I am a meat popsicle

Warm, cold, warm, cold...well, it's New England, what else did I think would happen?

Fortune cookies appeared in the house today. Fortune cookies amuse me. I don't like the taste, so I don't eat them, but I find the fortunes to be entertaining. I ususally only get a fortune when there's a surplus cookie, and someone else is willing to eat it. I also like to remove the fortune without breaking the cookie, if I can. Oftentimes the corner is sticking out and you can grab it, though on occasion I've used the tine of a fork to dig one out without cracking the cookie. Anyway, today's cookie says "You have a deep interest in all that is artistic." It's like they've got a window into my brain, I tell you! Wait, no, they can't have a window into my brain. If they did, I'm sure they would have warned the rest of you about me by now.

I tagged along with my girlfriend to a celebratory dinner at Vinnie Testa's on Friday. It was supposed to be for a friend's birthday, but since another guest has a birthday next week it was sort of for both of them. We'd already eaten, so we were sort of just there to hang out. We split a mousse-like chocolate dessert thingy while other people had real food. It was pretty good, but I could never eat a whole piece myself. Too rich for me. That, and I'd be embarassed to leave the outer edge of the thing on the plate, and to have carefully avoided the sugary white stuff dribbled all over the plate.

I hate being so picky about food. I envy people who walk into a restaurant and try to decide what they'd like from a number of tasty-sounding options. I, on the other hand, get to walk into restaurants and frantically search the menu for a chicken dish with nothing but breading involved in its preparation, or steak if I can't find chicken. For example, do you have any idea how embarassing it is to go to a real Italian restaurant and ask for an extremely complicated chicken dish with 80% of the ingrediants omitted? I had to do that once when my group went out for lunch when I worked at IDD a few years ago. I half-expected the chef to come out and indignantly ask why I was in an Italian restaurant if all I wanted was plain chicken. It's almost worse going to a seafood place. "Yes, I know this is a seafood restaurant. Yes, I still want the chicken finger appetizer and a glass of water for dinner." Shoot me.

Anyway, it's always awkward to be the friend-of-a-friend at these social events. I mean, I knew most of their names, but we don't know each other very well, and it can be hard to come up with small talk. Then there's always sitting there with glazed expression while the in-jokes I'm not in on fly back and forth. Of them all, Lee is probably the most sympathetic, or maybe he's just friendlier. I dunno - he tried to talk to me, anyway, which was nice. Made me feel a little more part of things. When asked what I'd been up to I tried to half-mention the art and layout work I've been doing for someone's prototype CCG. I can't talk about it too much since it's still in the design and pitch stage, so I don't think I'm supposed to blab the details. Plus, the details are probably hideously tedious to someone else anyway, so going into it in any depth makes for seriously boring conversation. So, once I'd established that I'm still trying to get my foot in the door for an art/design career in the world of gaming, I moved on to my usual conversational contributions; Cthulhu rising from the sea, weather-control devices, crashing the moon into the Earth. Standard stuff. It's not like I could contribute meaningfully to the computer-related chatter or car discussions that were otherwise the main topics for conversation.

RPG wacky fun stuff

Hey, I haven't talked about roleplaying stuff on here for a bit. Let's see - we had our third session of Big Eyes, Small Mouth on Thursday. That was our first session since we lost a player due to his vision of the game not quite matching that of the person running it.

Our investigative skills were tested, and found somewhat lacking. Nevertheless, we managed to visit the company that sure looks like it might be evil, despite the fact that we had nothing really impressive to ask them when we went there. We got ambushed on the way home from visiting it, and my character initially faced off against an opponent whom he was incapable of wounding, unless I got that 1:36 odds critical hit thing. Bleh. However, we soon rearranged whom we were fighting, and I got to matter. Yah! Truly, this hit home that I need to buy an armor-piercing attack with XP eventually, though. I always knew that I needed one sooner or later, and this conflict was designed expecting us to swap off opponents to better serve our strengths and weaknesses, but I gotta say that it was scary to be fighting someone who could take me out with 3 punches whom I could not wound in return.

Earlier in the week, on Sunday, we had part 2 of our sample combat to prepare for the City of the Spider Queen game. I do like my Zokujin character for that game, Digger. He needs a ranged weapon for those situations when nothing is available to fight on the ground, but otherwise it was reasonably nifty. I almost got to put my Tremorsense to use. It was probably all for the best that the Darkness I'd run into went away, though. I'm sure I'll get to use Tremorsense eventualy. I've already taken advantage of my extra long range Darkvision and Fire Resistance. Plus, my Earth Brotherhood I-ignore-metal-armor thing actually mattered, though we almost forgot to factor it in.

Exalted is going pretty well, I think. People seem to enjoy it for the most part, in spite of a few stumbling blocks that we've had. I wish I could involve everyone more. I'm finding it hard to try to give everyone equal attention with so many players. Also, I know a couple of people feel a little unsure about what's supposed to happen next, but I'm hoping they'll feel better after some things are spelled out next session. Then we'll get to see what the group decides to do. They've surprised me before, and maybe they will again. I just hope they don't do something I haven't planned for that I also can't improvise well. So far the story itself has flowed pretty well, and I'd hate to disrupt it by saying "You know, I had no idea you guys would decide to launch a naval invasion of the Blessed Isle. I think we'd better pause here for the night, and I'll try to have something for you in two weeks." Bleh.

I fear sleep

Yeah, I should sleep. Why am I still typing these things? It's 3:45 AM! I dunno. I'm still finishing my ice cream, and I still feel like 'talking,' I guess.

Saturday evening my girlfriend and I attended a piano recital. There was supposed to be a drumming circle thing afterwards, with piano involved, but not enough drummers showed up. Bleh. I mean, I've got nothing against piano music, but it was too bad we planned our day around this and then spent a couple of hours listening to the piano and then didn't even get to do what we actually went for. Drumming is fun, though I was a little apprehensive about trying to be musical along with someone that proficient. Ah well.

Heaven and Earth should be out for L5R this week. I've been going a little crazy waiting for it. I went to a prerelease and got some already, but I want to hurry up and find out whether or not I'm going to get the two new rare Scorpion Clan personalities, so I can hurry up and trade for them if I don't get them. It's frustrating to try to pick these things up after the really obsessive collectors have finished their sets already. No one cares about trying to trade after they've got their full set/play set/whatever. Past experience has shown me that if I want a particular card from a set, I'm a lot more likely to get in the first few weeks after the set's released. Anyway, I could live without the new Courtier - well, heck, I could _live_ without any of it - but I would like the Experienced Bayushi Tai. Probably there are some cards in the set that I don't even know about that would also be nifty to get. I'd seen some previews before the prerelease, but I didn't know about the Dark Oracle of the Void until I pulled it from a pack in the tournament. It's pretty darn cool, and it fits beautifully in my ridiculous Shadowlands deck. Its most amusing trick is Quest for Guidance, and I can't think of a better card to help with Quest for Guidance than the Dark Oracle. Wacky fun.

Okay, it's 4:01. Long past time to sleep, even if I am feeling chatty.