So today the wind chill dropped the temperature down to -20. My power windows in my car are frozen shut, the doors were almost frozen shut, and ice glistens along every uncovered surface thanks to the 40 degree temperatures yesterday and all of that melting snow. Seriously, Minnesota, what gives? If you're going to be cold, then be cold- don't give me this wishy-washy, flip-flopping weather (though it was nice to finally get my car washed), as it seems to only bury us in even worse conditions than before! Grr...
So this past week has been pretty much the same as always at work- people come in, I deal with kids, and occasionally I help somebody. I've been working on a few projects simultaneously- trying to find free computers for a certain resident, working on some kind of recycling awareness program for the residents/staff, and still trying to get those #@#$ing GED orders through. It's kind of complicated, but basically I need 3 pieces of information about our company that nobody seems to know. Yay!
In non-work life, I've been spending a lot of time... and money... at Matt's game store, Chaos (located at Lyndale and Lake in Minneapolis!) Most of my time there has been spent dealing with the Warhammer 40k campaign that Matt is running. It looks like it's going to be pretty cool- we have a strategic map with all sorts of randomized terrain features on it like chemical plants, abandoned cities and whatnot. Some people got luckier than others with the whole randomized bit- Caleb's Tau got kind of screwed as he started with half of the territory that everyone else started with and kind of crappy resources, while Greg's Orks and my Eldar are pumping out resources like nobody's business. Pechous might have the greatest advantage, however, as he is in prime position to quickly triple the amount of territory he controls thanks to a multitude of strategically placed abandoned fortresses that he found... Well, I was planning on killing him anyway...
I also did some shopping at Chaos. Most of my christmas presents for family and friends is from there, and I also picked up the rulebooks for Changeling: The Lost and the new World of Darkness. Now, normally I wouldn't buy rulebooks because I can (and have!) just bittorrented them from online. But when I started that lucrative process I swore that if I was actually going to use one of those game systems for anything AND the book was not out of print I would purchase it.
So yeah, after Russell's game is finished I'll be starting a Changeling game. It's a different rule set, and the experience is very much different from vampire, but the game can go from glamour-infused whimsy to heart-stopping terror in two seconds, and all because you accidentally broke a promise to someone else...
More updates to follow as I have them. Until next time...
"A wanton waste of projectiles."
- Mark Twain's The Art of War speech, 1881
Monday, December 15, 2008
Thursday, December 4, 2008
T-Day Week
Dammit, forgot about the blog for a while again. Well, no time like the present to catch up, now is there?
In my last blog post I headed home to Elmira, NY to do some shooting in the woods. Unfortunately that didn't work out so well for me, as not only did I not see any deer until Thanksgiving morning but I didn't even see any fresh tracks until then. My dad and I were pretty frightened that he had shot everything in the woods, but the last day proved us wrong. We switched to the one part of our property that we had not hunted yet and saw tons of tracks, droppings, and even the occasional deer. Unfortunately I didn't get a good shot at anything, but oh well. At least I saw something after all.
Being home this time was... weird. I don't know why, but it just feels very different to be home again now that I'm out of college. I guess I'm beginning to no longer consider home "home" anymore. I've spent the last 4.5 years out here in Minnesota, and now I'll be with the parents for a grand total of 3-4 weeks out of the year. I guess the really weird part is how ok I am with that; it's not scary or even sad- it just seems right.
But still, getting to see the whole family was pretty cool. I got to help Hans along on his quest to construct the perfect board game (the latest sounds like some kind of weird cross between the rules of Call of Cthulhu and Epic Duels), drink amazing Belgian beer with my dad and Siegi, tease Liesel about her boyfriend, see my Orio, and even kid around Oma (though I got to be careful with the latter nowadays). Perhaps as a gift to the fact that we were all home my dad even got the Wii, which was a blast. I mean seriously, how can you make a duck-hunt rip off so much fun?
Also while I was home I got to catch up with some of my high school friends. We played the requisite couple of games of Euchre and also went to see Role Models. I would describe this movie as the only cute rated-R movie that I have ever seen. Sure, it has its boatloads of sophomoric humor, but there's definitely a lot of tenderness thrown into the movie... also a lot of geekery. We decided that the writers for the movie just wanted to have an epic foam sword battle movie, but had to make some pretty major edits to get people to watch it. The final scene in particular has some pretty jaw dropping feats of Assassin-style sword fighting.
I got back on Friday to discover two things: 1) I was alone in the house, and 2) the water was shut off. The latter was fixed by a call to Jason, but the former was not resolved until Sunday, leaving me to go a little stir crazy at home. I filled this empty void in my life by watching Roughnecks: The Starship Trooper Chronicles on Youtube. It's actually a pretty good CGI cartoon, and a bit more mature than your average one. Of course watching the entire series in two days is a bit crazy... but I was pretty bored and drunk, in my defense.
Anyway, people came home, Teagle baked an awesome apple-cinnamon spice cake, and work resumed. There's some other, sometimes geekier stuff going on with me right now, but I'll leave that for another post.
Until next time...
"Thanksgiving Day. Let all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks now, but the turkeys. In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys; they use plumbers. It does not become you and me to sneer at Fiji."
- "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" by Mark Twain
In my last blog post I headed home to Elmira, NY to do some shooting in the woods. Unfortunately that didn't work out so well for me, as not only did I not see any deer until Thanksgiving morning but I didn't even see any fresh tracks until then. My dad and I were pretty frightened that he had shot everything in the woods, but the last day proved us wrong. We switched to the one part of our property that we had not hunted yet and saw tons of tracks, droppings, and even the occasional deer. Unfortunately I didn't get a good shot at anything, but oh well. At least I saw something after all.
Being home this time was... weird. I don't know why, but it just feels very different to be home again now that I'm out of college. I guess I'm beginning to no longer consider home "home" anymore. I've spent the last 4.5 years out here in Minnesota, and now I'll be with the parents for a grand total of 3-4 weeks out of the year. I guess the really weird part is how ok I am with that; it's not scary or even sad- it just seems right.
But still, getting to see the whole family was pretty cool. I got to help Hans along on his quest to construct the perfect board game (the latest sounds like some kind of weird cross between the rules of Call of Cthulhu and Epic Duels), drink amazing Belgian beer with my dad and Siegi, tease Liesel about her boyfriend, see my Orio, and even kid around Oma (though I got to be careful with the latter nowadays). Perhaps as a gift to the fact that we were all home my dad even got the Wii, which was a blast. I mean seriously, how can you make a duck-hunt rip off so much fun?
Also while I was home I got to catch up with some of my high school friends. We played the requisite couple of games of Euchre and also went to see Role Models. I would describe this movie as the only cute rated-R movie that I have ever seen. Sure, it has its boatloads of sophomoric humor, but there's definitely a lot of tenderness thrown into the movie... also a lot of geekery. We decided that the writers for the movie just wanted to have an epic foam sword battle movie, but had to make some pretty major edits to get people to watch it. The final scene in particular has some pretty jaw dropping feats of Assassin-style sword fighting.
I got back on Friday to discover two things: 1) I was alone in the house, and 2) the water was shut off. The latter was fixed by a call to Jason, but the former was not resolved until Sunday, leaving me to go a little stir crazy at home. I filled this empty void in my life by watching Roughnecks: The Starship Trooper Chronicles on Youtube. It's actually a pretty good CGI cartoon, and a bit more mature than your average one. Of course watching the entire series in two days is a bit crazy... but I was pretty bored and drunk, in my defense.
Anyway, people came home, Teagle baked an awesome apple-cinnamon spice cake, and work resumed. There's some other, sometimes geekier stuff going on with me right now, but I'll leave that for another post.
Until next time...
"Thanksgiving Day. Let all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks now, but the turkeys. In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys; they use plumbers. It does not become you and me to sneer at Fiji."
- "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" by Mark Twain
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