Ugh

Unpleasant day of roleplaying today. Two of the players got into a fight and there was some anger, some pushing, and some nasty things said. I did my best to contain and/or discuss things, but that didn't really work out. As the GM I feel like I should have been able to deescalate things, and I did try in the direction, but I suppose there's some things I just can't take responsibility for (though I'll probably try).

A bit more of a positive experience on the way home. Well, minus one element I stopped by the new Other Change of Hobbit and their new location (still filled with boxes) is very fab. Very spacious, moreso than either of their former locations. They have lots more stock out than before and lots of open space both horizontally and vertically. Unfortunately there was a very unpleasant Sci-fi writer or editor (I wasn't sure which). So, between the many boxes and her constant ranting rambling I headed out pretty quickly.

They had some old, OOP Doctor Who books that I'll have to look up. They were all priced in the $10-$12 range, which is probably more than they're worth, but if not I'll have to go back and support my local business.

Relaxed Day

After a stressful Saturday, I purposefully took a more restful approach today.

Took myself out to a fast-food lunch with a comic book to read, as I did every week when I was younger. I even read a classic, the recently released Excalibur Visionaries: Warren Ellis, Vol. 1 which was mostly includes stories I hadn't read before, as I got into Ellis' Excalibur a bit late.

(Man, Berkeley was crazy today. Some PAC-10 track thing. Munchkins walking around in graduation gowns. The first moving vans and packing crates solely infiltrating the streets. And it seemed like there was some type of street-kid convention this weekend too as grubby, smelly, punky kids were filling Telegraph--even more than normal--at least on Friday.)

After that I biked down to Emeryville to look for a book about Louise Erdrich. I took a pretty round about way both there and back up home, which means I did something like 9-10 miles of good biking today. I got to see some industrial streets in West Berkeley that I haven't biked before, then I revisited my old route home from Chaosium when returning. The local book stores of course did not have what I wanted, so I turned to Amazon. Yep, that's one reason local book stores are losing; it's hard to compete with infinite shelf space. And it's why niche stores might be the ones that hold out.

Sadly, the ride wasn't as nice as I would have liked. I had fun, no doubt, but it was cool, overcast, and breezy, as it has been. (I'd say the wind is the worst, but I've slowly gotten better about riding into the wind, just as I've slowly gotten better at riding up hills.) Give me a month and I'll be bitching about the heat, but we've had an abnormally long winter this year, with spring only peaking through for a day or two at a time.

The forecast for tomorrow: rain.

Did some reading and also some writing in the late afternoon & early evening. The latter was work, of course, on my RPG History Book. But, I enjoy the history writing, which was why I started doing it in the first place.

Finally, tonight was the Survivor finale. I'd say it's a guilty pleasure, but I actually don't give a crap about what other people think most of the time. This was easily the top season of the show, top to bottom, and though I don't think the best player won, I think a very good player did. (And I say that without spoiler because I think individual viewers could have considered many of the people going into this episode the "best" player, which is one of the reasons it was a great season.)

(And with summer coming and Survivor done, I'll soon be watching Big Brother. That one just might be a guilty pleasure, because I'm entirely aware that the show is crap, but it's also about the only show during summer which gives me my reality-TV buzz of seeing into 15-20 strangers' lives.)

A bit more reading before bed.