The car is still in the shop. When I called yesterday at two, they still hadn't taken the dashboard apart to see exactly which piece had broken. But according to Chuck, the guy working on my car, it's going to be one of two pieces, and the labor will be about the same either way. The two pieces are only about thirty dollars apart in price, so it's going to cost me slightly less than $200 to get my car fixed. Again. It might be ready by this evening.

Matt and I are supposed to have dinner with K.T. and Kevin tomorrow evening. This time, she's trying a Mediterranean menu. I'm looking forward to it.

It felt good to take yesterday off. We did the laundry, read the comics, and generally loafed around the apartment. It felt nice. Today I'm back at work, hoping like hell that I'll actually get some work to do, but not really expecting it. Oh, well. I need to do some work for my game, anyway. Since everyone has characters now, I need to do some introductions and get ready for the opening game. I hope this goes well. I've taken a little flak already for letting Carl have as much equipment as I did, but I did what I told everyone I would do: I looked at the list and didn't see anything on it that the character - being sent out into the world by loving ex-adventurer parents - wouldn't give him. And most of the value of his equipment was tied up into his horse and armor, and the first adventure isn't going to be heavily combat-oriented, anyway. (Most of them won't be. As a GM, I prefer puzzles and dilemmas to plain combat most of the time.) I don't think I was especially unfair (everyone else gets to pick their own equipment as well) and I'm not all that worried about it as such. I'm just a little concerned that this is symptomatic of the game as a whole. I don't want to be running a game where the players are mad at each other because they all think the others have better stats or better equipment or the best treasure. I'm trying to keep things as fair as possible, but... Oh, well. We'll see what happens, I guess. I'm wondering, though, if I should have given them points to distribute for their stats and a fixed amount of cash to spend on equipment. I've been jealous of other people's characters before, though, and I think the worst thing is being part of a party and not being able to do anything useful. So I'll have to keep a close watch on that, and make sure that both fighters are challenged, that the mages' spellbooks have different and complimentary spells, that there are locks for the thief to defeat, and for gods' sakes something for the cleric to do besides play medic!

At any rate, I made a lot of concessions during character creation that I suppose some of my players wish I hadn't made. And Carl is the sort of player who will take full advantage of every bit of leeway I give him. I'll have to be careful if I'm going to keep him in check. But I'm a little hurt that the other players don't trust me to do that. (K.T.'s not the only one - she's just the only one who posted something I could link to.)

Oh, well. Hopefully once the game gets underway, they'll feel differently. What I'm really hoping is that, if I can balance things just right, they'll all feel grateful for each others' skills, and learn to really work together as a team.

But I'm not holding my breath.