Tuesday, December 1, 2009

12/1/09

OK, so I made it through the Thanksgiving holidays. They are by far the busiest time of the year for us. We get started on things usually on that Monday, but we ended up losing that day due to illness. I actually had to cancel the Sunday game the day before that as I wasn't feeling 100%. However by Tuesday I felt decent. We got through the multi-stage shopping and in the evening my niece Kali joined us. She once again was a lifesaver for getting things done. Plus she got the chance to play Batman Arkham Asylum which my brother had lent me. She worked on that for about eight hours straight.

T-Day itself went off pretty well-- we had about fourteen people, which was down a little, but we had a nice mix and Kenny and Tammy joined us since their Thanksgiving had gotten moved to Saturday. I got up a little earlier than I usually do since I was working with a 27 pound bird. Surprisingly, the bird actually came out earlier than I expected-- I left it in an extra half-hour to be sure which I shouldn't have. The temp was pretty certain and I should have just taken it out to come up to rest. We had at least a dozen and a half different dishes-- a crazy amount of food. We got through perhaps half of it. I then collapsed on the couch until my brother stopped by to grab some late-night food (he'd been at work) before heading out of town.

Friday saw me sleeping in and then getting the house straightened up. I worked on my game for the last couple of hours of the day and then did a session of Libri Vidicos. The group had decided to head to a strange place to find out information, so a good deal of the session was given over to interactions with the environment and exploration. We had the good fortune to have Art Lyon sit in on the game as well-- which gave me a chance to show off the Action Cards system. The session went well and I pull out a couple of revelations I'd been saving. Probably one more session of their summer break and then we begin Year Three of that campaign-- so new classes and events for the characters this year.

Saturday, of course, saw the Big Videogame day which some have dubbed Lowellapalooza given the amount of Rock Band being played. We had plenty of food, and only a couple of logistical problems. Once again people generously pitched in to fill out the video games available-- I have to thank Kenny, Rob, Eric, Dave & Chas, Will and Steve for bringing televisions, consoles, controllers, and games. Beatles Rock Band went over pretty well and I was pleasantly surprised by new Boom Blox game for the Wii. It is much better than the original in that you can do party play right out of the box. Anyway, we started about noon and I think I gave people the boot about 10pm.

Sunday pretty much saw me sleep in and recover. I also caught up with the new Dr. Who series, finally watching up through the end of Season Three. I took about half of the turkey carcass and made stock from it. I then made a Thai Turkey and Rice soup, flavored with chilies, ginger, garlic and lemongrass. It came out pretty well-- you serve it with fresh cilantro, basil and scallions. I hadn't considered turkey as a Thai ingredient, so I was pretty shocked at the flavor. The stock came out nicely, though it was a good deal of work. The other half of the carcass I'm going to need a cleaver to break up, so I have that freezing right now.

Did some work on Changeling, got caught up on my editing project (although I'm in a holding pattern right now on that) and did some cleaning. I have some more to do which I'm going to head off to in a second. I have Rites of Passage by the Indigo Girls on the machine, an album I'd forgotten the greatness of.

My next ambitions, for December:
1.More job hunting
2.Finish revising this script for Gene
3.My full rewrite of Action Cards
4.Get to play L4D2 with my brother
5.Get caught up on emailing people
6.Blog regularly through the month.
7.Get the next two arcs (for Changeling and Libri Vidicos) off to a good start

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