This morning on the radio

the trivia question of the day was basically such-and-such percentage of women do this before a first date...with the obvious answer being 'shave/wax their legs' (yeah, even I, who haven't dated in ages, got that one), but there was a 10-year-old girl who called in, and while she didn't have 'the right' answer, it was an excellent one. Her answer: 'Have a backup plan'. That kid will go far.

I couldn't sleep most of last night. I think I woke up somewhere around 3 am, tossed and turned till 6 am, then slept till 6:30--and I hadn't gone to bed insanely early or anything. I did what I shouldn't have done--I went on Facebook. There is a group dedicated to the roleplaying game I play, and someone asked where people lived, and people form all over the world chimed in. I said I lived in Lexington, Kentucky, and someone replied that they lived a few miles away. The name sounded really familiar, but it wasn't anyone I knew. So I Googled him, and I'm 95% sure he is the director of the library I am sending an application to by Friday, as soon as I can get my transcripts for UK. Serendipity? I don't know, but hopefully he'll recognise my name and it'll spark some curiosity. :)

Then at 6:30 am I awoke to a raging thunderstorm, nearly leapt out of bed, got entangled in the covers and the CPAP hose, nearly fell, and then unplugged my phone as quickly as I could. I guess I still startle a little when thunder is nearby. I had a phobia for years (my baby book even says I screamed with thunder at 6 months old), and have actually been at a campsite that was struck by lightning. Everyone else felt it. I was in the full foetal position in a puddle on the ground. But over the years it's lessened, and I can listen to distant thunder and enjoy it, and I'm basically okay unless I'm outside (say, with an umbrella), or if it's REALLY loud.

So I went in to work early, and I have been consistently e-mailing all sorts of people today to let them know what books are available (my boss wants them divvied up by this week), showing others what's available, and telling people outside of the organisation that I need to change to my personal e-mail for things like book review proofing and working on collection development reviews. It's just really underscored that we're nearing the end.

After work, I went to my friend's house who is sick, got his card, went to the pharmacy, picked up his medicines, stopped by the store for sweetener, and basically crossed the town a couple of times in rush hour traffic on roads that haven't had rain in awhile that are really slick. I felt a certain sense of accomplishment that I didn't have an accident, and I didn't have much anxiety with the drive.

Now I'm home, I've had burritos for dinner (the last of them), and am hydrating and listening to music. I feel the need to be productive, and I'm not super sleepy or anything, but I am a bit tired. Tomorrow I'm going to sit with someone who's taking over one of my duties, today I helped someone with the audit I used to do, and Thursday we're supposed to have a representative of the unemployment office come and talk to those of us who are not going, which is good, because I need a little direction. I have been on unemployment before, when my hours were cut a few years into this job, but it's been over a decade and I'm sure things have changed. I do know where the office has moved, at least, and it's got resources that might help. But I'd also like to get my Internet connexion back on so that I can spend more time looking, and it would help A, too. Right now I have to use my phone (which is limited), the library, the laundry room, or over at my friend's physical therapy office, which has WiFi.

Speaking of laundry, I haven't done mine since YKWIA's been sick--I usually do it over there, and so I'm running low on some essentials. I may have to break down and use the laundry room, which costs $3 a load, when I get paid.

I kind of feel like I'm starting to crash. Maybe I'll rest for just a bit. I know, I tell myself that, and I'll probably be done in for the night. But I'll try to get up in about 30-45 minutes and at least water the plants and do some things here.

But just in case, good night. ;)

We did play the game today

but talked a lot out of gameplay as well. As far as the game went, it was downtime, and one of my character's is dealing with the fact that she has married a necromancer, is about to deliver their baby any day, and he's being somewhat controlling and sounds damn reasonable at the same time. Since asserting myself is a problem for me, I'm having trouble playing her as she should be, which is much more forthright and furious. I'll have to work on that.

I did get in late, though, and I don't normally post on Sundays, so I'll keep this short. But I hope your weekend has gone well. I remembered I have an appointment at 8 am tomorrow on the other side of town while I was driving home tonight. I just hope I can get up in time.

One last thing

This made me giggle uncontrollably yesterday when I saw it on Facebook:

Amazon Support Shows Us How It Should Be Done. This Is Priceless.

Hope you enjoy. Good night, for real. :)

A day of serpent mages and magic carpet rides

Okay, for anyone who has never played Call of Cthulhu or other tabletop roleplaying games, that probably sounds weird. But the game today involved trying to get innocents away from a serpent mage, who bugged out of there with them when he found we were dispatching his Children of Yig (giant snakes) fairly quickly. So we didn't manage to free the innocents yet, but we did escape a crowd of almost two hundred degenerate snake-human hybrid people who were out for our blood by using magic to turn ourselves invisible and then rode the air back to the plane crash site we'd started from. So it was an exciting game, and no one died. Since one of my characters is currently magically bonded to another, I have to be very careful or if one is injured or dies, so it goes with the other. Brenda has three characters on this adventure, so the stakes are high for her as well. But we're trying to save a 6 year old girl, an airline stewardess, and a German guy from having their genetic material used to try to elevate his serpent hybrids to a more civilised form. Yeah, you guessed right on what that means. It's an interesting adventure. It's called 'Final Flight'. The book is very small. I'm not sure who publishes it; I don't think this one is a Chaosium one. One of Brenda's characters owns and airline and so it was a natural fit with a plane crash in the Amazon and all. Of course, it's kind of funny that I'm playing in this adventure right before taking a plane ride myself. But at least we'll be nowhere near the jungle. :) Here's hoping for an uneventful couple of flights this week.

The weather has improved for the trip in terms of temperatures, being in the 50s and 60s here and the 40s and 50s in Chicago. It may be raining here on the day I come back, but that should be okay. I have a lot to do before I leave. Tomorrow I'm going to pay some bills and start getting everything together I need to, as well as working on the house. I hate to leave on vacation with the house a mess, and it definitely is, although I did do four loads of laundry at my friends' house today while I helped them get their house ready for the game, so at least that's taken care of, and I'm doing a load of dishes in the dishwasher right now.

So now I'm listening to some Loreena McKennitt and considering that while I shouldn't be all that sleepy, as we're an hour ahead with Daylight Savings Time now, so even though it's after 10 pm my body should think it's nine, I am, indeed, sleepy. So I may turn in soon, and then start anew tomorrow, going to work and getting things ready for my absence, and then going to the library to turn in a book and renew some. Then I need to straighten up around here.

Okay, I think I'll check the news before I go to bed. If I don't write anymore tonight, have a wonderful evening.

I had a really nice time with the Call of Cthulhu game today

My character who was injured in a vampire attack last time was healed by a witch, one of the NPCs (non-player characters) is going nutsy cuckoo due to an ability to travel and manipulate other people's dreams, and one of Brenda's characters has crash landed in a plane in the rain forest with several other people and a mystery is afoot as to how they got there. Next week should be very interesting. We hadn't played for a couple of weeks, so it was nice to do so. And even though I'm not on the plane adventure, I don't mind watching what happens (I have a character who is visiting an injured family member, so when I play that out, Brenda's in the audience, but mostly we're both in the scene, so to speak, together. I am the more passive player, however, and that's something I haven't really worked on in the 23 years I've been playing this game, and I really need to do so.)

It's been a pleasant weekend. A was away at a conference and YKWIA and I spent a lot of time together, watching episodes of 'Hart of Dixie' and talking about all sorts of things, including comics. We both used to work for the same comic book store, but I had no idea just how encyclopaedic his knowledge was of the Marvel Universe. No wonder he's always complaining about how the movies mess with the canon. For someone who has read comics all his life but is not a comic geek at all, he knows lots of details, and remembers many of the covers of his youth. I now know a lot more about mutants, Inhumans, Eternals, and Celestials than I used to, as well as Kree, Skrulls, and other alien races. :) But it was fun to learn about. I came to comics late. I read a couple when I was in my teens (Star Wars and The Amazing Spider-Man), but I didn't really read or collect much until I was working for the store and was in charge of ordering, so I saw the full catalogue. I started with The X-Files (I was a really big fan of the show at the time) and then discovered Sandman, which is still my favourite title, although it's not really a 'superhero' comic. I'm glad Neil Gaiman has been working on the prequel. I've got the first two issues, but I'm missing the third--I haven't had a chance to pick it up with how tight things have been of late. Comics have gotten more expensive than when I was working at the store in the 90s. It's over $5 for those comics, and I had been getting both variant covers. Granted, the Sandman prequel isn't monthly, so it's not really a terrible expense, but there's been other bills to pay and things like food and gas to get, so no, I can't really afford to collect much in the way of comics these days.

Okay, I have to get up early tomorrow and run an important errand before work. Good night.

Who on earth ever thought those accordion-style closet doors were a good thing?

And why did they put them in just about every residential building built in the 1970s? It seems to me that I've been fighting to keep them on track my whole life. I just spent several minutes fighting to get my bathroom one back on track after a bunch of toilet tissue fell off the top shelf and on to it. (I'm short, and was having trouble getting the tissue back up without incident.) Usually they come off on one side or the other. This time it was both, and simply from admittedly several rolls of paper with hollow centres hitting it. It was much harder to put back than it was to get off track. But I suppose that's the way of life.

Part of the problem was that I only was half-awake. I went back to the bedroom to take a nap earlier, because I was tired after working and am still on the last stages of my cold, but couldn't really relax. My back and abdomen are both hurting, and suddenly I put that together with some other symptoms and realised I most likely have a urinary tract infection, so I need to see about getting in to the doctor this week. I feel like an idiot for not putting two and two together sooner. Granted, I may be wrong, but I'd say there's an 85% chance I'm right. I did finally manage to relax enough to sleep for awhile, but I thought I'd get up for awhile. Then the dreaded TP in the closet incident happened.

One good thing is that I weighed myself today and I am almost seven pounds under what I was a week ago, and twelve pounds under what I was at midweek (my period factors into that, but still I lost actual poundage, not just water weight). I'm now the lowest I've been in a good long while, even lower by a pound than I was right after the ankle injury. Yay! Now if I can just keep going down rather than up. I've been precariously within a few ounces of my highest weight this week as well.

Gamers, I hope you remembered that today, in honour of Gary Gygax (a co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, who died on this date five years ago), is National Game Master's Day. I did. My game master got an Amazon gift card with which he can get a book. I used to give him certificates to our local gaming store, the Rusty Scabbard, but they haven't been as great about ordering the material he follows as they used to be, and special orders have often gone by the wayside since Eric left. So I think he's given up and gone to Amazon. See, it's not always that they're bigger. A lot of it has to do with timeliness and customer service. But in general I would urge you to support your local independent gaming shop if you have one. And by that I mean a place that has roleplaying books and tabletop games, not a Game Stop or similar thing. :)

I found out from Twitter that several of the Schoolhouse Rock (which I have all of on VHS--I'm such a grammar/history/math/science geek) and Bill Nye the Science Guy clips, among other things, were up under Disney Education's channel. I found this gem, which is neither, but will have special significance to a couple of friends of mine. It explains the origin of blue oxen. :)



Thanks to Mignon Fogerty (@GrammarGirl on Twitter), whose re-tweet of a link to 'Conjunction Junction' got me there.

Up briefly

Tonight was my night to leave a libation to Hekate, and I didn't want to put it off any longer (I have a three-day window during my menses; this was the second night). I feel better than I did when I got home, although obviously I plan on sleeping more if possible. I checked the news, just glancing through it, and saw the results of the Superbowl, but didn't really care on that front. I don't understand the hype, but then, I'm not a football fan.

Today's Cthulhu game was about righting all the things that went wrong last game, including removing curses and healing horrible injuries. I feel much better about where we are now. Last time one character (mine) was blinded [well, her eyes were red and filled with blood, and she cried tears of blood, which was even worse than simple blindness], another was shot in the head, and a child was kidnapped and something magical was done to her that had to be undone. There were no tentacled monsters, but there were evil people who burst into flame and incinerated when hit with the power of the Elder Sign. Brenda and I lost focus during the last game and things could have gone much worse in terms of the clean-up this game. And for once, the dice seemed kind to us. Last week I think the only roll Brenda made of any note was the one in which one of her characters, under the influence of an evil ichor, shot another.

I know for someone not familiar with roleplaying games, or our brand of horror/science fiction, this probably sounds weird. But it is generally fun--much more fun than sitting around a TV watching a bunch of men in tight pants run after a pointy ball. :)

Today was also heavily about roleplaying. I rolled my dice exactly once throughout the game. Almost everything was actually the result of acting, if you will, than the roll of the dice. That's a lot different from games like Dungeons and Dragons that are more about action and killing things than building characters and relationships.

Okay, back to bed I go. Hope your week goes well.

:)

As my feed for it said, 'because it's never too early to teach them how to kill orcs':

Wizards of the Coast Publishes D&D for Kids

Monster Slayers: the Heroes of Hesiod is a free PDF aimed at children 6 and up.

Daniel Donahoo says:

The publishers of Dungeons and Dragons have just launched Monster Slayers: The Heroes of Hesiod which looks like it could be a whole new line of D&D products for children age six and up. They are quick to link their product to the broad range of educational benefits including math skills, literacy, problem solving and creative thinking.

They leave out the other important skills that can be learned like how to pierce a dragons hide, why you should always let the thief open the locked box and why you should never, ever become separated from the party in a narrow dungeon.

Maybe Chaosium will get on the bandwagon and publish something similar as a Cthulhu Mythos line. :)

Haven't done this in awhile...

Your result for The RPG Class Test...

Mystic Theurge

15% Combativeness, 17% Sneakiness, 85% Intellect, 58% Spirituality

Brilliant and spiritual! You are a Mystic Theurge!


Score! You have a prestige class. A prestige class can only be taken after you've fulfilled certain requirements. This may mean that you're an exceptionally talented person, but it probably doesn't.


The Mystic Theurge is a combination of a cleric and a mage. They can cast both arcane and divine spells, and are good at both, making them pretty terrifying on the battlefield. They have more raw spellpower than just about any other class.


You're both intelligent and faithful, but not violent or deceitful. I guess that makes you a pretty good person.

Take The RPG Class Test at OkCupid

'Tis very late

but YKWIA just showed me an interesting web series (from quite a few years back, so for some of you this won't be new). It's called Ghosts of Albion. It was created by Amber Benson (Tara of Buffy: the Vampire Slayer) and Christopher Golden, an American novelist. The series features among its voice talents Anthony Daniels (C3PO) and Emma Samms (remember 'Dynasty'?) There are several chapters on the BBC website, and there are two books out for it. There is also a Ghosts of Albion roleplaying game from Eden Studios that was set to be released in September as well (I'm not sure if that actually happened; publication dates are very tenuous in the gaming world, but you can purchase a PDF copy from their website.) Here's a free starter demo (PDF). It sounds like it would be interesting to play. For more about the world of Ghosts of Albion, check out the Wikipedia article

Sometimes you just have to step in and save the world

Warning: I'm about to majorly geek out on you and babble about things which you probably neither understand nor care about, which is the game I play based on the fiction of HP Lovecraft. It's my main hobby. You have been warned.

Today was a good day. Okay, so I didn't finish this week's notes despite a marathon session last night of six hours (but the game master was benevolent). And I didn't arrive when I was supposed to be somewhere this morning (I was a minute late). And I didn't finish some work I was doing for someone on time.

But the game absolutely rocked. For those of you who play Call of Cthulhu and intend to go through the campaign Beyond the Mountains of Madness, you should read no further. This is a friendly spoiler alert.

***************SPOILER*******************

So we've been playing the Antarctic adventure for MONTHS, from checking and re-checking the ship's manifest to exploring the citadel of the Elder Things. Last time we explored the great pharos tower in hopes of finding our lost comrades, only to find evidence of their deaths.

For years one of the non-player characters has had visions of this mission; she's insisted all along that she had to be on it and went to great lengths to assure this. She also insisted that she would die on the mission in order to save the world, although she didn't know how, and that is why she had the visions. Each day we got closer and closer to her doom, with her getting more and more depressed. She didn't want to die--but if she didn't, it would be the end of everything. One of the player characters is in love with her, and kept trying to find a way to save her. I have to admit, I did too. I didn't want Sarah to die--she's been in the game for years and we're very fond of her. But it couldn't be as simple as pushing her out of the way at the right moment; there was no way of telling if in doing so we would doom everyone, for if it didn't work, reality itself would be sundered and the world, the universe, would end (and the game, too, unless our game master did some sort of alternative timeline). The stakes were pretty high.

I'm an incredibly passive player, often to my detriment. My character on this mission isn't as fleshed out as the others, although he was slowly coming out of his shell and I've enjoyed that. It is only his second mission, although he'd survived a plane crash (yes, he was the one who fell out of the sky en route to his first attempted mission so many months ago). He has at least one dark mark on his soul due to his sword being used to kill someone after being stolen. He has family, but isn't married, isn't involved with anyone, doesn't have the ties that the others have (one is married; another is in love with Sarah). He has become fond of Sarah and has a lot of respect for her. Unlike the player characters, she never took an oath to protect humanity. He considers her an innocent to protect, along with the ordinary folks they have in tow.

So when the moment came, he took it. The character in love with Sarah showed his Elder Sign when confronted with a shoggoth and a couple of Elder Things. Now the Elder Sign was created by the Elder Things. It surprised them that lowly humans could use it. I had already considered that if we did show the Elder Sign to them, they might recognise us as sentient, and that is what happened. Sarah could read and write their language. They asked if she, too, had the sign, and my character urged her to show hers, which she did. I was thinking that if she were considered sentient, then they couldn't use her in their organic machine to contain the Outer God they'd snared so long ago.

She offered herself up to them to make the machine work, and they indeed, told her that they had never killed anyone within the Unity of the Elder Sign. Then they asked about my character, and he did not show his Elder Sign, and told her that there was no need for them to know he had it, too. The other options were for one of the three ordinary humans along with us to die, or our other compatriot, who was not there at the time. He told her to tell them that they offered him (the Elder Things assumed he was a normal human, and the others' food source) up to the machine to keep the great horror sealed inside the Pit. Reluctantly she agreed. He also asked her to seek safe passage for the rest of them in return for this, and it was granted. Then he was taken away, stripped naked, and fed to a shoggoth alive, going insane at the end. Then his head, with his brain and neural webbing were incorporated into their machine just as the horrible thing began to escape, the power of the creature being such that mountains toppled. But then everything quieted as my character became part of the machine, the central processing unit upgrade that could power it for years to come. Somewhere his soul, with its Elder Sign, will reincarnate eventually. But the remains of his body power the machine at the heart of the Antarctic waste, standing guardian on that which would burst from the Earth and destroy reality.

It was a good death. I have a martyr complex, and I guess it's times like this it comes out. It's only the second character I've lost in the 17 years I've played Call of Cthulhu. The first went insane when she saw Shub-Niggurath and was stepped on by the Black Goat with a Thousand Young. Oddly enough, both characters were Jewish. I feel good about it, although a little sad, too. You get attached to characters when you play them as long as we do. Ours is not the brand of Cthulhu where you run a game now and then, but a continual universe that has developed for nearly two decades, with an excellent game master to bring that world to fruition.

Of course, the campaign isn't over for the others. There's still the Germans to contend with, and getting back home alive. There's another 30 pages left in the module. But it's over for me, except for taking notes and cringing when I think of something that the others don't, and I can't address because technically I'm not really there as a character. But I like to listen to the story unfold even when I can't play, and I want to see the end of this huge, long campaign.

It's moments like this that I really love about roleplaying. How often in the real world do you get to make a difference on this scale, after all?

Want a taste of what we've been doing? Here is a faux trailer for a fictional movie for HP Lovecraft's 'At the Mountains of Madness' (upon which the campaign is based) put together by a game master for another group. I think the person did an excellent job.

I never got to play D&D

(the guys I knew who played were into mega-level characters and not about to teach a newcomer how to play), but role-playing games have been an important pastime of mine for nearly 17 years, and without Gary Gygax, a lot of gaming wouldn't exist (not just in regular RPGs, but computer ones as well, since many of them are based off of D&D). So it was sad to learn that he died today at the age of 69, after years of declining health.

It's a shame we don't really have potions and spells that will restore health or the dead.

I think I did pretty well

considering I've played Call of Cthulhu, Vampire the Masquerade, Hârn, Trinity, Shadowrun, and Brave New World, only one of which is mentioned in this quiz. Most of my knowledge came from shelving the gamemaster's books, because he has almost all of the ones mentioned. Note that I did not include Dungeons & Dragons. I've never actually played that one, believe it or not.

Your Score: d10 Solid Gamer

You have a 67%RPG Geek Factor!

You are a solid gamer. You play or know at least one system fairly well. However, gaming is not and most likely never will be your life as you keep your habit under control. You rate a d10.

Link: The RPG Geek Factor Test written by Rerednaweht on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

A nice day so far

First of all, I slept until 2:30 this afternoon, giving me 12 hours' sleep. I apparently needed it. I dreamt of a bridge that went to a friend's family home. It was a nice size, about 8 feet wide and 14 feet tall to the timbered ceiling (yes, it had a ceiling, read on), and it was stone or light brick, with space on either side for displays. It was covered with a cedar shingle roof. The neighbours had tried to take it over, so we were arranging their plants artistically along the way. It was over a small ravine. It had all sorts of jars and a small lab or gardening bench where things could be mixed or pots planted. Okay, so it was a little weird, but very real, and I woke up several times and went right back into it.

After I finally did wake up and stayed up, I got ready, took Cerys out, and then headed to Hamburg. No, I don't normally do that, as it seems like the world's largest strip mall (okay, we're not a big city, there probably are others, but it's not laid out well at all and I'd almost prefer a super mall to what they did with the remains of a farm). I went to Backyard Burger for breakfast/lunch. Yes, you're wondering, a vegetarian (or pescatarian, actually) in a burger place? But they have a garden burger combo that has the burger cooked on its own George Foreman grill. Yay. I went ahead and transferred some addresses into the new planner while I was at it.

Then I went to Half-Price Books. It's a treasure trove of books, CDs, DVDs, computer programs, even vinyl records, all half the original price, plus a decent clearance section as well. They have a nice selection of various types of all of the above, including roleplaying books. I must mention that to our gamemaster--especially both old and new White Wolf titles. I got a couple of Julian May books (I did not have the Nonborn King or the Plicocene Companion, and I enjoyed that series quite well when I was young. I think I have the other two that begin it. There were a couple of paperback mysteries, one by Ellis Peters (not a Cadfael book, but from another series, but it sounded interesting) and one by Barbara Michaels (who is the same as Elizabeth Peters), a book on growing orchids, an astrology text, and a hoodoo one. Plus I got a 25-disc set of radioplays of Sherlock Holmes with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce (my favourite Holmes and Watson), and a landscape gardening CD that allows you to do both 2-D and 3-D planning, ages plants throughout the season so you can see how they'll look together, and you can do the platts and elevations. I'll need that this winter. All told I made it out of there pretty cheaply. There were many more I'd have love to have had. There was even a history of cannibalism--you don't see that every day. The books were in really good shape for the most part as well. They buy books, too, which I may keep in mind because I have a few duplicates (I think I bought one Anne Perry book three times). They have a really nice Judaism section. I considered getting an encyclopaedia of Jewish myth, mysticism, and magic as a gift (it is after all between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), but decided the person I would have given it to knew it all anyway.

Then I went to Kroger and stocked up on grocery staples. I went ahead and got three of those 99 cent canvas bags where they give you a rebate off for using them. I really don't need any more plastic bags--my cubby hole where I keep them is full, and since I don't have a cat box anymore, I should probably just take them in and recycle them or give them to Good Foods. I came home and cleaned out the refrigerator of some frightening things and then put the new stuff in. Now I'm blogging, of course. I'm going to put my foot up for a little while and then go do notes for the night and do some laundry. I didn't get much done on the house (I'd like to have it in good shape by Wednesday, when both the exterminator and carpet cleaner come.) It's not too bad, but the bathroom needs to be cleaned, dishes need doing, and a little picking up wouldn't be amiss.

That's all for now. I guess we could entitle this 'How I spent my Saturday off'. I didn't go into the store once, not even to get a drink. I'll probably write later tonight--I have a few things saved up to blog about that are library-related. In the meantime, I hope your weekend is going well.

And with that, Adieu! at least for tonight

You scored as Drama Queen. Your primary purpose is to create a story. You might even keep a log or journal of your adventures. Your characters are as real as any modern authors. Drama Queen 88% Do-gooder 75% Goldbricker 50% Rules Lawyer 50% Combat Monster 44% Comedian 31% Instigator 19% Munchkin 0% What type of RPG gamer are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Surprising, but better than most of the alternatives

Take the What Role-Playing Stereotype are You? quiz.