And so, on Saturday August 18th, after roughly two months of slowly moving stuff into my appartment, I finally moved in myself. I officially live away from my parents. Statistically, of course, about 50% of all people who move out find themselves moving back into their parents home at some point, and even at best I'm expecting to maintain this appartment for only about three years, but still, this'll be a suitably long time to be living on my own. Three days later, the experience still feels odd, more like I'm just staying at a hotel for a few days than like I've moved out... an impression no doubt contributed to by the fact that, for example, I'm back at my parents' as I write this, since food and laundry are free here (and the company's nice too).

So far, living on my own has been pleasant. I'm adjusting to the necessity of washing all dishes by hand, for example; I actually find it oddly relaxing and almost meditative, and it's kind of nice to start with something which needs to be fixed and by the simple expedient of a bit of soap it can be made visibly clean and shiny again. All of life's problems should be so nice and clear-cut, if you ask me. I've taken out the garbage and the recycling on my own and even swept up the floors of my own volition, because I didn't feel they were clean enough for my standards. I'm adjusting to the reality that if you don't buy food, there won't be any, by which i mean I went out and did groceries (and even remembered to buy fresh fruit) and not that the food ran out. It's quiet, and the place feels a little empty without anyone else around, but it's been pleasant.

The oddest part has been the feeling that I'm not in my own home, but that I'm staying in a hotel or something. I can't put my finger on why this is, exactly, since the appartment doesn't look or feel like any hotel I've ever stayed in. In part, it might be the feeling that it's only a temporary place to stay, a feeling which I assume will fade with each day and week that I fail to check out. In part it might be the way things have yet to be totally organized or stocked, leaving the mostly-empty fridge and cupboards that come from a place not being lived in. Or, it might have something to do with the fact that the it's a huge, fifteen-storey complex with wide carpeted halls between rooms and a 24-hour doorman. One way or another, the whole experience feels oddly unreal, and my own normal loose-grip on what reality is supposed to feel like doesn't help any.

Sleeping in an empty place has proven painless, though the first night was a bit tricky at first. I've got and always have had a hyperactive imagination -- I'm not afraid of the dark per se, but I'm all too capable of imagining (and even hearing and seeing) all manner of creatures lurking in shadows. The appartment actually felt genuinely creepy the first night with all the lights off, but the place itself is so comfy and homey that it didn't even bother me; I fell right to sleep and slept right through the night without a single dream (bad or good) to trouble me. My new bed has proven to be one of the most comfortable surfaces I've ever slept on. The only problem thus far has been an East-facing window with blinds that point right towards my face; I have yet to sleep past 7:30am, though by force of will and power of laziness I managed to keep from getting up and being productive until 8:30 this morning and I hope to extend that to 9 or even 10am as the days grow shorter and sunrise grows later (and I remember to shut the blinds at night).

There remain a fair number of things to do to get the place fully-livable. I don't yet have a toaster, annoying in so far as I've gotten used to having toast for breakfast every single day, and I don't yet have a kettle, which has thus far prevented me from making tea (I know I could just microwave a cup of water, but somehow that just doesn't feel proper). I'm also finding every day something else I realise I don't have. Today was the realization that I don't have any cofee, without which my morning hot chocolate just isn't as yummy, and the realization that I'm going to have to buy at least two outlet-splitters to be able to have enough lamps in various rooms. Fortunately, the necessities continue to be dollar-store purchases and the luxuries prove to be either easily-obtainable or stuff I find I really don't mind doing without. The only significant unecessary expenditure I've made thus far has been pots of paint, which I could live without but really would rather not have to. Besides, good quality paints last for years, especially given the small number of figures I paint each year nowadays, and since I'd already bought brushes and such before moving, *not* buying paint would have been the bigger waste of money. I give thanks every day that I can go out and pick this stuff up without fear of not having money left over for, say, food, but of course, part of the reason I have tht money is the stuff I do decide not to buy. This, too, is all part of the experience of being self-sufficient (or at least, mostly).

On examination, one has to conclude that this building is almost entirely non-zombie-proof. I can't imagine why any architect in a major metropolitan area would fail to take a zombie invasion into account. Pretty as the building is, there are at least four glass doors right on the ground floor without so much as an iron bar in their middle, an easily twenty or thirty balconies are at a climbable height for a low-weight high-strength zombie. The staircases are wide and low-stepped and and I can't even imagine how many zombies could shamble up simultaneously, making them impossible to secure. The elevators have nice, big pokable buttons that even a freshly-brain-dead Romero-class could accidentally poke, and fire exists lead into the big, open, defenseless courtyard which is itself protected on several sides, not by walls, but by knee-height hedges. In the event of a zombie attack, I'll be in real trouble here.

So that's it: I live on my own. I'm paying my own rent (with help from government subsidies and whatever gods or devils have always watched over me), cleaning my own place, and ending every night alone in an appartment. I'm not yet paying many of my own bills, but that's primarily because, this being the first month, they haven't been mailed to me yet, and within another few weeks I'll be doing that, too. In the meantime, each day is a new adventure or learning experience (with both the positive Webster and perjorative Imperial definitions of both each word). In the meantime, I take solace in knowing that no matter how alone I get or how overwhelming the whole process may grow to be, at least I've got those I truly love to fall back on: my stuffed toys.

On August 5th, 2006, I wrote: "I will not yield to the Universe, not this easily. It can knock me down but it cannot make me stop pointing up at it and laughing. Here's to hoping I still feel that way this time next year." This was the day I posted about how I was being made to repeat the first year of medicine. At the time, about two weeks before classes started, I wasn't feeling particularly confident about Stuff in general. In particular, I had no confidence that trying the year a second time would go any better than the first, based on previous experience of when I've repeated classes and gotten precisely the same grade, or as near as. Feeling rather down as I was, I was expecting the second year to be, if not a disaster, then at least a singificant displeasure.

I was, of course, partially right and partially wrong, as the Goddess encourages her faithful to be. The year *was* an exercise in unpleasantness, deja-vu, embarassment, agony, and torture, but at least my grades improved. Even going through things for the second time, I scored under the class average consistently, but all that matters is that I got above the cut-off grade for promotion. My first time around, my first-year average was 64.2, and students needed an average of 65 to go to second year. This year, my average was 75.7 -- a perfectly respectable grade just a couple of points below the average, which might feel low to a former "A" student like myself if not for the fact that all these other kids who (unlike me) study and feel enthusiasm for the material didn't do much better. I can even rationalize it further with my background in statistics: In a grade distribution, there's a ceiling effect and a floor effect. Nobody gets above 100%, obviously, and very few score over 90; we arbitrarily set the ceiling at 95%. Similarly, it is reasonable to suppose that at maximum, only one or two students score under 65. Now, 78 is closer to 65 than 95. We now assume that for every individual who scored over 90, two scored under 90; if anything, this likely overestimates the number who score above 90. We cannot make a firm calculation without concrete numbers to work with, but given an average which is closer to the floor than the ceiling, and given that every individual who scored above 90 therefore pulls the grade up disproportionately, we can suggest that while the mean is 78, the mode must be lower... between 72 and 76. Therefore, while I scored lower than the class average, I actually almost certainly scored above the actual grade which the majority of students obtained.

Lies, damned lies, and me. Deal with it.

So, after two years, I've ended my time in first year and begin my second year studies in about a week and two days. I wisely arranged to end work yesterday, so that I get a week to myself to gather my strength, settle into the new appartment, and get all my Stuff ready for classes to resume. I'm actually feeling a little bit anxious about the coming year. This past year, my grade rose by over ten percent, due largely to my slowly learning how to study and my finally beginning to not merely recite but also understand some of the material and the basic science behind it. That said, part of the increase was also no doubt due to the fact that every single lecture was a repetition, and I may not have been exposed to more than nine or ten new facts in the whole year. In second year, I'm going to be learning -- wait for the crash of thunder -- New Stuff. More accurately, I'm going to be getting *taught* new stuff, and only time will tell if I learn it. There's reason to hope, since I've become a better learner in the past year, but there's also reason to shriek, cower, cry pitifully, and go hide under the bed. The astute reader may guess that I haven't got the highest hopes for the coming year, but I take solace in the certainty that I've got one of the world's million smartest brains and in theory, if I can keep up with the work and force myself to study rather than read comicbooks all day, there's no reason in the world that I can't excel, or at least, pass with a grade in the vicinity of the class average.

Importantly, with a year's hindsight to work with, I can now say that being held back a year was probably a good thing to have happen to me. Yes, it was humiliating to be held back, and yes, it hurt to lose a full year's progress, and I don't exagerate to say that at times I really doubted my ability to sit through some of the more hateful material a second time. That said, I was held back because I really didn't know the material as well as I needed to, and now, while I can't recite the complement cascade verbatim, I really do know and understand much of what we learned. Repeating the year also gave me a second summer to work with my beloved boss at the Children's Hospital, from whom I've learned a tremendous amount and, more importantly, attached my name to another 6 or 8 papers that'll see publication in the next two to four years. Delaying the year meant that several friends of the family graduated their own schools, one of whom is the fine fellow who's last appartment I'm now living in, and if I hadn't taken his home from him, I could easily have been living in a much less satisfying home right now. Finally, let's be honest: the class I'm in now by and large has more interesting and exciting people than the year I was in before. My classmates now appear to be smarter, wiser, less stupid and disruptive of lectures, more fun, more sociable, more gamer-filled, and even better looking. Yes, I'm looking at this with the bias of a person a day away from celebrating six months dating one of the close charming and good-looking classmates, but that's just another reason why being held back may have been the best thing that could possibly have happened to me. The gods work in mysterious ways, and the tricksters triply so, and if I keep believing that I was held back to guarantee me a better future, then there's every reason to think I'll keep finding reasons why it's true.

Here's to a bright new year, then. If I can survive four more months of lectures -- some of which will, at long last, be psychiatry related -- then I'll be in the hospitals and working and learning in an environment where cleverness is as vital as intelligence and I'll finally truly see if I have the capacity to enjoy medicine. One way or another, this oughtta be a big year... which is all the more reason to spend the next week trying to forget that it's all about to start.

It is unclear at this time how holy my new home is.

I've always had a very wary relationship with holy ground. On the one hand, it's never done anything to actively destroy me, which is more than some people I know can claim. On the other hand, I've always felt a little uncomfortable around holy soil, specifically that belonging to That Other Religion. Jewish holy ground has never caused me any trouble in and of itself (though stupid people on that ground and heat inside the buildings there have caused me no end of suffering). When I walk into a church, however, I often feel my skin start to itch oddly and on two or three memorable occasions I've actually seen steam start to rise from my hands (probably due to the snow melting in my hands at the time, but why take chances?). Now add in the usual gamer paranoia -- how many films have we seen where the source of suffering was an ancient burial ground or sacrificial altar? -- and one can see why I might have a healthy disrespect for santified terrain. All of this to beg the question: how holy is my appartment, or more to the point, how holy do I want it to be? I've got my copy of the bible, but since it's a King James devoid of any Hebrew at all, I don't think it counts as holy.

I tend to keep Jewish traditions in some very odd ways. I couldn't put on tfillin if my life depended on it, but whenever I leave the house, at all times, I carry a written copy of the tfilat haderech, the Traveler's Prayer, in my wallet. It's been years since my Hebrew was good enough for me to be able to read it, and I can't say for sure if having the prayer on me has ever made a difference in how a journey went for me, but somehow I feel good knowing it's there, just as a lot of other people I know carry around lucky charms of one sort or another. There are other Jewish holy items about which I have mixed feelings, notably the mezzuzeh. For the benefit of the goyyim reading this, the mezzuzeh is the little box or scroll case you'll see in the doorways of Jewish houses and buildings. The mezuzzeh symbolizes the Passover story, wherein lamb's blood was smeared on the threshold to bar the angel of death from entering a house. Modern mezzuzot, for reasons of sanitation and replacability, use a small scroll-case instead of blood. The box contains the text of the shemah, probably the single holiest single prayer in all of Judaism. The shemah is god's monologue to Moses and, among other things, begins with the phrase "hear, O Israel, the lord your god, the lord is one." Such is the power of this single line that Jews traditionally cover their eyes when they say it, just in case an angel appears and burn out their retinas. Furthermore, much like the Lord's Prayer of the Christians, legend tells that a person who dies saying this line is guaranteed a spot in Heaven. Why we take this mighty, meanignful prayer, stick it in a box, and glue it to our doors is largely beyond me.

I don't own a mezzuzeh, which won't come as a shock to many people. Somehow, when I kept running through lists of things I'd need in the appartment, a mezzuzeh didn't top my list, or for that matter, middle or bottom it. Slightly more surprising, I don't think it's yet occured to my parents to ask if I've got one. I don't think it matters much to them religiously if I've got a mezzuzeh in my home, but I would imagine that out of cultural pride they'd want to see one there. A mezzuzeh isn't particularly costly -- certainly relative to the price of other means of keeping Death out of your house -- and unlike some neighbourhoods of Montreal, I can't imagine I'd face anything in the way of religious persecution aside from the occasional proseletyzer (and woe betide the poor Witness who comes to my door looking for an easy mark). I'm proud to be Jewish and I value my culture, if not the faith that comes with it, so there's really no logical, significant reason for me to *not* have a mezzuzeh. Except, of course, for inertia. A mighty foe, is inertia.

One ritual which I did fulfill, incidentally, is the ritual of salt and bread. Traditionally, though not for any religious basis, Eastern European Jews will bring a bit of bread and salt into a new home on the first day and put it into the cupboard. In theory, this symbolizes that the cupboards should always be filled with good food, but in practice I think it's just to give the resident's mother evidence that the home isn't being kept clean enough a few days later.

That's the Jewish angle, which is really just one of many possible. I figure I've got the Discordianism angle covered, given the contents of my appartment and the contents of the brain of the person who, in two more days, will be living in it. Unbeknownst to many, though, I spent some time prior to the move investigating Slavic folklore, which I've always been very fond of and which, though technically Pagan, is really a bit hard to tease apart from Jewish traditions sometimes. My favourite of those legends are the stories of the Spirit of the House, a benevolent(ish) elfoid entity said to link itself to a family and follow them around when they move, helping them keep the house clean, orderly, and filled with love. If the family should move and not properly invite the Spirit to come with them when they go, then at best, the workload in the house suddenly increases as the elf stops carrying its share, and at worst, the vengeful elf might follow them and actively work to destroy them for their ingratitude. I didn't invite the Spirit of my old home to come with me when I left, but then again, I'm not the homeowner, so I suspect I'm more supposed to find a new one waiting for me at the appartment... but I left some glasses in the sink for two days and nobody else watched them, so my appartment may not have come with one. I'll have to check my contract; I know electricity and air-conditioning are included in my rent but, looking back, I'm pretty sure it didn't cover elves.

So, how holy is my appartment? It seems to be a bit deficient, Jewishly-speaking, and certainly isn't a very Russian home. It's barely religious in the academic sense... I haven't got a single copy of the Koran and not a single text which critically analyzes the bible's themes. Obviously, there aren't a lot of crosses there, or any other obvious religious iconography. To most observers, it would probably seem as though my appartment isnt holy in any way, shape, or form, and it's completely secular. The more trained observer, though, is probably keen enough to see the life-sized plush penguin sitting on the couch with a beatific exppression on its face and a bright red top-hat on its head at a rakish tilt... and decide that obviously, it's just holy enough.

If you want to know a person, we say you have to walk a mile in their shoes. If you want to know a place, you sleep in it. Spend eight hours in a row there, from primetime to breakfast, and get a feel for everything that happens there. See if you feel safe enough to close your eyes and drift off; see if anything happens to you before morning as a result. If you want to check a place for monsters, you brave it in the night, because that's when most monsters -- the non-human ones, at least -- come out. Night is when you learn the real noises of a place, the true inhabitants, and the genuine colours and shapes unobscured by distracting light. You can rest, eat, game, work, and do whatever you like somewhere, but until you've slept there, you can never know the real character of a place or truly claim it as your own.

I spent my first night in my appartment last night. I don't have a bed yet, but I do have two futons which fold out into double beds (I thought I had only one which folded and one which was rusted solid, but I finally found the secret to opening the second) and company as wonderful as I had makes any bed more comfy. I don't have a bed yet, but all of my bedsheets, blankets, pillows and such have been in the appartment for months, so there was no shortage of those, and most snuggly they proved to be. I still haven't quite figured out how the air-conditioning in the appartment works, but the place was cool enough to be comfortable even by my standards. The appartment is beautiful in the dark... all the lines and curves blend together and the place almost feels as though it stretches off forever, and no matter how dark it gets, you can always make out the gigantic flag on the main wall, amiling down at you and making you feel safe. There are a few lights set up in the courtyard outside my balcony overnight, and just enough light comes through the open blinds to make everything visible and safe to move around without casting sharp definition or providing so much illumination to make it hard to sleep. Overall, the place gives a wonderful night-time environment -- comfortable and secure without being confined or creepy. When night falls on the appartment, it takes on the feeling of a big, plush, comfy blanket wrapped around. The blanket probably has duckies on.

Of course, I've slept in the appartment now, but I haven't slept in the bedroom. Arguably, I haven't yet got a bedroom, since there's no bed in the appartment; there's a protobedroom, a sort of platonic room where a bed is destined to one-day be, and there's a pseudobedroom, a bedroom pro tem, being the area where the futon has been transmorgrified into a bed in the middle of what was, just last Tuesday, the living room and gaming area. The actual bedroom might be quite different from the room where I actually slept, for all I know... among other things, the true bedroom has a proper closet, which means twice the probability of hidden monsters per night. The windows also look out over a different section of the courtyard, and the blinds rotate in the opposite direction, which likely means a different amount of light during the night. One problem I had during the night was that a bright light outside would turn on and off for period on a fairly regular cycle; it wasn't disruptive enough to keep me awake, but it was disruptive enough that I was aware of it even while trying to fall asleep. I couldn't be bothered to get up and time it rigorously, but it seemed precise enough to be some sort of automatic blinkenlight, which suggest the distinct possibility that it's a light which geblinken every night for some reason. Future nights will give me the opportunity to investigate this further, to isolate the source, to postulate why the light might be there, and to decide I don't care, close the blinds and go to sleep. The point is, after one night in the appartment, I certainly can't yet say what it's going to be like to really sleep there properly, in the real bed with the sheets properly done and in the correct room with monster-traps set. It won't be a nice and accurate night's sleep until I've got a penguin watching me from the end of my bed and a half-finished novel on the bedside table next to me.

Equally important as having spent the night at the appartment, I've now experienced what it's like to wake up there. Even if a place is nice to sleep, waking up there might be no fun at all. The reason that I never took naps at the Games Club, for example, was that it was comfy enough to drift off but when you woke up, it was always in a stuffy, dirty, poorly-decorated basement room somewhere in an unsecure location with windows that strange people could conceivably look in through (never mind the extreme improbability that anybody stranger than me was around). Similarly, I can fall asleep on a long car ride -- never yet while driving, fortunately -- but I don't like to wake up in them because the very first sensation that I feel is always that of being oddly-seated, my head unsupported, and my torso restrained. In contrast, my appartment was a joy to wake up to. With a combination of careful forethought and a bit of luck, I'd pre-arranged the blinds to allow in just the right amount of morning sunlight to help wake me up without burning out my retinas. My first sensation upon waking up was the overwhelming feeling of peace and joy that comes from knowing that a benificent face has been watching you while you slept -- though, of course, my flag won't be there when I start sleeping in the bedroom. The fridge isn't yet stocked, so I couldn't have breakfast right away, but other than that, pretty much everything I could have wanted or needed was right there with me in a peaceful environment decorated to my own unique tastes and specifictions. All that, and high-speed internet and newly-downloaded movies and comic books waiting for me and fill my life with joy. I have friends and aquaintances who live in homes they don't like and most of them seem to feel that waking up is a uniformly unpleasant experience each day, and if that's not a bad way to start a new dose of the onslaught of terror and herringhorror that is daily life, then I don't know what is. When I'm waking up in the depths of winter at five am to go to the hospitals and stand uselessly in surgery rooms loooking like I know what I'm doing, I'm going to be miserable enough as it is, and at the very least, I was to be waking up in a place that makes me feel relaxed, in control, and surrounded by Neat Stuff.

All this being said, since I never sleep well my first few nights in a new place, I'm pretty much beat and exhausted no matter how nice the place is to sleep or wake up, so no place is perfect, but hopefully that'll get better with time. I don't sleep well or wake up feeling rested under the best of circumstances, but I can move heaven and earth to ensure that I'm tossing and turning somewhere soft and cozy. Isn't that sort of thing what life is all about, most of the time?

It amazes me sometimes how much life can be changed by a little thing like being sick for a few days. I like to think I'm not too much of a kvetch, and I'm much less of a whiner than I used to be. I try, and usually suceed, to keep my life from getting disrupted every time I feel sub-nifty, because if my life ground to a halt every time I was in paint or feeling sick I'd never get anything done. Sometimes, though, we get one of those little illnesses that can't be worked through quite so easily, and we all have symptoms we have a harder time coping with. In my case, I can fight my way past insomnia up to about the 78 hour mark and most forms of pain won't stop me from doing whatever needs doing, but headaches or nausea tend to grind my life right to a halt. It's pretty much inevitable to most people that we'll have a handful of sick days every year that really incapacitate us, but it's still no fun to acknowledge that they happen.

Strictly speaking, I'm probably not even really sick right now, in the sense of being infectious and infected. I was, fairly recently, culminating in a sore throat, persistent cough, and most annoyingly, loss of voice (not that a little thing like being unable to talk is enough to stop me from talking). I was on the road to recovery from that bug when I went to receive a vaccination against tetanus, diptheria, and pertussis, all mandatory for the medical school and all well worth being immunized against. By several irritating quirks of fate, I've received this triple vaccine probably about three times more than I need to for my studies, most recently back in May 2007, and while there's no evidence that getting the vaccination repeatedly is harmful, it's still generally advised not to give it to someone more than once or twice every five years, as opposed to, say, the four or so times I've received it in the last two years. Most recently, the vaccine I received in May was of a type known as DTP, whereas about a week before I was given the vaccine by my doctor, McGill changed its regulation such that another brand name, Adacel, was the only kind suitable. The chief difference between DTP and Adacel are the concentration and deadliness of their contents; whereas DTP is a fairly simple and innocuous liquid, it's perfectly normal for Adacel to leave the recipient with two or three days of headaches, nausea, and muscle pain as they contract and proceed to fight off a minor case of tetanus. The normal side effects are "moderate to severe"; the side efefcts are known to be worse if an excess amount of the vaccine is administered, or if it is given too many times. And then, just to be really thorough, I went and had it given to me when I already had a depressed immune system due to an existing cold.

On the third day, I've regained the ability to stand up in one smooth motion and drive without being a danger to myself and others. I still can't fully flex my left deltoid, however, and the headache hasn't quite subsided yet. I have not had a pleasant three days.

The real kicker isn't even being sick, but the impact which being sick has on my life. I'm a moderately skilled and capable life-form, much of the time, but one little debilitating illness and suddenly I'm unable to work or, more accurately, able to sit in front of the computer screen and stare at all the little letters and things and wonder why the words I want to put down aren't simply coming to me naturally. Fortunately, I work from home and if I want to take off a day or three, nobody will ever know or care, but it's annoying to fall behind my own schedule. Similarly, if I don't feel safe standing up and walking down the hallway, I'm hardly going to get in my car and go for a haircut, even if I have been waiting a month for the chance to go... I can just go the next day or the day after instead, but that means changing my plans, and if I wanted my plans changed I wouldn't have made them in the first place. The worst, unsurprisingly, is simply the loss of control. I hate not being in control of events around me, and when even going up and down the stairs is laborious and difficult, it's hard to feel in control of much else. Mental note: never get sick again. It's irritating. Don't do it.

On the other hand, clever sort of fellow that I am, I was well-prepared for getting sick. I always have a stack of comics on hand in case I hit a day when I can't do much else besides read them, and I did fight to get a job where I can take off half the week and still be able to meet all my boss' deadlines (we call this the Miracle Worker technique, named after a certain Star Trek character). I also had the good sense to be around my house rather than my appartment while sick, so that I wouldn't find myself with nothing to eat, even if it does mean being back on slower internet for an extra few days. Getting sick may drop by strength and dexterity down to 3, but it takes more than a virus and a case of tetanus to reduced my score in Clever Bastard.

Whatever the case, the really important thing is that I'm getting better quickly. The last vestiges of my cold are still fading and I'm barely coughing now, while the lingering malaise from the vaccine has been fading steadily and should be gone within another day or so. Barring the admitted theoretical possibility that in two weeks I'll be suffering from full-blown tetanus and every muscle in my body will be persistently contracting with maximum force, I'll be all nice and healthy for work tommorow, a funeral and a party on Saturday, and potentially gaming Sunday. Not everyone who gets sick gets better again, and since I try so hard to take nothing for granted in my life, each recovery and restoration of maximal niftiness is cause for celebration. I have, after all, places to go, people to be, and improbable schemes to scheme.

One of the few words which nearly everybody who knows me would be willing to apply to me is "stubborn." It's not really in me to just give up on something and go away. When I get an idea into my head, it has a nasty tendency to stay there, undislodgable, for days, months, even years or decades. I'm *capable* of changing my mind, but it doesn't come easily to me. Much of the time, this is a positive personality trait; it makes one a hard worker and a persistent problem solver. In other situations, it can be a decisive negative -- it's a major predictor of depression and suicide in the elderly, for example. This kind of stubbornness can also be a negative in the face of, say, a new technology of potential value and worth. Case in point: Tonight, after countless months of resistance, I signed up for the social networking website, Facebook. Like Livejournal before it, I railed against joining Facebook for a long time on the principle that I thought it was a more or less useless system made redundant by my existing modes of contacting people. In most senses, I still believe that (about both services). That said, I finally forced myself to admit two important things: that there were a number of real, justifiable reasons for me to join, and that it had gotten to the point where I was resisting joining only out of inertia and, let's be honest, pure bull-headed bloody-minded stubbornness.

In the case of Livejournal, I caved in and joined after several years of hosting my own journal privately, because the majority of people I know use the service religiously and my mirroring there made it easy for them to read me. In the case of Facebook, above and beyond having a very persuasive girlfriend amused by the prospect of me joining, this past weekend alone gave me a whole bunch of hard-to-ignore reasons to sign up. First and foremost is the fact that a friend who's about to leave the country for a year informed me that his plan was to disseminate the bulk of his current events through Facebook; I'm sure he would have gone to the extra effort to keep me informed, but the fact that Facebook is the most efficient way for him to reach basically everybody else is a sign on its own. second and related, I've now attended no less than eight events in the last few months, photos of which ended up on facebook and nowhere else; again, I was able to get my hands of the photos I wanted by other means, but if I was on the service, I'd have had them sooner and with less effort on the part of the person sending them to me. Third, in the last forty eight hours, I've been informed of two social events which I was told outright I was invited to and which were now being organized exclusively via Facebook. My ignorance of the events in question was a shock to the organizers; it had simply never occured to them that anyone they were inviting might not be on Facebook yet. I don't want to be on Facebook, but apparently, it's not even an option anymore. "Join Facebook" or "miss out of every party for the next year" isn't really a choice at all. Third, though not this weekend, during the weekend of the Aerican convention, I was informed that there was a Facebook group for my Empire which I had never heard of... I resisted joining Facebook simply because of that for about two weeks.

George Orwell is officially redundant... offer blog space and a photo gallery and people will beg to be watched by Big Brother.

The second reason I finally broke down now is that I realised, at last, that aside from my contempt for the kind of AOLer kids who most commonly frequent these sites, I didn't actually have a single decent reason to keep staying off their system. I was doing something which I do have an unfortunate tendency to do: remain stubborn simply for the sake of being stubborn. Nobody likes admitting that they were wrong, and I'd held off of Facebook for long enough that I think I felt it would actually be embarassing to backpedal at this stage. I'd been proud of resisting the bandwagon for so long, most of my initial reasons for not joining had vanished, and all that was left was a knee-jerk "NO!" reaction. As much fun as knee-jerk reactions can be, they aren't -- or at least, shouldn't be -- a good reason to derpive oneself of a potentially useful tool. I'm a big believer in the benefits of stubbornness to mind, body, and soul, but I'm also a big believer in keeping one's mind open and always looking at arguments both in favour and in opposition to any stance. As an enlightened and superior mind -- stop that snickering, you -- then I've got both an ability and a responsibility to always be open to the posibility that the stances I hold, no matter how old and familiar, might be wrong. The day I stop considering the possibility that I'm hanging on to a stupid idea is the day I become no better that the morons I've dedicated so much of my life to mocking. The only single reason I was still fighting joining Facebook was because I had been fighting it for as far back as I could remember and would be embarassed to give in now... and that's really not a good reason at all, or at least, not a sufficiently good one.

As an aside, I'm basically adding people to my friends list as they occur to me in a functionally-random manner. If I haven't contacted you yet, it shouldn't be taken as any sort of slight or deliberate ignoring of you, and if it strikes you as a problem then add me yourself. I've always had the bad habit of wanting people to pursue my friendship, and it's actually rather out of character for me to add *anyone* to my list without first waiting for them to add me.

All that being said, having now been a member for about one hour, I have not yet found that my life has significantly altered. I feel no closer to anybody now than I did before signing up. I didn't entertain wild fantasies that I'd have two-hundred people making friends requests within a day of my joining, nor was I contacted by any long-lost friends in the first five minutes (though I did find my old grade-school best friend, with whom I haven't spoken in twelve years, on my first try searching for him, so if I ever bother to add him to my list then we'll see how surprised he is). Having browsed through their features, they've got a lot of clever gimmicks but nothing that I find shocking, compelling, or even particularly impressive. Will I feel differently about the service tommorow? I might, if I find myself with two-hundred friend requests tommorow, but somehow that seems unlikely.

As with so many situations in life, I'm once again reminded of those famous words: "I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member." Then again, if it gets me invited to one extra party in the next year, it's done its job.

As happens from time to time in any game, the D&D group in which I play saw a revent PC fatality. Faced with an unstoppable infernal foe about to claim several innocent souls, the group's noble and heroic warforged sold his own soul to the devils to save his city. This was a wise and desperate action on the characters part but perhaps not an ideal move on the player's part, who had hoped to cotinue playing his character for some time yet. This did prove to be interesting news for the rest of us, though, as it prompted the St to write up a two-session mini-campaign wherein we are all creating high-level heroes to storm Hell itself and rescue the soul of this fallen champion. This sort of mini-campaign can be a lot of fun, as it's the perfect excuse to try a character concept or prestige class which one might have always wanted to try but never had the chance. Our storyteller, for example, is using this as a chance to play a Gatecrasher as he's always wanted, a class which I myself have long wanted to try but never had the opportunity. For my part, I'm playing an uber-heroic half-celestial paladin turned modified Knight of the Chalice, a prestige class designed for nothing except devil-slaying which would be largely useless in most campaigns but which is remarkably effective when the entire storyline takes place in Hell. this character poses a number of amusing roleplaying challenges: he gives me the chance to play a highly intelligent and tactically-minded thinker without falling back on my usual pattern of glibness; he allows me to play a primarily combat-oriented character when I'm much more used to playing the skill-heavy or political character; and he has so many different versions of "smite evil" available each day that I had to create a whole new chart on my character sheet template to keep track.

Willem Brightsun was born in a backwater town in a backwater kingdom on a backwater plane. His mother, an innkeeper, and his father, a polymorphed Archon living out a vacation-lifespan among mortals, raised him to embrace the tenets of the warriors of Mount Celestia. His father's heritage was apparent; though Willem looked quite normal at birth, his skin grew from brown to gold in childhood, his eyes to shining blue by adolescence, and as the other boys sprouted beards Willem sprouted mighty, feathered wings from his back. Obviously, a normal life would be no option for the boy, and so he was sent to the churches of the nearby city to find his fortune. In the city, Willem studied briefly with the priests and other leaders of the faiths, but it was amongst the paladins and other warriors that he found his place. Stronger than any mortal, more durable, quicker of mind, Willem excelled in the schools of combat and learned to channel his own innate energies into magical manifestations of holy power. As an initiate in the militaristic Order of G'Dank, Willem was sent to far off wars to learn the ways of battle, and returned home a tried and tested champion. The priests of G'Dank foresaw that Willem was meant for far more important duties than their small corner of the war between the light and darkness, and so he was gifted with their holy relics, sword and shield and armour, and sent to Mount Celestia itself to continue his training.

Among the celestials and outsiders, Willem was knighted and welcomed into the Knights of the Chalice, an elite order of devil and demonslayers. Among them, Willem took the honour name Hellsfoe, swearing his life to thwarting evil. He trained rigorously, learning the ways of devils, their anatomy, their physiology, their languages, their every strength and weakness, until he had turned battle with them into a science and an art. Alongside other Knights of the Chalice, Willem began to undertake missions into the Prime Material, the elemental planes, and even into the lower planes themselves, where his skills were at their deadliest and his weapons at their most powerful. After years of battle and hundreds of demons destroyed by his hand, Willem was eventually sent to a Prime Material world for a more permanent assignment, to find the great White City and take up residence there, and stand guard within its walls against devilish incursion. Willem has stood at this post for one year now, to the day, when he is summoned to the city's central sacred grove and recruited for a special mission, one which will send him, once again, into Hell itself.

Roleplaying notes: As a Knight of he Chalice, you live for two things: to battle devils and to stop their machinations. Other beings risk their lives for their causes without certainty of reward, but for you, there can be no doubt... when you fall in battle, as there is indeed no guarantee you will ever do if you fight bravely and with wisdom, your eternal reward will be to ascend back to Mount celestia and become a true member of your father's people, ready to take up the banner of war again or retire to a quiet eternity praising the lords of holiness. With the security of afterlife, you are a fearless warrior and a deadly foe of evil, unafraid of death but not so foolish as to throw you life away cheaply. To strike a single resounding blow against the forces of darkness, you would make any personal sacrifice, which up to now has meant sacrificing the lives of many, many devils. Stand firm in battle; fight with honour, courage, and intelligence. Give 'em Heaven, and let the last sound ever to ring in their ears be "G'Dank!".

Tactics: Your three great strengths are your magical equipment, your innate toughness, and your magical abilities. You carry with you a magical sowrd. Against a normal Prime, the sword carries only a slight enchantment of sharpness, but its magic grows stronger when it is wielded against those from the more outer planes, and against a true outsider -- a devil or, for that matter, a celestial -- it becomes potent enough to pierce the magical protections of anything short of a demon lord. This magic similarly grows stronger as the sword itself is brought to the outer planes; in the White City the sword is less powerful than those of many of the heroes of that town, but carried in Hell, your sword is one of the deadliest weapons that can be wielded by a single human-sized creature. Your armour, like your sword, carries mighty protections; in addition to being as thick as mortal plate mail, it is a fraction of the weight of steel and can briefly confer upon you superhuman speed. Your shield is a mighty item of protection, but it too is a deadly weapon; a living weapon itself, the lion's head carved on your shield will from time to time awaken to begin attacking your enemies seemingly of its own volition, adding significantly at the damage you can deal in the space of a single attack. This armour and shield might never be needed against mundane enemies, however; even diluted, your angelic blood makes your skin too strong to be cut by a non-magical blade, and extremes of heat, cold, and energy which would kill a normal human are no more than pleasant sunlight or a light breeze upon you. Finally, and most importantly for your cause, your very body radiates energy which is anathema to devil-kind. Your every strike has the power of three mighty blows against an evil creature, and on top of this, the energy which powers you can be challened in a multitude of different ways to make your strikes more accurate and more damaging. Indeed, few and far between are the infernal creatures able to stand against you in combat. You have been bred, trained, and armed for one single purpose in this life, and you do it well.

There's a curious phenomenon that I've long observed among several aquaintances of mine. Everyone's life has a few things that they can't seem to explain scientifically, be it true faith, an odd shelf that never seems to need dusting, or a tape deck that seems to slowly turn every cassette into the greatest hits of Queen. In the homes of several friends on mine, something strange happens amongst the books. Specifically, although these people claim that they never go out to buy more books, none-the-less new books do appear in their rooms. No one knows exactly where these books come from... there are no receipts or empty bags to explain their arrival, and they do not appear to have been left behind by visitors. Some might suggest that the books are left behind by the book fairy, but this is patently silly.. every knows the book fairy now works for Amazon and no longer does free deliveries. One way or another, these mystery books seem to appear of their own accord, sometimes remaining for years, sometimes vanishing as mysteriously as they appeared. It is totally, utterly and completly inexplicable, which is why we're going to try to explain it right now.

One possible explanation for where these books come from is to be found, as with all great wisdom of humanity, in the sock drawer. In my house, books tragically do not accumulate on their own, but socks do vanish as mysteriously as my friends' books. In frequently but with horrific regularity, I will look at where I keep my socks and find that there is a pair less than there should be. More frequently than that, I'll look into the laundry and find an odd number of socks when I know I put in an even number. I don't know where these socks disapear to. Perhaps, like a Heinlein-class Martian, they tire of life and discorporate, moving to a higher plane of existence, or perhaps they are caught and devoured by voracious laundry weasels during the tail-end of the spin-cycle. While those two options are both about equally plausible, an additional option suggests itself. Neither energy nor matter can be truly created or destroyed. Socks vanish... books appear. What's more, these happen at a surprisingly similar rate, according tho those in the know. Socks vanish, books appear. One sock vanishes from the washing machine, a new book appears on the coffee table, in fine shape but suspiciously damp and smelling of fabric softner. Socks vanish, books appear. The answer is obvious: socks are the larval form of books.

Think about it. on the surface this may seem hard to believe, but then again, who would believe, if they didn't first learn it elsewhere, that the squirmy, stumbly, clumsy catterpillar could possibly turn into a beautiful, flying butterly? It's nearly inconceivable... they look nothing alike to start with, but one cocoon later and ten tons of yellow steel can transform into a couple of grams of flying bug, or something like that. Very few people would ever look at a catterpillar and a butterly -- or a larva and a moth, or a maggot and a housefly, or a semi and a giant robot -- and come to the conclusion on their own that one could become the other, because such a transformation defies common sense. Most people have a hard enough time looking at babies and figuring out how they transform into big people, and *they* start off the same basic shape and colour. In that light, it's not really so hard to imagine that socks might metamorphose into books, given appropriate conditions. In nature, one thing routinely becomes something else through one mechanism or another, and this is merely one more example of that. A sock disapears, a new book appears, and somewhere in your closet lies the remains of a cocoon which looks suspiciously like a shopping bag you don't remember leaving there.

So, this all begs the question... what triggers this metamorphosis? In this chaotic, unpredictable universe, one thing has a tendency to become another (and as a great thinker once said, I never metamorph I didn't like). Nothing eternally stays the way it is, whether the means to its change is entropy, centuries of rain, or expensive plastic surgery. In this case, the mechanism of change might be pupative metamorphosis: the larval sock finds a secure place to hide for a while, spins a cocoon, metamorphoses, and emerges with new colour and grandeur as a paperback. In this instance, pupation is triggered by forces unknown... perhaps it's because overwearing of the sock triggers some sort of growth factor hormone, or perhaps different socks are coded to spontaneously pupate if exposed to just the right temperature and pressure, where rich variability in the genetic code would explain why socks rarely if ever undergo metamorposis at the same time. Alternately, it's foolish to assume that the socks are necessarily larval and therefore animal, when they might just as easily be seeds... vegetable. This would be a good explanation in so far as it helps address the issue of very specific growth conditions being needed to trigger, not pupation, but sprouting. It's quite common in nature for a plant's seeds to sprout only in very specific, sometimes very strange conditions. The chaparral pea is one such plant species which thrives in climates one might otherwise assume to be inhospitable; native to California's chaparral region where firestorms are common events, seeds if the chaparral pea plant require the soil to reach temperatures in excess of seven hundred degrees celcius, such that the plant's germination occurs rapidly in the wake of every fire. Not so differently, sock biology might require that they be moved from the site of original development to another site of sufficiently different environment. A sock would therefore never germinate in its normal drawer, or even in the washing machine, but when an individual visits other homes and walks around in bare socks, one (or perhaps even both) socks might encounter an elusive growth factor and germinate. Such a sock would still need time to begin to sprout, and so would usually sprout at its normal home, but this would obviously be an evolutionary adaptation designed to spread the sock species across a wider territory.

As has already been observed, of course, although my socks do tend to disapear, they do not appear to transform into books, as we now see that the socks of some of my friends do. I come to this conclusion not because my socks fail to vanish, which they do not, but because books fail to appear. When a new book appears in my home, it is because I put it there, usually after paying for it. I rather wish that my socks did transform into books, because I'd enjoy seeing those proliferate for the price of a few socks. I can't account precisely for why my socks don't change into books, but I suspect it has something to do with their origination. While I can't speak for my friends, my socks tend to be made of cotton, wool, or polyester, as opposed to, say, insect or plant matter, and it is highly unusual for even high-quality cotton to metamorphose into an animate species. Thus, the reason my socks behave differently from those of my friends can probably be accounted for by the fact that their socks are plants and insects, whereas mine are cloth from Zellers. We can thus rule out the possibility that my socks pupate, sprout, or otherwise metamorphose, so I blame laundry weasels.

Last week, when a friend of mine was feeling down and stressed, I found myself in a dollar store and decided to get him a little gift, to cheer him up and remind him that he's being thought of by his friends and, more importantly, the players who rely on his good will for their XP. It just so happens that this friend's favourite animal is the hippopotamus, nature's siege engine and evolution's answer to Steve Irwin,m and the dollar had (for slightly more than a dollar) a piggy bank in the shape of a big pink exemplar of that animal. I picked up the hippo bank -- hippy bank? -- and packed it safely so that I could bring it to him when next I saw him a day or two later. I have a ard time judging anyone's emotions under the best of circumstances, but given that he laughed maniacally when he saw it, spent the rest of the evening snuggling it, and announced that it would be our game's mascot for the duration of the campaign, I assume he was happy with the gift.

While that may be a beautiful and moving story and another notch in my "I'm very good at giving presents" belt, none of that is what I consider to be the interesting part of this story. In my world it's never enough to merely give someone a cute gift... there has to be some sort of clever gimmick or meaning to it. In this case, the friend in question is someone who I know rarely opens up to others with his real feelings and to my knowledge has a very small number of real confidants. I can relate to that, and I know how hard it can be under the best of circumstances, let alone during particularly stressful life events. He has, however, observed once or twice in the past that he has this odd feeling that he can trust me and, once in a while, even open up to me, and whenever someone tells me this I never understand it but almost always try to cultivate it. In this case, before I gave my friend his new hippo bank, I put one penny into it. When I gave it to him, I told him that I had already put in a penny, and so should he find himself with any thoughts he wants to share, he's been paid in advance. When I came up with this scheme, I remarked to the incredibly nifty person I was with at the time that I was tempted to put in a second penny, because then he would have my two cents as well, but when someone is already dealing with rough events, they rarely need our opinions forced on them. This thought did take me tangentially to another one, though, which is why would I be paying him a penny for him to give me his thoughts and pay him two pennies for the priviledge of accepting mine? Never mind that most of my thoughts are worth way more than one penny... it's either devaluing his thoughts (because they're worth half as much as mine) or devaluing my own (because, after all, it's a pretty shoddy product if you have to pay someone to take it off your hands).

Why do we offer someone a penny for their thoughts? Maybe in the ancient days when five cents would buy you a full lunch a penny was a good price for a thought, but today, it's practically an insult. "Here," we say. "Your thoughts are worth less to me than the value of the copper that was used to make this coin. If you share another hundred and forty nine thoughts with me, maybe you can afford a cup of coffee." I can't remember the last time I bought anything for one penny offhand, not counting very small things which are bought in bulk, like grains of rice or molecules of graphite. It might not be meant as an insult, of course... when we offer that penny, we might be trying to say something like "most people give me their thoughts for free, but I value yours enough to offer something tangible for them" Alternately, we might be trying to be flattering in a more roundabout way, as in "I'm offering you a very small sum now for your thoughts because I want to buy many more of them in the future and I only have so much money." These are both nice ideas, but when you get right down to it, most people I know aren't that considerate or deep thinking, so it's easier and probably a safer bet to assume that the offer of one penny is more of a slap in the face than anything else. Of course, it goes without saying that when *I* offer one penny, it's a genuinely nice and caring gesture and I attach the value of one cent both to be ironic and because only a great fool offers to pay more than standard market value.

So, given that the whole one-ccent thing now almost makes sense, we're faced with the fact that itis' pretty well impossible to find a way to justify giving someone your two cents. At the very base of it is probably pure pragmatism... if you wait for somebody to ask to buy your thoughts, even at the price of only a single penny, that's kind of like waiting for them to get all enthusiastic about paying their taxes... yes, it's in their best interests and yes it's necessary for their lives to continue to flow properly and happily, but very few people would choose to do it given a choice. No, as we all know, when someone needs our opinion, whether they know it or not, they need it NOW and it would be remiss -- practically a sin, really -- to deprive them of that valuable, valuable wisdom. We therefore offer our thoughts right here and right now (there is, after all, no other place I or Mr. Jones would rather be), completly pushing aside the notion of being properly remunerated for our troubles because, after all, it's the right thing to do. But lo, for reasons utterly inexplicable and incomprehensible, some foolish people will always resist receiving that opinion even when it's obviously precisely what they need to know. Desperate to help them (it is, as we've already covered, for their own good) and with the moment swiftly passing by and disaster looming, we sweeten the deal: we offer the wealthy price of two whole cents, the immesurable value of this ransom illustrated by the fact that it's nearly *twice* what we would have paid them for one of their own thoughts. How important our opinion must be, then, to justify the cost.

That's one possibility. The other is that we secretly acknowledge that our opinions tend to be kind of stupid and whenever we offer them we have to make sure that whoever we've just given them to has enough cash to afford two better thoughts to verify them. But of course, as Descartes might observe, nobody sensible could possibly believe that.

So... One, two, three, four... Looks like all of you owe me five cents. I'll expect prompt payment, though I'll accept one penny and two opinions each.

For over ten years now, I've been on a Quest. Not merely a quest, with a small "q," but a Quest, as in "a search or task which is always at the back of your mind and for which the drive to complete is one of the great motivating factors of your life." This particular Quest dates back to 1996 -- long before the dawn of Eric 4.0 and quite a bit before most of the forces which have shaped my modern existence became in any way significant. While some Quests are for meaning, or dreams, or love, my Quest has been the most classical of all: the Quest for a rare, unique, or holy object whose location is known to none and whose very existence is shrouded in myth and mythtery. This... is the Quest for the Chocolate Monkey.

1996 was, in my opinion, one of the golden ages of cartoons. Sure, the early 80's brought us Transformers, He-Man, and G.I. Joe, but the 90's brought us Earthworm Jim, the Critic, the biggest and most popular years for the Simpsons, and quite a lot of others. One of the least well known of these -- despite starring the same voice actor who went on to play Phillip J. Fry on Futurama and the invisible announcer on the Weird Al Show -- was Project GeeKeR. The show chronicled the adventures of Geeker, a genetically engineered android/thing designed to have near metamorphic godlike powers who was stolen from the requisite evil megacorporation and mad scientist while still possessing the mind of a child. Among other contributions to my psyche, this show helped shape a fair bit of my vocabulary, poisoning me with phrases such as "I am sooooo on top of that" and "I'm gonna go BOOM!"The show also featured Moloch-brand chocolate monkeys -- small, nearly 2D milk-chocolate monkeys shaped as though they were crawling on the ground with their tails up in the air. From the first moment I saw these monkeys, I knew I had to have one, some way and somehow, and as the years went by this grew first into a minor obsession and then, over the course of multiple rebirths and build upgrades, an inherent part of my personality and a driving Quest. This Quest was a particularly difficult one since we were talking about an extremely specifically-made chocolate monkey from a TV show which was almost totally unknown even among geekdom. The odds of success for years looked to be very nearly impossible.

This is, miraculously, past tense. I ate the chocolate monkey last week. I always have had a knack of doing the impossible.

The thing of it is this: I've always been terrified to trying to make the chocolate monkey myself, because if I tried and failed, I'd have been more disappointed than ever. I'm a good cook but I'm terrible with my hands, and molten chocolate can be very difficult to work with unless you're very good at what you do. The trick had always been the mould; I didn't have a mould, and doubted my ability to make one to the point that I never even tried once in a whole decade. Since I couldn't make the mould myself, despite having loads of chocolate pastilles in my house just waiting to be melted and shaped, I was left with only two realistic alternatives. First, I might someday find the chocolate monkey in a shop somewhere... this was possible, and in fact I found many chocolate monkeys over the years which were close but none which were quite right. Second, I might get lucky and someone would make a chocolate monkey especially for me, but then, nobody else had ever seen the TV show in question and certainly didn't know what the chocolate monkey looked like. A half dozen individuals had said they would one day try to find a way to find or make for me the chocolate monkey of which I spoke, but for one reason or another, all comers failed, fell short, or all too frequently, never even got around to trying. Still, a Quest gets the big "q" because it's a challenge, and what would be the significance of deposing the Dark Lord of finding the Fallen Star or Holy Grail if anybody could do it? I kept my spirits high and told myself every day that someday, somehow, the chocolate monkey would be mine.

And then, a curious thing happened. A wonderful, special, interesting, unique, and very very cunning lady of my acquaintance became curious what the chocolate monkey was of which I spoke from time to time, and obtained from me, without arousing my suspicions, the story of how and where I first saw the chocolate monkey. Secretly, without ever hinting to me what she was doing, all while studying and/or working full time, she downloaded and watched the whole cartoon series to find the single best shot of the chocolate monkey that she could locate, based on my having described just a handful of frames here and there where they were briefly visible. She found a single clear shot and got it in screen-capture. She blew up the image to make it visible and printed it out. She hand-made a mould out of tinfoil using the printed image as a guide. She melted down chocolate chips of precisely the right degree of sweetness and poured it into the mould, and if you've never tried to hold the shape of moulded tinfoil as it fills with viscous liquid, you cannot imagine how difficult this is. She left it to cool and harden, and when it was just right, she wrapped it up so its nature wouldn't be immediately apparent when I first saw it, invited me over, and told me she had something special to give me.

Through all this, amazingly, I had no inkling what she was planning. Anyone who has tried to surprise me or tried to keep me from deducing the nature of a gift will appreciate how unusual this is.

And there it was: a chocolate monkey. No... *the* chocolate monkey, in front of me, in the flesh (so to speak) and very real. I could hardly speak... my hands shook and the world grew wavy around me. Here, in my hands, was the object for which I had Quested for ten years, not merely found by chance but with a whole story of how it came to exist given to me along with it. Here, at that moment, one of the very purposes of my life, one of the very reasons for my very existence was fulfilled. The gods smiled down upon me and the very Universe sang. I groked the chocolate monkey.

And it was yummy, too.

So now, here I sit. For the best of all possible reasons my life has one fewer purpose driving it and I find myself with one fewer Quest. I am, in a sense, fulfilled and even justified. I have become one with the object of my Quest; its molecules power my brain and make my heart pump with renewed life, and I am at this moment, in at least one way, a better creature than I have ever been before. Soon, no doubt, something new will catch my whimsy and I'll find myself with a new impossible Quest to take the place of this one, but nothing can take this moment from me. With help, I have found and eaten a chocolate monkey, and life is good.

Now if I can just find a life-sized weasel made entirely out of marshmallows...