Headspace

It seems that one of my favourite roleplayin games is coming out of hibernation.

Red Brick has bought Holistic Design’s Fading Suns. The new development team didn’t sound bad either. AlexW, aka Kossack as line manager and Kathy Schad aka Enkidi as Art Director promises good things to come.
My initial reaction was that of horror, but after finding out who the responsible developers were, this turned into hopefull happiness. They have terribly big boots to fill after the original team, Bill Bridges, Andrew Greenberg, Chris Wiese and John Bridges, but knowing these guys, they might just pull it of and do well on it.

So, looking forward to spend money on more Fading Suns products, Church Fiefs, that Alex will be writing, Arcane Tech that was to my knowledge almost finished by Andrew Greenberg and others that they might come up with. Indeed the sun might be reborn.

I’ve started a few new campaigns, not entirely unusual in itself remembering that with wifey we start generally a new solo-campaign once in few months. This time it has however once again led to devising a new world.

I got my own horror(ish) worlds Mental and God Save the Queen and one of our new solo campaigns is set in the latter one. NG (pronounced Angie short of Angela) is set in the latter one. The world has developed on again, this campaign creating a new facet to the supernatural part of the world. Fun to play as unlike the previous character, NG has been keen to explore (and no this does not mean that the previous character wouldn’t have been fun to play).

The other new solo-campaign started as M asked if I ever have had ideas about devising a scifi-world of my own. As a matter of fact I had, but that was a long time ago. I decided to give it a try, turned off the self-critique and shame and used rip-offing as the main design-method. The end-result after the first week of gaming started to seem promising. Those who know the themes I like to explore in gaming are not likely surprised hearing that social structures especially in the context of power, meta-physics, historical tragedies and a protocol of fictive space empire are on the fore front. I’m especially happy with the functioning of the space travel (high ethers, mystic aspects of astral navigation, the term “high ethers”) in the setting. Other high points are the imperial ethics of power and protection that nicely ambiguate the white-black hats of the setting,
Birds (the Ancient Order of Peregrine Falcon, now divided into the order of migratory bird/Phoenix/gray bird and the Imperial Order of Crane Vigilant) and their philosophies, the messianic emperor…

…and finally there’s the FS group campaign. After long pondering I ended up with the core player group of three players, taking risk with a new player. In other words Anni and Jt joined me and M on this. Character preparation worked nice. Anni had a few solo games to prepare the character and ended up with a thoroughly in-game indoctrinated military chick. Unfortunately I didn’t have similar chances with other characters, but the players’ capabilities seem(ed) to smooth things over a lot M and Jt playing their characters (created on the spot) out beautifully.

The campaign in itself is something I’ve been thinking for a year or two and the idea has evolved over the time quite a lot. The basic idea at this point is to have a group that’s studying in the Jakovian agency’s “academy” to develop the essential capabilities of intelligence officers. Of course the characters come from most diversified backgrounds. One has a few years of officer candidate school in special services field branch (heavy indoctrination, military viewpoint), other an upbringing as administration oriented householder and the third a boyarina with a past and an amnesia.

There’s also an option of using guest-players in the campaign. Interested players are about, nice people too at that (rr¹, I of I&C, Spidey…). As time permits I’m playing a solo with rr² to develop him a character to play with and gaming style to fit the campaign. A first session of this is behind, took a full day, was pretty much fun and needs to be continued. The character was left in train in frozen wastes of Malignatius on his way towards a glorious future, although his travel companion seemed to lack faith towards the said future. If this act will pull together and the introductions with main troupe work well, the visits from this fella might be balancing to the group. Of others it might be too early to tell, but the logistics of fitting people and timetables might prove to be impossible obstacles, but maybe we’ll get there.

It was funny to note that I really do get stage-fright about new players. I “test drove/played” Jt in an impromptu game last con, but still the first session of the campaign was a bit nervous on my part. Hope it gets better while we get on, otherwise the game quality is going to be lacking from my part of it. Playing with new people is a bit like jumping to the lake, first one needs to gather the required courage and jump in, next there is a need to find the flow to go with so that no sinking occurs. If the flow is found, the game will glide along nicely pretty much making itself if not, well then…

Eli katsaus kaikkeen siihen mistä olisi oikeastaan pitänyt kirjoittaa jo hyvän aikaa sitten.

Kävimme pohjoisessa päin oleilemassa appivanhemmilla ja osallistumassa pieneen SCA-tapahtumaan. Ennakkokäsitys tapahtumasta ei ollut kauhean hyvä, mutta osoittautui onneksi täysin vääräksi. Tapahtuma oli nimittäin harvinaisen hyvä ja feast vielä odotettuakin parempi. Ennakoitu aikataulu, joka tuntui hyvin vaikealta muuttui paikan päällä todella toimivaksi ja meidän lisäksemme muillakin tuntui olevan hauskaa.

Melko odottamaton veto tapahtumassa oli feastin pää- ja jälkiruokien väliin sijoitettu tauko, jonka kohdalla mentiin vanhan musiikin konserttiin. Konsertti olikin sitten jotain sanoin kuvaamatonta (yritän silti ). Alkuun paikalle käveli kaveri, joka lauloi Laudan, 1300-luvun ylistyksen joka oli tuttavuutena jotain käsittämättömän upeaa. Laulussa kuului välimerellisiä vaikutteita ja Veikko Kiiver paitsi omasi häkellyttävän äänialan, osasi totisesti koristella lauluaan hyvin inspiroituneella tavalla. Capella pro Vocale jatkoi sitten tästä huomattavalla osalla Palestrinan messua ja sointi oli sanalla sanottuna jumalainen. Oli jotenkin huvittavaa, että konserttiin oli otettu mukaan Bachia viola da gamballa ja sitten kamarimusiikkia 1700-luvulta, jälkimmäinen toden näköisesti siksi, että esiintyjinä oli konsertin järjestäjän oma oppilas-yhtye. Ensimmäisessä häiritsi lähinnä se, että ao. ilta ei tainnut olla soittajan parhaita. Kitaran teknisen puolen kautta tulkittuna, virheitä tuntui olevan aika paljon ja tekniikka ei vaikuttanut aivan riittävältä. Nopeammassa osassa musiikkia tämä olikin sitten jo varmaa. 1700-luvun fagottimusa, oli hyvin esitettyä, hauskaa ja täysin kontekstiin sopimatonta, mutta kevensi mukavasti musiikillisesti aika raskasta kokonaisuutta.

Perheaika pohjoisessa oli mukavaa, meille esiteltiin appivanhempien rotary-proggis, liikennepuisto ja appiukon masiinaa räpellettiin joukolla. Ehkä siinä jotain saatiin aikaiseksi. Tässä on ihan mukava odotella tulevia 85-päiviä, kun taas mennään.

Sunnuntaiposliinit, eli ne viehättävämmät kahviastiastot, joita otetaan esiin ja käyttöön juhlistamaan tilaisuuksia silloin tällöin, värittivät sitten maanantaitamme. Pysähdyimme kotimatkalla Kokkolassa tervehtimään Annia ja Liniä, suunitellen pikaista poikkeamaa. Neideillä on varsin upea luukku käytössään, siinä on jotain menneiden aikojen viehätystä jo itsessään ja uskomattoman paljon tilaa. Persoonallinen sisustus sitten todellakin tuo tuosta parhaat puolet esiin. Tuo nimenomainen päivä, talviloman ensimmäinen maanantai oli kuulemma käytetty siivoamiseen ja kuten saimme huomata leipomiseen. Tuoreet laskiaispullat, Linin kauniit pyhäastiat ja neitien loistava seura piristivät kummasti matkapäivää. Lyhyeksi suuniteltu stoppimme venyikin sitten jossain määrin pidemmäksi.

Kotona oltiin aika myöhään, vaikkakin ihan kohtuullisen ajoissa.

Luonnollisesti tuollakin reissulla ajomatkat käytettiin pelaten. Jezebel taisi olla siinä vaiheessa vielä erityisesti päällä, vaikka en nyt mene asiasta valalle asti. Jezebelissä on räiskynyt ja sekä hahmo että maailma ovat onnistuneet jälleen kerran kehittymään eteenpäin. Kirkolliset aspektit keskeisessä proggistelussa ovat viime aikoina nostaneet päätään, eikä romatiikkaakaan ole ilmeisesti päässyt liikaa puuttumaan.

Muuten olemmekin sitten keskittyneet Clarityyn, joka on peleissä hauska uusi tuttavuus. Clarityn lähtölaukauksesta M kirjoitteli ropeblogiimme varsin edustavan entryn, pitäisi varmaan ottaa itseään niskasta kiinni ja tehdä jatkosta oma entry. Clarity on tarjonnut hienon mahdollisuuden tarkastella asioita uudesta näkökulmasta. Toimiva Hawkwood hahmo on mukava tuttavuus.

Roolipelirintamalla meillä oli lisäksi intensiivinen peliviikonloppu Annin vieraillessa taas meilläpäin. Koska täälläpäin kirmasi muuan tähtisusi, lykkäsimme pelin alkua hieman ja olimme sosiaalisia porukalla. Pikku-hukan kanssa heitettiin huonoa läppää yhteiskunnasta ja roolipeleistä. Oli hauska jakaa vieraan inspiroitunut innostus edistyvästä proggiksestaan. Tuollaiset ovat aina hyviä hetkiä. Kun peliin sitten päästiin kiinni, ei siitä tahtonut tulla loppua laisinkaan. Aamun pienten tuntien jälkeen unta palloon, mutta herätessämme Mn kanssa pelin jatkaminen tuntui ns. hyvältä idikseltä, ensimmäisen setin jälkeen käydessäni aamusavuilla heräsi Anni, jonka ilme oli näkemisen arvoinen, kun häneltä kysyttiin huvittaisiko tuota peliä vielä jatkaakkin. Jatkoimme suurimman osan sunnuntaita, sitten päätimme jättää tuleville tapahtumille niiden arvoisen tilan ja lykätä ne seuravaan pelikertaan. Tuostakin voisi pitää tehdä ropeblogiin tarvittavat muistiinpanot.

Roolipelien kanssa on siis viimeaikoina ollut aivan tuhottoman inspautunut olo, olisikohan tuokin jotain kevään vaikutusta.

It has been busy.

First of all, there’s big things happening in the Finnish scene as we’re getting a new magazine. Roolipelaaja is a commercial project and I personally have high hopes considering it, maybe finally we get something like the good auld Arcane, a UK-RPG-magazine of good editorial quality, that I’ve been missing for quite a while. It looks promising as the mag is headed by none other than Mikki who is the best possible choise for editor I can think of. Of other people involved at least Merten who I know also happens to have what I consider the right approach both in writing and thought when it comes to RPGs.

Fading Suns forums are down… unpleasant as there for a change were a couple of rather inspiring threads going on. Ok, mainly the movie casting thing as the latest thread on Decadoses seems to have died already. Usually I tend to look at the known worlds rather differently than others, although there are couple of people to whom it would be great run some Dugiverse. Lux is the first that comes to mind and some Germans might get my Decadoses pretty well too.

Dugiverse of Fading Suns is doing rather well too. Mainly because I’ve been playing a lot and as I whip the ideas up while playing this activity does good to the gaming world. M already blogged that we’ve returned to Jez, my favourite campaign. Jez started out as an attempt to get M to believe that playing military characters might be fun. As a way of doing this we started the game with character aged fifteen entering an Officer Candidate School, North of Ottokar’s Boon. A Decados world where any householder level duties (administration, civil services, Corps Diplomatique, Commissions in armed services) pretty much required attending such an institution. Of course it didn’t work out as I planned and after we were through playing the five years of student life, the character was marked and destined for Jakovian agency and was promptly shipped to Severus. Dugiverse Agency is much more structured than the one outlined in the canon material so the thing works so, that people accepted to become intelligence officers study in Jakovian academies on various programmes. Jez spent five years in Jakovgrad due to having being picked out as having potential of becoming a sort of an heir to a very prominent magistrate, Boyar Grigori (Sort of a Mr.Smith name in Decados Hegemony of Dugiverse) aka Mirrorman. Magistrates operate outside the normal structures of the agency as trouble shooters that answer directly to the agency’s head, so it was quite natural for Jez to be required to learn a lot and then they decided that she had aptitude for the Art of Agony…

Through various phases and adventures Jezebel has become sort of a Monster PC of epic proportions. Her life we have played out for a worth of some twenty odd years or a bit more and she is still growing and developing. For a time motherhood suited her, she is delving deep in ancient mysteries, empire spanning cloak and dagger games and of course personal affairs. Most rewarding. Jez as a game and character seems to inspire me more than any of the other games we’ve done and these others have been good as well. Jez’s current multi-layered schemes and mysteries seems to keep us rather well entertained.

Lately we’ve taken an other try on Thana. There’s a new world shaping up, new perspective new kind of views on the cultures already there. Callista is surely a game that we will be returning to. Major NPC’s include an Ex-Sword of Lextiys Decados Baroness, a cabal of psychic Imperial Eye spec.ops, Migtht lords, a charming Mantis leagues assassin and so forth. The interpersonal relationships are very intresting and there is potential for much gaming entertainment in them.

Last weekend we also played our current FS-Group-Campaign. About a year back, after considerable effort on Anni’s part I gave in and decided to give a try to a group thingy. Besides this all of our games have been 1 on 1, but now we accepted somebody new. The setting started as a white castle under green roofs hosting a number of very gifted (cough psi) young people being raised to take their part as Decados nobles. Anni’s character started there, a Sixteen year old, too smart for her own good, quite gifted and blessed with the best friend a girl good wish for, a super-psi-cannon-geek with wit and a good sense of humor. Upbringing might be harsh, but so it usually is with the Decados noble youth as anyone who had read her Marius the Mantis Knight novels would know.

Same time Dariya Decados, a very capable young woman a knight some would say was busy not only in her duties towards her liege a certain baron, but in trying to find out what an earth had happened to her disowned sister (Disowned after having married a Juandaastas noble-obun pair as their concubine) and their little baby girl all assumed dead in an attack to their home and fire that ensued. She had searched a lot, gotten disappointed in the her late sister’s family by “marriage”, contacted all sorts of seedy elements, when she finally found out that the girl had not died, but was held by a certain boyar Ivanoff in a white castle under the green roofs for light knows what hideous purpose. Dariya rushed to the site, schemed her way in as a new fencing instructor for the youths and found out that things were actually worse than she had thought. Not that she would have understood the technosophical breeding program she witnessed or truly understood the Jakovian/genetech operations’s 101 fun and gruesome things to do with young psychers, but she knew that the girl would have to be rescued and from here the game kicked in.

It has been a treat to play/watch the interpersonal relations of these two young women, beutifully potrayed by M and Anni. The game was a running game for a long time, but it has reshaped itself over and over again. It has texture of its own in the growth and seeking of the ladies. Lara’s (Anni’s character) coming to terms with what she is, what the world for real is like and how it receives her and Dasha’s (M) growing, getting to actually know her house and proceeding on her road of chivalry. Their relationships with each other as well as the menagerie of NPCs thrown at their path.

Last sunday’s game introduced a new location, new schemes and new npcs tha played out great. The lame devil of Chobor Chemsky, proved an intresting boyar reinforcing Dasha’s position and selfimage of a knight. Micah, who has been a screaming dervish and now Lara’s “Yoda” was fun play, meek seeming but absolute. There’s certain rustic dark jedi appeal there. Stenka…

My favourite things that I was able to throw at them were Micah and Stenka Razin’s spurs at Dasha. You see, Dasha was knighted to her own astonishment and Lara’s delight, but never received the tokens. Now she got them from the new “liege”. Stenka Razin, Kossack captain knighted as a few surviving heroes of the Siege of Jericho had used them, now they’re Dasha’s and she was glowing.

Both wrote about the game in their blogs, feel free to check them out
This didn’t turn out as coherent as I had hoped for, but more later. As a last item I found great image material for gaming . Looks like some npcs are finally getting faces.

What a week it was. It has been somewhat hectic with christmas coming and work hasn’t been exactly quiet either. But before geting to what has been going on, I did a webtest. Those who know me from a longer time might understand the appeal this had for me

You Are Somewhat Machiavellian

You’re not going to mow over everyone to get ahead…
But you’re also powerful enough to make things happen for yourself.
You understand how the world works, even when it’s an ugly place.
You just don’t get ugly yourself - unless you have to!

How Machiavellian Are You?

Also as my beloved had wanted to check what kind of a movie her life might be, I wanted to see, if we’re in the same flick, and sure enough

The Movie Of Your Life Is A Cult Classic

Quirky, offbeat, and even a little campy - your life appeals to a select few.
But if someone’s obsessed with you, look out! Your fans are downright freaky.

Your best movie matches: Office Space, Showgirls, The Big Lebowski

If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?

Last week in general wasn’t too good, some social problems escalating and lashing back to my face on free time and work being unusually challenging in worktime.

However it seems that I’m taking a rather intresting assignment in the hobbyfield sharing a thing with P. This means a lot of work navigating my way, but that seems to be intresting work this time and should prove very gratifying indeed. Didn’t exactly expect it to gravitate to this when we spoke of it last summer. So a positive surprise there.

Had an SCA event for the weekend that proved to be quite fun. It was good to see some people who I haven’t seen for a while (a long while when it comes to cousin F, could have used a longer time with you pal, but that’s how it goes I guess) and having time for some rather good chats with them. It also seems that there are people who I’m getting to know about this time, which was also welcome and a nice thing. Something of a post-event low has struck, silly how SCA usually leaves somewhat unpleasant taste to mouth and nagging feelings that are hard to pinpoint to issues (I’d guess this has been so, most of the time I’ve been to the hobby my SCA-generation celebrating the decade of hobbying this year been thinking about the issues surfaced over the years), probably passes soon. We drove home in the sat-sun night, as it was somewhat chilly at the site to sleep and flu wasn’t particularily desired at this point.

As we were driving by ourselves the drive there provided us with good time with the latest mental campaign we’re been playing. Roleplaying really is a nice pastime for driving and something I very much enjoy doing. Lately there’s been some trouble with the flow of the games. As it is by improvisation 9x% that I spin the stories the feeling of inspiredness and the easygoingness of the game are of terrible importance. This one has an extremely good flow of the story.

Last week also offered a chanse to finnish the latest Potter, surprising and a …nice story I guess. Didn’t exactly like it as much as some of the earlier ones even though it still is brilliantly written. Looking forward to reading the next one, nevertheless. To be honest. I’m quite eager to get my paws on it.

But finaly it’s here So what happened during the last week…

Work is hectic and I find it very difficult to rip myself from the code to write here, even if I’ve been pondering things to say in here. That’s coder’s life for one, on my free days I was also busy.
As the work ended last week, I headed to Fantasiapelit 20th anniversary sales, which was a very nice thing to look forward to after a hard day’s work.

I almost bought n things, fortunately I was able to keep my senses, so I only bought one book (Gurps Russia, from M’s pile so that she didn’t have to leave anything essential in the store and besides I think this was more fun for me) This is a very good sourcebook about medieval Russia, can heartily recommend it. Because this was the anniversary sale, we got pressies. Two White Dwarf backissues that very nicely complemented the gaming stuff of late as M’s one included Warhammer Armies: Kislev (ie. WH Russia) and mine had large article on the whichhunter inquisitors of WH40K.

Corpse Bride was a bit of a disapointmen, it built up tensions it couldn’t resolve. I won’t say more about it now as that would be a spoiler, but this was the problem. Character’s were good and the animation excellent. Gues I’d give it a C for it’s merits and no higher for letting me down.

On the free days I continued the work on the SCA-thing I’m currently workin on and pondered the big-G on thursday and then went truly on leisure mood as we played the Sol-Campaing with M. Beautiful, soulfull gaming that had intensive emotional moments. Chingon inspired, Hazat-realm based, make an inquisitor out of an 14 year old Amalthean Ward, seems to work rather nicely. On thursday I also got a start on a baking project which was fun and… erm intresting. The key in this particular goodness was to let the dough rest in cold at least one hour, several times.

On Friday, I got the Christmass craftsproject on the go, after few failed attempts that made me seriously consider leaving it as impossible, I managed to make significant progress on the thing, before I went to pick Anni up from the trainstation. Rest of friday was spent chatting, eating at Pancho’s and after that seeing Potter. H.Potter movies seem to be dangerously inspiring for RPG, in this one it was the obvious similarities btw. Durmstrang and Dugiverse-young-Decados-in-certain-places dressstyle. Guess, that if I hadn’t have certain things planned, I’d come up with them after the movie.

On friday I also heard that an old friend had achieved, so congratulations hope you had fun celebrating it, though I still find it extremely difficult that you’ve taken liking in that stuff.

After the movie, I finished my baking project, by making the pie-filling. M and Anni got to lick the ladles and kettle, seemed to work for them .It is beautifull to look M have treats, my kitty she is…

Saturday, gave a name for the baking project. On first tasting it was obvious that this was the dreaded Suicide by chocolate or blissfull british departure pie. Got rid of some of it, by dumping nearly a quarter to M & G and another large part dedicated for M to take for eating with her gaming crew on sunday. This set, having the car ready for her to take next day we set to our main event, the Dasha and Lara FS-game, which went pretty damn well imho. The events unfolded in such a way that they had to make a hasty departure (with lots of angsty feelings *evil grin*), but before that the full festivities of Dasha’s accolade were played and it worked for the players . On they way they met brother/ father Ilya, a penitent priest who had made a night’s hike through Severan jungle in order to catch up with them… and was a nice jovial, guy.

Lot’s of good discussion btw. the player characters, lots of good mood moments and we played till early sunday. So late that they almost managed to forget they experience points, not quite, but it seemed close during the debrief.

On sunday the gaming continued as we started Anni’s new character. The intention is to play this as a solo for a good while and then join it with a hopefully realising group campaign with my Mansesterian gaming group nbr. 1 if possible. The character wast started out at age 15 and works a double role of testing a gaming consept developed with M, ie. can this style of start them young consept work in larger context than our own solo-style. Anni’s character turned out really well and first game produced already couple of good NPCs and some memorable one liners. Maybe I should get a page for my campaigns, gaming constructs and NPCs with quotations…

Long game and after Anni left on sunday I ran one more Sol-game for M. One might have thought that a weekend like this would have depleted all of my lately rather limited energy reserves, but quite the opposite was true. I started this monday feeling energetic and happy to get back to work. Today I’ve gotten things done so much that the last missing detail irritates rather badly. Have to get it done.

Before that one more thought on gaming, those who play with their SOs take not. Solo playing is good withe SOs, particularily good in this cold time of year, when engaged in snugling under the covers.

Life is good.

Not so sure about this webtest. I’ve been running a couple of rpg-chronicles involving angels and this guy has always been one of my favourites and here they tell me he nags…!? Wtf? Nagging archangel, great lord of bitching…

Anyway there’s a point to this result, now I just have to strive and keep consentration away from the angel-games, have a new chronicle will consentrate on that.

Rafael. You’re most like the ArchAngel of Healing.
You want people to shape up, and you nag. But
you mean well, and you’re well loved despite
it. Or because of it. You bring the donuts
even as you tell people to eat more veggies.

Which ArchAngel are you most like?
brought to you by Quizilla

Of course changing by one’s answers with only one little tweak produce different results in this kind of quizes and I can just as easily get labeled something a bit different…

Lucifer. The most misunderstood of all the
ArchAngels, you’re most like the ArchAngel of
Light. You’ve seen the darkside and have opted
for something better. You need better press,
though chances are no one will really
understand your motives.

Which ArchAngel are you most like?
brought to you by Quizilla

Guess they’re both just as accurate and just as irrelevant (I like the second one bettter)

But necessary. Weekend was mostly spent on homeimprovement ie. doing a major clean-up operation including some bulldozing for living space, washing dishes, scrubbing the stove and the oven… Yeah, I do think it was a major one. In addition got more shelfspace, which will become necessary and run out sooner than we thought…

Fortunately we also found time to watch the first part of Children of Dune miniseries, which was very good and produced more Fading Suns gaming, yet another campaign placed in that world. Looks kinda good. M wanted to have an inquisitor game and me being me, I started it off before the actual events. Her character being raised in Amalthean mission. The order of the camapaing will be the big change, her becoming the inquisitor and then the storyline somewhat deviced. Her character Soledad, Sol seems extremely good for the purpose as I think a compassionate inquistior will be an intresting one to center the campaign around. This one has true possibilities.

I’m using recycled villains from our somewhat shortlived spaghetti-western-squire campaign. Seems working already as tried in the prelude. Music for this is, Morricone, Chingon and Hildegard von Bingen… talkabout a soundtrack. This is a somewhat novel campaing in other things as well, as unlike the usual approach I’ve had, this one’s located started in Hazat-space, a rare incidence as I 9x% of time favour Decados-space. Time will tell how it goes, but the beginning looks good and it has chanses of becoming an epic.

The end of the last week was spent mainly in two activities. After the 10h day on wendsday I took some much needed rest on thursday by idling with Xbox’s Whiplash. A rather twisted game. I thought about G, but got more work done on the Aarnimetsä book of ceremonies. Looks like that one might get finished sometimes during the spring-season. Mostly it is combining work, composing a whole out of materials from different sources, tweaking texts but looks like there will be some more writing before it is allfinished. Time will tell. Making one’s own tools is if not fun then at least very rewarding.

Had an extremely pleasant weekend. The issues that felt very pressing seem to have dissolved, we managed to settle them, together. Life is at it should be. So there.

We spent the weekend up north, with M’s family. Apr. six hour’s drive is a trying experience, but it is much more manageable if well spent, ie. taking it as a quality time for two, roleplaying most of it (of course I consentrate on driving, I can do both ) Today I’m tired but the depressiveness of last week gone, that too feels good. The time there was great. It was good to see this side of the family, easy leisurely time, chatting slowly and of course gorging on the delicasies that V kept laying out before us. On the father’s day, by some weird twist f fate I ended up making the coffee. Result was intresting, as I failed to notice that their measuring spoon wasn’t the standard issue, but a double. Well I know it now, and the coffee wasn’t that bad if you drank it my way, ie. with plenty of milk and sugar.

Some other family things too. As those who read M’s already know we took the wedding gift espresso-maker out and put it to good use. It was a true family effort we wondered around the coffee-shelf together, she read the manual and I hacked the first round, she made the second and the next day after more consultation with the manual, it was my turn again. The stuff produced is gorgeous, true European art. Sure there is a thing to the Japanese tea-ceremony, but the espresso, making a perfect cup of this drink of gods’ is every bit as much zen and the end-result, imho superb. We enjoyed the drinks together, consentrating on the smooth taste, the cremá on the surface, creaminess of the milky substance…

Shared bliss, nice comparison, as that is what special moments with one’s loved one are, at least in our family, especially about. Juho, I know you sooner or later end up reading this, thank you again for the lovely gift. Hope the description was revealing enough to you

In the weekend we also visited the just opened market with M’s mum. The idea was to shop for some necessary items for her, but we ended up buying quite a lot for ourselves too. How could we have helped it with the offers they had to celebrate the opening of the store. I say that we mostly got things needed, and they were all bargains.

We now have
- a new water-heater, much needed as the old one had developed a leak.
- I have good winter gloves, much needed because I didn’t have such things, only a bad circulation in the extremities.
- Flannel shirts for both of us, nice looking soft shirts.
- Children of Dune, DVD. This wasn’t necessary but it was cheap and came highly recommended.
- We both have portable CD/MP3 players. These were so cheap that it would have been a crime to walk past them.
-We didn’t end up buying a new TV there (even if we had noticed the need), but decided to give the matter more thorough thought and examination before making a decision. M’s parents gave us one of their old TV’s (newer and obviously much better than what we had) so this matter quite surprisingly solved it self.

Sometimes being a wee bit materialistic can be quite exhilarating.

We roleplayed a lot during the weekend (two long driving sessions help in that) and the Cyber-Tampere is progressing nicely. As I no doubt have mentioned here, the game is a re-heated one, a new spree on an old campaing that has been in ice. I had next to no notes of the old games (Which is in fact quite a lot for me…*groan*), neither of us remembered the old games in very much details, so we had a problem. The solution proved a very good one as the game is moving on again. It may have been a bit clichéid as I opted for, “You awake in a strange alley, your hair and clothes have soaked in the puddle you’re lying in. The things you do remember are…” and there weren’t many. No it’s gatherring momentum and speed. The character’s new version is functioning beautifuly… I heartly recommend the amnesia route, to all of-the-cuff-gms who have a tendency to forget details.

So this is it for now, I’ll return to fixing bugs in the code,…smiling.