The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I’m going to let the horrible, ridiculous, nonsensical word order of the last post stand. Let it be known and I was stupid and writing a blog quickly. LET IT BE KNOWN.

Anyway, here’s a rundown of the key things that happened yesterday.

1) Aesa cooked me lots of nice food because Aesa is awesome! Seriously, made some lovely pork chops and a nice breakfast burrito. Yay food!

2) I got confirmation from my boss that the syllabus thing I freaked out about awhile ago is officially Not A Big Deal (TM) and has been dealt with, so that’s nice. Now I can be extra sure that any sort of insane reaction or worry is, in fact, insane.

3) Aesa and Q went from a questionable alliance to mostly getting along. Q is still not used to someone else being here all the time. He growls at Aesa when he’s in places people who aren’t me and him don’t normally go. But it’s just a little growl. He’s never snappy or mean or even loud about it. You just give him a pet and he’s fine. Heh.

4) Kenny started work at Kohl’s, and he even wrote me a card thanking me for helping him get his first job! I just wish I had gotten him a better one. Kohl’s isn’t great! But still, when you’re starting with nothing, it’s something! I hope he likes it and it helps him out. It was really nice of him to make that card.

Anyway, we’ll see what happens in this new day. I didn’t get much relaxing with Aesa time because of work, but now I am work-free! So.

Aesa is here. He arrived fine. Things are going great!

We talked about how generally boring I am food-wise, so it was decided I should be forced to broaden my horizons a bit. Apparently that means eating Pho, so we found a Vietnamese restaurant in St. Louis to try, called Pho Grand. It was apparently on The Loop, which surprised me when we got there. I don’t know why. I just figured it would be more out of the way, I guess.

The restaurant was small, but very nicely decorated. Service was also fantastic, but then again, when we sat down to eat, we were the only people there, so one would hope! (That changed by the time the meal was done.)

I had the thing you were supposed to get, apparently, which was this beef noodle soup. It was pretty good! It freaked me out a lot because it was really different. I’m just not used to things tasting outside my normal range. It’s normally just a combination of tastes I know. But this had a strong taste I can’t quite place that was very good. Kind of a calm taste over it all. It was also weird because, as Aesa said, it was a very “make your own” soup, with you getting a bunch of stuff to throw in it and you need to add all these sauces.

I, of course, didn’t know how to use chopsticks. So I had a hard time eating it with a fork. I also put in way to much of the rooster sauce stuff, which came back to haunt me near the end of the meal! Rookie mistakes! Such a n00b.

Still, I would definitely try that sort of food again. I feel like I’d like a chicken one better? I’d probably get chicken next time instead of beef. Is that okay to do? Is that a fool’s errand with Pho? I dunno. Still, an adventure!

I’m going to write about what happened, because I still don’t really know.

Basically, my boss e-mailed me saying that my syllabi were not up to the guidelines they have at the college. There were some crossed wires, and I didn’t do them right. He did not paint this as a big deal, but just laid out what the guidelines were to make sure I fixed it. I e-mailed him back, apologizing, and saying I’d fix them as soon as possible.

Then I freaked the fuck out.

For whatever reason, this bit of information caused me to panic so badly that I couldn’t work, couldn’t sleep, and still feel emotionally exhausted and taxed as I write this right now. I could not handle the fact that I had let my new boss down, who I feel has done a lot for me and put a lot of faith in me, on something so trivial that caused him to waste his time chasing me down. This minor setback, in the grand scheme, was, in my head, a herald of how terrible a teacher I am and how I can’t cut it. This is not true. I’m a great teacher, and I know it. I make mistakes like everyone, and I’m learning these new classes, but I am a great teacher. But in that moment, I was convinced. I had wondered if I was doing those right, and had decided that it was fine, and that turned out wrong. I was a failure.

I called people. I freaked out. It took me hours to calm down so I could sleep, and again, I’m still shaken. I can’t remember the last time I have fallen apart like this. It’s literally been years since I had such a downward spiral where I was convinced of my own worthlessness. I’ve been getting help. I’ve been transitioning. These aren’t thoughts I have every moment of the day anymore. But here we are.

Brer says I’m under a lot of stress. I agreed to this trip, which I’m worried about planning. I’m working more than ever before, with classes I’m unfamiliar with and a sleep schedule I still haven’t totally gotten the hang of. I’m running this Mafia game, which takes a lot of work and I take probably way too seriously than I should. I’ve got a lot of plates spinning. He says that for whatever reason, this just ended up being the thing that opened the floodgates. I guess I can understand that. But that doesn’t leave me with much knowledge of what to do about it. None of these things are things I’m willing to let go, and I’ve got this job interview Wednesday which, if I get it, means even MORE stress for this semester. Plus, Brer moving in, waiting and figuring all that out… I don’t know what I can do to relieve that pressure if that’s really what’s going on.

I just… I wonder if that stress is why I’ve been feeling sick to my stomach all the time. Not like, enough to throw up or for it to stop me? But just a general feeling. I don’t know.

I’m going to get what I need to do done. I’m going to let Aesa visiting help relax me. I’m going to survive. That was never in question. I’m no longer in the ending it all business. I’m going to survive.

I just hope stupidity like last night doesn’t happen again.

I guess in general, in teaching, I’ve been lucky.

I’ve never really had any problem students. Nobody who was actively trying to disrupt my class or anything, you know? I had some people who cracked jokes and stuff? But that’s just fun, and most of them would contribute for serious as well. I welcome that sort of person. I am that sort of person sometimes.

This semester, I don’t know. Today’s reading class went REALLY badly, both because of disruptions and it throwing me off my game enough that I couldn’t think of anything else useful to do. (Okay, the fact that I am really feeling fairly sick probably didn’t help!) But I have these two guys. They don’t do their homework, and they sit in class and they talk the whole class. It’s not subtle in a class of 6 people to do that. When I have to talk over them, and they’re not doing a very good job at trying to whisper, that’s a problem.

Normally I’ll do one silly thing, or I’ll just stop and stare for a moment, and that snaps people out of it, and they’re no longer a problem when this happens. I started first for calling on them to answer something from homework I knew they didn’t do, so they’d pay more attention. Their reaction was actively complaining. “I wasn’t here for last class, why would I have the homework done?” To which I responded “Because you were here Tuesday, and I post assignments two classes ahead. You knew what was due.” To which they said they didn’t have any way of knowing and I was wrong. So I pointed out they were wrong, and moved on. It didn’t stop them from talking. I stared at them, silently, in the middle of a lecture. Stopped them for mere seconds. I stopped them and said “Hi, how are you doing? Everything going okay? Comfortable?” Again, only stopped them for moments. I did my hi routine again, and one of them said to me “Is this some sort of sarcasm thing?” That caught me off guard. I said “No, just wondering what’s going on.” They stopped talking then, but they were just actively doodling and not giving a shit the whole time.

I’ve never been bothered by underachievers before. That’s their choice: they can waste their money and not learn anything if they want. But what they were doing just felt so… active. It felt different. It felt like they were trying to get in my way. I didn’t understand why. They could go get a fucking burger or something and get out of my classroom if they didn’t even give two shits about what I was saying. I wouldn’t pester them about it. Hell, one of these guys has just walked right out of the class in the middle of an activity with no explanation, and I could see him outside the window just chatting on his cell phone happily (as in, it really didn’t seem like an emergency to me!). I didn’t give a shit about that. Do it, dude! Just leave! Do what you want!

Whatever. Just… don’t try to fuck up my class, okay? I am trying to help people here.

It’s so weird that this seems so late now, but it does. Goodness, getting up early will do that to you. I am exhausted.

I didn’t really want to do two rambling blog posts in a row. I try to vary shit like that so that I don’t annoy people or whatever. Try to write “content” sometimes too. But I can’t seem to get started on anything, and the best solution to that is to write. I know this to be true. I told my students that the other day, probably.

Basically what’s going on is that Aesa just booked a flight to visit me next week. This is insane. I mean, it’s insane in a nice way, and it’ll be a nice if at least at the beginning awkward time. I’m looking forward to it, totally. That’s a VERY GOOD THING. But it still, at this moment, seems unreal. It was so out of nowhere. It’s something that, if I wanted to do it, I’d worry and plan for weeks to be able to do it, and even then, I might decide it wasn’t “optimal.” He just went for it. I hope I’m as special as he thinks, so it’s worth it for him.

Really, though, now I’m worrying about what I need to plan. What do we do? Do I plan activities? Meals out? Meals in? How am I going to take care of my teaching duties with him here distracting me? Do I need to work very far ahead? All these are things that I would have planned far in advance usually, but all this just kind of happened. And now that it’s locked in, I can start freaking out about it, I suppose.

I’m just not a spontaneous person in general, I don’t think. I mean, I can speak that way. I can interact with people socially that way. But outside of just talking, such things worry me. It’s an unsure situation. I don’t know the outcome. That’s the fun of it all, I guess, but I just rarely find it that way. I want to feel the path beneath me.

But then again, if I had waited, and planned forever for a “perfect” moment, this nice thing that’s happening wouldn’t have happened. I’d have worried about asking Brer about it, and worried about setting it up… instead we just picked a date that looked okay in my work schedule, and just did it. And now it’s going to happen.

Best prepare to enjoy it.

I’m worried about this job interview. It’s for a job I really want, and am completely qualified for, but if they’re already interviewing, which I didn’t anticipate when I applied, that means they probably need someone RIGHT NOW, and my current teaching contract is going to prohibit me from taking up that offer, at least on a full-time scale, until the end of the semester. I worry this will knock me out of the running, but I also feel like that would be really damn unfair. They can’t blame me for trying to get the best job I can. I can’t just fucking wait around with a shitty job while they twiddle their thumbs and think vaguely about hiring me. But still, I bet if I don’t get the job, that’s why. Sigh.

I’m worried about the crazy plans Aesa and I keep accidentally concocting. They sound like such fun! But I’m not stupid enough to make stuff happen without making sure there won’t be terrible repercussions. I can do that, though. But even after I do check, double check, and triple check, I’ll probably still worry about it.

I’m worried about the fact that I am always going to be late to my 3:45 class because of how they scheduled me. It’s not my fault, I can’t help it, but I don’t want all that to reflect on me. Still, I’m not going to drive like 200 mph on the highway just to make it on time. It’s not worth THAT.

I am worried, pointlessly, that friends, okay Essner, is slipping away from me. I mean, I understand you have to make life changes when you can, and that’s cool. But shit, him moving out caught me by surprise. I felt very distant in that moment. Not by any fault of his. It just made the amount of time between the last time we talked seem… gigantic. We used to waste time together all the damn time. Now life is fucking that up with all it’s “scheduling” and “work.” Bleh.

I am worried it’s going to take Brer all goddamn year to find an opening down here. It’s not his fault. But waiting for Wal-Mart to just magically decide they have space for him down here is becoming maddening. I don’t know what kind of planning I should be doing anymore, or when to expect him, and I don’t really appreciate that. I’m kind of a planner.

The standard joke finish is “I am worried I worry to much.” But it’s not that. I worry because I care, deeply care, and I wouldn’t get rid of that for anything. I’m worried I will somehow forget how to push through worry and still get things done. I am worried that I will revert back to being able to do nothing when I’m worried. That would be terrible. I don’t think I’ll do that.

Remember when I said I’d keep writing these? I guess I am.

Pokemon Gold/Silver is a basically perfect game. It’s the sequel to Pokemon every single Pokemon game since wishes it could be, but has completely failed to be. It was full of plenty of new content, gobs and gobs of fanservice, and refined basically everything there was to love around Pokemon Red/Blue. It is THE Pokemon game.

First off, let’s just talk about the new Pokemon. All of them fit right in with the original 150, easy. You don’t feel like they’re stretching for design ideas. They just work, and it’s awesome. The only Pokemon I truly love are from this and the first game, (Let’s try a list off the top of my head… we’ll call this a list of Pokemon who, if I saw a toy of them, I would buy immediately: Eevee, Vulpix, Ninetales, Wobuffet, Skamoray) and while that’s a personal preference to be sure, I just feel like, in general, these Pokemon are just the ones with the design chops to make me love them.

In addition, Gold/Silver made much-needed changes to the formula of Pokemon to make it a more fun game. Eggs were a really good addition that let you customize your team more. The new types, Steel and Dark, dealt with the balance issues of the first game, as well as little things like giving us a Ghost Pokemon that wasn’t also Poison, so that Ghost could actually be useful against Psychic Pokemon. The timed events, based on a real-world clock, were also fucking fantastic, and I just can’t understand why every Pokemon game after this hasn’t had them. Those events kept me playing the game for a long time, and being able to only catch certain types during certain times of day was just cool.

The amount of content in the game just hasn’t been matched as well. Getting to go back to Kanto and face Red after being the game was totally and completely a HOLY SHIT moment the first time it happened. While it didn’t take as long to get through that content of course, what with your fully-powered team, blasting through the area you had so much trouble with in the past game just made you feel like a REAL Pokemon master, you know?

This was like the pinnacle of handheld gaming when it came out, and frankly, for the most part, I bet it still holds up. I wouldn’t touch it at all. (Well, okay, maybe I’d put the female trainer from Crystal into the original game, but that would basically be it, and I can live without that.) Pokemon Gold/Silver? You’re awesome.

Today I took like a four hour nap. That hasn’t happened in… well, forever! I had been waking up super early to do all my teaching all week, and the times when I went to bed hadn’t really adjusted. I laid down for a nap, thinking I’d only be out for like an hour, and suddenly I was late for my brother’s family dinner thing. Me taking a nap! Me getting rest! It was just odd. An odd occurrence! I’m all tired again now. Maybe I’ll sleep some more! YOU NEVER KNOW!

Speaking of sleeping, Q really likes to do that with me. He’s learned that it’s warmer under the covers now, so when I get into bed he DEMANDS I let him into my blanket and then he curls up right beside me. This is a danger to me being able to get out of bed at a decent hour in the morning. He’s so warm, so cute, and so happy. I don’t want to ruin that, and it’s not like I want to get up out of bed either. Surely it would be better just to stay in bed with him a little longer, right? Damn warm dog, loving me and wanting to stay close to me. Such problems I face in life!

Speaking of puppy dogs, Q is also trying to steal my My Little Pony blanket that my brother got me for Christmas. Like, seriously, Q! You have a blanket to lay on right there! But if I drop mine to the ground for a moment, he’s right on it. Then, like, I can’t get him off, because of the previously mentioned cuteness and stuff. I bought you your own blanket for Christmas, puppy dog! I mean, I know that’s in the other room, and you want to lay in here, but…
He’s just a blanket-thief, pure and simple.

Speaking of stealing, I’ve been stealing class time from my students! (Okay, that one was a stretch, I admit.) But seriously, I can’t make it to class on time. I have 30 minutes to drive to Sikeston after one of my classes and teach there, and it takes me at least 35-40. I either have to let the class before out early every day, or have the other class be shorter than it should be. Nothing I can do about it. I wish we would have caught this schedule problem sooner! I mean, I’ll make it. It’ll be alright. But it’s just kind of frustrating. Because I’m required to not let students out early and such, and I really have no choice in the matter to do what I’ve been hired to do. Oh well.

Speaking of oh well, I guess this blog is over. Oh well.

I realized I’ve never talked about my new telephone!

I got a new telecommunications device. It is magical and cool! The end.

Okay, no, I have a Samsung Galaxy S II now. All Android-y and stuff. You know? I am, for the most part, very happy with it.

Let’s talk about what I wanted out of a new phone. Coming from my Blackberry, I wanted something that could do the internet well. Browsing the internet on that Blackberry was the worst experience possible. I wanted something where using the internet was not the most last of last ditch efforts, but instead something I could do all the time.

I certainly got that in this! I’m finding the Android browser pretty great! There are some slight annoyances, sure. Like how it for some reason seems to be converting Google AdSense ads into popups? That’s weird and frustrating. I also find the way you switch between tabs and stuff kind of clunky. But it’s way, way, way, way, way the fuck more usable than anything Blackberry has. And you can actually see Web pages in something extremely close to how they’re supposed to look.

The phone is huge, though. Like, it’s really big! I was originally worried it wasn’t going to fit in girl pockets, though it manages to, barely. This is, again, great for looking at web pages and stuff, but it is just kind of big! I’m getting used to that, though.

What’s really taking some getting used to is the keyboard. I love that the thing does good voice transcription: I use it when I can. However, I find I use too many internet slang words and usernames when I type and text for the voice transcription to be very effective. It won’t do things like Aesa and Brer and Q and such, because it doesn’t realize they’re names. Which makes sense. But it makes the voice stuff much harder to use. The phone’s default keyboard wasn’t that great either. Now, though, I’ve switched to Swype, which is just… fantastic. Like, it makes me go “why aren’t all software keyboards like this?” It has its mistypes and false positives, of course, but for the most part it is way, way faster than trying to plink out words on the screen. I miss my physical keyboard, I really really do, but this is doing a pretty good job.

That’s really about it, I guess? As far as apps and stuff goes, I’m really only using Tweetdeck, and this thing Aesa told me about called Out of Milk to keep track of what groceries I need when I think of stuff, which has been handy. I’ve been chatting using IM+, and it’s not too bad. There might be a better option out there, but it gets the job done.

This phone is a huge, huge upgrade. It’s great! Still, at the end of the day, it is a phone. I’m not using it for much more than what I was using my Blackberry for! It just does all the things I did on there WAY WAY BETTER. So, a step up. Hurrah!

I was talking with Aesa, and I ended up rambling about Silent Hill 2, and then Earthbound, because they were games I called “must plays.” Then I got to thinking that no, must play isn’t right. I tried “Flawless,” but as I started to make a list, I realized that wasn’t right either. Many of these games have flaws. I finally settled upon “Untouchables.” This list I was making was a list of games that, if I had the magical power to enact change on them however I wanted, I would not touch. They are something special, close to perfect, warts and all. Anything I’d do to adjust them would just ruin the magic, so I wouldn’t. These are likely games I love, yes, but many games I love have things I would fix. Take, for example, Space Channel 5. I love Space Channel 5 from the bottom of my heart, and if I was listing favorite games? It would be on there. But that game is messed up in so many ways. It’s got huge problems that could probably be fixed while keeping its charm and what I love about it! It isn’t an untouchable game.

Does that make sense? Anyway, I’m going to try this out as a series. We’ll see if I decide this is a stupid blog topic or not. I’ve made a long list, and I’ll just start writing thoughts about them, hm? We’ll see where this goes.

As I started writing down the list, one thing hopped into my head which shocked me. Bayonetta is a perfect game. I very much WOULD say that Bayonetta is a game without flaw. That surprised me. I’m still just not into that kind of combo-driven, perfection-demanding gameplay that Bayonetta has in spades. Why would I feel it so perfect? But dammit, it is. It is perfect.

Again, I am no expert at the combat in this game. I cannot do any sick combo videos or anything of the sort. I’ve seen them, and goddamn, are they a thing of beauty. The game clearly rewards that kind of play, which is fantastic. If you persevere, you will become badass. But normally these kinds of systems sacrifice accessibility for that. If you don’t put in that time, you’re useless. Bayonetta’s easy mode fixes that completely. Much like how Rock Band makes me feel like a skilled musician, the Bayonetta easy mode made me feel like someone making ridiculous combo videos to youtube. And while I’m sure the high you get from actually pulling that stuff off, and the much, much more complex stuff you can do if you’re in full control, feels much better, it let me have a taste that I never, ever would have had otherwise. That’s the mark of a great game.

Similarly, I stand by Bayonetta as being one of the best female characters this generation. She has depth, she’s a sexual being without being stereotypical eye candy for no reason, and you like her. She’s a fully realized person, and that is just so rare in games. On top of that, the game has an entertaining and batshit insane storyline that you feel like you could never follow, BUT YOU DO. Somehow, every fucked up thing in the world of Bayonetta quickly makes sense to you. Being that crazy, but somehow that grounded, is great storytelling.

I wouldn’t change anything about Bayonetta. This is a game that should be affecting how people design games. I don’t know if it truly is, which is a shame. Don’t make a sequel to Bayonetta now! It doesn’t need that, though I will fully admit I will play it. But it should shine as one of the high points of this long console generation. I truly think it should.