Monday 30 June 2003

• Another Sunday, another weblog recap of the week.

  
  

  I've been listening to a lot of Tom Petty this week, both with and without the Heartbreakers.  I'm so happy that I can at least play music CDs again, even if I can't play music cassettes yet. 

  
  

  Monday, Rusty picked my computer and I up and took us to his place.  There he and Kitty tried figuring out what the problem was with Windows 98.  They treated to Long John Silvers' for dinner.  Eventually, we just saved what I needed onto his spare external hard drive, formated this computer, and tried loading Windows 98 on it again.  It still was having the same problem.  They eventually gave up and upgraded this to XP Home Edition, but using their copy.  It worked.  So the computer is up and running again, at least for another twenty-five days.  Then I'll have to pay Microsoft for this copy or try reinstalling my Windows 98 on top of it.  They offered to find a "crack" for me, but it sounded a little too illegal for me.

  
  

  Tuesday night after work I loaded the Corel Suite 8, Yahoo! IM, & Zone Alarm.  I also explained my possition on Bishop O'Brien to Ben.  Then, while chatting with Jess, I loaded AIM and Trillian for the first time.  She became my test subject.  They seemed to work OK.  Trillian is nice because its one program running instead of several.  However, it doesn't have an Appear Offline or Invisible mode.  I like to set my IMS to that when I have work to do on my computer.  It limits the number of people I'm chatting with so that I can get that work done. 

  
  

  Wednesday I had planned to finish loading programs on my computer, but Wayne invited me over to his house for dinner.  We had a homemade pizza with pepperoni and his Dragon Bowl Restaurant left overs.  It was fairly good.  Not as good as his barbeque chicken pizza, but fairly good nonetheless. 

  
  

  Thursday we met at Jay's house for his D&D one-shot.  He gave us a little more freedom, stating that we could make characters randomly using Dai's charts or not.  He also allowed us to roll 4d6 and arrange as we wished.  So all in all, it was straight Players' Handbook.  I chose to avoid the tables and make an elven monk.  I had not had the chance to play either yet in third edition.  I wanted a chance before 3.5 comes out next month.  Sam played a human druid, Bill played a human conjurer, and Dai played a halfling rouge.  We started out drawing straws.  Because Sam and I drew the two short straws, we ended up waking in a separate cells just as we were sent into a gladitorial arena against each other, a dwarf, and a minotaur.  The druid and monk chose to not follow the wills of the crowd and jumped out of the arena (thanks to the monk's increased movement of 40' and a maxed out Jump skill and the druid's Boots of Leaping and Stridding).  The minotaur killed the dwarf while we tried to escape.  Meanwhile, the other two characters were in the stands watching the event.  The druid knocked the rouge into the arena during the first escape attempt, but he escaped into the gladitorial tunnel system.  Suddenly, the entrance to the tunnel system closed behind him as did the stadium seat exits.  They became flush stone.  Then the shade tarps at the top of the stadium irised close and the floor of the stadium opened up.  This swallowed the minotaur and the various summoned monsters of the human conjurer.  The monk and druid fought the animate tarps and eventually succeeded in cutting them into long strips and fashioning a rope down to the feather token created oak tree the druid placed below us.  Meanwhile, the conjurer started a mage duel with another magic user of some sort who wanted to sacrifice the conjurer to the devil with in pit.  And thus we cliffhangered, with the possibility of continuing at some future point.

  
  

  Friday we played Jackson's D&D campaign again.  We successfully faught off the gnolls which had ambushed us in the cliffhanging ending last April.  A well placed sound burst from Squigbarm among the archers and spellcasters stunned enough of them to let the magic missiles and thrown daggers finish them off fairly quickly.  Meanwhile, the gnoll barbarian was successfully felled by the harper scout and half-dragon.  That was a good thing, because Squig had his back to him while casting.  Unfortunately, we missed out on catching an invisible gnoll spellcaster who fled rather than die with the others. 

  
  

  Afterwards we found a lame gnoll expert who was probably the cohort of the escaped gnoll working in the alchemist lab atop the Ice Spire.  He didn't flee us (due to his lameness), so Ethan cast lesser geas upin him and interogated him.  We then dragged him )and the masterwork alchemist lab) along with us on our way back to Silverymoon.  On the way we saw the remnants of a gnoll/human battle outside Caldron.  We flew down where Deloan and Squigbarm healed the worst wounded while Ethan spoke with the cleric of Kelmvor who was with them.  They thanked us for the assistance, as now they could be home the same night rather than having to camp out on the glacer for a night.  So we headed to the Shackled City instead, as it was closer and might have someone to assist us earlier than the trip the Silverymoon would leave us.

  
  

  Saturday we went to Chili's before playing in Jackson's D&D campaign again.  In the Shackled City, Zed and Squigbarm explored the public hot baths.  The city it turns out is in the cone of a dormant volcano, so the city remains warm even during winter.  The baths are in a place where the pumice naturally created three different pools of different water warmths.  Meanwhile, Ethan, Deloam, and Syrus bartered with a wyvern rider to get his master to cast discern location using what we looted from the Great White Death's lair.  In exchange for the spell Syrus had to skin the white dragon carcass outside the Ice Spire and provide a 10' x 20' piece and Squig had to turn over 1200gp.  Ethan promised that Squigbarm'd be recompensated by party funds, even though we don't currently have any. 

  
  

  Delome, Ethan, and Squig also watched a funeral that the church of Kelmvor had for one of the recently fallen.  Afterwards, the took a tunnel which curved around the inside of the crater to the catacombs.  None of us had stonecunning, so we had no idea how far deep or to the side we had gone. 

  
  

  We cliffhangered when the wyvern rider returned the next morning with his master's results.  Then they announced that we would begin at noon next Friday.  That's when I realized that Friday was the holiday.  The holiday I had planned to go to Master's party.  Oops!  I always honor my first commitment, but which one counts as my first?  Jackson has always stated that his D&D campaign is held on Fridays unless stated otherwise.  But I agreed to the PFF party weeks ago when I thought I had no holiday plans.  How foolish of me to not connect the holiday with Friday.  I guess I should cancel the PFF party, even though I haven't seen the folks since IMAX.  I'd feel less bad if I hadn't missed out on the Cine Capri Star Wars event.

  
  

  Sunday I attended mass, where Father Milt had a great homily on the solemnity.  He made sure to emphasize that it was the power of the community's prayer which brought the angel to Peter and helped him escape the prison.  I guess that's something with which I've struggled these past years.  Why would God listen more to the needy for whom prayers are made than the needy for whom prayers are not made?  Maybe something's just not sinking in right. 

  
  

  Speaking of which, I noticed this week that I have better conversations with Jess, the Thursday gang, and even the Saturday gang than I ever seem to on any of the message boards, groups, or listservs I'm a member of.  What happened?  During college I could always get stimulating conversation from people online.  Where'd all the stimulating conversationalists go?  Now it seems like a majority of the online conversation places are either elitists who want nothing to do with newbies or popularity contest centers.  It's rather disillusioning. 

  
  

  Speaking of disillusioning (as I tangentalize all over), I've been having weird thoughts over the past couple of weeks.  First, last week I was talking with a friend who was commenting about how weird it was to have so many of her friends getting married.  It totally reminded me of when I was her age.  As we were talking about it, I asked her why she wasn't married yet.  She had been dating a friend of ours for some time, but they recently broke up.  I hadn't heard her side of the story, and rather than pry I figured I'd give her the opportunity to tell me if she wanted.  However, I was surprised when she said she was single, then proceeded to ask me why I wasn't married.  So obviously she didn't want to discuss her new status, but I was surprised.  I never really think about such things.  I never even date, much less think about getting married.  Oh, I thought about marriage when I was dating Sheila was back when, but we didn't date long enough for it to become a serious enough issue that any plans were made. 

  
  

  Then, the weird part came.  I thought, well, why not ask her out?  Isn't that incredibly odd?  I have no idea where that came from.  I squelched that thought quickly, but its haunted me since. 

  
  

  Then, this week while reading another friend's weblog I suddenly thought, you should ask her to marry you.  Woah!  We've never even dated!  Was this some implanted suggested by the first friend the week before?  Am I just attracted to my younger female friends?  Is there a part of me that I've been ignoring that I shouldn't, or am I not ignoring a part of me enough?  I don't know, so I keep praying for guidance. 

  
  

  Luckily, when she asked me about my thoughts when I read her journal I avoided telling her about that particular one.  What friend would want to hear such bizzarre thoughts anyway?  I doubt I would, unless she knew for certain what those thoughts really meant.  Which, obviously, I don't. 

  
  

  Well, the Hogwarts Live Action Meeting has just ended, the church down the street has stopped launching its fireworks, and SG-1 will be on soon, so I guess I'll bid you all good night.  Until next time...

  • 02:34
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