To the Batmobed!

I know, I haven't written in forever. You forgive me, right? I had a minor stress attack and abandoned everything to rebuild my sims bigger and better, denied myself naps, and used my lizard light. (Victory there, at least.) So my mind is working again, and at 2 a.m. I should be in bed fast asleep.

Why the hell am I up?

Easy answer: I remembered that I'm a kickass graphic designer, when I get into the zone. Which was about three and a half hours ago. BUT in those three and a half hours, I followed a poorly-written but well-executed tutorial and made myself a crystal ball.

I hate watermarks, so I didn't make one. I just outright messed it up, and it was fun so I'm happy. Besides, who knows when an image that says "Sucks to Be You" could come in handy?

But I digress. I played on Photoshop for three and a half hours and had to show off, and now I'm actually going to sleep. For a few hours. We'll see if I let myself nap again in the morning.

I hate the way I love you II

I have been fighting The Sims for days, uninstalling, deleting mods and caches, losing families and abandoning experiments to do so, and I let it drag me away from job hunting long enough to obsess over something else for a while. Just now, I moved the Fire Department in Bridgeport, and the game works. If I may, let me repeat myself:

I can pretend I feel accomplished now.

Update: Never mind that feeling of accomplishment. It was a cruel joke and the game isn't working again.

Update: It's working. Please refer to above image.

I hate the way I love you

I couldn't think of anything to write, so I went to play Sims. Unfortunately, something about installing the latest expansion/buggy patch botched everything up, and no amount of removing mods (or the latest expansion) could make the game work. Long story short...

I feel a lot better now, despite the fact that it's taking hours to reinstall the game from online. I don't really wish death on EA games or any of their employees, but that sure got out some of my aggravation.

The pieces of the above are not mine, I only put them together. This is my disclaimer. Painting by Delacroix. Gun from "Jailbird's Romance," ACG Comics' My Romantic Adventures, 1954. EA Games logo and Sims Plumbob are owned by their owners, who are not me. Just know, EA Games, that to inspire so much anger,you must first have inspired love. Or something.

The Nap-Wagon

You may have noticed that I didn't post anything yesterday. Or maybe not, because you're probably not even reading this (though you may be reading it, I can't count that out entirely). My sad excuse is that I fell off the nap-wagon.

This happens a lot during the fall and winter months. Midwestern winters do not agree with me, and no matter what I do, I spend at least part of each day struggling to stay awake. I have what I affectionately call my lizard light, which duplicates sunlight and keeps me from sleeping all day, but try as it might, there's only so much it can do. I want to nap.

Yesterday, after getting my morning routine out of the way, I was near quivering with excitement over the idea of taking a nap. I had only gotten six hours of sleep, so I could justify it! I came home and shuffled back into my pajamas, then snuggled down under a pile of blankets and fell blissfully asleep.

This wouldn't be a problem for most people. You're out for what, an hour or two? Then you wake up, refreshed (hopefully) and pleased with yourself for the novel idea of daytime sleeping. While everyone else was at work, slaving away, or maybe drowsing over their keyboards, you were in bed, or maybe on the couch or in your favorite recliner, refilling your energy bar enough to make the rest of the day a breeze. (If you think you saw a Sims reference there, you did. Sorry 'bout that.)

Napping isn't that easy for me. Or, rather, it's too easy. I can get my usual seven hours sleep, and since I do best on nine, talk myself into just a short nap to make up the other two. I set an alarm because even in moments of faux-optimism I don't trust myself, I wonder if the meager light filtering through the shades will keep me awake, then I go unconscious for hours. Three hours, five hours, and I end up waking some time in the early afternoon, vaguely aware of having surfaced enough to turn my alarm off.

Mmmm, naps.

This is not good for the functionality of my day. By the time it's two or three o'clock, I wonder if I'll have time to do any of the things I need to do. If I shower before I get dressed (which I should), my lazy side says that I won't have time to drive across town and get groceries before I need to be home again to wait for the school bus. I certainly won't have time to go downtown and see if I qualify for housing assistance so that when I get kicked out of grad school I have someplace to live. I'd have time to start laundry, but meh, carrying it all the way downstairs and to the community building next door is such a chore.

Naps are a duplicitous friend. On one hand, it's bliss sleeping, no matter how many nights in a row I do so. On the other hand, I find that I've just spent twelve of my twenty-four hours asleep. I should just accept the seven (or four-and-a-half) hours I get at night after talking to my friends, checking Facebook, and making sure my future-rockstar Sim gets in a relationship with the girl I made him. I was aware of the time, no matter how much I might claim otherwise. I glance at the clock at least every hour and a half, and I can't pretend I lost track of four hours, because I'll never believe myself.

I promise myself that I'll use my lizard light as soon as I wake up from the nap I intend to take. I'll sit under its angry glare for three quarters of an hour, and if I do so every day for a couple of weeks, I might be able to wean myself off morning naps and start feeling sleepy at night again. It's a vicious cycle, but one I'm determined to conquer.

Pavlov's Beotch

Remember how I needed to take out the trash Friday? Well, I didn't. I had better things to do, like Google what would happen if I left a Facebook group and make a girlfriend for my future-rockstar Sim. Those things may not seem vitally important to you, but if you could see how ugly the female Sims walking around Riverside were, you'd know it was a necessity.

Just now, a friend asked me if not liking the song Freebird made her unamerican. Of course not, I said, then went to look the song up to see whether I liked it or not and thereby not be a liar or anything. Actually, I do like it. It made me think of my dad and Sunday mornings, when my parents would put on their records, turn the stereo system up to EARBLEED, and we'd clean the house.

I fought it for about as long as it took to get through the first line, and by for I must be traveling on, I was excusing myself. The house is now trash-free, though the recycling still waits. Maybe later I'll throw on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and get that taken care of. There was a lot of Pink Floyd, Prince, and U2, but I listen to those enough that I guess I've killed the conditional reflex.