Checking In...

Hey, folks...

This is just a note to let y'all know I'm not dead.

I have been having a smattering of small, nagging health issues going on lately, and went to the doctor's office right before the holidays to kind of go over what has been happening. During the course of the discussion, the physician called for some blood work and a sleep study to be done.

I've yet to hear about the blood work, but I did the sleep study earlier this week.

I have come to the conclusion that "sleep studies" are the largest oxymoronic event ever created. Their purpose is to monitor your sleep patterns and what your body does during slumber. The technicians and doctors attempt to accomplish this by sticking about fifty leads to your body, most of them to your skull, as well as some breathing hardware around your face.

Now, I don't know about anyone else, but the absolute *LAST* thing I could do during the sleep study was sleep comfortably due to the amount of stuff stuck to my body.

How is this supposed to measure a person's actual sleep issues, again? No wonder the most common diagnosis for these things is "sleep apnea". I'm pretty certain I snored, tossed, turned, and otherwise twitched my way to a suspect diagnosis that night.

All that said, I'm pretty certain I have some sort of sleep apnea, and that it is mostly weight-related. All the weight I lost earlier this year I have gained back, with some bonus pounds added for good measure. What can I say? I like to eat and hate to exercise. That will have to change, though. Three hundred and eight pounds is NOT a healthy weight for someone with heart, spine, and knee issues. New year's resolution, here I come...

Work on the Winter War events proceeds slowly. I have the four events "rough plotted", which consists of little more than about half a page of notes for each. Within the next few days, I hope to have most of the necessary details filled in in regard to story/plot. Then I will begin to work on the pre-generated characters, including writing the genre sections necessary to make them happen. Honestly, even with all of the pressure I'm feeling, I'm fairly certain I can get enough done to run these things.

But only if I get back to work... peace...

-- GopherDave

Cold Sleigh-Bells, Starships, and Cyberspace...

Hmmm... Winter Storm Draco came buy and dropped a bit of snow, and more than a little bit of ice. The roads are dangerous this morning, but they'll get better as the day goes on. We Midwesterners are used to it.

Christmas this year has been different at Casa Gopher. We have so much random stuff in our house that we had very little room for the tree (it's a very small one) let alone any gifts we would have put under it. So, in true "just because we can" fashion, we've just been giving each other gifts as we acquire them. No excess paper trash, and no things to rearrange or clean up besides packaging. See... It's even a more eco-friendly way to do it.

This weekend is Shady's Terracide game, and since I haven't role-played in four weeks, I am needing it more than usual. On top of that, we are having a Netrunner LCG tournament on Saturday, and I am currently trying to puzzle out my decks for that. Tonight, though, is Friday Night magic, and we will be busy.

Off to it...

-- GopherDave

I'm Not Exactly Certain What Kind Of Day I'm Having...

Hmmm... Today is a day I am just getting angry for no real reason... I take that back, most of reason stems from one particular games distributor. Part of me wants to go into detail, but another part of me doesn't want to write a venom-imbued rant of hate. It'll take too long and I've got so much other stuff I could be doing.

On the positive side, the store will be running a couple of radio commercials from the 19th to the 31st. The sales rep sent over the audio files today and they sound pretty damn good. I wrote one and Loq wrote another (which I polished up a bit, but it didn't need much help). I believe mine reads better, but hers comes across better in audio form. Either way, the store is getting more advertising, and I am putting my not-quite-finished Bachelor's degree in Communications to good use.

Later on tonight is DaddyDeathSpank's birthday celebration. Loq and I plan on going to that for a bit. I cannot get too wasted. One, I'll probably be driving. Two, I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow. It's a general check-up sort of thing, but I have a *ton* of little issues I'm going to ask about, not the least of which is this cold/flu/sinus infection thing that I can't seem to shake. Being hung over for that seems like a bad idea according to the semi-official Gopher handbook.

Off to go do some more work... Toodles.

-- GopherDave

Days (and TIE Fighters) Get Wrecked...

Well, Saturday was *supposed* to be spent working on gaming stuff for the convention. Instead, I ended up playing in our Star Wars X-Wing miniatures game Kessel Run event so as not to have an uneven field.

I had never played the game before, but I am a quick study in terms of mechanics. However, I am no so quick a study as to immediately know how to play the units I was playing. I ended up going 0-3 for the day in terms of matches, and not blowing up any other ship I faced. I damaged the HELL out of many of them, but no opposing ship was killed in the playing of my games.

Those five hours dominoed the rest of the day, and I got nothing truly accomplished.

Today has been a bit of a different matter as I have managed to get one radio commercial written, another one refined and polished, and finally opened up sign-ups for the next MtG Pre-Release tournament. This next one will be happening *at* Winter War, so it'll be extra special crazy this year.

Ehhh... whatev... They call me the Red-Haired Maniac for a reason... =P

-- GopherDave

Semi- to Fully-Bummed...

Okay, when I left the store Thursday night, I had done so with the intention of coming back and playing in KEJR's newly-started Dungeon Crawl Classics game. While he had a few people there, there were several others whose participation he was unsure of, thus he thought he had openings. I had to leave to run a minor but important errand, and then I would be free to return. When I got back, not only did his wayward players show up, but a couple of other unexpected folks did as well. Hence, there was no more room left in the game.

Now, I will say that I sort of invited myself into the game, but there was no voiced disagreement from anyone else at the table, including KEJR, the GM. I'm kind of going nuts with no regular game currently, and I *REALLY* enjoy playing with the group of folks he had at the table. I, also, am not angry at how things went down. Honestly, I have no right to be given how the situation went down. I was, however, kind of bummed. Ehhh... what can you do?

HOWEVER... what little, trivial depressive fit I went through Thursday night is such a first-world problem compared to what happened in Connecticut this morning...

While this was nothing on the magnitude of shock and bewilderment that was September 11th, it was still pretty soul-wrenching. The Columbine and West Virginia shootings didn't really affect me much. Horrible though they were, the victims were at least of high-school age, and I could sort of rationalize that away to a numb part of my mind.

On Friday, the bulk of the victims were between the ages of five and ten years. They were children in the truest sense of the word. Gone, in the blink of an eye and the squeezing of a trigger. Lights extinguished before they had a chance to truly shine.

This incident gouged out a small piece of the world's soul, but it will get better. The soul of humanity will heal because life does not stop. Life demands that we collectively keep moving forward and by doing so, the world will place distance between its present self, and the wound that occurred December 14th, 2012.

Humanity will press on because it must... but that does not mean we should forget...

-- GopherDave

Who Knows?

Once again, not much to say. The Deadlands campaign is on hold for the holidays. Between sickness and family obligations, meeting regularly during the month was looking nigh-impossible. We will hopefully pick it back up after the first of the year.

As for other projects, things get done slower than more things get added. I'm almost to the point of ignoring anything else put in front of me that does not have "FLASHING RED" priority assigned to it. The most important thing I have to do is holiday shopping, which should get finished tonight or tomorrow.

This weekend, whether I mentally feel like it or not, I will get back to working on the DICEBAG stuff. Basically, I've been hung up on expanding the weapons section to include firearms and "ray-guns", which needs to be done to cover three of the four events I am running. I also need to plug in a psionics system, which will be necessary for at least one (possibly two) of the events that is happening.

It adds up to I need to be truly productive again, and stop with the sitting on the couch and watching NCIS and Law & Order: SVU reruns...

-- GopherDave

Third Plate, Please...

As the holidays draw ever closer, a number of life-, gaming-, and business-related issues are all vying for time and attention. Trouble is, the amount of time and attention I am able to give to things has not increased while the number of items I need to devote time and attention to have pretty much tripled.

I have a fantastic wife who I know is willing to help me with things. Problem is, many of the issues (mostly the gaming ones) are things that require my personal attention.

On top of all of this is the just general "bleh" feeling I have going on currently that is making doing any work at all more of a chore than it is worth to my psyche. That, however, feeds an ever-spiraling cycle of "the less work I do, the more work that builds up, which makes me want to do any of it even less".

I need a third plate, or at least a second me...

-- GopherDave