A Road Less Travelled

 ”Now that you’ve been through the pit of death it might make you feel better.”

 

 Yeah, that pit of death always just cheers me right up…. 

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 This post may be close to gibberish to those uninitiated into the Heroscape world, but it was a last stand story worth writing up.

 It really started last Friday when I realized how inexperienced I am at Heroscape. Just because I’m around people who talk about Heroscape doesn’t mean I actually know what I’m doing when I sit down at the board. (Imagine that…) So today when Samuel asked if I wanted to play Heroscape I decided I could use the practice.

 We played a 200 point game free-for-all to keep it short and simple. I went for the squad strategy, which worked okay, though next time I’ll have a better idea of which squads would be most effective. Suffice it to say that my nine-year-old nephew pared down my troops to a single Zettian guard who faced two Blade Gruts, an agent, and two samurai warriors.

 Let me say right here that I don’t like the samarai. They are, in fact, piggy annoying. Especially when your only figures with any range to speak of are Zettian guards with an attack roll of two dice and the samurai are closing in. That said, my Zettian guard singlehandedly defeated both Blade Gruts, the agent, and one of the samurai before the last samurai finally took him out.

 So, yes, I lost again. But this time I lost with style. That should count for something.

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days drip slowly past
carried off forever
by rushing waves of time

This is a rewrite of this haiku, based on the discussion that followed. (Okay, so it didn’t take me a couple of weeks.) I also wrote this less communicative, but more amusing version.

time flows
like surging rapids
of molasses

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 This morning I found myself with a book in one hand, which happened to be about the physics of time travel and touched tangentally on quantam mechanics and several other branches of mathematics, while the other hand held a baby on my hip. As I paced the floor to keep her quiet, I felt many twinges of sore muscles from my roller skating attempts last night. If this isn’t enough to illustrate the flavor of my life which defies description, then I think the crowning touch would be the black fingernail polish gleaming from my hands as I held the book and the baby.

 Perhaps the oddest part is that this bizzare scene sums up what I would consider to be most of the good and yet mundane parts of my life. Can you imagine what it would take to sum up the weird and disturbing parts of my life?

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 If I fall, I want to fall on my face. At least it shows I’m leaning in the right direction.

 This is like dying with your sword in your hand, only different.

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winter tree
standing in cold sunlight
snow on the ivy 

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Hello everybody! I am doing well here in good ole Drearie Erie. As of Thursday it had snowed here every single day for the past 29 days. I walked over to my father’s house and was just so very amused by the three foot high drifts on either side of the sidewalk. It made me want to laugh at everyone in Peoria who thinks that six to ten inches constitutes a city-wide emergency. So, um, feel laughed at you people.

In other news I have a brand new baby neice. Her name is Evageline Felicity Gardner and she is simply the cutest thing. She has a lot of dark hair and the Ben-Ezra nose which can make any baby cute. Lily and Malachi are thrilled to have a little sister and they are so cute when they try to say Evangeline. Their parents have told them that they could just call her Evy, but they are just too happy with her full name to shorten it. Surprisingly, this little girl has really superb timing. She gave me Tuesday to recover from travelling and then made her appearance early Wednesday morning.

I had quite the adevnture getting here. After many delays I made it to Pittsburgh only to find out that I had missed my plane. And after I waited for over two hours they told us that plane was cancelled due to mechanical problems. So there I am, stranded in the Pittsburgh airport without even a cell phone to my name. My father was trying to figure out ways to get me to Erie or to my aunt’s in Pittsburgh without him having to make a four hour round trip at 8:40 at night. I was just wandering out of baggage claim trying not to notice the entire airport closing down around me when a woman I had noticed in the gate came up to me and asked if I had a place to go. I told her I thought my father was coming to get me. She conferred with her significant other and they offered to let me ride with them in their rental car. They could drop me off at the Erie airport. I borrowed their cell phone to call Dad and he was far less nervous about it than I expected. So I had a really lovly two hour ride with two complete strangers. They were very nice people and she owns a beach glass jewelry store here that I had wanted to visit so probably sometime next week I’m going to go and say hey.

After the adeventure of getting here actually being here has looked rather tame, but I am enjoying myself. This week has been quiet though next week is starting to fill up. It’s weird- everybody seems to want to see me while I’m here. That goes a long way to making me feel loved.

Farewell for now, everyone. Perhaps I will write before I leave or perhaps I won’t. I’m finding the dial-up internet rather daunting. But if I don’t write do know that I am thinking of you. Well, I’m thinking of some of you. You over there, not so much. Well, I’m not thinking of you either. But I am thinking of the rest of you. Know that.

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how slowly time flows
ever rushing, crashing on
to make the future now 

 

Guys, help me out here–does this make sense? I’m trying to put words to a contradictory feeling, but it seems like it just came out… well, contradictory.

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February blah
but the breeze across the snow
brings a whiff of spring 

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Yesterday I finally got to use the day off Seth and Crystal gave me for Christmas. And what a day it was.

First, I got up at a reasonable hour and took Seth to work. Not exactly how I would have liked to open up the day, but I wanted the van so I had to get up. After that I went to the bank and did some exciting bank stuff. Wheee!

After the bank I mosied over to Kohls to try and find some pants that would be comfortable, affordable and comfortable. I managed to get two pairs of verysuper comfortable pants for fifty per cent off each! They need to be hemmed because apparently only seven-foot tall, plus-sized women were going to be wearing these pants, but hemming isn’t too hard.

The rest of the day was mostly taken up with various book stores. When Seth and I organized the books after we moved he went through and purged out the books no one is going to read again and so I took a large box of books over to the Book Nook and exchanged most of them for credit. Here comes the bookstore review. Ahem- The Book Nook is a used bookstore dealing in paperbacks of all kinds. The prices start at about two dollars for a book in good condition. I found some books there that I have been trying to find for some time. I found several books by an author that has been difficult to find. I found all the books I was going there for and then when I got to the front counter Michael, the proprietor we know from somewhere else, got some books out from behind the counter that he knew I would like. He gave us almost forty dollars in store credit for the books we traded in and I was able to use some of it and store the rest for later. The store is a little messy right now because he is in the process of expanding into the next-door store front, but I was still able to find what I wanted easily. I give it two thumbs up and would highly recommend the store. In fact, I think I have already.

After the Book Nook there were some other book stores and then I bumped into the Lansberrys at the library, but I couldn’t stay to chat because my meter had run out. Theresa had tried to feed it for me, but it was jammed. After the library I went to Barnes and Noble to finish the eleventh issue of a manga I’ve been following. Then I bought dinner at a grocery store. Dinner consisted mostly of cheese. I ate too much cheese and felt slightly sick afterwards. Or it may have been that I was sitting too close to the screen at the movie I went to see. I saw The Holiday which was a delightful chick flick. Every time I started thinking about what I wanted to happen next it would happen and I would be glad. It was almost a private viewing, but at the last minute another woman came in so there were two of us in the theater.

I got home just in time for the finale of Esther and to watch somebody else do dinner clean up. When Keith, our gaming friend, showed up I beat he and Seth at High Society and then was promptly romped all over in Blue Moon City. Before I went to bed I put all my new books in their places on my shelves and just looked at them. Then I pulled some out that I want to take to Erie with me. You did know that I’m going to Erie on Monday, right? Oh, well, you do now.

So anyway it was a good day. A day full of books and friendly people and absolutely no diapers or dishes. Thank you Seth and Crystal!

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