Roadside Picnic

Went 1-2 in Saturday's X-Wing tournament. Flew pretty well, but got tripped up by bad maneuvers in one game and just outfought in another. My buddy DK was able to ride along to the tourney with me, scoring the same record with his Rebel squadron.

Played two 50-point games tonight, winning both, but one by a very narrow margin. I flew two Y-Wings; the first (and closest) fight was against four TIE Fighters. Killed one pretty quickly, but the TIE maneuverability kept the rest alive for quite some time. The second fight ... Okay, the Y-Wing is clumsy, but it can take a lot of damage. When flying against something even clumsier, it's just ships beating on ships. I killed a Decimator, and fast. One Y had an ion cannon turret attached, so I just kept the Decimator from making any kind of maneuver, broke down his shields with blasters, and cracked the hull with torpedoes. The thing's still threatening, but it's not nearly as formidable as I used to think.

So, it's New Year's Eve. I'm staying in tonight. The ten-day stretch at the farm was great, and I look forward to having that time with my family again. Right now, though, I have peace and solitude. I'm going to watch The Lost Boys (RIP Edward Herrmann) and goodness knows what else, crack open a bottle of wine, and relax.

2014 was, on the whole, a good year for me. There were some dark times, and I have got to fix an ongoing problem in the first weeks of this new year, but I made big steps in giving my life some meaning, and I think that every time I fell, I fell forward.

I started the year off taking a class at BCTC. I wanted to see if I had it in me to be a student again, and the answer was a resounding Yes. I applied to two programs, was accepted to both, and a whirlwind began. In February, I fell back in love and got dearly-needed answers to some five-year-old questions. This helped, in many ways. March was adventure and a good decision implemented poorly. I decided to leave the H-L in April and spend a stretch of weeks doing nothing but preparing for leaving Lexington and becoming a full-time student again. Although getting out of that job was a long-overdue positive step, I really should have stuck around through mid-May instead of jumping out in mid-April. May - met with advisors, went through orientation, and was quickly made certain that I was going into the right field and was doing this in the right place. June and July are best left undetailed - some very dark times, and I felt The Fear coming back. In August, I moved to Louisville, started classes, and felt my decisions again confirmed and reinforced. The semester went well, and things are so different now. I'm happy again.

I'm blowing off the rest of the holiday season. Maybe I'll do something for New Year's Eve, but I think I'm just going to skip Christmas 2014. Thanksgiving's been okay - had a great talk with The Niece on our drive from Louisville to Liberty last night, and I'm glad to have this long weekend with Mom&Dad. I have to spend most of the rest of the weekend working, though - homework and final papers are looming.

Classes continue. Had an unexpected project dropped on me following a conversation with one of my professors, and, well, sometimes it's like talking to a cop - just don't do it.

Had a pretty good Halloween. Talked with a couple of people I really needed to hear from, then went to what I thought was going to be a party with some of my classmates and other folks, but turned out to be a very small gathering. Vampire movies and Netflix and whatnot. A good time.

Went to Liberty Saturday morning. Worked on some things with Mom&Dad, talked about some business matters, and went to an anniversary dinner with some of my high school classmates. Good times.

Busy week coming up. Two exams, registration for the spring semester, and more. Gotta make some progress on papers, get more resumes and applications out.

Onward.

Thanksgiving Day - football, family, avoiding my father's remarkably unappetizing turkey. Reading, napping, goofing off, refusing to take part in commerce.

The next day - slept late, more reading, returned to Lexington, bought books.

Saturday - take Dad back to Indianapolis to pick up his truck, drove Mom and The Niece around downtown Indy, struck out at both HPBs in Louisville, followed Auburn's upset of Alabama, flirted shamelessly. Played XCOM and WoW.

Today - game day was a bust. We'll more than make up for it on the 21st. More football. More reading. Getting my L5R pitch together. Laundry and some other housework.

I really want to play some X-Wing.

I'm starting off the last day of a four-day weekend. It's been, mostly, a good stretch away from the office (and, hey, I've got another one in 57 hours). Friday and Sunday were the best days, and I'm going to credit getting out of and away from the apartment with that. No grand adventures or day trips, just running some errands, but it got me off of the couch for a few hours early in the day, and that kept me from just being a slug all day.

It seems to have paid off a little bit. One of my goals was to finish up a proposal for a SF game setting, and late last night, I got the response - "I'd like to see more." So, today's going to see some IM discussion and laying the foundation of this thing. And I'm going to make myself get out of the apartment to work on this today.

My game club is stepping up! One returning member has put out a call for an open and ongoing game to be played at game days. One of my regulars is pitching two options for the inadvertent post-apocalypse day in a few weeks. I'm still planning my own games, but if these come together, the additional options are going to be fantastic to have around.

Thanksgiving is this week, and to the best of my memory, this is the first time I've had the entire four-day weekend off from work since '96. I'm looking forward to it, even if (or maybe because) I don't have any plans between Thursday evening and Sunday afternoon. As long as I'm not by myself or camped out at a hospital or something, I'll be happy enough. Or shopping on Friday. That's anti-fun.

Every now and again, I get a reminder of the depth of knowledge possessed by my father. Last Tuesday, he called and asked if I would drive across town and pick him up. His truck wouldn't start, and he was tired of being around it. The carrier had been contacted, and a repair order was in, so no worries there, but he was in town, so no need to stay with the truck when he doesn't have to. So, yeah, no problem, I'm in the car and heading across town. When I pull up to his location, all of 15 minutes later, the truck's running. He rooted around in the truck's toolbox and found a strip of metal. Laid said metal across the solenoid, forcing a short circuit that locked the thing closed and enabling the starter to do its thing. To him, twarn't nothin'. I wouldn't have figured out this problem and solution in a hundred days.

Had a good weekend - and have had a string of them of late, which is pretty darn terrific. Saturday was Free RPG Day, and the club's event went off spectacularly. Over thirty attendees, many games, many new faces. Our host store reported good sales, selling most of the items we had ordered to back up the giveaways. Another store ran a 25% off RPGs sale, and I landed a Mage sourcebook and a Star Wars: EotE starter set - more on that in a second. I ran four folks through the Shadowrun quickstart, and good times were had all around. I had planned to run the SW:EotE demo, too (and part of my reason and happiness at getting the starter set came from getting a set of the funky dice the game uses), but that was unfortunately derailed by a player who made up for his lack of smart with a surplus of belligerence.

Following the gaming, it was off to the bar, which led to its own hijinks. One of our little group only gets let off the leash a couple of times a year, while the rest of us are accomplished in defiling ourselves. Dave wound up drinking entirely too much, attempting to match Colin, the master at whose feet I learned. Dave was in sad-ass shape. And was crashing on my couch for the evening. Thankfully, he didn't get sick, but he's likely to lose his privileges over this.

Sunday! Father's Day! Got up, saw No-More-Drinking-Dave off, and headed to Liberty. Dad loved his gift - a nice little Dell laptop - and we had a good time grilling and goofing off. Had planned to go to Louisville in the evening to have dinner with Diane, but she texted me in the afternoon to ask about staying at my place that night instead - she had an appointment in Danville this morning (Monday) and leaving from Lexington would save her a lot of morning driving. We stayed up rather late talking, and while I paid for it with industrial-grade drowsiness at the office today, it was more than worth it.

More dumb stuff at work. Nothing new there.

Stupid summer colds. I've been fighting against this one for a few days now, and it's currently a stalemate. Just a cough and some congestion, but those symptoms are doing their level best to stick around. Laying around the apartment isn't how I'd hoped to spend Memorial Day weekend.

Not all of it, anyway. Monday was set aside as a do-nothing day a while back. Today, I was supposed to be in Louisville to work with Fandom Fest's gaming director, but he had a family thing come up. Got a couple of things on the docket for tomorrow, hopefully not including contaminating some of my friends.

So, as planned, I hosted Christmas dinner today. Right now, holy cow, the leftovers.

The Niece got two phones. A TracFone from her mom and stepdad, and a LG Xenon from Matt. Combine those with the netbook Mom&Dad and I got her (and the upcoming accessories for it), and she was a very happy and technologically-connected kid.

Dinner itself was a good thing. Short on crazy and stupid for the first time in a long while.

The Niece's netbook is pretty nifty. We were able to get one in purple (her favorite color), and it's a Win7 machine. I'm going to get her an external DVD-RW drive for it soon and get the necessary OS upgrade. It is a tiny little machine. Keyboard's way too small for me to use (the Macbook has spoiled me, too), but her hands are much smaller than my octave-and-a-half paws, so she should be just fine.

Hoping to get in a late showing of Avatar tonight, and maybe an early one of Sherlock Holmes tomorrow.

And so long, 2008.  For me, at least, you were a pretty good year.  Didn't accomplish everything I wanted, but things are better for me today than a year ago.

Got a few parties to go to (or not) tonight; staying in with some movies sounds pretty good, too. Had planned to go to the grocery after work (out a couple hours early, hooray!), but the traffic backup leading in dissuaded me from that idea.  I'll go tomorrow, I think.

Happy New Year, everyone!

The Twilight: 2013 game wrapped up early.  Not sure what's coming next, who the GM's going to be, anything.  I'd be happy enough not picking up the Viking hat right away, since I'm already running Spycraft for the UKMSU.  Have to see how discussions and recruitment go in the coming weeks, I guess.  I'm of a mind to try a World of Darkness game of some stripe, if it falls to me.

Thing is, I also want something huge.  I blame JSA and what bits of Final Crisis I've been following.  I want to just take out the brakes and let things go like mad.  Let it be a spectacular success or an equally huge trainwreck, just let it be something epic.

Nasty stomach troubles last night.  Subsided after some medicine.  No recurrence today.

We're getting a nice snowstorm here tonight.  Some accumulation on everything but paved surfaces, which I'm quite thankful for.  It's really quite lovely out there.

Things at work took an unexpected turn this week.  Supervisor B stepped down, and my current team became reintegrated with my old team, under the supervision of Supervisor L.  The micromanagement is gone, and there is a clearer division of daily duties.  I'm feeling good about this, and ex-Supervisor B seems to be in much, much better spirits.

Thanksgiving's a week from today.  Christmas shopping to begin soon.

Civilization: Revolution (DS) is rather a lot of fun.  Kushiel's Justice was a good read.  And The Lies of Locke Lamora is off to a good start.