yesterday's D&D game

Yesterday we played the penultimate game of our D&D campaign, and it was wonderful. I've never before played in a long-term campaign that had an overall story from beginning to end; we didn't know it had a single story at the beginning, but looking back on it it's obvious that Ralph had planted clues in the very first session. This was very neat. I guess it's sort of like writing a series of books or scripts that span years, with the additional complication that you have players who may take your plot and turn it sideways. I don't know if I'd be able to do that.

( plot stuff )

I don't know how soon I'll be able to bring my character's in-character journal up to date, but I didn't want to let this game pass without comment.

I'm a little sad now that this game is ending, but on the other hand, it would be a much weaker story if it didn't have an end. Maybe every now and then we can do some one-shot reunion adventures or something.

weekend bits

I chanted torah Saturday morning. It went very well; I did make a couple mistakes, but the associate rabbi was checking for me and he was able to feed me the corrections without throwing me. We've never worked before in that way. (The associate rabbi usually doesn't come to this service, but my rabbi is out of town so he led the torah study and most of the service. I led the torah service and concluding prayers.)

Later I will try to write up what I talked about. Thanks for the ideas.

The D&D game Saturday was fairly long (from around 4:00 to around midnight); we knew there'd be a lot going on and wanted the luxury of not playing on a weeknight. I'm glad we had a good long stretch for the climax of the story.

When I got home, I saw a flash of gray and white on the front porch. First thought: why is Baldur outside? Second though: waitaminute, that cat's not big enough. That's maybe half a Baldur. It turned out to be a vary friendly, affectionate young adult that sat patiently at the door with every expectation of being let in. I saw a tag on a collar but couldn't read it (too-small print in too-dim light), so I asked Dani to help me. When I picked up the cat I adjusted my estimate still further; this was about a third of a Baldur. :-)

The tag had a phone number but not an address. I thought about the lateness of the hour and called anyway; I figure that if one of my cats had gotten out I'd want someone to report a sighting right away. I got a machine, so I left a timestamp and an address. The cat was curled up sleeping on our doormat when I went to bed (I left the porch light on) and gone in the morning. I hope that if he's lost he was reunited with his people.

Today after brunch Dani and I went shopping for cell phones (and plans). Sprint, Cingular, and Verizon all offer the same package: 2 phones, 500 shared prime minutes, unlimited night/weekend, free long distance, $60. We ended up choosing based on the maps; we told the salesman that 98% of the time we're in Pittsburgh but we want to Just Not Care that other 2% of the time. So we ended up with Verizon, and we have 30 days to discover if that was a mistake (dead spots locally, etc).

Transferring the existing phone numbers turned out to be a PITA because we were instantiating a family plan from two individual plans. It took the salesman at least an hour to get this set up, and he had to call his tech-support people. At the end he said it could take up to three days for the service to transfer, but we both have service on the new phones tonight. (Dani got his a couple hours before I did; dunno why.)

Soon I'll read the documentation on the phone. I managed to get rid of the annoying background image, icon-based navigation (give me text, darn it!), and invasive ring tone; the rest can wait. Granted, I solved one of those (the icon thing) by saying to the salesman "this looks like a good phone but I can't see what those images are supposed to be; can it do text?". :-)