My brain? Somewhere 'round here, I s'pose...

Indeed, yesterday and today have felt like that, recovering from a long spell where the brain's been cranking at full speed, not leaving much time for actually thinking about things other than What was Focused Upon. Which, for the past two and a half weeks or so, has been gaming.

Not in and of itself a bad thing. Indeed, quite a fun thing, when done properly. However, I might be overdoing it a bit. I'm DMing a Friday night power-gamer group of DnD 3E players, giving five players each a different, small plotline, in addition to the main plotline, which is module based, but I am upgrading to match the PC's capabilities. Also, last Saturday I ran my (very)(no, make that EXceedingly) sporadic Shadowrun group for the first time in a year, a group that is prone to playing an entire plot-arc in one sitting, necessitating that I keep things a little more neat-and-tidy than I otherwise am wont (meaning a great, great deal of prepwork to keep things moving smoothly).

For all the work, though, things are going well in DnD and went pretty well in SR (although I do need to work on my plot-timing, it HAS been too long). One of the things I enjoy most about my SR group is that we're all participants what we call The Brain, and things can get amazingly funny. Examples:

After one particular game-pausing riff, I said "Moving right along..." and everyone started singing the Muppet Movie theme song.

I was removing the party's character sheets from my game binder at the start of this weekend, and pulled out my girlfriend's sheet. I meant to say "Hey, there's a dwarf in my box!" What came out was "Hey, there's a dwarf in my pants!"

Another time, I pointed to three of the players, whose characters had separated from the others and said "You, and you, and you..." Those three players all started singing "and you and you and you and YOooooOOOOu!" (I recognized the song, though I don't know who did it)

This last weekend, the characters were entering a ski resort where the doormen were orks in classic uniforms... "You walk past the ork doormen who are holding the lobby's glass-panel doors for you..." A player chimed in "Dork oarmen?" and I, being slightly tired from last night's DnD game had to pause and go "Did I really say that? I meant dork doormen. Er, I mean ork oarmen. Argh. ORK. DOORMEN." "Uh, no, Brian, you said Ork Doormen. I said Dork Oarmen. Thought it was funny." At which point I did my best Revenge-of-the-Nerds/Devo-manning a crew-boat impression.

There is the running gag about the party's dwarven mage using the ex-merc's armored kilt for cover in a firefight. While the merc's still wearing said kilt. The wannabe Scotsman has yet to answer questions about whether or not he's regimental...

The first time the group encountered a SR vampire (which are significantly harder to kill than DnD vampires, actually), one of the characters made four head-shots in a row with a sniper rifle, trying to kill the vamp. After the third shot, made after the second round of the vampire getting back up and looking around, the now infamous group line of "Is it dead yet?", repeated with rising intensity as the target kept getting back up, round after round, peaking with "Is. It. DEAD! Yet." Given that this weekend's game revisited the vampires, that line made a delightful (to me) comeback.

Honestly, the SR group spends about a quarter of its time just laughing. There's even a contest of seeing which line makes the GM (moi) turn a bright shade of purple as he laughs so hard he can't breathe.

So, it's all good. But I am greatly enjoying the fact that this week, for the first time in what feels like forever, game prep is not my primary occupation once I get home.

As my brain rejoins the thought-flow of normal humanity, I imagine I'll post more.

Shazbut and fiddlesticks.

If I actually felt more worked up about this, I'm certain I'd be using invective that is much harsher, but I'm not. I'll get to that...

Just got out of my annual performance review with the boss, which went just fine, as it was significantly less noxious than last year's. The boss gave me very good marks and we talked about the progress of things. Unfortunately, she also had to give me what is effectively my two-month notice.

Problem is, the grant I'm paid off of expires in mid-September, and the earliest that my boss will hear about the status of the replacement grant will be mid-November. And that's no guarantee that the grant would even come through at that time. Could be six or eight months after that. There is a slight chance that the boss can bridge me through a different grant, but then I'd be switching projects entirely, in addition to taking a severe pay cut.

I think I'm simply disappointed, more than anything. I greatly enjoy working with my labmates, I pretty well like my boss, I like my project. I had been thinking that I would leave this job, and likely this town, when I was ready to. My thoughts were that this would be my last voluntarily chosen lab-tech job, and when I left, I would be moving on in life, in another two or three years.

Which isn't to say that I will try and take this as an opportunity to look around at other avenues, but I have too many burdens right now to be able to uproot and change as I'd been envisioning. Have to sell the goddam condo, for one, but that's a different plaint. But, it looks like I will be taking on another tech job, most likely here at the U of M, until such things pass. And that's a let-down, because of the feeling I'd built up of preparing myself for the next development in life, using this particular foothold as starting point.

The boss was particular that there was nothing personal about it, merely the vagaries of the acadamic fates, and the scheduling of grant awards. I got the impression that she had already given serious thought about how to try and keep me. But she also promised that she would give me a wonderful recommendation, which is nice. And with the way that the U works, essentially I've got union seniority priveleges (or something equivalent--if I apply for a new job, they must interview me, because of the way in which I'm being let go). Greatly improves my odds.

But overall... shazbut. Fiddlesticks. Craptastic.