Conquerors and Concubines

An imaginary cookie to anyone who gets the musical reference in the heading.

Let me explain why I'm not getting involved in City of Heroes. Beginning this weekend, I pulled out Civ 3 and took it for a spin. Since then, for the last few days, I've spent nearly all of my free time parked in front of my computer, playing it. My ass hurts. Literally, right around the tailbone is sore from sitting for so long. I can feel my exercise starting to wear off. I've got the sensation that my body is turning into mush. And still I play.

Because, when I get into a game, I go all the way. I generally don't play around with a game, skipping this and that. I get into it. I intentionally delay finishing levels so I can make sure I've found every little secret. If the map is 99.9% uncovered, I'll spend hours trying to fill in the last 0.1%. It's fucking obsessive, and dangerous to my person (as the pained ass can attest) and to others (as my ever-patient wife can attest).

I've gotten none of the writing done that I need to get done. Nor any of the writing that I want to get done. I've got a story ready for its final edits, and I've put it off. I've got a novel that I'm about 13,000 words away from finishing, and nada. And I've got stuff for the website at work I keep back-burnering.

In good news, though, I think we've switched our Skull & Bones to Thursdays, and I'm going to join up with Jon's Mutants and Masterminds game on alternating Tuesdays. I can better justify another gaming night than I can wasting more time in front of this machine doing nada. Don't ask me how.

So I'm going to get some writing done tonight, if it fucking kills me. I want it to be my novel. We'll see if the muse is being kind. I'm sweating from sitting still, the air circulation in this room is terrible. I've got a bootleg of Roger Clyne's live shows at Nita's Hideaway back in '98 playing, so the writing mood is actually pretty good.

Oh, and Angela has also joined the world of online journals, but she hasn't actually written anything yet.