Overdue Update
Been away from my computer for the better part of a week. Time for an overdue update.
Thursday - Drove my car, slowly, by surface streets, over to Dave's Auto, which is where my dad has been going for 25ish years. Handed the car over to Dave to look at it, and got picked up by Will and Avery, and headed off to Will's place. We rented Def Jam: Fight for New York, and Blade Trinity, then spent a few hours cleaning the grove where we were gonna have the Amtgard event. After that, we retired to the house for a while. Will played Def Jam, Avery played WoW, and I played CoH. It was quite amusing sitting there listening to Will endlessly cussing out Def Jam, talking constant shit about it... And yet, never putting down the controller. Eventually, we watched Blade Trinity, which none of us had seen yet. It was predictably terrible, in the usual bad action manner.
Friday - I had spent the night on Will's couch. We futzed with the Amtgard grove a bit more, played some more video games, and then Forrest and Kayla showed up to give me a ride up to SLO for the Rocky rehearsals. They went pretty well, and then I retired back to BCK to sleep.
Saturday - Big day. Early on, we headed over to odinnsmeyjar and the_mikey's place, where myalchod had also stayed. When we got there, I remembered to call Dave the mechanic about my car. He told me $2000 to rebuild the transmission with a 1 year warrenty, or $1000 to replace it with a used one with a 30 day warrenty. I chose the used one. $1000 is one hell of an improvement over the earlier quote of $2900.
Anyway, we all went out to eat, and then saw Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. My feelings on that movie are very complicated and I'd rather not go into them all right now, but for the most part it was good. After that, Forrest, Kayla and myself headed off to grab and retailor a couple items to finish my Chip-n-Dale outfit for the Rocky show. That done, it was time to head to the show.
The first show was, as usual, only half full, but went quite well. Out front, I had met a very (VERY) attractive girl who seemed pretty interesting, and interested. Flirted with her for a while. Promised to utilize her lap during the second half of the second show, when the audience was certainly going to be full, and I had nothing to do so I'd want a place to sit in the audience. Unfortunately, by the end of the first show, she had latched on to some other guy and seemingly lost all interest in me. I think this had something to do with me mentioning I had to head back to SB right after the show due to an event the next day. I believe this marks the most definitive instance to date of Amtgard preventing me from getting laid.
The second show was, as always, sold out way early. The cute girl from before was still there, as she said she would be, but still enthralled with her new catch. When they let in, I did the usual trannie thing of offering complimentary pat-downs, and got, for me, a record number of positive responses. That was most definitely fun. Ran into a number of friends in the line. makellan and Laura were there, with maniakes. Gave a very fun pat-down to arielmnop, and spent a chunk of time on the lap of redvixen1979. Was also happy to run into trekki, whom I was glad to see seems to be pretty happy these days, all things considered. Anyway, when it reached the point in the show where I could join the audience, it was quite clear that the girl from before was not interested in having me there, so I sat with redvixen1979, which I believe was a substantial upgrade in many ways anyway. This other girl was clearly remarkably fickle.
After the show, I pretty much fell, exhausted, into Forrest's car, and he drove us back to SB.
Sunday - Time for the big Amtgard event. After just 5 hours of sleep, and still feeling sore from having performed two shows the night before, I got a ride from Ian off to Will's ranch.
The quest event was divided into two parts, to be followed by miscellanious battle games, the coronation, and interspersed with a small lunch and a big dinner feast.
The first part of the quest had the players going down a long road dotted with ambush spots, with the objective of getting the entire team over the line at the end of the road alive. They played their usual classes, with their usual life counts. As the monsters, we had infinite lives, and a short death count. Their objective was not to kill us, but just to get past us. Unfortunately, our ambushes utterly failed. They saw us, and cut through the grove (which I had thought they weren't allowed to do). So we ended up quickly retreating to the second part of the road, which was lined by a ditch on one side. We stayed largely on the far side of the ditch, pelting them with arrows. They eventually pulled through when sirkudzu cast a fear spell, which meant that no enemy could approach within 20 feet, and they had enough shields to keep our arrows back.
The second part of the quest had them in the overgrown grove. They were given the objective of re-capturing the circlet which is our chapter's symbol of authority from the goblin queen (played by Melinda). She stood on a branch, about two feet off the ground, while four goblins (myself, Avery, Ian and Alan) scouted out to harass the players. Avery and Ian had short bows, so myself and Alan each paired off with one of them. My shining moment that game was after I had died and respawned, and was headed back out to find Avery. I was moving down a narrow path between thick drapery of folliage, going to great effort to be stealthy, when I noticed a couple people around the bend coming along in the opposite direction. I didn't know who they were exactly, except that they weren't any of the goblins. So I crouched back carefully, and as they approached, I killed them both by myself. It was Todd first, wielding two four foot swords, followed by Brandon, wielding Freddy, his signature longsword that he's usually unbeatable with. And me, with nothing but a short and a small shield.
Anyway, they spent the first half hour just looking for Melinda. It wasn't that they were looking in the wrong part of the field, either. I watched the players just walk back and forth within a few feet of her SOOO many times, before one of them finally noticed her. Us goblins had her set as our respawn point, so we kept coming back to the tree she was hiding in to respawn. The players saw us do this, and it STILL didn't click to them to look IN that tree.
Finally, Fishy got the bright idea to use Talk to Dead on me after somebody had killed me. He was about to ask where Melinda had been hiding, when she ran past. Apparently Brendan noticed her, and chased her out. She did a lot of damage before somebody finally killed her. She is, after all, one of our best fighters, and had been granted four points of armor for this battle. Forrest was the final victor, but ended up granting the reward to Ian.
After that, we had lunch, in the form of Avery's chili. Then we did a few more battle games in the grove. A couple games of warlords (the first I won, and the second was inconclusive), and a capture the flag. This grove was amazing fun to fight in, and I hope we can do more events there in the future.
After the actual corronation of Will as the new Sheriff, we had an award ceremony, where Will and Melinda gave out huge piles of Orders. I myself got my 1st Order of the Rose (for outstanding service to Amtgard), my 1st and 2nd Orders of the Owl, for doing huge quantities of weapon construction, plus the chainmail I had entered into the crown events, and an Order of the Zodiac, for just generally doing cool stuff.
Anyway, after all that, those few of us who stuck around retreated back up to the house. We watched the second half of the new episode of Family Guy, and an episode of American Dad, then it was just myself, Will, Will and Avery. Both Wills and Avery played WoW, while I caught up somewhat on Def Jam, which I quite enjoyed. After that, Will gave me a ride home and I crashed.
Monday - Yes, that's today. This morning I got a call from Dave. My car was done. Went down with dad to pick it up. Cost $1000, but it's now in perfect working order. w00t. I am carred again, and don't have to keep mooching rides off friends!
In order news, odinnsmeyjar just IMed me that Age of Chivalry had exactly one of the old-style wood handled main gouches still in stock, which match the rapier I had purchased from them before. This was from a discontinued line, so it really was the last one I'd have the chance to buy. I'm trying to save money these days, but this wasn't gonna come around again, so I gave them a call and plopped down $125, and now I have the matching set. With the boots I plan to purchase at the faire next weekend, that will make my cavalier outfit complete.
Thursday - Drove my car, slowly, by surface streets, over to Dave's Auto, which is where my dad has been going for 25ish years. Handed the car over to Dave to look at it, and got picked up by Will and Avery, and headed off to Will's place. We rented Def Jam: Fight for New York, and Blade Trinity, then spent a few hours cleaning the grove where we were gonna have the Amtgard event. After that, we retired to the house for a while. Will played Def Jam, Avery played WoW, and I played CoH. It was quite amusing sitting there listening to Will endlessly cussing out Def Jam, talking constant shit about it... And yet, never putting down the controller. Eventually, we watched Blade Trinity, which none of us had seen yet. It was predictably terrible, in the usual bad action manner.
Friday - I had spent the night on Will's couch. We futzed with the Amtgard grove a bit more, played some more video games, and then Forrest and Kayla showed up to give me a ride up to SLO for the Rocky rehearsals. They went pretty well, and then I retired back to BCK to sleep.
Saturday - Big day. Early on, we headed over to odinnsmeyjar and the_mikey's place, where myalchod had also stayed. When we got there, I remembered to call Dave the mechanic about my car. He told me $2000 to rebuild the transmission with a 1 year warrenty, or $1000 to replace it with a used one with a 30 day warrenty. I chose the used one. $1000 is one hell of an improvement over the earlier quote of $2900.
Anyway, we all went out to eat, and then saw Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. My feelings on that movie are very complicated and I'd rather not go into them all right now, but for the most part it was good. After that, Forrest, Kayla and myself headed off to grab and retailor a couple items to finish my Chip-n-Dale outfit for the Rocky show. That done, it was time to head to the show.
The first show was, as usual, only half full, but went quite well. Out front, I had met a very (VERY) attractive girl who seemed pretty interesting, and interested. Flirted with her for a while. Promised to utilize her lap during the second half of the second show, when the audience was certainly going to be full, and I had nothing to do so I'd want a place to sit in the audience. Unfortunately, by the end of the first show, she had latched on to some other guy and seemingly lost all interest in me. I think this had something to do with me mentioning I had to head back to SB right after the show due to an event the next day. I believe this marks the most definitive instance to date of Amtgard preventing me from getting laid.
The second show was, as always, sold out way early. The cute girl from before was still there, as she said she would be, but still enthralled with her new catch. When they let in, I did the usual trannie thing of offering complimentary pat-downs, and got, for me, a record number of positive responses. That was most definitely fun. Ran into a number of friends in the line. makellan and Laura were there, with maniakes. Gave a very fun pat-down to arielmnop, and spent a chunk of time on the lap of redvixen1979. Was also happy to run into trekki, whom I was glad to see seems to be pretty happy these days, all things considered. Anyway, when it reached the point in the show where I could join the audience, it was quite clear that the girl from before was not interested in having me there, so I sat with redvixen1979, which I believe was a substantial upgrade in many ways anyway. This other girl was clearly remarkably fickle.
After the show, I pretty much fell, exhausted, into Forrest's car, and he drove us back to SB.
Sunday - Time for the big Amtgard event. After just 5 hours of sleep, and still feeling sore from having performed two shows the night before, I got a ride from Ian off to Will's ranch.
The quest event was divided into two parts, to be followed by miscellanious battle games, the coronation, and interspersed with a small lunch and a big dinner feast.
The first part of the quest had the players going down a long road dotted with ambush spots, with the objective of getting the entire team over the line at the end of the road alive. They played their usual classes, with their usual life counts. As the monsters, we had infinite lives, and a short death count. Their objective was not to kill us, but just to get past us. Unfortunately, our ambushes utterly failed. They saw us, and cut through the grove (which I had thought they weren't allowed to do). So we ended up quickly retreating to the second part of the road, which was lined by a ditch on one side. We stayed largely on the far side of the ditch, pelting them with arrows. They eventually pulled through when sirkudzu cast a fear spell, which meant that no enemy could approach within 20 feet, and they had enough shields to keep our arrows back.
The second part of the quest had them in the overgrown grove. They were given the objective of re-capturing the circlet which is our chapter's symbol of authority from the goblin queen (played by Melinda). She stood on a branch, about two feet off the ground, while four goblins (myself, Avery, Ian and Alan) scouted out to harass the players. Avery and Ian had short bows, so myself and Alan each paired off with one of them. My shining moment that game was after I had died and respawned, and was headed back out to find Avery. I was moving down a narrow path between thick drapery of folliage, going to great effort to be stealthy, when I noticed a couple people around the bend coming along in the opposite direction. I didn't know who they were exactly, except that they weren't any of the goblins. So I crouched back carefully, and as they approached, I killed them both by myself. It was Todd first, wielding two four foot swords, followed by Brandon, wielding Freddy, his signature longsword that he's usually unbeatable with. And me, with nothing but a short and a small shield.
Anyway, they spent the first half hour just looking for Melinda. It wasn't that they were looking in the wrong part of the field, either. I watched the players just walk back and forth within a few feet of her SOOO many times, before one of them finally noticed her. Us goblins had her set as our respawn point, so we kept coming back to the tree she was hiding in to respawn. The players saw us do this, and it STILL didn't click to them to look IN that tree.
Finally, Fishy got the bright idea to use Talk to Dead on me after somebody had killed me. He was about to ask where Melinda had been hiding, when she ran past. Apparently Brendan noticed her, and chased her out. She did a lot of damage before somebody finally killed her. She is, after all, one of our best fighters, and had been granted four points of armor for this battle. Forrest was the final victor, but ended up granting the reward to Ian.
After that, we had lunch, in the form of Avery's chili. Then we did a few more battle games in the grove. A couple games of warlords (the first I won, and the second was inconclusive), and a capture the flag. This grove was amazing fun to fight in, and I hope we can do more events there in the future.
After the actual corronation of Will as the new Sheriff, we had an award ceremony, where Will and Melinda gave out huge piles of Orders. I myself got my 1st Order of the Rose (for outstanding service to Amtgard), my 1st and 2nd Orders of the Owl, for doing huge quantities of weapon construction, plus the chainmail I had entered into the crown events, and an Order of the Zodiac, for just generally doing cool stuff.
Anyway, after all that, those few of us who stuck around retreated back up to the house. We watched the second half of the new episode of Family Guy, and an episode of American Dad, then it was just myself, Will, Will and Avery. Both Wills and Avery played WoW, while I caught up somewhat on Def Jam, which I quite enjoyed. After that, Will gave me a ride home and I crashed.
Monday - Yes, that's today. This morning I got a call from Dave. My car was done. Went down with dad to pick it up. Cost $1000, but it's now in perfect working order. w00t. I am carred again, and don't have to keep mooching rides off friends!
In order news, odinnsmeyjar just IMed me that Age of Chivalry had exactly one of the old-style wood handled main gouches still in stock, which match the rapier I had purchased from them before. This was from a discontinued line, so it really was the last one I'd have the chance to buy. I'm trying to save money these days, but this wasn't gonna come around again, so I gave them a call and plopped down $125, and now I have the matching set. With the boots I plan to purchase at the faire next weekend, that will make my cavalier outfit complete.