Weekly (?) Update

My fault.  I was waiting for an update from Rob (which arrived on Thursday, 2/2) and then I lost the rest of the post somewhere in the blogosphere.  I kept thinking I would be able to find my clever and witty text along with Carrie and Kurt's charming updates and then I would post it.  It is not going to happen.  My sixteen-year-old has it right.  I am technologically challenged.  Oh well. 

So here it is (minus my long-winded contribution)--The Week of January 30th(give or take)...

Kim

I've seen this on Pinterest (which tells you something about how I spend my week) and it kind of sums up my entire life for you...

My daily routine: Get up, be amazing, go back to bed.



Carrie

My goals for the week complete, my boys got their hair done at Little Klippers in Colchester.  They have an airplane chair!!!  They look so cute, although Chase looks so big!!!  And he is!  We moved him to a big boy bed this week!!  Freecycle rocks!!  Free car bed :)  Mom came to Providence with me and the monsters Saturday to get the girls hair done. Hailey has pink and purple highlights.  Kayla got her hair dyed too!!  It's a beautiful auburn :)  Crazy young but it's in their DNA!!!  My exercise has been awesome!!  I'm feeling a little superhero like.  I lost 2 lbs. :)  I picked up a scale, balance ball and some weights.  I overdid the workouts last week and needed a massage, so I came up with a four day a week plan.  I'm sleeping so good!!  I feel amazing.  46 lbs. is my goal.  Hopefully in 23 weeks I'll have reached it!!!

This week is starting with Chase throwing up, the oil tank is going in and the old one coming out.  Hopefully I'll have a time frame on the windows and doors :(  Special orders ugh.  Bump the elliptical time up 5 minutes.  And take Kayla to the dentist.  Have a sparkling week :)

Kurt

I walked in a runway show

I made a cell phone case

I want to bring my CDs to a store to sell them

Rob

Sunday, Thursday... they are so much alike, it is easy to confuse
them.  Ugh.  You take a few days off from your life and next thing you
know everything is forcefully moved around on you.

So I didn't have really anything to add the week before last, people
got sick, threw up, ran fevers - life goes on etc.  Last week I made
my trip out to D&D Experience in Fort Wayne, IN on Wednesday, getting
home (insanely tired) on Sunday night.  Not really much to crow about
in the days leading up to it, except for maybe watching the Patriots
win another playoff game, ensuring a spot in the Superbowl, only to
have the Giants beat the 49ers and get a rematch of 2007 - and we all
know how that ended :( . Last year I had brought McGuire with me to
DDXP, and it was an absolute blast getting to spend all day playing
with him for a long weekend.  This year, stupid school had to get in
the way of having my eldest son along with me, since he had mid-terms
that week, and I couldn't in good faith pull him out of midterms to go
have fun with his Dad.  As such, I got them off to school on
Wednesday, then took off for my trip.

I had a nice little scare on the way out, as I realized that I left
the house at 9, to get to the airport at 10, to catch my plane at
11:30 - and then noticed that the plane left at 11:10.  And the
parking lot was closed.  So I had to go to one of the far-away parking
lots, and practically run to the terminal - thankfully security was
empty and not a huge hassle, and I got to the terminal as they were
seating group 4.  I had the crazy good fortune of being in a row with
3 other people, a lovely woman in her late 40s at the window, an empty
seat, me, the aisle, a beautiful Indian woman, an empty seat and some
guy who fell asleep on the window as soon as he sat down.  No crying
babies, no kids kicking my seat, no rotund dude spilling over the
armrest into my lap; I count that a win.  When I got the Chicago to
switch planes, I actually saw one of the guys who works with Wizards
of the Coast, and we chatted for a while - he even recognized me from
last year, and asked about my son not coming.  There was also a
super-cute college girl sitting near me, we kept having eye-contact
moments with a smile - I know I am a dork, but it made me feel good to
get a smile from such a cute young woman.  Steve (yep, the same gangly
kid from Lebanon growing up) and Heather picked me up at the airport,
and we went over to the hotel to get ready for the coming 4 days of
gaming.

I was scheduled to run games for the first 4 slots of the show, but
they were adventures that I ran at GenCon last year, so I was very
comfortable with them.  They went really well: people had fun, dice
were rolled, monsters were killed.  Not the best set of players ever -
a handful of people who liked to meta-game the encounters a bit more
than I find fun, on either side of the DM Screen, but it didn't go too
badly.  The next day I was playing all day - the big Battle
Interactive, preceded by a rescue mission into a fortress full of
creepy eel people.  I played my "Knight in Shining Armor" Paladin for
both, and got a really great DM for the first adventure.  She was new
to DMing at conventions, and I had helped her out a little on
Wednesday night.  She ran the game really well, the table had a good
interplay and everything was really fun.  The big Battle Interactive
this year was to defend a city populated by Sea Elves, and I was
seated at a table with Steve and Heather - plus a husband-wife couple
that I really wish I had never met.  The adventure itself was great -
lots of cool battles, good challenges, interesting combats and a
choice of where in the city we wanted to help save.  The party was a
bit of a mess and the players of two of the party members had no
interest in listening to anyone or working as a team.  The DM was
inexperienced, but also unfamiliar with the rules and the adventure,
and was seriously lacking in "table presence".  I will get another
chance to play it with my local group at the end of February, so I
look forward to a better experience then, but the table was a low
point of the weekend, even though I liked the adventure.

The next day I was playing mostly games set in the desert world of
Athas, where the gods are dead and metal is rare.  We got lucky in
that the adventure was run by one of the people in charge of the
campaign, and sitting with us were two D&D adventure writers.  My monk
just barely got out of that adventure with his skin intact - literally
as close as one can get to having a dead character without actually
dying.  It was great.  By this, the third day, there was some really
good feedback about the adventure I helped write and was premiering at
the show.  Sadly, one table apparently ran it completely wrong, thanks
to a bad DM, but most people called it the highlight of the trilogy,
which makes me feel great.  Saturday I also had a chance to be in the
first public playtest of the newest edition of D&D, there is an NDA
(Non-Disclosure Agreement) so I can't say much about the actual
details, but I really dislike the direction they are going - sharply
backwards.  The game itself was really fun, since we had one of the
key guys at Wizards running the table, and a couple of web-comic
authors at the table with us.  There were hijinks, outright Orcish
brutality, slave girls, fireballs and lots of laughing.  On one hand,
pure role playing fun, on the other hand, not a game that I have a lot
of interest in playing much.

Sunday was the last day of the convention, and I took the hotel's
shuttle back to the airport.  Free wi-fi and a long gap between the
shuttle and the plane meant I finished season one of Downton Abbey -
SOOO good!  Back to Chicago, and the same cute girl from Chicago->Fort
Wayne was on this flight, too!  Turns out she was home for a long
weekend, then going out to Montana - college, as I assumed at first,
and warm fuzzies from a smile of recognition.  I'm such a dork.
Flight back from Chicago to Boston was not as good as it could have
been.  Two rows in front of me was a small family: father, mother
across the aisle from each other, and their perhaps 9 month old baby
on Dad's lap.  Crying.  The whole time.  Oh, and someone puked just
after we got airborn.  I would have guessed the baby, but the smell
had me gagging every few minutes the rest of the flight, every time I
caught a wiff of the puke.  I hate that smell, even more than the
crying.  Anyway, I got home in really good time - plane landed a bit
early, got to my car quickly and easily, no traffic.  I saw the kids
off to school on Monday, and that was the past week.

I will try to get next week's actually at the end of the week, but who
knows with me...