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Christopher 'Vulpine' Kalley,
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The Dream-Quest of Unknown Vulpine Thu Apr 28 11:16:47 CDT 2005
Mood: sleepy Music of the Day: Hammerfall - At the End of the Rainbow
Well, no frogs, toads, Great Old Ones, Elder Gods or Deep Ones in last night's dream marathon. I am of mixed feelings about this. On one hand, the faint worry that I was going insane(r) has passed, on the other hand, I kinda was enjoying the weirdness. I still had weird dreams, but a much more plebian sort of weird dream. Started with being somehow associated with a reality TV show. Somewhere nearby to my location was a swimming pool full of cute nubile females. But no one could direct me to the location, then as dreams are wont to do, it morphed, and I was best man at a friend's wedding. Ok...even a friend I know. But the groomsmen and groom and me were all dressed in costume. Not too weird, been to a few SCA weddings. The costumes were Roman military. Ok, that's weird. Corsetlets are heavy. Ok...wedding starts, it's in Hebrew...since the friend in question is Catholic, that was odd. The fact that I understand dream Hebrew isn't so odd. I'm a polyglot in my dreams (wish it was so in real life). Even had a sword arch. I had a taichi style sword, and the guy across from me had a two handed claymoreish sword. (Freudians, please keep your mouths shut. Thank you.) Then I woke up, with a major moment of WTF. Then, the alarm goes off. Uggg...

So ends another epic in the Dream Cycle of Vulpine. Ugg...I need to talk to my subconscious, it needs to stop turning my dreamscape into Felini films.

Weird Dreams day 2 Wed Apr 27 10:29:20 CDT 2005
Mood: squamous Music of the Day: Hammerfall - Legacy of Hate
Well, another night, another weird dream. This time, I dreamed I was developing gills along with some girl. Aka, developing the 'Innsmouth Look' or turning into a reject from the Black Lagoon. The weird part, this wasn't a scary dream...just kinda odd, and I was a little sad when it ended. I guess that says something about me, that the idea of being a frog hybrid and dwelling in the depths of the ocean with horrors beyond time and space sounds like a nice way to spend eternity...

And, waking up with two patches of dry skin under my ears, where the gills were forming in my dream did not help my sanity any...

Weird Dreams Tue Apr 26 12:01:02 CDT 2005
Mood: weird Music of the Day: Weird Al - The Alternative Polka
Mental note, don't read Lin Carter then go to bed while kinda bleah feeling. My subconscious takes that as a hint to really screw with me. Among other strange dreams, I had a dream that I was in a LARP (live action roleplaying) game...where the GM was one of the evil nasties from the Cthulhu Mythos. (Scary part is, I knew which one...I just can't spell it right now, one of the more obscure weirdos). Needless to say, this made the game a little tense...especially if you failed your task, the GM ate you. I woke up VERY confused, and a little concerned. I think tonight I'll read something simple, like a nice mystery novel or space opera scifi...nothing with tentacles. ;)

Weekend Update Mon Apr 25 20:40:45 CDT 2005
Mood: Good Music of the Day: Digging For the Truth on the History Channel
Well, I had a good weekend, as my last post may show. Friday night after work I got some dinner and drove over to Amythest's place to watched tivo'd Tru Calling. Shows were ok, kinda depressing subject matter. Then we found out the show was cancelled. :( Oh well, no more Eliza Dushku running. After that I went home, and tried to go to bed early...since I was getting up early the next day.

Woke up early the next day, headed over to Amythest's again to carpool down to Scarbourough Faire. Bought a season pass, but as usual...didn't go in costume. I dunno, I just don't enjoy dressing up as much as I used to. But I do enjoy watching other people get dressed up. Especially cute girls in corsets. :) I had alot of fun, enjoyed window shopping and wishing (as I usually do), and watching the shows. Especially Zilch the Torysteller. He does stories and plays in spoonerisms, or backwards talking. He's funny as hell...I haven't seen one of his shows since I was in college for some reason or another, and well...I've missed alot of belly laughs. Today's play was Romeo and Juliet, and well...*cackle* Needless to say, due to the involvement of a friend of mine as 'visual aids' for why 'A Tale of Two Cities' cannot be spoonerized in mixed company, I literally hit the dirt laughing so hard. Names are being withheld to protect the *ahem* innocent. ;) So...I'll be watching alot more Zilch shows. Also saw my usual (Don Juan and Miguel and the Corsairs) show fair. Didn't see too many people I knew, which was kinda odd. Mentally spent alot of cash, but was good and only bought a shirt (Corsairs). Headed back to Amythest's place where the gang meet up, and from there we went to see Kung Fu Hussle. Which, like Shaolin Soccer, was an absolute blast. Not as much character development as Shaolin Soccer, but much more over the top when it comes to the action. Vulpine says, check it out.

After the movie I came home and crashed out fairly early. Sunday I woke up, made breakfast and watched TV for a while. Then, got started on geeking. Now, this was kinda dangerous, since I was also on some good sinus meds...but they hadn't kicked in yet. So, down comes ATAthoth for a hard drive upgrade, added 2 40 gig drives I've had lying around. And for once, no issues, no config headaches, nothing bad. So I boot it back up, partition the drives, one is already formatted for linux, so I start to format the other one...and the drugs kick in, and I can't remember squat about the commands for formatting. ARGH !!! And for the life of me, I can't remember... so, off to google I go. Now repeat after me

/sbin/mkfs.ext3 /dev/hde1

Once that was done, I started copying over mp3s from cd backup. Then I was going to start working on a firewall build for a friend, but the Dell Optiplex case defeated me...putting the slot covers in such a way that you can't fit a screwdriver in to unscrew them is...annoying. And by that point the world was pretty fuzzy, so I quit while I was ahead. But hurrah for having a fileserver that went from 56 gigs of space to 136, with another 40 going in as soon as I find the last saved drive. *happy dance* Also, thanks to Nymaz, I have an idea for a new project. Build a linux box, with a tv-out card to play avi/mpg files on the TV. Shouldn't be hard to do, once I get the parts together. I'll need to play with the software for a while to get it working the way I want, but I think it should go fine. *crosses fingers*

The rest of Sunday was pretty ordinary, watched Iron Chef America that night, went to bed fairly early but I slept like poo. Very active dreams, I think my subconscious had a number of issues to get though. But I woke up today, tired, a little headachey but in a good mood. Lets hope it lasts for the rest of the week.

Quick Update Sun Apr 24 23:12:55 CDT 2005
Mood: tired Music of the Day: Morgana Lefay - Time Is God
Had a really good weekend, will go into more details later. Feeling a little under the weather today, combination of lack of sleep and sinuses I think. But in a good mood all in all. Hope everyone else is doing good too.

Weekend Update Sun Apr 17 23:31:31 CDT 2005
Mood: down Music of the Day: Show on Discovery Channel
Quick update, had a soso weekend. Friday was good, work foo = me doing my job well, and getting praise. Friday night was a bad Japanese zombie movie with some friends. Who needs robots, I can MST3k without them. Saturday was shopping day, got movies from Movie Trading Company, food for ferrets, and groceries at Walmart (and season 1 of Dark Angel for $15). Saturday evening I had dinner with some friends, went to Half Price and came home. Played alot of City of Heroes. Sunday blahs, however, started early. Today I didn't do much, laundry and cleaning a bit. A friend had a bad car experience (dead car in the middle of nowhere), but I helped keep her positive. Now, I'm trying to do the same for me. I shouldn't be so bleah, hopefully I can fight it off. *Crosses fingers* Oh yeah, I have a new show addiction, spent the weekend on and off watchign Firefly on DVD. Now I didn't watch the show when it was on, and when I first watched the pilot, I didn't like it. But my friends kept putting it on while I was around, and I found I liked the rest of the series. So I borrowed the episodes from Amythest, and sat down and watched the whole thing. I'm not a big western fan, but the combo of western and space opera worked for me. I need to get my own copy one of these days. (and the cute engineer chick didn't hurt.)

Not alot else, fighting the urge to give in and call in to work tomorrow. It won't really help, what cheer I'll gain by not going in and sleeping in, will be offset by the worries about my job and the having to play catchup on Tuesday. Hopefully this will work out. *Crosses finger*

Turner Falls Campout Sun Apr 17 14:45:37 CDT 2005
Mood: ok Music of the Day: Firefly episodes on TV
Finally getting around to writing up my campout experience. Friday rolled around and I got my ass out of work. Headed home, packed up my stuff and waited for Techie to show up. Me and him were carpooling up, Nymaz, Amythest and SugarFae had gone on up to Turner Falls ahead of us to setup camp. We leave out around 7ish, after getting some dinner and gas. And on the road we go. Very very boring drive. The most amusement was from a call we got from basecamp requesting we find bananas. *blink* Needless to say this inspired much amusement from us, and bad jokes about finding a banana farm, hijacking produce trucks ala "the Fast and the Furious" (save with Techie driving, it's more like the 'Slow and the Sedate') and general commentary about how Oklahoma is a bananaless wasteland. No bananas were found, hell...no grocery stores were found. Oh well. We get to the Turner Falls area, and of course...I get us lostish. Pick the wrong exit. Well, it did say 'Turner Falls'. Ok, in my defense while I have been to Turner Falls before it has been 5 years. So oops. We take some back roads, very twisty and turny roads. We miss the entrance, figure it out, pull a uturn, wave to the confused cops, and head back. Find the entrance, head on in, find the cabin/camp and unpack. We got a screened in shelter, with beds. Major upgrade from most camping I've done. :) We get setup, then hang around chitchatting at the fire. Eventually we call it a night, head to bed. It was a very noisy night, the beds make alot of noise when someone turned over, and our neighbor campers were fscking LOUD. So we got very little good sleep.

The next day dawned early...with Amythest being a cheery morning person. Breakfast, a very yummy breakfast was made, dishes were done, and we headed out to go hiking. Went down a trail to a cave. And lo and behold, the claustrophobic fox went into a cave. The same cave where over a decade ago I found out I was very claustrophobic. Well, I tried again...and wow...I could function. I didn't like it, but I survived it. After the cave we went down the path to the pool at the bottom. While my friends were taking the path I branched out, then scrambled down the rocks to the bottom. I used to love rock climbing, haven't gotten to do it in a long time. Nice to do something that doesn't require alot of brains, just physical energy and balance and instinct. Nice to know I still remember how to. We explored around, I kept wandering off the beaten path to climb more hills and rocks. *grin* After that we walked back towards the entrance, by way of the castle. The castle was built by a University of Oklahoma professor in the 30's, based around a English design, which he used as a summer home. Was fun to wander around, wish there wasn't as much graffiti as there was, but other than that is was very cool. Once that was done, we stopped for snocones and headed on back to camp.

Once we got back, lunch was had (hurrah for sandwiches) and some of us headed back out. Amythest and Sugarfae went to go swimming, and I wondered back out on the trail. There's a stream that starts up at the head of the trail we were on. It comes up out of a pool fed by springs, with a few very large rocks and another area behind it. Maybe a dry riverbed, I don't know. But I wanted to get back behind it, see what was there. Well the direct approach was...difficult. Aka, a sheer rock face with few handholds. And while I'm a little nuts, this looked to be a very good chance for me to fall and break something. So, I decide "Nope, not going to do it. Kinda disappointed...but then I turned around and saw something that looked like a goat track up over the side, past the big slick rocks. So, up and over I went. Wasn't hard, just alot of scrambling. And lo and behold, I saw a way down into the area past the springs. Woo. So down I went...slowly. Only had one scare, reached for a rock, seemed solid, but when I put my weight on it...it came loose and fell. I had a good grip and my feet planted, so I didn't go with the rock, but I wrenched my shoulder nicely. Stood there a while, and continued down, a little more nervously. But I made it down. It was a wonderful feeling, to have made it where I wanted to go on my own. Somewhere where not alot of people have gone. (unlike the rest of the park, there was very little trash to be seen.) Saw a bunch of little butterflys hanging around in a rock hollow, just sitting there waving their wings at each other. No idea if they were resting, or laying eggs, or just having a meeting. No clue, but it was something cool to see. I wandered around a bit, then headed back up over, down the trail, and to meet up with the girls. After that, we headed on up, grabbed showers, went to the gift store and got a few things and headed back.

From there we lazed around, Techie and Nymaz played Nightmare Chess, while the rest of us read. Later we had dinner, hung around and chitchatted for a long long time. Finally went to bed, but it was a quiet night compared to the night before. We got up the next day, packed up, cleaned up and headed back. On the way down me and Techie discussed spending plans if one of us won the lotto. Ok, Techie discussed it, I listened and was very amused. We got home, unloaded and I got a real good shower. Hurrah for clean. A while later we all met up to watch the movie Sahara. Now, I'm a huge fan of the Dirk Pitt novels, so watching a movie adaptation of the stories was a little off. It was a good movie, but it wasn't totally faithful to the books, so I spent alot of time silently saying "That's not right, that's not what Pitt would do." But was a good movie, would have been a great movie I hadn't been mentally correcting it. ;) Go see it, it's alot of fun. After the movie, we met back up and watched Iron Chef America then I went home and crashed. Was a fun weekend all in all.

So there you go, took a while to write, but I hope it was worth the wait.

Taxes Done Tue Apr 12 19:46:01 CDT 2005
Mood: Poorer Music of the Day: Dagon on TV
Well, I just finally, offically did my taxes. I did the numbers back in January, and found I owed again. So, as I am wont to do, I put off offically doing my taxes til the last min. No sense paying off Uncle Sam til I have to. Final result, I owe $128.00. Not as bad as it could be, and budgeted for. So now to write a check to the gov, and mail it in by Friday. Oh well. Maybe next year I'll get cash back...doubt it, but maybe.

P.S. Yes, I know I haven't posted details of the camping trip, it's been a rough few days. But I'll try to write something up soonish.

Goin' Camping Fri Apr 8 14:15:21 CDT 2005
Mood: soso Music of the Day: Tempest - Wild Rover
As the subject says, I'm going camping this weekend. Heading up to Turner Falls for a couple of days with some friends. Hopefully I'll have a nice time with minimal stress. Yes, I just had a vacation, but I still have a metric ton of stress on my shoulders. Bleah. Wish me luck, and hope I don't get eaten by a bear.

From this weekend Mon Apr 4 12:20:07 CDT 2005
Mood: amused Music of the Day: 05 - Hammerfall - Remember Yesterday
And photo evidence of the weekend's squamousness...



Btw, the octopus is named Nicodemus (funny, my Dad had a Volkswagon Bug named the same thing) and will be appearing in Skippy, the Plush Cthulhu's adventures.

Squamous Saturday Sun Apr 3 00:19:06 CST 2005
Mood: Squamous Music of the Day: Scary Movie 2 on TV
It was a very good, if squamous day. Woke up today to a slightly moody feeling. So after some thought, I ditched the idea of doing housework and being a responsible adult. Instead I decided to go to the Dallas World Aquarium. So I got ready, headed to the train station. And this is where the squamousness started. I was wearing a Shoggoth.net shirt, and I had a copy of the Innsmouth Cycle for reading. The aquarium was fun, it's more of a zoo/aquarium...they have a big exhibit of rainforest biospheres with animals and birds and well as fish. Very interesting. No squid or octopi, which was a bit of a bummer, but it was fun overall. After I went though the exhibits I stopped by the gift shop and got a few things, including a blue stuffed octopus. *grin* I love weird stuffed animals. I also picked up a pair of stuffed sharks (one purple, one pink) for Amythest and SugarFae. Hung out with them and another friend after the museum, watched Pricilla, Queen of the Desert. From there we headed to dinner, then to visit Techie and play Phase 10. The less said about how boneheaded I was playing, the better. ;)

After the game of doom, I headed home. And the last squamous bits fell into place.

Yes, I got some cool stuff today. Hurrah for me. And shop the above companies, they do good stuff. So I've been having a very good weekend. I'll post more later, my opinion of Sin City and whatever else I get into.