Misery Maze

Draw a wicked hard maze

I attacked this one enthusiastically. Thus the short post.

Front Side:

Back Side:

Transformed Corner:

You can click the pictures for the high-resolution versions. While it’s fully solvable, I’m not sure how well some of the mechanics come across. I’ll try and put up a post in the next few days that would explain it.

Short version: You need the “Grimoire of ZOR” before you can use the Shadow portals. They transport you to the related shadow portals on the other side. When you dead-end near the broken road you need the Star and Moon relics. Once collected they allow you to fold the corner which opens the path to the end.

Next: Create a mythos for New Years Eve including symbols and traditions

Progress & Procrastination

Clean Everything

Okay, as my housemates pointed out repeatedly, my objective was a little overambitious. I did not, for instance, clean everyone else’s rooms, or the roof, or the creepy garage I don’t have a key for and have never been inside.

I did have a very productive day though, both in cleaning, and in procrastinating on the Internet. Thus I’ll present my experience in two lists.

Top five things coolest things I found while cleaning:

5) Nitro Brand Snappers

I found these in the dark recesses of our unfinished storage room. They’re left over from when I was alone on the Fourth of July and spent the day throwing snappers at neighborhood kids while sitting in a kiddie pool on our front lawn. Now if only I could find the dollar-store aviator glasses I wore.

4) My Original Packing List

This is from my original freak out road trip that brought me to Minneapolis. It reminds me of how I packed extensive first aid and survivalist gear, and then spent the entire trip sleeping in Walmart parking lots.

3) My Prototype for a Board/Card Game

The original idea for this game dates back to my college days. Every once and a while I start working on it again and I’m quickly reminded that games are incredibly hard to design. Plus I am lazy. Maybe it would be good “Do a thing” fodder.

2) This Green Robot

This robot is notable because I got it as a gift but never opened the box because I thought it was the same as an orange robot I already have. But it is actually green! Good story.

1)   My Doodle Shirt

This is a shirt I doodled on for a long time, and then lost, and then found again. I don’t wear it anymore because it makes me self-conscious, but it’s a nice thing to have.

Top five coolest things I found while procrastinating:

5) Muppets with People Eyes

 http://muppetswithpeopleeyes.tumblr.com via Urlesque

God bless Photoshop.

4) Make Your Own Kaleidocycle

http://foldplay.com/foldplay.action via Cynthia

Fun, crafty, kind of hypnotic.

3) Space Jam Website

http://www2.warnerbros.com/spacejam/movie/jam.htm via Topless Robot

Still running 15 years later.

2) PyroSand 2

http://www.enigmasand.com/pyro2.html

Not really a game. More of an incredible timesink toy. Doesn’t work in Safari though.

1)   Avi Buffalo

Cannot stop listening to this song.

In the future I’ll try to avoid choosing things that are basically household chores. They are not interesting to write about.

Next: Draw a wicked hard maze.

Destination Meditation

Meditate for an hour


What follows is a pictorial representation of my experience:

Start:

Minute One:

Minute Two:

Minutes Three through Ten:

Minute Eleven:

Minute Fourteen:

Minute Nineteen:

That last part repeated over and over again until the end of the hour. But now I feel like this:

...so I guess I won meditation.

Tomorrow: Clean Everything!

Mission Delicious

Eat five types of food I’ve never tried before

This provided an interesting evening, as I am both an adventurous eater and a terrible cook. Thus, I stuck with the narrow category of “new foods I could prepare without accidentally killing myself." This accounts for the absence of shellfish and flambés. The foods are as follows:

Paneer

This one came up after my roommate told me we had to use his Groupon at an Indian restaurant for dinner tonight.  Chili Paneer was on the menu and it sounded like a food I had never eaten. This is a blurry picture of it I took on my hand-me-down cell phone:

Paneer is “…an unaged, acid-set, non-melting farmer cheese or curd cheese made by curdling heated milk with lemon juice or other food acid.” It is also freaking delicious. I mean, it’s basically a classier version of the cheese curds you get at the state fair, but you get to eat them in a nice restaurant instead of on a bale of hay. Also no greasy fingers or ugly babies with face paint glairing at you while you wait in line.

Anchovies

I bought the rest of my foods at a health food co-op I’ve never felt cool enough to go to before. The only anchovies they had came in a fancy glass bottle. The lack of a tin with an old timey peel away lid felt like cheating, but I persevered.

The Internet told me the best way to eat them was on bread or crackers with hot sauce and a splash of lemon juice. This was kind of not bad. A bit of an acquired taste, but between the sweet, spicy, salty, and overpowering fishiness of it, I could see myself maybe trying it again for a bet. I also tried one au naturale. It was unpleasant.

Edamame

For the uninitiated, these are fancy pea pods where you can’t eat the casings. They usually show up next to your appetizers at fancy pasta bars.

They taste pretty much like you would expect large pea pods to taste. As an added bonus, the casings look the same after you eat them so you can offer them to people as a mildly hilarious prank.

Grits

I impressed my roommates by talking in a southern accent for half-an-hour while I prepared these. These also win my award for least appealing looking breakfast food.

The box informed me that grits should be seasoned with “grated cheese, soy sauce, honey, herbs, spices or seasonings of choice”, which seems oddly specific and then vague. I tried soy sauce, honey, and brown sugar. Somehow the blandness of grits overpowered everything.

Artichoke

This was my most ambitious effort. I learned how to use the steamer, and then I steamed it.

The first bite didn’t live up to the hype. It’s a lot of effort just to scrape a bit of plant matter off the bottom of a leaf. But the lemon butter sauce made it awesome. Artichokes are my new awkward dinner party appetizer offering.

Tomorrow: Meditate for an hour.

O:DAT – Week of December 26th through January 1st

Official schedule that I completely made up:

Monday – Eat five types of food I’ve never tried before

Tuesday – Meditate for an hour

Wednesday – Clean everything

Thursday – Draw a wicked hard maze

Friday – Create a mythos for New Years Eve including symbols and traditions

Saturday – Play in the snow for a solid two hours

Sundays will remain a day of rest and coming up with new lists.

Welcome to Operation: Do A Thing

A preface

I’m a twenty-five-year-old guy who lives in the USA and looks kind of like this:

I graduated in 2008 with a Bachelor in Humanities and moved back in with my parent. Then I freaked out, threw all my possessions in a car, and drove aimlessly around the country for a while. I ended up here in the great state of Minnesota. It looks like this outside my window right now:

I work two jobs, primarily with elementary school kids. I live in a house with five other people, all of them wonderful friends. For my last birthday we went to a Mexican restaurant where I wore a comically large sombrero and drank margaritas out of a fishbowl.

Despite all of this, I am almost perpetually miserable.

I think it has something to do with my paralyzing fear of the future. I’m not on a set career path, and have no real inclination to start one. The only things I really enjoy doing are drawing monsters and yelling at the television, and no one has offered to pay me for either of those yet.

Basically I spend a lot of time procrastinating. So, as a means of change, I’ve decided to activate Operation: Do A Thing.

I even drew a crest:

This sort-of-planned, conveniently vague endeavor will begin today. It will consist of me thinking up random things for each day, and then me doing those things, and then me writing about doing those things. Eloquent eh?

Best-case scenario: I meet interesting people, discover new hobbies, and learn to more actively engage the world. Worst-case scenario: I give up on this in a week and get stabbed by a ghost.

Today’s thing to do was starting a blog. Tomorrow’s thing to do will be thinking up a full week of things to do.

Tally-Ho!