I Need A Second Plate...

It's very late Friday night/Saturday morning as I write this... I'm tired. It may ramble.

There's a lot going on in the background of the store and in the background of my life. Enough that I feel I need at least three other hands and another brain to keep track of it all. Most of it is minor, but important stuff. Some of it is major. The one major thing it all has in common is that it is stuff that I cannot delegate off to others. I have to deal with it... ...and I shall, just not in any order that makes sense to anyone but me. Those who know me should understand this. It's just the way I'm wired.

Once I finish taking a nap/going to sleep, I have a plan to go visit a store in Decatur that my older brother owns. It's not a game store, but more of a hobby shop with remote-controlled planes, boats, and cars. I only recently found out that he had this store. While we love each other (we are brothers), we're not close, and we are usually not fond of each other's company. The two of us are a *LOT* alike. More than either of us will really admit to. We don't mix well. Still, it would have been nice to be told what he was up to. Since I've been doing this whole retail ownership gig for 4+ years now, I've learned a fair bit I could have passed on to him. However, since I am the "little brother", I am one of the last people he will ever ask for advice from. That's just how he's wired.

 This all being stated, I figure I will go check out his place, talk to him for a bit, and show him some support. Given some of the things he did for me and some of what he sacrificed for me while we were growing up, it's the least I can do...

He's my brother...

-- GopherDave

Phlegm-Bot...

So... What you all do for your Thanksgiving holiday? Me? Well, I got sick. I've spent the last seven days or so suffering from some sort of cold/sinus thing that has had me in "phlegm eviction mode" for the last three days or so...

I've been to work... sort of. Most days I either went home early or was pushed out the door by the lovely Loquacious. Today has been the first day I've had where I feel good enough to work the whole shift, possibly the whole day. I should do the latter as I am falling majorly behind on work.

During my convalescence, I did make a "WTF"-sort of discovery. Namely, that Saints of Los Angeles is a damn fine Motley Crue song. Yes... It's four years old. Why am I "now" extolling it's virtues? Ehhh... It's one of those things where I heard the song when it was new, but it was Motley Crue, so it wasn't high on my priority list to buy. Four years later, I'm in one of the local used CD haunts I have and I stumble across the album for a reasonable price. I throw it in the player, not expecting a lot (it's late-period Crue, after all), but I am pleasantly surprised. The disc is solid and the title track has been in my head for about four days.

Well, it's almost store time. I have things to catch up on. Hopefully I'll find my lungs while I am here...

-- GopherDave

Not Really A Status Update...

Not much today. In fact, practically nothing.

Have a great holiday, folks!

-- GopherDave

[Insert Impending Doom Music Here...]

Okay... the last couple of days have not been kind to me work-time-wise for various reasons. Last night, I totally blame Comcast's net blackout of the Illini basketball game from the Maui invitational. If I could have watched it on my laptop (without jumping through a plethora of hoops) here at the store, I'd have put it on and gotten to work. Nope! Wasn't happening. So I went home and watched, and when I am in front of an activated TV, my motivation to work drains completely away.

Tonight was originally supposed to be a session of my Deadlands: Last Sons game, but with the holidays, we put the session on ice. We'll pick it back up next week. So, tonight I will be staying at the store and getting some work done around here. During store hours, that work will consist of a little cleaning and sorting of product. After, I am going to *TRY* to get some DICEBAG work done.

If I manage that chunk, I'll post here and try to let folks know that I've actually *DONE* something instead of kvetch and moan about it all...  =P

-- GopherDave

Pulling Up...

One of the better tie knots I have achieved lately...

After a week-long depressive funk and not getting much of anything accomplished, things are starting to look up. I am working one of my long days at the store, and once I close, I am planning on diving into the DICEBAG work I am hideously behind on.

After bashing my head against the "rules wall" for the last month or so, I am thinking that I will plot out at least one, if not more of the events I am running at Winter War in late January. Perhaps if I take some of the narrative pressure off then I can get back to the "heart of the matter" and finish wrenching on the rules engine.

Overall, the "heart" of the rules is written. Where I am at now is fine tuning things and adding situational rules to cover basics like falling, fire, electricity, and what not. I am still debating the inclusion/revision of a cache of weapon/damage rules I found from an earlier version. They would make things a bit more "realistic" at the expense of slowing things down. If I could just "poop or get off of the pot" with this bit of mental wrangling, I'm pretty certain things would begin to progress once again.

While Monday is a day off of sorts for me, I have a fair amount of stuff to get done. I was hoping to go see a concert in Joliet (GWAR!!!!) but looking at what is on my plate, that is not going to happen. I shall be busy, but I will be better equipped mentally to deal with it.

-- GopherDave

Oddly Funk-y...

Well, for some reason, I am feeling a little depressed. I'm not sure why, but I believe it may have something to do with the impending convention stuff and the game stuff I am not writing even though there is a deadline practically around the corner.

Tonight is the Deadlands: Last Sons game, but with one of the players not able to be there, we are just going to take care of "leveling up" and perhaps tweak a couple of characters to more closely resemble their initial intentions. Depending on how much time the Deadlands stuff takes, I might be able to look over what I have left to do in terms of DICEBAG and make a revised plan of attack to make things progress.

That's really all I have for today... Odd...

-- GopherDave

Still More Changes...

Okay... I hope to have some pictures up in the next few days, but we have moved some things around in the store once again. We had some shelves we were using for RPGs and used games just absolutely die on us a few weeks back, so we picked up a couple of "make-do" shelves from one of the local DIY stores. Turns out, we kind of liked them for a number of reasons.

So, we picked up a third shelf, and moved some stuff around. The rearrange, if we compact some things, gives us back about six to eight feet of slatwall space. It doesn't seem like much, but truthfully, we can put a *TON* of product in that space. Now we just have to figure out what we are putting there.

Also, the local entertainment weekly put up the electronic version of our "Best Regional Store" write-up. You can find that here. Hopefully, it will be the first of many such awards, but I am trying to stay humble and take things one step at a time.

In gaming, Shady and I had a talk, and we are going to go with a plan he came up with to keep my character in the Terracide game viable given what has happened to him recently. I have trepidations on this plan, but only because the character, like before when he became the captain of a spaceship, really isn't ready to handle what he has been given/offered. The character is either going to be oddly triumphant with flying colors, or (more probably) take the whole campaign down with him. We'll see how that goes...

-- GopherDave