Rick's Journal

Nutshell version, awesome weekend but utterly exhausting.

( All sorts of fun things under the cut )

So for all of you who have Columbus Day off, boy, do I envy you.  I would have loved nothing more than to sleep in today, maybe even until 7:00 or 8:00.  Sooooo tired.  Oh well, Mirror, Mirror is coming up this weekend.  Maybe I'll catch up on my sleep then.

I have to admit that putting Sasha down on Friday afternoon put a damper on my entire weekend.  Even when I was playing the Headmaster, I burst out in tears a couple of times.  Good thing I have understanding friends.

Jyn came up Friday night and did a stay over with her kitty on her way up to MA.  She's just a wonderful person to talk to and we stayed up until 1:00 (after promising Monique I'd be in bed by midnight) talking about a great many different things.  The fascinating part was how much of it was LARP related but not war storying, but so much deeper things like the psychology behind some of the things that happen at LARPs and how we react to them.  It was a great night to have a friend keeping my mind off other things.

7:00 Saturday morning came a lot earlier than I would have liked but Monique and I had to get moving for me to go to our weekly weigh-in with her and get her back home on time for me to leave on time to meet people for lunch before the 7V one day.  I gained two tenths of a pound this week.  :-(  Oh well, you can't keep losing forever I guess.  I'll make up for it next weekend.

I picked up Jack/Richard Horton on the way and we got to the DQ at exactly the arranged meeting time.  Company was fantastic.  Lunch was good.  Again, having friends around was an extremely good thing.

So, 7V, yeah, first thing I see on my way to park the car is this adorable, grey, tiger tabby cat in the driveway that looked so much like Sasha that I lost it... again.  *sigh*  This is a recurring theme through the day because this awesome, loving kitty was around throughout the event all day.  One of my friends even picked her up during the event IG right in front of me.  There were people wondering why the Headmaster was crying.  People in the know did some quiet explaining.to those not in the know.  To those who felt guilty, don't.  I'd rather have seen that sweet little kitty get some lovin' than not just because of me.

On the other hand, the majority of the day was a great deal of fun.  The RP was fabulous, I didn't die of heat as I feared and I got to spend some time with PCs that I rarely ever did during the campaign (Gavin, Idriante (perhaps some of the best RP of the day), Alera and Calita).  Dream interpretation and Vortican mentality were two topics that were just a blast to talk about.  Compassion Ball hit me with some drastic news at the most inopportune time and looked so miserable doing it.  Kate was pretty cool too; all but pushed me out of my chair to go up and give a testimonial on Prof Caelia's behalf.  Best awkward RP ever with another NPC... and sadly, no PCs around to witness it, though I'm sure they will get the fallout from that at further epilogue events (yeah, there will be at least one more).  So, good time all around and much needed.  Getting home at 1:00 in the morning, not quite so needed, but worth it.

Sunday was a day of unpacking the car, laundry, balancing the bank accounts, budget and bill paying, cleaning up the LARP room and then basically being a sloth in front of the TV, mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted.

We were supposed to be going up to NH this coming weekend for tax-free shopping / Easter / Bardic / Haunted House kick-off meeeting / Haunted House site hunting, but due to changes in plans went up this past weekeend instead.  Chris and Elijah came with us and we met up with both Monique's mom and my family for an early Easter.  We also took the opportunity with Randy and Tracy to talk about various haunted house issues.  Only 220 days to go; the clock is ticking.

( Haunted House stuff behind the cut )

On an unrelated topic, freeing up next weekend from the NH trip means that we're free to make a trip down to VA next weekend.  Since I have Friday off (there's a reason it's called GOOD Friday) we're going to head to VA Thursday night after work and we'll be down there for a couple of days to spend Easter weekend with Monique's family.

One week from now and 7V will be all over.  It's been a heck of a ride and a lot of it has been fun, but I'll be glad when it's over.

This weekend saw more time spent on the house renovation project, though most of it (for me anyway) was on restoring order and cleaning in areas that were already done.  Man, the dust from drywalling gets into everything.  What a pain in the butt.

Amidst trying to get that done I just had to finish 7V update work if I was going to meet the schedule.  I managed to pull that off by staying up late Saturday night.

Sunday we had a wedding for someone at Monique's work and then flute choir rehearsal last night with half a football game sandwiched in between there which I half watched while I finished the half-assed job of a Madrigal PEL I ended up submitting.  I didn't even reread it before submitting it.  Sorry Madrigal staff.

So tired.  I wish Marlin had Columbus Day off too. 

Monique had been down in Frederick, MD all week last week, so rather than drive down, I took a train and she met me in Baltimore.  From there we went down to the Fairfax, VA area to spend the weekend with family.

Train is a pretty cool way to travel.  I like it.  Roomy seats.  Refreshment car.  On-board internet.  I was able to catch up on all the PEL reading from 7V (what peopel had turned in to that point anyway) and I even got a lot of my own PEL written, which I still turned in incomplete, but I'll add to it  :-(

We stayed one night with each of Monique's two sisters.  We did manage to sneak in a hastily planned last minute lunch with Kiera and Steve and a game of Ticket to Ride at their place.  I wish we could have done more and spent time with more people, but this was very much snuck into the middle of a busy family schedule.  The rest of the weekend was spent mostly talking.

We picked up Elijah in DE last night on our way home.  He'll be staying with us for a week.  This of course put us a fair amount out of our way and we didn't get home until far too late last night.

So, back to work.  Short week.  Monique and I are taking Friday off to go to St. Louis for the annual Halloween convention.  Good times and something to look forward to all week.  :-)

Monique went to Foxwoods with her mom and three sisters for the whole weekend, so I had pretty much the whole thing to myself.  I say pretty much because they didn't leave until Saturday morning but they left early.


( All the good stuff hidden behind a cut for my friends' pages )

The Eastwyck team players from NERO spent the weekend at my place.  This consisted of silway, thedeviantangel, draco, byron and talon.  There was no IG session, just OOG bonding.  We played games and talked and ate and ate and ate.  We played multiple games of Settlers of Catan and RoboRally, both a lot of fun.  Of course I didn't win a single game all weekend, but it was still fun.

Monique did her usual amazing job of making too much food for everyone.  Let's just say the scale was not my friend this morning.

I miss playing with these fine folk.  I miss playing Kumir.  Sadly, I just can't go play while I'm doing 7V, so it probably won't be until late in 2012 that I play again.

Flute choir rehearsal was awesome.  It was the first time in a very long time that we had that many people all at the same time.  The sound was really good.  It was nice to see that people had kept up with practicing over the break, a break extended by two rehearsals due to winter weather issues.

And then, there were 7V PELs.  We got the vast majority of them in this weekend with a huge number yesterday, last night and the wee hours of this morning.  I was up until after midnight processing and I still have about 20 to go.  Silly 7V players, waiting until the last minute, but the PELs are so wonderful to read.  I love our players.