Posted by Devin Parker

My head has been buried so deeply in homework - both of the revisionary kind and the "special present for spring break" kind - that I didn't even remember to mention in my last post that I have a new neice, Miriam Rose. My sister sent photos, and she's a little cutie.

I feel really disconnected from everyone these days, even my wife at times. Not good. Fortunately, the end of the winter semester is coming up, and like the 50-degree weather we started having this week, it's something I've been looking forward to with great anticipation.

I need to keep as solid a schedule as I can every semester, not only to get school finished as soon as possible, but also to continue being eligible for the financial aid we've been getting. Also, since I was admitted to MCAD on Academic Probation (due to my lousy grades in the past), I need to finish this semester with a high GPA. I'm pretty paranoid about that - I think I've done well, for the most part, but I'm not so sure about my performance in my Figure Drawing and especially my 2D Design classes. I think I did all right on my mid-term for Art History, but I was overconfident about my first test in that class (we only have three, total), and I don't want to repeat that mistake.

Meanwhile, God has been giving me stuff. First, He's introduced me to a guy at work named Shaun, who's been working as a security guard, wants to become a pastor, used to live in California, is very much into board games (of the Axis & Allies sort) and, as it turns out, has done a little Live Action Roleplaying in the past (Vampire, which is funny to imagine him doing, since he doesn't look the type). We got to talking about gaming one night and discovered a lot of common interests. While he's only done a little bit of tabletop roleplaying (it was an experience soured by the dishonest motives of the GM and his odd gaming style, unfortunately), he's expressed interest in it, sort of. He brings up the topic a lot, but I don't want to pressure him to play, since he's repeatedly talked about Axis & Allies being his addiction, and I don't want to be like that last guy. As my wife has said before, it would be really nice to find a Christian couple to game with up here. Thus far, his wife doesn't seem interested in his boardgames, but for roleplaying...well, hopefully Marilyn and I can convert her.

He invited my wife and I over to his apartment for dinner on Sunday night. We went and got to know him and his wife Rebecca better (she's the first Little Person I've ever met...and before you ask, Shaun is a big guy. No, I don't know how it works, but apparently it does). He made an excellent pork chop dinner with lots of applesauce and these garlic-cheese mashed potatos that were so delicious I'm still longing for the leftovers.

That leads me to the second thing. While he's showing us around their apartment, he mentions that they've just ordered a new Dell computer and says, "Oh, I remembered you saying that you had a dinosaur of a computer. Do you guys want my old one?" He turns on his "old computer," and there's a melodic chord introducing the Windows XP (or was that XT?) system it runs on. He puts in a music CD to demonstrate the speakers it uses, and the window in the room vibrates in time with the music. It's a sweet computer that could kick this Windows 95-using computer's butt. And he's going to just...give it to us!

Shaun has been inviting me to do a number of activities with him. We're looking at the possibility of meeting on Monday nights to game (beginning with Axis & Allies, hopefully doing some roleplaying at some point in the future), and he's invited me to go to a concert with him on Friday, since he had an extra ticket and the music they'll have isn't really to our spouse's tastes (at least, I assume it isn't to Marilyn's taste). It's called the See Spot Rock Tour, and it'll include, um, I think Skillet, 10 Stone, uh...some other hard rock Christian bands that I can't remember the names of at the moment. About five of them. It's at a place downtown called Club Three Degrees, which always has Christian bands playing there. Should be fun. I've been wanting to see where this club is anyway, since Marilyn has mentioned some interest in going there to see the likes of Tobymac. Shaun's picking me up, and then treating us both to fast food before we go. On Tuesday, he bought me a Coke because I didn't have any money on me to get one.

If he weren't married, I'd think he was flirting with me. He's a gamer and a Christian, however, and being both of those myself, I understand his desperation entirely. It's tough to find others that fit both categories, and even harder to find others that you want to spend any time around. It's nice to just have new friends, too - I guess even I can only take so much isolation.

Have to go get my laundry. I've been promising myself (and telling my wife) every day this week that I'll go to bed earlier, and every day I've been up until 2 AM either working on artwork (which is fine), reading (okay...), and dinking around on the internet (not so good). It's a bad habit; I really hate losing the morning to get things done, which is what happens when I come back from dropping Marilyn off at work and go back to bed for a couple of hours. Somehow the whole day feels wasted and I get really sluggish about everything. Not so good when I have so much to do before the beginning of next week!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 at Wednesday, March 24, 2004 . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

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