the sun and the moon and the stars

So, I appear to have disappeared for three months - oops?

In fact, the last three months have been hectic and draining, although not unenjoyable. I've been seconded to a project role in my organisation's head office, which is full of interesting challenges - although it's always a bit of a startling reminder how disconnected the corporate branch is from the frontline work, and how different are their concerns and priorities. Still - it's great on the resume, it's interesting on a personal level (I've finally realised that to be happy in a job, I need to have growth opportunities) and I managed to negotiate a 10% payrise.

(I was very proud of myself - I've never negotiated my pay before, and it's substantially more than they'd intended to pay me.)

Buuuut -- I'm working in the city which adds nearly an hour of commute to my day (with considerable extra expense, but whatever), and I can't cruise on autopilot, and there's a shit ton of meetings and workshops. So I end every day exhausted, which means my evenings are a combination of some desultory gaming (Exalted! Shadowrun! Dungeons and Dragons! Exalts Fall Into the Wyld and Land In Faerun! Fun times) and staring at the wall trying to recoup some energy. Oh, and I'm no longer able to do my 9-day fortnights in this role.

So. Tired Eleanor is tired. Happy, though.

How y'all doing? ;)

Life has been pretty much uneventful.

Mostly. I'm working at a new job; it's only a temporary contract, although I was told otherwise when I was recruited - still, it's valuable experience in a growing industry I'd been hoping to enter, so it's definitely worth doing. It's a hell of a slog; there's more work there than I can handle, so I've been working a lot of unpaid overtime* and being very stressed. For all of that, though, I actually really enjoy the job itself and not hating my job is a delightful novelty.

(* that's 'a lot' by my standards, not by 'crunch time in the videogaming industry' standards or anything)

Other than that, though, life continues as it always does. Gaming three times a week - D&D with Chris's group on Tuesday nights, Exalted and/or Shadowrun with my long-running group on Wednesday and Saturday nights. Raiding in WoW on Sunday and Monday nights. When I put it like that, it's no surprise I've been a ghost around these parts, I guess.

I've noticed a real tendency to disengage from social networks lately - I still read everything multiple times a day, I just ... find it hard to get up the wherewithal to comment. I shall attempt to rectify that.

So, I'm trying to work on my current vid project, and I keep coming up against the source quality. It is bad, people - we're talking "cam copy of a pirated movie" bad, and I don't know how people manage to vid with this shit. I certainly can't. Any scene with a reasonable amount of motion has horrifically blurry interstitial frames, so short/fast clips just look like ten kinds of mess.

Which makes me sad, because I'm going to have to wait for better quality source and I want to vid now. >:(

Also, ( cut for mental health whining )