I live in Geek Central.
Update on Ian's Internship
Ian continues to enjoy his internship at Gearbox Software. It remains #1 on his list of companies where he wants to apply for full-time work after graduation in December. My hopes are irrecoverably up over this! Well, maybe that's the wrong word since I'll be happy once the idea of moving just about anywhere sinks in. It'll be an adventure no matter what -- just I have my eye on the particular adventure of keeping my current job that I love (despite occasional potholes such as in friends-locked post this morning). That'd be swell.
Date Night Tonight / Weekly Movie Date
We made a plan to start going to the movies on Sunday mornings. AMC offers $5 movies before noon on weekends and holidays. We both like going to the movies, but reading The Five Love Languages helped us identify that going to the movies together is an activity that's especially important to Ian. Unfortunately, our inaugural voyage last Sunday was canceled last-minute due to a team meeting for Ian's last project at the Guildhall. Ah well. We decided that the next best thing to "cheap" is "free popcorn," so we're going tonight to go see "Hellboy 2." I'm not especially looking forward to the film itself, though I'm certain it will amuse, but I am totally psyched for date night with the sweetie! That's important, really.
Geek Central: D&D Plans Did Not Work Out
Elsewhere, we had the opportunity to play D&D 4E with some of Ian's schoolmates, but I dropped out after one session. It was originally announced as for 5 people on Saturday nights. It turned into nearly 10 people starting at 6:30 on Sunday nights. That's just too late for me on a "school night," and with that many people, no chance of running efficiently, quickly, or ending at a reasonable time. I'm sad to miss the chance to play, to schmooze with Ian's friends, and to enjoy an activity with Ian with them, but me dropping was the right call.
Among other things, I was unaware, for it never occurred to me, that many of the Guildhall students have never roleplayed. I guess it's just my particular geeky bias that I assume all us sci-fi geeks also roleplay and have played video games of some sort at some point. Nope! Many of these kids (a term not appropriate of all, but for some/many indeed) have never played other than video, board, and maybe card games. This resulted in breaking some sort of understood "rules" of roleplay which it wouldn't even have occurred to me to go over with people, they're so ingrained in my habits. For example, I asked early in the character creation session if we wanted to come to some consensus about alignment within the party. This discussion didn't go too far, and I assumed that was because many of the people were totally unfamiliar with D&D in particular and just didn't understand the meaning of that term. There were lots of light-hearted jokes about stabbing each other in the back, and ganging up on this one or that one, and I just assumed they were indeed just that, jokes and nothing more. Apparently not so. The translation from competitive play within shoot-em-up video games to a cooperative action of an adventuring party in table-top roleplaying is actually not that instinctive. Things like keeping the party together or getting the party moving in one direction are apparently not concerns of either the players or the DM -- and my personality type probably wouldn't have handled that well. BIZARRO TRACE v. The Video Game Geeks, I'm thinking.
One player in particular made a dwarven wizard whose highest stat is Strength. I thought this was just kind of funny, and an amusing roleplaying quirk -- like how my dwarven cleric ended up with a 17 CON after racial bonuses, and it ended up being a fun point around which to write my little character sketch. Turns out that in the first session, the 18 STR wizard (who had never roleplayed before) had his character strip naked, and then he skipped the combat to go steal pies out of a farmhouse after spelling down the local hapless farmer. Everyone had a good laugh over the non-sequitur joke. I'm a terribly casual table-topper, I like a party of friends to hang out, snack, roll some dice, chat about life, the universe, and everything including the occasional participation in the actual game. Drives Ian batshit since is a serious, serious geek in this realm, and he likes the hard core 10-hour session where people forget to eat, relieve themselves, and even sweat because they concentrate so heavily on the game! The naked guy stealing the pie story was enough to make me say, "Glad I didn't show up," so I kind wonder how Ian still derived fun from the whole thing, and yet, he rolled with it, made what fun he could, and he's going back next Sunday night. Bummed that activity didn't pan out for both of us, but ah well. I ended up buying the 4E Player's Handbook in the process, and I look forward to reading through that.
It did start a conversation wherein I admitted, as I have before, that someday I think I'd like to try my hand at GMing a table-top game. I think that if I could learn one system good enough, I could make it fun. Certainly easier than running another LARP! So if you're interested in that, stay tuned for where we move next, and I'll expect you to start checking out apartments in the area. BYO Doritos. (Oh! And another thing! I know that not everyone comes from the "Ring the bell with your elbow" school of thought (but they should) -- but at least bring your own drink to a D&D game. I was positively appalled at the way the jackals at the character creation session pounced on the snacks and four cans of Coke Ian and I brought. The snacks were meant to be shared, but you didn't even stop at 7-11 and pick up your own Big Gulp? Inexcusable, I'm sorry.)
Miscellanea
Been getting a weekly massage for the past three weeks, and during last night's session, I definitely noticed an overall improvement in my tension levels for going every week. Score! It won't last forever, but I'm enjoying it now.
Realized in horror that I have a book that is ten days overdue at the library. This stings my Lawful Good heart! I not only thought I had returned this, but I even saw it marked overdue on their website, and I thought it odd that they hadn't logged it into the system yet. Igit!
The Heart Walk pep rally today wasn't nearly as bad as I feared. I seriously considered calling out sick today to skip it -- this was no doubt the cause of me oversleeping this morning. I've stopped using an alarm clock, and today it bit me on the ass. I woke up 1 minute after the time I hope to leave the house! I did my yoga, took my time getting ready, and even read the YMCA class schedule for the day in my contemplation of whether or not to go to work. I'm glad that I did the responsible thing and came in anyhow. There were many jokes at the pep rally made about the cheeseburgers. At least the chips were all baked. The plan for public humiliation ended up getting changed and wasn't so bad. All that, and I'll still finish the day with half-an-hour of overtime even though I showed up about that late. Glad I have a cool boss. She had a worse morning, and we shared a bonding laugh over it all.
That's about all I've got for you in terms of anything like a real update. Gosh, I sure hope you enjoy this minutia!
Trace
Ian continues to enjoy his internship at Gearbox Software. It remains #1 on his list of companies where he wants to apply for full-time work after graduation in December. My hopes are irrecoverably up over this! Well, maybe that's the wrong word since I'll be happy once the idea of moving just about anywhere sinks in. It'll be an adventure no matter what -- just I have my eye on the particular adventure of keeping my current job that I love (despite occasional potholes such as in friends-locked post this morning). That'd be swell.
Date Night Tonight / Weekly Movie Date
We made a plan to start going to the movies on Sunday mornings. AMC offers $5 movies before noon on weekends and holidays. We both like going to the movies, but reading The Five Love Languages helped us identify that going to the movies together is an activity that's especially important to Ian. Unfortunately, our inaugural voyage last Sunday was canceled last-minute due to a team meeting for Ian's last project at the Guildhall. Ah well. We decided that the next best thing to "cheap" is "free popcorn," so we're going tonight to go see "Hellboy 2." I'm not especially looking forward to the film itself, though I'm certain it will amuse, but I am totally psyched for date night with the sweetie! That's important, really.
Geek Central: D&D Plans Did Not Work Out
Elsewhere, we had the opportunity to play D&D 4E with some of Ian's schoolmates, but I dropped out after one session. It was originally announced as for 5 people on Saturday nights. It turned into nearly 10 people starting at 6:30 on Sunday nights. That's just too late for me on a "school night," and with that many people, no chance of running efficiently, quickly, or ending at a reasonable time. I'm sad to miss the chance to play, to schmooze with Ian's friends, and to enjoy an activity with Ian with them, but me dropping was the right call.
Among other things, I was unaware, for it never occurred to me, that many of the Guildhall students have never roleplayed. I guess it's just my particular geeky bias that I assume all us sci-fi geeks also roleplay and have played video games of some sort at some point. Nope! Many of these kids (a term not appropriate of all, but for some/many indeed) have never played other than video, board, and maybe card games. This resulted in breaking some sort of understood "rules" of roleplay which it wouldn't even have occurred to me to go over with people, they're so ingrained in my habits. For example, I asked early in the character creation session if we wanted to come to some consensus about alignment within the party. This discussion didn't go too far, and I assumed that was because many of the people were totally unfamiliar with D&D in particular and just didn't understand the meaning of that term. There were lots of light-hearted jokes about stabbing each other in the back, and ganging up on this one or that one, and I just assumed they were indeed just that, jokes and nothing more. Apparently not so. The translation from competitive play within shoot-em-up video games to a cooperative action of an adventuring party in table-top roleplaying is actually not that instinctive. Things like keeping the party together or getting the party moving in one direction are apparently not concerns of either the players or the DM -- and my personality type probably wouldn't have handled that well. BIZARRO TRACE v. The Video Game Geeks, I'm thinking.
One player in particular made a dwarven wizard whose highest stat is Strength. I thought this was just kind of funny, and an amusing roleplaying quirk -- like how my dwarven cleric ended up with a 17 CON after racial bonuses, and it ended up being a fun point around which to write my little character sketch. Turns out that in the first session, the 18 STR wizard (who had never roleplayed before) had his character strip naked, and then he skipped the combat to go steal pies out of a farmhouse after spelling down the local hapless farmer. Everyone had a good laugh over the non-sequitur joke. I'm a terribly casual table-topper, I like a party of friends to hang out, snack, roll some dice, chat about life, the universe, and everything including the occasional participation in the actual game. Drives Ian batshit since is a serious, serious geek in this realm, and he likes the hard core 10-hour session where people forget to eat, relieve themselves, and even sweat because they concentrate so heavily on the game! The naked guy stealing the pie story was enough to make me say, "Glad I didn't show up," so I kind wonder how Ian still derived fun from the whole thing, and yet, he rolled with it, made what fun he could, and he's going back next Sunday night. Bummed that activity didn't pan out for both of us, but ah well. I ended up buying the 4E Player's Handbook in the process, and I look forward to reading through that.
It did start a conversation wherein I admitted, as I have before, that someday I think I'd like to try my hand at GMing a table-top game. I think that if I could learn one system good enough, I could make it fun. Certainly easier than running another LARP! So if you're interested in that, stay tuned for where we move next, and I'll expect you to start checking out apartments in the area. BYO Doritos. (Oh! And another thing! I know that not everyone comes from the "Ring the bell with your elbow" school of thought (but they should) -- but at least bring your own drink to a D&D game. I was positively appalled at the way the jackals at the character creation session pounced on the snacks and four cans of Coke Ian and I brought. The snacks were meant to be shared, but you didn't even stop at 7-11 and pick up your own Big Gulp? Inexcusable, I'm sorry.)
Miscellanea
Been getting a weekly massage for the past three weeks, and during last night's session, I definitely noticed an overall improvement in my tension levels for going every week. Score! It won't last forever, but I'm enjoying it now.
Realized in horror that I have a book that is ten days overdue at the library. This stings my Lawful Good heart! I not only thought I had returned this, but I even saw it marked overdue on their website, and I thought it odd that they hadn't logged it into the system yet. Igit!
The Heart Walk pep rally today wasn't nearly as bad as I feared. I seriously considered calling out sick today to skip it -- this was no doubt the cause of me oversleeping this morning. I've stopped using an alarm clock, and today it bit me on the ass. I woke up 1 minute after the time I hope to leave the house! I did my yoga, took my time getting ready, and even read the YMCA class schedule for the day in my contemplation of whether or not to go to work. I'm glad that I did the responsible thing and came in anyhow. There were many jokes at the pep rally made about the cheeseburgers. At least the chips were all baked. The plan for public humiliation ended up getting changed and wasn't so bad. All that, and I'll still finish the day with half-an-hour of overtime even though I showed up about that late. Glad I have a cool boss. She had a worse morning, and we shared a bonding laugh over it all.
That's about all I've got for you in terms of anything like a real update. Gosh, I sure hope you enjoy this minutia!
Trace