Yup, Maine's still there all right.

Went up to York Beach, Maine this afternoon with my mom. We were both distressed that neither of us had made it up there this year, yet, so we decided to go. Mom wanted to wait until after Labor Day at first, so things might be cheaper in some of the stores, but I pointed out that some of the stores might change their hours after Labor Day, and not be open during the week. So, off we went.

It turned out to be a pretty nice day. Sun, a nice cool breeze, and no nightgaunts snatching us off the beach and carrying us into the mountains to be be eaten by elder gods. We arrived at high tide, though, so we went off to browse the usual stores while some more beach materialized. The shopping expedition went well - I get to pretend that I don't know about a couple of very spiffy t-shirts that I'll be getting for Christmas this year. We even impressed the woman at The Little Bull with the magnitude of my wolf t-shirt collection, after commenting that we were adding to it with our purchases. When I went away to Colorado 3 years ago, my mom sorted my t-shirt pile while I was away (to my horror, when I returned). She counted 32 t-shirts with wolves on them at the time. I don't know how many I've accumulated since then, but I wouldn't be surprised to discover it's in the area of 45. After all, I added 4 more on the trip to Colorado last month alone.

After indulging in touristy consumerism, we proceeded to wander the beach itself. I, of course, stuck out. Other people are in swimsuits or at least shorts, and even my mom at least took off her shoes to walk in the edge of the water. Not me. I like walking on the sand, feeling the breeze, admiring the view, and watching the waves, but I'm perfectly content to do it just beyond the reach of the water, still wearing my sneakers and long pants, since I don't do shorts.

Eventually it was time to be heading home, with every intention of stopping for 'lunch.' I requested that we swing by Brown's Old Fashioned Ice Cream, though, because I know for certain that their hours get annoying after Labor Day, and they have awesome ice cream. Well, I suppose it would be more accurate to say that they have awesome Mocha Chip. I assume their other flavors are also good, but I like a very narrow range of flavors, and Mocha Chip sits at the top of my small list of favorites.

Having officially spoiled my appetite with a dish of ice cream much bigger than I remember Brown's usually serving, we stopped for lunch. Of course, it was about 3:00 or something by this point. Service was sort of inconsistant - very friendly, but not terribly fast, and not possessing very good listening skills. I ate some of my chicken fingers and packed up the rest for later. Then we escaped and set off for home, hoping to beat most of rush hour traffic.

Not long after we got home, it was supposedly time for dinner. Hah! Not wishing to explode, I elected to postpone dinner until some time later. Then it was off to tonight's gaming session...

Ye Gaming Session...and Jellyfish!

Continuing from the previous post...I dunno, I just wanted to split this up for some reason. Anyway, this evening was pretty cool. If nothing else, my friend Dave apparently brought me a souvenir from his trip to Niagara Falls and the surrounding area. He visited a little aquarium, which apparently was attached to a gift shop that sold truly awesome stuffed jellyfish, one of which he brought back for me. He said that he decided to fuel my jellyfish obsession because I didn't mock him for his goldpanning obsession. Coming to think of it, I fueled his goldpanning obsession by picking him up a goldpanning pan while I was at the rock show in Springfield this year. I was astounded by the benefits that one can achieve just by not mocking someone. I can't help wondering if I should start mocking people less frequently now. Nah.

Anyway, on to the game. It was Big Eyes, Small Mouth, in which we are playing agents of Section 13. Well, sort of. See, most of Section 13 got blown up, along with most of human civilization, in our previous session. I suppose that we technically are still Section 13 agents, but that no longer carries with it the backing of a large, well equipped government organization.

I managed to contribute slightly to the defeat of our foe in the combat of the evening, even dealing the finishing blow. This was actually too bad, since another player was all set to start beating on the giant robot with its own severed leg before I incapacitated the thing, and that would have been pretty cool. I keep wishing I'd taken ranks of Diplomacy or some other social skill. I really envisioned my character, Arkady, as being a bit more talkative than many of my other characters, but there's nothing to really back that up in his stats.

Still not entirely sure about the system (BESM d20), but the direction the GM has taken the game has been unexpected and interesting. Plus, I get to run up walls and turn into a swarm of tiny motes of light, which is always a major plus.

After the game, I worked on my board game some more, and created about 10 more cards for the deck. The deck doesn't actually need more cards, of course, but there were a few imbalances that were still nagging me, and I feel better for trying to address them. It makes sense to do it now, before I hopefully get some testing from my friends on Monday. Then I might get to see some of the new stuff in action, and rework it if it turns out to suck.

Okay, I feel better now that I've actually written some stuff. Seemed like too long since my last entry for some reason. Maybe it's because I feel like I should be doing more writing of some sort, even if I can't seem to focus on fiction enough to write something for Composite. Bleagh.