Happy Valentine's Day! Matt and I couldn't stand the wait this morning and exchanged our presents before we even got dressed. Wait, that's not what it sounds like! I gave him two comedy CDs, and he gave me the Gary Larson book, There's a Hair in My Dirt!, which I've been wanting for a while and never getting around to getting. He's got another present coming later today, too.
We don't have anything special planned for today. Monday is the day we usually do the grocery shopping and get on the MeadeHall, so there isn't much time for anything. We might have a belated dinner out, later this week, when we're less likely to have to stand in line for hours. We thought about meeting for lunch, but I'm starting back on my diet today, which makes it a very bad day to go out to lunch!
We had a pretty good weekend, though. I already wrote about the circus on Friday (the pictures are up in the album, by the way). Saturday evening I picked back up the reins of my game, and as I'd guessed, Mike fit into our group pretty well. We didn't get a whole lot of actual gaming done - since Mike was new to our group, we took the opportunity to tell him all the stories we're tired of telling each other, and so the conversation kept getting sidetracked.
Which was all right, because while I've got the general outline of the current plot set up, I don't have all the intermediate details worked out. Since the next game won't be for another month (due to various conflicts) this will give me some time to plan, now that I know what the party's composition is.
We subjected Mike to trial by fire - we let Greg drive all of us to dinner. Greg's a fairly reasonable driver when he's familiar with the roads he's driving, but when he's unsure of himself, his skill falls by a factor of ten. Of course, I'm sure it doesn't help to have us all in the car, laughing and joking and teasing him. He takes all it in fairly good grace, which I'm not sure I'd be able to do.
Matt did get some humor points in. He's playing a dwarven priest, and when Mike decided to play a dwarf as well, they played off each other. They had a schtick going for a while where they were "snoring" in concert while I rolled the night's random encounters. At one point, K.T.'s character took a long pole, slipped it through the entrance to Matt's character's tent, and poked him with it, trying to stop the snoring.
Matt grunted, wiggled, and muttered (in his deep and gruff dwarf voice), "Rock rats!" and resumed snoring.
For some reason this struck all of us as extremely funny.
And I had to use a fair amount of GM fudge-factor to keep K.T.'s character alive. The party was attacked by stirges while K.T.'s character was on watch, and she failed both perception and surprise rolls, and wound up with two of the little bloodsuckers attached to her. The whole combat was partially fudged at any rate, because stirges, once attached, are supposed to do 1d3 points of damage every round. I decided that they did the 1d3 points when they attached, but that subsequent rounds only did a single point. Which is good, because otherwise the party - all first-level characters - would've been in big trouble.
K.T.'s character was down to a single hit point when she fumbled.
I don't like for characters to collapse on a fumble. If she'd been healthier, I'd have had her take some damage and lose some time recovering. But any damage at all would have knocked her unconscious. I thought about breaking her sword but not having it do any damage, but that would've left her without any weapons at all.
Last night's group didn't include Carl, the power gamer, so I wasn't forced to be the hardass GM. I gave her the choice, and she opted to have her sword break. Probably the best choice - it was taking a while to mop up, and if she'd been an nonmoving target, the remaining stirges would have had a much easier time getting to her.
At any rate, it was a good combat. Everyone was sweating a little, and I think I managed to fudge things just enough to let the party prevail while still keeping it exciting.
Sunday was fairly uneventful; we didn't leave the house all day. I took a stab at doing our taxes, and boy I hope my dad can find something I did wrong, because otherwise we're going to owe the IRS over $500!
Matt insisted that since I'd done the taxes (or at least tried) and put the dishes in the dishwasher in the morning, that he should do the laundry. I figured the fair trade would be to let him sort it and carry it downstairs, and then to take the clean stuff back up the stairs. Moving laundry from the dryer to the basket and from the washer to the dryer isn't especially taxing anyway.
He would come down to check on the laundry, realize I'd already moved it, and come in where I was reading and make little hmph! noises at me, chanting "Sit-and-rest! Sit-and-rest!" After a while, I kept doing it just because he was so funny. (Sorry, sweetie.)
I've got another stupid training meeting tomorrow. Well, two of them, but they're back-to-back, so it might as well be one. At least I know what these two are about. Quality Assurance and Configuration Management. Zzzz. Oh, well, at least we're getting fed again.
Which means I not only have to remember to get something that will taste okay at room temperature, but I have to find something on the menu that at least pretends to stick to my diet. Hmph. Well, I'll do my best.
But the meetings themselves promise to be mind-numbing. I mean, QA and CM are necessary evils in a software company, and I'll agree that we need to follow the procedures. But what's going to drive me crazy is that they're not going to just tell us how to go about testing and saving versions. They're going to tell us details that are completely insignificant to us. All I want to know is, what do you want me to do? and who do I talk to if I have ideas or questions? But that would be too easy. A free lunch isn't worth this much hassle.
Hmm. Maybe this time I'll bring my notepad and work on my game.
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