May-November 1999 Update

Monday, 22 November 1999

Well, that was a long hiatus. Here's the past half-year's news:

Love-Life

Chris and I broke up in July. Technically she broke up with me, but I'd been thinking about doing it for quite a while, waiting first till she graduated and then till she was earning enough to live on her own. My fault -- my feelings for her had waned, and were never strong enough to begin with to sustain a long-term relationship. She moved in with her mother, leaving me alone in the apartment, which I'm getting used to, even though it's a strain on my budget.

There's other love-life news too, but that'll have to wait till tomorrow.

Work

I'm still webmaster and interface guru at Crossover. I've grown more confident at using Perl, I've got a Linux box on my desk (an addition to the Mac, not a replacement) that I hardly ever use, I've learned some ASP, and I'm looking to start playing around with PHP.

Games

Lisa finally finished up the CthulhuPunk campaign -- the big mega-ward was put up and the Outer Gods were banished from the Earth for a thousand years. Lisa ran a playtest of 7th Sea in September or October so that she could review it, and we all liked it enough that she is planning to run an ongoing capmaign of it.

I've picked up both Big Eyes, Small Mouth (from Guardians of Order) and the Star Trek Roleplaying Game (original series, from Last Unicorn Games) and fantasized about running games, but haven't done anything yet. Fred has been making noises about running a Star Trek game, probably using some set of minimalist freeware rules, but procrastinates about such things at least as much as I do.

Physique

I've had stretches of working out regularly, and stretches of going just once a week. I broke the 290-pound barrier in August, but have been hovering in the mid-280s since September. I need to cut down on my food intake again -- I've been slacking off.

Movies & Television

I've been seeing a lot of movies since the breakup: The Blair Witch Project, The Iron Giant, American Beauty, Dogma, Being John Malkovich, The Sixth Sense, Princess Mononoke. I've been renting a lot, too. I saw the Studio Ghibli film festival when it showed at MoMA in September, and Fred and I have been attending the monthly meetings of the Parsons Anime Screening Society, so I've been seeing a lot of anime.