09 October 2006

The Earth Shakes

Yes, earth-shattering news on my end, and it's not just North Korea testing a nuke. Nothing I can talk about, either, so I suppose I'll shut the heck up now and go on with my day as usual.

Three days of work this week, prior to our trip. JD's next installment of the Liberty D&D game is tonight, otherwise I'd plan to be out writing. Andrew (one of the other players) and I helped JD and Keri move and assemble their "ultimate gaming table" last night. It's a bit like the HumVee of gaming set-ups. I guess we get to try it out tonight.

I reckon I'll write either tomorrow night or Wednesday night. I've got a lot of things that need to get done before we leave, so my work is going to have to be curtailed for the time being.

08 October 2006

Another Day

I'd forgotten how much I like autumn in California. Besides the seasonal transition from "winter" (a subjective term, especially here) to spring, the California fall is the best time of year. There's none of the heat (alternately dry and sticky) that plagues us during the summer time. The current weather report is cool, with a light breeze, somewhat hazy, with only a few clouds here and there.

Of course, the heat of summer bites, especially when living in an upstairs apartment with no central A/C. We've got the crummy window unit, which works, but it's not exactly efficient. There's no A/C in the bedrooms, though, so we end up soaking in our own sweat on summer nights with the windows open and between 2 and 5 fans blowing hot air on us from all directions.

Not exactly a romantic image, eh?

So, back to the present. I'm at the coffee shop, doing my warm-up before I dig in and start on a five hour session of key-tapping. I'm starting to doubt I'll be completely done by the time my self-imposed deadline rears its ugly head.

04 October 2006

All Over the Place

I'm all over the place tonight. Three posts in one day is some sort of record for me, at any rate. One of them emotional, the next pondering, and this one...well, this one is just a decompress of sorts.

I went writing tonight, as I mentioned I would be doing. I wore my "Vader was Framed" t-shirt, and one of the girls (Danielle) complimented me on it. I got a good deal of work done, thankfully. If I can keep up this sort of pace, I'll be drinking champagne on Sunday night. After I got done at the coffee shop, I had to put a few dollars into my gas tank, or I'd never make it to work tomorrow. I decided to spent $5 on a touchless car wash, as my Corsica was so embarassingly dirty that I often feel like sneaking out to it after work so that no one sees me driving away in it.

Halloween is coming. It's my wife's favorite holiday, though she has yet to break out her massive collection of decorations. I'll keep bothering her about it until she gets busy. Maybe this weekend she'll feel up to it. I like having those decorations up, as the majority of them are pretty neat. I'll have to get some pictures and post them once she's made the plunge.

There was a time, back when I was still living at home, that I used to run a horror scenario just about every single Halloween. At least, that's how it feels. I probably only ran three or four (or maybe even less than that, eh), but they were always a good time. I'm considering doing it again this year, but I have to get up the energy to get past the current project first. I've already got a possible scenario in mind, a very Delta Greenish sort of plot. I'd probably use the Call of Cthulhu system, just because it seems to work well. Or maybe I can brush off my d20 Call of Cthulhu rules and give them the old college try.

Anyway, I'm on my way to bed soon. I went into work late this morning, so I can't really afford to miss too much time. Maybe the gods will smile on me and I can win the lottery or something.

Probably "or something."

Gen Con SoCal?

One of the many things I'm currently mulling over is whether or not I'm going to attend Gen Con SoCal next month. Even if I did go, it'd be for one or two days instead of the usual four. As much as I'd like to support the largest gaming convention that's within 70 miles of my doorstep, I'm thinking that I'll be skipping it.

I may reconsider. For now, I'm thinking I'll spend the weekend prior to Thanksgiving at home.

In other news, I'll be heading out to the coffee shop in about an hour or so to continue my work in progress. With luck I can wrap it up this weekend, just in time to go to PA. Lord knows I won't have a scrap of time to myself over our family vacation to do any sort of writing. Not that a lack of work is a bad thing. This is, after all, a family vacation.

Forgive, Never Forget

Maybe you know who Charles Carl Roberts IV was. He's the fellow who took several Amish girls hostage in their one-room schoolhouse in Paradise, PA on Monday, and then ended up shooting each of them before taking his own miserable life.

When I read reports of this incident on Monday, I was appalled. How can any human being do something like that to ten innocent children? Given the description of the items he'd brought along with him, as well as his admission to molesting children in the past, one can only imagine what he had planned prior to the point that the police arrived.

So you've got the Amish now, and their faith teaches them that they have to forgive those who trespass against them, that they must not think evil of the man who took the lives of five of their children, and critically wounded five more, as they sat bound and helpless at his feet.

While I can respect the thought of forgivness in principle, my perspective on this crime is one buried in emotion. I am still deeply disturbed, and my heart aches for the victims and their families. It's these sorts of inequities that make me grind my teeth in frustration, and they happen every single day, all over the world.

Could I forgive Charles Roberts if my daughter was one of the dead or wounded? The simple answer is "no." Having killed himself, we'll probably never know why he did what he did, exactly, and we'll never, as a society, be able to punish him for it. Part of me feels that we're better off with the fellow cold and stiff, whether he took his own life or not.

I only wish he'd done us the favor of committing suicide before he'd taken the lives of five human beings, wounded five others, and caused depths of grief to their friends and family members that I hope I never experience.

01 October 2006

Brain Like a Fried Egg

That's what you get when you sit me in front of my laptop for five hours at a stretch. Right now, my head feels light and empty. It's not particularly euphoric. It's more disturbing than anything. That, combined with the fact that there is still a lot more work to be done, thousands more words to be written, lends to the overall feeling of despair.

Still, there's some feeling of accomplishment to be had. I've done a good deal of work this weekend, some of which I am pretty proud of. It's going to take several more hours of concerted effort on my part to complete what I've started. I only hope that the powers that be can look upon what I've generated and smile, knowing that I'm on the right course.

Gods, I hope I'm on the right course.

This is one of the first times I've written something (at length) from the perspective of someone who is so far removed from my own thought processes that it's similar, in some respects, to my years in high school drama. I was a method actor, and I immersed myself in the roles I played so much that I carried them around with me when I wasn't on stage. To hear my mother tell it, the two months leading up to my first performance as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol were some of the worst she'd ever spent with me. When she saw me on stage, she finally understood why.

I can't say much about the persona I've adopted for the current project. He's not like me in a lot of ways, some of them disturbing. He might be considered a good guy in the grand scheme of things, but I have trouble agreeing with that. There's more depth to him than that, even if it is to one extreme or the other.

Anyway, enough of that. I can't say anything about it, so I might as well shut up. I need to go home, finish what I've got so far, and send it off for review. Tomorrow, I get up at my normal hour and head in to work. Bother.