10 February 2000

Well. Today I get to spend two hours in a meeting which looks like it will be rife with corporate buzzwords. The title of the meeting, even, is the "Capability Maturity Model Orientation." How many is that? Did anyone score on their Buzzword Bingo cards?

Two hours. And next week, there are two more "Orientation" meetings, an hour and a half each, back-to-back.

My consolation is that my officemates are stuck in these meetings with me, so maybe we can sit together and write rude notes back and forth.

I'm trying to decide what to do about my daily walk in light of this meeting. On the one hand, the meeting is sucking up two hours of time in which I could be working on my project. On the other, after two hours of this nonsense (coupled with a high-fat lunch provided by the company) I'm going to need to take a walk. I guess it'll depend on how productive I am before the meeting.

So it looks like Random will be joining our gaming group. We spent some time yesterday talking about gaming, and I think he'll fit into our group pretty well. I asked him what kind of games he likes, and what he said boiled down to wanting a reasonable amount of combat - one or two encounters per game - and that he liked there to be a point to the adventures - the party is out to accomplish something, rather than just aimlessly wandering around killing monsters and collecting treasure. Which meshes fairly well with what we've got. He's also got a weird, surreal, sarcastic sense of humor that should go over very well with our bunch.

He's even willing to (gasp!) try new things. So I gave him directions to K.T.'s apartment and her phone number, and we'll see how things go. It looks like I'll be GMing tomorrow, barring an unforseen appearance by Richard, so I should probably put together a set of maps and stuff for him so he can decide where he'll be from and everything.

Okay, is it just me, or has everything gone insane?

Matt and I were in the grocery store the other day and we noticed a cereal called "Flakes, Twigs, and Granola."

"Flakes, Twigs, and Granola"

What were these people thinking??? What the heck is their demographic? Flakey twigs and granolas? Sheesh.

I swear, I ought to do a whole journal entry on stupid cereals. Take my notebook to the grocery store and just walk slowly down the cereal aisle a few times, writing down the ones with stupid names, or dumb gimmicks, or whatever. "Flakes, Twigs, and Granola," indeed. Hmph!

Yesterday afternoon, sitting at my desk and attempting to justify my salary, I very badly wanted to go outside and play.

It was a weird sensation. Quite distinctly, I did not want to go for a walk, or sit and enjoy the weather, or do exercises. I wanted to play. I wanted to find some kids and play Tag or Hide-and-Seek. I wanted to grab a handful of friends and play volleyball or netless badminton (which is way more fun than badminton with a net). I wanted to run around shrieking with laughter, duck behind walls to avoid detection, jump out suddenly to yell "Boo!" or have a humongous pillow-and-tickle fight that ended in a big gasping pile of laughter. Like that.

I don't know what caused it, but it was an exhilarating feeling. If only I'd been able to act on it.