Warning: This update doesn’t really have a whole lot to do with gaming. There are some mentions of it here and there.

I’m sure most readers people reading this will recognise the title of this update as a reference to Pink Floyd’s song Time. For anyone who doesn’t know it, the full verse is as follows:

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

I figured it was a somewhat appropriate line since I celebrated my birthday on Saturday. I suppose some people might consider the song to be a rather morbid one to have in mind when thinking about my birthday, but I look at it as a reminder to not waste my time on this mortal coil. Looking back on the last year, I like to think that I’m doing okay with that. I may not be changing the world, but I’m happy with how I’m living my life. Some of the highlights of the last twelve months of my life –

• I took a risk leaving my permenent job, where I didn’t really have any future career prospects but was somewhat comfortable (if a little bored), for a temporary position with a new employer in hopes of expanding my skills.
• I stopped being such a social hermit and started spending more time with my friends, including moving in with one of them.
• I started a new Pathfinder group, running the Skulls & Shackles campaign, and gave a few people their first taste of role playing.
• I joined a fantastic World of Darkness game run by my housemate, which let me meet some great new friends
• I started exercising and eating better to get myself back in shape. I’ve got a long way to go, but I’ve lost close to 10kg so far, and I’m feeling great.
• I finally started to work past the issues left by my last relationship, and have started trying to move on.
• I got my provisional motorcycle license and bought my dream ride, a Gilera Fuoco 500.
• I won a permanent role at my new workplace, getting me into a more specialised position.

So when I look at that, I think it was a pretty successful year all round. Sure, there were the down times as well, a few emotional meltdowns and a bit of illness, but overall the good far outweighs the bad. For the next year, my goal is to keep this upward trend going. I’m going to keep working on my weight, do my best to learn and improve at my job, and generally just keep moving forward.

So, now that we’ve got that little bit of retrospective analysis out of the way, let’s talk about the fun stuff. Namely, my birthday celebrations.  Since I was working on the Friday (my actual birthday), I decided to have a party on the Saturday. While it was a fairly low key affair, I think a good time was had by all. At peak we had maybe 10 to 12 people there, which is a pretty comfortable number for my living room.

Parties for me aren’t really about the drinking, they’re about getting together with good friends and having some fun (the drinking is just a pleasant addition). For my group, that means throwing on some good comedy (we worked our way through some Argumental, one of Reginald D Hunter’s live shows and a bit of The Wrong Door), listening to some music (being my birthday, I had control, so we listened to plenty of Chevelle, Fair to Midland and Clutch), chatting about anything and everything, and playing some games. We got a few games of Munckin Axe Cop in, and earlier in the day while we were still waiting for more people to arrive, I played one of my favourite cardgames, Blood Bowl Team Manager. So all in all, a great evening.

I also got some great presents. My friend Nell (who runs http://ineedafeed.wordpress.com) got me a copy of Pontypool on DVD, a film I’ve been meaning to watch for some time now, along with some awesome t-shirts. While slightly too small for me thanks to my gut, I’m taking them as encouragement to step up my game on the exercise front. Jim and Emma got me a beautiful notebook to jot down ideas for Cooking the Cosmos in, and had one of their friends who’s good with calligraphy do up the title page for me. I’ll try to get some photos of it all and update this entry with them when I get a chance.

So overall the celebrations were great. I caught up with some people I don’t see anywhere near enough, sampled a number of delicious ciders and schnapps, and just generally had a fantastic time. An utterly satisfactory end to my 23rd year on this world.

Just to finish off, a quick update on upcoming articles for the blog. As I mentioned last time, I’m taking a bit of a break from Cooking the Cosmos, and will be starting up a few new features soon. At some point during the week I hope to get the first installment of a series on character development written up. The series will feature a number of characters that I have written as both NPCs and PCs. The first character I’ll be writing about is Norva Wintarius, an NPC from my Skulls & Shackles game who I have rewritten into a PC for Nell, since she recently joined the group. Since the first game where Nell will be using the character is on Wednesday, I’ll aim to have the article up on Thursday or Friday so I can include some observations from seeing how the character is run.

Until then, take care, and keep those dice rolling.

This update was written while listening to Lindsey Stirling’s self-titled album. Lindsey is an extremely talented artist who writes and performs choreographed violin routines. Although she does excellent covers and songs inspired by games such as Skyrim and Assassin’s Creed, my favourites are her original songs where she experiements with adding electronica and dubstep backing tracks (also created by her) to her violin. Considering that I actually quite dislike dubstep, I find it interesting that her mix of it and violin appeals to me so much. You can find her Youtube channel, LindseyStomp, here: http://www.youtube.com/user/lindseystomp. Personal favourites that I recommend are Crystallize, Elements, Shadows and Stars Align.