Just Catching Up

Not too much interesting stuff has happened since my last post, but I figured it would be a good idea so that I don't forget the few things that really are interesting.

Last Friday marked the last session of the Changeling game I was playing in. Gene tried to stretch it as long as he could, but it got to the point where our characters would just be "bean counting" after last week's session. That day was also Steve's birthday. I have no idea how old he is, but we had cake. David's D&D 2.0 game was cancelled that night, due to the fact that I was the only player other than Steve who was actually there.

We're having Thanksgiving dinner at my parents' house this year, since Mom had surgery last week. We planned the menu, and I'm making brussels sprouts. I've got to stop at the grocery store tonight and get them, plus the ingredients to make them "less boring." I found a recipe on the Food Network website for Sauteed Brussels Sprouts with Red Cabbage. Yum.

Due to Mom's health issues, she's lost a lot of weight. In fact, she's lost so much that we now both wear the same size jeans! No lie; I actually had her put on the pair I was wearing yesterday, and she fit them better than I do!

This morning, I packed two sandwiches to take to work for lunch--one was pastrami and the other was salami. I then went upstairs to eat my breakfast before I had to leave for work, and when I came downstairs, I found Tabby (Tim's cat) "chasing" one of the sandwiches off the dining room table! I found the other one on the kitchen floor. Grrrr.

I didn't have time to pack more sandwiches before I had to leave, so I got Five Guys for lunch today.

Fun, fun, fun

Halloween was pretty busy, all told. I went to work in my RennFest garb, and we had the annual party there. Then I went to the Haven for their Halloween party. Anna, Kayla and Jason came in and talked for a few minutes, then later on, Anna and Kayla came back and I went home around 10:30 or 11.

The next day, Jason and I decided to go back to the Haven, and I taught him to play Khet (laser chess), and we played Settlers of Catan and a couple of other games before we went home--four hours later.

Monday evening, I went to the Walkersville chapel to help set up for the election, and Tuesday was the election itself. It went pretty smoothly, except that once all the machines were put away, the chief judges kept us there for another hour and a half because their counts were off. We finally got to leave the chapel at around ten though.

We have a new president--Barack (sp?) Obama. I'm okay with that outcome, even though I voted for Nader. When Heather and I were looking online at the candidates' solutions to various issues, Nader's and Obama's solutions were all pretty good, but to me it seemed that Nader's ideas had more of a chance of getting implemented in a four-year time period than Obama's did. So, despite having voted for someone else, I'm perfectly okay with Obama as president.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were work as usual, and then after work Friday I went to the Haven for the "big" Changeling game--the session that could either end the whole campaign, continue with the villain known, or end the whole campaign.

The campaign almost ended, but the villain (Carl's character, H.P. Lovemore) was revived, so we were able to continue. Now, all of us will be playing on Friday's, instead of in individual sessions during the week. I also got my own copy of the Changeling manual, so that's pretty neat.

David's D&D 2.0 game went okay, except for the fact that most of the party members kept arguing about the stupidest little things and wouldn't get their acts together long enough to actually play. The three people rescuing my half of the party had one encounter, then they rescued us in a second encounter. By the time we got to a place where we could have an encounter as a full party, it was already ten o'clock, and time to stop. Grr.

Ah well, there's always next Friday.

Yesterday was a pretty lazy day, but around 4 or so, I paid my bills and stuff before going to run errands around 6. I went to Bath & Body Works for shower gel and more body cream (plus other stuff); CVS for shampoo, conditioner and Blistex; Rosa Pizza for dinner; Advance Auto for antifreeze; WaWa for gas and a lighter (for the oil fragrance warmer I'd bought at Bath & Body Works); and the storage facility for some of my music and writing stuff. I still have yet to put the antifreeze in the bug, but I'm going to do that either later this evening or tomorrow before I head out to work--it's been screaming at me about the temperature for at least a week now.

It would be really neat if . . .

. . . there were an RPG for Pern, don't you think?

End thought.

On with the updates:

Kayla and I didn't actually get to see the new Batman movie the day after my last post, but we did see it eventually. It was awesome. Of course, with my little knowledge of the Batman universe, I was kind of spoiled--I just knew that Gordon couldn't really be dead, 'cause he had to become Commissioner first.

Heath Ledger was awesome as the Joker; if I didn't know it was him, I wouldn't have recognized him--his voice was completely different from usual, and the makeup was (necessarily) heavy, of course.

A few Sundays ago (I don't remember exactly how many), Anna found O'Malley (one of her orange tabby cats) on the staircase, struggling to breathe. She rushed him to the animal hospital, where they found that he had fluid in his lungs.

There were four things that could have caused that, and various solutions to those problems which could have been implemented. But each solution had its down-side, and none of them would have guaranteed that he wouldn't have fluid in his lungs later on, so he had to be put down. He was five years old.

Anna was devastated. We had a little funeral for him out back that same night, and Anna painted a cinder block brick with his name on it for a headstone.

A few days later, someone stole the power adapter for the camper. I came home from work that Wednesday (or maybe it was Thursday?) to find that there was no power going to my TV, my alarm clock, my VCR/DVD-R, or my computer. I tried resetting the breakers both in the house and in the camper, but nothing worked. So I looked at where the extension cord got plugged into the camper, and there was a piece missing, which allowed the extension cord to have the camper plugged into it. It still hasn't been found.

So, the day after that, Anna and Kayla cleaned out Anna's old room (Kayla had already moved out of it into Kimba's old room, since she moved into a house downtown), and I slept in the empty room on Anna's "nook" pillows for a night with a few "essentials." The day after that, Jason got his room cleaned, and moved into the empty room. That Saturday, I was able to move
all of my stuff into Jason's old room, and slept on Anna's pillows until last weekend, when I setup my old daybed.

After Anna gets married in February, I'm going to move all of my stuff (except the daybed and my books) into my old room (currently Anna's), and we're going to use the room I'm currently in as a guest room which will double as my library.

Or that's the plan, anyway.

A few days after I moved into the house, Tim (Anna's fiancé) got a new puppy. She's a shepherd mix, and he named her Brian, after the dog from Family Guy. She's so tiny, and cute--too bad she'll have to grow up and get all annoyingly big and everything.

Yesterday, Anna, Kayla and I went shopping for various things, including lingerie and new pillows for me and groceries for all three of us. We also picked up the dress I bought at RennFest a few years back, since we're going there tomorrow--both Anna and I have Labor Day off, and Kayla has agreed to come, as long as we don't make her wear any garb. I said that was okay, as long as she at least tried Anna's dresses on yesterday and looked in a mirror; she did, and then promptly took them off and got in her regular clothes again.

My Friday night D&D game is no more. Actually it was technically a "new to RPGs" game, so since at least two of us had gotten GM memberships at the Haven, we don't really need "instruction" anymore--not for playing, anyway. Instead, Gene started up a new game, based in the World of Darkness. He's doing a GMs-only, mostly one-on-one Changeling game.

Pretty much, the concept is, he'll work with each of us players individually on certain days of the week (my day's going to be Friday), and we'll have to post on the message boards within 48 hours about what our character did during the latest session. We'll also be able to have one-on-one sessions with the other players, I'm thinking as well. The world itself seems interesting, and I'm looking forward to playing it. I created my character two nights ago, but I forgot to give her a name.

My D&D 4.0 character went into the "Old Characters" section of my RPG player's binder. I've also got a GM binder for my Serenity game, as well as for a series I'm writing for the Buffy RPG.