Tra la la ...

So it's December now ... where am I? Let's see. Looking back at my Tying Up Loose Ends post back in January, how many loose ends have I tied?

... none. :p But I've made some progress on some of them!

I barely even looked at the scientific paper I need to submit. Meanwhile, the other one I mentioned - with my former boss - is also no closer to publication. So I suppose the race is still sort of on. The other one has been submitted and rejected twice more this year, and now it's on its way to a fourth journal. It looks like it might make it, as one of the editors has already said (unofficially) that he likes it.

I haven't finished the Starcraft single-player missions, though I only have one more left (the very last one). This fall I bought the battlechest pack again and finally had the original game's worth of missions, so I played through a large number of those recently too. Haven't done all of them the second time through yet.

Unpacking? Well ... I did that. Sort of. The problem is that now everything is in *cough* "temporary" *cough* holding patterns, rather than in their final resting places. I got stalled out when I ran into the paperwork problem. All the stuff I need to throw away and/or shred (but I did buy a paper shredder!), followed by all the stuff that needs to get filed into the opened up places in my filing cabinets. I also need to figure out where to put all my books - there are two big bookshelves chock full of stuff that aren't books, while meanwhile my textbooks are sitting in a corner, most of them in a single stack that's 5 feet tall.

Getting my 2004 Nano novel to a presentable shape? *cough cough hack splutter wheeze* Yeah umm ... maybe I'll attempt to edit that mess during Nanoedmo 2006. I suspect I should probably not even try to do anything useful with the 2005 Nano novel messes I made, until 2007. ;) In general, I'm beginning to think I need to have first drafts of everything in the entire series, before I can get down to revising things.

Then there's cleaning. Which wasn't on the list in January, but has tacked itself onto the end of it now. I never clean. I also don't make a mess, so for the past few years my basic housework philosophy is to just not get anything dirty, and therefore not need to clean. So my cleaning behavior is fairly minimal (but not nonexistent!). And I'm not so disgusting as to have rotting food scattered everywhere, like some horror stories I've heard before. Sadly, though, this philosophy doesn't work out so well as a permanent solution, and one can only last for so long by doing only the laundry and dishes and occasionally the toilets. By now it's getting to the point where even I can't stand it anymore. So I suspect I'm going to be doing a whole big whirlwind effort fairly soon.

Especially if I once again skip visiting relatives for Christmas. It's a 12 hour drive, one way, and I don't really want to go. But I didn't see them last year either, so I probably should. I can stand my family for up to 4 days at a time. Gas prices are starting to reach reasonable again. It's snowing up there, dammit! Bleh. Haven't decided yet.

Meanwhile, I have another work cruise coming up. Sunday to Thursday, middle of December when it's freezing cold and stormy, which means I'll be sick for the first 14 hours. I'm looking forward to it. ;) What can I say, I'm a field scientist and therefore a glutton for punishment by definition...

Roleplaying is no less of a load than it ever is, even though I whine constantly about having to cut down on it. My current count is 14 characters in 8 games, GMing one game, helping GM one game, and one game on my list of things to join (possibly two soon, as I've heard through the grapevine that someone is considering inviting me to join an invite-only game). It's not actually as bad as it first appears, though, because 4 of those games (with 7 characters) only ever run intermittently. My favorite GM has been vanishing more often lately, for longer periods. Two other games are throwaway "useless oneliner" couldn't-care-less about whether it lives or dies. There are only three games that I focus on - the one I run, the one I'm helping run, and the high-writing-quality one (3 characters). Those three rotate as my top priority games. The 4 games by one GM are my "drop everything and play there when the GM is present" category. And the one I'm considering joining would alternate with those four as to whether or not I play much, if I did join. And if I were really smart, I wouldn't join it. :p

I guess that sums everything up about the state of my life at the moment.