The bout of pneumonia I recently had was kind of like a reboot - physically and mentally. I had been feeling really frazzled, and was going to use my vacation as a time to reflect, meditate, have fun, recharge, and just basically figure out what the hell was wrong and get on a better track.
Three weeks of stabbing lung pain, hallucinations, and a seething, unexplained anger later, I was finally recovering slowly. But in some ways, I felt better than I did before I left for vacation. All of those little projects, those plans, those things I do on a regular basis - I just tossed them aside - not just put on the back burner - but cancelled indefinitely in my mind.
That's one heck of a load off.
I've been mentally focusing on the core things - the really important things - family and such - and putting the other things into their proper perspective. It's been a pretty freeing exercise.
I've been adding things slowly back. Simple, small things. Reading Tolkien, for instance. The pneumonia interrupted my jaunt through Middle Earth.
Letting my mind run free in the lands of J. R. R. Tolkien has been great. No expectations - no projects - no end result. Just getting to know the paths of the Shire again, so to speak. Very nice.
Then I look at gaming. Either DMing or playing - it takes a lot of work and effort. I miss it and my gaming group greatly - but I wonder when I'll be ready to put it back into my repertoire I mean, seriously - I went up to the game store last weekend and played an hour and a half of card games. Those 90 minutes completely wiped me out - mentally and physically. How am I supposed to do a 4 to 6 hour role playing session?
It worries me. I feel old.
Well, enough staring into my navel. How about something positive? Drawing had been frustrating me, so I remembered to do some exercises that have helped out a lot in the past. It's called gesture drawing, in which you basically give yourself between 30 seconds and 2 minutes to capture a pose. I've been doing it a lot recently, and am pretty happy with the results.
Below are the last three gesture drawing I've done - each at the two minute mark, and I think they are the best ones I've ever completed. Okay, yeah, there are some proportion issues - but that's not what's important in this kind of exercise. We're looking for movement, action, and direction - all done as quickly as possible.
Hmm - maybe I just need the equivalent of D&D rehab. I'll just sit here and roll dice for a while and see if I can strengthen my crit muscle. ;)
- Ark
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Monday, August 6, 2012
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Roads Go Ever Ever On
Before our vacation, The Boy and I started listening to the audio versions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, narrated by Rob Inglis. Having more time than I typically do, The Boy raced ahead of me in the narrative, but would gladly go back with me and listen at my slow-poke pace.
Unexpectedly, one day, The Boy sat down beside me and said, "Do you know what my favorite part of the Lord of the Rings books is?"
I thought for a moment, imagining battles in The Hobbit and the other books, wondering. Could it be the spiders is Mirkwood, or maybe Bard and Smaug? Perhaps the fights in Moria, at Helm's Deep, or Minas Tirith? Tolkein was typically more skimpy on descriptions of warfare than Jackson's vivid interpretations, so it was hard for me to pinpoint something in the books themselves that would rate high on The Boy's Awesome-o-meter.
"I don't know. What is your favoirte part?" I smiled.
"The songs," he said.
It took me a second to process that. He meant the poems. Well, at least what I called poems - as I was introduced to them as 'spoken' cadences in my head. But yes, they were indeed songs, as the narrator Rob Inglis reminded us by actually singing them.
Upon the realization of what The Boy meant, I was rather overwhelmed with emotion. I had been blindsided. As a kid, I had dug through those books are read those songs over and over. I even sat down and wrote my own after hearing the songs in the cartoons. I turned my head and wiped the tears from my eyes.
"What's wrong," my son asked.
"Absolutely nothing," I said, clearing my throat and weakly smiling. "I like the songs too."
"You know what my very favorite song is?" he asked.
I shrugged. It was safer to shrug at that point, since I was still blinking away moisture.
"Roads Go Ever Ever On," he smiled widely.
I just about lost it. Only through an iron will did I not just sit there and sob.
"That's a good one," I squeaked.
Something about Tolkein's works get me - deep down. I heavily identified with Frodo and his pains and travails as a child. Tears still fall - either in the books or Peter Jackson's movie. That's probably why I like to watch the DVDs in the dark.
Listening to the books, I'm amazed at how - absent - the songs are from the movies. Jackson still provides the emotional context via images and the soundtrack. But really, the songs are the soul of the books. The fact that my son understands that at some level - while not surprising when I think about it - is still very comforting.
- Ark
Unexpectedly, one day, The Boy sat down beside me and said, "Do you know what my favorite part of the Lord of the Rings books is?"
I thought for a moment, imagining battles in The Hobbit and the other books, wondering. Could it be the spiders is Mirkwood, or maybe Bard and Smaug? Perhaps the fights in Moria, at Helm's Deep, or Minas Tirith? Tolkein was typically more skimpy on descriptions of warfare than Jackson's vivid interpretations, so it was hard for me to pinpoint something in the books themselves that would rate high on The Boy's Awesome-o-meter.
"I don't know. What is your favoirte part?" I smiled.
"The songs," he said.
It took me a second to process that. He meant the poems. Well, at least what I called poems - as I was introduced to them as 'spoken' cadences in my head. But yes, they were indeed songs, as the narrator Rob Inglis reminded us by actually singing them.
Upon the realization of what The Boy meant, I was rather overwhelmed with emotion. I had been blindsided. As a kid, I had dug through those books are read those songs over and over. I even sat down and wrote my own after hearing the songs in the cartoons. I turned my head and wiped the tears from my eyes.
"What's wrong," my son asked.
"Absolutely nothing," I said, clearing my throat and weakly smiling. "I like the songs too."
"You know what my very favorite song is?" he asked.
I shrugged. It was safer to shrug at that point, since I was still blinking away moisture.
"Roads Go Ever Ever On," he smiled widely.
I just about lost it. Only through an iron will did I not just sit there and sob.
"That's a good one," I squeaked.
Something about Tolkein's works get me - deep down. I heavily identified with Frodo and his pains and travails as a child. Tears still fall - either in the books or Peter Jackson's movie. That's probably why I like to watch the DVDs in the dark.
Listening to the books, I'm amazed at how - absent - the songs are from the movies. Jackson still provides the emotional context via images and the soundtrack. But really, the songs are the soul of the books. The fact that my son understands that at some level - while not surprising when I think about it - is still very comforting.
- Ark
Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.
Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.
- The Hobbit
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Bedtop Wargaming
I'm still slowly recovering from the pneumonia that I contracted three weeks ago. It's been a doozy. At some point I got laryngitis as well, and my voice still sounds like one of those anti-smoking tracheotomy commercials.
One of the more interesting points of my pneumonia has been the hallucinations. At first I thought they were dreams, but then I noticed I was awake when they were occurring. Kind of unsettling at first, but after you get used to it - it's just kind of like free cable TV.
The most vivid hallucination was when I was trying to get comfortable in bed and one of the cats was trying to make herself comfortable on my chest. Known fact: cats will sense when their owners are about to die and try to help them die more quickly.
So, at some point my chest became The Lonely Mountain and the cat became Smaug the Dragon. You know, like cats are apt to do. From somewhere down near my toe, Bard the Bowman and King Tranduil of Mirkword began to march towards my chest, war banners unfurled. I think the cat morphed into Thorin at some point and hurled curses at the men and elves.
Then from a crumpled up comforter at the bottom of my bed, Dain began to march towards my chest. I had no idea that my black and green comforter with a picture of Yoda on it was indeed the Iron Hills, but you know, stranger things have happened. As I was trying to get Smaug/Thorin off my chest, the Goblins raced down my precariously placed pillows and attacked the gathered host. There was a horrible battle, with tremendous coughing up of phlegm and cat scratches. Then there were Eagles and Beorn showed up in bear form and Bilbo go knocked unconscious and everything got really confused and hazy.
What was particularly odd about the whole thing is that I could see each army very vividly - from a high vantage point with binoculars. The battleground, however, remained my sheets, comforters, and pillows. No other imagery covered those up, so it looked like some sort of Lilliputian war game on my bedtop. Very odd.
Strangely enough, it harkens back to when I was ten - about half a year before I discovered D&D. I had been reading the LotR books when I was hit by one heck of a flu or cold of something. I remember that my mother was very concerned about my temperature being so high, and she'd check on me and ask me questions to determine how close I was to reality - like where I was and such.
At one point, my mother popped her head in the bedroom and asked who I was. I remember very clearly that I didn't have the foggiest idea who the hell I was. I just couldn't remember. Then suddenly a named popped in my head. I didn't really think it was my name, but since it was the only name I could remember, I figured it would do.
"Gandalf," I told my mother. "My name is Gandalf."
A brief look of concern crossed her face, to be quickly replaced by rolling eyes and a 'you smart ass' stare.
I shrugged and smiled. I figured that if I told her I really had no idea what my name was, she'd get all upset and keep me awake - and what I really wanted to do was just to sleep. So, I let her think I was a smart-ass (which was accurate, actually,) and got back to sleep.
It's funny how much of Tolkein seems to be etched on my subconscious. I suppose I should warn the nurses at the old folks' home when I arrive. My dementia should be pretty predictable.
- Ark
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Screw Me, Vacation
First day at beach nice. Then cloudy. Then rainy. Then monsoon. The flooding outside condo. Then waves of mosquitoes. My bites had bites. Got horribly sick. Then the flying ants. An alligator was somewhere in there. Left early. Shit my pants in a convenience store. Not convenient. Thought it was a fart.
Been sick for 7 days straight. Not getting betting. Prognosis unknown. Pneumonia maybe. Must have pain meds to get out of bed. Dunno when will be well. Everyone else healthy. Vacation over tomorrow.
No blog features for a while. Must cancel all games I run indefinitely. Players please spread the word. Will get back in touch when I have the good sense to stop myself from letting the entire world know I shit my pants.
Sense of humor still intact.
- Ark
Been sick for 7 days straight. Not getting betting. Prognosis unknown. Pneumonia maybe. Must have pain meds to get out of bed. Dunno when will be well. Everyone else healthy. Vacation over tomorrow.
No blog features for a while. Must cancel all games I run indefinitely. Players please spread the word. Will get back in touch when I have the good sense to stop myself from letting the entire world know I shit my pants.
Sense of humor still intact.
- Ark
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Screw Ya'll, I'm on Vacation!
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| Margaritaville, Cancún, 2007 - Back when I still used death sticks. |
I'm off to the Texas coast. See ya'll week after next! Yee-haw!
- Ark
PS - It's a metaphorical 'screw ya'll,' you know - in a nice way. ;)
Craig Morgan - Redneck Yacht Club
Knee Deep - Zac Brown Band
Zac Brown Band - Toes
Jimmy Buffett - Cheeseburger In Paradise
Jimmy Buffett - MargaritaVille
Kenny Chesney - Summertime
Kenny Chesney - No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Stars Without Number: A Whirlwind Tour of the Last Few Months
I've been horrible at updating readers on the progress of the intrepid crew of the Fat Tuesday. I'll present a quick summation and bring you close to present time. Hold your questions till the end of the lecture.
While exploring systems behind the 'Methan Veil', the PCs found a lost planet with medieval level technology named Normandie. An apparently non-damaged, but not operating, Jump Gate was in orbit, which interested them quite a bit, but they decided to go scout the planet itself at first.
They quickly found a large land-war with six legged reptile horses and knights and shit going on, picked sides, and used their armed spacecraft, a grav tank, and a floating motorcycle to turn the tide and win the war. Well, actually, the Boy popped the enemy king with a sniper rifle from like two miles away and ended the war before it began, but the PCs had to have some fun now, didn't they? It would have been a complete slaughter fest, but the enemy had teleport ninjas that crashed their spacecraft upside down in a forest full of pine, which promptly caught on fire from the heat of the engines.
Eventually they patched their ship back up and left, but not without the King granting the players each 50 acres of land, peasants to farm the land, and giving Captain Goodnight two squires, a handmaiden, and his youngest daughter's hand in marriage. Surprisingly, Captain Goodnight got hitched to Princess Evangelyne, who only spoke archaic French, but was a wiz at heraldry, the abacus, and 13th century encryption techniques.
They also fought an 1/8th of a mile wide crazy AI, rescued ancient German engineers from a decaying Battleship, and caused the nuclear annihilation of a medieval city, but that is neither here nor there.
So, the PCs hopped back to Metha and traded their information on the Jump Gate, as well as a map to every jump gate in the known galaxy, and even an entire library of engineering documents on how to recreate much of the lost technological wonders of humanity, to the crazy alien Methans. I'm still wondering about that, and the campaign ramifications are going to be horrendous. I mean, um, wonderful. For me. The evil GM.
They traded all of that for enough money to replace their aged, broken Patrol Scout class vessel for a brand new Frigate level ship. But they didn't want to get thr new ship from the Methans. No sir. They look upon the Methans (rightly so,) as the Tinker Gnomes of the galaxy - only crazier.
So, they went to the nearest human planet with a high-tech ship yard - the bustling planet of White Chapel. For six months the crew has been putzing around the planet, attending parties, throwing parties, getting throw in jail, clearing out the occasional genetics laboratory complex 500 miles underground full of 30 feet high, eight legged wolf mutants and horses without heads whose entire bodies are plasma cannons, etc. Captain Goodnight's Princess wife has been behaving like a princess, draining him of as much wealth as possible on dresses and university mind implant training. AR-50, the bio-infiltration robot threw a 30,000 credit rave, which caused so much damage that it took 270,000 credits worth of lawyer fees and city fines to get him out of jail. And so on.
So there we are, with the crew about to get their big, bad new ship, and then the next thing happened. I'll tell you about all the problems they had later. :)
- Ark
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