Earl is still here, oh frabjous day! He planned to go home this morning, but he went and got sick instead, so he's here until at least tomorrow and maybe until Thursday. I shouldn't be gleeful about someone else's misfortune, I know, but I can't help being glad he's still here. And he doesn't mind, since if he's up here I can soothe his fevered brow and whatnot.

The weekend was busy. I got very little sleep (except Sunday, when I got too much and was late to gaming) and had a lot of fun. Carl did indeed run Shadowrun on Thursday night, which lasted nigh unto 3am and was intensely amusing. Not very high-tension, like our previous games had been, but we all got to be clever. I had weird intense RP with Bryant, which Earl fortunately didn't mind.

Friday we hung out at Brad & Gretchen's and watched the Champions people argue a lot. Al was there for most of the afternoon, so I had a nice chance to talk with him. Neither Earl nor I had much energy. I read more of The Nano Flower (the last Greg Mandel book by Peter Hamilton). We attempted to play Die Siedler, but at any given moment we only had three people who wanted to play, which was sort of a lose.

Eventually Marith showed up, and then Harold, and we ended up geeking about the Mage run we did two weeks back, so I was pretty content. Champions finally came to a close (after only about eight hours; I was impressed) and nearly everyone went to dinner, then to Harold's to stand around outside for a very long time until finally fireworks happened. They were good fireworks, though.

I'm feeling horribly overworked. I currently have seven tickets in my queue, all of which are major pieces of work that're going to take hours to deal with -- at least sixteen hours to clear out my queue, and more stuff is coming in every hour.

I refuse to worry too much about it though. I won't get through it all, someone will ask me why, and I'll calmly point out that I have three times as much stuff to do as anyone around me. Then they'll fix it, or I'll make sure that my contract ends this month. The glories of being a contractor.

More about my weekend: Saturday was okay, but not as much fun as I'd hoped for. The Indigo Girls concert was nice, but we were sitting on hard stone benches outdoors, and they didn't do many songs that I knew. Berkeley itself (the planned book-shopping and so forth) didn't work very well, mostly due to a refusal to plan on the part of everyone except Earl & I. The best part of it was after the concert, when we had dessert and all giggled a lot.

Sunday I played Mage. Oh, did I play Mage. Not that much happened in the grand scheme of things, but I had a very nice time roleplaying with my friends. Chryse had a disturbing revelation about her own motives, angsted at Genni, and was not at all reassured to be told 'I trust you.' Then Sunday night I had a vivid dream from Chryse's point of view... more, actually, a nightmare that Chryse would have. It wasn't a nightmare from _my_ perspective though. I spent several hours yesterday writing it up for Al.

I'm still feeling obsessive about it all, of course. I have more stuff to write up (Al said he'd be glad to have summaries of the conversations Chryse had on Sunday, for example) and there's some more RP I'd like to do while we're between story arcs... like talking to Shariko, and asking Harold to do some research for me, and finding presents for the rest of the characters in the Chantry. (It's December in the Mage world, but with our set of mixed beliefs there's no way Chryse is giving Christmas presents. Oh, no. They're just winter presents or December presents or something.)

I ended up asking Rachel some really blunt questions on Friday, mostly along the lines of, 'What's the deal with you and Czr? He thinks you're not speaking to each other. Augh!' This seems to have had a good effect, since Saturday morning they vanished during brunch and had a long talk, and since then they've been interacting in a friendly and happy manner.

So I did meddle, but probably to good purpose. We'll see.

I failed to buy Dar Williams on Thursday, mostly because Tower stubbornly doesn't yet have it. Maybe it's not out yet? But I've read about people listening to it, and I thought she'd said it'd be out at the beginning of July. Patience and all that stuff, I know.

I have seven tickets still, and time is crawling, but I'm sure that as soon as I start working it'll be 16 and I'll have to run off to class and my first exam. I feel woefully unprepared, but I'm not really sure what I could do to make myself _more_ prepared. More homework, I suppose. Or maybe I understand everything (hah!) and the exam really will be as easy as all the homework has been.

Anyway, off to work. I'll try to write more often, really.