Alex's even longer post thread.

[Alex]

Heading off down to my mum's for a few days. If I am not online betwixt now and getting back have fun everyone and keep watching those bad movies.

[Alex]

Insomnia is my companion tonight. Still, it is dark outside. I can sit with the lights out and stare out into the dark heart of the world.

Yeah, that gets boring after about 2 minutes. It isn't like watching the sea rolling in, which I can (and have in the past, although not for many years), do for hours. I have no particular fondness for the sea itself, it being rather cold, salty and full of fish poop. A series of conditions that I do not care for in any combination. I enjoy sailing above it, or canoeing, but swimming itself has never appealed to me. I find doing laps of a pool to be boring, and the one time I've been in a submarine I found to be a very underwhelming experience. Maybe if it had, had a view outside then I suspect I'd have been much more interested, but I do recall being bitterly disappointed by that lack of attacks from giant sharks, octopi, Krakens (what is the proper term for a multiple of Krakens? Would one call them a school of Krakens, or Kraki or what?), blobs or even any kind of man-made mechanical terror).

I wonder if my disinterest in jumping into the sea comes in some way from watching Jaws at a young age? I have no particular fear of sharks (although I don't care for the idea of being eaten alive). Indeed sharks are one of my favourite creatures (alongside spiders and cats. Hmm, can I come up with a combination cat/shark/spider monster for D&D?), and earlier on in the year when Kristi asked if I would be interested in a swimming with sharks experience, I eagerly said yes. I am hoping she was enquiring as part of research for a potential christmas present and not planning some elaborate scheme to cash in on my life insurance, or making general chit-chat.

Guess I'll find out in four days.

[ER]

Insomnia is my companion tonight. Still, it is dark outside. I can sit with the lights out and stare out into the dark heart of the world.

Yeah, that gets boring after about 2 minutes. It isn't like watching the sea rolling in, which I can (and have in the past, although not for many years), do for hours. I have no particular fondness for the sea itself, it being rather cold, salty and full of fish poop. A series of conditions that I do not care for in any combination. I enjoy sailing above it, or canoeing, but swimming itself has never appealed to me. I find doing laps of a pool to be boring, and the one time I've been in a submarine I found to be a very underwhelming experience. Maybe if it had, had a view outside then I suspect I'd have been much more interested, but I do recall being bitterly disappointed by that lack of attacks from giant sharks, octopi, Krakens (what is the proper term for a multiple of Krakens? Would one call them a school of Krakens, or Kraki or what?), blobs or even any kind of man-made mechanical terror).

I wonder if my disinterest in jumping into the sea comes in some way from watching Jaws at a young age? I have no particular fear of sharks (although I don't care for the idea of being eaten alive). Indeed sharks are one of my favourite creatures (alongside spiders and cats. Hmm, can I come up with a combination cat/shark/spider monster for D&D?), and earlier on in the year when Kristi asked if I would be interested in a swimming with sharks experience, I eagerly said yes. I am hoping she was enquiring as part of research for a potential christmas present and not planning some elaborate scheme to cash in on my life insurance, or making general chit-chat.

Guess I'll find out in four days.

Friend of mine from Austin was on a beach in Florida back around 2010 that had a history of shark attacks, it was at dusk, and he got an idea he told me had not been in his mind a second before he felt his body rising and his feet running toward the ocean. While his future wife looked on aghast, my friend ran as fast as he could into the surf and proceeded to swim about fifty yards out into the dark ocean, and going out he felt a surge of life-affirming energy, but when he turned around he got a sudden sense of helpless terror so profound he experienced tunnel vision for the first and only time in his life, and said it was much like what the camera showed on Saving Private Ryan, the edges of sight blacked out and a small aperture remained straight ahead, and he swam back as furiously as he could, reaching the beach without incident, but when he reflected on what he'd done, tempting fate like that, he found himself going back and forth in his thoughts between judging what he did a low risk activity on a one-time basis, and knowing he'd been a total and complete idiot for the undertaking.

[Alex]

I don't think I'd choose to do it during one of the peak shark attack times, although I think it was at an aquarium in Scotland, rather than say flying out to South Africa to swim with Great Whites. My wish to preserve the species does not stretch as far as volunteering to be food for one.  Call me a virtue signaller if you want, but I have my limits. One of the local shopping malls has randomly put in a decal of a rickety wooden bridge going over a number of oceanic hazards ranging from dolphins to squids and a shark with a very wide open mouth. Ash likes to walk over it and then claim the shark has bitten his foot off, which basically means he'll stand with his legs firmly placed together and not bend his legs or walk. Almost managed to get me to trip over him the last time we were passing through.

About 3:30am I went back up to bed and found Kristi was awake and was about to come back downstairs to join me. We just lay in bed and I held her while she read her kindle. I did drift off to sleep at some point thankfully.

Kristi managed to turn her ankle on the way down to my mums, not even slipping on ice or anything. She didn't even make it out of our street before she hurt it. She's been getting around a bit, but today it was sore again so we won't be going far today. I did get some writing done though for my Friday night game. I put in some scenes last night based purely off them being standard tropes for the type of adventure I am running.

Hmm, one of my D&D books specifically banned the use of one of those tropes. I might use it just because it is banned. What they going to do, send round the game police?

Wizards of the Coast (who bought TSR who made Dungeons & Dragons, but who in turn were bought over by Milton Bradley), are rumoured to be about to cancel a thing called the OGL (Open Gaming Licence), which has allowed 3rd party groups to publish supporting material for the game. They did this once before, when they brought out the worst version of D&D so far (4th edition). This led to a game called Pathfinder becoming much more popular. I can't help but think that the new woke version is dangerously close to repeating previously made mistakes and killing the games current popularity. Hopefully people will either keep using older editions of the game, or switch to new systems. I'd hate to see the game go out of print though and disappear.

[Alex]

The trip back home was blessedly peaceful and quiet. We figured today would be a much better day to travel tomorrow when lots of people would be going somewhere for the holidays. We were going to walk around Glasgow a bit, but Kristi's ankle was still dodgy so we ended up just jumping on an earlier train. It meant we got in two hours early though.

I like the train journey across the country. It goes through a lot of areas with very few people living in them. I find that relaxing to go through. Since our entire journey was done during daylight, Ash was quite happy just watching out the window at the world passing by. The news that Mike Hodges had died was a slight downer on the day, but hey 90 isn't a bad age. I wrote a bit on the journey, did some reading and played some games on my laptop inbetween keeping Ash amused when he didn't feel like just watching out the window.

Anyway, we got home, got fed and got Ash to bed. I discovered a friend who had been visiting California had sent me a present. They'd been looking for somewhere to go eat and I suggested they go to Danny Trejo's taco place. Apparently the food there was fantastic and as a thank you for the recommendation she sent me a souvenir tee shirt. It is my new favourite shirt (I am wearing it right now, so no naked posting for me tonight).

Life is simple right now, but good.

[Alex]

Funny how you can miss someone you've never met and years later their loss can still hurt. All those people whose deaths I had a hand in don't bother me, but one little girl I never even got to hold still gnaws away at me. Going out to the cemetery tomorrow to put fresh flowers down and read her a story. I have no idea why I read her stories, but I do. The only guesses I have is that it gives me comfort, or that I hope that I am wrong, there is an afterlife and reading a story to her somehow gets through to it.

Yesterdays Advent Calendar present was a giant chicken. Kristi calls it a cockatrice, but I prefer running around waving it in the air and declaring it to be my giant chicken.

I have just started painting it, just has the base coat so far, but to give you the idea of what it looks like:



Ok, so it has more lizard DNA and less feathers than most chickens, but it is still clearly a chicken to me.  

[Alex]

Well I didn't get the swimming with sharks experience (Kristi had looked at it but it had received a lot of very poor reviews), more kind of wading in a shallow pool than actual swimming.

We were awake early and ended up getting Ash up at 5am to open his presents. The only trouble was that by 08:00 me and Kristi were both fading and had to go for a nap lol 

The first thing we handed Ash was a cheap trainset we'd picked up on a whim. Given his current obsession with trains that turned out to be a slight mistake as he then had no interest in any other presents. Kristi kept trying to get him to open other ones and I kept telling her just to wait and let him go to them in his own time. Eventually, he did. He asked me to build up a Lego set for him which I did, but I made sure he helped me. I remember as a kid anytime I'd to ask my dad to help me build something, he'd take over completely and I got nowhere near them until he was done, so I'd sit there bored until he had finished doing everything. I learned quickly not to ask him for help unless I was really stuck. Funny, for all his other faults and how tight the guy was with money the one things I cannot fault him on, was the amount of presents we got at christmas, birthdays and so forth. Never quite figured that part out. It certainly doesn't make up for the rest of his deficiencies though. Just before we had dinner, Ash finally took an interest in his physically largest gift. It was a big garage playset with a rampaging gorilla. Took quite a while to build it, especially since Ash's help consisted of him playing with it while I was still trying to put it all together. It was fun though.

I was going to let him sit up as late as he wanted to tonight, but when it got to around his usual bedtime, he wanted to go. Fair enough. He went up and went out like a light. This is the first year he has really known what has been going on, and has been excited about it. I am glad I was home for it.

Today was a good day.

[chefzombie]

Funny how you can miss someone you've never met and years later their loss can still hurt. All those people whose deaths I had a hand in don't bother me, but one little girl I never even got to hold still gnaws away at me. Going out to the cemetery tomorrow to put fresh flowers down and read her a story. I have no idea why I read her stories, but I do. The only guesses I have is that it gives me comfort, or that I hope that I am wrong, there is an afterlife and reading a story to her somehow gets through to it.

Yesterdays Advent Calendar present was a giant chicken. Kristi calls it a cockatrice, but I prefer running around waving it in the air and declaring it to be my giant chicken.

I have just started painting it, just has the base coat so far, but to give you the idea of what it looks like:



Ok, so it has more lizard DNA and less feathers than most chickens, but it is still clearly a chicken to me.  

i dunno..looks like a jabberwocky to me! i've missed reading here...

[Paquita]

It was a big garage playset with a rampaging gorilla.

I think we have the same one!  Bat enjoys it and he also likes jamming the spiral car lift with cars and it makes the most "amazing" sound.  Actually, the sound of it working just fine can get troubling after a while.  We've had it over a year and Bat still likes playing with it so I hope Ash gets as much fun out of it as he does!

[Alex]

It was a big garage playset with a rampaging gorilla.

I think we have the same one!  Bat enjoys it and he also likes jamming the spiral car lift with cars and it makes the most "amazing" sound.  Actually, the sound of it working just fine can get troubling after a while.  We've had it over a year and Bat still likes playing with it so I hope Ash gets as much fun out of it as he does!

This one?


Yeah, Ash is loving it, although it gets trains on it more than cars so far lol. Hope the neighbours are being less of pain in the arse for you. If not, consider the benefits of having a shovel party. 

Kristi has been in bed most of the day. She can over and stuck a cotton bud in my face, telling me to look at it. I couldn't see whatever I was supposed to, but she said it had blood on it.

Beats me why she didn't just say "I was cleaning my ears and found blood" in the first place.

Two of the presents I'd picked up for Kristi involved bits and pieces for the Lord of the Rings wargame. Although it irks me to buy anything from Games Workshop, Kristi had mentioned she'd be interested in playing, so I picked her up a boxed set based around the battle for Osgiliath. I also (and I am aware their is no direct connection here), picked her up Thorin Oakenshields Company for the game. Then it occurred to me, "Damn, that box set has Gandalf in it. I don't really have anything that could stand up against him, just the Orcs and Troll from the boxed set. So I ran out to my FLGS and picked up the Witch King mounted on a Fell Beast. I did the base up as a brown, muddy wasteland. Looked quite nice I thought. Then Kristi decided what she'd like on her figures bases was blue/grey rocks. Great. If I leave the Nazgul as is, then it will totally look off alongside the rest of the models, so off I go and redo the base for it. The ruined buildings for Osgiliath, I have just undercoated in a bone colour to give it an off-white, dirty look. I might smear some black on them to make them look a bit smoke-damaged.

Got one of Kristi's school friends coming over to visit for a week or so early next year. She has been going round Paris and having a miserable time by all accounts.

Yeah, she didn't need to go all the way to Paris to find out it would suck. I could have warned her if she'd asked. 

I wonder if in Home Alone the parents just didn't like Kevin and deliberately left him behind? I am not sure if I have ever watched any of those movies from start to finish.

[Alex]

Having a 60s Batman marathon at the moment, combined with creating a map roughly based on the Winchester house, which has different descriptions for each room depending on when the party enters them for D&D as well as painting up 3 armies for Kristi (men of Gondor, Mordor Orcs and WW2 US marines).

I remember when I used to have spare time when I was on leave.

[Alex]

Well the chaos of present giving is over and done with. We were sitting last night, looked at each other and said "Lets put the tree away." No idea why we wanted to pack all the decorations away early, but since we both felt the same way about it, it was all cleared away in 20 minutes.

The next time they come out, we will be in a different house.

[chefzombie]

and it will be a happy cuddly home...filled with magic and trains and general weirdness. as it should be .

[Alex]

At some point in the night, Ash decided to join us. He climbed into our bed and went to sleep, then didn't take up until almost 10 am. I'd been awake since around 5ish and just lay in the bed listening to everyone breathing and enjoying the darkness. Although my body wanted me to get up and do something, I decided I had the casting vote and I'd enjoy my last day off work with a rare lie-in. When we did get up I suggested we go out for a walk and eat lunch somewhere. We ended up at the Salt Cellar. Normally I only have a single dish there, but the starters sounded tempting so I had mushrooms done in a garlic butter sauce, followed by a surf burger. The starter was better than the main as it happens, although both were good. Ash evidently was hungry and managed to eat his entire pizza as well as some chips. After that, we had a short stroll on the beach. We'd picked up new trainers for Ash and evidently, they were bothering his feet, so the walk had to be cut short.

It has been a good break. Too short as always seems to be the case. Has anyone ever had a holiday and thought "You know what, that was exactly the right length of break"? I'll prep my uniform tonight, have a bath and a shave so I don't need to rush around in the morning. It is going to be a busy day tomorrow, although it could have been worse.

I asked Kristi if she wanted to go to the cinema to see Avatar. She didn't unless I wanted to. I said I was good on skipping it. The first one was an ok watch and enjoyable enough fluff, but I don't get the whole release it three times thing.

[Alex]

So a new working year has begun and it turns out it is just the same as the old one. Never understood the whole new year, new mantra some people go with or making resolutions. If you want to do something differently, just damn well go ahead and do it. Don't wait for some arbitrary day to declare you are going to do it. Certainly, never start an annual gym membership at the beginning of the year. I see a lot of people starting fitness regimes at this time of year, but very few, if any are still going come the end of February.

I swear gyms must make a fortune at this time of year out of people they know are going to pay in advance and then never turn up. What a scam lol.

Not that I plan on seeing the inside of another gym. My days for that are done. I have big shoulders, my overdeveloped calf muscles (both of which I get from walking and have nothing to do with my job), and I don't need to do another fitness test.

Every time I read a report on Russia's preparation for its Ukrainian invasion, I find out something new that they'd messed up with. Today's (unconfirmed) nugget is that they have been using maps from the 1970's. I keep seeing the (allegedly) fascist supporting head of Wagner criticising the Russian regime. Given that being a wealthy Russian and doing that seems to be a very hazardous occupation I wonder if Putin were to survive (politically) all the fallout from the war and remain on top, will Wagner's head survive or meet with some strange end?

Kristi suddenly lost her hearing in one ear over the holidays but waited until yesterday to make an appointment to get it looked at. She just has an infection in her ear (something a childhood accident left her prone to), and she can expect to get her hearing back in 8 to 12 weeks. Hopefully, she'll have it back in time for our Weird Al concert.