pdx42 was here for Thanksgiving. I had to explain to some British friends that we celebrate the genocide of Native Americans on Columbus day, not Thanksgiving, but other than that, things went fine, if low key.

Only three were there and not seeing any place selling turkey (and not wanting to eat turkey sandwiches for the next five weeks), I made a roast lemon chicken with rosemary potatoes. It was a nice meal, but finishing off the bottle of wine, a bottle of Advocaat and a couple of Guinness has left my head the worse for wear.

Ow.

That's the first time I've roasted a chicken in this oven. It runs a touch cold and I overcompensated a bit and the meat was a touch dry in spots, but not too bad considering that I had never made that recipe before.

This might seem to be about World of Warcraft, but it's not, so bear with me. It's worth reading and thinking about the implications.

If you're not familiar with the game "World of Warcraft", it's a massive online world with over 6 million players, divided across many servers. The server I play on (rather sporadically, I might add), is named "Twisting Nether". I'm in a guild named "Disposable Hero" (if you know how much I like Michael Franti and you know his first group, I can assure you that the name is merely a pleasant coincidence).

The guild leader of Disposable Hero is named Kahierden. He's 17 years old, but there's only one other thing I really know about him. More on that in a moment.

Kahierden built Disposable Hero into a friendly, decent sized guild. He helps out other players who are less experienced, he helped us avoid a rather unpleasant guild takeover and is generally a nice guy. I chatted with him about politics, life, and other things and came away thinking "this is a nice guy". In fact, while I don't know him well, it's safe to say that, oddly enough, I think of him as a friend.

There's just one little problem. I really should have written about him in the past tense. Kahierden had a heart murmur and would often be gone in the hospital for days at a time. A few months ago, he went into the hospital and never came out. He knew he was dying and before he went, he gave his brother his username and password so that his brother could log on and transfer control over the guild to another player named Slyniti. He was dying but he wanted to make sure his online friends were taken care of.

After he died, we didn't know what to do. It's not as if we could attend his funeral. We considered him a friend and our guild leader, but we didn't know who he was. In game, we got together and had a moment of silence for him. This is probably one of the most unsettling things I've encountered, but how else do we honor his memory? One can say "it's only a game", but Kahierden was a real person.

This is going to be more and more common. As more people start transferring parts of their lives to online worlds, they're going to be making friends in a way that society isn't used to. Many of us today have real and virtual friends. What do we do when a virtual friend passes away, particularly one who so many people know and like? It would be unfair to say that I felt true grief over his passing, but I'm disturbed by this nonetheless.

I suppose some folks are going to think "get away from the damned computer", but that's like shoveling the ocean back with a fork. Even if I do it, millions of others are not and we'll see and hear more about this all the time. Our world is changing and the future of the Internet is going to continue to change things in ways we can't even imagine.

I hugged Roger and Carolee goodbye last night. Due to scheduling difficulties, I might not see them before I leave. In fact, I might not see them again. The night before, I hugged Silke goodbye. That was tough. I love Silke dearly and she's a wonderful friend but I might not see her again, either.

A few days ago, I filled my car with gas, realizing that it was the last time that I was feeding this loyal beast. At just under 100,000 miles, she's never let me down. I've cared for her tenderly and fixed her few ailments and she's rewarded me by taking me hither and yon without complaint. Now I'm selling her to Schwern and it almost feels like betrayal.

I just bought my last bag of coffee beans over here. I walk by buildings and wonder if I'll see them again. I don't remember going through this years ago, when I moved to Amsterdam. But then, I wasn't a regular blogger at the time and this pseudo-memory wasn't available to me.

Unlike my rather disastrous adventure in Amsterdam, I've prepared carefully this time. All of the legal "t"s and "i"s are crossed and dotted. I've carefully built a solid resume, continuously improved my craft and blogged relentlessly with the intent of keeping my name out there. I volunteered for the Perl Foundation, wrote articles and, by a curious stroke of luck, have my name on the cover of a book.

It's not blind luck, though. Lady Luck has keen eyes and if you keep working at something, breaks come your way from time to time, so long as you're paying attention. And I have. Years of dreaming and always keeping this possibility in the back of my mind have paid off; I'm moving to the UK. I'm also getting rid of most of my possessions and have already started thinking about how my retirement will work out, decades from now. That will probably be my next big goal.

But what's a goal? Why do we have them? Many folks think that their purpose in life is to achieve their goals. They're wrong. Once you achieve your goals, then what? Is it time to die? No! They have it backwards. Their goal in life should be to follow their purpose and each person's purpose is to understand their driving needs and pursue them with integrity.

My driving needs are adventure, learning, and challenging assumptions (rebellion, if you will). Those are a dangerous combination and if I didn't know what they were, I'd still follow them, but perhaps in an unhealthy manner. How many people, not consciously understanding their driving need for adventure wind up cheating on a spouse? If they consciously knew that adventure was so important to them, there are plenty of ways they could satisfy this need without being dishonest.

Others have different driving needs. Some need security or comfort (and not in the Maslow's Hierarchy sense) and find themselves too timid to take risks. Others have a driving need for justice and that, particularly when combined with a sense of adventure or rebellion, can lead them to do stupid things. Witness the Earth Liberation Front.

So my needs for adventure and learning have led me to pursue moving to Europe with a focus which has surprised me. It took me years to find my brother; it's taken me years to move to Europe. Anyone familiar with me knows that I'm often not a good "long-term project" kind of guy. I have a huge library of partially read computer books. I have tons of unfinished software projects on my computer. I have a screenplay I should rewrite but probably won't. But somehow I've pulled it all together enough to relentlessly pursue Europe.

The beast of my purpose, however, is only temporarily sated. It's gorging itself on the prospect of new adventure and learning but my rebellious streak is a separate creature altogether and it's one I've not entirely tamed. If anything will be my downfall, it's the latter.

I have just over a week left in the US and most of that time will be spent with Sean and Lil, the two people in my life who mean the most to me. They're both brilliant and wonderful people and leaving them is going to be the most difficult part of all of this. I don't mean that to slight the others who are close to me, but without Sean and Lil, gallivanting off to a new life would be much easier.

I'll keep blogging and letting people know what I'm up to. I'll read your blogs and keep track of your lives. I'll miss all of you -- a phone call or a blog entry isn't the same -- but I'll make new friends, too. Life is going to get very interesting soon.

So we're having a potluck over at _sister_madly_ and pdx42's house tonight. Since it's a "build your own burrito" night, we were asked what we would bring. One friend wrote:

Yo tengo crema y jalapenos. Te los quieres? Me gusta burritos! Burritos con carne! Burritos con frijoles! burritos con crema!

My Spanish is pretty rusty, but I could read that. Just to be sure I didn't mess up, I ran it through Babelfish, which translated that to:

I have cream and jalapenos. You you want them? I like young donkeys! Young donkeys with meat! Young donkeys with frijoles! young donkeys with cream!

Last night I wrote a moderately longish post listing various real ideas humanity has had about interstellar travel, ending with the possibilities stemming from the relatively obscure (until recently) work of Burkhart Heim, and my browser crashed. It was too late to retype it.

Now I have to drive pdx42 and _sister_madly_ to the airport so they can spend a week on the gothcruise. I shouldn't have canceled. I'm envious.

_sister_madly_'s birthday was yesterday and naturally, I didn't post a huge happy birthday message here. Oops.

I think I'll get a pass, though. Friday was spent acquiring the things for the birthday party. On Saturday pdx42 and I went over to tmonsta and city_of_night's house and set up. Saturday night confirmed that many of us are going to a special Hell and much of Sunday was spent cleaning up, including getting on my hands and knees and scrubbing tmonsta's kitchen floor, only to discover that the marks won't come out. Fortunately, she suspects the marks were there prior to the party and merely remained unnoticed.

Many great friends showed up at the party, far too many for me to type out here. Never enough time to talk to all of them but it was great to see them. All things considered, it was three days well-spent. Welcome to your fourth decade, L!

Ich verstehe nur ein bisschen Deutsch: "I only understand a little German."

Given that two of my best friends, pdx42 and coradee, are fluent in German, as is my father (who's lived in Germany for the past two decades, I might add), it seemed only natural that I should want to learn the language. There's really no reason I need to learn the language, though, other than a love of learning. Still, being trilingual can't be a bad thing.

I purchased the Pimsleur "German in Ten Days" course. Having already learned French, I'm not so naïve as to believe that I'll be speaking German in ten days but hopefully I'll pick up enough to be able to terribly embarrass myself.

Feeling rather nervous about this, I wasn't planning on telling coradee since she's German and I was certain I would butcher the language, but I had dinner with her last night and had some questions about pronunciation which I couldn't exactly ask the Pimsleur course. Fortunately, she informed me that my pronunciation was excellent, so there were no worries there.

I'm rather torn about the Pimsleur course. Since it focuses exclusively on spoken German, there are no written materials. I'll not be able to read or write German while I'm learning to speak it. On the plus side, it means less of a distraction and I can focus on the spoken part more readily. Still, it would be nice to have transcripts. The word for "only", nur, sounded like "nua". When spoken quickly the distinction is subtle and can be lost. I had to look the word up since I couldn't quite hear what was being said.

The introductory course is a series of ten half-hour lessons. The course promises that I can "spend just thirty minutes a day on each lesson." Uh, nein. That's a crock. I'm doing one lesson a day (I'm on lesson four today) and I have to repeat each lesson four or five times to get it down. Maybe I'm a bit slow, but unless one is phenomenally gifted, I doubt anyone is going to get by on a half-hour a day. I knew that "spend just thirty minutes a day" was a lie when I picked it up, but it still irks me that they would be deliberately deceptive.

Assuming I finish the ten lessons and feel comfortable, I'm going to buy the "Pimsleur German Level 1" course. It's thirty lessons and should give me a good start.

Auf Wiedersehen.

Everyone else had carved their pumpkin but for some reason, I didn't feel inspired. After giving in to peer pressure, I finally knelt in front of my pumpkin and tried to figure out what to do. It would not stand up straight and the stem of the pumpkin wound up curling out from the side. That's when _sister_madly_ piped up.

"Hey, that kind of looks like a tail."

By god, she was right. That's when inspiration struck. I turned to pdx42.

"Hand me that head over there."

Admittedly, this is not a line one hears in everyday conversation.

( And the carnage began ... )

_sister_madly_ came over and we went jogging again last night. Two miles in 22 minutes is her best time so far! I swear her body is taking to it faster than I mine did. Unfortunately, running in the dark isn't cool. I had to adjust our route for safety but the first leg was still a bit hairy.

I actually like doing this. I could see myself introducing others to running. It's fun, relaxing, and forces me to not slack off on my running.

And in other news, Howard Zinn's fantastic book A People's History of the United States is going to be made into a television series! This is fantastic news. I doubt that people will wake up and stop slavishly worshiping some of the SOBs who built this country, but it's nice to know that people are still trying.

Good music. Good friends. And we're all sitting around on computers. Two outa three ain't bad, right?

On the other hand, _sister_madly_ did let me respond to one of the guys IMing her so it's not too bad. Poor guy. He's probably scarred for life. Still, that's what he gets for IMing a complete stranger, eh?

Went down to the Lovecraft festival tonight with acu_martin and xwrn. Too bad they were sold out.

Later on we ran into my old friend Sparky. I always run into him at the oddest places/times.

I complained that we weren't going to be enjoying tentacles snaking out of the shadows. Sparky replied that it depends upon which bar we hit.

A few pints of beer later and I'm ready to hit the sack. I think I'll read myself to sleep with pleasant nightime stories of Nyarlathotep. Nothing like a big helping of Old Ones to firmly fix a smile on one's face while dreaming.

(Has anyone else noticed that LJ is not emailing comments? Grr ...)

Sitting there, in a huge church, noticing that the organ's pipes looked like Turkish cigarillo's, when Neil Gaiman walked to the podium. A lady shouted out "I love you, Neil". Then, to my horror, I found myself shouting "so do I!"

_sister_madly_, pdx42 and I managed to show up at the Neil Gaiman reading/signing moderately well-lubricated. Seems we got there so early that only a few people were there before us. So we nipped over to a bar "for a drink". Or more. These things happen.

By the time we got back to the reading only a few people arrived after us.

And lest I embarrass her, I will not tell you about _sister_madly_'s attempt to bunny-hop up the stairs on a full bladder. I put her up to it and I knew she would regret it. I'm a bastard. She was cute. pdx42, upon hearing of this, just shook his head. He's kind of used to it by now.

All of this, of course, is how we showed up at the Gaiman's reading with a bit of a buzz, hence my outburst. Oops.

Possibly the best part of the evening, though, was pdx42 pointing out the sign on the wheelchair lift which thoughtfully reminded the wheelchair-bound that, in case of fire, they must use the stairs.

Nothing like a little ecumenical humor at the expense of the handicapped, eh?

The reading, by the way, was wonderful. At one point he called on a little girl for the Q and A session. He repeated her question for all to hear and said "that's a very good question". How very gracious. What a nice guy.

His latest book is Anansi Boys. Go buy it. It's fantastic.