Today is the last day of work before a week off, in which I intend to do very little indeed. Sleep, catch up on various aspects of game-writing, do some stuff around the house... ordinary things. I haven't had a chance to do "nothing" in my own house since I was about 17 for more than a day or two, so I'm grabbing this one with both hands. I haven't looked forward to time off so much in a very long time.

There seems to be no hangover. I woke up at ten, reasonably refreshed, lay reading for a while, showered, and had a solid breakfast. I'm not feeling like doing anything strenuous, but I'm not dead either. This is an improvement on the ordinary post-late-night situation.

Fibbers last night was in some ways strange. There was a definite feeling of being 20 again, and there were an awful lot of the same faces around - some of them have to be younger siblings, though, as they haven't aged at all. The music was different in content if not in tone and there was no smoke - though there was a godawful stink from somewhere in the downstairs area. I think I must have spent the best end of an hour on the dancefloor, and my neck is telling me a bit about it.

There was one point, with the floor about half capacity, when Europe's Final Countdown came on. I turned to see who else was on the floor, discovered three other long-haired and/or bearded guys doing the same thing - so that we had formed a spontaneous circle. We all looked at each other, grinned - and proceeded to headbang through the entire thing. One guy was grinning maniacally throughout; you could see his teeth glowing in the UV light each his head swung up. Green Day and System of a Down were additional opportunities to hurt myself, although things stayed just short of a full mosh.

Aside from the beer garden, which was full, they had opened up part of the car park behind, with one or two security guys to stop people from wandering too far away. It was quieter out there, you could breathe a bit, and have conversations. LJ saturation was at its usual level, and I had meandering conversations with mr_wombat, pardina, tobinjt, yrthilian, darskyl, and one other guy who I know from Redbrick, but whose LJ username I'm having trouble finding. eng_monkey was lurking somewhere, too, as were various other folks. I spoke to various people about various books; if I said I'd lend you something, remind me and we'll make arrangements for a handover.

mr_wombat, olethros and I walked most of the way home before we got a taxi. Navigating the streets of Dublin to avoid nightclubs at three in the morning is an interesting route.

I believe it may finally be cool enough to sleep. And believe me, if I can't get to sleep, there's something odd going on.

Since everyone else has this, I might as well have a go, and I'll put it on LJ rather than the weblog. I got the questions from puritybrown.

past
first grade teacher's name: Mrs. Francis Dowse.
last word you said: "Cheers."
last song you sang: All Star (Smash Mouth)
last person you hugged: Nina
last thing you laughed at: A bad pun in an email on a web development list.
last time you said 'i love you': To Nina, this morning as I was heading out.
last time you cried: No idea...

present
what's in your cd player: A set of images too big to FTP usefully.
what color socks are you wearing: One grey, one black.
what's under your bed: Two drawers, one of which contains some bed linen.
what time did you wake up today: 06:20, courtesy Miroza the cat.

future
where do you want to go: Edinburgh again, New Zealand, Finland again, Alaska, Norway, Prague
what is your career going to be: Web Developer / Game Writer / Guru
where are you going to live: Somewhere in the SE quarter of Ireland. Rural.
how many kids do you want: None.
what kind of car will you have: 4 wheel drive of some kind. Probably Volvo.

current taste: Either "scruffy" or "coffee". You choose.
current hair: Tangled, black at the ends, blond at the roots, tied back in a ponytail.
current clothes: Green combats, black tshirt.
current annoyance: Sore patch on my side. No idea why.
current smell: Um. Coffee too, I guess.
current longing: A 28 hour day.
current desktop picture: Something from Digital Blasphemy.
current favorite artist: Smash Mouth
current book: Deities & Demigods (Just finished Burnt Offerings)
current worry: This is taking too long. I should do some work instead.
current time-wasting wish: Sleeeeep.
current hate: Not having enough time.

story behind your lj username: "The air around you darkens noticably as you gothwalk here"; a verb from the TCD NetSoc MOO.
current favorite article of clothing: Multi-pocketed vest/coat thing.
favorite physical feature of the opposite sex: Curves.
last cd that you bought: Can't remember.
favorite place to be: Behind my laptop while running a D&D game.
least favorite place: Changing rooms in secondary school.
strong in mind or strong in body: Hm. Can I say both? I'm both stubborn and capable of lifting weights...
time you wake up in the morning: 06:30 weekdays, about 09:00 at weekends.
if you could play any instrument, what would it be: Saxophone or electric guitar.
favorite color: Black, or lapis lazuli blue.
do you believe in an afterlife? Yes.
how tall are you? 5'8", about.
current favourite word: Anthropomorphic
favorite book: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
favorite season: Winter
one person from your past you wish you could go back and talk: That's a weird question. And I can't think of any that I can't just go and talk to anyway.
favorite day: Sunday, cos that's the one day I get to spend with Nina. After June, probably back to Friday - start of the weekend and game day.

type a line you remember from any book: "Had I the heavens embroidered cloths / the blue and the dim and the dark cloths"
a line from the last thing you wrote to someone: "The World Cup site is shaping up decently, albeit with a few changes still to be made." It's a work thing.
a random lyric: "I believe that we'll conceive to make in hell for us a heaven.
A brave new world. A promised land.
A fortitude of hearts and minds.
Until I see this kingdom is mine,
I'll turn the darkness into light.
I'll guide the blind.
My will be done until the day I see this kingdom has been won."
-- "Kingdom", VNV Nation.

identify some things surrounding your computer: This would be much more interesting at home... various printouts and scribbled noted, a copy of New Scientist, several O'Reilly Books, a mug, my mobile, a biro, a few CD cases, and the Code Otter.

Today is a hard-at-work day, with plenty of stuff on the to-do list, but I'm going to take a break and write a bit.

Dave repaired the SSIs on my website for me today - in view of my continuing inability to get an ssh connection out of here for more than about 30 seconds - so everything there is working again, at last.

Weather outside is being sunny, but cold, yet not cold enough to be satisfying. The weather boards on weatheroutlook and the BBC are both predicting a cold snap at the beginning of February - and indeed some real cold on Friday, as well. What I want, perversely, is the kind of weather that leaves me shivering at the bus stop, and genuinely glad to get inside again. I know the memory plays tricks with regard to weather, but last winter seemed much much colder than this one.

I'm starting in to think seriously about the followup campaign to Spellbound- Major Arcana. It'll use Tarot spreads as a kicking off point for themes, ideas, and so on. I'm also reading James Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces, so as to get some more inspiration on the archetype ideas, which fascinate me. I'm looking at making it much more character driven - much more player driven - than Spellbound, and with less of the vast, world changing DM actions. Davon has changed enough over the last few years, and I want to settle down and examine the changes now. It might be nice, from the point of view of interest in ongoing events in the world, to speed time up, so that a month in real time is two or three months of game time, but I don't know about this - it does make the in-character-but-out-of-game sessions more difficult to pinpoint. On the other hand, it's far easier than trying to run things the other way round, so that a day or two of game time takes place over two weeks of real time, which I find frustrating.

I'm currently writing a series of day-in-the-life pieces from people in the Royal Haelthannic Navy. For purposes of this, I'm doing research into real navies, mostly the British Navy, which seems to be an extremely complex edifice, with a great many odd traditions and unspoken rules. Several people have recommended the Hornblower novels, which I should probably investigate. I must find out where Dun Laoghaire Public Library is, as well.

The cat managed to terrify myself and Nina completely last night by appearing on the windowsill of Nina's study - on the outside- when we thought she was asleep somewhere in the house. How she got out, we're not at all sure, and teleportation seems to be the only reasonable explanation. She's already sleeping on the bed, of course, but I'm not showing any allergic reactions at all - unexpected but pleasing.

It's late, it's so late it's early. It's a quarter past four in the morning, and I'm not tired. It used to be that I could get up when I couldn't sleep, and write something, something that would be worth reading in the morning, but the muse ain't in tonight. I could write somethingt else, but I know that it wouldn't be any good. Maybe I should set in, do that webpage redesign I was talking about. Black on white, Victorian graphics.
On the other hand, my shell account machine seems to have some trouble.

I'll go pay attention to that.