Well, we had a good weekend. My parents and Rylee (my mom's havanese puppy) came to visit, which is always a good time. Ally wasn't quite sure what to make of the little white fuzzball that ran around the house, but overall I think they got along.

There were, of course, the requisite "projects".

The roof's minor issue has now been completely fixed (which is good, because it's raining) and the downspouts on the gutters have been flushed out too. The jeep's had some small tune-ups - changed the fanbelt and a small vacuum hose. There are some other little things, but overall I was told the jeep was running well.

We also spent most of saturday doing what we can to map out a deck plan. I've been wanting to build a deck on the front of our house for a couple years. The project is still very much in the preliminary stages, but we're making some progress. What we need to do now is discover where our septic system is for sure (we're pretty sure already) and have the water line marked - because those pipes are in the area in question. Also, we need to either figure out how to get 18ft support beams or shorten the width to 16ft (which might squeeze one section). Still, we're making some progress.

In addition to home/auto projects, we had a great time hanging out. We went to bay's mountain park and went for a short hike and got soaked with rain about 3/4 of the way back to the car. On the upside, the rain cover for my camera case has been field-tested with great success.

My parents also, of course, had their shiny iphones. I decided a while back that I want one of these. We kinda need (at least one) personal phone, and if I'm going to add another bill to our monthly expenses, I'm totally willing to pay a bit more to get something *fun*. As of now, I think we're waiting for Sheri to decide if she wants her own phone and whether she also wants an iphone. She isn't sure how much of a smart phone's capabilities she would use a lot (at first anyway), but she doesn't really have any gadgets and this would be several in one. I personally think it would be kind of cool, if somewhat expensive. Edit: yeah, we did it. We now have shinies. Rather sooner than I would have imagined, but we had put it off for quite a while...


My World of Darkness game is now two sessions in and is going great. The players seem to be really enjoying it, and I'm liking the theme. Synopses' are posted on the Gaming page as useful. On a related now, I have now feared the entirety of the boot, and I've been poking around on the ftb forums. On another related note, I'm trying to figure out if I can pull off going to gencon this year.

Milligan's faculty/staff picnic was last tuesday, and that was cool. It's fun to talk to people we only see occasionally and meeting others.

A week ago last saturday was our friend Stacie's birthday party at Rucht & McKennas, and that was cool. I game with a lot of the same people, but that's a lot different from just hanging out. Plus, Stacie, McKenna and Jen aren't really gamers and they're really cool people - when we're gaming we sometimes "see" them, but don't get to interact with them much when we're roleplaying.

~PS

Well, we finally got the jeep to the mechanics on wednesday for a replacement fuel pump. So far it seems to be behaving - but, even though i was 99% convinced this was the problem, it'll take a week or so with no problems before i'm convinced.


About the only other things to report are gaming-related.

I finally got to run Mouse Guard! Granted it was just an intro session using one of the sample missions (though i did add a bit to it) and characters, but still, i'm just glad we finally got to play.

This game is going to be a lot of fun. I *love* the setting and 99% of the mechanics, though I did house-rule something out from the start: I don't like the "turns" system. It seems too arbitrary, railroaded and limiting. Basically, the way it reads, is that the GM gets a "turn" where the players deal with all the stuff he/she has planned. Then the players get a "turn" where they can do certain things. There are certain things that the players can't do during the GM's turn (no matter how much sense it would make for them to do it then), and vice-versa. I also don't like the "checks" system that goes with this - where the players spend "checks" that they've accumulated during the GM's "turn" to do things on their "turn": if you don't have a checks, you can't initiate things. It could be that i'm misreading it, or maybe it's not meant to be as set in stone as it seems to be presented, but I just don't like how these aspects read so i'm not using them.

In the game's defense on this matter, my thought is that this game isn't actually written for roleplayers - it seems to be written assuming the players have never played a tabletop rpg before. I think it's just trying to give very clear and definite guidelines so that both the players and the GM know what to do when in a more concrete way - via the "turns" - as opposed to a more abstract flow where the characters can do things "when it makes sense" or "when they have downtime" or in other, more narrative but less definitive conditions.

Aside from this relatively minor game-flow-based complaint (which was pretty easy to house-rule out), I really like the system a lot and I'm really looking forward to an ongoing Mouse Guard game. :) The plan for next session is for the players to actually make their own characters for our campaign.


In other gaming news, my system has been tabled again. I think the game was solid the way it was, but I had an epiphany at about 6am the other day for a change that would result in a game I *like* more. I now just need to work out exactly how i want a couple of related aspects to work. Basically I'm finding out that I like abstract/descriptive/narrative terms better than numbers: I think I'm now trying to make a system that is based on numbers as little as possible. As I was saying to Robb last night, I'd rather have a character in a game who was "Very Strong" and to get a certain advantage for possessing that "trait" than to have a character with a high, numerical strength "score". It's just more intuitive and descriptive.

So yeah, back to game design. I'll get something I'm happy with some day I'm sure ;)... ...and it'll probably only take another 13 mind-changes...


~PS

...that i can mash the button on the jeep's clicker for five minutes and it will not unlock for anything, but i can then hand it to Sheri and she'll push the button once and, click, it works...???

Research is currently underway to determine if this is also related to the Pickle Jar Phenomenon.

And now, the news (in no particular order):

Getting new tires on the jeep tomorrow. Yay rah exciting, i know, but it needs done.

We played catch in our backyard today. This seems random, and it is, but Sheri had been saying for a couple years that we should get some ball gloves and baseball and play catch because it would be fun. We had a couple of walmart gift cards, and it seemed an amusing thing to spend them on.

I think the last of Hikaru's current computer problems has been isolated and (somewhat) solved. I love my computers... ...when they work.

Had a great time jamming at the Hippie Hut yesterday. I think we're still one band member short, but it's going pretty well.

Continuing to go over the Mouse Guard rules and trying to get one of the current D&D story arcs wrapped up so i can put it on the back burner for a while in the interest of something new.

Been looking over some camera lenses and reviews of them. I know i want a long telephoto, a super-wide-angle and a wide-aperture prime (probably 50mm), but i keep going back-and-forth regarding exactly which ones i'm after. Oh well, i've got time.

Had a going away party for Ginger last weekend - which she almost missed ;). I think we had a dozen people or so. I took a few pictures - but didn't get too many before my flash batteries died. I hadn't thought about bringing the camera until right before we left and at that point i didn't have time to charge them. Anyway, we had a bit of a cookout and then sat around and talked for a good while. Later we played a game of Apples to Apples, which is always fun. It was a good time. We're going to miss Ginger a lot. :(

~PS