The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I told my parents about my gender issues straight up on Saturday.

Granted, I had done this before, but when I did it went, how do you say… incredibly badly. There was fighting. It shattered confidence and I kind of went into hiding for years. That was fun.

But I built myself back up, and better than I was before. I matured, and became a better person, I think. Not that I wasn’t always a fine specimen.

And then, finally, I told them again. Better this time. Planned. With backup.
I did that.
I did it.

It went better than I had hoped. They both are worried of course. They don’t want me ruining my life, and that’s understandable. They don’t want me to go through with it. Also understandable, even if not something I feel like I can do. But I left those conversations with… an incredible sense of love. They aren’t going to abandon me. I mean, I didn’t really think they would? But I had built up that possibility in my head over the years… and it meant a lot that it didn’t happen. There was no fights. Very few tears. Just hugs and reassurances that they love me, and I love them. That’s… good.

And I feel so much better now that it’s out there. And this is only the first step. It’s all just beginning.

I think I’m ready for it.

I’ve probably put way too much brain processing power into the sex element of Mass Effect 2.

I mean it. I’ve been thinking more about the logistics of having sex with Garrus, about how that’s going to affect Shepard’s relationship with Liara, and if I can get Kelly involved in some three way action basically more than the actual plot. I mean, I guess some people are getting abducted or something? But that’s just the battlefield where love can bloom, apparently. That’s not what I’m thinking about.

This is just another reason why I should never, ever be in charge of people in tense situations. Because I would worry about these inter-personal relationships more than, perhaps, what’s going on. Okay, I suppose it depends on what the actual goal is. If it’s something stressful, which I’d want to get away from, you better believe I would focus on such things instead.

But seriously, I’m spending way more time thinking about the fact that Garrus said “if we can figure out how to make it work” and what that means for the actual sex. What kind of weird alien cock are we talking about here, where it’s some sort of issue? It’s almost a Yoda’s Penis sort of situation, although Garrus is certainly a more attractive alien than Yoda. Would clearly be better in bed, I would guess, even if you took force powers into consideration. I bet he would be a biter. See, look at me. Thinking about these things.

It really is almost two different games for me. One’s a shooter with some RPG elements which is fun, and then the other is this weird dating/life sim where I’m talking to people and learning their histories and things. It’s so disconnected. I would like each game by themselves. But I’m engrossed in both. I dunno.

Space fucking, you know?
Apparently hot.

With the idea that my body will soon be something that, perhaps, I don’t despise to the very core of my being, I have started thinking that, maybe, I need to take care of myself a little. Granted, I’m not going to go all crazy with it. I can balance, say, the health benefits of not enjoying candy now and again versus the benefits of doing so, and doing so wins out every time. I’m going to drink my caffeine drinks and eat what I want. Going without just doesn’t seem like a good plan.
Still, my body is now something I may want to keep, so I have started looking into maintenance, like exercise. I am too crazy busy to go to a gym or whatever. The thought of making time for that just makes me depressed. I looked for other, lower-impact solutions, and I ended up picking up Personal Trainer: Walking, the most X-treem walking game you’ve ever seen for your Nintendo DS.

Okay, so it’s not really very X-treem. It’s full of that kind of mostly bullshit Japanese philosophy about things you see in stuff like Brain Age. Apparently I’m walking so that I can have a proper “life rhythm.” Yeah. Okay. Sure. You also do things like put stamps on a calendar and get your life rhythm measured every day. (Mine tends to be Evening Horse style, apparently.) None of that is very useful.
Also, it’s not a game in any way. It’s mostly a program for tracking data over time and giving you little goals. These goals are kind of silly, too. I think my daily “mini target” is to “make a comfortable, friendly environment for those around me.” Yay? Really useful in keeping you walking and stuff, huh?

But again, that’s not the point. The point is that the activity meter that you just keep loose in your pocket keeps a fairly active count of your steps as you move around and exercise. It keeps track of active periods and calm periods, and it has a little LED on it. If it’s red, you haven’t met your daily step goal. If it’s green, you have. I actually like this vagueness. It keeps me going longer than when I hit green, because I don’t know how much more I have to walk. I currently have my goal set to 5,000 steps, but you can set it to whatever you want in the game, or have to set it to your average steps over a long period of time.
The game comes with two activity meters, so you can compete with a friend or significant other or something. I gave the other one to my Mom. Talking to her about it seems to have spurred her to be more active, too, so that’s good. Of course, I’m doing a lot more than her.

I really like Personal Trainer: Walking. It’s giving me a reason to walk more, and I’ve been doing so, walking while reading assignments, always taking the stairs, and so on. That’s a good thing. It’s not going to get me super-healthy, but at least I’m doing a bit better than I was. For the cost, I very much recommend it. Combine it with a Pokewalker when Heart Gold and Soul Silver comes out, as I plan to, and you have some serious Watts you’ll be earing, let me tell you!

My class this semester talks to me.

This, honestly, really caught me off-guard. Last semester, it required some teeth-pulling to get my students to actually discuss anything I put before them, and as such I had planned around the fact that I would have to pre-prepare them with things to say in order to get them to talk. There would always be group work and pre-discussion before discussion.

This semester is different. I have a much, much larger group of people who offer up thoughts and comments without hesitation. I’ve ran out of time twice already because I didn’t want to stop the awesome talking that was going on in class. It’s so awesome.

There are plenty of theories I could throw out as to why this is happening. For one, it’s the second semester, so maybe these students have broken out of the “high school” mode a lot of them were in their first semester. Also, my class is an hour later, which probably is helping my students to be much more awake when they come into class. Or maybe it’s just a much better group of people, I don’t know.

All I know is I feel like I am accomplishing a lot more already, and I feel like, for the most part, they’re getting it. I’m unsure what this means for my students. Hopefully they’re getting more out of it too. But for me, as teacher, this is the very best thing.
We are going to have so many discussions. Yes we are.

Now returning, in what is apparently a series! (probably only a two part series) You demanded it! (you didn’t demand it) So here’s another Mike and Ike review.

Tropical Typhoon is much better than Berry Blast.

It’s a mix you might worry about, due to it’s heavy dependency on Banana flavors, seeing as two of it’s five flavors have the word Banana in their name (Strawberry-Banana and Kiwi-Banana), and you would be right to worry. Those two flavors are, by far the weakest of the set. You wouldn’t necessarily want to eat them alone, though the banana part of their flavor does fade away nicely when mixed with other flavors. I prioritized these for mixing, and it worked out okay. They just weren’t optimal.
However, the other three flavors more than make up for it. They have the robust, powerful flavor that Berry Blast completely misses, especially in the Punch and Mango flavors. You’re drawn to want to search and dig out more of those. They’re really great.

The only shame is that I rarely see Tropical Typhoon about. It’s always Berry Blast and Original Mix. It’s a shame, because I would certainly pick it up more often as a viable choice for mixing it up otherwise. I won’t waste my wish on that, though: Obviously, if I had to pick one Mix to show up all the time, it’s Lemonade Blends, all the way!

…I like candy, okay?

I’ve been feeling fairly stressed lately.

I mean, I’ve been getting everything done. That’s not the problem. But to fit in everything I have going on, my life has sort of become hyper-scheduled. I like routine, but I like my routine to have big spaces of nothing where I can just do whatever strikes me as a good idea to decompress. I’m really not getting that this semester. Most of that kind of time in my schedule is being eaten up by driving to St. Louis for my appointments and such. It’s 5-6 hours of free time I’d have every week eaten up by it. I mean, it’s not wasted time, but it is time I am losing.

I don’t know. Maybe I haven’t been sleeping right. Maybe I still haven’t gotten into the swing of things. But feeling stressed sucks. I used to run away from it and basically failed two years of college because of it, you know? I had thought I was pretty good at getting such things away from me. But as I think ahead to, say, when I’m going to get to continue working on Mass Effect 2 and beating it, it really gets to me, because I can’t think of a good time to do that. Much less run my KoL turns, be involved in the Twilight Heroes event, finish Forumwarz Episode 3… so many fun goals I want are just completely set aside. That sucks.

I’m going to survive without problem, you know? It’s not a problem. It’s not enough to break me. But it is certainly testing me, which is very unfortunate. I wish I could be having a low-stress time. But there’s so much happening in my life, it just doesn’t seem like it’s going to work out that way, at least not for this semester.
Oh well.

I enjoy candy.
I’m not really a chocolate person. I more lean towards either your pure sugar candies (Pixie Sticks, Nerds, Sweet Tarts) or more your fruit-flavored candies (Spree, Fruit Mentos, Skittles). One of my go-to candies of the latter variety would be Mike and Ike, which are those wonderful little wax fruit-ish candies that always come in a movie-theater-style box. I tend to go with the standard flavors of course. It’s their standard mixture for a reason. It’s got good variety, and you can enjoy them mixed, or individually with little trouble.

There are variants of Mike and Ike. Obviously, the best is the excellently citrus and sour Lemonade Mix. But I only know of one place to buy that, and I’m rarely there. So I’ve been attempting to branch out and try the other, easily available mixes.

For example: Mike and Ike Berry Blast. I see this basically everywhere I see the standard Mike and Ike Mix. I’ve been picking it up instead recently to give it a go.

It leaves something to be desired.

I mean, I like berry stuff, certainly. Not as much as citrus, but berry? Good. And this mix has Blue Raspberry, and I have a huge fan of Raspberry. It seems like it would be pretty great.
However, I find that, individually, each flavor lacks punch. They’re all very dull, slight flavors on the tongue. None of them are disgusting or bad, mind you. We’re not having a Banana Runts situation here. But none of them make you want to pull another out of the box. They’re just weak.
Mixing them in twos or threes does help to alleviate this, but when mixed, they tend to form one combined flavor, instead of being a mix of tastes. This, again, doesn’t taste bad. But it doesn’t leave me wanting to buy another box of them or anything.

I’ll eat Berry Blast. It’s not bad. But I should really stop buying it, I think. I’ve given it a chance, but it just isn’t as awesome as the standard mix.

Also, side note: Look at the Mike and Ike website. Oh my goodness. And what is up with that music player? I have no idea. But I highly suggest you change the music to “Baller.”

Welcome to Linkuary, where I will provide you with links every day for a month!
…okay, yeah, that would be completely lame.

Still, my browsers are completely full of tabs that I’m keeping open for another one of these posts, so let’s empty them out and give you something else to do other than reading this bloeg, eh?

First off, on the Youtube front, here is something my mother called an educational video about how to present a news story. It’s pretty damn funny, and painfully accurate.

Speaking of actually educational, though, Brer shared with me this intense rap about Economic theory. Learn yourself.

On a more visual side, shivam tweeted this awhile back, and it’s still completely amazing. I don’t care how many times I see it, but when you successfully switch art styles on a property, some really cool stuff happens. This is some of the best Pokemon fan art I’ve seen in awhile.

Also, man, I guess I’m easily entertained, but this has, by far, been my favorite Chainsawsuit in awhile. So true to how furries actually work, with the punchline not being an insult, so much. I just kind of love it.

There’s a few little things for you, hm? Anyway, I’m going to get back to Mass Effect 2. (Yes, this lazy post was just an excuse to play more Mass Effect.)

When the big snow storm of winter comes, what does someone do?

Buy a TV. Obviously.

Mass Effect 2 was pissing me off. Why? It was so good, but I couldn’t read a damn thing in it. It had HD Tiny Text EVERYWHERE. I couldn’t level up because I couldn’t read what skills did. I couldn’t read tutorials. It was awful, and I was very frustrated.

It was the last straw.

I’ve been constantly looking for something to buy lately. I don’t know why. I feel like I have a lot of savings, and I’m handling paying for my therapy with absolutely no hitches. Maybe Gamefly really is saving me that much money. I’ve been working hard, and I knew it was only going to get harder. There’s so much to do. So why not get something nice? I deserve it, right?
I kept looking at laptops. I don’t really know why. As cool as a laptop is, I don’t see a need for it, really. I know I don’t. It’s just a neat idea. I kept going back and forth with buying one, always ending up backing out.

Then this HD TV idea got into my head.
Similar cost, but here is something that I would, literally, every single day. Giving that extra bit of quality to my gaming, but also letting me do things like read the stupid text in all these games that seems to constantly elude me. This would be a lot of money, but it wouldn’t be wasted. Plus, I’m an adult now, with magic fake money. I could finance it, and continue building my credit.

I spent most of my afternoon looking for a TV, and I ended up buying this 32″ LG LCD television. I’ve been playing Mass Effect 2 on it since I got it set up. And now I can read things.
Yeah, I think I made a good decision here.

I… think I just don’t get this month’s Twilight Heroes IoTM. I mean, okay, it’s obvious that the Stainless Steelbreaker has some good stats. The Weakens Opponents is really useful, especially if you’re doing the crazy high level stuff.

But man, I don’t know.

There’s just nothing really thematically interesting, to me anyway, about an offhand dueling knife. I’m really more of a shield person, myself. It’s got a nice little bit of story in the description, of course, but if I equipped it, it just wouldn’t stimulate the silly part of my brain that kind of roleplays while I do such things.
It is also just one of those items that is only good stat-wise. There’s nothing mechanically new about this item. It doesn’t spring up any interesting effects during combat or anything. It’s just a really good offhand item, a slot which I already have a much more fun item for, Zorromir’s Double Tower Shield. Am I going to give up my battlecry, SMILES GO FOR MILES, just for slightly better defense and chance of enemy fumbles? Eh, probably not.

This is pretty well the first TH item I haven’t picked up in a long time. I’m sure it has its place, and I’m sure there are some people who just much optimize and have it. But much like the VR Helmet, it just does nothing for me, and I’ll save my money. I already gave Ryme a bunch of extra for all the new yearly Talismans! Hopefully he won’t starve this month because of that. Heh. (And thank you for the event, by the way, Ryme! I’m glad I noticed it in my busy-ness before it totally disappeared.)