The local Tim Horton's I have been hanging out in has a little character. There are a bunch of older men that come here and sit down in the morning and talk on various things. They are all over the retirement age, some are in their eighties. They are mostly Croatian. The sit there in the mornings and chat in Croatian. They have been in this country for years, most still have an accent and they prefer to speak their own language. I love it. It is a diversity that exists in many countries that have been receiving regular immigration for decades. Like the United States and Canada. The group is not exclusive to that country of origin or language. There is Joe, who migrated from Germany in the fifties or sixties. His Wife died a couple years ago and he likes to talk about how smart she was and how they never fought or disagreed, memory editing for sure, but acceptable if he wishes to remember her that way. He has two daughters. He grew up in Nazis Germany and has a few of the ideas from that time that have not been removed, because that is what happened to children; they grow up thinking the state of the world they grow up in is normal and everything afterwards is the change. There is an older gentleman who sometimes comes in with his wife and joins the group when he is alone. They are people. Mostly immigrants with interests and community. They are a microcosm of the way the world works and the way that people work.
I love it.
My girlfriend has told me to use her Netflix Account. She told me to do it months ago. Months and months ago. I resisted. But I started a few weeks ago. I have been watching Star Trek in all it's various forms. Because I love SciFi. I loved Voyager when I watched it, while it was on. But I have started watching Deep Space Nine. Mostly because the is a plot that threads it's way though the series that did not thread through the other Star Treks. Until Enterprise, but be then people were getting tired of Star Trek. There was something like 26 seasons and a dozen movies, not even mentioning the original series. They started having to offer snatches and glimpses of female characters taking their clothes off to get ratings. So I am using her Netflix account and loving it. Last week, Marvel's Ironfist was released and I finished watching it last night. It was interesting, but I did not find it as compelling as Luke Cage or Jessica Jones. I really did enjoy that there were characters from Dare Devil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage in it, but it felt like it was centered on yet another rich kid who saw his parents killed before his eyes. Another Oliver Queen, a Batman with less gadgets. A white man. Not a minority, a woman or a disabled person. You know what I mean? Next coming soon is the Punisher, who debuted on Dare Devil. I can't watch Legion, because the cable company that is hosting it has an iron grip on it. There is a Justice League like series coming up with those minor characters coming soon. Then we get more with JJ, DD, and LC in their own series next year. IronFist did advance the understanding of one of the super villains in the series. So not a total loss.
My girlfriend, Natural20, has gotten me into applying for education jobs. It is a good thing. Landscaping really sucks. And I really love children, especially in a white wine sauce! Most of the jobs are tutoring jobs. I have had two interviews and four or five phone calls. I have one interview later this week. Had to miss it earlier this week because I had to take apart a landscaping display at the Home Show in Big Smoke. I really like the interviews as they allowed me to talk about something I am passionate about. She asked me about some pretty difficult things in education, like how to deal with developmentally delayed students and autistic children. I suggested additional ways to help them learn that she had not considered and when asked how i would teach multiple people at different learning levels the same, I responded with the same way that they performed the task. I felt energized after that brief encounter. The half hour interview actually lasted for more than an hour.
My Exalted game has had some bumps. One of my new players is an old friend and the problem is that he is having a clash with my changes and his personality quirks. My game is darker than he was used to Exalted being, more mature and quite frankly he is not that mature. He has stated to the players that he wants to do things to destroy the world that I had created. I find that unsettling. He feels that that is his duty as a player. I don't like that. His play style is irrational too. He does not move in a straight line plot wise. He likes to jump and picks tiny plot points and makes them his focus, which makes him difficult to predict. And he is arrogant. He is upset that he has no artifact toys, neglecting to understand that none of the players have any toys. It is like saying to your Parents, "I can't get a job, because I don't have a car," or telling his Girlfriend that he can't marry her because he does not own a house. He is so material, that when he voiced his ideas that his Character was poorly made, I made his character, because it did not have any artifacts, one of the players told him that he could have her artifacts. Which was a really nice gesture, but then he spoiled it by saying no, because it was not good enough for him. The direction the went in was one that I was not prepared to go to, but I try to only tell people no once a session and they already asked to go one location where I had nothing, instead they went into a location where I had almost no preparation, I had read a lot of material about the place once many years ago and a friend ran a campaign the once so I had something. They went to Rathess, which is a really big city in ruins with a bunch of really big mysteries and a lot of prep work required. I had to do it cold and on the fly. And my subtle suggestions about where going other places on the way failed. So I ran the adventure off the top of my head. They had fun. I just told my player, that if he is unhappy with his character he can remake it, but I foresee this just ending in him not wanting to play anymore. Which I am fine with. Except that his wife seems to be enjoying the interaction with one of the other players and he is one of those people that won't let his wife out of his sight, not because of anything nefarious, but general insecurities and immaturity.
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