Ramblings of a Samurai and his Duct Tape

Pleasantly surprised

I had a fleeting moment of inspiration and after typing down the beginnings of it so I can figure it out, I started clearing off the refuse and dishes from my comp desk so I could begin. My garbage bags needed to be taken out after this so I jogged through the snow-lined parking lot to bring them to the dumpster. Even though I was wearing a t-shirt, I wasn't feeling cold and decided to get the mail from the other side of the lot, and it was in my mailbox that I found my surprise.





A package from this here website. I open it up once I'm back in front of my computer, and find inside a holiday card. Inside that card is a pin, and what I'm assuming are two bookmarks. Now this isn't much, but it's just enough to warm my spirits. Despite the snow all around, the holiday movies and commercials for them all over the tele, this hasn't felt too much like the holiday season to me until I received this.





Now that I think about it I'm a little surprised I haven't received any holiday cards from family yet. I have a rather large extended family, and by this time of year I usually have at least 3, but so far I have none. I'm not one to notice this kind of detail normally, and could really care less whether one of my many aunts does or does not send me one, but to not receive any so far? Makes me more than a little curios. Now that I think of it I know the main reason why I haven't received any. For the longest time I've gone by the nicks Navatar1 and Ducttapesamurai. But I do have another that I go by, though much less often. And I would never share this third one with family, though I wouldn't hide it either.





Perverted Hermit. And various misspellings of it thereof, always with vowels missing.





Mostly I use those nicks with online gaming, such as Guild Wars, and WoWarcraft when I used to play it. Holy Hermit was a pretty good Paladin before I realized that game was sucking away my life, as sure as a Lich or tick might. Oh how annoyed I would be that everyone thought I was a healing paladin because I put Holy in my name when I created that char. I didn't realize the mistake I had made until it was too late, and I wasn't about to either go back and start a new paladin, or pay whatever the fee was that blizzard charged to change the name. For me in that instance, Holy was all about bring the holy cleansing fire to the undead and netherworld beasties. But enough with the aside and reminicences of the past. It's more than a little disturbing finding myself being nostalgic over a computer game now, though thinking of it, and what it meant to me, oddly gives me a little more inspiration. I'll have to ponder on that later.





No, the thing about that nick that's important is the Hermit portion. I am somewhat becoming a hermit, isolating myself from certain facets of the world. Part of that is where I live. There are very few people worth my time here in this part of Iowa. At least in the places I frequent. Part of that is the hours I keep, which I'm attempting to shift a little, but I realize my attempts so far have been halfhearted. I do make attempts to visit with family up in the cities when I can, but it's hard when all the people I care about are such a long drive, and when I can make the time, there's never enough of it.





Down here I barely ever see people. Sure, there's plenty of players at the casino that I deal to, and other dealers and people to talk to. But interests just don't overlap. Most times I would rather be alone with my thoughts or notebook in the break room, than to venture out back and into the filthy smoke shack. Far too many of my coworkers smoke. And of those few times they don't go out there, I feel disconnected from them. I suppose that disconnect is one thing I should take and try to bring to my characters, since I know it so well.





Wow, I've gone quite far afield in tonight's ramblings. I guess the only thing I have left to say is that it will be nice having proper bookmarks now. I always use whatever's handy when I've been reading before now, such as pay stubs, random scraps of paper, even my credit card once in a while!