Mishaps and other haps

I do think that there are serious sleep problems and people suffer from them and their quality of life drops until they can get them under control.

You really do need medical treatment for disorders like sleep apnea, which my sister has recently been diagnosed with.

In 99% of other cases, I think it’s self-inflicted and has to do with things like stress (maybe anxiety and depression also), caffeine consumption, and being on a weird schedule.

So if everyone got up at 6 AM every day, regardless of how they feel, worked hard most of the day, eliminated all caffeine from their diet, sought treatment for their stress/anxiety/depression (even if it’s just informal “treatment” like yoga or exercise) … I wonder how far that would go in eliminating sleep problems.

I can sympathize, really, because I have trouble sleeping sometimes, but since my day begins pretty early during the week I generally feel pretty tired by bedtime … even with stress and caffeine during the day … and I’d probably sleep even better if I actively worked to eliminate the stress and caffeine.

Oh, the politics …

Even small group-of-friends tabletop gaming groups have their politics, based on player and PC dynamics and interaction. For example, if person x and person y don’t get along, there’s bound to be trouble and it’s just a matter of time until there’s enough tension to prompt people to make some changes.

Now take this to a larger level with thousands of people on a server playing online characters.

PhysOrg and I talk about WoW gameplay a lot– usually things we want to accomplish soon or what we should do on a particular evening since we’re both free.

Occasionally we discuss the politics. We mostly run instances and quest with friends, so we don’t have the drama that sometimes comes with your huge raiding organizations (meta-guilds).

However, our guild is small enough (being friendly, but careful about recruitment) that many of our members have invested time in running some of the elite 40-person instances with one or more meta-guilds. So we hear stories about the drama.

And there are other issues that come up– mostly involving grouping and resources. It gets sticky.

***

I do know we haven’t been playing tabletop games as regularly since we have been involved in WoW and while I do enjoy hanging out with my guildies, I miss having people over for in-person RPGs.

Our Tuesday night game has recently gotten some play and this is wonderful! But those times past when I had five games a week? Or even three? Not happening at the moment.

Not necessarily a bad thing– I hate being overscheduled and am happy to be avoiding it– but a *little* more tabletop gaming would be nifty.

Another three-day weekend for me and I keep sleeping later and later … yesterday I was awake by 10:15; today it was 11 or 11:30.

Gruntac and I shopped for winter coats and household supplies/food yesterday. His leather trench has not yet made it back from England and surviving the Wisconsin winter without the proper outerwear is … unwise … and unnecessary … although I am sure SOMEONE has done it.

Last night, PhysOrg and I went to test drive the 2007 Civic Hybrid we’re both drooling over. It handles a little differently from my car– what with the different transmission and the battery-charging and engine shut-off bits. I think I am sold on this car over the Prius, though, and I am definitely sold on the service department at Zimbrick. I’ve just heard too many good things. I’m sure the Toyota place in town is OK, but nobody out there seems to be jumping up and down about their customer service. Or maybe a high percentage of my friends just happen to like Honda’s service department … any good Toyota stories out there?

It is WONDERFUL to have mechanics you can trust.

I hope they’re still making the Magnetic Pearl exterior with the blue interior when I decide (or am forced) to buy. I like several of the colors for the regular (non-hybrid) Civics (like black … more black … maybe the really dark-ass blue).

PhysOrg seems to like the brighter, snazzier atomic blue, but he also agrees that the Magnetic Pearl is a fine color for a car.

While I was still groggy this morning, I was formulating a theory about how the color of your car says something about your personality, but I think my theory runs into some snags since certain colors seem to also be popular in certain areas of the country (white + a light interior is nice in FL because it doesn’t feel quite as oven-like when the heat index is 115).

Anyway, that’s all I have for now. I think there will be much slacking and playing of computer games today. I’m *hoping* that the garage will be cleaned out tomorrow … we have all of those bags of grass that need to be picked up during yard waste pick-up week (this week) and plenty of empty cardboard boxes from our move in July that need to be discarded.

THERE IS SO MUCH MEAT IN OUR HOUSE RIGHT NOW!!!

(Thus spoke the vegetarian)

Madison has been expecting to get a Trader Joe’s for years and apparently it’s actually opening on October 20th. I e-mailed the company last week since I had previously heard “sometime in October” and received a reply back today.

Cool– that’s a week from tomorrow.

EDIT: Oh, they’ve updated their website to include this date, so I guess it’s official.

We drove up north yesterday to retrieve Gruntac from his family. He has completed his thesis, so he’s gonna crash with us for a while and do some job hunting.

PhysOrg scored a massage from the CMT of the Gruntac clan while we were there. When he finally managed to get up from the table, he looked like the most relaxed thing ever. I had forgotten how stress and tension completely dissolves with an hour or ninety minute session with a massage therapist. It’s important to take time to do things that make you feel healthy and well-cared-for.

We took a short drive through the countryside to a beautiful log cabin where one of Gruntac’s sisters lives. I vaguely want to live in a log cabin now … with a basket of kittens and woods enclosing three sides of the house. It might be fun for about a week, until I decide that I need to be closer to people and commerce.

On the way back to Madison, we stopped at the Norske Nook in Osseo for dinner. We all had lefse and pie. Gruntac and I were lefse purists and each ordered a plate piled with the potato-flour pastries, but PhysOrg had a chicken wrap made with lefse. OMG, lefse. And happy local bakery pie.

It was around 9 when we got home, but we decided to make a Scholomance run. It was so much fun that everybody wanted to do a second run, but I decided Montanni should harvest some herbs instead since he had just exhaused his supply in the Alchemy Lab. Sometime between 3 and 4 AM, I staggered to bed.

Gruntac and PhysOrg have been sent off to see the closing performance of “The Matchmaker”, I have been making pumpkin muffins, and Mlitiagrl just reorganized her shelves in the pantry.

It’s probably about time for some more World of Warcraft … my girl Minni needs a mount.

It wouldn’t have taken the whole evening to make pie, but I had to bake the pumpkins first. Then, while the pumpkins were cooling, I ran out to pick up some ingredients I needed.

I was actually intending to bake the pumpkins tonight and make pie or muffins this weekend, but PhysOrg got home soon after the pumpkins had entered the oven and asked if there was going to be pie.

The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that there was going to be pie.

The remainder of the mashed, baked pumpkin in the refrigerator will probably be baked into something else this weekend.

Mmmm … bosc pears really are the best pears.

Poll question of the day on our local channel3000.com: “Are Harry Potter books evil?”

(Before you go off to troll the website, this poll question was prompted by an article about an Atlanta woman who is lobbying to have the Harry Potter books banned from school libraries)

Answer that almost put me on the floor laughing: “Yes, but they get kids reading, so they’re okay.”

PhysOrg and I just got back from a trip to Spring Green with Terry, Tom, Jack, and a few other friends of Terry. We spent the weekend at Aldebaran Farm, which was once the home of Frank Lloyd Wright’s uncle. It’s about a stone’s throw from Taliesin, which you can actually see from the driveway (not so much from the house itself).

While we were in Spring Green, we saw “The Matchmaker” (a wonderful, wonderful Thornton Wilder play) on Friday night and “Julius Caesar” on Saturday night at APT. We intended to see the Saturday matinee of “Romeo and Juliet”, also, but it was really too nice of a day and there was a hammock and video games and cigars …

I was very excited about the apple tree in the yard, but soon realized that very few apples were within my reach and the best looking ones were well-nigh unpickable without a ladder.

We had a good time and the weather was excellent at play times, although we were a little worried when we woke up to rain on Saturday morning. It was a little chilly in the evenings, but we all had several layers of clothes, blankets, and hot cocoa with peppermint schnapps.

I have posted a few photos from the weekend in the Fall 2006 folder of my Photo Album.