civilisation going!"
"Civilisation is doing fine. Only, we are not where it is."
On Sunday, the choir I'm in sang in some pretty little palais out in the countryside. It being the day of the World Cup final, and, as I said, out in the countryside, the audience was small, but nice. We were far better than we have been with the same programme eight weeks before, but I hadn't had breakfast (or lunch - I overslept), and it was hot, and my knees were wobbly, so I didn't notice much of it. One more gig and it's off into summer recess, and in autumn we'll start working on a new programme and I'll be singing soprano, which is good, because the low alto notes are out of my range.
I worked some on the SF role playing game I've been writing on and off for years and still haven't decided on a dice engine. Straight Stat+Skill+1D10 vs. Target Number? 1D20 vs. Stat+Skill? 2D10? 3D6? Something entirely different? Then, the usual unbalance in a Stat+Skill-System, when a talented newbie is better at a job than someone with average talent and years of practise. I do not like it, so how do I best work around it? Or do I depart from the Stat+Skill pattern, which I like for it's versatility?
That's what I'm doing on Saturday nights when it's too hot to do something useful. I'm such a geek. And I like it.