springading.com

I figured I should post now because 1) I feel like posting, and 2) Jim is still asleep. I have an easier time concentrating if Jim isn’t around while I’m writing.

A couple of things. One, I’ve been having some off-the-wall dreams. Yesterday, I slept until 11:30 (!) and had a dream about killer bubbles. Trust me, it was way more eerie in the dream. Upon waking, though, I was like HA. Funny. Then last night, I had a dream that Jim and I were too broke to go on our honeymoon because I had found out that I owed the government a bunch of money after doing my taxes.

Okay, that dream was brought on by the fact that over the weekend, I was pushing off doing my taxes because I kept thinking, “Well, I shouldn’t owe money” (I’ve never owed money) “but WHAT IF?”

Luckily, I’ve already paid for some of the honeymoon stuff up-front, so HA. No matter what the taxes come up as, it’s already done.  Yup,  the first week of May, we have a room booked at the hotel of our choice and tickets for two awesome-looking shows in Branson. At first, I was ehhh about the idea of going to Branson for our honeymoon, but now I’m stoked. Yeah, I said it. STOKED. We wanted something that wasn’t too far away and not too expensive.  We nixed anything anything that involved going outside of the United States (too expensive), Florida (too expensive, too far, too typical, and we’ve both been there), and any place which would involve driving through areas where we would feel obliged to visit with family members. I love my family, but seriously? No visiting any family on our honeymoon. That’s our rule. The honeymoon is all about US.

Also, I should mention, no Internet, so you all will get a break from me the first week of May. Now, I have brought up the subject of possibly bringing the laptop with for writing, since we both find writing enjoyable on its own, and it’s not like we’ll be tempted because (for some reason unknown to me) our laptop’s wireless capabilities quit working a while ago. Jim’s balking at the idea. He’s really for no computer at all. But I think we need other downtime things to do when we’re not reading, swimming, or having lots of loud, rambunctious, newly-wedded sex.

Hey. You were thinking it. And you know we’re gonna be doing it. Why deny, friends, why deny…

Anyway, like I was saying: Jim and I are getting excited about going to Branson. The hotel we got was our top pick (smoking room, indoor swimming pool), the shows we’re going to see look great, and I’ve already discovered there’s something called the Victorian Village I want to check out while I’m there. And I’ve already decided I’m blowing my diet while we’re there because I am not dieting on my honeymoon. If I have to start over when I come back, then so be it.

Oh, I forgot to mention that–I’m on a diet. Started  last week. Not nearly as bad as I thought I would be, which should clue me in as to how much of my eating was mostly just stress eating and not eating because I was hungry. And Jim’s been good. See, at first, it was hard because Jim would request that I get my (new) favorite chocolate stuff (marshmallow 3 Musketeers), knowing full well that it was my favorite,  and while I can easily avoid most foods, that is hard for me to resist. Anyway, I had to have a little chat with my man. His view: “You’re really not that big. I don’t see why you can’t eat this.” My view: “You are blinded by love. The scales say I AM that big.”

Seriously, for a skinny guy, Jim has a very skewed vision of weight. I have gained forty pounds since I moved to Carbondale in 2003. Forty pounds is a lot of weight, especially considering that I’m barely five feet tall. But Jim just doesn’t seem to see it. He hasn’t noticed that twenty of those pounds came along after he and I started dating, either. In fact, he’s always complimenting me on my body.

(Aside: I sent Jim this picture via text on Friday night while he was at game, and he texted me back that I was the prettiest girl in the world. If I were the type of person who said squee, I would do it then. But I’m not, so I won’t, and don’t you do it either–I want to punch all squeers in the face.)

Back to my point. This skewed vision he has of weight, it’s not just me. He doesn’t really seem to think people are fat until they reach something like the 400 pound mark. Unsurprisingly, Jim isn’t much into thin women, lol.

Anyway, I reminded Jim that 1) I’m well on my way to becoming diabetic–look at my health thus far–and 2) he had an uncle who died because of obesity. I hope I’m not saying too much here by admitting this (I’ll edit this post if Jim does mind), but Jim blames his uncle’s wife for it. His uncle was constantly trying to lose weight, and she’d mess up his diet by giving him cakes. One could say that his uncle always had a choice in the matter, but still? Shitty thing for his wife to do.

Anyway, when I reminded Jim of that story, things changed fast. Jim went out and bought soups for all my meals (that is in part because of my tooth extraction), but he made sure they were all both vegetarian and low-calorie. When we stopped by McDonald’s earlier this week, he didn’t even ask what I wanted to drink; he made sure I had water. And, again, because of my tooth extraction, he asked for them to put it in a coffee cup, since I can’t drink from straws right now.

As a result? I’ve already lost 6 pounds!

Okay. So, there are other things, things more interesting than my diet, which I know is of no interest to anyone but myself…once upon a time, I had mentioned possibly going to Gen Con. Jim hasn’t mentioned it at all, so I’m not sure we’re going. My thought is that we’re not because we’re doing our best to knock out the credit card debt. Our goal is  to have it gone by next year. Once it’s gone, Jim is going to quit his  job  and just go to school full-time. Poor guy–taking 5 classes and working 4 days a week while co-running a game with Karac is wiping him  out.

And on that note…our Werewolf game is postponed indefinitely. It was supposed to run on Saturdays, but both Jim  and Karac keep getting scheduled to work on Saturdays. That, and Jim usually needs to catch up on homework then. It’s really too bad because I think I’m really going to like it, but hell, I like just having Jim to myself on Saturdays, too. (Although, Phil, if you’re reading this, you’re always welcome to come over. Just don’t mind the mess.) But my guess is that we’ll pick it back up during the summer.

That’s okay. I can wait. Because right now, I have this to read:

A Game of Thrones

That’s right, A Game of Thrones. Oh my god, guys, a fantasy writer that knows how to write. I will neither hide nor deny it: I am a writing snob. Before you go thinking that I have no right to be a writing snob, I have to point out that my blog-writing is  vastly different than my fiction-writing. And while there are lots of good fantasy stuff out there, most of those writers are good story-tellers, which is not the same as knowing what to do with the language. There is a difference.

By the way, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with just telling a damn good story.  In fact, I think our society needs it. But I personally love it when I have a writer that knows how to use foreshadowing, alliteration, imagery, all that good stuff that does more than tell a story, it plays with the reader’s imagination…SIGH. Love it.

Anyway, George R. R. Martin knows what he’s doing. I’m impressed.  We just bought the first book a couple weeks ago, and Jim’s has already started on the THIRD book. Have you seen the size of these books? Jim is single-handedly the fastest reader I’ve ever known, surpassing even my mother, who, I have to say, it pretty damned fast when she wants to be.

So, yeah. Read them. I’m really excited for the HBO premier  in April because (gasp!) I think I actually have HBO! (I’m not sure. I don’t really watch much TV, so I’m not sure what all I have, but I’m pretty sure Jim said we have HBO.) On that note, I’m going to leave you with a trailer to get you all excited:

Enjoy!

Well, I started a post about how I was having second thoughts about documenting the Werewolf game, but I decided it sounded too whiny, so I deleted all of it. Suffice it to say, the reason why I’m having second thoughts is because I might not make all of the games, plain and simple.

Yesterday, I went into work early to do some overtime. Pulled out my MP3 player from my purse, like I always do, and found a little notecard folded next to it. On it was Jim’s handwriting:

Even if I’m asleep, I’m probably dreaming about you. I love you so, so, so much. Have a good day. -Jim 

I read the card, think that my man is quite the romantic, and secretly hope that whatever he is dreaming about, it’s better than my dream of having a bunch of rapists for neighbors and having to beat them off me with a shovel.

Not even an hour and a half in, my sister Jennifer called to let me know that she needed to go see a patient. Since she’s a hospice nurse–and on call–when she needs to see a patient, it’s usually pretty urgent. Luckily, I had warned my supervisor of the situation the day before (her husband took a job out of  state, Jim and I are the back-up babysitters), so he’s already aware of everything. So I left. I had fun watching the kids, though. I cannot deny it. I helped Trinity clean up her room with Seth, doing the Rocky theme song as I tossed clothes to the kids so they could put them in their places. Afterwards, they roped me into blowing up balloons for them in exchange for “please” and kisses. I came home with a sticker on my shirt and stamps on my hand.

Oddly, during that entire time I was there, I barely saw the oldest, Damian. He spent the entire time cleaning his room, yelling from the other side of his door that his room was “atrocious” and not to come in. Jennifer later told me that he didn’t want me to see how bad his room was. He’s definitely getting older; he’s getting embarrassed way more easily.

Anyway, watched the kids, Jen came home. Started to leave twice, but Jen got a couple more calls, so I would then hang around to see if she needed me. (She didn’t.) By the time I left, it was 11:05. Since my original plan was to leave work at noon, there was no point in going back to work.

Raced to Kroger, picked up snacks for the game, came home. Jim was already on the sofa with his coat on, waiting. Told me Phil was on his way. There was a flurry of calls and texts the second I had walked in. Karac couldn’t get out of work. Ben had to stay home because they were delivering his computer, and they wouldn’t be open the next day. Matt would have to leave at three anyway.

Decision: Game cancelled. Jim called Phil. Phil was already in our parking lot and starving. Poor guy. So the three of us instead went to McAlister’s. Mmmm, Cheese Spud!

After that, the day was decidedly less eventful. Jim and Phil read Werewolf books on the sofa while I started dozing off in the rocking chair. Finally, I threw in the towel, kissed Jim, and went to take a nap. When I woke up, Phil was gone, and Jim and I spent the rest of the night eating way too many snacks and watching Justified and Babylon 5. Justified is totally a man-show. Jim just loves it. We both remark on the lead guy’s name being Raylan, similar to Jim’s “Raelan” in our D&D game. (Obviously, spelled differently.) And Babylon 5, of course, has one of the best scenes ever:

I’m gonna taken Delenn’s advice and be somewhere else. As in the store. We’re almost out of coffee, and I’m pretty sure without it, I just might die. Minbaris be damned.

You guys will have to forgive me–it’s been over two months since this game as real-life cropped up between then and now, so getting this post written is going to take some effort, as I’ve forgotten a lot since then. And, if you’ve been keeping up with this blog, you’ll know that this game has since ended. I’d recommend skimming over the last installment prior to reading this; I know I had to. But a quick recap: We left Iema, Natalia, and Sunshine in The Dump, a place full of wood “bushes” that turned out to be the corpses of children. We were then attacked by their killers (splinterwaifs) and after a long, difficult fight, we manage to kill most of them and run the remaining off. And now for the last game…

Icetor the 15^th (continued)

Iema, Natalia, and Sunshine are still standing in the wood pile, exhausted after their fight. Iema casts Detect Magic and find a glowing “pot” of money–and a dead body. It is not a body like one of those wood “bushes” that we had found earlier, though. Jim says the body is decayed, has nice clothes, and a necklace that has the symbol of St. Barius society, which was bigger during the Godstorms. There aren’t as many people wearing this symbol nowadays, and when you did see it, they were mostly found on guards.

Iema and Natalia try to figure out what they know. Most of the murder victims were crushed, shredded…murdered by something very powerful. These splinterwaifs, though, are more for shooting, well…splinter-things, things that some people mistook for arrows. Obviously, the splinterwaifs, as terrible as they are in their own right, are not responsible for the murders we’re investigating.

We consider that one of the victims that was nearby The Dump had both an “arrow” in him and had his arm torn off. We conclude that the man had the misfortune of getting between both the splinterwaifs and whoever was killing everyone. Damn, talk about rough luck.

We walk back to the Burning Inn. On the way, Iema takes off his herald’s cloak. He’s decided to stop pussy-footing around with Burne Layward, and if the only way to make the guy talk is to put aside his symbol of his service under Julium, then that’s what he’s going to do. We get to the Inn. Iema sits down. Natalia remains standing, watching Burne warily.

Iema sits down, tells Burne that his story doesn’t add up, there is no way he had made such a huge mistake about what was in The Dump, and blantantly accuses Burne of knowing what was really going on. Burne at first tries a lame attempt at blaming the Corporal, then tries to change his tune.

“You know what?” he says. “Let’s start over. C’mon, I’ll buy you drinks.”

Iema, ever the polite bard, accepts his offer; Natalia, ever the rude druid, flat-out declines. Good thing because Iema takes a sip–and starts choking.  Fortunately he makes his Fortitude save, so the poison doesn’t kill him.

Combat! (My favorite part.)

The place breaks out into a frenzy. Four guys pull out longswords and flip over tables. Before she can react, Natalia gets hit by four arrows. She yells for Sunshine, who is nearby outside, hoping that her dire hawk will hear her. I don’t even remember if she does, though. What I have in my notes is that Natalia turns into a dire bear (of COURSE) while Iema starts hacking away at enemies. Eventually, we’ve bloodied several and run the rest off, but we managed to get Burne held down. While he’s being held, Iema goes around and calmly starts straightening up the bar, remembering to give the bartender 15 gold to go toward the damages.

Finally, Iema dispels whatever it is that’s keeping Burne held. Burne decides to tell us what he knows. The kid that we had heard died was actually the fourth murder. There was another murder even before what others knew about, but it took place outside of town. We get a name and an address for a contact named Al’menna from Burne, he admits that everything he’s said about the Corporal is a lie, and he begs us not to turn him over to Corporal Murstas.

We head off to this new contact, who confirms the rumor of that the first murder actually took place outside of town. Iema asks if anyone new was coming in, and Al’menna confirms there was a very nice family who came had been fleeing their old town because of–get this–some unresolved murders taking place. But these aren’t any old murders. Whatever is doing it could crush animals.

Iema and Natalia surmise that the killer could either be someone in the family or someone following the family. I remember at this point, having a weird feeling of déjà vu, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Al’menna then tells us that the child victim actually knew the family’s little girl. In fact, he had a crush on her and teased her all the time.

Natalia perks up. “Little girl?” She glances at Iema, who seems to be thinking the same thing she’s thinking.

We got back to visit Madwyn, who seems surprised in our sudden interest in this family, telling us they were very nice people. Still, she hands over the address. On the way, Natalia and Iema try to figure out what it could be. Let’s assume they are, indeed, “very nice people.” How were the murders tied to this family? Natalia suggests poltergeists. Of course, I don’t even know if poltergeists exist in D&D and thought maybe I was being dumb for even suggesting it, but if Jim and Phil thought it was dumb, they kept it to themselves.

Good thing. I’m usually the one getting their drinks for them. Yeah, stay on my good side, boys, ha.

So we get to the home of the girl and her family. The house is dark. The door is off the hinges. This doesn’t look good. Iema has a new ring that he uses to light up the area around us.

“I smell blood,” Sunshine offers.

Based on the damage, we can tell whatever it was was bipedal. It’s obviously huge because it’s crushed through the door. Natalia turns into a wolf, and she smells that same smell of blood and fecal matter. There are human parts everywhere.

We go back outside. Again, the smell is everywhere. We can overhear the Corporal nearby, and we call him over, explain what we’re doing.

This entire time, something is nagging me. Something about all this feels very familiar. I remember someone thinking this was the ghost of “Druid Jack.” Whatever it is, it’s big, super-strong, bipedal, crazy-protective, enough where it could mistake a little boy’s teasing for something more serious–

“OH,” I say. “OH. I bet this is–I bet–it’s–ARGH. What’s the word? What are they called again? IT’S A GRAY RENDER.”

Phil is impressed that I figured it out; Jim admits that he thought I would have figured it out sooner.

 In character, Natalia voices her suspicion, and then we’re all really moving because you don’t want a gray render running around loose in the town. We spread out. Natalia casts Greater Magic Fang on Sunshine because we really can’t afford for her to miss. We start roaming through town, trying to figure out where something as large as a gray render could be hiding. We’re go through alleys littered with small, dead animals–no doubt, leftovers from the render’s meals–and end up standing by a statue.

A bum sees us. “You outta be careful.”

We turn. “What?” one of us asks.

He scoffs. “Statues around here come to life.” We look at each other. He insists, “They do! I just saw one in the park.”

We remember something: Aside from blood, Natalia kept smelling fecal matter when she was shapeshifted. The park the bum is referring to houses a large stone vent that goes to the sewers. Iema calls for the Corporal, and we race toward the park.

Sunshine flies high up overhead to see into the tall vent, then lands by us. “Yup,” she says. “The fan inside is busted.”

I don’t even remember how we call got up and over. I mean, I assume Natalia and Sunshine flew, but I don’t know about Iema and the paladin. Once inside, though, we find some weird things. We see symbols with lines radiating from the center. Jim says it looks like the moon eclipsing the sun, which is the symbol for Tharix, god of crazy people and doomsday cultists. We go through a lake of poop (that’s my oh-so-poignant description in my notes, ha), and we notes that it looks like there’s been a fight. Two cultists are dead. One is still alive, but there are entrails behind him. His eyes are gouged out. Behind him, there is a message written in blood: I have seen death, and it is mine own.

Leave it to doomsday cultists to be drama queens.

Iema spots the little girl. She is freaked out. Jim asks Phil if Iema is going to calm the girl down. Phil sighs, mumbling that he has a feeling that he’s going to regret this…Attempting to comfort the little girl, he puts a hand on her shoulder.

Whoosh. That would be the sound of speedy, angry gray renders coming to attack us, by the way. Yes, gray renders, as in plural, as in one very large one and one smaller one.

Okay, that, we didn’t see coming.

Natalia immediately shifts into dire bear form, then starts a spell to summon an earth elemental. Meanwhile, Iema is fighting like crazy, and poor Sunshine is being smashed by one of the renders.

Suddenly, we hear a grinding sound. “What’s that?” Natalia asks.

We crane our necks, while trying to keep an eye on our attackers. Finally, we spot bricks that are starting to pop out of the walls. Jim reminds us that Natalia had summoned an earth elemental. Well, the elemental is coming from the walls. We watch in horror as a brick-man pulls himself from the walls. The ceiling above us starts to groan.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Natalia says, kicking herself for not predicting this. Iema scoops the little girl up and starts to run.

Natalia is hard-pressed to leave a fight and Corporal Murstes behind. The smaller render charges the earth elemental. Natalia’s creation then faces off both it and the larger render.

“Get to the tunnel!” Murstes yells.

The larger render is still fighting the earth elemental. Natalia grabs Sunshine and start to head out. Before she can turn around and find out if Murstes is behind us, she sees that Murstes has summoned a glowing wall between himself and us, effectively keeping the render and elemental from getting out–and locking himself in with the two.

“What are you doing?” Natalia demands.

“Go.”

She hesitates a moment. Iema has already gotten the girl out; after a moment, Natalia and Sunshine flee as well, and they get out just before everything collapses. The little girl is in shock. We decide what she needs is someone familiar, so we go back to her house, pick up the money in the safe that we found there, then take her to Madwyn’s, give the woman the money and the girl, and explained what the culprit was.

Next, we go to the guardhouse to let them know what happened to Corporal Murstes. They seem busy. I don’t remember what exactly they were doing; my notes say they’re “caught [doing something] revolutionary.” Don’t ask. I’m sure if the game continued, we would have found out. I can guarantee you that Jim’s got all worked out, and it probably will have an effect somewhere in Valt and the next game.

At any rate, we don’t care too much about it right now because suddenly, somebody breaks into the room, yelling that there’s a monster in the street. Natalia is surprised. That thing survived the cave-in?

The desk guard runs out to start ringing warning bells, and they start closing the town gates, effectively shutting down the town. We’re about to run out, but we’re suddenly halted by fire coming through the door. Men with black sacks on their heads burst in with firey swords, Burne in the lead. Why the hell did we let him go? Burne yells to burn the place down.

ARGH, WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS. Natalia quickly gets back in her dire bear form because that’s the form that gets shit done. Iema casts Improved Invisibility on himself and joins the fights. One of the guards jumps up on the desk, downs a potion, and starts breathing fire on the attackers for max damage. While Natalia is grappling one of these idiots, she hears a thunk outside as something hits the window.

“Ow,” she hears Sunshine’s muffled voice from outside it.

Oh, geez. That bird.

Iema, still invisible, sneaks to one guy and guts him, but he isn’t getting past everybody. Jim rolls for one of the female attackers and announces that she has made her listen check. So she figures out where Iema is and attacks. Luckily, she misses. Natalia kills one of the other attackers when Sunshine suddenly bashes through the window.

Iema swings around on the woman who had pinpointed him and manages to kill her. Other guards swoop in around him to surround Burne, grab him, and throw in a jail cell.

Finally, with Burne out of the way, we can focus on our main concern: The very large gray render that’s on the loose. Around us is chaos. Aside from the fight we just had, one guard is yelling to block the gates to keep the render from escaping, and another has just run in to call out that it’s on one of the docks. We hurry that way.

There is a brief debate among some as to whether or not to let the little girl die, figuring that once she’s gone, the threat will be gone, too.  And we picked…what do you THINK we picked? We’re not letting a little girl die! It’s not her fault this crazy thing is attached to her! Are you freakin’ nuts? Iema starts heading out toward the boat and gets about 10 feet before the render starts hurling iron at him. A piece strikes the bard’s shoulder. His whole arm goes numb. Iema gets hit a second time and drops. Both Natalia and a guard make a beeline toward Iema, but the guard gets there first and heals him, enabling Natalia to refocus on the boat, the gray render, and the little girl. She proceeds.

We see that it’s worse than we thought. We thought at least the smaller render had died. It, in fact, had not. Both the renders were on the boat. The smaller one charges at Natalia. Iema quickly manages to grab the Wand of Cure Serious Wounds from Natalia because he’s just about out of spells–and because Natalia, seeing that she’s about to get attacked, is going to shift back into dire bear form. (Quick thinking on Phil’s part, by the way.) So Natalia shifts and starts clawing, Sunshine sweeps in and does her thing, and the lieutenant fighting with us manages to get the killing blow in on the little render.

Everyone then turns to focus on the larger gray render. This fight is much uglier. Iema is killed during it, his legs torn off. Natalia manages to finish off the gray render, collects her friend, and then goes to find a cleric to resurrect him.

Easier said than done. It turns out that not all clerics are willing to just resurrect people. This cleric wanted a good reason to  resurrect Iema, and when Natalia failed to provide one (aside from “he’s my friend and I’ll claw your eyes out if you don’t”), the cleric refused to help.

So Natalia has to use her reincarnate. She was hoping not to have to do that because the chances of him coming back as an arcling were pretty slim. Still, better alive…So she casts. Iema comes back as an owl.

Sunshine eyes the owl hungrily and hops toward him.

“SUNSHINE,” Iema says. “It’s ME! Iema! YOU CAN’T EAT ME.”

“It’s really a drow pretending!” she says, hopping closer. “I’m not falling for your drow tricks!”

Natalia gets in the middle and orders Sunshine to back off. Sunshine reluctantly obeys. We had back to Julium’s, give our report, and go to bed.

Now here’s where I really have to rely on my memory because I didn’t take any notes beyond this point. I believe it was the next morning when Raelan finally comes along and transforms Iema back into an arcling. (Wizards are so handy to have around. When they’re not being annoying.) We go to find Madwyn to discover that when the renders found her with the little girl, that they had torn her arm off. Natalia feels guilty about that (after all, we’re the ones who left the little girl with her, assuming that the renders had died, and thus, had made her a target), so we find someone to try to fix her arm with a spell. Unfortunately, the dice gods were not with him when Jim rolled for that NPC; it went horribly wrong, and her arm ended up growing out of her side. She, of course, is horrified. Determined to get her arm fixed, we go to Raelan, since he has surgery skills. He teleports us to his castle and fixes her arm to some kind of monster arm. It’s not as nice-looking as her old arm, but this arm can do all sorts of things that her original one couldn’t do. To her credit, Madwyn doesn’t complain. Instead, she admires Raelan’s work.

And that’s where the last game ended: Us standing around a woman with a monster arm, and a young wizard throwing his arms up in the air, declaring himself a genius.

It’s as good an ending as any, I suppose.

Originally, I started this post while waiting for eggs to boil. Hence, the title. But the eggs soon were done, I got my egg salad made for lunch tomorrow, and then I was outta here like a bat out of hell because MY GOD, was I craving candy. Which is weird because I don’t usually have cravings to this extent. But tonight, all I wanted was some good old-fashioned lemon drops.

The marshmellow 3 Musketeers was just a bonus. I didn’t even know I wanted that! When I saw that bag, the only thing that kept me from attacking it with my teeth and shaking the bag around was that people were starting to look. I think I was just a little to blissful in the candy aisle tonight.

It’s a good thing I don’t plan on wearing a traditional wedding dress when we get married in April because I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t fit. Can I wear a moo-moo? That’s kinda like a dress, right?

Speaking of wedding stuff, Jim actually brought it up today. Even before the werewolf game he’s doing. Wedding > werewolf, I can imagine him saying. Heh. His mom had been asking him about decorations, and he was like, “Are we on the same page on this? Do we really need decorations?”

My response?  “Ah,  no. I mean, some people probably have flowers at their weddings, but we plan on doing it outside, and it’ll be springtime. There will already be flowers.”

Jim was happy with that response. I think, for a moment, he panicked, thinking that maybe there would be decorations and music and fanciness. I reassured him. Nope. It’ll be SUPER casual because I think neither one of us are formal people, and formality is gonna freak us out. It’s just going to be a barbeque where we get married quickly beforehand. There will be a cake just because I want an excuse for cake, and hell, I might make it myself. (Or not.) There will just be meat and Boca Burgers and him and me–okay, possibly me in a moo-moo.

How very romantic.

The weekend was wonderful. Even after working overtime on Saturday and the bumminess (totally should be a word) of ending our D&D game, it was a good weekend. First, Phil, Jim, and I played a “warm-up” Werewolf game, which is what Jim is going to be running next. This game will actually have other people in it. Yup, I will be playing in a game with other people. I know! I grow up so fast, right? So far, I know their friend Karac has agreed to play, Ben’s a maybe, Jim plans on asking Mike, and he’s still waiting on “Boyscout Matt.” So it could be interesting.

(Aside: Don’t judge me for calling him “Boyscout Matt.” I know way too many Matts, and besides, it’s not like he reads this, SO HE’LL NEVER KNOW.)

(Unless you guys tell. Then no marshmellow 3 Musketeers for you.)

Phil and I are rolling “cub” characters, which I guess is what they call new werewolves. The warm-up game was so Jim could get our characters through their first change before the real game; also, I think Phil and Jim wanted me to learn how all the rolling works.

So far, I think I’m going to like Werewolf. One of the things I really like is that Jim is setting it right here in southern Illinois. I had decided that my character (Liv–haven’t decided on a last name yet) spent most of her life in a mental institution, so Jim told me that it was Choate’s in Anna. In fact, when we went out for a (super long, super awesome) drive on Sunday, he even drove me past the actual place, so I could better visualize it, along with some other places that popped up during our warm-up game.

Before anyone cries “cheats,” Phil and I didn’t actually get any XP during that game or anthing. Strictly “this is your first change, this is what this is about, and good god, Spring, are we going to have to tell you which dice to roll forever?”

(Yes.)

If this game actually gets off the ground (who knows? we still don’t know who all is playing), I haven’t decided on whether or not I would write about them like I did “Homebrewed.” I’m a little hesitant because I don’t know how other people would feel about me writing all their stuff where anyone could read it. At least when Phil joined our D&D game, he had been reading the “Homebreweds,” so he knew what he was getting into.

If I do decide to try to keep records of it, I can tell you this: It wasn’t be nearly as detailed as the “Homebrewed” posts were. It was really hard to maintain that level of detail, and I often found that I was too busy writing to pay attention to the actual game.

We shall see.

Anyway. It’s 8:30. I feel the need for more candy and my book and a nice warm bath. I know. My life is so terrible.

This whole post is going to be about gaming. You’ve had fair warning.

As I (very briefly) mentioned a couple posts ago, Jim had confessed to me, while we were out on a drive, that he felt that our game was in its final stretch, and it was probably about time to lay the game to rest. At this point, Natalia and Iema are well-known enough in Derrikol Forest that people aren’t going to give them trouble. Jim told me that those mountain giants that were giving people problems before would, if running across us, rather jump off a cliff now than deal with us. They might survive the fall. They wouldn’t survive us.

Jim had also said that if I wanted to continue playing, he could do it. We could push on, Natalia could go off to other parts of the world and be more ambitious and powerful, but truthfully, Natalia was never an ambitious druid. Her big ambition was to be done with the adventuring and return to her forest. The running joke throughout the game was Natalia saying she just wanted to live in her treehouse, and while we joked about it, it was true. If I had been playing a character like Raelan, I could see where we could have pushed the game further. But Natalia? No, especially after she discovered that both her efforts and even her existence were resulting in deaths without her realizing it.

(If you’re confused, it’s probably because I don’t think I’ve posted that game yet. No worries. I will.)

So, last night, Phil came over, and before we even started playing, Jim asked if we also thought it was time to wrap up game. It was a pretty short discussion. We could all feel it winding down. So we didn’t actually play D&D. (We actually started the warm-up to a werewolf game Jim’s going to run next, but that’s another story.) Instead, Jim gave us summations of what happened. There were a couple points where we could pick what our characters would have chosen, and he would tell us how it worked out.

Eventually, I am going to post up the last game we had, the one from two months ago that I barely remember. Might as well; then, I will have had the whole thing documented here. And at some point, I’m going to ask Jim to write the official summary here. I didn’t write a single thing down because I wanted to soak it all in. And I had a big debate with myself on whether or not I wanted to post the big reveals and what happened because there were some things we were blown away by like, oh my god, THE PERSON WHO BETRAYED US TO THE DROW. But I’ve decided that I really want all the details in one post, and I really want Jim to be the one to write it.  Here’s hoping I can convince him.

I don’t remember where exactly I left off on the blog with what was going on in Valt, but I think I did write it down here that when Iema and Natalia came up from the Underdark, they had found out that the towns of Devies and Stilldale were suffering from plagues. Before I found out the game was going to end, I had already talked to Jim about how Natalia wanted to fix this. She had worked hard alongside the towns, particularly Stilldale, and had finally won some amount of respect from the people there–no small feat, considering how much they hated druids in the beginning. Just as Stilldale referred to her as their “local witch,” she thought of them as her town–or, as much as any druid would claim a town. She didn’t want them to all die.

What I was going to have her do in the next game was have her create her first unique spell, one that combined the properties of an insect swarm spell with a type of anti-contagion spell, so that she could release a swarm of mosquitos into the town to heal the people. While wrapping up the game, Jim says that Natalia is successful in creating the spell, but she has limited success, only because by the time it happens, most of the people in the towns have died from the plagues.

Glossing over the summary: Natalia had already had a hint of some of the “bloodletting” that was unknowingly released by herself and Iema that the earth weird had alluded to while we were playing. Jim will finally reveal just how MUCH damage had been caused by Natalia’s choices, actions, and even her own resurrection from when she died fighting the black dragon, ALL those games ago. Jim said there’s a lesson here: Be careful how you use magic.

I’ll tell this part because it’s already been alluded to in the “Homebrewed” posts, so it’s not a shock: Beta does, in fact, become evil. In fact, he creates a monster mess–literally–in Derrikol Forest, to the point where even Natalia doesn’t stay anymore. Instead, Natalia goes off to retire on a boat. A really cool boat. You’ll find out in the summary, despite who finally writes it.

After I agreed that Natalia would do this, I backtracked and asked Jim if Natalia fought Beta before she retired. He said I could if I wanted to, but she would have to had become the leader of the Spruce Circle and gotten herself and all the other druids killed in the process of “cleansing” the forest from Beta and his new groupies. Jim asked if I wanted to change what I had agreed to with Natalia’s fate.

But, at this point, I had already agreed to have her go away, and I’m a big “no cheating” fan and didn’t want “backsies” to rewrite her story, so to speak. Still, it seems very out of character for Natalia to not try to fix the problem that she, in fact, created. I mean, if she had never Awakened Beta, this whole mess wouldn’t be. So I justify her fleeing from Derrikol Forest this way: Natalia would have fought anyone she thought needed to be put down, including Iema. (Sorry, Phil, but that’s just the way it rolls.) But the idea of fighting Beta, her first and most beloved companion, after finding out just how much she contibuted to the downfall of the area, coupled with finding out which of her friends had sold her to the drow…well, it was too much. Besides, what if she just caused more damage? Rather than risk it, she leaves the forest she loves so much and had so much hope for. Yes, it’s sad, but it is what it is.

Unsurprisingly, Iema and Natalia will separate. Phil will reveal things to me on his character sheet that I had suspected (Iema finally moved from chaotic-good to chaotic-neutral), but the source of the slippery alignment will be a complete surprise to me. Iema, as it turns out, has been keeping some mighty big secrets from Natalia, and for good reason. Had she known, there’s a very good chance she might have killed him. I think she would have done that as a last resort, but yes–it probably would have come to that.

Iema has his own ambitions that are quite big, and in fact, I suspect he’s going to be one of the catalysts in an upcoming world-changing event in Valt. I totally want to write about his plans because they’re really cool, but I don’t trust my memory and would rather Jim give all this away. As to what will become of Iema’s ambitions…we shall find out in the next game.

That’s the other thing that surprised me: Although we have no plans yet to start another D&D game, Jim already knows that his next game will be set 17 years in the future of Valt, after Julium has ruled for some time, so Iema and Natalia will both still be alive. What Phil has chosen for his bard’s fate is pretty big, and I would be shocked if Iema doesn’t come up as an NPC. Natalia, though, has become pretty secluded, so I think it will be hard for the next group of players to run across her, unless they’re specifically looking for druids. But seeing as to WHICH boat she retires on, I think it will be very difficult for them to find her, even if they wanted to. Sad that I probably won’t see my first character again as an NPC in a later game? Well, yes. But, truthfully, it seems right for her.

All I’ve got to say about the next set of players–and who knows, I could be among them–is that wow. This campaign ended on a very dark note, and some very big things are on the horizon. Hope you’re ready.

Anyway, enough about all that. The reveals and summary will come later, after I post the last real “Homebrewed” game. Upon concluding my first D&D game, I wanted to touch on some things I learned, things that would be perhaps be useful to others just learning the ropes:

• Have a fully-fleshed out character concept in mind before you start your character sheet. Mine was pretty vague, and I seriously think that’s what took SO long when I filled Natalia’s sheet out the first time. (Seriously, it was something like 3 1/2 hours.) Phil knew exactly what he wanted to play and had his sheet done in minutes. Granted, he’s also been filling sheets out way longer than I have, but I think knowing exactly what he wanted to do helped a LOT.
• Unless you have a natural aptitude for acting, create a character that is pretty much just you if you were in a D&D world. I had no issues figuring out how Natalia would feel or do things because, honestly, if D&D was real-life, I would probably be a druid.
• At the same time…druids are probably not the best class to play for a first-timer, or at least, not in 3rd edition. Unless you have a fabulous memory (which I do not), it can be very tricky keeping track of not only all your spells, but all your forms and the abilities you have in those forms, PLUS all your animal companions’ stats and abilities.
• For your first game, play with people with loooooots of patience. Preferably friends that you feel very comfortable with. I would not recommend starting out with strangers at a convention, that’s for sure. 
• Sad fact: Make fun of it all you want, but role-playing really does make the game better. It breathes life into it. As much as I make fun of people who LARP, I can at least see where they’re coming from. In our games, I tend to just tell Jim, “Well, Natalia does this or that.” My scenes are always way less dynamic than the ones between Phil and Jim, where they actually role-play it out.
• If you’re “of the shy sort” (as Jim describes me in one of his first posts about this game), the best thing I’ve found (aside from alcohol, heh) is to prepare for games. Know what you want to do before the game starts. If you’re like me, you’ll be like a deer in headlights if you’re put on the spot regarding what you want to do next. I wish I had taken my own advice on this one more often.
• Related to that (as well as the first bullet point): Character backgrounds. I now realize why veteran gamers get so freakin’ detailed with their character backgrounds. I knew Natalia’s past, but I didn’t really know what I wanted her future to be. It made it harder to figure out what I wanted to do, and I wasted a lot of time in-game trying to figure it out spur of the moment.
• This might be obvious, but the more dice, the better. Try to get different colors, too. One thing I saw Phil do a lot was say something like, “White die is this kind of damage, black die is that kind” and roll. He was way more efficient than I was.
• Next time, I’m also going to hunt down a box top to roll my dice in, so I can be as enthusiastic as I wanna be in my dice-rolling–without losing them all over the floor and creating a mad cat-chase as they scramble after them.
• Another thing I saw Phil use a lot was something called “bardic knowledge.” Any time Jim mentioned anything, he would say, “Jim, can I roll a bardic knowledge on that?” Then he’d roll, and if he succeeded, Jim would tell him what Iema would know. Keep in mind that your character knows things that you do not, and if you suspect you’re running into something that fits that criteria, ask the DM. Granted, unless you’re rolling a bard, it won’t be a bardic knowledge check, but it will be something.
• If I had to do it all over? I would have secretly swiped Jim’s Monster Manual and taken a look at some of the things we could run into. Be careful not to metagame–I’m proud that I’m very good at not doing this, especially for a first-timer–but still, I see nothing wrong with actually familiarizing yourself with the types of critters your character would know about.
• While you can play without reading the handbook, it certainly helps to skim over it. I actually did read the druid section of ours a couple of times, and actually knew things about druids that Jim had forgotten.
• Index cards! They’re the best. In hindsight, if I had to do it over, I would have put all the new spells Natalia had learned on index cards and separated them by level. I did eventually write them down on paper so I wouldn’t have to ask to see the book every time I needed to change her spell list, but index cards would have been better.
• Also, index cards for magic items: Jim took this idea and ran with it. He even had a way we could keep track of charges on wands. DMs should really consider doing this. It was easier for me to remember I had items when I had cards in my hands than when I had it written on a part of my character sheet I never paid much attention to.
• If you play for any length of time–our own game had been been running for maybe a little over a year now–don’t be surprised when, upon ending the game, you’ve discovered you’ve grown attached to your character. I still don’t get people who cry over their characters dying (that’s just nuts), but I was surprised to realize that I was pretty bummed about shelving Natalia, never to play her again. Even more so, I was disappointed how sad I was for Natalia, seeing how hard she tried to make the world better, and how the world actually had become darker for it. 
• RESPECT YOUR DMs. Holy crap. The amount of work and even themselves  that they invest to give you something this awesome is nothing short of amazing. Come prepared and don’t be a jerk. Repect what they’re doing because they’re doing it for you, and they certainly don’t have to.

That’s all I can remember for now. In my very first post about this game, I had posted Natalia’s stats. I figured I’d end it the same way. She ended the game at level 14, only points away from 15. (For the curious, I believe Iema was at level 16.) In her human form, she was sitting at 133 hit points and an AC of 18. And for her abilities, they were as follows:

Strength: 13
Dexterity:  13
Constitution: 18
Intelligence: 8
Wisdom: 19
Charisma: 13

Funny how, through all that, her intelligence never went up, heh. But she did get wiser and hardier. I guess that’s all a druid can really ask for, especially in a world like Valt.

Oh, and Jim? Thank you for a great time. I had a blast. And you’ve finally convinced me:  D&D is better than Warcraft. You win.

Things I need to do: Dishes, the vacuuming, the sweeping and mopping, clean the bathroom.

What I’m actually doing: Eating popcorn, fighting Gremlin away from my popcorn, charging my MP3 player, and watching Angel.

I really do need to clean. A couple nights ago, I actually woke up in the middle of the night thinking about how I needed to clean. And then the following night, I dreamt that our place had gotten so bad that we had developed a mouse infestation, and the mice had become so well-known to us that we even knew their names. (Apparently, the mice could talk in my dream.) But it was not a happy cohabitation. I chased them everywhere, like  Tom chases Jerry, and just like the cartoon, they always outsmarted me.

Honestly, the apartment isn’t that bad. But it’s definitely not clean, and my brain is having issues with it.

But I have other things on my mind besides cleaning. Nothing much bad. Most things are great. Work is great. Jim is great. Jim is fabulous, actually. That man! For Valentine’s Day, he bought me measuring spoons and measuring cups and a HUGE wooden cutting board, just like I asked for. Oh, my god, I’ve wanted one like that since I was, like, nineteen. (If you think it’s weird that a nineteen year old girl would want that, keep in mind that I was married at 18 the first time.) He also gave me the best chocolates I’ve eaten to date.

Sigh. That man. He still makes me swoon.

Well, I guess there is some stuff on my mind, but I can’t really go into it. Jim had a bad day at work, and I’m getting pissed about the reason behind it. Or, more accurately, the person behind it. Grrr.

Also had a very interesting e-mail at work that caused a lot of gossip (and I think I got to the bottom of it, heh), but alas, that is also something I don’t think it would be in good taste to talk about here. Kinda “company business,” know what I mean?

So what can I talk about? Hm. Jim mentioned that he thinks our D&D game is perhaps in its final stretch. He claims it’s not because we’ve gone a while without playing, but where we’re at in the game. I can understand where he’s coming from. I also kind of wonder if Jim’s ready for something new. I mean, he already has an idea of another game he wants to run, one that he thinks I would like. Who knows? I sure don’t.

But I do know I need to clean. On that note, I’m outta here.

Good grief, will somebody make me wash the dishes already?

So. Hi. I feel better. Not 100%, but maybe 80%. Which is a B. Which is not A-quality as in excellent, but still, VERY GOOD, good enough for me to start hitting on Jim again and trying to lure him into the bedroom with my best, lecherous grins.

Of course, by the time we get in there, I’ve hacked up a couple of times and gone through a box of Kleenex and immediately pass out as soon as I crash onto the mattress. So, okay. That’s maybe not so sexy. I didn’t say advances on Jim were actually working.

But Jim and I are both doing better. Thank goodness because Friday, I sounded awful. Seriously, this is how it went down on Friday morning:

Co-worker 1: Hi, Spring.

Me [croaking]: Hello.

Co-worker 1 [eyes wide]: Oh, my.

Co-worker 2 [just appearing at her desk, so she hadn't heard me yet]: Well, good morning, Spring.

Me: Good morning.

Co-worker 2: WHAT is THAT?

Yeah, it was that bad.

For the first time since working there, I actually e-mailed my supervisor and asked to bow out of any phone duty that could come my way that day. I didn’t think I’d be put on anyway because it was Friday, so phones are slower, but I had also heard that the people we were supposed to be backing up had resumed their normal duties anyway, so the chances of me getting put on were that much slimmer. Still, I requested to not be put on, and my boss agreed to it.

The funny part, though, is that my supervisor also needed to give me my evaluation, but he wouldn’t come near me. Instead, he did it with me over the phone. Luckily, I didn’t have to do a whole lot of talking.

(My eval was really good, by the way. I’m pleased.)

Anyway, I felt better last night to demand–er, nicely ask–Jim to take me on a drive. First I had to make sure he was up to it, since he hasn’t been feeling well either, but thankfully, he did. I say “thankfully” because I was starting to get cabin fever.

I love our drives. I even love listening to Jim talk about his old games. Well, let me be honest: I have a love-hate thing for listening to his old games. I think I like it as long as we’re in the car and going. Depending on what mood I’m in, I don’t even mind hearing about some of the people he knows in them. If I’m in a good mood, I’ll just laugh (Oh, my god! That girl seriously cried and threw things when her character died? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!) or if I’m a morally-superior mood, then I get all huffy (That’s really disgusting that that girl left her freakin’ HUSBAND for a 15 year old boy that she met while GAMING.) Honestly, the two moods are not mutually exclusive. Jim gets really confused.

By the way, I don’t think that last one actually happened. I exaggerate to make a point. But I exaggerate only a little. And my point? Jim used to know some people who border on freakin’ creepy. No wonder why he never wants to leave the house now, heh.

I think he ran into some the other day, actually. Well, okay, they weren’t the actual creeps. I think these were nice, normal people, but people who knew him back when Jim didn’t have standards and hung out with creeps habitually, heh. They told Jim about a game that they were running, told him he should join them sometime.

“And I was so happy,” Jim said, “because I finally could say I’m sorry, but I don’t do LARP anymore.”

I frowned. “Didn’t you quit that, like, a long time ago? Wasn’t that kind of a kid thing?”

“Yes, but it was nice to finally say out loud to someone else!” Jim laughed. “It was like this horrible thing, and I finally got to say I’m off that stuff now.”

Jim’s a funny guy. And if they are really nice people, he should probably keep in touch with them and do non-LARP things. Apparently, decent folk in southern Illinois can be hard to come by.

One thing that made me happy, though, during our driving and talking time, is that Jim says he misses our D&D game.

“It’s because of Phil, right?” I said. Because, seriously, this is Jim and Phil:

Okay, they really are not NEARLY that bad, but still. I’d bet money that if someone told Jim he could only keep one friend in his life (besides me) and drop all the others, Phil would be the one he’d keep. But Phil’s good people, so I approve.

“Well, I enjoy gaming with Phil, that’s true,” Jim admitted. “But that’s not what I meant. Our game is fun. And you seem to enjoy it. I like running it for you.”

“Even when you make me mad in the middle of it and I sulk?”

“Yup.”

“You DO realize that pretty much happens EVERY TIME you make me role-play, right? When you FORCE me to role-play, I feel put on the spot and then I get pissed at you about it.”

“I’ve noticed,” Jim said. ”And I’m good about not doing that to you too often.”

HA. HAHAHAHA. Whatever, Jim. Seriously, I like watching them role-play scenes, but I hate doing it myself. I explained to Jim that it was akin to having to give presentations in class. It FREAKS ME OUT.

Also, to put it out there: I get really crabby when I have to make a decision. I think I’ve decided just now that I actually want to start doing games with more people. My odds of getting “called on” are less.

Blah, what else is new? OH. My dad just sent me an e-mail to tell me he was making out his will and wanted to know if I would like to be “burdened” with their house. Eh? What about Mom? OMG, DAD, ARE YOU TAKING HER WITH YOU? I kid, but seriously, I don’t want to think about this. And I know I need to because…well…my daddy’s getting old. They told him he wouldn’t make it to 50 with the way his health is; now, he’s going on 67. Last time I saw him, he seemed much older. My dad was always a very quiet person, but when Jim and I went to visit him and Mom last May, he was talking up a storm, often repeating things he had just said. It worries me.

Okay, we’re not going to think about that. On a cheerier front, the weather has warmed up. It’s feeling very spring-like, and you know what’s gonna happen in the spring? I’m getting married to the most awesome man EVER, that’s what! And, no, we still haven’t done any preparing because we figure it’s going to be so casual anyway, but sometimes, I like to pretend that we’re going to end up doing something like this:

Ha. Yeah, that would never happen.

But dishes will! OFF TO THE BATMOBILE.

(“Damn, Robin. This is way less exciting.”)

My throat. Oh my god, my throat. I cannot tell a lie: When I saw that IDOT was reporting that the roads were “partially covered” with snow and ice, that the road next to our apartments still looked messy, and that schools were closing, I was relieved. I was relieved because I could call in for inclement weather. Because of the sparse amount of sick days I have left, had yesterday’s snow not occurred, I would have had to go to work today and probably talk on the phone (I’m on the list to back up the phone people this week) and it would have been torture on my throat.

Instead, Mother Nature decided to work with me. Still, a girl cannot live on luck alone. I told Jim to please bring home medicine because I am not going to get a break like this again (it’s supposed to be in the 50s next week) and I’ve got to get over this.

So does Jim, by the way. He’s also suffering from some of it, although he never seems to get anything as bad as I do. Either that, or he is and is just being all manly about it.

Anyway, it seems like every winter, all I do is complain about being sick and about snow and about being sick of snow. I’m sick of complaining.  So, instead, I’m going to suck on this throat lozenge that doesn’t  taste great but totally numbs my mouth and type about something else.

Like…D&D. Yeah. We haven’t played in, like, two months, people. And I thought we were going to start back up this Saturday, but as it turns out, yet another person at Jim’s work  was fired, so Jim is going to have to work Saturday. Again. I guess it’s just as well. I tend to forget how everything works if I take even a little time away from D&D, so I probably should take a couple of days and reacquaint myself with Natalia’s character sheet.

What else?  Oh! Jim has a new addiction. Farscape. Funny because the idea of getting the first season belonged to yours truly. Now it’s me how half-watches it, while Jim watches episode after episode.

(To be fair, I  only half-watch everything. Right now, I’m half-watching Angel, which is one of my favorites. I simply have a hard time sitting still and only watching TV.)

But I have my own new addictions. Mine is coming in the form of a book, Unholy. I’m plowing through it pretty quickly–well,  as quickly I get through books these days, anyway. “Are all the Forgotten Realms books this good?” I asked Jim. Then I remembered. “Oh, wait.  Homeland. Nevermind.”

Not that Homeland was bad. It was just…not as good. Maybe it’s because I found Drizzt a tad boring for my tastes. He seemed kind of wooden. To be fair, I don’t really connect with the characters too much in The Haunted Lands trilogy either, but focus there is more plot than anything. In the books with Drizzt, they had more time with him, more time to pay attention, so I had expected more character development, to really like the main character. Or, hell, I’d even take really hating the main character. But it just wasn’t there. Drizzt was “blah.”

I’ll probably eventually read the rest of The Dark Elf trilogy, too, though. Maybe it gets  better. If anything, I’m sure more exposure to evil things will prepare me  for Jim’s game.

Speaking of Jim, I’m going to get off the computer. My man should be coming home soon. Hopefully, with medicine.

Today, I rediscovered the joys of surfing around on You Tube, an old love of mine. But like most of my loves, it was not super-passionate and faded when I got distracted by something else. Sometimes, anything else.

Um, this doesn’t apply to my love for Jim, by the way. In case it needs to be said.

But you know what? I forgot how much stuff is on the Internet, just waiting to be found. I found a video on how to make amigurumi.  Specifically, I watched these ones:

You guys! I KNOW THIS STUFF. I didn’t even know I knew this stuff! When I was teaching myself how to crochet in a circle, I had inadvertantly started something similar to what she is showing here. It was with yellow yarn and everything. Sadly, at the time, I was trying to make a flat circle to make a way less cool coaster, and at first, I couldn’t figure out why it was curling up like a bowl. It only took me a couple of tries to figure it out, though.

I’m excited. After I finish Jim’s Lego Pirate Ship Blanket (incidentally, I think fabric glue will be my savior–just sayin’), I want to make a cthulhu to go with Jim’s cthulhu that I bought from Ruth. I seriously did not give a rat’s ass about crocheted little critters until I bought one of those. I had no idea how cute they would be. And trust me, I’m not a girl who normally falls for cute.

I just hope mine turns out half as awesome as hers. I wouldn’t want Jim’s cthulhu to have a floppy-looking mate or something, heh.

Anyway, the videos did two other things for me: 1) make me appreciate that we have so many awesome tutorials on the web. When I first taught myself to crochet, it was from a very outdated-looking book, and while Internet existed, it was back where people having it was more the exception than the rule.  Also 2) it led me to the site crochetme.com. Oh, yeah.  I’ve signed up.

My You Tube searches weren’t limited to crafting, though. I found a cute, little video by a guy about girls who play D&D:

I don’t mean “cute” in a condenscending way, by the way. I just can’t help it. They’re so young and seem cute to me. I guess that does come off as condenscending. Sorry, but it is what it is.

At first, I was like, Why is it such a freakin’ shock that girls play D&D? Even before I started playing it, I knew that there were girls that played it. I just didn’t really want to hang out with those girls, heh. Two stand out in particular. One was a girl from high school who made me listen to her really bad Star Trek fan fic that involved her as a captain and threesomes with the male crew that were more than twice her age. (I never let her invite herself to my house again.) The other was a girl in college that wrote the worst fantasy stories I’ve ever read. Admittedly, they were creative. But, wow. Badly written.

Hey, is there a correlation between gamers and bad writing? In my defense, I started writing long before I ever gamed. And I write literary fiction. Because, apparently, I’m a snob in every sense of the word and don’t even deserve it. D’oh!

But back to the gamer girl video! I was wondering why the video even existed, until I read that the guy was making the video for a class of “non-geeks” (GEEKS IN THE CLOSET, I SAY!), so I decided to watch. What I liked? For starters, these are very normal girls. Likable. Not weird like the girls that I knew, that’s for sure.

I would like to put out there that as more girls game, the greater my chances are of finding girls that don’t freak me out. I’ve already “met” a couple online that I think I would totally like in real life–if I weren’t so freakin’ anti-social, heh.

Second, the boy said he wanted to show that D&D is a game that can be enjoyed by anyone. Oh, breath of fresh air! If you don’t get the geek-bashers, you usually get the geek-elites. You know, the geeky snobs who wants to keep stuff like D&D an exclusive , must-own-a-pocket-protector club. (Did anyone ever actually wear a pocket protector in the first place?) I hate geek-elites almost more than I hate the geek-bashers. Guys, I know people shoved your heads in toilet bowls when you were in high school, but get over it. It doesn’t mean D&D (or Warcraft or gaming or whatever) is exclusively yours because you suffered worse than zits at 16. Take the higher ground.

Or invite that football player to a game and beat the snot out of him in combat. I don’t care. No one said you had to be a freakin’ saint, either. Just quit the “uR a n00b” crap. Ugh.

Finally, I found this girl. Also very cute. Seriously, she should model. Incidentally, I was looking up organizational tips, found one she did about closets, and found she had beauty stuff as well. Another good thing about the Internet? Used to, plain-old girls like me wondered what the pretty girls did to get the perfect hair or the flawless skin. Now, because the pretty girls like to see themselves on camera and make how-to videos, we get to learn their tricks! BWAHAHAHA, PRETTY GIRLS, WE NOW KNOW YOUR SECRETS.

Er, yeah. In particular, I liked this one:

Now, watching this kind of thing is pretty out of character for me. I’m not usually a health and beauty kind of person. But I did try her mask, figuring I might as well do something “girly” and stupid while Jim wasn’t around to witness it. (Also, there’s only so much Warcraft a girl can do in a day.) I didn’t have a lemon for the egg white one, though, and I did a variation of the egg yolk moisturizer, doing egg yolk and honey instead, and wow. GREAT STUFF. Immediate difference. For the curious: Beat one egg yolk with one tablespoon of honey. The only bad thing about it is that it kept running down my face and trying to drip in my mouth. Gross.

But I had a point.  My point is SEE? Look how much stuff I learned today from the Internet! Who said the Internet was for porn?

Although I’m a little worried that some guys will use that last video for just that…

Because of our recent Internet problems, I became paranoid about shutting off the computer.  This happens every time the Internet stops working for any length of time.  Sadly, although this is the longest we’ve had Internet trouble, we’ve had trouble often enough and for long enough periods of time that I’ve done this quite a few times.

So when I discovered we had Internet again Friday night, I left the laptop on overnight.  Then Jim and I decided to go for a drive on Saturday afternoon, and he shut off the computer.  I protested, then stopped.  I mean, it’s silly.  You should be able to turn off your computer.  I was being paranoid, and I knew it.

Went out for the afternoon, came home.  I had bought Tekken 6.  Jim and I played it for a while–I’m terrible at it, if you were curious–then I decided to fire up Warcraft and work on Grimoira some more.  I turned on the computer, while Jim tried to figure out combos one of the Tekken characters.

And–nothing.

“The Internet’s not working again,” I said, staring at the screen.  “I don’t believe this.”  I had been secretly wondering if it would come up, and then secretly telling myself to quit worrying about stupid things.  Have some faith in these guys, Spring, I told myself.  So to have it be true…well, sometimes, it sucks when you’re right.

I tried resetting the modem, everything.  Then I sat back.  I was upset, yes, and…dumbfounded.  Just completely in shock that it would be down again.  I mean, we didn’t even have it for 24 hours.  How can an ISP be this bad?

Jim took one look at me and grew furious.  No, not at me.  At our ISP.  Because I was disappointed, and obviously so, and I don’t think Jim’s seen that so much from me.  I don’t have big desires for much, so I rarely get disappointed about much.  Sure, I’ve been annoyed for over two weeks now about the Internet, but to have it come back and then taken away…I felt like a deflated balloon.  You gave me a shiny new toy, let me play with it long enough to make me want it, and then took it away.  Sad face.

For Jim, though, angry face.  Angry face with teeth and fangs and red eyes and that bulging vein in the forehead.  You do not mess with his girl, no matter how far away you are, how remotely you’re involved, how petty, or how dumb she’s being.

He took one look at my face, then immediately turned off Tekken and called our ISP.  Luckily, he didn’t have to wait as long as usual (seriously, I’ve been on hold with them for as long as an hour before), and I immediately felt sorry for whomever was on the line.  Because Jim was doing the loud, crisp voice thing, and having worked on phones before, I knew that tone, and my guess is that the guy on the other end knew it, too.  After Jim first informed them that we were not a hotel, we were an apartment complex (we have to tell them this every time) and gave the rest of our pertinent information, he said, “Before we get started, I want to be very clear.  If our Internet is not working by the end of this phone call, we will be going elsewhere.  We are paying you money for a service that you have not provided for half a month now.  You are taking our money for a service that you are not giving.”

Another sign Jim’s pissed:  He repeats the same things in different ways, just to make sure you understand exactly what he’s telling you.   Here, he was basically telling the man in not so many words that they were thieves.

And trust me, there was no confusion.  The man quickly got Jim off the phone to go check things.  I understood.  I would have, too.  Angry people on hold just get angrier, but my god, you don’t want them breathing their angry breath in your ear.  What’s worse is that I knew that it probably wasn’t this guy’s fault.  I’ve also done calls in a computer place; usually, the people on the phones just know the basic troubleshooting, but the real fault lies with the various specialists that they dispatch to go fix things.  If the specialists can’t fix it, it’s not them who gets an earful–it’s the poor guy on the phone.

In Jim’s defense, he didn’t make it personal.  He was angry and it was obvious, but he knew that it wasn’t necessarily the fault of the guy he was talking to.  Still, he wanted to convey just how pissed he was.  The guy called back.  And this is what we were told:

Yes, our Internet did come up for a little bit.  This was a fluke.  Because the network guys “did something” (I don’t know if Jim just didn’t understand the terms the Helpdesk guy was using or if the Helpdesk guy actually said that), but whatever they did, they “didn’t do enough of it,” so it’s not working for us again.  So they’re still working on it.

Two weeks, two days later.  They’re “still working on it.”

“Okay, then.”  Jim was livid but in full control.  “I am getting off the phone now, and I am calling Verizon to get DSL with them.  Goodbye.”

So that’s how a man stands his ground, being angry and forceful, but without resorting to being a complete dick.  Very impressive.

So, the Internet was back to being down, and I was back to not knowing what to do with myself because all my other hobbies require concentration, which I cannot do for any length of time.  They do not support my crazy ADD of wanting to do something different all the time the way the Internet does.

How on earth did I do it before, way back when, when I was home all day but had no Internet and no cable TV?  Well, I cleaned a lot.  I also became depressed.  Kinda lame, actually.  I need more ADD-type hobbies, offline ones.

But I had a theory.  Although I know nothing of networking, I know enough about computers to be dangerous and make some really dumb theories.  I knew they had installed a new server around here while trying to resolve the problem.  I also knew that one guy said that they had to reinstall software or something.  If they “didn’t do enough of something,” could that something be related to how many people could “dial in” at a time?

That’s probably retarded.  I mean, that’s the case for dial-ups, isn’t it?  I don’t know if it’s the case for cable.  But I remember trying to work though this another time, and the guy could see me trying to get on, and that they kept losing our IP address on their side.

Still, I had my theory.  Maybe when we turned it off, others got on, and there wasn’t enough room for us.  So I would try again really early in the morning.  I’m usually up before anyone, anyway. 

And maybe my theory isn’t totally crazy because I woke up at 5:30 (without an alarm clock, mind you) and decided to try it.  And now it’s working again.

And now?  I’m really afraid that I was right, and I’m back to being paranoid about shutting off our computer again.  Which leaves me a little worried about playing Warcraft because our laptop tends to overheat in the middle of it and reboot.

So, that’s where we’re at.  I tend to blog pretty frequently, so if you don’t hear from me in a while, it might be that the Internet has gone down again.  I’ll keep my Twitter updated because I can post to that from my cell phone. 

Even if I’m wrong and it’s really fixed this time, we will still be going elsewhere.  I’m done with Goldentree.

At least if the Internet goes down again, I can play Tekken 6.  Which, admittedly, is exactly why we bought it–just in case.  Still, the fact that I’m so unconfident in our ISP’s abilities to resolve this issue…again, the word is dumbfounded.  Just utterly dumbfounded.  And that’s sad.