The candy bowl is ready for the onslaught of trick-or-treaters. I have no idea how many kids to expect– new house, new neighborhood.
My paladin is ready for some game play. Bring the new game!
Spanakopita will (finally) be assembled tonight and baked.
Can’t wait to leave work 
Happy Halloween!
Day two of this year’s film fest (Saturday) included: Clue, the were-car episode of Futurama, the MST3K version of The Unearthly, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Attempts at baking on the second day were not entirely unsuccessful, although it was hard to avoid being sidetracked by World of Warcraft downstairs and Munchkin being played upstairs.
Four of us had brunch with Guffey on Sunday and PhysOrg drove him home.
We had a very good time and are looking forward to planning many more of these events in the near future. Thanks, everybody!
I spent most of Sunday afternoon working on Minni’s tailoring skill and when Teqnoq showed up, they worked on quests. Last week Blizzard announced that the Burning Crusade expansion is being delayed until January, so it seems likely that our guild will have (at least) two more level 60 druids by the time we see the new content.
Back to work, now– it’s Monday– very sad. However, we do have Halloween tomorrow and a brand-new game with brand-new characters to play tomorrow night …
Sleep is good. So good.
Ick, my day off yesterday was spent cleaning the house and running errands. I did have a long stretch to chat with Gruntac, who helped with the cleaning and helped Inle do some house re-org. Still, I think the next time I schedule a vacation day months in advance, I am going to plan to go out of town– either a fun-packed day trip or a long weekend spent away from home (this might require some planning on the part of more than one person– hint-hint, wink-wink).
But! Pay-off! Artie and Guffey arrived around 4 PM and the rest of the evening was lots of fun!
Our Friday night of scary movies had a cannibalistic theme. We watched Ravenous (one of my favorite “scary” movies although I never can remember the plot past the point where the rampant cannibalism gets underway), Night of the Living Dead (staring Barbara, the most useless character ever), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (original, 1974).
It was astutely pointed out that all of these movies have references to swimming, although no swimming actually takes place in any of these movies. Random and completely obscure, but true. Coincidence?
These movies are also prime examples of how *NOT* to choose your adventuring party. While some of the “good guys” in these movies are more capable and mentally with-it than others, each group of potential heroes is absolutely dysfunctional in fundamental ways. The party wipes, or mostly wipes, in each movie and the dysfunction of the group is at least partly to blame.
After the movies, we played a game of Vampire Hunter (an all-ages board game) and, in a startling twist, defeated the vampire with our extensive knowledge of movie trivia. Well, our guesses were kind of bumbling, but it was a nice addition to the game and we were ultimately triumphant.
I am looking forward to the continuing festivities tonight– an evening of more lighthearted Halloween movies.
::waves to Artie who took off this morning and left us a nice note– we had a wonderful time, too– give the fish kisses for us!!!::
Hrm. It seems like I have heard and fielded a lot of questions from people about marriage lately. With the vote on the proposed state marriage amendment coming up, it’s been a topic of conversation all over the news and in public lately.
So PhysOrg and I were just discussing it and, to open up a can of worms, why is marriage important?
I’m not looking for answers about love and commitment.
What I am asking is why is marriage law so important and what does it have to do with the love and commitment the individuals intend to express?
Why do we need a special set of civil laws about marriage that make it different from any other type of legal contract two parties want to make?
What would married people currently stand to lose if the state decided that marriage was a religious sacrament, completely out of its jurisdiction, and that all marriage benefits granted by the state were null and void except in their general contractual obligations as designated at the time the contract was made?
Does it make a difference in how you feel about it, whether marriage is a tradition or a contract? Or a sacrament? (a sacrament that happens to be heavily enmeshed in law)
Wowie, wowie! We’ve got a curry place within carry-out distance. And it’s good!
Mmmm … chana masala and samosas. I think I can honestly say that they have the best samosas I’ve ever had.
Now let’s talk about hot (spicy). I like hot. There is a certain moment, however, when I slow down eating because something is too hot. Usually this does not happen unless I go into an Indian restaurant (or possibly a Mexican restaurant, although I have not done the Casa de Lara “can you kill me, please?” test) and say I want something HOT. There is no level of “hot” at which food becomes completely inedible– it’s just a matter of whether I have to seek medical treatment after each bite … which makes it harder to eat fast or at all, really.
The curry I had last night was perfect. It was just hot enough to give my sinuses fits and require plenty of water, but it didn’t cause me to *slow down*. It was one of the hotter dishes on the menu, although Inle assures me that the lamb he had a night or two ago was the hottest dish on the menu and even it wasn’t as spicy as the death chili I made a few weeks ago.
So I am excited about having good curry nearby. I think there’s a Russian restaurant somewhere in the Fish Hatchery area, too … and some Mexican places besides Casa de Lara.
EDIT: Coincidentally (or maybe not), our cafeteria at work is having an Indian food day today. I may have comments to add about this later, or not. I expect to be astounded by how bland and salty bad cafeteria veggie (or chicken) tikki masala can be. But I could be surprised. I am way too curious to skip this one.
It has been a cold, dreary, rainy October day.
So it’s the perfect day to spend the afternoon and evening inside reading.
I went out this morning to have breakfast and catch up with a friend and run a few errands. On a whim, I stopped by the library and picked up Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian to read back-to-back. I was surprised that Dracula was in the library because, well, it’s late October, but I was more surprised that there were multiple copies of The Historian on the shelves because it is still a relatively new book.
I expect I will break down and play more WoW later this weekend (after making three LBRS runs last night), but in the meantime there are books to read …
I read this today and thought it was particularly apt:
The Buddha taught that for most people life is just this way: The good things either go away, lose their appeal, or never happen, while the bad things come despite your best efforts. So when you try to manage your life by clinging and aversion, you are left dissatisfied, uneasy, or without a sense of meaning or wholeness. Moreover, being identified with the clinging Self and its endless wants and fears means that even when things are going well, there is no room to breathe, to experience the spontaneous joy that is the basis of happiness. Every day becomes a tally sheet of gains and losses; the bountiful mind shrinks, reduced to being an inner bookkeeper huddled over an account ledger of what is to be held and what is to be discarded.
from: “Life Dancing” by Phillip Moffitt, published in Yoga Journal, July/August 2000
I was just reading the recent LJ article about the popularity of LJ in Russia and I realized it’s good to still be able to recognize and read a few basic words in Russian … about a decade after taking a semester of Russian. If I had a dictionary, text, maybe a grammar reference and a little time on my hand, I could start picking it up again pretty easily. Language is really a self-study once you know how the grammar works. Well, to clarify– you really need other people around if you want to learn to speak a language with any fluency, but if you just need to be able to read it, you can totally do it on your own.
***
I spent most of yesterday evening working on Minni’s fishing and cooking skills, wasting time by looking for recipes in the wrong places, and missing the fishing vendor when I was in the right place. I was SO happy to finally get her cooking up to 300 and her fishing up to 225 (so that she can do the lvl 40 fishing quest), though. Moreover, I was happy to catch 25 Stonescale Eel to send to Montanni. The drop rate has definitely increased for SSE– this was a hard-to-come-by commodity for Montanni’s alchemy several months back. Luckily, Bovia sent him some and Elixirs of Greater Defense and Greater Stoneshield potions were made– whew!
Stonescale Oil (squished from the eels) will also be needed for a couple of flasks that Montanni will eventually (hopefully) have the recipes for, so Minni’s fishing efforts will not be in vain. NEED TO RUN SCHOLOMANCE A LOT. AND UBRS. AND STRAT.
The stat buffs from cooked items makes it totally worthwhile to have a character with a maxed-out cooking skill. I may not work on secondary skills much with other characters, but Minni is doing them all.
We met with a bit of bad luck last night in our Eberron game that we had recently picked up after a lengthy break. In two rounds of combat, all of the characters died except for my dwarven cleric, Spruce. Granted, the first round of combat was a surprise round (not the party’s) and we were fighting a bodak, but still it was kind of sad. Spruce made about three fort saves and killed the bodak himself in two rounds, so it wasn’t all that tough … just that lethal gaze and all …
Still, we created those characters and started that game in December 2004. That’s a long time to have an “active” character, even if the game went on hiatus for about a year. Nah, I guess the hardcore, old school gamers who started their characters twenty or twenty-five years ago and are still playing the same game are really the ones who have enduring games.
So anyway, a new Tuesday night game will be starting up in addition to our *other* Tuesday night game (in which I play a druid with a camel). Gruntac is running and I will be playing a paladin because I haven’t played one in a long time and I rolled pretty good stats all around (12,12,15,15,17,17).
I always try to play classes and characters that I like because we never know if a game is going to last for two sessions or for two years. Therefore, playing a mage or anything involving metamagic feats and arcane focuses is totally out. I do like playing divine casters, but I prefer them kind of beefy and often enough I just like to play a straight-out fighter or barbarian. Monks and rangers also rock.
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