This is not fun to write. You are probably tired of reading about my pathetic life.

It’s not like I didn’t know it was coming.

Five weeks ago a 56 year old woman walked into the little closet called my office and announced that she was here to take my job. Surprise!

She has 24 years seniority and her department was outsourced. I was put in the position of “trainer”- which means I sat on a little chair at her elbow and tried to help her use the work station that had once been mine.

She was computer illiterate. We tackled such difficult tasks as opening an email, writing a reply to it and figuring out how to find the address of the person we needed to send it to. She thought everything was an email address - a person’s name, or a website, or just a jumble of letters. She couldn’t understand why her computer didn’t work.

Oh, of course there was the whole issue of training her for the job-that-had-been-mine....

A casual acquaintance remarked to me the other day that I was a type A person. I freaked! What the hell was his problem? I’m way better at analyzing things than he is and I have fully believed for a long time that I’m a type B.

In case you don’t know, a Type A is a rushy rusherson, always worried about time, competitive, has “free floating hostility” (whatever the ^%$%# that means) and is impatient. Allegedly.

I guess that kind of sounds like me in some ways on some days. That disturbs me. I’d always thought I was an easy going, happy Type B-er.

I guess I’ve morphed into a sort of AB thing- the A stuff was thrust upon me by circumstances out of my control- divorce, children, job stresses. Maybe if you’re a type B and you’re relaxed and don’t take care of stuff it piles up, becomes sentient and chases you, making you into a Type A?

I did some reading and a bunch of Type A scientists disagreed and debunked the whole A-B theory. (as...

You all know that elves and dwarves don’t really like each other. No matter what fantasy world you play in there always seems to be tension between these two races.

I think the problem can be summoned up this way: The one species is beautiful, noble, and resourceful and the other one is elves. (I’m trying to be impartial, and failing)

Dwarves are hard working builders. They build useful things with grace and beauty.

I’m afraid that I think elves are lazy. They love magic because they don’t like getting their hands dirty. Using magic to do their work has gone to their heads- now they think they’re so clever. Smarter than other races. But it’s all in their heads...

I suppose there are few cultures on earth that have ever been able to coexist peacefully. You can build beautiful buildings and monuments but all it takes is some barbarian with a hammer to wreck everything.

In the time of...

Well now you have me terrified about the “sort of weird staring people in my neighbourhood who probably play Scape” that I found out about by looking in their recycle box.

You don’t think that things like that sneak into your head, but they do, they do. (thanks AliasQTip). Three nights ago in the middle of the night I heard a big crash and something that sounded like wood breaking.

My first thought- out of a deep sleep- was “they’re here”. The weird people have come because now they know about me, they saw this site, now they’ve peeked in the side window, saw the big castle and swamp setup, and they’re coming in, like Marr in the night, like noisy ninjas, like Brunak in a china shop, like.... well you get the idea.

I laid there listening. You know I have cats. Sometimes they get delusional and hunt furniture in the night so I was hoping it was just them. But the sound of wood breaking?

There were no more...

When I was briefly unemployed a few weeks ago I set myself a daily schedule. I was expecting to be jobless for a while, so I didn’t want to revert to a lesser hominoid state- hairy, dirtier and smellier. I still had to get up every morning to get all the kids off to school, and I was trying to save on day care costs so I kept my small three year old Marr with me. He’s got a lot of energy so we went for a walk late every morning which ended in a nearby park, so he could climb and swing and get in touch with his lesser hominoid. (how is it fair that he reverts to a thin agile monkey thing and i revert to a hairy chubby baboon thing?)

Anyway, continuing the theme of lesser hominoids- as we were heading off on our walkie, we pass by what my kids call “the creepy house”. It’s not really all that creepy- the driveway is all smashed concrete with a huge oil stain, the lawn is half dead and half wild, the paint is peeling and there are big piles of junk and trash everywhere....