My girlfriend is wonderful. <3 <3 <3 Congrats on her new job.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Looking back, I realized, this has been the happiest, most fulfilling, most victorious year in the past few decades for me. Thankful for love, my kids, friends (past, present, romantic and platonic), and happiness.


The universe has been talking to me. SO glad I managed to listen last year.

This weekend we are all going to make gingerbread skeletons! Maybe we should get creative and include other types of monsters... Like gingerbread cyclops seems easy and gingerbread mummy would be pretty easy. I will have to consult my co-chefs.

It is all very exciting!

Annemarie and I like it when it gets kind of cold because I have a fireplace. :)

I like to hold hands when we walk
I'm not averse to pillow talk
But I prefer a private joke
The memory it evokes
Because it's our punch line

That film we saw from the front row
It means so much to us alone
I love the wrinkled brow
Of anyone else around
Because it's our punch line

And when we're out and you say
"It would appear"
We love and laugh no one else hears
No one at all

And when we're out then we say
"It would appear"
We laugh and laugh no one else hears
No one at all

If you want to be a romantic fool
You don't have to say I love you
Just say what's in your heart
Non-sequiter or not
And without even trying
Find your punch line

Won't you come away with me?
and begin something we can't understand...
I'm as lonely as the Irish Sea-
I'm as willing as the sand.

Could it be so wrong, so wrong?
But don't cry baby,
Please don't cry baby
I'll be tender til the day I die.

This love I have for you
is terrible and true
how this sheltered loveless life
fades into

...the weakest shade of blue

Note to self:

1985 was TWENTY FOUR YEARS AGO.

Needless to say, my motivation is low today.

The government entity I work for is grossly over budget (big surprise) and they are going to try and find the money by cutting personnel-- a large group of personnel. Including my entire team. So - unlike a supervillian, they didn't tell me just before they did it. They informed me that it had already happened a few days prior.

So .. as of now I am still employed, but only barely. The commercial entity I contract through is trying to figure out what to do with me (and everyone else that was cut). There is no position left for waht I want to do, although I might be able to get into another position. (This confuses me, because at the same time as we are shrinking, other areas are still growing? That makes no sense...)

On top of that, I have a large tax bill, because I am getting divorced this year, and I also had to replace the brakes and rotors in my 7 year old vehicle. (Because I didn't want to die..) I used the savings to do that, already.
I already live in a 1 BR apartment by myself so I think I am pretty much getting the best deal I could in this area, already.

Recently, I was on a business trip to San Antonio (representing my organization that is being decimated, I guess), and while I was there, the lady who sponsored my visit subtly asked for a resume.

I could go to San Antonio.

I could at least send my resume.

People with clearances and experience like mine are hard to come by, especially when you start getting out of the beltway type area.

Hmm.

The new improved version of my livejournal

Sheena the Wanton

The minotaur I use for Ionos (it's suposed to be a female minotaur with a mace, but whatever).


Tables and chairs made from sculpey (they have pennies for bases)


Some big bat demon.

Handsome Boy Modeling School is my new fav'rit.

I liked 3E fine.

It was frustrating to DM at the extreme low end (PCs were less survivable, and yet a lot of effort goes into building one) and the high end of the game (save-or-die effects were rampant), and things like grapples and monster stat blocks were just a bit nutsy for a DM to manage, but I managed the hell out of them. I like designing stuff, and I liked how D&D3 worked in nearly all other aspects. I liked the skill system introduced in D&D3, and the only thing I decided later that I didnt like was there were too many skill points to assign every level. So it's like you put a point here, and a point there, and half point there.. what? Yeah, a half point.

I actually kinda like extrapolating builds out to whatever level and multiclassing and a lot of stuff that went away. Some people hate that, but I liked it. I could never manage to extrapolate my multiclass ideas out beyond a few levels because I kept changing my mind. I had my Tiefling Bard I hoped to one day convert to a Shadowdancer. But I kept thinking "just one more level of fighter.. and I can add in a neat feat combo.."

So I never quite got Emeth to Shadowdancer, but I did multiclass the hell out of that bard. He's still one of my favorite characters.

My personal D&D philosophy has always been to turn all the options on and allow everything. I've DM'd for kobold barbarians, necropolitan clerics, elan psions, winged PCs, gnoll marshalls, etc. I don't care. Bring your character, and I will DM. Not everyone shares this philosophy. In fact, in my area, hardly anyone shared it.

I never got to play the goblin or mongrelman binder I had my heart set on. Most DMs in my immediate groups just disallowed any kind of interesting options. Tome of Magic? Out. non standard races or classes? out. vampiric bloodline? out.

In one campaign, I played an interesting (to me, anyhow) sorcerer build based around illusions and using a scimitar. It wasn't a particular effective character, but to me, I had this sort of Alladin-esque sorcerer running around "summoning" illusionary dragons or casting an illusion of himself fighting, while he went invisible.. disguising myself with my turban of many faces .. or hurling my scimitar with the "whirling blade" spell. Unfortunately, I had to then prove to one of the other players that my character was "useful" because I didn't bother with magic missiles or fireballs. That ended up very frustrating, and I eventually quit that campaign for other reasons.

So I liked 3rd Edition, and played it plenty. But I'm officially running 4th Edition right now. I seem to be DMing 4E between 1 and 3 times a week. Mostly this is LFR, but I'm getting ready to launch a real campaign again soon.

As soon as DDXP is over with...

Found my camera cable this morning. Pictures should be up soon...

Lots O' Gaming stuff. Here's a post about me joining the 52 Miniatures challenge.

First- Need to get my camera cable found-- I have the camera. I decided to join the Mearls/Bisbee 52-miniatures-in-52-weeks challenge. I still need to send the email out.. Getting back into metal was a tough decision: plastic is just so easy to deal with, and I don't care if it gets bumped around or lost. My metal stuff (vice plastic- which I have a ton of thanks to friends who buy by the case) is in sad shape, and I (like most miniature painters) buy more stuff than I ever get around to painting. But that also means I had a backlog of unpainted metal miniatures (mostly Reaper figures) that dates back like 8 years. So all I had to pay for was paint, and I am not stupid this time: I bought crappy acrylic craft paint at Michael's. It ranges between 54 cents to 94cents a color, and comes in a bottle about twice the size of the hobby paint (that costs about 4x as much).

Thus the 52 miniatures in 52 weeks challenge.

But anyhow, I have so far painted in January (not yet photographed)

* my tiefling rogue, Sheena (Reaper hellborn rogue). This is my main LFR character as well.
* a female halfling w/sword (Reaper)
* A spear-wielding warlock character from the old City of the Spider Queen boxed set.
* A Reaper tomb-bat.. kind of an oversized humanoid batwinged guy.
* A minotaur (a Reaper "Beast Man" that was meant to be a ram-headed figure that I made look minotaurish.

I'm almost done with a female elf warrior. I also sculpy-ied up some tables, chairs, a boat, a magical pylon/door thingy, and a wooden platform that can serve as either a wall, ramp, or bridge type deal. Terrain is kinda what makes battles memorable.

I have two more halflings and two more elven females I haven't primed yet, and a whole caseload of old metal minis that never got painted.

I'm nowhere near as good as some of the guys posting their pictures over on the 52-weeks blog, but they are coming out pretty good. I'm going for "tabletop quality"- stuff that is going to get used and tossed around a bit, not really for display. My style is very focused on drybrushing and highlighting the details already on the figure rather than on customizing anything.

Anything involving kicking a monsters ass I am pretty much in favor of.

http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2009/01/01/UPI_NewsTrack_Quirks_in_the_News/UPI-30861230847200/

Man in Thor costume scares off burglar

EDINBURGH, Scotland, Jan. 1 (UPI) -- A man who dressed as the Norse god Thor for a costume party in Scotland said he returned home and scared off a burglar who had entered his house.

Torvald Alexander, 38, a construction firm manager who stands at 6 feet tall, said he ran after the burglar with his red cape and silver-winged helmet still in place, making for an intimidating sight, The Daily Telegraph reported Thursday.

"As soon as he saw me his eyes went wide with terror," Alexander said of the burglar. "He looked like he had had a few drinks and decided to do a late night break in, but he hadn't counted on the God of Thunder living here."

"I had just got back from a fancy dress New Year's party and because I have a Norwegian name I decided to go as Thor," he said.

Alexander said the burglar did not have time to steal anything from the house and fled from a ground floor window without his shoes. He said the shoes will be turned over to police to help them attempt to identify a suspect.

I made this plant-dude up last night.