It's been an interesting several weeks. I haven't written for several reasons. The first is that I caught a sickness / plague that was going around at my place of work, and it lingered for about 3 weeks. I lacked energy to do much of anything for that time. Oh the joys of a cold that turns into a sinus infection. Anyway, aside from that, my birthday rolled around, my family visited, and then I suddenly got extremely busy. I'll start with the extremely busy part that involved some professional writing.

Video Game Op Ed

This was a random happenstance. So, back before the move to Iowa, I remember seeing something about one of the Penny Arcade guys saying some transphobic thing, and a trans woman named Sophie Prell engaging him in a discussion about the issue. I was reading her stuff thinking "She's awesome and has my full support." Turns out she lives in Iowa right near where I was going to be moving. When I got the Steam Machine, I thought maybe she'd like to see it / review it. I discovered she no longer goes by Sophie, and now goes by Sam instead. So, I contacted him and offered, and it was accepted. I ended up befriending him, and we talked a bit via email. Randomly a little while later, I got a message from him regarding an article being written by Ben Kuchera at Polygon.com surrounding the project being done by BeAnotherLab involving gender swap and the Oculus Rift.  Ben was hoping to talk to someone in the trans* community about the research, and my friend thought of me. I gladly accepted the offer. After chatting with Ben for the article, I was asked if I'd be interested in writing a companion piece to his article, and I was very excited about that opportunity. So through that, I wrote an op ed that showed up on Polygon on Wednesday, March 5th, and as soon as it did, my Twitter exploded with tweets, retweets, and all sorts of comments. I went in to the article fully expecting that the comment section was going to be riddled with negativity and horribleness. I couldn't have been more wrong (insert Thorin Oakenshield meme here). Everything people were saying was exceptionally positive. I can easily say that this was the greatest emotional high I've had in a very long time. Since that article came out, I have been asked to do a few podcasts. One is already out, and another will be out sometime in the next week or so. I really don't know if I'll be doing any more writing for Polygon or any other video game journalism site, but I'll welcome the opportunity to do so. I'm more than happy to be "that girl" in the game journalism community. If you'd like to see more of my work on Polygon, feel free to let them know. Here are links to all the articles mentioned: Being someone else: How virtual reality is allowing men and women to swap bodies Gaming is my Safe Space: Gender Options are Important for the Transgender Community Super Gamer Podcast: Episode 27 – Steam Machines, Gender Swap, and a new friend!

Vlog and 4chan

On a slightly related note, some of you may be familiar with the online community 4chan, which is known for being some of the best and often worst parts of the internet. Most internet memes are spawned there. It's a place for anonymity and can often be a place for ridiculousness and hate. I ended up on the target of some folks on 4chan, particularly those that participate in an overlap of the gaming board and the extreme right wing board. I will link to the thread, but I would encourage care, because some of the things said there are so horrible, that it's not the best place in the world to be for emotional sanity and health. So anyway, they decided to target my Steam Machine video that I posted a month ago. Apparently they didn't like the fact that a trans woman, or even any kind of woman, would want to talk about video games or review technology. So, they started spamming the dislike button and filling the comments with anti-trans hate comments. Some of them were sexual in nature. This all happened when I was home sick from work with the plague. My email and phone started getting notifications, and I was very confused with why. I then got a note from someone telling me what was happening. I think the goal was to make me feel bad or bad about myself. They failed pretty miserably at that. I don't need everyone's validation, especially people I don't know, to know who I am, and a stream of negative comments from children with no faces is really just an inconvenience. I was more annoyed that I had to waste my time deleting and banning people than anything else. My feelings were not hurt. My ego was not hurt. All in all, it told me that there are people in the world that spend a lot of time and energy deliberately trying to hurt other people. That's a very sad thing. If you're interested in seeing what these sad folks said, you can find the thread here.

New Friends

I have been going to a meetup on Thursday nights for a few months now, and I've mentioned before that they really feel like "my people". I've grown a bit closer to all of them now, which is awesome. I chat with a number of the folks regularly through the Facebooks, and I feel like I'm starting to fit in a bit more. Making new friends as an adult is hard, and it's definitely a bit strange coming into a group as a single person when every one of them is paired up. In the past, I think this would have bothered me a lot more, but it really doesn't phase me at all where I am in life right now. I'm really enjoying getting to know new people and learning about their walks of life. I'm so grateful to them for allowing me to get to know them and for their open ears to my life experiences. I'm sure it's strange and uncomfortable to have this weird, depressed girl come in and start chatting them up. So, if any of you are reading, thank you for your kindness and patience. I had some of them over a week ago for a Cards Against Humanity night. Side note, if you haven't heard of this game, you should look into it. It's essentially Apples to Apples for horrible people. It's one of those games that's just really hard to get tired of. Anyway, it was my first night having people over by myself, and I think it went well despite there being a little bit of awkwardness in the air. I've only known these people since January, and I guess that's to be expected. I am sure that will change over time.

Sisters

I just wanted to take a moment and say I have awesome sisters. In the past month or two, I've had several moments that just have made me stop and go...damn, why are my sisters so great. My older sister called me up randomly one night and asked me how she could make the world a better place for the LGBT community. She had heard the Macklemore song "Same Love" and thought I should listen to it (I tend not to listen to stuff that's on the radio). It was really awesome to hear her say that. And then there's my younger sister who routinely tells me how annoyed she gets when people post religious anti-gay stuff on Facebook. When my sisters stand up for me, I'm shocked because I feel like I made their lives more difficult. I feel like I should be thanking them for tolerating their weird sister. So thank you, Becky and Melissa, for being the best ever.

VD / New Car

Yup, everyone's favorite yearly venerial disease known as Valentine's Day happened, or as I used to call it / call it now "Single's Awareness Day". I was expecting this day to be rough, and thankfully it wasn't. I decided to spend that weekend doing awesome things. I went car shopping. My old Focus was starting to feel like it was on its last legs. Yeah, the very same focus from back when I started this blog in 2002. I got the car in February of 2002. It had 14000 miles on it when I got it. When I traded it in, it had 175000 miles on it. The car saw me through quite a bit over the years. It's been in the ditch a few times. It's cost me a bundle of money to get things like the fuel pump or the rear wiring harness repaired. It was just not feeling safe anymore. Time to trade up. I went looking around last December. At the time, I was pretty interested in the Ford Escape due to its cool body styling and technology. I test drove one, and I really liked it. Just for funzies, I decided to drive the step up from that, the Edge, and I pretty much fell in love with the car. It was exactly what I wanted: more room, comfort, bells and whistles, and pretty. I wasn't ready to buy though. It wasn't until the weekend of VD that I had the money set aside to put down on the car. I ended up with a fancy pants platinum white 2013 Edge. I'm loving it so far. It drinks gas a lot faster, which isn't as fun, but so far, that's the only downside. I feel safer on the road, and I just love having a car that's new. Here are some sexy photos for you to enjoy.

Birthday

I ended up not being able to pick up the car that weekend. I had to wait until the following Tuesday to actually take delivery. As it happened, that fell on my birthday. I essentially got to say that I got a new car for my birthday. It wasn't intended to be that way, but hey, I'm not complaining. It ends up being the most expensive birthday present I've ever bought myself. I'll be paying for it for a long time, I'm sure. So yeah, my birthday happened. My parents and younger sister came to visit me the following weekend. It was nice to be able to take them around town in the new car. I took them up to Snus Hill Winery in Madrid, Iowa (pronounced MAD-drid, not Ma-DRID...weird, right? I think so too.) I'd never driven on unpaved roads during February before. My brand new car was covered in mud. Turns out I've been to that winery enough that they now recognize me. That's pretty crazy. We all enjoyed some of the wine and bought some to take home. Later that evening, we went out for dinner. They didn't stay long into the next day, but it was cool to have them here.

Dungeons and Dragons

I have watched many friends play Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) over the years, but I've never participated in it myself. When I recently discovered that a good high school friend of mine lives in this area not a mile from home, we started chatting, and I got invited to play D&D with his friends. It's something the ex and I had discussed doing at some point, but never had a group to play with. I figured, hey...get me out of my comfort zone and try something new. So I went. I created a female half elf archer / fletcher named Liara (after Liara T'Soni in Mass Effect). I've played a few times since in the campaign. It definitely takes some getting used to. I'm not used to having to speak for the character and know all the traits and what not. It's fun though. The last time I played, I shot a lot of evil creatures in the face with arrows. I can't say that I'll go every Sunday because it's a huge time commitment, but I'm enjoying it so far. Yes...yes...I'm a nerd.

Kitty Love

I've gotta say, my two kitties have been really affectionate since my ex left. It's very noticeably different. They crowd around me on the couch and huddle up to me at night. They're very social kitties, and it just surprises me. Scarlet has taken to snuggling up to me every night, and now she's even started to clean my face. My entire face. It seemed adorable the first time, but kitty tongues are like sandpaper. Eventually it's not so pleasant anymore. I've started to shoo her away a little just because it hurts, but it is very cute.

Vlog Ideas

Lastly, I've been working on my vlog. This weekend I shot the footage for episode 3. I've been trying to compile a list of things I'd like to do episodes on and what kinds of videos I'd like to do in the future. So if you have thoughts on topics that fall in to the nerdy category, please feel free to let me know in the comments section below.