Free Candy For Everyone

Ok, so after writing my last post where I linked to Zach Braff’s imdb page, I read his biography and learned something really funny. Now, I already knew that Lauryn Hill went to my high school. Both Lauryn and Zach were seniors when I was a freshman and I remember them both. But someone who was apparently in their class who I don’t recall was Ahmed Best, the voice of Jar Jar Binks. Wow. That’s just too funny.

And yeah, you can keep on reading that bio page and find out that Andrew Shue (Melrose Place) and Elisabeth Shue (many things, but I like to remember Adventures in Babysitting) both went to my high school as well, though well before my time. There were even more people that went out to fame and all that from my high school. I don’t really know what’s up with that. It isn’t tiny, but it isn’t all that big either.

Anyways, I just thought the Jar Jar Binks thing was funny. Probably since I now work at Lucas and all that.

I like kittens. They’re just so darn cute! How can you resist little tiny noses and stuff? I just don’t know. A sure way to make me smile is to toss some kittens into the mix.

Scrubs is one of the few sitcoms that I still watch. It’s not longer at the top of my list (How I Met Your Mother gets more actual laughs from me nowadays), but it’s still generally amusing. Hey, it’s entertaining. And I happened to go to both the same high school and college as its star, Zach Braff, so that adds an extra little coolness factor. Or something. Well, it did at first when we were all abuzz that someone we knew was starring in a new show. But now he’s sort of someone outside of that. But I digress (much like JD on Scrubs does…). Back to kittens.

In last week’s episode, they had a character who was young but having heart troubles. It turns out she actually was ailing because she had a broken heart. Ok, right. But then JD started thinking about how you’d possibly treat an emotional problem like that. Next, he’s imagining a patient lying on the table with broken heart failure, “I need a box of kittens, stat!” A nurse hands him an actual box of tiny balls of cuteness and he dumps it on the guy’s chest. The lucky fella promptly perks up and starts smiling. Who couldn’t smile at a pile of kittens?? No one, I tell you. No one.

A few months ago I mentioned that I was trying this website called BookMooch. It lets you basically trade your books with people all over the world at no cost except postage. Shortly after my first post on the subject, I had a bookmooched from me. I sent it out, and with my point, selected one and had it sent to me.

Since then, I’ve had several more books mooched. It’s actually kind of cool. I get an email when someone wants one of the books I have up for grabs. Then I just wrap it up and drop it in the mail. It costs less than $2 to send it anywhere in the US with bookrate media mail. According to my profile, I’ve mooched 6 books and sent out 4 (you 1/10th of a point for giving feedback to someone when you receive a book a 1/10th of a point for listing a book, so it is possible to get ahead a little bit). Got one in the mail today, sent one out yesterday, and just ordered another one. It’s kind of cool to think about all these books flying around the country.

Speaking of which, several of the books I’ve received came with bookplates inside directing me to BookCrossing. This awesome site is all about helping get books out there in the world, traveling and being shared. Each book gets registered on the site before you send it on its journey and then people can make journal entries as they receive it. You can see where the book goes and who gets it. I haven’t actually flagged any of my books (I have trouble “defacing” books, I treat them with much reverence and sticking something permanently inside it doesn’t come easily to me), but here’s my profile page and you can see the books I’ve caught.

Reminds me of the very cool Where’s George website. It’s just like BookCrossing, but for money. I received a bill with a where’s george stamp on it a little while ago, and it led me to the site. You enter in the serial number and can track where it’s been based on log entries. My bill hadn’t traveled all that far, unfortunately. But ooh, it’s pretty darn nifty to look at how far some things travel. Though I do wish the page weren’t so stuffed with ads. It’s a bit annoying.

Anyway, I love me the books and the reading. You should all go read a book or something. Meanwhile, I’m gonna play some World of Warcraft.

The WoW expansion is almost here! Just a week until we’ll all be sitting waiting in unbelievably long queues to enter an overcrowded world where an incredible event has lead to the birth of thousands of Blood Elves and Draenei. Shall we go to the starting zones with all the other newborns and camp tiny baby wolf kills? I’m thinking no.

People are preparing for the expansion. I’m not quite sure what they’re doing, but they’re definitely playing a lot of WoW. For the first time in months, I’ve had to wait in a queue to log on to my server. Nothing too atrocious yet, but I can only imagine that it will be many times worse on release day.

I ordered my copy of the expansion from EB, so it’ll probably show up a few days after the release (hoping it shows up at all, given other people’s horror stories). I’m ok with not being there on release day - it’ll be really crazy with people bringing Barrens chat to all new world locations. I’m thinking that for the first few weeks it’ll be bad, but that first week will have a lot of people starting new characters. My plan is to just check out the new areas on some new, empty server. If I go somewhere empty and quiet I should at least be able to see what things look like and have a little fun without feeling like I’ve entered the lines at Disney World.

We’ll see, we’ll see. I certainly don’t want to invest any time into some throw away character that I just make to bide the time until my server isn’t as clogged. But a few hours of messing around sure can’t hurt!

In fact, I’m in new-alt withdrawal. I love rolling new characters so much, and I’ve very much wanted to do so for the last few weeks. The only thing holding me back is the knowledge that I’m going to be making new characters so very very soon. It’ll be so awesome! Ok, calming down. I’m calm. Don’t worry.

This darn blog chain letter just hit me. I’m supposed to tell you all 5 things you don’t know about me, then tag 5 other people to do the same. My tag comes courtesy of Krones at Plaguelands, who was tagged by Abalieno at Cesspit, and keep on going up the chain ultimately leads to Raph Koster. That’s where it leaves the game blogosphere, but this has been bouncing around for a while. Pretty amusing. Ok. So I talk about myself all the time on this here blog, but I have to think of novel things to share. Hmm.

1. I can’t do a cartwheel. It’s a sad fact. I’ve always thought it’d be a neat thing to do, but have never managed to accomplish it. Despite acquiring some modicum of coordination after I left my teen years, I just never did get the cartwheel down pat. I think I might have to go through my whole life and never know what it’s like to tumble feet-over-head in such a manner.

2. I can play 4 musical instruments at various levels of competence. Piano and guitar are the main ones, I took close to 10 years of piano lessons and still think about buying a piano to take it up again. I have two acoustic guitars, a Sigma and a Guild. You can hear me singing if you feel like it here. I’ve dabbled in the bass guitar, as well. Hey, if you can play guitar, you can play bass! And for a while I was studying the cello. I miss it, but it’s not exactly easy to tote around. Someday I’ll get back to it.

3. The first arcade game I ever played was Pole Position. I was totally scared of playing anything in the arcade. I hadn’t really gotten into video games at all yet (I was probably 8 or so). I was at an arcade with my older brother and he convinced me to give it a try - he handled the shifter and the peddle and I just turned the wheel (Yes, I know that there were only 2 gears and it was trivial, but I was scared of it!). After that I soon got hooked on the joys of Ms. Pacman (which is still one of my favorite arcade games) and continued to play all sorts of games until today when we all know about my gaming addictions.

4. I’m scared of heights. Yup. I get terrible vertigo when I’m at big heights. So I do my best to combat it whenever possible. I took up rock climbing for a while (well, indoor wall climbing, I didn’t get out onto real rock all that often) - hanging on a wall 50 feet above the ground is a good way to push your fears aside.

5. The first time I really got drunk was when I was 22. Not much for drinking in high school or college, I drank more once I got out into the real world. But it took a breakup to push me to the serious drinking side. At least for that one night. I don’t recommend it to soothe you woes, it doesn’t work too well, but I did get strange men at bars real eager to buy me drinks. I guess I’m a fun drunk.

Ok, now to pass it on. It seems like this has gone the rounds. Brinstar, I don’t think you’ve had the pleasure yet. Tag, you’re it! And I’ll pass this on to my family over at All In. Next up, Anu. Lisa at Guilded Lilies. Ok, so that’s not 5. But that’s all I can think of right now when I should really be sleeping.