Happiness.

It seems a bit silly to glean much depth from a program like Ally McBeal, but there is one line from that show which has stuck in my mind over the years, and it seems appropriate today:

"Happy is easy. You act happy, others see you as happy, you see yourself through their eyes, and you feel happy. It doesn't work for lonely."

I woke up today and consciously resolved to be happy. I got a full night's sleep, and that was wonderful, but that insane happy feeling I had last week was conspicuously absent. I must admit, it has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster over these past few days, for reasons that I may or may not go into later, but I managed to keep busy enough over the weekend that I didn't really notice until a couple of hours ago.

It was at that point that the indignant part of my consciousness jumped up and demanded more than one week of happy. I deserve more than that, don't I? At the very least, if I don't feel quite as happy, I can try to behave as if I am. Maybe if I keep it up for long enough, I'll start feeling it again. Maybe I can fool myself back into that cheerful mood.

And that brings to mind another quote, courtesy of Denis Leary:

"You don't welcome death. You punch him in the throat as he drags you away."

Whether it's something small and trivial, like a card game, or something with a greater impact on life and the world, I don't like to go down easy. Even if it seems that something or someone is about to defeat you, why make it simpler for them? Even if they ultimately prevail, make them earn it, make them bleed for it, make them wish they hadn't tried.

Sometimes, it seems easier to just sit back and give up; but good things rarely come with ease. It may be the more difficult path, but I don't have to welcome sadness or loneliness. They can pull at my feet and try to drag me down again, but I won't let go of happiness until they pry my fingers loose.

Maybe, if I try hard enough, I'll forget what it means to be lonely.

"...it's so hard not to talk about WoW!"

And now, the usual mundane crap. :D

This seems to have been the weekend of random encounters with people I haven't seen in months, or even years in some cases.

I went to nidaba's on Friday and played Munchkin for the first time. I topped out at level 5, because I am distinctly not awesome at this game. :) There were several people in attendance that I haven't seen in many moons, so that was nice, too. And they fed me interesting food, including pasta + turkey (?) sausage that had cheese in it, and a Not!Cheesecake. It ended rather early, by my standards--even after giving mathnerd a ride, I was home by 10:30--but that was okay, because I was feeling rather loopy and tired.

So, naturally, I came home, put on some comfy sleepwear, and... worked on my website until 3am. ::laughs:: I finally pulled my personal pages off of Mokuzen and dumped them out at Sore Loser. Sore Loser is not even remotely what I want it to be, yet, but now it has actual content on it, instead of that 1000-year-old "coming soon" screen.

Saturday was most excellent. I went and helped with the Taiji school cleanup, and the senior students seemed really appreciative of the carnations I brought. Hopefully, the ancestors appreciated them just as much, heh. :) After I did some borderline-OCD tidying and reorganizing of the weapons shelves, the cleaning was pretty much done, so whole lot of us went to lunch at the Empire buffet, so I actually got to know the Taiji crowd a little better. I'm generally a rather grumpy and quiet little mouse during classes, and I only make it over there twice a week anyway, so it was a nice change of pace to just hang out with everyone. (note to self: you owe PK $7)

After gorging myself on way too much food, I practiced some wushu and started in on that jump training program. My quads are *still* sore as of last night, but I suppose that means it's working. :)

The Posse invited me out to dinner sometime after that, so we all went and stuffed ourselves silly at Nacho's. I ordered a vegetarian wet burrito, thinking that it might be more modestly-sized than the giant nacho plates of doom, but I was sorely mistaken. I hadn't really gotten to hang out with everyone in a couple of weeks--they were all doing Labor Day stuff last weekend, and I was on vacation the weekend before--so it was very cool to just hang out.

Sometime after that, I went to another party thrown by the same folks as the one I went to last weekend, and we had much fun playing pool and watching Rocky Horror. Also, upon my arrival, I walked through the door with a sixer, and who should be sitting there but wonderelk and doubleaught! They apparently know one of the other roommates at the house, so they'd been invited, too. I hadn't seen them in a long time--the invites to party with them seemed to trickle down less often after rantar moved out, and even less than that since rhyn moved recently--so it was cool to catch up with them. And, well, we had to geek out about WoW for at least a few minutes, once they found out that I play it. :)

Sunday was... less than relaxing, seeing as I spent probably half the afternoon on the phone. My dad was trying to help me make heads or tails of the 401k paperwork I got from HR, so I sat there scanning and e-mailing various pages for a while, and scribbling down notes in between. Apparently, even *he* thought the paperwork was pretty involved, so I feel slightly better about being confused by it, seeing as I have only a very rudimentary understanding of the various investment options that exist right now.

On the plus side, we did a BRD run that was far more successful than any of us expected. And I hit 52! Even the busy life of recent weeks can't get completely in the way of my leveling, heh.

I must also mention the fun that is Alien Loves Predator. I think alleycatsphinx sent me that a while back--or at least, it seems like the sort of link he'd send me--but I recently re-discovered it, so I thought I'd share.

Anyway, that checkout took for-freakin-ever, but now it's done, so I'll end this here.

What the crap?

I think I just "won" free crackers. Seriously!

I put in my $0.70, made my selection, and the crackers dropped down, as expected. But then, suddenly, the machine spat out some coins into the coin return, and I'd put in exact change, so that was unexpected. I looked at the LED on the machine, and it said, "YOU ARE A WINNER," and when I reached down to get the coins in the coin return, they were the same ones I'd put in.

Has anyone ever encountered this in a vending machine before? What the crap?

Of course, the happiness of free crackers seems rather small, considering that I have learned of at least one layoff, and possibly more than one. And, one of the possible victims is probably the only person in this frickin' office, outside of divadrummer, who has actually attempted to be social with me outside of work. (And that's, "being social," in the sense of anything that's not a general "everyone in the company" invite)

Again, I say: WHAT THE CRAP??!

This "resolve to be happy" thing I'm doing seems to be facing a lot of opposition. [insert long string of profanities here]