Previously, in Trip's Life...
31 May 2003 - Saturday
It seemed like we made progress in AHS today, and at least we have
accumulated a large collection of defunct vampire machines! Also we have
discovered that destroying vampire bodies does reduce the pool of
spirits causing problems. But next session: The Party!
After gaming Ken brought supplementary sandwich supplies and we ate
sandwiches and geeked and did crossword puzzles and generally enjoyed
ourselves without actually doing anything.
* * *
After we parted ways, I watched the second disc of .hack//SIGN.
It is still slow, perhaps even slower than on the first disc, which
makes me sad, because I think the story will be interesting if we ever
get to it.
Make a comment!
30 May 2003 - Friday
First thing in the morning, I got a ticket to set up some stuff: a samba
share here, a virtual web server there, an rsync between them, some access
control; nothing major, easily accomplishable by the end of the day. Then,
just before lunch, my boss spontaneously inflated the thing into a major
project involving a dedicated machine, a completely new SSL web server
installation, duplication of major internal websites, and no change in
deadline.
We were all still working on the stupid thing when the two-minute
network maintenance at 17:30 turned into an hour or more of DNS failures
and random disconnects. Angie and Bruce, who had stayed late yesterday to
deal with the stupid STUPID rollback creatures, took off a little after
that, but I had to stick around until I got a stupid webserver version
inconsistency straightened out. Then the network died so completely that I
couldn't even get to the server to test to my fix, so I left.
Blargh.
* * *
But now that I am safe at home, I have finished reading Red
Thunder by John Varley, which doesn't quite fall into the
category of "Heinlein juvenile that happens to have been written by
someone else" but contains many references. It is very fine.
Make a comment!
29 May 2003 - Thursday
I'm not sure about "frizion" as a word, but I figure someone
who makes stuff like
this is entitled to call it whatever he wants! (Found from
Astronomy
Picture of the Day.)
* * *
Yay! Ayse
will be a BAMM instructor! Celebratory sushi is definitely called
for!
* * *
Norm left my voicemail thanking me for Spree. I think he was somewhat
bemused. :)
* * *
Ayse has done my taxes through the magic of TurboTaxTM! Now I owe her sushi! How convenient!
* * *
Yum, sushi! With extra bonus cleavage! Er, not Aysecleavage, but that
of some random Asian chick who helpfully sat in our line of sight. There
was mrowring.
Also, ice cream. I am terribly disappointed that Ken did not get the
Monkey Bites flavor.
Make a comment!
28 May 2003 - Wednesday
If I were less lame, I would find out if any of these books
are available in American translations.
Or order from amazon.co.uk, I guess. Hm. New Diana Wynne Jones. I
sense a bookstore accident approaching.
The bookstores only attack if they scent weakness, though.
* * *
Post-Thai-City foodcomatose parasite.
* * *
On Monday I wore my Cheapass Games zombie shirt to Millbrae, and Norm
asked what it was all about, so I explained. Kinda. Not very coherently.
So tonight I gave Ayse a copy of Spree to take to him. I wonder what
he'll think.
* * *
No comics for me today, because it's not really Wednesday. Never mind
what that calendar says. So I played zangband really badly until I
became disgusted with myself and then went to finish reading
Nobilis.
The extended example of play made me think maybe I could see how to
run, or at least play, Nobilis, but then I got to the sample campaign
and now I know better again. Oh well. I'll just sit here in this small
pit under this big rock, rolling some dice.
* * *
Yum, brain brownies! Christy is best!
Make a comment!
27 May 2003 - Tuesday
It's HENRY DAY!
It's also Monday (observed) but we won't hold that against him.
Hm, and by definition, comics come out on Wednesday, so I guess this
really is Monday, and we get no Thursday this week. Well, that'll be
nice for all the people who could never get the hang of Thursdays.
* * *
Bruce's failure to document thoroughly confused Angie so she broke
some of the front-end machines and was convinced she was going to be
fired on the spot, but in fact it was all okay and tomorrow Bruce will
be back so she can extract documentation from him with pliers.
* * *
It is Too Hot.
* * *
Suddenly, Christy appeared POOF! She gave me replacement brownies!
She disappeared POOF! Then we watched anime.
Magical Project S had a pretty good ending, and a very
silly post-credits clip. Be sure to watch the extras, too.
Yay Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne!
The other new series, Chance Pop Session, seems to be
hard-core shoujo about three girls and the struggle for stardom, or
something like that. I'm not sure if I'll vote for Ray buying more DVDs,
but there are four more episodes to persuade me one way or the
other.
* * *
Had a terrible time falling asleep, probably because it is still Too
Hot.
Make a comment!
26 May 2003 - Monday
More Nobilis-reading this morning, but finally I had to
get up and do laundry so it would be done before I went to hunt the rare
and secretive Holiday Train to Millbrae.
There was much reading, but not as much as I expected, because the
person in the timeslot before mine lamed out. I even made the 17:30 train
back south, instead of having to wait for the 18:30 one, which meant
that the sun was still well and truly up while I lugged groceries home.
Bleah.
* * *
I finished reading the new Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game before bed.
I dunno. It certainly suffers from having been designed specifically to
write up the characters that appear in recent movies, but this is not a
surprise. The system is a diceless thing where you have a pool of points
which you can allocate to various things (beat people up, avoid getting
beaten up, etc) up to the limit of your number in that action, possibly
adding bonus points for having weapons or good stats or whatever. Compare
your stones to the opposing stones, higher number wins, more excess stones
means better result. Since you don't regenerate your stones completely in
each combat round (er, "Page" in their jargon, and a character's phase is a
"Panel"), the allocation can certainly be interesting in combat, but I'm
not sure what makes it anything other than a simple yes-or-no based on how
many stones you have vs how many it takes for noncombat actions. Perhaps I
need to reread.
The biggest problem, though is that what you can do with N stones in
various "Actions" (superpowers, skills, etc) is not consistent either in
effect or mechanics. Since you pretty much write the rules for each
action on your character sheet, this isn't a problem when using
standard Marvel characters, but it makes it hard to work up new
powers Actions if you fall into the small group of
deviants who don't want to use only the book characters.
Make a comment!
25 May 2003 - Sunday
Sunday Sunday Sunday! Mmmonnnsssterrr-- well, just monsters, really,
since Marith and I went over to Harold's to get more caught up on
Buffy. We have now seen up through the camcorder episode,
which leaves something like 3 Angel and 6 Buffy
until The End.
* * *
Hobee's actually does a pretty good dinner. I didn't even know they
were open at that hour!
Make a comment!
24 May 2003 - Saturday
I spent most of the morning and early afternoon lolling around in
bed, but at least I was reading! (Nobilis, mostly. I'm still not worthy,
but this version seems more playable than the previous. Maybe it's the
twenty-page example of play.)
* * *
In the evening, I was suddenly abducted by Ayses and Mariths and
carried off to Ariake, where sushi was devoured! Also ice cream, Ariake
being conveniently located next to Cold Stone. There was much
conversation and it was good.
Book Buyers sold me fourteen books of old SF for $27 and sold Ayse
five old computer games for $13, which was nice of them. Then I went
next door and almost had a $150 bookstore accident. Fortunately, I had
discount weasels so it was really only a $130 bookstore accident!
Whew!
* * *
Stayed up late reading the new John Ringo (yah, yah, I know).
Splut.
ringtail by Bryant (Sun May 25 18:18:19 2003)
I read 'em. Well, electronically.
Make a comment!
23 May 2003 - Friday
Bruce and Angie are both out, and Greg is in meetings (as befits his
status) so it's mostly just me here today. Wheeee.
Make a comment!
22 May 2003 - Thursday
Today is all meetings all the time, but none of them involve me, so I
don't mind!
* * *
Splut.
Make a comment!
21 May 2003 - Wednesday
I think I broke my REM cycle. I didn't go to bed much later than
usual, but wow could I not wake up this morning. Zombie parasite!
Strange dreams about going back to Tech, more or less as me, but not
really much like Tech. Dabney House was right, but instead of the
Ruddock there was something called Parrish House, which was three
stories high but had only two small doubles on each floor (plus a lounge
on the first floor where people were watching some animated movie about
the attack of the Insect-Riding Night People or some such).
As a 33-year-old frosh, I had to visit the Dean of Students, who had a
lair underneath the south houses, with extra free-standing virtual
reality (even more than fifteen years previous, apparently). I got
assigned to Parrish House for rotation, and discovered that I had left all my
luggage on the bus, but eventually mysteriously found it again, and then
was sent off to be given a test from a plaque mounted on the wall at the
stop of a stairway, administered by a scary Asian chick with a quintuple
major. There were lists of emotions and stuff, and I suspected I would
have to demonstrate some of them, but the first question was "Read the
last four real words on the top part of the plaque", which would have
been easier if the light had not been glittering off the engraved
lettering in just the wrong way, and if the writing had not been
dream-writing and thus held still. (It initially seemed reasonable, but
eventually ended up being the brand names of drugs, which brought up the
whole "which words are real?" issue.)
Then the alarm went off.
* * *
Ah, I see. The past week of daily two-hour meetings has been to
toughen us up for today's three-hour meeting.
Nap time for parasites!
* * *
Hm. We can make microwaves with almost perfect efficiency. I wonder if
we can use this to
make any wavelength with high efficiency?
Also, fun
with cosmology!
* * *
Backed up my external brain and put new batteries in while waiting
for the bus to get comics; this week of interminable meetings has really
been sucking down the juice.
* * *
Hounds of Balazar! Not much actually happened except that Alois got
possessed by a fallen star, but we got our training and spells and no
one we cared about actually died.
Laura brought the kitten that has adopted her to distract Ayse and maybe
get a new home, but although terribly cute, it was determined to be Too
Fuzzy for Ken's immune system. Oh well.
Make a comment!
20 May 2003 - Tuesday
Look, another meeting!
* * *
Finished both Ceres and 3x3 Eyes tonight,
so we need new anime for next week! One will be Kamikaze Kaitou
Jeanne, which I have also seen, but that's okay. Maybe to keep
the tradition of those two timeslots alive, I'll have to lend Ray
El-Hazard.
Make a comment!
19 May 2003 - Monday
A dry two-hour lecture delivered in a thick stammering accent is just
the way to start the week off.
* * *
Bruce has dropped out of Tokyo Tower. I am sad, but I can't deny that
the ratio of socializing to gaming is very high, and he doesn't really
know any of the other players.
* * *
Hmph. Level 29, at 1850 feet, and a stupid STUPID smoke elemental
lurking in the darkness hits me with a fire bolt for 142 points of
damage. Hmph.
* * *
Indeed, there was much digression. I think I need to practice my
ominous throat-clearing. (I'd try a gavel, but not my table.) Anyway,
undead were abused, fireballs were cast, and at the end something like a
plot element appeared.
Being a not-very-smart parasite, though, I left the parasite_ok brownies
Christy made me by her front door! Meep! :(
Make a comment!
18 May 2003 - Sunday
I have finally started reading Nobilis. It still scares
me, and I'm still not worthy, but I'm reading it anyway.
I wonder what the San loss roll is.
* * *
Laundry.
* * *
Today I read the TPBs of the Bulletproof Monk comic,
which was very different than the movie, and Little White
Mouse, which is about a girl trapped on a space station. It is
good that I read them, because Angie lent them to me, but I only liked
them okay. Anyway, now I can give them back.
* * *
Soda is very heavy.
* * *
Our assault on the keep went not quite as hoped, but as well as could
be reasonably expected. It would have been unfortunate if we hadn't had
a druid handy to entangle the enemy forces and shoot the archer off the
tower, but we did, so all was well. The master villain and his main
minion were holed up in the basement, so we piled the entire contents of
the storeroom and smithy on top of the stairwell and went to sleep. In
the morning we went downstairs and opened up a dagger of whup-ass on the
master villain (and also got rid of the zombies and one last mook).
Sadly, we had to end the session before cleaning out the last villain
and her dogs, but there's always next week.
Make a comment!
17 May 2003 - Saturday
Feigned preparation for TT, played a lot of zangband, briefly
entertained Randomness and Marith, finished watching
I My Me! Strawberry Eggs. That is all.
Make a comment!
16 May 2003 - Friday
Blargh. Yet ANOTHER two-hour meeting, this one right after
early lunch. More meetings on Monday and Tuesday.
* * *
Yay TBG is working again!
* * *
Three more episodes of Buffy tonight, thanks to the
generosity of Harold! At this rate, I'll be ready to watch next week's
finale episode sometime in September!
Make a comment!
14 May 2003 - Wednesday
Whee! Gecko
shoes ahoy!
Actually, New Scientist is pretty good today, having also articles on sinking to
the center of the Earth, neutrino
cannon, and why you
should stop eating seafood.
However, I am sad because the TBG server is down and so there is no
turn for me today.
* * *
I got to beam Dope Wars to the guy at the comic shop.
Muahahahahah.
seafood by kit (Thu May 15 09:58:06 2003)
Fish farms. I don't know why people don't warm up to the idea of fish farms.
Well, yes, I do, it's because fish farms cut the throats of commercial fishermen (and, being from a fishing town myself, I really /do/ understand what a horrifying concept that is; Kenai already has a very high unemployment rate, and if commercial fishing were banned, the city would dry up and blow away), so the thing that's actually hard for me to understand is why people don't grasp the fact that commercial fishing is cutting the throat of commercial fishermen, too.
I really do have friends who are like the characters of Billy Joel's "Downeaster Alexa"; people who've been fishing for generations. It's what their families do. I know people who lead the fishing fleet, because they know where the fish are, even if no one else does. I don't know how you find new jobs for people who've fished their whole lives, and whose grandfathers' boats they worked on when they were young; people whose life and pride are in the sea. But it seems like trying to find a way now, before there's absolutely no other choice, would be the right thing to do, both for the communities and the individuals.
Of course, that's pretty much rhetorical, because humans don't usually act preemptively. Crisis first, please, even if there's a way to predict the crisis is coming. Or, y'know. Here.
Re: seafood by Trip (Thu May 15 11:34:54 2003)
The least-disruptive course would be to make everyone aware that in N years, there will be no more fishing. None. Period. That way young people who have not yet fixated on the course of doom can make non-fishing-oriented lives for themselves, and hopefully by the time the fishing stops, they'll be able to support their family members who have no other skills. But I suspect it may be too late for that.
gecko shoes! by Ken (Thu May 15 12:10:03 2003)
I strongly suspect Dr. Gecko was working with the scientists who discovered the properties of gecko clings. After all, he is a doctor. It seems possible that that's because he has a PhD. Though since Ron Fearing was apparently in EECS (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)(which greatly surprises me) maybe Dr. Gecko has amazing EECS skills he hasn't told us about.
Then again, maybe he's just not a real doctor. He is certainly a real gecko. An actual gecko. He lives like a gecko, after all.
Re: Seafood by Dor (Fri May 16 13:22:00 2003)
Of course, fish farms generally use ocean water, dumping fish poop right into the water wild fish are using. Plus there are escaping farm fish which have introduced Atlantic salmon to the Pacific, and farm fish which get the wild fish sick. I still think fish farms are the long term solution, but they need to use water that doesn't go right back into the ocean.
The other alternative (no more fish) is simply too horrible to contemplate. Though pricing the fish high enough that fisherfolk can make a living without depleting the stocks might work, too. But then we'd have to make sure that the beef industry prices their products in such a way that production doesn't increase to the point where western states drown in the cow poop.
On the third hand, maybe the next SARS will reduce the population to the point of sustainability. But that would be sad, too.
Re: Seafood by Trip (Fri May 16 14:16:46 2003)
Well, it's not as if wild fish don't pump the ocean full of fish poop (although certainly concentration is an issue, as is random antibiotic flow-through), and I'm not sure what the problem with Atlantic salmon in the Pacific is, but yah. Farming/ranching in such a way as to not cause ecological devastation is not something we're remarkably good at.
On the other fin, some people are working on farming fish in buildings, and apparently getting good results.
I don't know to what extent beef is a substitute for fish, economically speaking.
Finally, no disrespect to the people who have actually died of SARS, but SARS is a damn wimpy excuse for a plague. It's only arousing excitement because it's afflicting rich light-skinned people in a country with lots of TV cameras.
Make a comment!
12 May 2003 - Monday
Even random passers-by comment on my calf muscles. Sheesh. (Male
passerby, not remarkably cute, if you were wondering.)
* * *
Having done laundry, shopped, and otherwise feigned social functionality
over the weekend, tonight I resigned myself to my zangband-playing fate.
Wheee.
calf muscles! by Bruce (Wed May 14 08:33:37 2003)
Because you have the calf muscles of a Greek God. It's hard not to notice. :)
calf muscles! by chrisber (Wed May 14 12:13:56 2003)
Americans don't have calf muscles; they just get wheeled around in their hydrocarbon-based SUV wheelchairs because they're so evolved, see?
Re: calf muscles! by Trip (Wed May 14 13:36:14 2003)
And indeed, a Greek god would not be American, so this all fits!
Make a comment!
11 May 2003 - Sunday
Finally did laundry. The problem with buying clothes to extend the
laundry cycle is that eventually there's a really
big pile of laundry. Oof.
* * *
So, do we still get to be chaotic good if we kill prisoners? I mean,
it's not like you can't continue to be lawful good after killing
prisoners, so long as they are properly tried and convicted first, and
these orcs certainly deserved killing...
Plans to bust into the keep and deal with the Evil People there were
laid but not executed. Next week for sure!
Make a comment!
10 May 2003 - Saturday
Flip flop flump.
* * *
Yay! Marith isn't dead! We can go to see X2!
* * *
No spoilers here, but that was a darn fine movie! I want to see the
third one now!
* * *
We went over to Ayse & Ken's and bibbled around for the rest of the
evening, with delivered Chinese food.
Make a comment!
9 May 2003 - Friday
No anime today, since Bruce is out. Ah well.
Make a comment!
8 May 2003 - Thursday
Well, those were kind of interesting dreams, but apparently not a lot
like resting. The first sequence was about travelling from world to world
(most of which seemed to be very indoors, like a succession of shopping
malls by different architects), from the point of view of a vaguely regular
person recruited for unclear reasons (although someone who keeps a .45
automatic in her sock drawer seems like a good choice in general). A
surprising number of the other worlds were run by autocratic queens with
special powers or at least special knowledge, like how to get through the
very poisonous area without using horseradish as a filter.
There may have been a previous sequence, actually, in which the
person who recruited the gun-toting interdimensionall moll was a
mercenary captain in a low-tech war, but I don't remember any real
details.
The second sequence, after some vague maundering around with large
numbers of books and writers or at least fans, turned into something
about bizarre new physics which both allowed the creation of an
indestructible beanstalk from the ground up and made world leaders
invulnerable so long as a particle beam was aimed at them
(low-interaction-cross-section, so intervening planet wasn't a problem).
Alas, the aliens objected to this, so they unmade the beanstalk and the
exotic matter. Everyone died, except for three uploaded people in a very
small satellite with no maneuvering capability, although it looked like
Earth was being taken over by a new ecosystem, possibly partly
machine-derived.
Then the alarm clock said I should get up, so I did. Kinda.
* * *
If I were a clever parasite, I would have spent the evening searching
out novel 5th level spells to terrorize Sherilyn with, or at least doing
laundry. Instead I played zangband badly (turned into a yeek, Strength
reduced to 11, legs turned into short little stubs, fire nest with
jillions of worms plus unlimited breeding room plus water to eat any
treasure) and finished watching I My Me! Strawberry Eggs
(or whatever the title actually is), another series which I may like more
than can possibly be justified on its merits.
You do know where to put that amateur psychoanalysis,
right?
Make a comment!
7 May 2003 - Wednesday
Lee's had one copy of Cinderalla by Junko Mizuno, which
I gleefully seized upon! Muahahahahah!
* * *
Hounds of Balazar! And that was kind of like plot, or at least had
identifiable villains who escaped! (Bad! That's my human, who
you are not qualified to even pretend to mate with! Grrrr!)
Make a comment!
6 May 2003 - Tuesday
The problem with a long weekend is that there's so much more spam
built up when one finally returns to work.
* * *
My anime-interpreting fu is weak. Perhaps you can help.
When Our Hero is in the fancy restaurant with two gorgeous babes, and
the "camera" occasionally closes in on the voluptuous cleavage or
silk-sheathed gams of one of them, does that mean that she's emitting
sex-appeal rays at him, or only that the artists need to get out more? (The
other babe didn't get any close-ups, but also couldn't deliberately emit
sex-appeal rays if her life depended on it, which seems possibly
significant.)
Just a parasite.
Make a comment!
5 May 2003 - Monday
10:00 appointment at Kaiser, so I just took the entire day off. I
need to bleed off some PTO pressure anyway, since I've been at the
accumulation cap for years. That I still haven't prepared for Tokyo
Tower is completely beside the point. No, really. Hmph.
* * *
For no readily apparent reason, I decided to replace all my worn-out
briefs with boxers.
* * *
Argh! Level 28! I had the THIRD CHAOS BOOK! Stupid arch-vile. Stupid
me.
* * *
Slow Tokyo Tower, with much digression, and also a lengthy interlude
for identifying magic items and talking with things called forth from
the sun. Also, undead with missile weapons!
* * *
I redeemed one of the excellent certificates Christy gave me for
Parasiteday, so soon I will have parasite_ok brownies! Yay Christy!
parasite brownies by Ken (Wed May 7 12:54:30 2003)
You must ask her how they are made, so I can duplicate the feat! Since the hardtack and butter variety of brownies seem to mostly be parasite safe because they are inedible.
Make a comment!
4 May 2003 - Sunday
Slept in more. Finally got up. Talked. Ayse and Ken left. Marith did
something very clever and then took a nap. Robert played PictureFrame
on my external brain while I pretended to think about Tokyo Tower and
buried Katie in the ball pit. Eventually, we left.
* * *
Halfway home, Ayse and Ken and Dave called to lure us to La
Mediteranee1 in Berkeley. So we went,
and the food of the Byzantine Empire was consumed. Yummy! (Sadly,
however, the Chicken Cilicia didn't come with a side of naked elf.)2
1: Add grave and merry accents to taste.
2: It makes sense to me.
* * *
Splut.
Make a comment!
3 May 2003 - Saturday
Made my external brain get me up at a reasonable hour, wandered
downstairs, found Ayse and Ken had arrived, wandered back up to read
Batman: Arkham Asylum and shower and return in time for
gaming! Ayse sat out, or napped out, or something, but Ken made such big
eyes at Sherilyn that she let him guest-star.
* * *
Amazon Quartet of Justice VIa: "The Bigger They Are, The
Hotter They Burn"
Amaryllis and Alyra are drinking in some dive when a cloaked and cowled
figure joins them and demands to be smuggled out of the city. To no one's
great surprise, this is Princess Lisbet, last seen being sent off to the
temple of Pelor for training. She has had another of her ominous dreams,
and wants to consult her gypsy spiritual advisor, Madame Natasha, but is
being followed by the Guard. Since she's obviously not going to be
dissuaded, Our Heroinces decide it's probably best if they go along to keep
her out of trouble. In the process of losing their tail, they fall in with
Fresa, and the four of them fly out of Tigris and over to the gypsy
encampment.
Alyra bribes a small gypsy kid to fetch Madame Natasha, who comes out
with her two bodyguards (Fred, a free-lance berserker, and Marika, a lady
mercenary of diverse training). Before Lisbet and Natasha can have their
discussion, though, a pair of ten-foot-tall, dragon-winged giants crash the
party.
The giants, being immune to fire, cause a great deal of trouble by
setting off fireballs when Our Heroines (plus Fred and Marika) surround
them, but Amaryllis manages to divide them for easier conquest and Fresa
keeps the combatants and Lisbet (who cannot be kept out of a fight
except by lethal force) from being permanently roasted. All available
healing is then used on the bystanders caught in the blast radii, some
of whom survive.
The City Guard, alerted by the huge columns of flame rising from the
gypsy camp, rides out to investigate. Thad makes sure everything is dealt
with, congratulates Alyra on her stealth, accepts Amaryllis's firm belief
that Lisbet will come back fine from wherever she wandered off to, and goes
back to town. Moments later, Alyra bursts screaming from the bushes,
"Yuan-ti! They've kidnapped Lisbet!"
There are only two yuan-ti, so although they use a great deal of
illusion and enchantment magic, they are soon run down and meet a grisly
end. Lisbet is, indeed, returned intact to the temple of Pelor.
Neither the giants nor the yuan-ti respond usefully to post-mortem
interrogation, but the giants have a jade statuette that Lisbet
recognizes from the royal treasury, which makes everyone go "Hmmm."
* * *
A day or two later, Alyra encounters Liam, Connor's adventuring
buddy, and gets drunk with him while he bemoans his failure to get
anywhere with Sophia. After she drags him home, she notices that her
life force has been sucked out. She goes "hmmm" but also finds Fresa to
get put back together.
* * *
A day or two after that, Alyra and Amaryllis are keeping Lisbet
out of trouble in another bar when the gypsy kid Alyra met earlier wanders
in. Passing a couple of ominous-looking patrons, he passes Alyra a couple
of haste potions, tells her Natasha said she'd need them, and makes his
escape just as the goons notice their purses are missing. Chaos ensues.
Marika, having lost her job when Natasha and the gypsies decamped, is
now officially in charge of keeping an eye on Lisbet, and has a magic hat
so that no one can recognize her. So, when Amaryllis lets fly with the
blinding spells, she ends up as unable to see as half the goons. With that,
and Alyra's superfast magic hammer, the fight is soon over, although not
without a few slapstick moments involving blind people trying to wrestle
each other. Unfortunately, Lisbet escapes the ice wall Amaryllis imprisoned
her behind in time to join the tail end of the fight and get charred when
some villain from outside throws a fireball in to make sure dead men tell
no tales, and has to be put back together before being delivered back to
the palace. Any lingering doubts about the Great Yuan-Ti Conspiracy are
slain by the Royal Army of Tigris-issue magic shortswords the assailants
were carrying.
* * *
Ayse and Ken stayed overnight, so I got kicked out of the library and
had to sleep on the couch again. It may actually be more comfortable.
AQoJ writeup! by Silkie (Tue May 6 15:18:49 2003)
V. keen! I can't wait to read the next one!
Re: AQoJ writeup! by Trip (Tue May 6 15:31:56 2003)
I can't wait to play the next one!
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2 May 2003 - Friday
Went to Thai City with my cow orkers for lunch today. Bruce is truly
one of us now. There is no escape.
* * *
Buh. That's all I have to say. Buh.
* * *
Zooming zoomingu la la la!
* * *
No navigational errors. Go us!
* * *
The relative paucity of guests means I got the library. Many years of
sleeping on a futon have made me deeply distrustful of things that give
way under one while one attempts to sleep upon, but after reading Junko
Mizuno's excellently surreal version of Hansel & Gretel it
was late enough that I slept anyway.
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1 May 2003 - Thursday
Fun with brains!
Susceptibility to advertising seems to be deeply rooted in the
vertebrate nervous system.
And, fish feel pain.
Brains! by Dor (Fri May 2 18:52:25 2003)
Synesthesia is so cool.
I wonder if fish respond to advertising, and if that fact would convince the Angler spokescritter of their having brains or not...
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