Thundercats Ho!

This morning I am really struggling to boot my mind into something even vaguely functional. I had a weird night, and with it came an extremely odd dream. Basically I was back in High School and in some kind of engineering competition, where we had to do something interesting with an old broken phone. I was on a team of three, and as the dream is already fading… I forget who exactly was on my team. I do however remember that we went to a bunch of flea markets, found this 60s area payphone and with the assistance of an arduino made it work so it would be able to receive text messages. The text message had a special kind of ring, and when you picked up… Microsoft SAM voice would read back the text. I am pretty sure we won the competition, but at this point that is fading from my mind as well.

School Daze

Granted I don’t really know how to do any of the things I just described… but it worked well in the dream. I blame the High School related dream on the fact that all yesterday I essentially hung out in the High School where my wife teaches. The school year is over, but due to some changes in the schedule and a class she will be tag teaming with a science teacher… she is having to move rooms. Normally this would be something we could wait to deal with until August, however they are needing her room for summer school. As a result we had to go up and move her into the new room yesterday.

According to my pedometer app, I walked roughly 2.5 miles over the course of the day while moving roughly 200 textbooks, 25 legal sized boxes and miscellaneous items that didn’t fit in them. 35 pounds ago there would have been no way in hell I could handle this, let alone get it done in an hour and a half. So I am feeling pretty damned proud of myself, and while I am sore today I am not absolutely dead to the world. That is a pretty huge distinction, I guess it means my muscles are actually getting used to the activity.

During the first hour and a half I brute forced moving all the items from one classroom to the next, then left her to unpack and move things into their proper locations. I give my wife crap for this, but she does an amazing job of labeling exactly where something came from… so since the class rooms are essentially the same she was able to take entire boxes and know exactly which shelf they came from. After doing my volley of movement, I went off and ran a few errands and gathered lunch while she worked.

We ate the lunch of champions… Doritos Tacos from Taco Bell… which are surprisingly not that bad for you, and one of the better choices you can make from a fast food restaurant. After coming back I started assisting with piddly little things to help the process along. It became my job to break down boxes, and anything else that needed done as not to interrupt the flow of emptying boxes. We got up there at roughly 11:30 and ended up leaving around 4. It took considerably longer than I had anticipated, but I also was not aware of the gravity of the situation. “A Few” boxes turned out to be considerably more than I was initially expecting.

The Hobbit

I know this is geek sacrilege, but I watched The Hobbit for the first time yesterday. After the morning activity, when we finally got home I wanted to do something stationary for awhile. So I decided to fire up The Hobbit. I had picked it up awhile back, but never actually got around to watching it. Now you are thinking to yourself… why did you not watch it in the Theatre? Well honestly… crowds freak me the hell out. It takes a lot to get me to go to the theatre, and since this is not a movie my wife would enjoy… it is even harder to get me to justify going by myself.

As far as not watching it until now… well quite honestly until we got this sofa, hanging out downstairs and watching a movie was not really that enjoyable of an experience for me. My previous recliner was broken down and made sitting for any length of time fairly painful on my back. So I figured watching the movie was a good way to christen the sofa. The only negative is that about halfway through watching the movie, we had neighbors come down so I had to turn down the sound… and divert attention to them as well.

All of this said I found the movie enjoyable, but for whatever reason it felt like it was lacking something. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, and honestly still cannot. I realize that The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy are two vastly different styles of storytelling, and have vastly different moods to the books. It is lacking the atmosphere that Lord of the Rings had in spades, while the world was gorgeous… it just felt off. I am sure this is one of those movies that I learn to love on repeated viewings… but it was not the immediate moving experience that Lord of the Rings was.

The highlight of the movie for me were of course the dwarves… because I have an irrational attachment to dwarven characters. I cannot play a game without playing a dwarf sooner or later. My first Everquest character was a Dwarf, and it has colored my tastes ever since. I think that since I am 6’4” in real life, and end up banging my head on everything… I secretly long to be shorter. Overall the movie was good, and like I said I think I will fall more in love with it on repeated viewings. Just on the first watching it felt like there was something off about it.

On a whim last night I decided to spend a bit more of my accrued Cartel Points and unlock the Caithar race. Immediately I decided to create a Thundercat Sith Juggernaut… because at the end of the day that is exactly what the newly christened Belgrenth looks like. All I am lacking is the sword of omens, and a weird gauntlet sheath. Actually that might be a fun trope for this guy… use only vibroblades… that is as soon as I can get a moddable vibroblade. A Thundercat totally needs a real sword, not a lightsaber!

I’ve done the Korriban starting zone so many times I could likely quest through it in my sleep, however I still found it enjoyable to be doing it on a Caithar. Overall the experience is not really any different, but I really like the appearance of the character. I have chosen to go full light side, as though a thundercat just accidentally happened to get stuck in the Star Wars universe. To be truthful, since Thundercats is really a science fiction story… and the magic in their world is almost purely technology…. it is not that far fetched if you think about it. Maybe the Caithar ARE the thundercats… in that case would the Emperor be Mum’Ra the Ever Living?

The other big highlight of the night is I finally caught up with Delevax and got my army of unguilded Sith alts in the House Stalwart sith guild over on Ebon Hawk. It is not super active, but it will be nice to see the occasional “green spam” as I play. I know him and a handful of friends play on a regular basis, I might try and get something up to their level range and hang out with them. I warned him as I warn everyone anymore, that pretty much I am not intending to really settle down in a game until the release of Elder Scrolls Online. At that point I am going to try desperately to “get the band back together” as it were.

Happy Memorial Day

My one request all weekend has been that we pretty much have Memorial Day to rest. For the most part it looks like this is going to happen. We have to drive out to a friend house and deliver the spare table from our livingroom, but overall it doesn’t appear that there is going to be much that is strenuous going on. I hope to be able to game most of the day and just chill out on our comfy new furniture. We had our requisite cookout on Friday night, so at least that memorial day tradition has been honored. I hope you all do whatever your family considers a tradition today… or at least find it relaxing. Happy Memorial Day to you all.