Random Dialogue

For reasons I’d rather not get into right now, I’m mentally exhausted. Today feels like the first day I’ve been able to really catch a breath since I graduated from college three years ago.

To be honest, I’m not even really allowed to catch my breath. I have three reviews I should have written this week, one of which I really should have finished for tomorrow. I have games to play and household chores to do. Tomorrow I’m gaming at Brian’s place, checking out some UT mods with him. Wednesday is Poker Night again, and then Thursday night we have the Eberron game.

Next week is going to be me up and running again.

But, to back up, I had a nice weekend.

Friday night we hung out with Eva and Alan, mostly enjoying each other’s company and having a gnosh. The new supporting character that took the place of Sharona on USA’s “Monk” is the girl from “Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place”. I like her, though I’m not sure the writing has been as good since this season began.

Saturday night we hit a movie with Brian and Kat. Finding Neverland, the Johnny Depp movie about J.M. Barrie, was pretty good. Better than I expected certainly. Expect commentary to follow when I get the chance.

Sunday night was the very last session of the Cormyr game. The PCs became NPCs and took their places as fixtures in the nation of Cormyr. My internal gameworld has been moved forward, to be picked up by the next folks I toss into the realms. It’s … very odd thinking about the amount of time we’ve played the Cormyrian campaign. We started it the summer I got back from TESC, and if you count the time off as part of its lifespan it’s seen me through three living spaces, a marriage proposal, four jobs, three freelance gigs, several promotions, over a dozen fish, two PCs, two web hosts, and three Christmases.

In-game the PCs have clocked hundred upon hundreds of miles traveled, probably well over a thousand gobbos killed, five dragons slain, an orchish warband destroyed, a dwarven city imploded, an astral citadel laid to ruin, the foundation of a keep and a town, the growing up of two children, the reunion of a father and his daughter, the rescue of parents by their son, the humiliation of a son by his mother, and the refounding of an entire tribe.

With the Eberron campaign getting put onto Hiatus status at the end of the month because of Katie’s game it looks like I’m just going to be a player for a little while. I have plans for my next game already, of course. This one will rely heavily on modules and will be geared for a group that could be quite large so as to allow some floating. That one is going to allow for a party to go up to 20th level, so who knows how long I could be running that one.

As always, I love the chance to tell stories with people.

Many thanks to Adialana, Katie, Ben, Fure, Brian, Drealec, Aaron, and Grim for the opportunity to do some serious damage to my favorite place in the realms. Well Met, Indeed.

Ben’s notes from the final session of the Cormyrian Campaign.

We decide to give Grim’s 24k to that random Draelic charity. We sell most of the loot from the Five: +4 bracers; +5 bracers; amulet +2 prot; amulet +2 prot; +3 chain shirt; +1 flaming burst longsword; +3 amulet of nat. armor; +2 flaming burst longsword; +5 studded leather, +3 adamantine flaming burst greataxe; +3 adamantine greataxe

We’re invited to the castle on the last day of the month. In the area where, in the alternate universe we fought the Five, are large tents and a stage. Filfarel gives a cool speech about how we rock “everybody’s” socks; random cool folk we met are there to celebrate our ascention. This day will henceforth be the day of the Purple Star. There’s a huge feast and party.

I take jewelled box (found in temple to Helm in Underdark) to temple of Helm in Suzail.

Adi gives us all cool purple sending stone things. We’re appreciative. They rock.

Adi and I head up to the Keep. She visits her father; I start working on magic items and casting stoneshape and such to help with the defenses (takes about 2 months).

Grim takes a contingent of PDKs up to the Keep, and begins his reign as the leading badass. He starts up with a Cormyrian / barbarian culture thing, and such. Adi and I and Grim and the war wizards stationed there construct a wall around the keep and dinky town and some space around there as well for expansion. Anada comes up to help with the Keep too. Grim gets her to help spreading rumors about gold in them thar hills to get adventurers to go in and help us clean up. Grim leads several successful campaigns to clear out the surrounding lands, including one which unearths a small clutch of blue dragons. Several soldiers die, but
Grim discovers a nice little horde of dragony goodness to supplement the Keep’s finances to fund future expeditions and bounties on major local baddies.

Vagerdehast and Maya come in and setup a 2-way gate between the Keep and the castle in Suzail. We setup the gate in the base of the tower at the Keep; it goes to a trellised archway with roses and such in the castle in Suzail. Maya gets stationed at the keep to work with folks and do stuff. Go us!

Draelic goes to wander the wilds for a while (during said 2 months). Also he kicks some major ass in the regional archery championships. Grim goes up to the Keep and begins his reign as the leading badass. Adi divides her time between the keep and the Purple Star. I head to Sembia
to help clear up the Church problems there. Draelic volunteers to come with; his presence is much appreciated.

Draelic and I get the rebellion going in Sembia. We get help from the Cormyrian Church to help with new administration and such. I’m temporarily installed as the high priest of Sembia, but manage to extricate myself from that by the end of the year. With Helm again a force for good in the people’s lives, and a secular government founded on principles of goodness and light installed, we return to the Keep.

The town has grown and has become self-supporting. Mort is discussing plans to open various shops in the town as well. All is well.

Adi throws a huge festival in honor of Draelic’s birthday, inviting all his family that she can find. He drinks heavily.

Katie and I have new toys as of today. I came home to a box from Apple, with two iPod Shuffles awaiting us.

Setup -

The software CD installed a driver and the newest version of iTunes, then prompted me to sync the Shuffle to get it recognized. The Shuffle gets music (and power) via a USB connection. On Katie’s PC it conveniently slots into a front ports. On my machine, I have to tip it forward to get to the USB slots. Not a problem in the long run, as I’ve ordered a cradle that will allow me to sync and charge the lil’ beast on my desk. With the software installed and everything filled out it was time to fill the beast.

I opened iTunes, and loaded up some music. With the Shuffle slotted on your computer, you have a big button that says “Fill iPod”. You can choose playlists to fill it from or fill from your whole library. You can also manually add songs if you want. It took about 20 minutes to fill the iPod entirely with songs. Many of my mp3s are 128 kbps, and I fit 257 songs (roughly 7 and half hours of music) onto the stick of a portable.

Use -

I’m going to be using this on my way into and during work tomorrow, so I’ll have more impressions then. Tonight, I wore it while I was making dinner. I had the pleasure of doing up pasta and a sauce to Nina’s 99 Luft Balloons, Abba’s Dancing Queen, and Bob Seger’s Old Time Rock N’ Roll.

The Shuffle ads suggest that you “Give Your Life a Soundtrack”. Nice slogan. I’ll see how it works out, but so far I’m pleased with the ease of setup and use.

Played some more poker last night, which is always enjoyable. We had kind of a smallish game last night, with Aaron, Joe, Ben and myself being the only participants for much of the evening. A friend of Aaron’s joined us for the last 45 minutes or so of the game, livening us sleepy folk up and making the pots bigger. We reset to 100 even, and I came out just a little up for the night. Thanks to the vagueries of the calendar next week is an even numbered day too, so it’s likely we’ll be playing then as well.

We should have new toys at home when I get there, so I’m looking forward to tonight. Books from the library and the prospect of italian sausage laden pasta increases my happiness quotient to about a 6.

I’ve added to my stack.

Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.

Wow. The game almost matches Half-Life 2 for atmosphere. Will be interesting to work through.

This past Friday Kat, Brian, and myself ventured to a suburb of the city of Milwaukee in order to see Alton Brown give a talk and do a book signing. The event was held to promote his new cookbook, I’m Still Just Here For the Food (Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking).

Before we made it to the store we enjoyed a dinner at a chain restaurant called The Melting Pot. It’s evidently expanding, and one will be arriving in Madison soonish, out in the Middleton Greenway Plaza. Their schtick is that everything at the restaurant is essentially a fondue. Cheese fondue was our first course, followed by a salad. We had the Wisconsin Cheese Trio fondue, but there were several nummy sounding choices to be had. For the main course we were brought raw pieces of meat. Essentially we just spit them on metal forks and tossed them in the oil to cook. The oils were flavoured, and we also had some mushrooms, carrots, and broccoli. It was quite nummy and the novelty factor was entertaining. To be honest the meal was very expensive for what we ate, though, and I’m not sure I’d do it again anytime soon.

Alton’s talk was very nice, and afterwards he did a Q and A. He then hung out for almost 4 hours signing books and having his picture taken.

• The first thing he said when he got started was that he needed to correct an error, and asked us to turn to page 238 and pick out the ingredient in the Pizza Dough we thought didn’t belong.The ingredient?

  That was supposed to be chewable vitamins, but someone cocked up somewhere. He mentioned that not only would that be gross to eat, but he’s actually allergic to asprin. He has a recipe in his book that could kill him.

• His main talking points revolved, for the most part, around the fact that he really sees baking as a use of applications more than anything else. Cooking is forgiving. A little this, a little that, some heat and voila! Baking is much more exact, and he wanted folks who read his book to be comfortable with the basics of the art. You can hear part of his talk on my short films page from our vantage point in the store.

• When asked which of the Iron Chefs was the most impressive, Alton stated he was most impressed with Bobby Flay and Mario Batali. “Everything they touch ends up tasting so dang good.” If he were to end up a contestant on the show, he hoped he’d go up against Chef Morimoto. “I think the odds would be in my favour be cause American Judges just can’t distinguish between 12 different kinds of kelp. I think I can take him.”

• Someone asked how buddy-buddy the FoodTV stars are in general. Alton said that, while he’d met them once or twice and in the case of folks like Flay and Batali he’s had a chance to work with them, he wasn’t super close with anyone. “If the were going to have a party, I probably wouldn’t be invited anyway. After all, I’m not…what’s the word….Perky!”

After the talk we headed back to our vehicle for the drive back. It took us about an hour and fourty five minutes, a drive that normally takes an hour being dragged out by the 4 or 5 inches of snow impeding our travel. We made it back late, cold but safe.

At lunch I took care of some photos I had lying around and incorporated them into my Galleries.

Katie’s Graduation Party was this past Saturday, a little get together with our families.

Chocobo Express is a Gallery of FFXI screencaps done over a series of months by Guardian Guildmate Mador. I’ve had these sitting in a drawer for quite a while and figured it would be nice to put them out where someone can see them. He did a great job with them, and this new Gallery is one of the best to view in slideshow mode.