shannon_a

Suddenly it's Birthday. / The longest holiday. / When they say 'Season's Greetings' / They mean just what they say. / It's a season, it's a marathon / Mature eternity / And it's not over til it's over / And you end the yearly spree. [Apologies to Loudon Wainwright III]

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I sit amidst the debris of birthdays past. Bags and tissue paper sit about the room, while birthday cards look on for the mantle. The week of birthdays is finally over for Kimberly and me.

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It was a week of food. Top Dog on campus for me, a pleasant evening of reading aloud in the growing shadows beneath Stephens Hall. For some reason K. laughed every time she talked about how I'd decided on Top Dog for my Birthday dinner. But a Chicken Apple Dog with Chili sounded like what I wanted most in the world that evening.

Then tonight there was an early dinner with the Wiedlins at Chevy's, which everyone seemed very happy with. Well, everyone except Jason and Lisa who sadly did not attend, due to illness.

But, the alternative would have been worse: "Guess what we got you for your birthdays? VIRUSES!!! Happy Birthday!"

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And yesterday was the pièce de résistance. K. and I spent the day in San Francisco as a birthday celebration with much eating.

We got fancy-dancy sandwiches from the Canyon Market to eat at Glen Canyon Park. We've enjoyed the park a few times, set down in a ravine which makes the rest of the City invisible, and this time we were pleased to see many of its renovations complete. There's now actually an entrance to the park and even better there are now nice new stairways climbing out of the park up its steep sides if you exit further down the Canyon.

(And, we did, climbing the entire canyon wall to get up to Diamond Heights. It was better than scrambling up scree. After that, we hiked several blocks to get to a bus line which took us to a bus line which took us to ....)

Ghirardelli Square is often the highlight of a day in San Francisco. What can I say? Chocolate fans! We also enjoyed sitting out at Aquatic Park, enjoying the view and the Bay and the breeze (and reading aloud). As I told K., the stone bleachers looking down on the park remind me of the public works of '30s and '40s and a sense of civic community from that time that's now gone. I can imagine neighbors coming together and sitting together on a balmy night in 1949 and feeling like they were part of something greater.

As for us, we had seagulls that I encouraged K. to feed with the other half of a fancy-dancy sandwich that otherwise would have gone to waste (Spoiler: They loved it!) and some rotten kids smoking pot and blowing it up toward us. (Smoke your pot? Cool. Give me a headache with your smoke? Not cool.) They were other folks too, but each group an island unto themselves.

A clear spring day / In a bright and balmy March-time; / We are alone, / Gazing from our stone bench to the cove below / On a salty silent shroud of calm blue water. / I am a rock, / You are an island. [With apologies to Simon & Garfunkel]

Fun Flash Fact: It looks like Aquatic Park was indeed a WPA project in 1936-1939. Thanks, Mr. Roosevelt!

Our Saturday in SF ended with a dinner at a hole-in-the-wall fish and chips place called The Codmother. Very good. Too much food. We gave those leftovers to homeless folks at the end of Market, rather than to seagulls.

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Of course our birthday week also included one-quarter of a crappy play on Wednesday, and then a visit with the Wiedlins today which was somewhat more extensive than just eating. There was also talking and presents and cards.

I actually have multiple gift monies that I need to spend. I'd already decided to order some nice collections of comics with money from my dad and Mary (some "Morning Glories" deluxe hardcovers, and something else), so perhaps I'll look at books with money from my mom and Bob.

It began on Monday, which was of course my birthday. I took the day off work, and good thing because it was a glorious day. My plan was to bike up to Wildcat Canyon. There were some troubles on the way there, as my gear cable snapped less than a mile out of my house. Fortunately, the folks at Missing Link were willing to fix it right away. Willing, but somewhat less able, as my gear shifters largely boggled the mechanic working on my bike. He had to keep looking at instructions on the internet. Did I note I bought those gear shifters at Missing Link? Within an hour all was well and I was on the road again.

It was actually warm (nay: hot) when I biked through Wildcat Canyon, and overall was quite a nice ride. I hung out for a bit at Jewel Lake, reading and (almost) napping a while, then headed home.

For dinner, Kimberly and I went to Chevy's.

Then afterward we went to see Veronica Mars: The Movie. Fun movie, but unlikely to be of interest for non-fans. It continues our streak of good movies at two, following a good Winter's Tale for Valentine's Day, and before that the disappointing Hobbit 2: Elves with Swords last Christmas.

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The birthdaying picked up in earnest on Friday night, which is K's birthday. It was less eventful than my own, but we went out for a very tasty dinner & dessert at Pasta Pomodero in El Cerrito.

Tasty food, but pretty bad service. Slow, slow, slow. Our waitress was also constantly worried about forgetting little things we asked for (like no onions in K's salad), and I think she honestly forgot about picking up our check. We probably did 45-50 minutes of reading of our current book (Prince of Chaos) while there.

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Saturday, K. went out for tea in the city with a friend and I hung around Berkeley. I'd been planning a big bike ride to somewhere I haven't ridden before (I was considering a few different bridges), but I was foiled by rain. (Sadly, this was the second foiling: two weeks ago I was foiled by a hard drive crash at Skotos.)

Anywho, I had a fast food lunch in Berkeley, then hung out at the main library, mainly to have some time away from the house. Up on the top floor, I had wifi which made it easy to do the writing I was working on, and I also had a nice view of the Marin headlands when the sky finally started to clear.

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Tonight the Wiedlins came by. We had a nice dinner over at La Med, some ice cream, and some chatting here and there. We also got some prezzies: I got some fancy bike shorts which may keep my butt from hurting when I do long rides; we'll see how they work out.

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I've also been buying myself some birthday prezzies online. Unsurprisingly: books and comics. I'm most excited about The Severed Streets by Paul Cornell, a preorder that'll arrive in a few months. So the birthday times keep going and going!

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In other news, this morning K. and I finally caught up with our backlog of TV that appeared when we visited Hawaii at the start of the month. Whew! (Since then, The Amazing Race, Once Upon a Time, and The Walking Dead have taped; but Sunday is our biggest DVRing day)

And we've started in on season 4 of Justified from Netflix. Nice to have one of best quality TV shows again!

This year, Kimberly & I opted to spend Christmas Eve & Morning with the Wiedlins, which turned out to be a great way to spend the holiday — all the best parts of the holiday, followed by some time on our own.

Christmas Eve, Bob surprised us by picking us up in Berkeley, and we had a nice ride to San Marteen together.
They had a surprise guest, Ulf, who is a former member of the flyball team my mom is involved with. He turned out to be a quiet, super nice guy, so it was actually nice to have him there.

His dog, Gandalf, was also present. A very sweet dog, though a bit unshaky on his feet because he's epileptic and taking a few drugs to deal with it. Poor dog! The house was absolutely filled with dogs, because my mom currently has three, and then there was Gandalf, and then when Jason and Lisa arrived, there was one more — all of them huge black and white dogs. There was much chaos at times, but most of the time, there were just tired dogs strewn about the house like so much driftwood.

We had a great dinner on Christmas Eve of ham, mashed potatoes, broccoli (with cheese), and crescent rolls.

Afterward, we played games. I'd brought 7 Wonders, since I thought we'd have a lot of people, but it turned out to just me four: me, mom, Bob, and Ulf. We played the first game entirely openly as I taught the rules to a non-Euro crowd, but everyone enjoyed it, and then we were able to play a second game with closed hands. It all went over well, and I've been asked to bring it again, now that folks were starting to figure it out.

Poor Rob was sick during the entire festivities, which is why he wasn't gaming with us. It sounded like a horrible flu, as it knocked him on his butt. Bob was also getting over a cold (from his recent visit to St. Louis) and Ulf was getting sick while we were there. So, it was totally a House of Plague. It'll be a Christmas miracle if Kimberly & I don't get sick now, for the rest of the holiday break.

Christmas morning we had a great breakfast (of which the grilled chicken sausages were the best part), and then we opened stockings and prezzies.

Then Kimberly and I had a long ride home, and we opened more prezzies.

And that was Christmas.

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Among the prezzies I got were three games: Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, Bora Bora, and Expeditions: Famous Explorers. Thanks Chris & Mom.

I also got some cool books on biking. Pedal Revolution is a neat looking book what the more innovative cities are doing about biking, while Bike Snob mocks biking snobs. (Amusingly, both Kimberly AND her mom got me Bike Snob; we're returning the one she got, since dupes would be silly, and I've ordered _Caliban's War_ instead, a space opera book). Kimberly also got me Soon I will Be Invincible, a super novel that I'm certain I've heard of before. I look forward to them all — but especially Pedal Revolution. Thanks Kimberly (& her mom!). Oh, and I picked up a book that analyzes the first two seasons of nuWho and a new Gene Wolfe book with an Amazon gift cert: thanks Lisa & Jason!

There were also stockings full of candies and pens and other various things.

Overall, a great Christmas.

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In the evening, I wrote all the section dividers for _Designers & Dragons_, since my schedule says I start editing today. So I violated my usual no-work-on-Christmas rule.

But it was pleasant enough work, and I indeed get it done.

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For Christmas Evening, K. and I went out to see our traditional Christmas movie. Despite some reservations, we saw _The Hobbit 2_. Well, despite reservations, and because there was nothing else showing that sounded particularly great.

It was pretty mediocre/bad. I often found myself (correctly) predicting the lines, which always means the writing is badly cliched (including getting the climatic final two lines of the movie word-for-word; one of them even slipped out in advance of the movie itself, which made K. laugh). The writing was actually overall quite bad, between bad dialogue and a plot that often didn't make sense (if you looked at it too deeply) and which was mainly a bunch of boring ways to keep anything from happening.

Worse, it felt like Peter Jackson was purposefully satiring himself, especially when those elves started jumping around and killing orcs in ways that obeyed no laws of physics and really didn't matter much for the plot. The absolute worse was when the (totally hot) red-headed elf healed Kili and was surrounded by a big white nimbus, and the audience broke into spontaneous laughter which was clearly *not* intended by this supposedly moving and spiritual scene. That was the "elf orgasm" scene. Really, really bad.

I was also pretty annoyed that they took my favorite scene in the book, the barrel escape from the elves, and they entirely ruined it by turning it into a computer game action scene that went on so long that you were bored by the end (much like the similarly boring falling-through-the-orc-caves scene from the first movie).

In general, The Hobbit 2 felt to me like it was one of those C-grade movies like _Barbarella_ that people might enjoy and laugh at decades later, but for its campiness, not because it was any sort of quality movie. Whereas _The Hobbit 1_ felt stretched, this one felt stretched ... and poorly written besides.

Good things about it: the aforementioned hot elf chick (who was pretty much a Mary Sue); Smaug being totally scary (before he turned into a blithering buffoon who could have been tricked by a 7-year old); and a few bits about Watson's discussion with Smaug (before it turned into another dull, overly long action sequence).

Yeah, we'll watch the third, because we watched the first two. (It's now too late to stop.)

And so the Holiday season has begun.

My brother Jason and sister-in-law Lisa stopped by to visit us Wednesday night. K. and I had opted out of the larger familial Thanksgiving because she wasn't up to it, but my sibs were kind enough to see us a bit on their way down to San Marteen. We met their very excited, very large boxer-pit-bull dog and talked for a bit (with the sibs, not the dog). Cupcakes were dropped off. It was nice seeing them.

My actual Thanksgiving on Thursday kicked off with a bit of busy-ness. First thing, I had to run up to Andronico's to get our deserts and sides. Sadly, they make you jump through hoops now, such as getting a slip for your food, paying for your food, and then having to come back to pick up your food. Their delivery was also lacking, as it included green beans in a zip lock bag. Not very class-ay. (But, the food was tasty as ever.)

After getting home, I then ran out to have a light lunch with my friend Eric R., who was visiting from New Zealand and stopped by on his way back to the airport (after visiting his parents for the last several days). We went to the only restaurant I could find open in Downtown Berkeley (The Original) and talked a bit. It was nice to see Eric, but it's been a long while since he's gone, and time has moved on.

After I arrived back home, I read for a while, then K. and I cooked our food (including our ham) up for a supper at about 4pm. While things were cooking and while we were eating we watch Downton Abbey, because K. and I have developed the habit of marathoning a TV show on Thanksgiving when we're home. The show was good (it was the back half of season 3) and the food was delicious ... particularly the ham. There are now huge piles of leftovers.

The rest of the day was restful. I worked on the two novels I'm reading (Shadows Edge, The Thirteenth Tale), plus a large graphic novel that I'd set aside for Thanksgiving (X-Men vs Apocalypse I). I usually have a "no work" policy on Thanksgiving, but I've got too much up in the air now, so toward the evening I started doing some editing and writing too -- knocking a couple of things off my Designers & Dragons TODO list and also making some notable progress on my next article for Wizards of the Coast.

So, now the holiday has come and gone, but K. and I still have a few fun days of other stuff planned and we have food (ham in particular) that will carry us into the next year ...

Today was my 41st birthday. (Sigh!) However, I biked 20.5 miles for it, which I consider an accomplishment (especially since the first part of that involved a ride up to 1400 feet).

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Early in the day I made my first ride up upper Tunnel Road since my sickness. I made it all the way up to Sibley Volcanic Park (it took some work!), and this time I decided to ride the Ridgeline Trail, which I had failed to ride in December or so because it was horribly muddy.

Well, it turns out that the ride wasn't a lot easier in the absence of mud. It's really a horribly laughable "multiuse" trail. Several bits of the 0.9 mile trail are virtually unridable due to extremely bad maintenance and extreme grades. (I'd see a sign that said "Downgrade; reduce speed" and I'd get off my bike because it meant "So steep that you will die" in at least some of the places.) When 0.6 or so miles in I hit a creek cutting across the path surrounded by (wait for it!) mud, I just had to laugh. I carefully skirted several muddy patches after that, then I just started saying "F*** it" and riding right through.

I should say the trail was a very attractive wilderness ride ... but one I won't be doing again.

At the other end I descended to Fish Raunch Road ... and suddenly discovered that I was in Orinda, looking over the back end of the Caldecott Tunnel. I let out a woot as I've been wanting to get over the hills for ages, then realized that where I'd gotten was entirely worthless. There's literally no way to get the rest of the way down the hills into Orinda if you're a bicycle (or even if you're riding a bicycle), because the only route downward goes to 24.

So instead I went up Fish Range Road (300 feet of ascension in about a mile), mostly walking because it was somewhat steep and I was tired by this time, then came back down on my side of the hills via Claremont (very fast!).

It was a proper birthday adventure, and a lot of fun other (perhaps) than that Fish Raunch trudging.

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Today's other riding was down to the Bay and along the Bay Trail with Kimberly. Our destination was Chevy's. I had tasty pork fajitas and a strawberry margarita the size of my head (practically the only alcohol I've had in years, but I'm no longer taking Nortriptyline whose efficacy can increase with alcohol, so I felt able to let loose with one large, tasty, and slightly intoxicating drink).

Fun times. Good food.

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The other major birthday happening of the weekend was the visit with the Wiedlins yesterday. They came up for dinner (after my afternoon RPG). There was good company, excellent vietnamese food, and good ice cream. It was a nice evening, even after the busy-ness of roleplaying day (which involved biking to Oakland and back — which I suppose brings my birthday weekend biking up to 30+ miles).

I got a weed wacker birthday present from the Wiedlins, which is more exciting than it sounds, as it's cordless, and the stupid cord is perhaps 50% of my hatred for weed wacking. I suspect it's a much superior model to the crap I had too.

I've also done a lot of writing & editing for Designers & Dragons over the weekend. I think I've got a rough plan in place that will get the third book done on the 31st, when it's due, but we shall see.

Had a big Thanksgiving yesterday, down at my mom and Bob's new San Mar-Teen house. It's the first time that Kimberly & I have been to a big family Thanksgiving in many a year.

It was the usual effort to get down to San Mar-Teen, which is 20 or 30 minutes further south than the old San Jose house. We left for BART at about a quarter to 11, got picked up by Jason in Fremont around noon, and pulled into the house about ten to 1. So it goes. Kimberly & I started a new Andrea Barrett short story while at the BART station, and then I read Moon over Soho (a British urban fantasy) and Spike: The Complete Series (a Buffy comic) on the way down. 

There were 18 people in San Mar-Teen all told: Kimberly & me, the parents, Bob's Dad & Marge, Jason, Robbie, and Lisa, all of the immediate Martinezes, and some friends of the Martinezes (Greg, Deirdre, and their two well-behaved children, who were thus clearly not from the Berkeley-Rockridge area). An awful lot of people, but the new San Mar-Teen house is large enough that folks can spread out and it doesn't seem like such a big mass of humanity. Even more surprising, their dining room is big enough to seat 18(!), with perhaps not enough space between the two tables.

Quite a bit of Ping Pong was played over the course of the day, and much to my surprise I discovered that I still have most of my Ping Pong reflexes, including a wicked ability to drop the ball at the very back-right corner of the table. Mind you, every time I tried to do something fancy like spin the ball or slam it, I came up short. But pretty soon I learned not to try those things, and I won more games than I lost. It was fun and made me want to find a Ping Pong club in Berkeley, as we'll never have enough room for a Ping Pong table in this house. Maybe when I'm done with Designers & Dragons next summer. 

Note to self: Berkeley Table Tennis Club.

Lots of talking. Everyone there is good folks. Good eating with all the usual fixings and tasty chocolate chip cookies for desert afterward. (There were pies too, but chocolate chip cookies are among my favorites.) We have a bit of leftover that we brought home. (I'm actually pretty happy not to have the *huge* piles of leftover that we get when we Thanksgiving at home.)

All together, very nice!

Lisa & Jason gave us a ride all the way home from San Mar-Teen to Berkeley, which makes it only a 1.5 hour or so trek. 

Exhaustion afterward (though I actually managed to edit another chapter of Designers & Dragons in the late evening, the one on Columbia Games for the '80s book).

And here's my list of stuff to do for the holiday weekend:

• Finish current work on TSR article for Designers & Dragons (finished Wednesday night)
• First-draft Leading Edge Games article for Designers & Dragons (got pretty comprehensive notes together Wednesday night)
• Write RQ6 review
• Write Star Trek: Catan review
• Prepare next Knucklebones article for Mechanics & Meeples publication
• Ride bike! (Iron Horse Trail?)
• The Sound of Music (Sunday)

Whew! That Star Trek: Catan review may get delayed, but we'll see ...

Had the Wiedlins up here on Sunday for a typical birth day get together. We had dinner at La Med, then cake at home. There was much enjoyable talk with all the relatives. Kind birthday checks were also offered. As usual, I took the birth day gifting as a chance to get stuff I wanted but which might have been a bit more expensive than I'd usually put for. So, I got About Time 1 (so I can read about the early Dalek stories, which I'm currently reading novelizations of) and Songs of the Dying Earth and Moorcock's non-fiction collection London Peculiar and a few other things. I've still got about half the money to spend and am going to see if anything strikes me 'specially in the next week or so.

Since then, it's been back to work, except with much cake, as we had the remaining half of the delicious chocolate cake that the Wiedlins brought, plus the remaining super-rich cakes Kimberly and I had gotten at Berkeley Bowl. Whew.

Among the stuff I've been reading lately is A Game of Throne by George R.R. Martin. It's my third read, I think. I'm amazed how damned good the book is. Martin writes each chapter like a little short story with a beginning, middle, and end. Each chapter also gives us a strong moment of revelation or change, usually encoded right at the end of the chapter. The craft is just superb. I dunno how the same person who has written OK Wild Cards stories and nothing else that I know of super note is also writing some of the best-crafted fantasy out there.

Tomorrow: the birthday celebrations continue, as it's Kimberly's actual birthday. Delicious food is planned. At one of my top 3 restaurants. Stay tuned.

Ah, the vacation, she is gone. Which is a shame, as I got very relaxed, calm, and comfortable after a week of worrying about very little. I'll just have to try and hold on to that. (So far, fairly good.)

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Jason & Lisa. Last night we had my brother & sister-in-law over for a games night. I'd been wanting to do this for a while, but Jason actually was the one that suggested it, as he has time off before going back to classes (which I suppose makes it still vacation from his point of view). I suggested a handful of possible games, and Lisa somewhat excitedly said that Teamplay Ticket to Ride Asia sounded fun. So, that was what we played.

It was my second experience with the team play rules, and if they weren't as amazing as they were the first time, it was only because they weren't so wonderfully and surprisingly novel. It still was a totally great way to play the game. Lisa and I lost to Kimberly and Jason. Tactically, it was because Kimberly took a chance and drew tickets on her last turn, which gave them the 14 points needed to win (10 from tying us for most completed tickets, 4+ for the ticket), but strategically it was because they had a superior train route that hit three corners of the board.

Overall, good fun.

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With real-life running again, I'm reminded that I've been wanting to write about a few ongoing things ...

Cobweb. Our faithful grey tiger-stripe is still with us. It's been 10 months or so that we've been giving her subcutaneous fluids on a daily basis and that's been enough to keep her system going. If anything, for me at least getting her to eat is the larger battle to be fought every day, as we tend to lock her up with food for an hour in the afternoon, then feed her again in the evening. And, it's not just the battle of placing her back in front of the food several times, but also figuring out what she'll eat on a weekly basis as she's constantly tiring of one food or the other.

Despite all that, Cobweb is either continuing to lose weight or else has landed at a lower weight than I'd like, I'm not sure which, but her ribs are relatively pronounced again. We're trying not to worry about it too much and to continue on with life. It works for the most part.

Trees. So I've written very few updates about our exciting trees out in front of our house. Sadly, the windstorms in December stripped them of all their leaves. I just hope they return with the Spring. Because of our unusually dry Winter I've been out watering them once a week, which I didn't expect to have to do for several months. Go figure. I've also been doing my best to keep all grass/weeds a foot or two out from the trees. (I'd hoped to keep the whole front strip clear of foliage, but now I must laugh at that; in any case, the care guide for the trees said to keep this amount of space free, so it should be good.)

Games. Went to Endgame today, and had a good time. It marked the start of my new gaming theme for 2012. Not as exciting as the Year of Knizia, the Year of Alea, or the Year of Wallace, but in '12 I plan to "PLAY OR DIE". Basically, I want to get old games to the table to be replayed. If I don't really like them when I replay them or if I don't manage to replay them at all, then I'm going to consider really hard about putting them into the '13 Endgame Auction.

(OK, some will be saved because they're great games or they're set aside for my RPG group when appropriate or they're tiny card games, but there are lots I'll be applying this criteria too.)

Tonight I actually played two games from my shelf. Streetcar was probably never in danger, as I play it at least once a year and love it. Atlantis might have been. Surprise, surprise, I rediscovered that I really like it too. So, two games that won't DIE.

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And finally, a special holiday editions of companies-that-suck.

Roku. Our Roku was our worst tech purchase of '11, and really one of my worst tech purchases ever. For those who aren't familiar with it, it's a box that you put on your TV to pick up streaming. I wanted it for Pandora streaming and Netflix streaming into our Family Room. The problem: its networking SUCKS. In our first weeks, I found that it usually dropped off of Pandora after just a few songs. I was about ready to send it back (as it was still in its trial period), but then we started watching some Netflix TV shows and that mostly worked OK.

Well, except about 1 time in 10 when it'd totally lose its networking and we'd have to reboot it to get it working again.

That's gotten considerably worse lately, now that we've used it for 6 or 9 months. Lately, 1 in 2 times we try and watch something, it just locks up during some point of networking. Sometimes it can't find the wireless hub (about 12 feet across the room) and sometimes it can't connect past the hub to the internet. And, even worse, I can reboot everything and it still doesn't work sometimes. 

Very frustrating.

I'm about ready to toss the piece of crap out of window to see if it'll explode when it hits the street. More notably, we're also considering dropping our Netflix streaming since we don't have a device that adequately shows them (actually, we have several, but they're all computers, iPhones, and iPads, not really conducive to group viewing).

(I should see if I can get our Tivo linked up to Netflix, but I was having problems with the wireless [again], though in this case it's more understandable because it's on a  different floor.)

Westfield Comics. These guys have been in mail-order for a long, long time. I remember ads from them in Marvel Comics from the '80s or so. So, I'm surprised how tone-deaf they are about Internet orders. Basically, I tried to order a big omnibus from them a week ago, on the 29th. They waited a full week to process my order, then told me they didn't have it. Which is pretty unacceptable in itself. But the cherry on top was the fact that they took my money (which may have been illegal, as they did not actually have the item to sell), they did not issue a refund, and instead told me they'd given me credit at their store.

Fortunately, I always pay relatively unknown companies with Paypal if I can, and thus I have no doubt that I will be getting a refund, if the idiots at Westfield Comics like it or not.

Went out to Endgame this morning for my friend Eric's release party for his two games Cambria and Hibernia. There was tasty catering and fun games to play. I've played a lot of prototype games over the years, and I'm happy to say that many of the ones I've played at Endgame (Armorica, Cambria, Hibernia, Race to Adventure) have been top-rate, and the sort of things that I'd be interested in playing even if designed by people I didn't know. I did horrible in my one game of Cambria, but pretty much sharked both Hibernia games I played.

My Dad called in the late afternoon, which he often does on Sundays. We chatted for a good hour on this and that, which is always a pleasure.

I picked up the Ascension card game while at Endgame today and introduced it to Kimberly tonight. She's been a big fan of Dominion (having played the game more than I have, I'm positive, and I have almost 100 plays under my belt), so I've been wanting to introduce her to another of my favorite deckbuilding games--except I didn't own it until today. I'm very happy to say that the experiment was successful, as she liked it, even after I got out a rampaging horde of Mechana Constructs.

My Mom called in the evening, and we're going to go visit her for Christmas Dinner on Christmas day. We haven't done that in many, many years, but with a relaxing week afterward and plenty of notice on the plans, I was happy to say yes.

Whew! Which is why I say busy. I was going to do some more writing tonight (on the AP for my Pathfinder game, which is now done for the year) and some programming (on the iPhone version of the aforementioned Armorica game, which is nearing feature and UI completion, but still has no AI), but I got knocked off track when my dad called around 3.45, and it's now much, much too late. So instead, I'm going to relax, finish the volume of Scalped I've been reading (#7), and do some other assorted reading.

Cobweb. So after our stressful first time out with Cobweb's subcutaneous fluids, things have gotten better. It's still all a pain in the neck, but she's been mostly tolerant and mostly calm about it. Cobweb has also clearly doing better from the combination of the antibiotics and the fluids. She just begged me to put some dry food down in fact. The real question will be if she relapses after she goes off it all. She has a doctor's appointment to look at her kidney's infectionousness on Friday.

The Book. After I sent off the RPG History book off (again) on Tuesday, I got some late comments. Sigh. But they were on articles that I was very happy to get feedback on. I managed to address the comments and do another full pass on the articles afterward today. And hopefully there won't be more comments for the moment.

Weather. Beautiful. I'd like to get out an do a long bike ride or two. Just a little too busy still.

Gaming. On the other hand, it looks like I'm going to be gaming free for one Saturday, maybe two. That should give me time to do taxes and start catching up on all the stuff that got delayed while I worked on the book.

Wiedlins. And finally, today, Kimberly and I had the first of a few belated birthday celebrations. My mom, Bob, Rob, Jason, and Lisa came by to wish up happy birthday. K. & I got some b-day money (yay!) which means there's going to be some book purchasing shortly. Well, at least for me. I was going over my Amazon list tonight, but will probably wait until tomorrow for purchasing. And we had a great dinner at a nearby Vietnemese restaurant. And much nice talking.

Overall a nice day. Especially when you add in the late waking and the midday nap. Another few weekends like that and I'll feel human again.