Kat’s Pause 

I accepted McMaster’s offer to Psychology. If this doesn’t work out, I think I’ll call it quits: transferring schools once in my life is too often.

Have I mentioned my new medication is excellent? Because it is. I feel so much better now and it doesn’t even give me Effexor’s annoying side effects. Can I get a hurrah?

My city’s annual young writer’s contest closes today and I still don’t have a short story idea. We’ll see if I come up with something before midnight.

Today I had my first taste of PvP combat on a Normal server. Kattryn just hit 34 and I was poking around Stranglethorn Vale when I stumbled upon the rebel camp full of level 40 humans. I killed one of the lower ones and, despite me not being flagged for PvP, a level 43 dwarf paladin decided it was his sacred duty to avenge his humanoid brethren. After the first shot, I started running, but he took me out relatively quickly. Oh well, it happens, and it was a short jog back from the graveyard.

Once I arrived I saw that he had decided to camp my little level-34 corpse. After a minute, the moron attempted to hide behind some trees while Kattryn’s ghost kept an eye on him. I was annoyed at first, but this soon turned to amusement when I realized I had better things to do. If he wanted to waste his time waiting for me to res, he could go for it. I got up from my computer and walked around in the real world.

The moral of this story: some people are silly.

UPDATE: Submitted.

There is a small
grey monster who
slavers on my left shoulder,
gobbling up inspiration
and spitting out sense,
and I don’t have the heart
to swat him away.

He muses and peruses
the words he sees,
pointing tiny talons
at subject-verb disagreements
and awkward phrasing
and the tritest of clichés.

Sometimes I shout at him
to be quiet and leave me alone,
and he sullenly slinks back, grumbling
into the hollow of my collarbone
and tapping his claws
until I let him out again.

He’s a necessity, you see—
There will always be essays,
stories, poems, emails,
and no one knows
better than him
where to break a line in two
and when to mend it whole again.
My monster thrives on revision,
picking apart precarious prose and
knocking the bits into place
until they’re constructed sturdily enough
to weather the harshest critical storm.

The glint in his eyes:
so eager to fix me,
the brute,
and it hurts when his pointy nails
dig into my skin.
He cackles with every corrected word.

But I love my little pet.
Without him,
those subjects and verbs would
continue to quarrel
until the neighbours complain.

I want a new job.

[insert relevant complaining here]

I finally got around to getting my G1. (For Americans and other aliens, that’s the first step of a Canadian driver’s license.) It was as easy as everyone said; I got perfect on the written test.

Immediately after they handed me my temporary license, I watched The Bourne Identity with my sister and her boyfriend and cheerfully pointed out how many demerit points he would get for each of his illegal driving acts (had he been in Canada, that is). After that, I drove around an empty mall parking lot in my dad’s little Civic. Driving was a lot easier than I’d expected — I feared it would be like trying to control a wild beast, but really the car is very cooperative. Much easier than all those driving games and minigames I’m terrible at.

My friend and I went to the beach today. The weather was perfect and we had a lovely time, finishing things off with the exquisite Pan’s Labyrinth. I desperately want the DVD now, which reminds me how desperately I want Mirrormask.

All in all it was a nice relaxing day off.

My muscles hurt from very little wall-climbing yesterday. I found out that the new girl gets paid more than me for doing less. My friends are all busy having lives and I can’t sleep at night. And I just realized I left the milk out. What this amounts to:

I suck at climbing because I don’t have people to go with often and when I climbed with my friend yesterday I couldn’t finish one route because I was so tired. And my Visa bill is now groaning slightly louder under the strain of my barely-above-minimum income.

Hold on milk, I’m coming!

Must not think about.
Must not think about.
Must not think about.
Must wash all my laundry again.
Must especially not think about how to extricate the corpse from my bedroom so that I can enter the room without fearing a nervous breakdown.
Must not think about.
Must not think about.

When my hair is wet, I look like a lesbian hedgehog.

Also, my laptop has officially been nicknamed DODOF. Old, clunky and loved out of necessity rather than worth. (The name comes from the random text appended to Seryn when I transferred servers and was prompted to change her name.)

Do not pick a fight with mobs 3 levels above you while trying to eat a sandwich, even if you do have a pretty new wand.

The priest formerly known as Seryn (now known as Kattryn) is happily settling into her new home on Terenas. Something tells me I won’t miss PvP servers. Sadly, I can’t meet up with Ren’s baby blood elf warlock just yet because I’m the only geek on the block who doesn’t have Burning Crusade. Don’t tempt me, Blizzard.

I love grilled cheese, but I’m impatient and I hate doing dishes. Toasting bread in the toaster and adding cheese is an alternative, but it just doesn’t taste the same. So one day when I was hungry, I decided to try it in the toaster oven. It turned out even better than in the frying pan — delicious and less greasy. I thought I’d share my ingenuity just for the hell of it.

—

Ingredients
- two slices bread, white as my untanned legs
- one slice whatever kind of cheese you like (I use processed cheddar — mm, plastic!)
- some margarine

Butter both slices of bread and place butter-side-up in toaster oven. Set to toast until not quite browned. When done, remove one slice and add cheese to buttered side. Re-toast both slices until desired brownness is reached. Remove and combine.

—

Scrumptious! One thing I love about this recipe is that the butter stays on the inside of the sandwich, which means less hand-washing for little OCD me. But because it gets baked into the bread, it gets that wonderful grilled flavour.

Who’d believe I can’t cook worth peanuts, eh?

I got a letter from Mac today (dated June 18, wtf?). No Nursing for me. Psych was my first choice, but it’s still a bit of a disappointment.

Andrew’s gone to China for a month and my manager’s going to Cancun for a week. I am both jealous and lonely. With whom will I play drunken Wii tennis?

After an hour or so of tossing and turning, I got fed up and went downstairs to play WoW. My body is stupid and will frequently keep me awake for hours at night when I’m dead tired. I hate you, body.

My brilliant idea would have been more brilliant if I’d had an ounce of inspiration in the past few days. Seriously, I haven’t been able to squeeze out a word. I do have some ideas for photos, but since most of them involve me, I’m waiting until I get my hair trimmed. So yes, I’m cheating. CALL THE SELF-DISCIPLINE POLICE.

Today I rollerbladed to work. In a dress. I am just that awesome.

What is your birthdate?
___ ___ ______
MM/DD/YYYY

If later than 21 August 1988, provide evidence of outstanding maturity in a short paragraph. If earlier than 21 August 1983, provide evidence of uncreepiness.

Number these traits in order from those you value most (1) to least (9).
- honesty
- kindness
- intelligence
- geekiness
- dependability
- ambition
- cynicism
- appreciation for the complexity of human relationships
- love of cats

On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being not at all and 10 being all-consuming, how important to you is cleanliness?

Are you currently employed? If yes, for how long? If no, why not?

Do you have any musical ability? If so, what instrument(s) do you play?

Do you prefer cats or dogs?

How do you react to bugs? Are you comfortable killing and disposing of them, perhaps while I’m screaming from the next room?

Are you in good general health? Do you have any transmittable infections?

Do you smoke? Have you ever used recreational drugs?

Do you have any permanent body modifications?

What is your stance on organized religion?

Do you want children? If yes, would you be content to give up all hope of ever having any?

Have you ever had a depressive episode? Do you consider yourself mentally and emotionally stable?

Have you ever been convicted of a crime? Would you consent to a criminal record check?

Thank you for your interest. You will be contacted shortly if you meet the desired requirements.

I despise gankers.

So much so that I’m probably going to transfer Seryn to non-PvP Terenas, where Ren has a lowbie warlock. It’s about time I played on a normal server.

Seryn’s 31 now and coming along nicely in the shadowy arts. She’s poor as dirt — Katarin has all the gold — but a little deviate fishing in the Barrens should fix that soon enough. Right now I’m running errands for the goblins in the Shimmering Flats. Sadly, I’ll have to rename her when she moves to Terenas because there’s already a Seryn there. Katryn is taken too, but Kattryn is not, so I might go with that.

Lastly, I’ve come up with an ingenious plan: writing 100 words or taking one good picture earns me one hour of WoW. I’m still stuck for short story ideas, but I’m tired of being totally unproductive, and this convoluted form of self-discipline should help.

On behalf of all retail monkeys, I would like to say thank you to those humans who are capable of browsing through a clothes rack without impersonating a tornado.

It’s always ironic when a parent yells at their child to not touch the clothes — kids hide in racks and run around like hooligans and crawl under changeroom doors, but adults are the only ones who create more work for us. Kids put stuff back; adults will pretend they don’t notice when it falls on the floor.

This post brought to you by my seething hatred for humankind.

And I’m a little too excited about it.

Ning remembered half of my password, and knowing that it had to be minimum 8 characters long prompted me to remember the rest. So much for password retrieval, Blizzard. You guys are useless.

Now to squander small amounts of money before I get paid tomorrow.

To the creepos in northeast Hamilton: You seem to believe that because you can’t see my eyes behind my sunglasses, I must not be able to see you. On the contrary — sunglasses mean you can’t see me watching your every leering move.

Please stop making me hate this city more each day,
Kat

Hey you, freaky red rash forming on my neck — kindly leave. I know it’s harsh, but you’re not welcome here. Find someone else to bother, maybe somebody with allergies who will actually have a reason for your presence. Oh, and try not to leave any scars on your way out.

Thanks,
Kat

The weather was perfect that day.

I also took some photos of the fountain at night. Converging lines for the win.

Today I have eaten one strawberry, some Twizzlers and a bowl of Mini-Wheats. Life is delicious when you’re young.

It seems Blizzard is intent on keeping me out of WoW. If my money isn’t good enough for them, I’ll just keep to myself then. There are always clothes to be bought and prescriptions to fill and taxi rides to pay for when I inevitably run late.

Yesterday my nephew and I went to Canada’s Wonderland. My dad’s company had their annual picnic there and immediate family got free tickets. Aside from my left eye baffling the nice people at First Aid by briefly stinging and watering uncontrollably (until we went on Cliffhanger, which seemed to cure it, despite me previously flushing it three times), we had a good time.

An old flame from high school instant-messaged me tonight out of nowhere, purportedly out of boredom, and we’re planning to go out for “coffee” tomorrow (in double quotes because I don’t actually drink the stuff) followed by some gaming. Later in the evening, Dave and I and some of our friends are having a games night, which should be fun. However, my policy on Wiimotes stands: if you want to play with me, bring your own, because I’m not dropping $75 apiece on the controllers just for your potential benefit. My Visa bill has been whimpering under the strain of my greed for a while now already; I’m giving the poor thing a rest until my next paycheck can relieve it.

I’ve been thinking lately about getting back into WoW for a little while before school starts up again. My plans are currently on hold thanks to the system’s refusal to surrender my password to me, but I think it would be fun to run around for a month or so, provided I find at least one friend to play with on Aegwynn where I abandoned Seryn last summer. Cripes, that was a long time ago. I have fond memories of fishing for deviates on Ning’s computer before he woke up in the morning. He always liked sleeping late, whereas I didn’t want his parents to think I was lazy. Nowadays I hate sleeping in because the day feels wasted. Also, I love breakfast, and being asleep when restaurants stop serving it makes me sad, because the truth is I am lazy and I’d rather not cook for myself if I can pay someone to do it for me. Oh, how I miss Mel’s Diner in Waterloo and its all-day breakfast.

Twilight is celebrating by hiding under the couch. Fireworks are too loud for kitties.