So here I sit at the end of the thanksgiving weekend. A few days of not having to do much of anything were nice. It's been a while since I've had that kind of time to relax. I think it did me quite a bit of good. I'm thankful for it.

We had a tasty thanksgiving meal, played quite a bit of Age of Empires II and Ticket to Ride, helped set up Skype for Sheri's mom and my parents (and enjoyed chatting with them over it), moved some furniture in the livingroom around and then put up our christmas tree & other decorations. We've also reached the time of year when Sheri will generally be insisting Christmas music be played a rather large percentage of the time.

The next week or two compose what I've come to know as the 'lull': a (too) brief period between the busyness at thanksgiving and the busyness leading up to christmas. It's generally a good kind of "busy" for us, but there's not quite enough time to relax in my opinion.

Currently I'm at our church, as is typical of a sunday afternoon. I've just sent out some invitations to a sort-of birthday party thing for Sheri and I - basically, we just wanted another excuse to play some games with our awesome friends. I hope people can come, I know it's a busy time of year. I'm also preparing to send out a couple of gaming-related emails. Sheri was telling me yesterday how she's been wanting to play. It's been quite a while, but there's been a lot going on. Alas, it'll probably have to wait till 2k10.

We're still trying to work out some of the final details regarding our trip up to IN this christmas. I'm looking forward to it.

~PS

I'm currently sitting on the couch in the livingroom with my laptop, feet propped on our little round ottoman, watching Ally nap in the warm sun which is brightly streaming in through our large, bay window on this mild autumn day, and hearing Sheri preparing tasty food in the kitchen (where I really ought to be helping her) - some faint aromas of which are starting to drift toward my position.

I'd say I'm thankful.

I make a concerted effort to be thankful all the time, actually.

I remind myself fairly often that, with respect to the other several billion people that live on this planet, my life is most likely in the upper 90% in terms of what can be considered "good".

I'm thankful most especially for Sheri (who's wonderful :)) and all my awesome family and friends (because you *are* awesome), but also for having a job that i love and that pays the bills (and for the turkey currently in the oven), for our cozy little house, for our adorable Ally, and for my variety of hobbies that keep me creative and entertained.

Sure, there's things I still wish after (some of those desires more petty than others) and a number of troubles or concerns like anyone has, but I have a lot to enjoy.

I'm thankful.

~PS

Since my project for work is starting to hurt my brain, I'm opting to take a short break to talk about our awesome weekend.

Thanksgaming was our second mini-gaming-convention hosted by our friend Rucht. As with RuchtCon, the general idea was this: invite all your gaming friends over (both local & out-of-towners), everyone votes on what to play, the chosen games are assigned to gaming 'slots', and people sign up for what they want to play.

This mini-con began at 8pm on friday the 6th with Pathfinder and 3:16.

Pathfinder is basically D&D 3.75. It's a little different from 3.5ed, but it's not 4e. My understanding is that it was basically devised by some people who weren't too fond of 4e and decided they'd rather continue 3.5 with a few changes. It was quite a fun game. It's been a long time since I've had a chance to *play* D&D, and I got to play dwarven cleric (a race/class combo I'm particularly fond of). The game does show a bit of inherent power creep over standard 3.5 (which can be viewed by cynics as a bit of a shameless attempt to get players to like it), but many of the rule changes do help the game in a more objective way. Personally, I'm still satisfied with 3.5, but this game was also fun and played very similarly. I do like the flavor of Pathfinder, which tends to expand D&D conventions.

As an aside, I discovered I really like the way Rucht does minis - which is much more like battletech: he doesn't use a grid, he just sets up the scene on the table, and then uses a tape measure to determine distances. This way, you don't have to worry about "diagonals" and other unnatural-feeling grid phenomena.

While we were playing Pathfinder, the other group was playing 3:16, which is, from what I understand, a simple space shoot-em-up rpg. Each player only has two stats: Fighting and Non-Fighting. Everyone who played it said it was lots of fun. I'd like to try it sometime. I like simple games.

The con resumed at noon on Saturday. This is when I ran my Mouse Guard session. That was lots of fun. The scenario I'd made was to take them into the Darkheather before the war of 1149 to destroy a weasel weapon. They were so into their characters, the world and roleplaying interactions that they barely even made it *to* the Darkheather, let alone found the 'weapon' they were sent to destroy. Despite the fact that they only had one conflict (a journey/storm conflict) and didn't even get to fight a single weasel, they all had a great time with the game and I had a great time running it.

The other noon session was for Zombie Apocalypse. This was actually one of a few zombie-based games that were played (others between sessions). I'm much less a fan of zombies than many of those present. I don't really know much about this one, unfortunately.

Saturday evening's games were Cartoon Action Hour and Spirit of the Century.

Spirit of the Century was *great* and Matt did a great job running it. I want this game. It's very simple, heavy on roleplaying, and exceptionally fun to play. It is basically a steampunk/pulp game which emphasizes overly-archetypal characters and over-the-top stunts, actions and dialogue. We all had a blast.

Doug's Cartoon Action Hour was a game based on 80's action cartoon characters ala He-man. Players were essentially playing through such an episode, complete with all the mayhem, crazy antics and amazing cheese.

On Sunday I was supposed to run a session of the system I've been working on for the last year or so. Unfortunately, half of my group had to leave Sunday morning, so we ended up joining Robb's Werewolf game. As it turns out, it was just as well. I'd been re-engineering large parts of the setting for the last week and wasn't entirely sure I was ready to present it. I'm kind of glad I have some more time. I'm close though.

Robb's Werewolf game was a lot of fun but, like RuchtCon's session, we didn't get very far into the story (for a variety of reasons). I keep telling him he should run an ongoing game so we'd actually get to play through it.


The weekend was a lot of fun. It was awesome to get to hang out with so many cool people and play so many fun games. I'm already looking forward to next time... ...which is hopefully reasonably soon...


~PS