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Pots. Cats. And Adventures.
Jun. 10th, 2005 11:28 pmOne of our wedding presents, 'lo these five years ago, was a pot rack. It made Kimberly happy, because she'd had a pot rack at her old apartment, and that was good. Not good was the fact that we actually needed to do work to get it installed, and with the chaos and problems of the last five years that's never come to pass.
At first there was just the intimidation factor of figuring out how to get it mounted. Eventually, we bought a stud detector so that we could find the wood beams in the ceiling and put it up in a way where it wouldn't fall down and kill us. But, it turned out to be not that easy. I tried using the stud detector, a few years ago now, and got totally inconsistent results. There was a stud, then there wasn't, then there was again. It was like a Chippendales Merry Go Round.
So, no pot rack then.
Well, for the last couple of days Kimberly's friend, Jay, has been trying to put up our pot rack, with about as much success as I had. Wednesday he just scoped things out. Then Thursday he decided to give it a go, but mysteriously couldn't find the studs. He blamed our stud detector. Today he came by with his much studlier stud detector and ... couldn't find any studs.
I stood in the kitchen as he worked, idly eyeing the ceiling. Finally as my gaze swept between one side of the kitchen and the other I pointed out that the ceiling was about a foot lower in the part of the kitchen with our sink, where we wanted the pot rack. That's, boys and girls, what we call a false ceiling. There were no studs to be had because that whole portion of the ceiling had been dropped down at some point, probably to cover unsightly electrical work. I felt at least somewhat vindicated.
(Kimberly, when told the story lately, asked, "Is our ceiling still there??" Ah, such faith. Jay didn't drill more than 3 or 4 holes in our ceiling; most of it is still there.)
Of course when Jay then tried to mount the pot rack in the other part of the kitchen, where the ceiling doesn't appear to be dropped down, he couldn't find a stud there either. It was like we were at a gaming convention or an SCA event. So, no pot rack now.
Jay's going to come back next week with some do-hickeys that'll help mount the pot rack and keep it stable even without a stud present. He said it'd be fine as long as Kimberly didn't swing from it or anything. Why he thought she was more likely to swing than I, when the opposite is probably more likely, I dunno.
Other humorous trials this last week: the cat cafe.
Last week I decided to finally pull the cat's feeding dishes out of the Junk/Guest Room. They've been fed there since it used to be my office, but with us trying to clean up the room I decided that it was no longer appropriate. So, I moved the dishes downstairs to the kitchen, and conveniently next to the water fountain we got for the cats last year.
This, as you might expect, didn't go well. For the first day or two Dumb Cat yowled in the Guest Room each night at feeding time and had to be carried downstairs and have her head stuck into the food dish.
Afterward both cats slowly started figuring out where their food now was, but I soon noticed another trend. The food kept disappearing from the dish further from the water fountain, but not from the dish closer to the water fountain. Yes, that's right: despite the fact that these cats have drunk from that water fountain for a year it was just too scary to eat next to it. Go figure.
(Dumb Cat just started yowling from the Guest Room despite the fact that their food dishes downstairs were filled about ten minutes ago. Sigh.)
In any case, a day or two ago I rearranged the food dishes so that they were both as far away as possible from the water fountain in the little cat cafe alcove. Now both dishes seem to be being used equally.
I did manage to sit down and prep an adventure for Stormbringer this evening, so I'm ready to go tomorrow. I actually probably prepped two adventures, but they're largely intertwined, and thus I can't tell which direction the players will go first.
I've been trying really hard to never miss a week (bi-week) of running this game. I used to run constantly when I was in High School, but somewhere in College I managed to lose the looseness that let me easily run adventures. I'm not sure why. I have managed to consistently run some campaigns of Ars Magica and Pendragon, but it's always been a push, with there being a tendency for me to duck out on a week's adventure if I could. I'm trying to change that trend, and find the simplicity of running an RPG again that I used to have.
I like the notes that I prepared. Despite being a lot of fresh stuff I managed to keep them to my two-page limit in my notebook and if I went over my one-hour prep limit, it was only by a little bit. After I've finished running these new plot elements, they're going to make some nice additions to the geography-based set of adventures that I'm preparing for Stormbringer at RPGnet [ http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/YKAdventures:Main_Page ].
At first there was just the intimidation factor of figuring out how to get it mounted. Eventually, we bought a stud detector so that we could find the wood beams in the ceiling and put it up in a way where it wouldn't fall down and kill us. But, it turned out to be not that easy. I tried using the stud detector, a few years ago now, and got totally inconsistent results. There was a stud, then there wasn't, then there was again. It was like a Chippendales Merry Go Round.
So, no pot rack then.
Well, for the last couple of days Kimberly's friend, Jay, has been trying to put up our pot rack, with about as much success as I had. Wednesday he just scoped things out. Then Thursday he decided to give it a go, but mysteriously couldn't find the studs. He blamed our stud detector. Today he came by with his much studlier stud detector and ... couldn't find any studs.
I stood in the kitchen as he worked, idly eyeing the ceiling. Finally as my gaze swept between one side of the kitchen and the other I pointed out that the ceiling was about a foot lower in the part of the kitchen with our sink, where we wanted the pot rack. That's, boys and girls, what we call a false ceiling. There were no studs to be had because that whole portion of the ceiling had been dropped down at some point, probably to cover unsightly electrical work. I felt at least somewhat vindicated.
(Kimberly, when told the story lately, asked, "Is our ceiling still there??" Ah, such faith. Jay didn't drill more than 3 or 4 holes in our ceiling; most of it is still there.)
Of course when Jay then tried to mount the pot rack in the other part of the kitchen, where the ceiling doesn't appear to be dropped down, he couldn't find a stud there either. It was like we were at a gaming convention or an SCA event. So, no pot rack now.
Jay's going to come back next week with some do-hickeys that'll help mount the pot rack and keep it stable even without a stud present. He said it'd be fine as long as Kimberly didn't swing from it or anything. Why he thought she was more likely to swing than I, when the opposite is probably more likely, I dunno.
Other humorous trials this last week: the cat cafe.
Last week I decided to finally pull the cat's feeding dishes out of the Junk/Guest Room. They've been fed there since it used to be my office, but with us trying to clean up the room I decided that it was no longer appropriate. So, I moved the dishes downstairs to the kitchen, and conveniently next to the water fountain we got for the cats last year.
This, as you might expect, didn't go well. For the first day or two Dumb Cat yowled in the Guest Room each night at feeding time and had to be carried downstairs and have her head stuck into the food dish.
Afterward both cats slowly started figuring out where their food now was, but I soon noticed another trend. The food kept disappearing from the dish further from the water fountain, but not from the dish closer to the water fountain. Yes, that's right: despite the fact that these cats have drunk from that water fountain for a year it was just too scary to eat next to it. Go figure.
(Dumb Cat just started yowling from the Guest Room despite the fact that their food dishes downstairs were filled about ten minutes ago. Sigh.)
In any case, a day or two ago I rearranged the food dishes so that they were both as far away as possible from the water fountain in the little cat cafe alcove. Now both dishes seem to be being used equally.
I did manage to sit down and prep an adventure for Stormbringer this evening, so I'm ready to go tomorrow. I actually probably prepped two adventures, but they're largely intertwined, and thus I can't tell which direction the players will go first.
I've been trying really hard to never miss a week (bi-week) of running this game. I used to run constantly when I was in High School, but somewhere in College I managed to lose the looseness that let me easily run adventures. I'm not sure why. I have managed to consistently run some campaigns of Ars Magica and Pendragon, but it's always been a push, with there being a tendency for me to duck out on a week's adventure if I could. I'm trying to change that trend, and find the simplicity of running an RPG again that I used to have.
I like the notes that I prepared. Despite being a lot of fresh stuff I managed to keep them to my two-page limit in my notebook and if I went over my one-hour prep limit, it was only by a little bit. After I've finished running these new plot elements, they're going to make some nice additions to the geography-based set of adventures that I'm preparing for Stormbringer at RPGnet [ http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/YKAdventures:Main_Page ].