I hate moving.

It's just way too much work.

Anyway, I am now living in my parents' camper in their back yard, with a few bins of stuff which I might need from day to day or week to week (like clothes and my computer). It's actually kind of cozy, even though the roof leaks in a couple places and the power goes out every few days or so. This morning the power went out at least two hours ago, and it hasn't come back on, so I've been trying to figure out why. It's the outlet that the camper is connected to on the outside of the house.

I tried every breaker inside the camper, plus the breaker for the outlet in the house, but the power still wouldn't come back on. So Dad said to try taking something electric out to the cord and the outlet to see if the power is even coming to the camper at all. I took the little hanging "lantern" out to the place where the cord plugs into the camper--it didn't turn on. Then I plugged it into the outdoor outlet--still didn't turn on. Finally, I brought it into the kitchen and plugged it in there--it turned on. So I need to find another outlet which the extension cord can reach before I'll get power in the camper again. I'm typing up this entry on my dad's computer inside while he's at church with Jason.

Bart from the Haven helped me get my furniture and most of my other stuff to my storage unit last weekend with his "Mobile Opression Palace" (a huge SUV)--thanks, Bart! Then Kayla and I went back to the townhouse on Wednesday to pack up our dishes and such. We left all of the tupperware-type containers for Jenn and Amit, since we didn't really have anywhere to use them. Then yesterday I went back to the townhouse and vacuumed my room, Kayla's old room, and the living room, then cleaned my full bathroom and the half-bath on the second floor--Neha helped me with that one. After I swept the dining/common room, I was done.

Speaking of the Haven, things are going well there. We finished our last Friday night 3.5 dungeon crawl a few weeks ago, and Gene and Steve decided to start teaching us D&D 4.0. We created our characters last week, and then this past Friday started actually playing. We killed a few kobolds, and then stopped for the night. My character is a dragonborn warlock.

On Thursdays, we have what I like to call "Crazy Thursday." Three Thursdays ago, Bart ran a Buffy game--although it was just creating characters, since we've decided not to play with the original cast anymore in favor of a setting in the Gold Rush time period. Then two weeks ago, he ran a new D&D 3.5 game, in which I play a gnomish cleric, with a dwarven fighter/cleric cohort.

This past week was the first session (in which character creation was done, and not much else) of the very first RPG I've ever run. I'm running a Serenity game, and I'm hoping it's going to be awesome. The only reason we couldn't do more than create characters this week was because the guy who will be playing the captain of the ship (once the crew has a ship, that is) was home sick. Next week is either going to be a free week, or the week which we start the actual Serenity game, if Brian (ship's captain guy) can make it both next week and for the July 24th session. Truthfully, I'm pretty nervous about running my first RPG, but hopefully it'll be fun. I've introduced a concept that I haven't seen done before--transient characters. There were a bunch of people who wanted to play the game, or watch the system, and I could only handle 3-4 actual crew members, so I introduced the transient characters idea so that some other players could get into the system at least every once in a while.

Not much more to say now, except that I wish the power in the camper was back on.

Finally, an Update

A lot's been happening the last couple of weeks, not all of it productive in the strictest sense of the word.

As of last week, I've joined a Buffy RPG game on Thursday nights. The story is set after season 3 episode 4, and I'm playing Faith. So far, we also have a Willow and an Oz, and room for two more players.

The Friday night game is going well--last weekend, we spent a "year" training and fighting in the plane of Akron (don't know if that's the correct spelling or not). My character, a ranger named Laina, gained a point of strength (for a total of 16) and lost a point of constitution because she'd been beat up so much (for a total of 12). Everybody also was given a level of dual-classing in fighter, with most of the extra stuff that comes from leveling. Next time I level though, I'm going to have to decide whether I want to be ranger 5/fighter 1 or ranger 4/fighter 2. Not much of a huge dilemma, but it'll be fun to figure out which would be best.

After we all figured out how dual-classing worked and made the necessary changes to our character sheets, we got to another plane of existence and found ourselves in Sigil, the City of Doors. We looked for a way to get back to Eberron (the world we're playing in), but it would cost us 500 gold per person, and even I'm short at least 80 gold (I'm the least broke of the party), so we looked for a job to do. This guy sent us to find some magic fungus in a cave rumored to have Medusae in it (wouldn't that be Gorgons though?), but when we got there, the Medusa was an illusion--we were actually fighting Driders instead! Laina took 10 points of temporary strength damage, 7 hit points of damage, and got stuck in a web for the last half of the combat. Then we were done for the week. I can't wait to find out what happens to us next! We still have to find that fungus.

When I got home on Friday, I watched episodes 3-14 (plus special features) of Firefly. Yes, you read that right, 3-14. I was so psyched about finally getting to watch the whole series (what little there is of it) that I didn't want to turn it off and go to sleep--so I didn't. The special features finished around 9 Saturday morning, so I put Serenity in the player and started it going. About fifteen minutes later, I was dead to the world. Good thing I'd already seen the movie.

Three hours later, Anna came over asking me stuff about Pittsburgh and New York, but since it was my "stay home and clean" week, I told her I wasn't going to come.

I went back to sleep for a while, and somewhere in there I remember eating some leftover boxed mac 'n' cheese, but I pretty much stayed asleep until around 5:30 on Sunday morning.

I layed there in bed for a while with my eyes closed, 'cause I couldn't make them stay open, then I popped MacGyver in and watched an episode before I went downstairs to get some cereal. I watched another episode while I ate, and by then it was about 7:30. There hasn't been much luck on the roommate finding front, so I started packing my movies and books. I got all of my stuff on the first floor packed up, plus a good portion of my books on the third floor, before I ran out of empty packing tubs. (I use the Rubbermaid 21.5 gallon things.)

At that point, I was kind of physically exhausted, but nowhere near sleepy, so I watched a couple more episodes of MacGyver before heading out.

Dinner at Mom & Dad's was kind of quiet, what with Anna and Kayla not there, and Kimba taking her dinner to her room. I pretty much hung out with Dad and Jason for the evening, and then after dinner we played video games. Kayla got in around 11 or so (Anna left again after dropping her off), and then I went home a little later.

Before I went to sleep last night, I watched the last two episodes of MacGyver season 2, so I can put that season in the tub now, and start on season 3 next time I watch.

I always pack my movies and books first, because no matter how much I like to have them out and organized, I know that they're actually the least necessary items in my possession. So I pack them first, and then I pack everything else with increasing necessity over the course of a month, ending with things that I absolutely need from one day to the next. And I put sticky labels on the lid of each tub with semi-detailed (but concise) descriptive words. That way, I'm not stressing about losing something, or not being able to find it later. Plus, I'll know which rooms to put which tubs in the next time I have a place to put them and I won't need a million cardboard boxes, just a dozen or two Rubbermaid tubs.

You're probably wondering where that drabble I posted earlier today came from.

Well, they added a new forum to the Haven message boards specifically for creative writing. So I suggested that we have weekly drabble challenges where someone contributes a challenge word, and anybody who wants to posts a drabble based on that word. The first word was "silver," so I got to thinking of thieves and then I thought to myself that it's pretty much a given that you should never trust a thief, but you should never hire a thief who has naught but two coins to rub together. And then I wondered if that were necessarily true, and decided to write my drabble based on the assumption that it wasn't.

Silver Drabble

She gave her loot to the starving children, and had nothing to eat herself yet. So what? She grumbled at His Lordship’s disdain of her haggard appearance in the interview earlier.

Sneaking from shadow to shadow in the square, she remembered she hadn’t told him about the children—he hadn’t asked, wouldn’t have cared, just assumed that lack of wealth meant the job was beyond her.

She’d show him.

She snuck into the palace, into his chambers, and without a sound slashed his throat and looted his coffers before the guard changed at false dawn.

The children would eat well.