Price of Victory
We're late! We need to get going! Throw everything into the truck. Get in, let's go! Drive, drive, drive. Stupid RV driving the winding mountain roads where I can't pass! Get out of the way. We're late! Do you know how to get there? Will we be able to find the place easily? Is it Black Hawk or Central City? Crap, I don't know. I don't go to the casinos! There it is! Where do we park. Back there? Ok. Where's the elevator? What floor? Which restaurant? Is it this one? Great. Where's Mac? Is that him over there? Yeah, I think so.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand breathe.
Who's here? Matt, Brian, Mac, Nate and I from the team. Where's Dave? Nobody knows. Great. He's the cleric. Not that we're totally screwed without him, but.... No, maybe we are. Has he called? Nobody knows. Eat something. That's why we're here. Where's the eggs? No, not made to order, something faster. Yeah, those eggs don't look too bad. And some bacon. And a biscuit. Not that biscuit, it's burned. But I touched it. Can't put it back. How about this biscuit? No, it's overdone, too. But I touched it, too. Crap. This is going to taste awesome. Where's the gravy? Don't these people believe in gravy? Where's the - oh, there it is. Ok, dump it on both biscuits. Maybe the inside of the biscuit is edible. Ray's with me, so we have to get to the game site early so she can NPC. Are you done eating? Great. Let's go. ICK! Cigarette smoke! I hate casinos.
How do we get from here to there? Up 119, right? Yeah. Okay. That's easy. How far up is it? It's right here? Seriously? That wasn't far at all! Okay, where do we park? The usual lot. Good. Is this side being held open for some reason? I'm guessing not. I'm parking here. Good. Now, to get my costume and make-up done. Can you do my make-up? Yes, but we better hurry - I need to get to my encounter. Team one's going on soon. Okay, do what you can.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand breathe.
Make-up's on. It's going to smudge all day long. It looks really good, though! Diamond on the forehead and everything. Awesome. How long do we have? 40 minutes? You're kidding! I'm not getting dressed the rest of the way yet. Yeah, you can use my short sword, but I'll need something to hang on to for the game in the meantime. Yeah, that'll work. Don't thrust with it? Okay. 10 minutes now? Oh, I better get dressed. What kind of armor do I have? Where's my list of abilities? Okay, I'm ready.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand breathe.
At this point, we went into game. I was playing Varanus, my neutral lizard-man character. I was traveling with folks I've traveled with before - the crew of the Persephone and Sir Kel that I know, and a guy named Athos that I didn't know. People are dying of a disease? Oh, people are being killed because they have a disease. Interesting. Don't touch that. Don't touch that either. Don't want to get the disease. These people are really poor. There's a bunch of kids hanging around a dead body. We have to take it where? I'll stand guard. I'm mistaken for the pack animal too often anyway. Up the hill. Down the hill. Find rocks and bury the guy. This town's messed up. These people are messed up! They're attacking me! Alright, they die. What's up with the captain? He seems distraught. I better grab his swords and stick close just in case more of those come out of the woodwork.
Weird creatures of all races coming out of the woods to beat on us. CLANG! (OOC: Sword to the ear here. Not good.) Okay, back to fighting. I think I remember how many hit points I had left. Walking on. Moving on. What's this pool? Some sort of moon pool with chaos in it, but the wards are broken. Okay, protect the captain as he searches out the pieces of the ward. Put them together? Sure. I'll run around and put them together. What's that? People attacking? Get inside - inside's more defensible. Hope they don't have missile weapons. That could get messy. They don't. Good. They're pretty mindless. Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight. Breathe. Drink. Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight. Crap, I can't take this any more. Have to sun myself a while (OOC: Fighter's recovery). Fight but my spells are down so it hurts much more now. Battle fever. Fight. Fight. CLANG! (OOC: Another strike to my left ear. Dizzy now. Major headache.) Drink. Breathe. Fight. Fight. Fight. Are we done yet? Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight. Pant pant pant. We're done! Yay! Thanks, Captain!
Get across this chasm. Get across the next chasm. Wheeee! Oh, that's right, these guys can't jump like I can. Well, not true. That Athos guy did it. Guard. Waiting. Moving on. Who is that guy? An audience with the Avendarrians? Fascinating! Oh, all spells are down. Items don't work. What's happening? White stone? That can't be good. Attune to the white stone. Stop accusing each other of things. Keep focused on the task at hand. Temple. Going to the temple. Okay. Fight. Fight. Fight. (OOC: Crap, Jonas should totally have blown my arm off two hits ago. Need to heal now.) Fight. Fight. Fight. We're getting the better of them. They got back up, but they go back down again just as easily. Whew! We're done! And 600 gold richer!
This ring is pretty comfortable on my finger. I think I'll keep it. Bloodleaf ring of nature. I like it.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand breathe.
Help Lori unload the food. Take a swig of whatever is in Mac's blue bottle. Mmm... Take another swig. Watch the third team. Hang out and chat with people I haven't talked to in a while. Eat something. Sit around the fire until it gets dark, watching the nearly-full moon rise over the trees. This is awesome. Drive Ray home, listening to contented breathing of everyone else in the truck. Sleep.
It was a good day. It was a good game.
Labels: ifgs
Kissing the Clouds Away
I woke up on 8/23/2007 with this tune and these lyrics in my head, sung in an Alanis Morissette voice. I don't know if I've ever heard the song or the lyrics before, but Google wasn't helpful.
This happened just after the weekend I spent with Ray in Manitou Springs where we visited the Dulcimer Shop there and talked music for a couple hours, so maybe that had something to do with it.
Apparently, I'm creative in my sleep.
Oh, while I'm at it, I'll mention that I've been posting to my MySpace blog a bit more than here. I'm not sure which one I like better at this point, but that one certainly gets more non-anonymous comments. Can you say "positive reinforcement?"
Manitou Springs trip
On the weekend of August 19th, we took a quick trip down to the Colorado Springs/Manitou Springs area to see what there was to see. We started out at the Garden of the Gods, arriving at night and sleeping in the truck until the sun was just peeking over the top of the hillside next to us. The naturally red rocks took on a deep hue in the early morning sun. We made and ate a delicious breakfast, then walked around long enough to get a sunburn, taking pictures of everything.
Feeling hungry, we meandered back to Colorado Springs. At first, I was going to go to the sushi restaurant near the Citadel Mall, but we ended up driving north instead, towards the Chapel Hills Mall area. We happened upon Texas Land and Cattle, and boy, are we happy we did! They had fantastic service, great atmosphere, and awesome food - the pepper-crusted smoked (never grilled) beef is at the top of my list now, and I only got a bite of it! Too bad they're not in Denver... Yet.
We reached the hotel just before the end of happy hour, so within 15 minutes of walking in the door, we had 3 free drinks in each of us. Fortunately, it was only house Scotch and whiskey, so not much of an impact. A quick shower and we headed to the movie theater to see Stardust. I LOVED this movie. I must own it.
The next day, we headed west on 24 to the cliff dwellings, where we probably spent just as much time in the sprawling gift shop as we did walking through the actual dwellings. It's a neat place, but difficult to envision what it must have been like long ago, before the road was put into place.
From there, we got to the Cave of the Winds with just enough time to jump on the next-to-last Discovery tour. It was a bit crowded, and the various tour groups had some stacking issues. I rated the logistics low. (If you're in the IFGS, you get that joke.) But the scenery was nice as usual. Maybe it's me, but the tour seemed a little more rushed than it had before. I can't wait to see the super-night-shot video of the dark areas of the cave.
We tried to go out to Seven Falls, but the price was a little outrageous for what little we would have been able to see in the failing light of the day. Cheyenne Mountain Zoo was closed by this time, too. There are some really nice houses out that way. Some really ugly ones, too. But all expensive.
Later in the evening, we found ourselves in Manitou Springs again. Many of the shops were closed, as it was getting late. We walked around looking for a place that might have a bathroom and found ourselves in the dulcimer shop. Bud the younger was behind the counter, and Bing Futch was visiting. We chatted with them for almost two hours about dulcimers and music. They told us about a music festival coming up that they would be performing in. Bud recommended that we go to the Keg for dinner. The grill was mostly closed, but they had burgers and salad, so that's what we had.
At the end of a long night, we had the long drive from Manitou Springs up to Longmont. It's no wonder I've already got 16,000 miles on my "new" truck!
Labels: travel
Oh Ming, why?
How appropriate it is that as I begin to write, I am listening to a song called Drive, from the Cars. That is definitely what we did the weekend of August 11th. From Denver, we made our way north to Longmont for impromptu last-minute pre-trip sushi. Then at 8:16 PM, we began the drive north through Ft. Collins - which is a very neat town to which I would like to return for a visit - and on up to Wyoming. [Every time I try to type the name of that state, it comes out "Whyo...backspace backspace backspace dammit."]
Why Wyoming? We wanted to go somewhere that didn't have city lights, but was still interesting to look at. We settled on the Tetons, which turned out to be an excellent choice. But why no city lights? It was the weekend of the Perseids meteor shower, the same weekend as the new moon. How can you not want to find some dark spot of sky to watch that? It was a moral imperative!
Ignore for a second the hours-long drive up, the Holiday Inn Express (that didn't make me feel any smarter), the lousy food and service (I don't remember the last time I stiffed a waitress on her tip - I'm usually quite generous) and the freaky traveling carnival, complete with Tilt-A-Whirl, set up near the town grocery store. Think instead about the gorgeous scenery, complete with nearby wildfires whose lingering smoke colored the sky, especially at sunset. Driving through orange-tinted forests on orange-tinted roads is surreal. Apart from the scenery, it was nice to just spend some time with someone, talking, walking around, taking pictures, relaxing.
Even though the air temperature dipped into the 40's, the night at the Tetons was nothing short of amazing. There probably wasn't a part of the sky that wasn't touched by the flash of a meteor some time during the night. Meteors fell occasionally, sometimes frequently, coming in from all directions at all angles. Some burned with greater intensity, leaving a glowing trail behind for several seconds. Others were barely visible, even in the darkness. An occasional car's headlights lit up the horizon, but the road was far enough away to really impact the view. We stayed out watching the skies until they started to lighten in the pre-dawn hours.
In the background, we could hear (but not see) horses whinnying in a nearby field. In two different directions, we heard coyotes calling out to each other. When the sun came up (and we climbed out of the back of the truck), we got to see just how close those animals were. We saw one pup walking around near the old house structure that was a couple hundred yards away, and the horses were in the pasture just beyond that.
It's always hard to leave such a place behind and return to reality.
Labels: travel
