Musings and Ravings

Diabetes Test Results
I got my copy of the blood test results for diabetes that I had done earlier this week.

The test results are...pretty bad.

That's all.

Current Mood: depressed
Current Music: Pat Benatar - "Hell Is For Children"

50 Questions Meme
Haven't done a meme in a while, so I figured it was time to do one. Got this one courtesy of

thebitterguy, but have fleshed it out with three other questions to bring it up to an even fifty.

( 50 Questions and Answers are here )

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Jethro Tull - "Dogs in the Midwinter"

Babylon 5 News, Sort Of
Some Babylon 5 news to share...

Stephen Furst of Babylon 5 (and even earlier, St. Elsewhere) fame turns 53 today. Happy Birthday, Stephen! :)

In other B5 news, TV Guide Online's Michael Ausiello reported that Babylon 5 star Bruce Boxleitner has won a top-secret recurring role in NBC's Heroes, a role that was originally going to be modeled after Senator John McCain.

The character has since been re-conceived, and Boxleitner will reportedly share the screen with a female series regular. Heroes returns in the fall. (NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.) See the link here:

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=0&id=53713&type=0

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: None - spross here! :)

Incomparable II
The day has been a pretty good one so far...other than having blood drawn, of course.

In the meantime, some of you may recall reading my blog entry about the incomparable Dejah Thoris... and so here is a treat from the talented artist Blaine Taggart:

Current Mood: energetic
Current Music: Jeff Wayne - "Thunder Child"

Gave Blood, Now Work
Beautiful, crisp Ottawa morning (about 8⁰C, with lots of sunshine).

Just got into the office after having gone to the DynaCare clinic, where I had my blood tests done. Had one of the veteran technicians there, Marianne, take the samples, and eight vials of blood came out of my arm no problem. She had a good touch, and I didn't even feel the needle go in or come out.

I went to Denny's this morning on my own for breakfast, but decided to eat healthy, so I had some scrambled eggs with veggies, and some whole wheat toast. Washed it all down with their decaf coffee. I took my Lopid (I have to take the pill half an hour before breakfast and supper, so have taken to calling it the "half-hour pill") just as I was about to leave the clinic, so was able to eat when I got to Denny's and that was fine. I'm felt a bit light-headed after the blood tests, which is normal for me after having that amount of blood drawn, but I'm fine now.

Gonna see if I can take a bit of a walk around lunch, since it's such a nice day outside, although it is supposed to rain this afternoon.

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Nanette Workman - "Lady Marmalade"

Long Day
It has been a long day, both at work and here at home at Casa Kahane. Nothing I really want to go into, although I did feel accomplishment at the end of the work day before coming home.

Still have no kettle here at home, so am having to boil water in a saucepan. Must take the time before the week is out to go and get a new kettle.

In the meantime, off to bed. The joy of my three-month diabetes blood tests is upon me, so I will be going to the lab bright and early tomorrow morning. If you prick me, do I not bleed? Damn, I hate these tests! And I don't think these are going to come out all that well. *sigh*

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Sue Foley - "Sugar"

CanGames Update
Downloaded the current game schedule from CanGames, and saw that lo and behold, my Desolation scenario, "A Few Good Men", is finally listed on the schedule.

For those who are interested in what I'm running at CanGames (or for those who want to avoid playing in my games at all cost <g>), here's what I'll be running this year.

A Few Good Men
Game System: Desolation RPG
Players: 6
Time: 7 pm - 11 pm (Friday), 7 pm - 11 pm (Saturday)
Description: When your intrepid band of travellers in a wild, post-apocalyptic fantasy world travel to the town of Ridge River, they find themselves embroiled in a conflict between the villagers and a warband, with the added complication of a strange magician who lives in a tower nearby. Will your player characters be able to avoid bloodshed - notably your own?

The Pyramid of Doom
Game System: Hollow Earth Expedition RPG
Players: 6
Time: 2 pm - 6 pmm (Saturday), 2 pm - 6 pm (Sunday)
Description: Continued from last year's "The Secret of Lake Qechacua". Having escaped the lizard-men on the Isle of Death, your group of intrepid adventurers find themselves in another part of the Hollow Earth where ancient Egypt still holds sway, and where the characters continue their search for the leader of a previous expedition. Having played in last year's game is not necessary.

Should be a good time for all. Hope to see some of the folks from LJ out there for the convention and the games. :)

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: Jethro Tull - "My God"

Sunday Game and April Book Thoughts
Didn't sleep all that well last night, so am feeling slightly groggy and all, even though I've been up for hours. The weather seems all right, and there is sunshine outside, so at least I don't feel tired and depressed. :)

Yesterday afternoon's gaming session saw

spross attempting to playtest his Star Wars (West End d6 system) scenario for CanGames. I say "attempt" here because, as

spross found out yesterday, the amount of work in man-hours that you put into a convention scenario for any rpg system is proportional to how well the scenario will work out. That said, I'm going to let him blog about "things that went wrong" with the scenario and so forth.

After supper, I spent the rest of the evening finishing up re-reading Tanith Lee's The Book of the Mad, the first book in the Secret Books of Paradys series.

On the subject of books and reading, the month of April was a pretty slow month for me this time around. I did manage to get in six (6) re-reads of books last month, including the The Hercules Text and A Talent for War, both by Jack McDevitt, The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, and the Edgar Rice Burroughs classic A Princess of Mars. The only new book that I read this past month, well new for me at any rate) was Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen, which had been sitting in the queue for a while, and demanded reading. Fabulous book and all.

That brings my reading for the year up to 20 books through April, not the pace that I was hoping to set, but part of that was due to all the roleplaying game stuff that I was doing during the month as well. I am seriously hoping to do better reading-wise this month, and have already finished a couple of books.

Current Mood: groggy
Current Music: Martin Barre - "Empty Cafe"

Sunday Morning This and That
The last couple of days have been pretty gloomy weather-wise, both dark and rainy, with temperatures in the 8⁰C range. Today appears to be no different, although the temperature will be a bit warmer today.

Saturday was a pretty quiet, relatively uneventful, gloomy, rain-filled day.

Given the stuff as pertains to the Elfquest roleplaying game and all (see the previous journal entry),

spross returned to me the copy of the Elfquest RPG and its supplements that he's been holding onto for me for several years (no storage space in my cupboards and all!), and we got to talking about the game, and the potential playing of it again.

Did a bit of grocery shopping in the morning, house cleaning and some laundry sporadically through the day, and some stuff on my gaming bits that needed to be done.

Spent part of the evening watching DVDs. I saw that the first movie based on The Chronicles of Narnia was on the tube, but had seen it in the movie theatre, and decided to rewatch The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen on DVD instead. While not a faithful adaptation of the comics, it has some interesting and fun moments in it. Read a couple of dozen pages of the current book I'm reading, The Book of the Mad by Tanith Lee, before bed.

Woke up this morning to find the kettle was fritzed, the power cord short circuiting at the base of the kettle itself when I plugged it in, so had to boil water in a pot to make my decaf coffee. Need to get a new kettle some time this week.

Nice to have today, Sunday, off from running a game.

spross is supposed to run the playtest of his CanGames Star Wars rpg scenario, so hopefully he'll have that material ready when he arrives at my place. Should be an interesting afternoon of gaming.

Anyway, I'm off to clean up from breakfast, and then get ready for the afternoon.

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Music: Jethro Tull - "Heavy Horses"

Friday Night Games
Friday night's gaming was actually pretty good.

As mentioned, I am being given three weeks off from running stuff on Friday nights, although my goddaughter, Ellie, tried to convince me to run a couple of sessions of either Faery's Tale ,or the Elfquest roleplaying game (bet that's a game name you haven't heard of in some years, huh? :)), since she remembered me reading her the Elfquest comics when she was smaller.

I had mentioned Elfquest to the Friday nighters and Ellie, because I had

spross bring me the notes and all that for the Holt that I had run back in the days, which had also been my Holt in the EQ Fan Club days (don't ask about that, long story!), as I was thinking the basic area around the Holt would make for a good adaptation into a village and its nearby surroundings for the Desolation game for the Sunday group. When the matter of running Elfquest came up well... While I'm really tempted to revisit the World of Two Moons, I'm not sure I want to run a campaign of it again.

In any event, we played four games of Ticket to Ride, and after Ellie went to sleep, moved on to a game of Britannia, the classic boardgame about the multiple conquests of Britain. Ah, nothing like watching your Jutes slaughtered to the last unit...but I got my revenge with the Danes! <evil g>

Good night overall, and it was nice to get in some boardgaming time again.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: David Bowie - "Starman"

Catching Up on the Friday Night RPG
It occurred to me last night, being reminded that I was running a roleplaying game this evening, that I haven't blogged about the Friday night group's roleplaying of Desolation since this journal entry. So there's two weeks to cover in ongoing story.

( Desolation game session stuff behind the cut for those who are not into roleplaying games )

The Desolation game went really well, better than I had expected, given that I'm using the second edition of the playtest materials to run the game. The players told me that they are having a really good time with the system, and Joanne said that she had been worried about playing the spellcaster in a free-form magic system like this, but she's enjoying it, and likes the challenge it presents her.

While I would have continued to run Desolation and start a new scenario, the Friday night gaming group has decided to give me a few weeks off from running in light of CanGames being in a few weeks, so we'll be doing some boardgames over the next few weeks. Looking foward to it.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Elton John - "Madman Across the Water"

Of Dice and Men
A really interesting article at Clarkesworld Magazine, called

Of Dice and Men: Modern Fantasists and the Influence of Role Playing Games

It's a fascinating piece of the influence of roleplaying games on some of the writers of modern fantasy, including Tim Pratt, Jeff VanderMeer, and a host of others.

Found this one courtesy of

gmskarka.

Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: Emerald Rose - "Pagan Girl"

Origin Awards Nominees Announced
Well, for those gamers who haven't heard, the Origins Award nominees have been announced.

Origins Award Nominees Finalists

There are some interesting nominees here, to be sure, but I was very pleased to see that Faery's Tale Deluxe from Firefly Games has been nominated in the Roleplaying Game category and the Hollow Earth Expedition GM Screen from Exile Games has been nominated in the Roleplaying Game Supplement category.

I won't be at Origins this year, having chosen to attend GenCon instead, but I wish my friends at Exile Games and Firefly Games the best on being finalists, and hope they both win the awards this year. :)

Of course, reading these lists of nominees and finalists always shows me how out of touch I am with the gaming industry in a lot of respects.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: The Golden Compass Soundtrack - "Lyra Escapes"

30 Years of Spam
Believe it or not, today is the anniversary of spam e-mail.

Thirty years ago today, May 1st, 1978, Gary Thuerk was a salesman for Digital Equipment Corp. He managed to connect a computer to the Arpanet (what the Internet was called at the time), and sent a message advertising a new computer to 390+ folks on Arpanet. He was slapped down by the first "stop sending us spam" type message, and it didn't happen again for another 10 years. However, the model was set, and today about 120 billion spam messages are sent each day, accounting for 85 percent of all Internet traffic.

And we owe it all to Mr. Thuerk.

Happy birthday, Spam. We hates you, we does, yes, we do.

Current Mood: disgusted
Current Music: Loreena McKennitt -"Marrakesh Night Market"

New Month
May 1st. A new month. In some ways, I'm grateful that April is over and done with.

I'll talk more about the month that it was later today, but for now...

May promises to be one very busy month. Mother's Day is coming up the weekend of May 10th. Have to make a few arrangements for that day. The Victoria Day weekend of May 16th - 18th is the annual CanGames gaming convention here in Ottawa, where I am going to be running two different rpgs, Greymalkin Designs's Desolation post-apocalyptic fantasy rpg and the Exile Games Hollow Earth Expedition Pulp action rpg set against the backdrop of the 1930s. Need to finish up a few things for the two games for the convention, but thank Goddess the scenarios themselves are ready to go. And finally, joy of joys, I get to experience my three-month diabetes check-ups with my doctor and at the Diabetes Clinic.

Long, interesting month ahead... :)

Current Mood: good
Current Music: Annie Haslam - "Blessing in Disguise"

Sign of Spring
While on the way home from work, I saw my favourite chip wagon at the side of the road on St. Laurent, and got off the bus to go and grab some fries. I only had a small fries, so didn't do too badly in that regard.

When the chip wagons that usually only come out between the spring and fall seasons are on the streets again, you know it's a sure sign that Spring is here.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: The Golden Compass Soundtrack - "Mrs. Coulter"

Things Squiddy
I was catching up on some of the news today, and came across this lovely bit:

Giant Cannibalistic Squid Invades British Columbian Waters

I find this completely ironic, given that I have just finished up Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen only a few weeks ago. Geez... :)

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: The Flash Girls - "A Girl Needs A Knife"

Depressing Day
I have been pretty depressed for most of the day.

This is primarily due to the fact that it has been raining pretty much all day and most of the evening, and coupled with the fact that it has been quite chilly, the weather has got me down and out. Couple this with the fact that my leg is still badly painful, enough that walking is an exercise in agony, and well... Add to that that I've taken in my car for servicing (the business with the oil or whatever fluid is leaking finally needed to get fixed, despite the fact that money is a bit tight right now). I'll find out tomorrow what's going on with that, but in the meantime arranged with Donna to get a lift in with her to work. I've known for a long time that I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), so it's just been a miserable day.

On the other hand, things are looking up somewhat. I've just finished watching Dancing with the Stars, and that always cheers me up a bit. Tonight, head judge Len Goodman was feeling somewhat peckish himself, obviously, and Cheryl Burke's partner suffered an injury, but those were the only bad moments of DwtS.

Tomorrow, the weather is supposed to stay chilly, but the sun will be out, so that will be good. And, of course, the DVD version of The Golden Compass comes out, so that will be a perk for the day.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: None - Heading for bed

Incomparable
And the sight which met my eyes was that of a slender, girlish figure, similar in every detail to the earthly women of my past life. She did not see me at first, but just as she was disappearing through the portal of the building which was to be her prison she turned, and her eyes met mine. Her face was oval, and beautiful in the extreme, her every feature was finely chiselled and exquisite, her eyes large and lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass of coal black, waving hair, caught loosely into a strange yet becoming coiffure. Her skin was of a light reddish copper colour, against which the crimson glow of her cheeks and the ruby of her beautifully moulded lips shone with a strangely enhancing effect.

She was as destitute of clothes as the green Martians who accompanied her; indeed, save for her highly wrought ornaments she was entirely naked, nor could any apparel have enhanced the beauty of her perfect and symmetrical figure.

The above is the very first description of the incomparable Dejah Thoris, as seen through the eyes of earthman John Carter in Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars. It's an image that I absolutely adore, and that has stuck with me for oh these many years. In many ways, when I first read this book when I was nine or so, Dejah Thoris was the second woman (after my mom, of course!) I fell in love with. I have just finished re-reading the book for the first time in at least fifteen years or so...and I've got to say that this is one of my favourite moments in the book and one of the memorable descriptions that Burroughs engaged in when writing this book.

Incomparable indeed.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: None - The sound of rain on the windows

Books Away!
Today has been a day for the books.

spross came over after work today, and helped me take 8 (yep, I said eight!) boxes of science fiction and fantasy books to the my favourite used book dealer, The Book Bazaar. The gentleman who owns the store, John (yes, another one of us!), bought most of the old furniture and bookshelves when I closed up Basilisk Dreams Books back in 2004 (ohmygoddess, is that it that long already???), and I've been pretty pleased at the prices he gives me on second-hand sf and fantasy stuff, both hardcover and trade or paperback.

He bought a good chunk of the stuff I took in to him today with

spross's help, although I won't know until Tuesday or Wednesday how much he'll give me for the books. Despite the condition of my leg (see previous blog entries on this), I helped Steve as best I could with the carrying and all, and after leaving there, he and I took the rest of the stuff to a Book Market (where they pay a pittance for books, regardless of condition), and dumped off what they didn't want at the local library. I know that Steve himself is hurting from his own injury last weekend, so I am really grateful to him for helping me out with this today. I figure at some point he'll suck my brains dry asking for information or help with something or whatever, but that's cool with me.

In any event, it cleaned out a bit of my storage cupboard full of books and made me a bit of money for GenCon Indy. So, there are some folks out there who will be getting some good reading in soon, either by buying the books I sold to the Book Bazaar and the Book Market, or the stuff that I donated to the library.

Off to make some dinner, but have no idea what I feel like eating.

Current Mood: sore and tired
Current Music: Babe Ruth - "The Mexican"

Advertisement

Advertisement