Roadside Picnic

Strong Enough

2023-12-13T02:09:08Z

Saturday night was the annual big-ass LeNoue holiday party. I went up to Lexington a couple of hours early to see Ben Parks for the first time since Lexicon. A good hour and change catching up and just hanging out with one of my brothers-by-choice.

He's living in the same apartment complex I lived in before moving to Louisville, and the place has since seen a big remodel. It's gated now - just theater, since the exit gate is always open - and the units are dolled up a little. Being there spun up some memories - I was pretty happy in the place, really. It ... goddamn it, it felt like home.

The time to head down to Southpoint came soon enough. The LeNoues are lovely people, and always welcoming to someone who is just a friend of their son-in-law. Lots of food, the friends from Transy and that circle.

It was an exciting night, weatherwise. Powerful storms down in Tennessee and western Kentucky. A couple of F2 tornadoes hit around Clarksville. The parents of a friend from UK saw some damage in their neighborhood, but nothing worse than power loss at their home. We got a lot of heavy rain, started hitting on my drive home. The neighborhood is about a mile south of Man-O-War, and at that time of night, getting from there to Danville is about half-an-hour. In the rain that night, it took me a little over 45 minutes. Never quite got to the point where I felt the need to get off the road, and I was glad to see things calm down about the time I got to Danville.

Sunday was nice. Slept late, got up later. NFL games, napping, reading. It was a quiet afternoon and evening, and I sure appreciated it after the socializing and heavy weather on Saturday. Got a call from SCC this afternoon to schedule a second interview - there's tomorrow afternoon locked down. Let's see what happens.

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Sentimental Heart

2023-08-17T01:19:24Z

Took a day for myself Friday. Drove to Lexington to see Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1, which was unsurprisingly spectacular. I don't know how they do it, but every movie in this franchise continues to improve on its predecessor. DR1 brings Hayley Atwell into the cast, and she's just wonderful, of course, and Kittridge's return was a real surprise, and there's Esai Morales, who should always get more work, and Pom Klementieff was pretty terrific in her barely-speaking-but-much-fighting role. A fast 163 minutes.

Had some time to kill, so I stopped by the new-to-me game store in (ugh) Fayette Mall and found some suitable minis. Went over to Southland Drive and another shop ... and found another two-pack of minis. And then things got weird for me. I went to Joseph-Beth, and felt out-of-place. No titles jumped out at me. I got bored browsing. So damned strange.

Having been reminded of how much I dislike driving in Lexington, I headed south on US27 as the afternoon commuter crawl was starting. Stopped in Nicholasville for a tasty brisket sandwich, then headed to Somerset for the Delta Green game.

Refueled the Escape, bought drinks, went to the store. Good session, good talk after, and headed home. Really not in love with driving KY910 late at night anymore. And the past couple of times I've driven home from Somerset, I've caught myself thinking about the beautiful crazy girl from Indy.

Saturday was downtime, Sunday was a lunch meeting in Louisville. Bought another set of paints at Miso's, and got home in time for most of the NASCAR race at IMS - a road course race! Good watch, lots of shots of downtown Indy for that hey-I-was-just-there vibe. Downloaded a book, read the first chapter, called it a weekend.

Really rough mental health day Monday, much improved yesterday and today. Dad and Kaiser went on the road yesterday afternoon, heading to Florida. We joked about being extra careful going through Fulton County, Georgia, but it was that Southern gallows humor, and with a grand jury getting death threats from that orange bastard's cultists, well, I'm glad Dad knows plenty of alternate routes home.

Here it is, 9:15PM and I should start winding down for the night. But there's this little plastic figure glued to a base for painting and hey Tubi has served up the last Matrix movie, so I think I'll stay up a little while longer and try to get a little creative energy going.

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Get Him Back

2023-04-26T15:49:31Z

It was a good convention. 90-95% good, anyway. I had full tables of four players for all three of my Blade Runner games, and that was frankly gratifying. Players had good times, and everyone had some kind of emotional reaction to the reveal about implanting Replicants with traumatic memories. I got to play in a Dragonbane game, and that was a good time, too. Great player mix.

Not so great - driving in Lexington remains absurd. And despite the description of my games as being for 13+ only, one dude brought his young kid to the table, and that wasn't great for me or the other players. To make this worse, dude is the organizer of a con I'd thought about trying sometime, but if he can't bother reading - or honoring - the description of someone's game, my interest in supporting his show is limited.

Lexicon's organizers posted attendance numbers and they're good. This was the biggest con to date, with 701 attendees. The game rooms felt full, and I saw decent traffic at the vendor tables. Deiter had a good-sized Goodman table in a very good spot. He sold through the stock of softcover DCC cores and moved a lot of the hardcovers, among other things.

On the Free League side, the huge amount of material in the Blade Runner starter box sold people on that beauty, and some of my players said they wanted their own copy.

I got to hang out with Ben Parks, newly returned to Lexington, and that was worth the price of attendance. Hotel was comfy, but lacking in 'Net connectivity. Got breakfast at Tudor's one morning - I'd forgotten how big their biscuits are, and ordering two was a slight mistake.

It was a good weekend, and if I can, I'll go back next year. Next on the schedule is Charcon, and I think I'm going to swing back to DCC for that one - partially because the following weekend is DCC Day, and that's going to be a good one.

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The Truth About Unicorns

2018-07-22T13:21:24Z

Mom had open-heart surgery Wednesday, the 18th. She was given three units of blood at the start of the procedure due to low hemoglobin, probably because of six days of constant testing. The plan was for a quadruple bypass, but one of the arteries was too small to accept the graft, so no home run. Her surgeon said the three other grafts should be sufficient to take care of the blood flow. She was on a ventilator until late Thursday night, and sedated most of the day. When I left Thursday evening, she was able to communicate by squeezing hands and mouthing words around the ventilation tube.

I came back to Louisville to recharge and, as CERT training instructed, keep myself from becoming a liability. Mom's PT team got her out of the bed and sitting upright on Friday, and walking with a little assistance yesterday. We think she's going to be released the day after tomorrow. Then, about six weeks of recovery at home - new ways of moving to keep the sternum from separating, moving and breathing exercises to prevent pneumonia and blood clotting. If things go normally, I'll have my mom back by Labor Day.

My Lexington family has been a lifeline through this, and it's been good seeing some of the places there that were touchstones for me - even if some of them are radically different. The Niece and I are going back tomorrow afternoon, and maybe Tuesday for her release. Otherwise, and this is up to Mom, I'll probably go to Liberty and start prepping the house.

Yesterday was the local Armada store championship - part of my recharge and return to normalcy. We had ten players, mostly locals, but a couple of dudes came down from Bloomington. Seven Rebels, three Imperials, and I think mine was the only fleet without cruisers. I went 1-2, scoring well enough thanks to points from objectives and a couple of murderous volleys from my glass cannon MC30s to land a sixth-place finish. Good times, good games, and a nice stack of prizes. Next up, I think, is our casual play event at The Louisville Game Shop.

One thing about sitting in a hospital waiting room and not really being interested in conversations about which visitor's relative had what procedure - you can get some reading done. I finished a biography of Ulysses Grant, tore through James Luceno's Tarkin, and dove into Catalyst, by the same.

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