tracker7 | Entries tagged with gaming

It's the Winter Solstice, the first day of winter, Longest Night, what-have-you. I've been very lazy, just reading and doing laundry after driving home from Lexington. It's been nice.

Last night was the annual LeNoue extended-family Christmas party. I wasn't sure if I was going until Thursday afternoon, glad I went, though. Most times, I drive back to Louisville after things wrap up; this time I decided to get a hotel room for the night and that was a good choice. It actually led me to leave the party earlier than I had planned because the thought of that quiet room and big comfortable bed kept running through my head and I surrendered to it. Felt great, a worthwhile little treat to myself.

I'm probably going to pass on the Fallout game. The setting is interesting enough, but I'm at least a generation older than the other players and a couple of them are just a little too twee for my tastes. The Numenera game looks better, and it's a Discord/Roll20 game which has the huge selling point of, when the game is over I just put the iMac to sleep and walk three feet to my bed.

I'm about halfway through The Game Must Go On: Hank Greenberg, Pete Gray, and the Great Days of Baseball on the Home Front in WWII. That is a title-and-a-half, dear reader, and it's a heck of a book. Deep dives into individual players' stories, the value of pro baseball as a morale booster for servicemen and civilians alike, FDR's love of the sport, and all of the politicking involved in keeping the game going. Good stuff.

Also reading the second marvel G.I. Joe compendium. This one includes a dozen or so Special Missions issues and I'm very much looking forward to revisiting those.

My lengthy regular-gaming drought may be coming to an end. Found a local Fallout game looking for a couple of new players and an online Numenera game starting up. I'm spending the afternoon reading the relevant core books and thinking about characters.

Louisville got a decent bowl bid, playing Toledo in Boca Raton on the 23rd. I'm planning to knock off work early and find somewhere to watch the game and finish up my notes for the day before we close up for Christmas.

We got our second snowstorm of the season Thursday night. About four inches here, and I was even happier to have scheduled a personal day for the 12th. The 12th was also our holiday party for clients and it was no coincidence that I lobbied hard for it to be on that day instead of the 19th. Anyway, it was a good dry easy-to-clean-off snow. Another snowfall last night, about an inch, but it's much much colder with this one. It's currently 13F, up from single-digits when I woke up around sunrise this morning.

Finished Gail Simone's Red Sonja Consumed a few nights ago. Satisfying sword-and-sorcery adventure. Finally saw Sinners, and it's one of the best movies I've seen in a long time.

I decided around GameConjunction that I was going to skip GMing at the January and spend the time playing games instead. That plan isn't doing so well. It's seven weeks until that one, and there's not nearly enough on the roster to get me to spend my money on a badge. Same locals running the same stuff, and there are some good GMs there, but it's more of the same and more practice runs for whatever Lurking Fears is doing at whatever other cons later in the year.

Thanksgiving was just a delight. Spent the day with Dad and Kaiser, grazing on snacks and pizza, reading and watching football. Late lunch on Friday with my brother and sister-in-law, more reading after that. Saturday was the Governor's Cup, and I was fully expecting UK to beat an injury-depleted demoralized UofL team. Yeah, that didn't happen. The Cards ran away with the game, winning 41-0. It was a good end to the season, breaking a three-game losing streak and hopefully making a good enough showing for a respectable postseason game. Felt pretty good after the game and decided to head back home that evening so I could have all of Sunday to do whatever, and "whatever" turned out to be more reading and NFL games and it was good.

Haven't done much this weekend. Some household chores. Picked up my new contacts. Napped. No regrets on that front - it's good to just rest sometimes.

The Dodgers have gone 10-1 so far in the postseason. Swept the Reds in the Wild Card, went 3-1 against the Phillies in the NLDS, and swept the Brewers in the NLCS. The team has been playing terrific baseball following the September slump. Shohei Ohtani in particular has been just incredible. Beyond incredible. He's damned near redefining the game.

Ran a DCC game for a buddy from the Outer Rim Heroes days and some of his friends last night. It was a good time, lots of cat-herding and chainsaw-juggling. Got paid for it, to my surprise.

I have a mighty need to get back to GMing regularly. It's been my chief creative outlet for years and not doing it has beat on my mental health.

The MLB regular season is over. LA took the NL West for the 12th time in 14 seasons, but finished with the worst record of the division champs, so they're hosting the NL Wild Card series against Cincinnati. Of course, I want the Dodgers to win another World Series, especially with this being Clayton Kershaw's final season. The postseason field looks good, overall. Let's see how the next week goes at the parks.

Helped out with a DCC Day bonus round at a new store in Versailles yesterday. Good turnout, some folks new to DCC. Ben P came in and it's always good to see him. Had a good post-game chat with the owner and the other Judge and we're going to coordinate some monthly-or-so game days there. I'm taking my NFL season break from SYR, and if we can set things up for Saturdays, that'll work out nicely.

Been a while.

Charcon was a heck of a lot of fun. Saw the people I wanted to, ran three DCC sessions, played some stuff. Similarly, yesterday's DCC Day went darn well. Ran two short sessions, the other judge ran a full-length module. Lots of giveaways and exclusives, as usual. And we were one of three DCC Day events in the metro. Pretty cool.

Ten days until GenCon. Looking forward to that one. Got some people I can't wait to see.

It is fucking hot and I hate it. I at least got the Impala's AC recharged, but the actuators are still fucked and it intermittently blows warm air on the driver's side. Frustration, coming and going.

It was good to be away from work and clients for a couple of extra days. I didn't do much, and much of what I did do was unsatisfying. I did get plenty of rest, and that's not nothing.

Saturday was Free RPG Day. Went over to Golden Keep and picked up a few things, bought the BattleTech Alpha Strike box. The store has been scheduling demo nights for an array of games - playing Alpha Strike there a week or so ago was a good time, and it's hard to beat getting in a lance-on-lance fight in about an hour. The box is a heck of a deal, two IS lances and a Clan Star for $80, plus all of the maps and terrain and stuff. They're hosting a Mothership demo night on the 26th, and I'm hoping to make it out for that.

Slur Your Role didn't go well tonight. I was the only board member there following a last-minute cancellation; two players had tried to get into my game but the ticketing system wouldn't let them; one person who had bought a ticket for my game didn't ion show; no one showed for another GM's game and I invited him to join mine and boy did he live up to the "mostly a D&D5 and MMO player" in his bio. It's Star Wars, dude, do more than endlessly ask for "who looks disgruntled in this bar" and ah fuck it.

Finally got around to seeing John Wick: Chapter Four. Liked it more than the third one, felt it was a return to the feel of the first two.

It's been a decent long weekend. Saturday and today were spectacularly lazy - didn't get out of the apartment or my pajamas, even. Ran a decent CP Red game Friday night and a banger of a D6 Star Wars game last night at SYR.

I made myself sleep in, or at least lie in, this morning. Kept playing a new podcast episode every time I woke up and went back under the covers, and it felt fantastic. Finally got up and made breakfast and had some brief thoughts about finding something to do. Decided, nah, let's do some more reading, and that was a good course of action for the day.

April's been a rough month, and I stopped fighting it for a while and took a sick day on Friday. It helped a lot - I've slept so well the last three nights and managed to do some other things for self-care. My shoulders are relaxed, I haven't had anxiety skirmishes, I've painted minis and written little things, and I feel good.

Finally bought a table for the Bambu printer. Setting it up and calibrating and testing and everything else is the order of the afternoon. I'm hopeful that I can get enough of a handle on it to print something useful for May's first CP Red game session.

I feel like I've headed off some burnout by just putting in work instead of reading about someone else's work or endlessly diving into Wikipedia or whatever else caught my attention for the immediate sixteen seconds. I outlined the Star Wars games for May-July, sketched out a few more session ideas for CP Red, and just about settled on Symbaroum for my Charcon games.

Valentine's Day ate the CP Red game, and that was okay. Saturday saw heavy rain and thunderstorms and that was good for lying in bed and reading. Sunday's board meeting was blessedly moved online, and weather in Florida did a number on the Daytona 500, so, hey, more reading!

Packed my duffel and took off Monday morning. Drove down to the Corvette Museum, a long-overdue visit. The very fast machines are the focus of the museum, of course, and there is plenty of space given over to the people who designed and engineered and promoted them. I found myself taken with the story of Zora and Elfi Arkus-Duntov - they were a heck of a couple, Elfi was the first Corvette Girl, and she would spell out Zora's name on her body with adhesive medical tape and go sunbathing so his name would be on her. It was a good visit.

Drove to Dad's after the museum. Spent the night with him, then lit out for Dayton early Tuesday morning. I hadn't been to the Air Force museum in several years, and while it was nice to see some of the new exhibits (a Titan 4 stack and a Su-27), I found myself kinda bored. Beautiful machines and stories, but I've seen most of them, you know? And the Presidential aircraft gallery just kept reminding me of that orange bastard, and ... ugh. Hotel was nice.

Wednesday morning, up and off to Point Pleasant for the Mothman Museum. US35 is a heck of a fast road, and would have been even faster without the winter storm I drove through. Fun visit to Point Pleasant, then headed back to Louisville. WV2 was an easy drive down to Huntington, and I-64 brought me home one more time.

Ran an errand with a friend this morning. Going to take care of some business this afternoon - taxes and car licenses and REAL ID documents. No plans for tomorrow, maybe back to BG for a train show on Saturday, then the first ALIEN session at Slur on Sunday evening. Back to work on Monday. Can't wait to see what nonsense went down while I've been gone.

That's a lie. I just don't care all that much.

Still dealing with this latest sickness. Congested, repeating headache, coughing and sneezing. DayQuil is helping, and having nothing requiring me to leave the apartment this weekend has been nice. Resting, reading, just trying to heal up.

Started last night's CP Red session by asking the players what they wanted to do. I hadn't been able to come up with anything on my own, and the scenario I was going to default to needed a lot of rewriting to bring it up to snuff, so I had the players do some of the lifting. And they went for a fetch quest, and this was a pleasant surprise. It was a short, fun session, doing some favors for contacts. To my surprise, they all said that they were fine with quests like this, and I'm okay with it. There are two fetch quest scenarios in TotR: Street Stories, and they're well written - and I'd written them off because I didn't think the players would go for them. Joke's on me, I guess! The book gets more value late in the game.

I can't seem to get over being tired most of the time. I'm not sleeping as well as I'd like. I feel like I'm just staggering forward at work, succeeding in spite of myself. Last week was bad. I think part of it was the first five-day week in a while, what with holidays and weather. By Friday afternoon, I was moving mostly by the power of spite. I just wanted to have enough energy to get home.

An early bedtime helped. I went to Dad's to pick up a pressure cooker that I'd had shipped there. We had a good low-key afternoon together, a late lunch and some football. Got back to Louisville around midnight, stayed up for an hour or so, went to bed.

Sunday. The Ravens lost a heartbreaker to the Bills, who will play the Chiefs - again - for the AFC championship. I put my trusty printer to work on material for this weekend's convention during commercial breaks, tearing through a couple of ink cartridges and lots of paper - 4th- and 5th-level DCC spellcasters can easily have 15-page grimoires!

MLK Day was a holiday for us. It's still nice and a little bit novel having holidays off like civilized people. I took it as easy as I could, doing more convention prep. I had some vague plans of finding some volunteering to do, but the cold and my own weakness wiped those plans out. And I sure as hell wasn't going to watch that orange bastard's inauguration.

I'm looking forward to the con - seeing friends and playing some games and all that. Unfortunately, I'm expecting some drama with a bad actor. I tag my games as ages 13+, and this dude signs up himself and his kid. A couple of years ago, I let this slide in a Blade Runner game, and it was a mistake - the kid was disruptive and took away from the experience of other players, and I'm not going to let it happen again. I've already talked with the con organizers, and they told me I have final say on who gets seated at my table. So, in the parlance of our times, fuck dem kids.

The storm hit just about as forecast. Snow started around 8 yesterday morning and switched over to freezing rain in the late afternoon. Our clinics and offices were closed, and I opted to work from home - knocked out a handful of training modules. Another three inches or so of snow today, with some very cold weather coming in the next few days, and maybe more snow on Friday.

No Dragonbane tomorrow night. I'm a bit relieved, to tell the truth. The game's fun, but this final act has gone on for far too long, and the host has invited more players than the game or venue can comfortably handle - last session, there were eight players plus the GM, and while Dragonbane's pretty light and fast-moving, that many players bog things down.

Friday night's CP Red session went pretty well, and the after-action chat was great. Polled some of the players as to future plotlines, and they delivered. The Netrunner gave me the sort of thing that I can spin into a proper '70s-style political thriller, and the competent Solo told me that the person responsible for the bad reputation is her twin. The Nomad sketched out some more details on her interest in street racing stories, too. This gives me tons of material for future sessions.

Busy week. In addition to the normal client visits and office work, our holiday party for the clients was on Thursday and that meant lots of extra work. I'm dangerously close to getting one of my folks intro transitional housing and if I can manage that I'll call the first half of the month a win.

Friday was good. Took a half-day as Clayton was in town and sat in on the evening's CP Red game. John C was unable to play, so that saved me from running out to Crescent Hill before and after the game.

Went to Liberty for a presentation at the library and to see Dad for a bit. My iPad suicided during some app updates and it couldn't be fixed, so I bought a new one this morning. Not cheap, but it's a hell of a good tool and I'm very accustomed to having one.

UofL football is going to the Sun Bowl, a New Year's Eve game. Win or lose, it'll be a good end to the season. Since it's on CBS instead of whatever cable network threw money at the NCAA, I'm going to take a half-day and watch the game from my couch before ...

Holy cow, I have plans for NYE! Almost a date, really. I don't quite know what to do with this. Casual plans, just hanging out and watching movies and quite possibly nodding off before midnight.

Turnout for early voting was fairly high over the weekend, for whatever that's worth. The Tuesday night group decided to play on Election Night and leave our phones in our cars. I'm not hopeful.

Got on the road Friday morning. Weather was good until I got south of Charleston, and that convinced me to head to Christiansburg instead of diverting to the New River Gorge. Checked in, went to C&C's new home, went to dinner, caught up. A good day on the road and a very good evening with friends.

Went to Roanoke Saturday morning. Lots of good stuff to see - the J looks like it's doing 70MPH just sitting there, the big A-class is almost as impressive as a C&O Allegheny, and I think I want to add an E-unit of some stripe to my collection. Checked out a couple of other places - Center on the Square had great aquariums and Mishap Gaming impressed with the amount of not-D&D5 on their shelves.

Today's weather was much better, and the drive to the Gorge was quite nice. The bridge is a damned impressive structure, and the Gorge is just beautiful. The sense of the age of the place is daunting - the Appalachians are incredibly old, and the New River predates the rise of that ancient mountain range.

Stopped off in Charleston to have lunch with Gena. Great pizza at Pies & Pints - Gena's vegetarian, and their white pizza was a good fit for both of us. Got home ... around 7, I think. Gonna watch part of the Sunday night NFL game, then take some sleep medicine and call it a night.

Back to the literal madness tomorrow.

The Dodgers are the 2024 World Series champs! They won Game 5 last night, a banger of a come-from-behind win, final score of 7-6 after spending four innings down 0-5. I would have liked to have seen the win at Dodgers Stadium, but winning at the opponent's park is just fine.

The Trail game was not good. Had two players more interested in their Noo Yawk accents than pursuing the investigation that others were there for. It happens, I guess. Sometimes even Han Solo got boarded, sometimes even I run a bad game. On to Eclipse Phase in a couple of weeks.

Tried to vote around 9:30 this morning. Traffic around my first choice of sites was quite heavy, backed up a quarter-mile. I opted to run a couple of errands and try again elsewhere and had better luck. In and out in about 15 minutes. Poll workers said the site had been busy all day.

The site was the hotel convention space that used to host Conglomeration. I hadn't been in there since the last Conglom in '19. The mind's eye saw the registration table in the main hallway and the vendors' tables in the room where I cast my ballot. Sic transit.

Got the books. The Buick started acting up around Bardstown - lost power, as the dashboard helpfully let me know. Towed it back to Liberty and drove the Frontier back to Louisville early Tuesday. Swapped it out for the backup Impala Wednesday after work. Impala is behaving and will hopefully continue to do so.

The Dodgers are up two games to zero in the World Series. Freddy Freeman hit a walk-off grand slam in the tenth to win the first game. Game Two wasn't as dramatic, but Shohei Ohtani injured his shoulder trying to steal second and that's concerning. Ice Cube performed a version of "Today was a Good Day" to open the game, paying respect to Fernando Valenzeula at the mound.

Running a Trail of Cthulhu game at Slur tonight. Got three players so far, and that's enough to make things work. If people bail, no worries, I'll just go home and watch the evening NFL game.

Taking Halloween and November 1 off. Voting on Halloween, hopefully not for the last time. Going to Virginia on Friday to see folks and a museum and other stuff. I think this is the first vacation trip I've taken since late 2020 - conventions are working vacations, so I'm not counting them. I'm looking forward to the trip, and very much looking forward to not seeing clients and not being at work for those two days.

Sent out a couple of resumes last night. I've given the job the best shot I can, and it's just not working out for me. Time to move on. Again.

Friday night's game only ran for a couple of hours, and I wound up leaving a couple bottles of soda and water at the shop. Not my best night.

Did a lot of nothing yesterday. Laid in without sleeping very much. Miami beat Louisville.

Read a good chunk of When Gravity Fails this morning. Worked on more material for Cyberpunk.

Back to work tomorrow, and I'm making a fast trip to Liberty and back to pick up a couple of books from Noble Knight and some documents from Dad. Thought about spending the night and coming back up here early Tuesday morning, but I don't think I will. I'll sleep a little late and attend the morning meeting's via Zoom.

Short workweeks are always appreciated. I like them better when the day off is a Friday - when the week ends sooner rather than starting later - but I'm not going to complain. This one was busy, with the normal 150-mile drive on Thursday, so at least it didn't seem to drag on. So, here I am on a Sunday afternoon, watching the Colts-Texans game and doing laundry. Getting in some reading, too.

Today is the third anniversary of Mom's death. The pain is gone, and has been for a while, if I'm being honest. It's an emptiness now. An empty space. I miss her.

Friday was Dad's birthday, and I took him to lunch yesterday to celebrate. Heck of a good meal and Copper & Oak in Danville. We had a little other business to take care of, and that was handled easily enough. He's singing with his gospel group this afternoon, and that will hopefully keep him from dwelling on the date too much. They're singing about thirty miles south of Indy next weekend, and I may go up there and see about going early enough to go up to Patachou for one of their fantastic omelets.

I'm diving back into Eclipse Phase, prepping for a SYR game in a couple of weeks. I remember the broad strokes of the game, but so many details are coming back to me on the reread.

Some real glamour shots of Lucas Oil Stadium and Indianapolis in general during the game. I was just there five weeks ago, and I find myself missing it already. My GenCon family isn't what it used to be, but they do still mean something to me.

Some jerk decided to shoot up I-75 yesterday afternoon. Dude bought an AR of some stripe and 2000 rounds for it yesterday morning, then found a spot on an overpass and ... just started shooting. Still at large as of this afternoon.

Work wasn't great last week, and my normal sources of recharging didn't happen, so I was very glad when Friday afternoon rolled around and I rolled into a three-day weekend. Got home, turned off the work phone, and decided that the most important thing I could do this weekend was to take care of me.

I did a lot of reading this weekend. Not a lot relative to me in my 30s, but quite a bit relative to me in the past couple of years. A middling sci-fantasy novel from my GoodReads list. Some of the RPG titles I picked up before and at GenCon. Some articles and blogs on video games.

Got in my daily GT7 workouts and completed the weekly challenges. The Aston Martin Group 4 was a nice reward for the latter. Played OSE yesterday - low on action, high on roleplay and building up our little settlement, and logorrhea player was absent. Good times. UofL football started the season with a big win - the opponent wasn't great, but a 62-point win is a statement, no matter what.

So, this evening, I'm feeling good. I'm updating my resume later tonight, with the intent of applying for another position, one more suited to my skills and interests. Dinner turned out well, and I'm enjoying Netflix's Terminator anime. I needed this weekend, and I have very much enjoyed it.

Roadside Picnic

Bright Ideas, Dark Futures

Go Go Gadget ClanTech

No One's Gonna Love You

Lost Weekend

East City Blues

I'll Need Someone to Hold Me

My Time Ain't Long

The Steps

Picture Window

Good Vibrations

Mood Ring

If Trouble was Money

Addictive

Philodendron

Mountain Fever

How Could I Love Her so Much

Ghost of a Texas Ladies Man

Get Back

Little Prince

Violet

And the Bottom Drops Out

Profile

December 2025

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags