Off topic randomness

A mish-mash of random stuff I want to rant or otherwise comment on.

• Work is ze crazies. Looking at a departmental reorganization which could mean any number of things for me and my coworkers, and there are too many ifs and maybes to be able to do anything but guess at what will come. I buried myself in my shaman this past weekend specifically to get my mind off the uncertainty. Fun times.

• I built an elaborate cabinet thing this past week. It was one of those follow-instructions-with-labeled-parts constructions, with (mostly) pre-drilled holes, but it was fun. There's just something about building a physical creation with your own two hands that I think we sometimes miss when we spending so much time on computers. I'm now eyeing the space around my computer and plotting building storage space around it. It doesn't help that I've started following the Ikea Hacker blog. I want room to store (in a more organized fashion) all of the CDs, books, toys, and trinkets that otherwise clutter my (old dining table) desk.

• Speaking of the Ikea Hacker blog, this amazing hamster home is making me want to get another small furry rodent of my own. I used to keep rats while in college, and hamsters/gerbils while a teenager: I enjoyed building custom cages for them, though I still owe my Mom a wool coat from when my gerbils escaped one of my early attempts. The short life-spans were devastating to me, however, especially for the rats as they are so social (I miss my little girls), and my husband has forbidden that I get any more pets with a 2-3 yr or less life expectancy. He has enthusiastically agreed that we will get a dog (Malamute or mix) when we move out of our current no-dogs-allowed rental house, though!

• If you liked Spaceballs and play D&D, you need to see this movie: The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. It is freaking hilarious. I have also played with each of those gamer stereotypes. I completely lost it when the sorceress raised their dinner from the dead... and it killed the bard. A must-watch movie.

• Speaking of roleplay games, here be a raccoon. With tupperware. She's a pen-and-paper roleplay character of mine ;) My GM is awesome and has let me play some very unusual characters, including a drow-werewolf ranger, wolf monk, and an axe-wielding earth mage of a geology grad student (she had a Jeep, too).

• "Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez Wednesday accused the United States of causing the destruction in Haiti by testing a 'tectonic weapon' to induce the catastrophic earthquake that hit the country last week." Wait, what? Okay, this is reminding me of a witch hunt: some group isn't either as affluent or well-off as another group/individual (or deserving of attention), and thus decides they must be either pacted with the devil (which has also been accused in the case of this earthquake) or otherwise they're involved in some horrible evil ulterior motive plot. The world is just plain weird. Nevermind thinking that an atmospheric research project dealing with the ionosphere (far upper atmosphere) would result in deliberate tectonic reactions. That's like blaming a resto druid for pulling aggro with a Berserked Mangle.

• I plan to begin work on some large, false "stained glass" windows this weekend, using tissue paper and contact paper. Trying to decide what to do for the joints between the "panes," maybe use black paint since it'd be thicker than the ink from a sharpie. They'll ultimately be used as atmosphere for a summer camp I'm co-directing (thus they need to be easily portable and removable, hence the materials). I'll be dog-sitting for a friend at the same time; this'll be interesting!

• I'm halfway through a 3lb. box of Russell Stover Bloopers. Thank goodness for a high metabolism.
  

• http://icanhascheezburger.com and http://ihasahotdog.com bring me many giggles.

That is all. For now. ;)