Whispers in the Windstorm

I did three laps around the therapy table (think of a square with the length of a pool table) with two canes! And one of those laps was with single-point canes! (Rather than ones with four toes on the foot.)

Wheeeeee! :D

And the therapist didn't even suspect that I'm on three hours of sleep. :D

But before I continue, the sleep report:

11/19 -*- 02:00 - 07:00
11/20 -*- 00:00 - 01:00
11/20 -*- 02:00 - 05:00
11/21 -*- 02:00 - 09:00
11/22 -*- 05:00 - 07:45

I think that's it. But I really haven't been tired. I think my body's starting to agree with my head - sleep's just time you could have been doing other things. :)

Sunday I woke up at 10. Nobody else was up, and I really had no idea what to do. So I just laid there, closing my eyes when a lone red-robed figure (whom I only later learned was Lori) ambled through the distant kitchen, and otherwise tried to read the spines of a bookcase across the room. After around fifty minutes, Kathy and Joe finally roused themselves to consciousness. I didn't know if they'd stay up, and I didn't know if Lori was up yet, so I kept schtum - but opened my eyes. I could swear Joe made eye contact with me twice during this time, but apparently not. Chris finally awoke, said hi, and walked into the kitchen.

(mumble)
(mumble)
(mumble) - "Jeff's still asleep."
"Jeff's up."
(Me, from other room) "Yeah, I've been awake for over an hour, now. You guys gonna come say hello?"
(step-step-step-step-step)
(FWUMP>
"Hey, why'd you throw a pillow at me?"

The nerve!

Anyway, we went to Bob Evans' for breakfast. I still can't believe the server asked how to spell Lori's last name. What - are they tracking customer frequency per person or something? I can just imagine:

"Party of 4."
"Name?"
"Johanson."
"Could you please spell that?"
"S-M-I-T-H."
"I beg your pardon?"
"It's Venezuelan."

Are they gonna call Johanson or Smith? Or Gomez, for that matter? Just being nosy is what it is - or lazy. (Then again, a linguistic vampire was only a yard away. Slurp.)

Breakfast was nice, albeit slow. My companions seemed to have a few complaints about the food and such - but being a veteran of the Chicago suburban dining scene, somewhat littered with substandard help, it seems - I was quite impressed with the speed, the memory, and the attentiveness of the waitress. Quite professional, I thought. I had blueberry pancakes, ham, and six cups of coffee. Everyone else had eggs and some form of fat. (Yes, Kathy - bacon has fat. Bacon largely IS fat. I don't care how much you burn it. You just get high-fat charcoal.)

We returned to Lori's place, and after Joe went to his family's house for a moment, I introduced the group to Puerto Rico. I gotta say that was the single best first-time game of Puerto Rico I've ever been involved in, and just a damn fine game of Puerto Rico all around. The game ended by the victory points running out. DO YOU HEAR THAT?!? THAT NEVER HAPPENS!! People started getting the gist of it right away - I went over goals, game-end, components and basic turn order and we dove right in. I think this group will enjoy a lot of German games - they seem to have a good talent for them, and we even stayed late to finish it. The result? A tie! Chris and I finish with 51 points and no money! Well done, sir! I look forward to a rematch against you all.

We left around 6PM (with Lori too depleted from her exertions to see us to the door - hmph), and Joe, Kathy and I talked in the car the whole time back. We talked Amber, D&D, history, and just how much fun we'd had the whole weekend. We talked about a possible participation in their New Year's Eve party (doubtful but not yet out of the question), perhaps joining them for another trip to Bay City for a cluster of birthdays in their group (not likely at all, since I now have THREE important birthdays to celebrate between 1/17 and 1/21), and I floated the idea of asking them to visit near the end of January (which was approved by the parental unit, as long as I clean). Rich, Noel - you might get to meet more of my players! I think you'll get along rather splendidly in some regards - both pairs of you can cite 3.5 stats until my brain goes all mushy have my utmost respect as experts in the mechanics of the d20 system.

Kathy's brain seemed to fail as a driver after she kept seeing the number 69 over and over again. Can't imagine why. Anyway, she asked me to switch places with her - apparently a random thought and certainly not an attempt to suppress and displace anything she might have been thinking about - and I drove the rest of the way to my brother's house. We said our goodbyes and they drove away.

I went inside and Mom was pretty much ready to go. We gathered her stuff up, Chris told me he's coming in Wednesday night, and he also mentioned that he has not fully completed FFX, despite my failing memory's attempt to credit him as Lightning Dodger and Butterfly Catcher. Sorry, folks - he's only human. The drive home was as swift as any midnight drive through Illinois has ever been. Talked with Myra near the Illinois border - she was tired, even with a four-hour nap. And she had this insane, irrational idea that I might be tired after 16 hours of sleep in four days. Some people just don't have an eye for detail, you know. But she's doing well, thank you.

Home and the computer beckon. I cleared my spam, said another good-bye to Lori as she appeared online, chatted with Matt (who is in town starting tomorrow), and finally caved and played like three hours of Half-Life 2. Totally awesome. But I now definitely want to finish HL1 before I play it again. So many Demons, so little time.

Lori, Kathy, Joe, Chris - I wish to thank you sincerely and completely for a wonderful weekend. I had an excellent time, many memories slotted away for storage ("Look, Lori, there's a rest area. Want me to pull over and whip it out?"), and I look forward to seeing again the only sight I've seen worth seeing in Bay City sometime soon. (Other friends of Lori and Kathy - well, you apparently didn't have the inclination to come see me. Sniff.) I only wish I could reward you folks a little with some competent discussion of 3.5 statistics - sadly, it has not been for me to devote myself to it as you have. I thank you for suffering this fool's silence as he attends the conversation of the learned.

Eat Snacky Smores - now with cinnamon, cinnamon, cinnamon and then some cinnamon.

Ah, sweet all-nighters. Twice in the past three months, I have made the enormously wise choice not to go to sleep. I'm just too busy - or too lazy - sometimes to turn everything off and go to bed. But let us review Wednesday night, Thursday and Friday morning.

And by the way, I want to clarify that I am not getting tired of my journal or anything, just because I've only made serious entries on Monday, Wednesday and Friday for this week. I just got busy at work and Tuesday and Thursday evenings aren't terribly accessible to me. So I was forced to save 'em up for when I had time.

After work (which I stayed at until 6:30), I went home and talked with Myra, playing two games of Scrabble (1-1, with an awfully close second game). We watched the Red Sox beat the Yankees (Whooo-hooo!) and we talked for a while, then she went to bed. I'm not sure I remember when </a></b></a>lori came online, but we had QUITE the interesting and varied conversation, as she herself will tell you. I think I'm just rather good at offering a somewhat non-judgmental point of view sometimes, which is one of the best ways to elicit openness and communication. I think that, if I were any less opposed to alcohol, I'd be a pretty darn good bartender. Heck, maybe I actually would be - it's not like I would swipe any product or anything. :) But we traded a few good songs, a few good stories, and I concluded the conversation by cowing her into meek acceptance. ;P (Oh, and I wish to issue an official correction on behalf of my brother - his Doctor Who collection is flawlessly organized and stored. Pity I can't find what I need anyway - must be my ever-errant vision or something. Key to something, something Key... what was that again? Hmmm.)

Anyway, that particular conversation concluded around 3:30AM. After that, I played some MTGO, installed Lord of the Rings Online and looked at the spoilers for Shadows, and cleaned up my room a bit. But I checked the board at 4:30, literally just as I was considering taking a slight nap - and I see Garvey online! I soon am chatting away with him as well, providing welcome relief to his busy evening/morning working on school projects. His wife had sensibly gone to bed several hours ago, and while I'm not surprised she allowed him to remain awake to finish his work, I am surprised that she would permit such fancies as AIM to be left on during this vital crunch time. Go Gaja! (Even though your web page still refers to Matt as your fiance.) I'm still looking forward to the first pictures from your photography class. But Matt welcomed the relief I provided, and we spoke briefly. After that, I watched Galaxy Quest and began harvesting cards from my VTES collection for a deck design I wanted to put together for that evening's festivities. It's a nice anti-Toreador affair, but I'm missing a vampire for it. Rats. But I got out of the door reasonably on time. The drive to work and Thursday morning were a bit nerve-wracking, as I was actually suddenly quite tired. But as I got closer to lunch (which I had originally intended to nap through), I found myself gaining energy. And so when lunch got around, it felt natural to just go out and have Baja Fresh and read from Fanfare for the Area Man. (I'd get Democracy Inaction, but it's kind of pricey. Dunno.) After I came back - sigh - I got tired again for a while, but nothing too bad. Then, work is done! Yayyy! I drive down to Games Plus, saying hi along the way. Brian and Ernie are there, and </a></b></a>rich and </a></b></a>noel show up soon afterwards. The breakdown of the game:

A) Brian, playing Tremere. Go figure. This one is a standard Talaq-plays-Burst-of-Sunlight thing.
B) Rich, playing Brujah/Anti-Brujah extra strikes stuff. At least it's not extra strikes/AGG.
C) Noel, playing a vote deck. Yayyyyy. (Sigh.)
D) Ernie, playing Tzimisce. Not sure what he was doing - Noel is funny about not letting her prey do anything like what they were intending to do. They tend not to sit down to a game as to a short yet painful death.
E) Myself, playing anti-Ventrue and Salubri. I saw a Salubri hit the table, and it was cool doing stuff like Anesthetic Touch and Sight Beyond Sight and Repulsion. But it didn't go far enough. I think the next one I'll try for the scarce clans is True Brujah.

Only casualty was Ernie - between votes and bleeds, he didn't stand much of a chance. But after that, most of us had our stuff together enough to prevent more lawnmowing. I'm still somewhat surprised every time Noel thinks she's got the ENTIRE TABLE - three players' layouts, deck types, and hands - in her head, makes a big move, and gets surprised by ONE detail which screws it all up. I really don't think, when a game turns into a 3-on-1 situation (as a vote deck running the table is wont to do), that one person can really hope to take on three players and be successful. Perhaps as a straight bleed deck (though don't get me started on stealth/bleed) might be able to - but if you throw politics in the mix as well, not sure what can be done. And she gets SOOOOO mad about it, too. It really puts a damper on in-game chatter, which is quite a pity.

Anyway, afterwards, we went outside and watched Jon Stewart beat up the Crossfire hosts on Brian's laptop. (No, I'm not linking it. Just go Google "Jon Stewart Crossfire" and you'll find it.) Kind of funny - but then again, it was just more of the same. People have this weird feeling that the august Mr. Stewart 'destroyed' the hosts. But what kind of TV is Crossfire, anyway? All they want is argumentation and controversy. All they did in having Mr. Stewart there is temporarily appeal to a larger audience. They didn't learn anything from that - except maybe that getting themselves hit attracts ratings as much as having the guests get hit. Me, I just ignore the whole 'news' thing for the most part. NPR and the front pages of the Chicago papers is about it. And even NPR ain't perfect.

Drove home, chatted with Selyna again, though not nearly so long and wonderfully - as I was getting tired at long last. I cleaned off the bed (or at least the right side) and went to sleep. Luxuriant that it was, but brief.

Today's been pretty reasonable. Filled up two trash cans with page counting stuff, and I've got an hour to write material for Blood Loyalties and post to the Private Threads. I've been a little focused on ACD at the expense of my own game. Sorry, folks. Riding/driving with Dad tonight to Chris' place. Yayyy, Chris! (Even if you are an old fogy.)

Oh, and A) I caught up with page counting today, and B) I found the receipt for the book-on-tape I've been listening to! Woohoooo! I'm stopping at Barnes & Noble tonight to get a new one.

Eat Snacky Smores.