Oops, haven't updated in a while
Long update here.
For Thanksgiving, made the usual crazy Mass to CT to NJ back to Mass circuit. We were supposed to throw Long Island into there, just for kicks, but happily the party we were supposed to go to there got canceled (none of us were terribly looking forward to adding on an extra 3 hours of driving onto our drive home on Saturday).
I got to see a lot of people I don't get to see very often. There was football on Thanksgiving proper, both a Patriots game and touch football with a group that included three people over the age of 50, one one-legged person, three reasonably healthy people in their twenties and thirties, and three children under the age of ten. Was a fun game. Ate turkey until I thought I would explode, then waited a bit and ate ice cream and cookies. Was surprised by the champagne toast for me and sarrciano, which was really nice of everyone (yes, they brought non-alchoholic champagne for me).
Friday did some shopping on Black Friday and picked up a couple pairs of jeans (which I desperately needed) and some shirts. It's always kind of stressful, going shopping then, but it's about the only time of year that I am willing to make multiple purchases from department stores, and it's a good time to refresh some basics. That afternoon there was more food and seeing family (and showing off my ring). My grandmother is actually getting pretty good at cooking, which is sorta awesome. That night we watched a movie and then went out to play billiards, which is sort of like pool in that you're hitting balls on a felt table with a cue, but that's about it. There's a lot of geometry in the game. A lot of it. My brother is quite good at it. I can see the angles pretty good, but my ability to hit the ball with any degree of accuracy is somewhat lacking. Was a really fun time, and I want to do it again. :)
Saturday morning we mostly just hung around, then we had a big lunch and headed back out, stopping by to visit my great aunt (who is in a retirement home) on our way back to Mass. It was good to see her (she was really excited to hear about me getting engaged), but a little rough, too. She's in her mid-eighties, and she's slowed down a lot in the last year or two. I only see her once a year, so the last few times I've seen her it's been a huge shock each time. It's not a happy thing, but not really something anyone can do anything about.
On the way back up to Mass, we stopped at a rest stop, and found a group of boy scouts/fire men who'd set up a tent and were handing out hot chocolate/cider and popcorn. There was a donation bin there, but there was no set cost for anything. It was a really nice thing to do on a cold night when a lot of people were traveling.
On Sunday, sarrciano and I met up with thedeviantangel for lunch and hanging out, and then ended up going to see Tangled. Tangled was a ton of fun (and we all agreed that the heroine reminded us of Danielle at certain times). Was just a really fun, low-key day. You know when your schedule includes things like, "Kill an hour wandering around at a book store before the movie" that some very solid fun-happening is going on. :)
A while back sarrciano and I had made plans involving taking several days off after Thanksgiving to go visiting people. That sort of fell through, but we still had several days off (and I'm desperately trying to use up vacation time before the end of the year), so we did a mini-vacation close to home.
Monday we spent in NH. sarrciano showed me how to shoot a handgun (which was fun and which I want to do again), complete with how to break it down and clean it afterwards (which was less fun but a necessary part of the process). Then we went to hang out at JR's gaming store and talked and played Dominion for the rest of the afternoon. We were going to go home after that, but ended up staying longer than anticipated, so we just went back to the Bartlett home that night. I taught myself how to crochet (man just about all the book-instructions and picture-instructions I found on the internet sucked), had a fun chat with draketamarack, and surfed the internet while sarrciano went to a Volta staff meeting.
Tuesday and Wednesday was mostly devoted to catching up on our DVR and being lazy. There was some cleaning and laundry done, and I actually cooked a bit of food (we ate pretty much everything in the refrigerator, which wasn't much, but it was kinda amusing), but other than that, we didn't move much. It was nice.
Thursday sarrciano went back to work, but I was still off, so I did some more errands, Christmas shopping, and picked up some more yarn for more projects, now that I'd mostly figured out how to crochet (mostly). Spent the rest of that day and Friday prepping for Volta, packing, catching up on notes, and making repairs to Omi's costuming and props that I've been meaning to make for many, many months.
Volta was mostly a lot of fun. Biggest issue was the ridiculous cold, which got really bad Sat night and sort of killed my ability to do anything after I got overly cold on one mod. Pretty much after that I limited myself to staying in well heated buildings and drinking hot liquids, and then went straight to bed.
Some highlights:
- Tavi walking up to Omi as she sat on a couch happily crocheting during some downtime, and saying something to the effect of how much she enjoyed Omi being her (farmer) self.
- the Lady of Prescient Slumber showing up with the announcement, "I have a bad plan." It sorta was a bad plan. The sort of plan you come up with that's not really a good idea, but has a solid chance of working and the level of risk in doing it is acceptable. Then the Lord of Unbound Horizons jumped in and made it worse. And that was before he volunteered the Lord of Blissful Ignorance into helping, too.
- the title that Rillien picked out for Devon. It was so perfect. I have a hard time remembering things like that, so when a day later I found myself easily able to rattle it off when asked, I knew it was a good one.
- the golems in the barrier mod. Just a fun mod. We made it through all of the golems and were about to leave when one of the NPCs whispered, "Just put the stones back in, we'll do it again." So we did. :)
- making a solid effort at stopping Daniel Redpath from taking Angle's dagger. Omi lasted for two or three minutes with just her throwing spells at Daniel and a nightmare creature and then dodging like mad while he responded with lots and lots of arcane obliterates. Was sadly unsuccessful at delaying him long enough for other people to arrive and stop him, but I delayed him way longer than I thought I would.
- Not exactly a highlight, but there was a lot of intense emotion when Rillien resurrected on the last mod to gather the lorekeeper tomes. Arg. 7 seconds. Arg.
- Rillien resurrecting aside, the mod was very interesting, if rough. Just about all of the retrieve-the-book mods have been really interesting in their setups. baronbabykiller does really good interesting mods.
- a discussion about relationships with someone who is in a rough spot now. Omi is not exactly the most positive person when it comes to love between adventuring types, but she was trying to be supportive.
- Desperately racking my brain for riddles during the reason fight. I do not do my best work when overly cold, sadly, but I did come up with a few that stumped him. Also, helping to put the puzzle together which ended that fight.
- Getting to talk to Dorala (the last Lorekeeper of the Tome of Body). I wish I'd had more time to talk to him, but the discussion about how the body affected the spirit and vice versa was really interesting (as was the digression about bloodlines), and I continued the conversation with several other people later on in the event.
- Omi got a transform! Totally unexpected, but very cool for me.
- Talking to one of the spirits on the dream mod that needed to be inspired. I don't know what my face looked like, but I felt like I'd been punched in the gut when he said, "I'm scared and I don't want to die, but I've been told there's someone I can ask for help..."
- Nearly jumping out of my skin when the griffin-thing that Angle was talking to suddenly pointed at me and said, "She can tell you about it." It wasn't anything bad, but startled the heck out of me at the time.
- Talking to the crystalsmith. There was one sequence where he went from yelling at his shield to shut up, to telling Anyasha she was being mean, to commenting on the screaming marshmallows, to telling me that my sword didn't like him at all, all without pausing for breath.
- hearing about, in rapid succession, Cynnir's conversation with the General, and then Angle's conversation with Yuriev.
So yeah, that's a pretty good event.
For Thanksgiving, made the usual crazy Mass to CT to NJ back to Mass circuit. We were supposed to throw Long Island into there, just for kicks, but happily the party we were supposed to go to there got canceled (none of us were terribly looking forward to adding on an extra 3 hours of driving onto our drive home on Saturday).
I got to see a lot of people I don't get to see very often. There was football on Thanksgiving proper, both a Patriots game and touch football with a group that included three people over the age of 50, one one-legged person, three reasonably healthy people in their twenties and thirties, and three children under the age of ten. Was a fun game. Ate turkey until I thought I would explode, then waited a bit and ate ice cream and cookies. Was surprised by the champagne toast for me and sarrciano, which was really nice of everyone (yes, they brought non-alchoholic champagne for me).
Friday did some shopping on Black Friday and picked up a couple pairs of jeans (which I desperately needed) and some shirts. It's always kind of stressful, going shopping then, but it's about the only time of year that I am willing to make multiple purchases from department stores, and it's a good time to refresh some basics. That afternoon there was more food and seeing family (and showing off my ring). My grandmother is actually getting pretty good at cooking, which is sorta awesome. That night we watched a movie and then went out to play billiards, which is sort of like pool in that you're hitting balls on a felt table with a cue, but that's about it. There's a lot of geometry in the game. A lot of it. My brother is quite good at it. I can see the angles pretty good, but my ability to hit the ball with any degree of accuracy is somewhat lacking. Was a really fun time, and I want to do it again. :)
Saturday morning we mostly just hung around, then we had a big lunch and headed back out, stopping by to visit my great aunt (who is in a retirement home) on our way back to Mass. It was good to see her (she was really excited to hear about me getting engaged), but a little rough, too. She's in her mid-eighties, and she's slowed down a lot in the last year or two. I only see her once a year, so the last few times I've seen her it's been a huge shock each time. It's not a happy thing, but not really something anyone can do anything about.
On the way back up to Mass, we stopped at a rest stop, and found a group of boy scouts/fire men who'd set up a tent and were handing out hot chocolate/cider and popcorn. There was a donation bin there, but there was no set cost for anything. It was a really nice thing to do on a cold night when a lot of people were traveling.
On Sunday, sarrciano and I met up with thedeviantangel for lunch and hanging out, and then ended up going to see Tangled. Tangled was a ton of fun (and we all agreed that the heroine reminded us of Danielle at certain times). Was just a really fun, low-key day. You know when your schedule includes things like, "Kill an hour wandering around at a book store before the movie" that some very solid fun-happening is going on. :)
A while back sarrciano and I had made plans involving taking several days off after Thanksgiving to go visiting people. That sort of fell through, but we still had several days off (and I'm desperately trying to use up vacation time before the end of the year), so we did a mini-vacation close to home.
Monday we spent in NH. sarrciano showed me how to shoot a handgun (which was fun and which I want to do again), complete with how to break it down and clean it afterwards (which was less fun but a necessary part of the process). Then we went to hang out at JR's gaming store and talked and played Dominion for the rest of the afternoon. We were going to go home after that, but ended up staying longer than anticipated, so we just went back to the Bartlett home that night. I taught myself how to crochet (man just about all the book-instructions and picture-instructions I found on the internet sucked), had a fun chat with draketamarack, and surfed the internet while sarrciano went to a Volta staff meeting.
Tuesday and Wednesday was mostly devoted to catching up on our DVR and being lazy. There was some cleaning and laundry done, and I actually cooked a bit of food (we ate pretty much everything in the refrigerator, which wasn't much, but it was kinda amusing), but other than that, we didn't move much. It was nice.
Thursday sarrciano went back to work, but I was still off, so I did some more errands, Christmas shopping, and picked up some more yarn for more projects, now that I'd mostly figured out how to crochet (mostly). Spent the rest of that day and Friday prepping for Volta, packing, catching up on notes, and making repairs to Omi's costuming and props that I've been meaning to make for many, many months.
Volta was mostly a lot of fun. Biggest issue was the ridiculous cold, which got really bad Sat night and sort of killed my ability to do anything after I got overly cold on one mod. Pretty much after that I limited myself to staying in well heated buildings and drinking hot liquids, and then went straight to bed.
Some highlights:
- Tavi walking up to Omi as she sat on a couch happily crocheting during some downtime, and saying something to the effect of how much she enjoyed Omi being her (farmer) self.
- the Lady of Prescient Slumber showing up with the announcement, "I have a bad plan." It sorta was a bad plan. The sort of plan you come up with that's not really a good idea, but has a solid chance of working and the level of risk in doing it is acceptable. Then the Lord of Unbound Horizons jumped in and made it worse. And that was before he volunteered the Lord of Blissful Ignorance into helping, too.
- the title that Rillien picked out for Devon. It was so perfect. I have a hard time remembering things like that, so when a day later I found myself easily able to rattle it off when asked, I knew it was a good one.
- the golems in the barrier mod. Just a fun mod. We made it through all of the golems and were about to leave when one of the NPCs whispered, "Just put the stones back in, we'll do it again." So we did. :)
- making a solid effort at stopping Daniel Redpath from taking Angle's dagger. Omi lasted for two or three minutes with just her throwing spells at Daniel and a nightmare creature and then dodging like mad while he responded with lots and lots of arcane obliterates. Was sadly unsuccessful at delaying him long enough for other people to arrive and stop him, but I delayed him way longer than I thought I would.
- Not exactly a highlight, but there was a lot of intense emotion when Rillien resurrected on the last mod to gather the lorekeeper tomes. Arg. 7 seconds. Arg.
- Rillien resurrecting aside, the mod was very interesting, if rough. Just about all of the retrieve-the-book mods have been really interesting in their setups. baronbabykiller does really good interesting mods.
- a discussion about relationships with someone who is in a rough spot now. Omi is not exactly the most positive person when it comes to love between adventuring types, but she was trying to be supportive.
- Desperately racking my brain for riddles during the reason fight. I do not do my best work when overly cold, sadly, but I did come up with a few that stumped him. Also, helping to put the puzzle together which ended that fight.
- Getting to talk to Dorala (the last Lorekeeper of the Tome of Body). I wish I'd had more time to talk to him, but the discussion about how the body affected the spirit and vice versa was really interesting (as was the digression about bloodlines), and I continued the conversation with several other people later on in the event.
- Omi got a transform! Totally unexpected, but very cool for me.
- Talking to one of the spirits on the dream mod that needed to be inspired. I don't know what my face looked like, but I felt like I'd been punched in the gut when he said, "I'm scared and I don't want to die, but I've been told there's someone I can ask for help..."
- Nearly jumping out of my skin when the griffin-thing that Angle was talking to suddenly pointed at me and said, "She can tell you about it." It wasn't anything bad, but startled the heck out of me at the time.
- Talking to the crystalsmith. There was one sequence where he went from yelling at his shield to shut up, to telling Anyasha she was being mean, to commenting on the screaming marshmallows, to telling me that my sword didn't like him at all, all without pausing for breath.
- hearing about, in rapid succession, Cynnir's conversation with the General, and then Angle's conversation with Yuriev.
So yeah, that's a pretty good event.