26 March 2002

Just in case you were curious, this morning's journal entry is being written to the musical accompaniment of my MP3 player's randomizer, set at twice its usual volume in an effort to block out the world's most annoying and irregular computer noise, which is coming from the locked room next door.

I'm trying to think of it as my punishment for having gone completely off the deep end last night. No, never mind, I'll get to it.

So we were Halling away, and my connection dropped out. I'm getting awfully tired of that - it's got something to do with the recent switchover of cable modem service, even though Matt and I don't have a cable modem, because our ISP links up with the cable's lines further up the line. Service isn't usually interrupted for more than a couple of minutes, but boy is it annoying.

But this was different - instead of dropping out entirely, I still had access to all the usual internet services. Just not the Meadehall. Matt eventually figured out that for some reason the domain lookup wasn't working. (If that's gobbldegook to you, don't worry about it. Just translate it as: Matt located the problem, and it wasn't anything we could do anything about.)

As he occasionally does, Matt decided to take this personally. By the time we'd located an alternate server to use and got everyone moved over, he was in too bad a mood to play. I did what I always do when he's being especially irritable over something I think is astonishingly trivial: I shut up and didn't say anything and waited for him to calm down. (It's what he does for me when I'm being irritable over nothing, and I always appreciate it.)

So I went right on Halling. And after the Hall, Matt decided he was going to bed, still irritable. I wanted to play some more, and anyway trying to go to sleep next to an irritable spouse is, if you've never tried it yourself, only needlessly frustrating for both of you. I changed clothes and kissed Matt good night, and went back down a session with the Scum.

This made me happy at first - I'd been jonesing to play the Scum all day, and I can't bring them on the Hall proper.

But things went downhill from there. A whole laundry list of nit-picky little irritating things happened to the Scum. Some of them are things they're used to (like having their competence questioned) which they usually just ignore. Some of them are things they were expecting (like getting demoted) but which are still annoying. Some of them were heavy on embarrassment (like getting chewed out by their boss in front of other people) which is never good for anyone's temper. That's not even the whole list.

And at some point an event happened which the Scum had been arguing about with Karen's character Cat, and it happened the way Cat had insisted it would, and Karen sent me a silly little teasing message to say, "Nyah, nyah, I was right and you were wrong." I know she meant it to be silly and teasing, but between being tense over Matt's irritation and the Scum snarling their frustration in my forebrain, it came through to me as smug.

I hate smugness. Nothing makes me want to punch someone's teeth in more than when they're being smug.

I said a few things to K.T. in messages that I'm sure communicated a little of my state of mind, because she attempted some damage control here and there. But still, for at least an hour of that session I was so angry - by proxy, mind you - that I was actually crying, and shaking so hard I could barely type.

In case you're wondering, yes, I was aware that this was completely irrational of me. I can't even blame it on PMS.

At some point, Karen asked why I was being so quiet (since the Scum have this tendency toward mouthiness) and I actually told her. I probably made her feel much worse than she deserved, but I had no idea how to leaven it. There was a little more damage control in the session, and by the time we wrapped up, I was feeling better.

Of course, now I'm feeling mildly sheepish for making K.T. and Karen have to do damage control - and take actions I'm not sure they would otherwise have taken - just because I was feeling irritable.

On the other hand, the Gods of Sleep Deprivation are very pleased with me this morning. I didn't get to bed until after 2:30.

--Liz