Ranting, depression, and cool stuff

Blog 042908


Well, I’ve done it now. I booked my flight for Dragon Con. $560 round trip including some sort of $30 insurance by a third party that should cover extra expenses for delays over 6 hours. Delays include bad weather. I have no idea what that weather will be like so why not.

The weekend was okay. We had to work Saturday as mandatory and then I snuck down to Dual Core and grabbed 4 hours of double time for Sunday morning. I guess that’s the last Sunday as a new bank will open this week negating a need for Sunday over-time. This rather sucks as I’ve talked myself in buying an Xbox 360 and Rock Band. That’ll cost around $500 and I’ll want to go on-line which will be another $50. Most of my next check should be mine but that will only cover half the amount. Over-time will help if I can get it.

I’ve been depressed the past few days. I think it was mainly the rain. I was fuming over all sorts of things. The brother that lives with me now makes more money than I do so I was getting pissed thinking about it because I don’t expect him to move out any time soon. He’s only been making the new money for a couple of weeks and needs time to build some up. Although twice he’s had to borrow money from me which is really poor form on his part especially so when he rents a movie and then asks to borrow money for gas. To make matters worst, it was right after he heard me tell the truth to a friend over the phone that I was totally broke and was able to buy my raspberry bushes only because I had change I could roll and exchange for paper money. So he took MY gas money and spent only half of it on gas. He didn’t offer the rest back and I suspect he bought cigarettes with it. I got the money back the next day but it was still irritating because I believe he brings home more than $60 a week more than me. Where it goes I have no idea and knowing would probably only get me mad.

The ship’s fool at work REALLY pissed me off tonight. That fat fuck didn’t work this past Saturday. She claimed she was never called for over-time. A junior came in so ship’s fool went and filed a grievance with the union. Now ship’s fool is going to get paid for 12 hours. Saturday was mandatory. Ship’s fool called out Thursday when the mandate was posted and had a vacation day scheduled for Friday. Again she claims she was never called but I think that that was an outright lie on her part. And now she’s going to get paid. A bunch of us had gotten calls to go in early and a couple did. She’s the senior and she’s saying she never got called. Here’s the real kicker though: she would have turned it down! She’s a lazy fuck that has told the supervisor not to bother calling her for over-time much less a 12 hour day. But because she sniffed ‘free money’ she filed a grievance and won pay for 12 hours. I wanted to spit in her fucking face. What a piece of shit. She made sure to put on this big dramatic song and dance in front of me about not being called and it smelled like an act from the first second. And she’s the same fat fuck that nearly blows a gasket if she has to do any work more than necessary. AND she gets REALLY pissed if she thinks people are getting away with easier jobs than her. She outright hates a co-worker because she believes co-worker’s job is easier. Ship’s Fool went so far as to verbally accuse co-worker of flaunting her ‘easy ass job’ in Fool’s face when co-worker was doing legitimate work even if it was only reading orders.

I was so pissed at Ship’s Fool winning free money that I went into a rant about the union. I used some other real cases that happened recently about how the union saves the asses of shit workers that don’t do a damn thing but I’m fairly certain that Fool is too stupid to know I was really ranting about her.

Clean your room, kiddies! I didn’t and it cost me $10. My bedroom is packed because of severely limited space in the house. I still have unpacked boxes under my kitchen table from when I moved in over two years ago because my brother moved into the loft where I originally had them. So in my bedroom is a drawing table, a bed, a dresser, a bookcase, tons of clothes that don’t fit in my dresser, and two hampers one filled with dirty clothes the other clean clothes. While trying to do some minor organization looking for a notebook I discover a hard cover edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix or whatever book five is called. I had just bought the same book in soft cover because I didn’t know I had the other in my room. Since my niece and nephew are in their 20’s they won’t be wanting their Potter books back so I now have two copies of book 5. Ugh.

I thought I had the cover to issue three finished but I’ve found an error on it. Goddamn it. But better to find it now than after printing it. I’m fairly certain the inside back cover is done though. I just finished that last night. So if the tweak to the front cover is quick I’ll only have the inside front cover and the back cover to go. Unfortunately I let myself get easily distracted from it and have trouble finishing the freaking book.

Tonight at work it was slow and I sketched out some panels for a potential web comic. This would feature my long time super-heroes. To keep it simply I’d be drawing three or four panels per entry since I wouldn’t be doing it daily. Pretty much it would look like something you’d find on the comics page of a newspaper. We’ll see what happens.

I may have had a precognitive dream come true. Occasionally, I try to program myself to ‘see the future’. Last night I was looking at something and I could pretty much predict what my brother was saying to me because I had heard it before in a dream. As usual, this is mundane stuff. Right now I can’t even remember what I was looking at but my eyes and ears had seen the exact stuff before – in my dream. And I get that déjà vu feeling as it happens. Neat stuff but nothing I can do regularly.

Okay, bed time and I want to read Harry Potter book 5 for hour, as usual, before sleeping. It’s good relaxation.

busy week & weekend

Blog 042208

Worked all weekend to end a busy week for me.

Monday started off with a couple of trips here and there to do shopping, cash my paycheck and stuff like that. I looked around for snowblowers too but they are all gone for the season. I plan to buy one with the government rebate of $600 I should be getting sometime in May or June. I also set up an appointment to have my cat fixed, blood work, physical and shots. I was surprised to get an appointment for 8am the next morning! Then there was work that night.

Tuesday was cat both after and then picking her up before work. She was trying to walk around but was literally falling over every few steps. I felt bad for her because I kept hearing ‘clump!’ every time she fell over.

Somehwere along the line the guy that handles my investments came calling. I think I saw him Wednesday. The only reason I truly believe I’ve seen him is because the market crashed hard. He had my account for over a year and half with not even a peep. But as soon as he probably needed money I became his best friend. I find talking about money very boring and tedious. Furthermore, every investor type person has always made me feel poor intentionally or not. But the guy had his uses. I moved some money over from a bank savings account. I know it’ll probably lose a little to start but it should perform better than just in a savings account over the long haul. I also started putting money away for me. Eventually I’ll have to get a new car and saving now should help pay for it. So I either heard from this guy almost every day. I was getting really sick of him.

Thursday was a morning oil appointment and Friday I handed a check to the investor guy. I was quite happy he was allergic to cats and that despite his talk of it not being bad his face was all red and his eyes watering. Go Weebee! LOL!

I worked Saturday and Sunday to help pay for the cat’s medical bills which were almost $400! I had $160 already saved towards it. And she still has to go back for some sort of booster shot or something. Good grief.

I was able to buy to Golden raspberry bushes. I LOVE golden raspberries and haven’t had in years. We used to have some plants at my parents house but my dad killed them off. I wrapped one in Saran wrap to keep my cat from eating it. The plant’s gone crazy. It’s growing like mad now! The other has barely grown at all. I just wrapped up some change so I can hopefully buy another bush or two if Lowe’s still has them in stock. I’ll be very disappointed if they are all gone but it has been about a week since I bought mine.

I have a sore throat. This sucks. It’s like 70 degrees out and my throat is all scratchy and sore at the top. My brother’s been sick a lot over the past couple of weeks and I think a co-worker was sick this weekend. I ran myself fairly hard this weekend with the over-time which I believe lowered my natural resistance to illnesses. I’m eating chicken soup as I write this.

Somehow I managed to miss paying both of my phone bills last month. I knew I was missing something when I wrote bills last month but I couldn’t figure what. I got one bill yesterday and one today and I was like WTF?! I then checked my checkbook and couldn’t find a check for either bill. Whoops. It’s probably all my fault because I can be a little disorganized but my brain’s self-defense mechanism blames my brother. He cleaned the house one weekend and that may have been when my bills got placed who-knows-where.

I finished Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire this morning. It was pretty good but I’ve seen the movie first so it didn’t hold any surprises. Harry Potter Prisoner of Azkaban was on Saturday night and I caught about an hour of it before heading off to work. Goblet of Fire is on this Saturday.

Because I’m short on cash this week I’m a little stuck. I haven’t picked up my comics from last week and won’t this week. I want to buy the next Harry Potter book but I’m planning on spending my money on time sensitive stuff like raspberry bushes. Once I get my check for this week I should be okay for cash. I’ll still only have about $40 for me but that’s enough to buy what I want.

I’ve been trying to tell myself to dream certain things here and there. I told myself to dream about my comic book heroine Jaina during the week. It worked. My dream was weird. Sometimes essentially I was Jaina and sometimes I was a floating camera following the action. Two of my co-workers were involved in the dream as well. Mostly Jaina was walking through the woods behind my neighbor’s which then turned into a small community of old but cool looking brick buildings on a small hill.

I’ve been working on the picture I plan on using as the back cover for issue three of The Necropolis Chronicles. Initially I wanted a rip-off of the movie poster The Exorcist. But I did a lousy job. I changed it some but I suck at drawing buildings. I tried twice. The second looked better than the first but not all that great. I’ve moved on to Jaina walking through some fog. This is rather hard because I’m mostly painting the picture in Photoshop. I’m not skilled in painting in Photoshop. But I read some fog creation tutorials although most didn’t help. But the effect I have going is decent looking. I need to do a chunk of more work on it though to get the whole picture where I want it. The start I have is pretty promising though which is nice.

I was looking at some cos-play costume last night on-line and I got inspired. I haven’t done a detailed drawing yet but I sketched out an idea for a new character. I’m also building a world around her too. Maybe I’ll try sending that one to comic companies to.

I work with the ship’s fool at work. This woman is really pathetic. She’s stupid. I mean really stupid. I could live with this as people can’t help if they are short or tall and stuff like that. But she’s lazy and dramatic. And fat. Yet she thinks she’s all that. I think she made over 10 errors during the Friday night. Stampers were constantly coming back for more balls because the woman literally can’t count. And she’s still asking questions about orders that literally every other person has gotten easily after the second day of training. She’s going on a month and a half. And these are questions about basic things to just accomplish the job. And she doesn’t lift a finger more than she has to. She literally leaves me every lifting to be done. God, she’s really a suckless worker. Worse, if she thinks someone has an easier job than she does she hates that person. She was literally bitching out a co-worker that wasn’t there Friday and who has done nothing to her. But because that other person’s job seems easier the ship’s fool was ripping her all over. And then the ship’s fool was made because she didn’t get to do ‘that easy ass job’ on Friday because the usual woman was out. But ship’s fool is too stupid to understand that she’s too stupid to do the job which is a lot of counting.

I started shit with ship’s fool by getting her all worried about the zapper. The zapper is a machine that we have to run certain golf balls through to make the ink stick to the ball’s surface. So what that take, maybe 20 second tops to read and comprehend. My supervisor had to spending, literally, ten minutes explaining it over and over to ship’s fool because she didn’t get it. Afterwards, this laid back rarely swears supervisor asks me, ‘is the concept of the zapper THAT fucking hard to understand?!’ I burst out laughing. He knows she’s a joke but because of union rules we’re stuck with her.

Okay, too nice a day out and I need food for the house.

Bye.

Money - spending more than I have

Blog 041508

Big week for spending money.

The biggest hit was my cat. $373. Phew. Got her a physical, her shots, blood work, and fixed. It seemed like the vet rattled off more shit and some sorta seemed not necessary but I still went with it. And I have a follow up for more shots in three weeks so there’s more money.

My financial advisor shows his mug tomorrow morning. I’ll be moving some cash around to different accounts. He tried to get me to splurge on life insurance but I was like ‘forget it’. I’ll be dropping my 401k contributions at work to put money into a different account. I have 12% of my pay going into my 401k which usually results in $84 on a normal 40 hour week. I’ll have to do some math to figure out how to drop it to around $70 a week. That money lost would then be used to put into an account I can use at any time instead of when I’m 60-something.

Thursday morning it’s off to the garage for an oil change. I noticed the other day I’m 200 miles late. Damn it! So that’s going to be like $30.

My niece’s birthday was this week so I gave her $10.

I gave my mom $50 for her birthday gift but I have no qualms about that.

I found raspberry bushes at both Lowe’s and Home Depot. Home Depot has regular bushes for $7 a pop. That’s what I paid last year. Lowe’s has golden raspberry bushes. Yum! I like them better than the regular ones. They are $10 a shot. So I need $30 that I currently don’t have to get some bushes. I really wanted a golden raspberry bush last year but nobody had any. I know I had one raspberry bush survive from last year. I may have another towards the back of the land that I planted two years ago. Otherwise, all my bushes have died. I probably planted them in the worst place possible though the first year.

I also bought some various garden vegetable seeds and some flowers seeds. I’m fairly poor at attending my garden so everything will probably die again.

Because of all this cash flowing out of my pocket I’ll be signing up to try and score Saturday and Sunday over-time. I’m pretty sure I’ll get Saturday but Sunday is a tougher bid. Everybody loves double time pay. We have Patriot’s Day off though so it wouldn’t surprise me to see Sunday axed since it’s all voluntary.

My fantasy baseball team is off to a scorching start. I’ve ripped up the competition both weeks now and stand in first place with a 20-6-2 record. The second place guy is smoking too with a 19-8-1 record. This current week I’m off to a slightly slower start losing 5-7-2 but we have 5 more days left of play.

One of my brothers has left for Japan on business. He’ll be gone for a couple of weeks. That means I’m the only brother in the family not to have gone to Japan. My remaining brothers went we they were in the Navy.

Haven’t done much drawing lately. Actually, I really blew it this past weekend. I had Saturday and Sunday off and most of Monday. I did some working on the back cover for The Necropolis Chronicles. The background is of the academy but I have a really hard time drawing buildings. It’s looking decent so far but I want it perfect but my skills aren’t up to my desire. I ended up playing a lot of Call of Duty 2 on-line. The game is usually really awesome when a ton of players are one and the games were often 10 versus 10 which makes for a lot of action. The last game I played I kicked ass finishing with something like 20 more kills than the next guy.

Seems a lot of co-workers and my brother are sick. Joy. I’ve fended off everything so far though.

Lots of drama over the pas two weeks involving my niece. Her mom threw her in foster care without even telling my brother. She may have kicked my niece out of the house. My niece is 13. The ex also filed assault chargers and larceny charges against my niece. And she also blamed the niece in front of a bunch of court and DSS type people including lots of verbal fighting for not being able to move to Ohio. No mention that my brother files to stop that in the courts. Yeah, the ex is a real piece of shit. If it wasn’t for getting money from my brother which I fully believe she pockets I wonder if she would bother with the kids. Well, yeah, she would, because she uses them as weapons as often as possible against my brother. She’s a real piece of work. And she’s also a picec of shit as far as human beings go.

My reading binge continues since Christmas. I’ve finished 8 books I believe since Christmas 2007. That should be 3 Harry Potter books, 3 Dark Horse Universal monster books and two Anita Blake books. There may have been a third Anita novel in there for a total of 9 books.

I actually lost my glasses in my room the other day. Sunday night I was so tired I took a nap at 8:30pm. I woke at 9 and couldn’t get up. I slept until 10:30pm when I got up and turned off my computer. I then went back to sleep. I woke up a lot but I slept until 8am or so. When I got up I couldn’t find my glasses. I found my other pair easily and eventually found the pair I always wear. They had slid off from where I put them and had been covered by some loose papers. So they were where I pretty much figured they were but I was apprehensive for a number of hours when I couldn’t find them.

Nothing overly major with dreams lately. A lot of dreaming about work. Stuff is usually like I need to wake up to get to work. I think a lot of it is because my co-worker really sucks. She’s just flat out stupid and lazy. I’ve taught some people the job in a day. It’s moving on 6 weeks and last night she asked me something she should’ve known since day one. Nobody else wants to work with her because she’s so pathetic. I get stuck with her because I can cover most of her mistakes. Usually.

One dream was really weird though. My friend uncovered a spider, more like a tarantula about the size of a serving platter. This thing was BIG. Somehow, its fat and round and hairy abdomen came off but it was surviving like nothing had happened. Then I started playing fetch with it. I would toss its abdomen and it would run off and bring it back to me.

I make up way to many comic book characters to possibly write about. I love making characters. My current scheme is working on some characters whose names start with X, Y and Z. I’m missing a good name starting with Z but I haven’t googled it either.

Getting close to time to leave for work. Damn suckless Bruins are gobbling up NESN when the Red Sox are also playing. Now I can’t watch the Sox.

ConnCon part 2

Blog 040908

ConnCon part 2

The first game of ConnCon my friends and I played was written by a fellow I usually don’t get along with. Further, he ended up being our DM. I’m very happy to say things went fine and I had a good time. This was terrific news as it was a game slotted for 8 hours and took about that much time. Although my character didn’t do a whole lot the team did well overall. At the end we were faced with a situation by our DM. We could face a really tough challenge or walk away. With the national campaign ending this year I was fine with facing this challenge knowing my character could be eliminated from the campaign as a possibility. We got our asses kicked. LOL! Three of us were turned to stone and we were forced to flee to a different dimension to escape leaving one of our party behind! He was killed. That was my friend’s character. The worst part is, he never really wanted to engage in the big fight and voiced opposition to it but was over-ruled by majority. Those of us turned to stone were later turned back to flesh with no ill effects.

I had another 8 hour game and that one ended up totally sucking out. The DM read the scenario as we played it so we sat around waiting with 30 second long pauses or more between questions as he read. Three of us actually fell asleep at the table including me! The game was THAT boring. It didn’t help that I couldn’t get into story of that game either.

I played an intro to D&D 4th edition and liked it. The new rules seem to try and slim down the game. D&D is hugely detailed and rule books often conflict with one another constantly. Often new rule books make even the previous year’s book obsolete or throw the balance of the game way off by introducing new elements that throw the game out of whack. I’m sure 4th edition due out in a few months will eventually suffer this same problem but I liked over all what I saw. Probably the only thing I didn’t like about 4th ed was that it seems very easy to be hit as a melee fighter. I played a melee fighter and seemed to be hit again and again at first level like it was nothing. Still, I’m highly excited by a return of my favorite fantasy campaign setting as a background to the new national campaign due out later this year.

I didn’t want to play in it but I sucked into the ‘interactive’. D&D interactives are usually about a ton of people playing in one large room wandering around talking to one another. Then you get a group and sit down and play a small thing. I tend to find them extremely boring and often highly dangerous to character with little pay-off. The big deal about interactives is that they usually have a direct effect on the campaign where gaming scenarios don’t. This was yet another 8 hour game. Three in one weekend, ouch. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be but it was tough. Pretty much only myself and another guy had a clue as to what was happening out of 6 people though. In the first round – a four hour block of gaming – we were branded traitors. Not good. We all knew it was to be resolved in the second round the next morning. Well, my table of players fell apart and I had to play a totally different character! So now my poor little diseased rogue, very much like Xena, is a traitor to the land and cannot clear her name because she missed the second round. I did kick ass in the second round with my nasty wizard though.

The last game of the gaming con was fun at first until my food poisoning kicked in and I was more worried about shitting than playing. But it started off being the most fun of the weekend. We had a gay judge which was fine be I felt there was a moment of awkwardness. My high level wizard is kind of a jerk in character. My friend and I banter back and forth and in character my wizard was more interested in getting ‘some’ from a female NPC as a reward for rescuing her. My buddy started in on how my male character likes little boys,… in front of a real life gay person. I tried to shut that down as soon as possible but my friend didn’t get it and kept it up. The whole situation only lasted about a minute or two but it felt like a lifetime. The gay guy is fairly cool and I hope he wasn’t insulted by my friend’s kind of jerk reactions at attempting to be funny.

Towards the end of the game my mind was more about crapping than playing. Still, my character kicked the shit out of the bad guys almost eliminating them before anyone could get near them. As soon as the game ended I started looking around for an unused room. We pretty much had the whole floor for gaming. However, with renovations happening the hotel wanted us out as soon as possible. Hotel people were emptying chairs and tables out of rooms while contractors were starting to remove light fixtures and whatnots. In fact, construction was happening all weekend and at times it was very disruptive as it was louder than people’s voices.

First, I couldn’t find any toilet paper. I found a roll and tucked it under my arm like a football. Almost every one had a game or a contractor in it. I finally found a quiet room and closed the door to the bathroom. I lifted the toilet cover to find a plugged toilet with a mass of brown stained toilet paper like a man-made island in the bowl. With a horrid expression I reclosed the top and began a new search for another bathroom. I finally situated myself in a room where a hotel guy was removing furniture. I ran the water as I shat to let him know not to try and enter the bathroom. Things went quick because it was the beginnings of diarrhea. Joy. Still, there was no way to I was going to be able to hold things in on the ride home so I was glad I cleared the bowels when I did.

I felt bad for my friend. He had a good weekend despite his character dying, playing at a shit table and his same character being deemed hated in the realm by a shit judge and something else detrimental happened to that I’ve forgotten. He also won a table which meant he may have won a small prize. These prizes are usually a small coupon to get a cheap item from the dealer’s room. But the dealer’s room REALLY sucked this year. There were like 4 dealers and I think two had already packed up and went home by the end of the con. So he wanted to stay to see if he won anything but I was able to win by leaving almost immediately for home. I felt like shit on the ride home. It actually went fairly quickly because I felt asleep for about 40 minutes. My friends noticed I was really quiet before that as I concentrated on keeping the contents of my stomach down.

We got back to their place to find out the orange juice in my bag had leaked out into my buddy’s trunk. Luckily it was only small amount along the side of the trunk. I think we were both at fault. I was whipping the bag around as I carried it and I think my buddy crammed the bag into his trunk making the juice container not stand upright. I later found my bag filled with the remaining orange juice. Yuck.

I drove home after leaving my buddy’s almost immediately and stopped to get some ginger ale for my stomach. I took a long hot shower just to help my aching muscles and laid on the couch for awhile before going to bed.

The next day I woke to a fart. A really wet fart. A check confirmed my worst fears. That underwear was quickly discarded into the trash and a lengthy shower ensued. For the rest of the day it was running to the bathroom shitting out explosive amounts of diarrhea. It wasn’t fun. And I should’ve apologized to my toilet. It didn’t end until I relieved my stomach of everything I had eaten that weekend. I think the pizza from Friday night was the main culprit. I didn’t really like it and it seemed heavy with grease. It was bad enough to make me call out from work that night and I had stomach pain until Wednesday. I also didn’t eat anything solid for two whole days finally eating a Mystic Pizza just before work on Wednesday night. Oy.

I forgot to mention I bought 6 boxes of Girl Scout cookies at the con. There’s this girl there every year making a killing. For the first time in 6 years of doing this, the hotel complained and shut her down. The young kid, maybe 11 years old, was smart though and defiant. She went around with pen and paper and took orders returning to fulfill the orders and collect money. I bought too many cookies though and sent two boxes to my mom and gave another to friends at work. I’m keeping two boxes of Thin Mints for me and another box – Trifoils or something – short bread ones for me.

Gotta go to work now.

CNN and ConnCon and other things...

Blog 040308

I finished my The Wolfman book. It’s from Darkhorse Press and based off the old Universal movies. While I found the situations the Wolfman found himself in very convoluted I liked the book a lot. I really enjoyed the aspect of a lonely man caring a burden he never asked for and now has been condemned because of it. I guess I relate to alienation. I read the book in a couple of days and liked it much better than The Bride of Frankenstein book which did not impress me.

The other day I started reading The Shadow of Frankenstein. It’s another Universal monster movie spin-off novel involving Frankenstein and Jack the Ripper. At first I put the book aside rolling my eyes at the concept. Having finished The Wolfman book I started in on Frankenstein and I’m finding I really enjoying it. I grew up loving the Frankenstein movies and the author has really caught the way I like the monster portrayed. I was really surprised by how different the Universal movie was compared to the original book. I prefer the movie.

Reading through some of the acknowledgments a lot of the names listed seem very familiar. The author resides in a town close by and I e-mailed him asking some questions about the people in the acknowledgments. If the people are the same people I’m asking about, I’ve played Dungeons and Dragons games written by them.

Mazzy Star’s song Fade into You is currently my favorite song.

I was griping to my brother about back to back work weeks of four days of pay. He said he knows how I feel as he’s doing the same. One week was the family court thing his ex putting their daughter in foster care and the next is the 13 year old’s arraignment. “What?!” I asked. Apparently the ex is serious about the assault and battery and larceny charges against their own daughter. So you have the ex signing their only daughter into foster care and also filing/pressing charges against her. Without a doubt I bet she’ll continue to claim to be the better parent over my brother. And apparently because my niece called the cops on her dad during the early days of the divorce just to cause grief and suffering the whole family has to be investigated to some extent before any of us could take custody of her. Did I mention that her mother coached her to say the right things when my niece first went to therapy and if memory serves correct that she went once and only once to help relieve the stress and pain of the divorce? Yeah. The ex is a real piece of shit of a human being. Here’s yet another kicker. Before we learned that my niece had been sent to foster care by her own mother – no mention to my brother about it – the ex filed papers to move the kids out of state.

ConnCon had its up’s and down’s. ConnCon is a gaming convention where all sorts of strategy games are played. The big draw is Dungeons & Dragons. That’s what my friends and I went to play.

I got home from work and did some things before heading to my friends who were driving. I don’t trust myself to do 2 or so hours of constant driving after work. So we get on the highway and we notice this huge column of smoke. There was no missing it really since it seemed as large as a tornado. We determine its got to be some sort of massive fire. It was the blackest smoke I had ever seen in person. I related it to something straight out of the Iraq war. It got to the point that we knew we’d be passing very close to the source as cops were all around, traffic was slowing and we were very close to the smoke. It was right by where the highway we were on passed over another highway and all I could think was that a tanker blew up. Then I caught a glimpse of the source and I was certain I was right. And I was. Seems a guy in a car came onto the highway and lost control of his car. He hit another car and the tanker swerved to avoid the original car. This caused the truck to jack knife and the trailer part ripped free and rolled off the highway. 9600 gallons of gas and 1000 gallons of diesel fuel caught on fire. The cab of the truck also caught on fire. The trucker was pulled free by heroic people that faced the flames of the truck. But with his body 60% covered in burns the trucker eventually died. I was surprised to hear he was the only on to die actually. The driver of the car that caused the accident was charged with several things including either manslaughter or vehicular homicide. My gut reaction was the initial driver that caused everything was being an asshat but I really don’t know that. In any case, the original driver now has a man’s death hanging over him. It’s not something I’d want to face.

The crash was so spectacular it made CNN national news and some other national news organizations.

We got to the hotel early and found it was undergoing renovations. Signs and tarps were everywhere. For some reason, Au Pairs were there for something. Lots of young women, some very cute, were about and none seemed to speak English. It was like something straight out of a Hollywood teen sex flick or goofy romance movie or something.

We played our first game that afternoon and into night since it was slated for 8 hours. I didn’t really want to play it because the guy that wrote the game and I do not get along. I figured it would be all about player kill counts – as in how many players can the module kill. I soon discovered that the guy would also be our DM. Joy. While fair, he makes no secrets about killing characters. He’ll kiss your ass if he’s playing his character but if he’s DMing ‘all’s fair…’

I was very happy and surprised to say I enjoyed the game and the guy and I got along fine with no problems. He did end up killing one player and turning 3 more, including my character, to stone. But he had warned us plenty that it was an optional encounter and that our characters would be raised from the dead. My buddy was the only character to actually die. Getting turned to stone doesn’t really screw a character over like dying does.

We went to our room and I got the futon while the father and son, both adults, shared the queen bed. It was the last hotel room available when the father rented it. The pillows were god awful terrible. I hated them! I also froze my ass off! I shivered most of the night and the temperature for the room was set at 68 degrees!

I got a restless 5 hours of sleep at best when the alarm went off the next morning at 6:30am. The father goes to shower and there’s no hot water. So he’s in there for a long time because he had to wait for the water to heat up. It seems like forever before he gets out and then announces that the shower is not draining. Oy. The son goes in after some minutes of waiting. He has to wait for hot water. Eventually he comes out and announces the shower is not draining. I’m afraid to go near the bathroom by now. But with my hair in all directions and not wanting to stink I go in and see a couple of inches of water in the tub. I give it a few minutes hoping for luck but it doesn’t drain. I further notice, my buddy being the hairy bastard that he is has apparently shed or something. I’m seeing all these little inch long black hairs sticking to the tub like washed ashore corpses. And the cloudy water was hardly thrill inducing to look at. It was rather cringe inducing. Plotting and planning I try to concoct a plan of some sort to wash while staying out of the shower. I turn the water on while still clad in my blue underwear. I start soaking my head awkwardly leaning over the shower side. If I can just wash my hair and arm pits I think to myself…

Soon water is sliding down my body soaking my underwear and/or splashing off my body and all over making a soaking wet mess on the tile floor. I realize that my current actions simply won’t work per my intent. With horrid reluctance I put my foot into that brutally nasty shower water and shower as best I can as fast as I can. Still, I want to amputate my foot. Gah! I would never have believed a shower could feel so dirty.

Somehow surviving the showering experience I dried off and dressed and ate breakfast. Breakfast was a blueberry muffin, a donut, orange juice and milk all bought the previous day at the local grocery store because I’ve been to enough cons to know we otherwise don’t eat breakfast. With that I hustled off to a new day of games.

Here ends Part One of ConnCon 2008.