Neat avatar, Alden. Did you generate the background, or was that an existing image?
Agreed on the wrongness of not voting. My brother joined the Marine Corps and served a term in the Middle East, but still doesn't vote. "It wouldn't do anything anyway." Like, what? Really?
I know Pete started college and Kris started working at the mall. I can't believe that's completely eaten up _all_ their free time.
Maybe it's the other way round!
Any ETA on those photos, Kank? Very curious to see what you look like in dramatic robes.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
[The Crafters] | [Johnnies United]
My anecdotal evidence disagrees with yours! EXPLAIN THAT!
@Kank: Maybe, sometime, I'll get around to messing with it. I'm surprised you haven't changed it in all these years. I may have to do an update. Now that I'm a little better with my photoshop skills.
@Zith: Yes, in fact, I did draw the background. It was just some coloring in and setting the brush settings over to "hard light" and "difference." A little bit of time and a smudge tool later....
@Kank: Nice. Where the bright white teeth on purpose? It creates a pretty big contrast there. However, either way, you still look appropriately horrifying.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Proud Owner of: Extremeicon's Hamster-balled soul Istanbul's Soul, Bidder of Myself votan's Linux-loving Soul grappler12's Poop-smithing Soul Sir Blakely's Fencing Soul CraZedMiKe's Soul Transferred Back at His Request HAWKEYE 7's Calvin and Hobbes Loving Soul Tanthalas' Greek Alliance Soul Avatar of Kokusho's Island-Hating Soul Salubrious' Rather-Belatedly Added Soul
When all of my makeup was black, the whiteness of my teeth stood out. I don't have them whitened or anything, so it must just be the contrast.
I'll have to upload some of the bigger pictures onto my server at home. I can't do that while I'm at work.
Ack. Things keep happening around here. This time it's my brother getting divorced and moving in for a few months at least. I'm not terribly pleased about it; he's got anger issues that quite nearly got me beat up on his birthday in August. But he'll have his nieces half the time, so I've been picking up kid-friendly board games. Pengoloo, Spot It! and Chateau Roquefort so far, with a couple more on order that I'll probably make Christmas presents instead of just having around.
Thanksgiving went fairly well. Made potato puree and tried my hand at creamed corn - a success! The basic idea being you cook out the water in the corn, replace that with cream, cook out the water in that cream, then finish off with a bit more cream. Throw in a touch of lime juice and zest, turns out pretty tasty. Oh, and I made five dozen rolls or so as always.
There was a bit of embarrassment when we had my grandmother over, but intentionally put off dinner until she left as we thought she was eating elsewhere. Yeah, turns out she wasn't, to my mother's horror.
My Black Friday amounted to a trip to the game store, where they finally had Dominion: Prosperity and Fabula in stock. No crowds, though.
Yeah, winter really snuck up on us over here. We had a very mild summer that lasted well into October, and somewhere between then and now it got cold and rainy very quickly. Hooray cold!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
[The Crafters] | [Johnnies United]
My anecdotal evidence disagrees with yours! EXPLAIN THAT!
@Kank: The bigger picture looks good. Very creepy and evil. However, for some odd reason, I'm reminded of Old Gregg every time I look at the picture. And yeah, Christmas already.
@Zith: I understand what having a brother with Anger Issues is like. My brother and I were going to room together during college, but about two weeks in, a physical altercation between him and I meant I moved out. In retrospect, I should've pressed charges on him so he could've gotten to the anger management course he still so desperately needs. Good luck, sir.
@Games for kids: I ended up picking up some young playables for son to start his boardgaming. We're working on counting, so Cooties and Chutes and Ladders were snatched up. Candyland will also be making an appearance on Christmas morning, as it is a simple, easy-to-learn game that we can start playing with him. He's only two and half, but he's mentally quite a bit older...we think he should be able to grasp the rudimentary concepts and start having fun with us.
@Black Friday: Oh, God...that was a mess for me. I ended up getting like 3 hours of sleep in between two shifts of shopping and then running and participating in a draft as the 8th man. I, to put it mildly, sucked it up. Hardcore.
@Cool new things: Who likes pictures? I DO I DO! Great...here's some artwork for the Christmas Exchange. Don't look if you don't want a surprised ruined. I did the Planeschase Card and the Myojin. My wife did the Day of Judgement.
ATTACHMENTS
Myojin of Christmas
Mirrored Depths
Day of Judgement
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Proud Owner of: Extremeicon's Hamster-balled soul Istanbul's Soul, Bidder of Myself votan's Linux-loving Soul grappler12's Poop-smithing Soul Sir Blakely's Fencing Soul CraZedMiKe's Soul Transferred Back at His Request HAWKEYE 7's Calvin and Hobbes Loving Soul Tanthalas' Greek Alliance Soul Avatar of Kokusho's Island-Hating Soul Salubrious' Rather-Belatedly Added Soul
Christmas=Day of Judgement?
Santa Claus will judge your SOUL! [/evilhohoho]
I haven't even started shopping yet. This year my family has instituted a name drawing instead of just buying a small gift for everyone. So now we have to buy a $40 gift for the name we draw and something for the kiddies, but that's it. That only counts for my side of the family, we'll still have to buy something for everyone on my wife's side.
Oh right, the exchange! Forgot all about it. Well, I guess this is the first time around I'm not putting a Maze of Ith Zith in the mix.
My mom's folks had to institute a name exchange, too. There are just so many of us; I have 26 first cousins on that side. But over time that fell out in favor of just abandoning gifts for the extended family in general.
I've decided to get all of my gifts from my FLGS, so it's a party game for my party game loving sister (Time's Up: Title Recall), a skill-less party game for my game-hating father (Say Anything!), a couple for my nieces (Hisss and Kids of Carcassone). Not sure what to do for my brother - the party game Argue! was shot down - while for my mother it'll probably be a game for her to have in her classroom.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
[The Crafters] | [Johnnies United]
My anecdotal evidence disagrees with yours! EXPLAIN THAT!
Kank: Yes, Evil Ho Ho Ho. My wife totally came up with the idea and I think it 100% fits the card. You totally get judged.....NAUGHTY! I hope to heavens that whoever gets it puts it in their deck to show off.
Zith: That's too bad! You almost had enough time to get one in still at that time. It's a little sad panda.
Gifts: Well, games are always positive for people. I've never met anyone who doesn't even enjoy party games. However, if your father hates games....maybe reconsider something else? Plus, you're supporting your LGS, which is definitely positive.
I've got a very limited family presence in the area, so we only really get stuff for those in the area. We send cards and greetings-type stuff for those we can't really travel to visit, so it keeps costs down. In fact...going to travel this weekend so I can visit my family and go watch TRON 3D in the IMAX. Guess which one I'm excited to do?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Proud Owner of: Extremeicon's Hamster-balled soul Istanbul's Soul, Bidder of Myself votan's Linux-loving Soul grappler12's Poop-smithing Soul Sir Blakely's Fencing Soul CraZedMiKe's Soul Transferred Back at His Request HAWKEYE 7's Calvin and Hobbes Loving Soul Tanthalas' Greek Alliance Soul Avatar of Kokusho's Island-Hating Soul Salubrious' Rather-Belatedly Added Soul
I'm going to attend a free screening of Tron: Legacy on Saturday. I don't know if it's going to be 3D or not, but hey, free is free.
I still remember seeing the first one (at the drive-in, no less!) in 1982.
That was the best year ever for sci-fi movie fans.
Yeah, but I used my last Maze of Ith last year and funds are a bit tight at the moment (not helped by missing a week of work due to a freak HSV1 breakout on my hands that's never happened before). It is funny, though, because I kept a few cards off to the side that I thought would make submissions but couldn't come up with actual final ideas for from last year, and even ran across them again in October, but still forgot.
Well, he likes "games" where you don't have to make any decisions, but he's too stubborn about games in general to try even the lightest party games. We've said before that we need to force him into a game of Apples to Apples, and I think Say Anything! will be even better than that because you don't have to wait for the card to show up. I am already regretting getting my brother a set of BuckyBalls instead of switching the two ideas, though. My mom's getting Once Upon A Time, a storytelling game where you work from cards in your hand, mostly generic fantasy fare for the base game - the thief, the magic wand, the princess, the dragon...
Oh! Speaking of games, it seems that I've always known about Crokinole at least by name, and I've always assumed it's one of those games that everyone's heard of like Bridge or Pinochle - and I'm finding that I don't know anybody who's even heard the name! Please tell me whether you all have.
I've been carefully keeping my hopes down for TRON - as much as I can, anyway - as I rather doubt they, the producers, actually want to make another movie like TRON as the majority of "normal people" wouldn't get into it. But even with that in mind I can't keep myself from getting excited about it.
I saw that they're doing a fourth Mission Impossible next year, which I'd roll my eyes at except that it's written by Abrams, and more importantly for me, directed by Brad Bird. Between those two, I'm definitely curious about it.
Ran across Fake Stan Lee yesterday. It seems like the kind of thing that the Internet would already know about, but I hadn't heard of him. He's really good at it!
Also only heard about the EDH Commander thing yesterday. I'm a little tired of nomenclature changes from WotC, seems like Elder Dragon Singleton could've worked just as well... =/
HSV1 on your hands?
Usually Herpes Simplex breaks out around the mouth or genitals.
I still have so much shopping to do. The best gift so far that I'm getting anybody is that I'm getting my mom a Blu-ray player. She has a nicer HDTV than we do but only has a regular upconverting DVD player attached to it.
@Crinknole: Never heard of it. Have no idea what type of game it is at all.
@Once Upon a Time: I'm probably going to pick this one up once my son gets around 4 or 5. It seems really fun and cool to play. I love storytelling quite a bit.
Mmmm...bucky balls are fun. Even funner if they're actually Bucky Balls (C60) and not the toys.
@Kank: Wow...I'm not really getting anyone anything really cool this year. I've been really stumped what to get my wife. I usually try and get her something amazing...I just haven't been able to find something this year. I'm a little disappointed about it.
@Tight Money: Being tight on money is never good around Christmas. I hope things work out better for you, Zith!
@EDH: I refuse to call it "Commander." I haven't ever played "Commander," but I've been playing Elder Dragon Highlander for nigh on SIX years. Just because WOTC decides to cash in on its popularity, it doesn't mean I have to respect their changes. It was, is, and ALWAYS will be EDH to me. /rant.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Proud Owner of: Extremeicon's Hamster-balled soul Istanbul's Soul, Bidder of Myself votan's Linux-loving Soul grappler12's Poop-smithing Soul Sir Blakely's Fencing Soul CraZedMiKe's Soul Transferred Back at His Request HAWKEYE 7's Calvin and Hobbes Loving Soul Tanthalas' Greek Alliance Soul Avatar of Kokusho's Island-Hating Soul Salubrious' Rather-Belatedly Added Soul
Buckyballs are even more fun when you swallow them!
My wife always gets me a huge want list that absolutely dwarfs our daughters (who only asked for 4 things). I'm admittedly hard to shop for because there really isn't anything that I want or need that I don't already have. Smart family members just get me gift cards.
Hehe. My family is full of people that are hard to shop for. My brother's not usually too difficult, but my sister and I are incredibly picky.
Yeah, but there's also herpetic sycosis, usually caused by shaving and transferring it that way. This just spontaneously broke out on my hands and feet, something like 30 pustules total. Good times.
A little more rules-heavy than Once Upon A Time is Fabula, but I think I like the idea of it a lot more. OUAT is, by the book, competitive, and playing to win makes lame stories because telling a more elaborate story opens it up to being stolen more easily and whoever finishes the story wins. Fabula has a player act as judge, with clear guidelines on how to score the stories, but this makes it much more open. It's definitely harder to incorporate the cards, though, especially at the end when you have to use both of the last two, unused items - generally unused because they're hard to work with. A birdcage and a spyglass?
But each game has a variant to encourage more fun storytelling. Fabula can be played without a judge and everyone involved at the end without bothering about having a "winner." OUAT can be played without having individual victory, as well, trying to incorporate everyone's Happily Ever After cards instead of just your own.
Then again, Fabula is four specific problems to solve in an otherwise already set story. I think OUAT is much more open than that. Hm...
Lucked into talking to my theater-working friend about TRON six hours ago, causing him to check when the employee screening was and finding out if he could bring guests - it was four hours ago and yes - so hooray seeing it early for free! And it was very good! There are the usual nitpicks, of course, but those are few and little enough that it's fine by me. For the most part, it hit all the right buttons. You'll have to like Jeff Bridges, though, in much the same way someone might say you'll have to like Johnny Depp before an installment of The Jack Sparrow Show Pirates of the Caribbean.
A little bit much slow-mo for my tastes, a bit of excessive foreshadowing, lack of Bit and curves in my light cycles!! They played a touch loose on the notion that Kevin would die in the process of derezzing CLU directly. And the whole laser capture system thing worked because the molecules were left in the laser stream and then it used them to reconstruct the object later (helpfully keeping this from being a 3D fax), so how does CLU plan to bring an army into the real world? Going around kidnapping folks? Using each to churn out two half-sized soldiers?
That part almost ruined it for bringing Quorra through, but I think she's smaller than Kevin, so it should be okay. I'd expect her emergent parts to not translate too terribly well into the real world, but whatever. Oh, and my friend and I are pretty sure that her make-up is an integral part of her body.
I loved the many, many references to TRON - though I'm fairly sure the door was bigger in the original - and thinking about trying to play first-person aerial combat light cycles is makes my brain hut in a good way. I'm impressed by the story idea, definitely belongs in the rarefied field of good sequel premises.
The "Not Alan Rickman" guy you must be referring to is David Warner (Sark). He played the comedic villain in my favorite Terry Gilliam movie Time Bandits.
I hope I'm feeling well enough to go to the screening tomorrow. I was out sick yesterday and I'm still feeling crappy today. It's some sort of stomach thing where you feel like you could throw up at any moment but don't yet not feel that nauseous overall. I dub the feeling as "Oogie."
I enjoy it, but I'm not completely insane about it - and I'm certainly not addicted to it like some are. I just had a great Tex-Mex dish the other day that made me think of it - skirt steak broiled with jalapeños, red chillies, and habañero peppers served with corn tortillas. It was delicious flaming hot fajitas.
My favorite cuisine is Mexican. Beans, rice, tortillas, carnitas, shredded beef, cheese, guacamole, salsa/pico de gallo, etc. You living in Houston must have a plethora of good authentic Mexican restaurants to choose from. We have quite a few Mexican restaurants in the Sacramento area, but only a few that are worth bragging about. I've had better stuff at On the Border than at most of these "authentic" restaurants. Say that someone is visiting Houston, which Mexican restaurants could you recommend (or Tex-Mex if you will). Please note: Chili's does not count!
I've got quite a few, depending on area. Since the area I live is a great spot for tourists (by NASA), I would recommend Lupe Tortilla. It's been there forever, and is a common place for businesses to take people for Tex-Mex lunches. The best high-end is Hugo's, which is in the Montrose, near downtown.
There's tons of small places everywhere too. I can always find a good beef (or carnitas) street tacos.
About once or twice a month I start really seeking spicy foods, and I find that nothing available at most restaurants or stores is spicy enough. Went to my favorite sandwich shop and asked for the spiciest thing there, the guy whipped up an off-menu sandwich using all their spicy stuff, and it didn't quite hit it. I suppose I should make it for myself, but I'm inexperienced around peppers. I've also generally felt that I should get involved at chili festivals and the like to really test it, or maybe even judge.
As Mexican cuisine goes, there's not much here in Wine Country, though I have heard of a pair of restaurants over in Napa (on the other edge of Wine Country) that are supposed to be quite good. But out in Berkeley there's a terrific Mexican restaurant called Tacubaya near the marina - convenient for those kite-flying days - that does simple food at a reasonable price using top-notch ingredients.
This being around my nieces thing has started really wearing me down around Christmas. I'm really not okay with lying to children, and these days there's this whole Santa Claus thing that drives me crazy. Stories and imagining are fine, but this one's told as fact. I've taken to avoiding them so I don't hear about it. Or worse, I could get asked about it. Does anyone else deal with this sort of thing?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
[The Crafters] | [Johnnies United]
My anecdotal evidence disagrees with yours! EXPLAIN THAT!
@Emo: Hell yeah I love me some spicy food! But with a caveat: I've got to be able to taste the flavor of the food, not just irrational heat. It's actually why I rarely, if ever, eat spicy Hispanic dishes. Very little flavor most of the time, just heat. I prefer Thai, traditional Sichuan,and Indian for my spicy side. Nothing like a great-tasting Chicken Tikka or Lamb dish to really heat up the palate. Surprisingly, yes, I actually seek out spicy foods on a regular basis. I love the release of endorphins, the rush as the body kicks into overdrive to control the heat, then the satisfied, happy feeling of release after the peak. Mmm...then you can just eat at any hot level afterward. So nice. Personally, I want to try me some Ghost Chili.....
@Zith: I totally discussed with my wife whether we wanted to do Santa Claus or not with our son. We ended up going with it, with the same eventual expectation that we both were told. Santa Claus does truly exist, he's just the embodiment of the spirit of giving. Sorta a less martyr-like Christ for the non-religious. I hope I didn't offend anyone with that last statement. How do I deal with it? By politely keeping up the lie. I don't want to ever have to get to the point where I'm all like "Don't make me call Santa!" with my kid to get him to behave. I think it's unnecessary.
@Good Hispanic Food: Thankfully, I live in an area where there are plenty of migrant workers or settled Hispanic families in the area. There _are_ benefits to agricultural communities. This manifests itself is some absolutely freakin' amazing Hispanic restaurants and taco wagons. Seriously...there's probably 16 different restaurants around town (65,000 people!) serving everything from high-end fair to the aforementioned taco wagons to Tex-Mex. My favorite two are the high-end Jalisco's and the middle-range Pachanga's, which is more of a lunch-type deal. Both very tasty and very authentic. Plus, they serve Mexican Import Coke around here. Dunno if you guys have had Coke made with Cane Sugar, but DAMN it's SOOOO much better.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Proud Owner of: Extremeicon's Hamster-balled soul Istanbul's Soul, Bidder of Myself votan's Linux-loving Soul grappler12's Poop-smithing Soul Sir Blakely's Fencing Soul CraZedMiKe's Soul Transferred Back at His Request HAWKEYE 7's Calvin and Hobbes Loving Soul Tanthalas' Greek Alliance Soul Avatar of Kokusho's Island-Hating Soul Salubrious' Rather-Belatedly Added Soul
DCI Advanced Organizer
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
If you wanted to play around with my avatar that you made *over* 5 years ago, I'd love to have some animated flames!
Agreed on the wrongness of not voting. My brother joined the Marine Corps and served a term in the Middle East, but still doesn't vote. "It wouldn't do anything anyway." Like, what? Really?
Maybe it's the other way round!
Any ETA on those photos, Kank? Very curious to see what you look like in dramatic robes.
@Zith: Yes, in fact, I did draw the background. It was just some coloring in and setting the brush settings over to "hard light" and "difference." A little bit of time and a smudge tool later....
@Kank: Nice. Where the bright white teeth on purpose? It creates a pretty big contrast there. However, either way, you still look appropriately horrifying.
Proud Owner of:
Extremeicon's Hamster-balled soul
Istanbul's Soul, Bidder of Myself
votan's Linux-loving Soul
grappler12's Poop-smithing Soul
Sir Blakely's Fencing Soul
CraZedMiKe's Soul Transferred Back at His Request
HAWKEYE 7's Calvin and Hobbes Loving Soul
Tanthalas' Greek Alliance Soul
Avatar of Kokusho's Island-Hating Soul
Salubrious' Rather-Belatedly Added Soul
DCI Advanced Organizer
I'll have to upload some of the bigger pictures onto my server at home. I can't do that while I'm at work.
Proud Owner of:
Extremeicon's Hamster-balled soul
Istanbul's Soul, Bidder of Myself
votan's Linux-loving Soul
grappler12's Poop-smithing Soul
Sir Blakely's Fencing Soul
CraZedMiKe's Soul Transferred Back at His Request
HAWKEYE 7's Calvin and Hobbes Loving Soul
Tanthalas' Greek Alliance Soul
Avatar of Kokusho's Island-Hating Soul
Salubrious' Rather-Belatedly Added Soul
DCI Advanced Organizer
Here's a bigger picture of my Halloween costume:
http://kankennon.com/pics/Halloween2010.JPG
Wow. Is it Christmas season already? What happened?
Thanksgiving went fairly well. Made potato puree and tried my hand at creamed corn - a success! The basic idea being you cook out the water in the corn, replace that with cream, cook out the water in that cream, then finish off with a bit more cream. Throw in a touch of lime juice and zest, turns out pretty tasty. Oh, and I made five dozen rolls or so as always.
There was a bit of embarrassment when we had my grandmother over, but intentionally put off dinner until she left as we thought she was eating elsewhere. Yeah, turns out she wasn't, to my mother's horror.
My Black Friday amounted to a trip to the game store, where they finally had Dominion: Prosperity and Fabula in stock. No crowds, though.
Yeah, winter really snuck up on us over here. We had a very mild summer that lasted well into October, and somewhere between then and now it got cold and rainy very quickly. Hooray cold!
@Zith: I understand what having a brother with Anger Issues is like. My brother and I were going to room together during college, but about two weeks in, a physical altercation between him and I meant I moved out. In retrospect, I should've pressed charges on him so he could've gotten to the anger management course he still so desperately needs. Good luck, sir.
@Games for kids: I ended up picking up some young playables for son to start his boardgaming. We're working on counting, so Cooties and Chutes and Ladders were snatched up. Candyland will also be making an appearance on Christmas morning, as it is a simple, easy-to-learn game that we can start playing with him. He's only two and half, but he's mentally quite a bit older...we think he should be able to grasp the rudimentary concepts and start having fun with us.
@Black Friday: Oh, God...that was a mess for me. I ended up getting like 3 hours of sleep in between two shifts of shopping and then running and participating in a draft as the 8th man. I, to put it mildly, sucked it up. Hardcore.
@Cool new things: Who likes pictures? I DO I DO! Great...here's some artwork for the Christmas Exchange. Don't look if you don't want a surprised ruined. I did the Planeschase Card and the Myojin. My wife did the Day of Judgement.
Proud Owner of:
Extremeicon's Hamster-balled soul
Istanbul's Soul, Bidder of Myself
votan's Linux-loving Soul
grappler12's Poop-smithing Soul
Sir Blakely's Fencing Soul
CraZedMiKe's Soul Transferred Back at His Request
HAWKEYE 7's Calvin and Hobbes Loving Soul
Tanthalas' Greek Alliance Soul
Avatar of Kokusho's Island-Hating Soul
Salubrious' Rather-Belatedly Added Soul
DCI Advanced Organizer
Santa Claus will judge your SOUL! [/evilhohoho]
I haven't even started shopping yet. This year my family has instituted a name drawing instead of just buying a small gift for everyone. So now we have to buy a $40 gift for the name we draw and something for the kiddies, but that's it. That only counts for my side of the family, we'll still have to buy something for everyone on my wife's side.
IthZith in the mix.My mom's folks had to institute a name exchange, too. There are just so many of us; I have 26 first cousins on that side. But over time that fell out in favor of just abandoning gifts for the extended family in general.
I've decided to get all of my gifts from my FLGS, so it's a party game for my party game loving sister (Time's Up: Title Recall), a skill-less party game for my game-hating father (Say Anything!), a couple for my nieces (Hisss and Kids of Carcassone). Not sure what to do for my brother - the party game Argue! was shot down - while for my mother it'll probably be a game for her to have in her classroom.
Zith: That's too bad! You almost had enough time to get one in still at that time. It's a little sad panda.
Gifts: Well, games are always positive for people. I've never met anyone who doesn't even enjoy party games. However, if your father hates games....maybe reconsider something else? Plus, you're supporting your LGS, which is definitely positive.
I've got a very limited family presence in the area, so we only really get stuff for those in the area. We send cards and greetings-type stuff for those we can't really travel to visit, so it keeps costs down. In fact...going to travel this weekend so I can visit my family and go watch TRON 3D in the IMAX. Guess which one I'm excited to do?
Proud Owner of:
Extremeicon's Hamster-balled soul
Istanbul's Soul, Bidder of Myself
votan's Linux-loving Soul
grappler12's Poop-smithing Soul
Sir Blakely's Fencing Soul
CraZedMiKe's Soul Transferred Back at His Request
HAWKEYE 7's Calvin and Hobbes Loving Soul
Tanthalas' Greek Alliance Soul
Avatar of Kokusho's Island-Hating Soul
Salubrious' Rather-Belatedly Added Soul
DCI Advanced Organizer
I still remember seeing the first one (at the drive-in, no less!) in 1982.
That was the best year ever for sci-fi movie fans.
Well, he likes "games" where you don't have to make any decisions, but he's too stubborn about games in general to try even the lightest party games. We've said before that we need to force him into a game of Apples to Apples, and I think Say Anything! will be even better than that because you don't have to wait for the card to show up. I am already regretting getting my brother a set of BuckyBalls instead of switching the two ideas, though. My mom's getting Once Upon A Time, a storytelling game where you work from cards in your hand, mostly generic fantasy fare for the base game - the thief, the magic wand, the princess, the dragon...
Oh! Speaking of games, it seems that I've always known about Crokinole at least by name, and I've always assumed it's one of those games that everyone's heard of like Bridge or Pinochle - and I'm finding that I don't know anybody who's even heard the name! Please tell me whether you all have.
I've been carefully keeping my hopes down for TRON - as much as I can, anyway - as I rather doubt they, the producers, actually want to make another movie like TRON as the majority of "normal people" wouldn't get into it. But even with that in mind I can't keep myself from getting excited about it.
I saw that they're doing a fourth Mission Impossible next year, which I'd roll my eyes at except that it's written by Abrams, and more importantly for me, directed by Brad Bird. Between those two, I'm definitely curious about it.
Ran across Fake Stan Lee yesterday. It seems like the kind of thing that the Internet would already know about, but I hadn't heard of him. He's really good at it!
Also only heard about the
EDHCommander thing yesterday. I'm a little tired of nomenclature changes from WotC, seems like Elder Dragon Singleton could've worked just as well... =/Usually Herpes Simplex breaks out around the mouth or genitals.
I still have so much shopping to do. The best gift so far that I'm getting anybody is that I'm getting my mom a Blu-ray player. She has a nicer HDTV than we do but only has a regular upconverting DVD player attached to it.
@Once Upon a Time: I'm probably going to pick this one up once my son gets around 4 or 5. It seems really fun and cool to play. I love storytelling quite a bit.
Mmmm...bucky balls are fun. Even funner if they're actually Bucky Balls (C60) and not the toys.
@Kank: Wow...I'm not really getting anyone anything really cool this year. I've been really stumped what to get my wife. I usually try and get her something amazing...I just haven't been able to find something this year. I'm a little disappointed about it.
@Tight Money: Being tight on money is never good around Christmas. I hope things work out better for you, Zith!
@EDH: I refuse to call it "Commander." I haven't ever played "Commander," but I've been playing Elder Dragon Highlander for nigh on SIX years. Just because WOTC decides to cash in on its popularity, it doesn't mean I have to respect their changes. It was, is, and ALWAYS will be EDH to me. /rant.
Proud Owner of:
Extremeicon's Hamster-balled soul
Istanbul's Soul, Bidder of Myself
votan's Linux-loving Soul
grappler12's Poop-smithing Soul
Sir Blakely's Fencing Soul
CraZedMiKe's Soul Transferred Back at His Request
HAWKEYE 7's Calvin and Hobbes Loving Soul
Tanthalas' Greek Alliance Soul
Avatar of Kokusho's Island-Hating Soul
Salubrious' Rather-Belatedly Added Soul
DCI Advanced Organizer
My wife always gets me a huge want list that absolutely dwarfs our daughters (who only asked for 4 things). I'm admittedly hard to shop for because there really isn't anything that I want or need that I don't already have. Smart family members just get me gift cards.
Yeah, but there's also herpetic sycosis, usually caused by shaving and transferring it that way. This just spontaneously broke out on my hands and feet, something like 30 pustules total. Good times.
A little more rules-heavy than Once Upon A Time is Fabula, but I think I like the idea of it a lot more. OUAT is, by the book, competitive, and playing to win makes lame stories because telling a more elaborate story opens it up to being stolen more easily and whoever finishes the story wins. Fabula has a player act as judge, with clear guidelines on how to score the stories, but this makes it much more open. It's definitely harder to incorporate the cards, though, especially at the end when you have to use both of the last two, unused items - generally unused because they're hard to work with. A birdcage and a spyglass?
But each game has a variant to encourage more fun storytelling. Fabula can be played without a judge and everyone involved at the end without bothering about having a "winner." OUAT can be played without having individual victory, as well, trying to incorporate everyone's Happily Ever After cards instead of just your own.
Then again, Fabula is four specific problems to solve in an otherwise already set story. I think OUAT is much more open than that. Hm...
Lucked into talking to my theater-working friend about TRON six hours ago, causing him to check when the employee screening was and finding out if he could bring guests - it was four hours ago and yes - so hooray seeing it early for free! And it was very good! There are the usual nitpicks, of course, but those are few and little enough that it's fine by me. For the most part, it hit all the right buttons. You'll have to like Jeff Bridges, though, in much the same way someone might say you'll have to like Johnny Depp before an installment of
The Jack Sparrow ShowPirates of the Caribbean.That part almost ruined it for bringing Quorra through, but I think she's smaller than Kevin, so it should be okay. I'd expect her emergent parts to not translate too terribly well into the real world, but whatever. Oh, and my friend and I are pretty sure that her make-up is an integral part of her body.
I loved the many, many references to TRON - though I'm fairly sure the door was bigger in the original - and thinking about trying to play first-person aerial combat light cycles is makes my brain hut in a good way. I'm impressed by the story idea, definitely belongs in the rarefied field of good sequel premises.
Oh, and I really missed Not Alan Rickman.
I hope I'm feeling well enough to go to the screening tomorrow. I was out sick yesterday and I'm still feeling crappy today. It's some sort of stomach thing where you feel like you could throw up at any moment but don't yet not feel that nauseous overall. I dub the feeling as "Oogie."
I enjoy it, but I'm not completely insane about it - and I'm certainly not addicted to it like some are. I just had a great Tex-Mex dish the other day that made me think of it - skirt steak broiled with jalapeños, red chillies, and habañero peppers served with corn tortillas. It was delicious flaming hot fajitas.
My favorite cuisine is Mexican. Beans, rice, tortillas, carnitas, shredded beef, cheese, guacamole, salsa/pico de gallo, etc. You living in Houston must have a plethora of good authentic Mexican restaurants to choose from. We have quite a few Mexican restaurants in the Sacramento area, but only a few that are worth bragging about. I've had better stuff at On the Border than at most of these "authentic" restaurants. Say that someone is visiting Houston, which Mexican restaurants could you recommend (or Tex-Mex if you will). Please note: Chili's does not count!
There's tons of small places everywhere too. I can always find a good beef (or carnitas) street tacos.
I don't plan on being in Houston anytime soon, but that sounds muy tasty!
Feliz Navidad Amigos!
As Mexican cuisine goes, there's not much here in Wine Country, though I have heard of a pair of restaurants over in Napa (on the other edge of Wine Country) that are supposed to be quite good. But out in Berkeley there's a terrific Mexican restaurant called Tacubaya near the marina - convenient for those kite-flying days - that does simple food at a reasonable price using top-notch ingredients.
This being around my nieces thing has started really wearing me down around Christmas. I'm really not okay with lying to children, and these days there's this whole Santa Claus thing that drives me crazy. Stories and imagining are fine, but this one's told as fact. I've taken to avoiding them so I don't hear about it. Or worse, I could get asked about it. Does anyone else deal with this sort of thing?
@Zith: I totally discussed with my wife whether we wanted to do Santa Claus or not with our son. We ended up going with it, with the same eventual expectation that we both were told. Santa Claus does truly exist, he's just the embodiment of the spirit of giving. Sorta a less martyr-like Christ for the non-religious. I hope I didn't offend anyone with that last statement. How do I deal with it? By politely keeping up the lie. I don't want to ever have to get to the point where I'm all like "Don't make me call Santa!" with my kid to get him to behave. I think it's unnecessary.
@Good Hispanic Food: Thankfully, I live in an area where there are plenty of migrant workers or settled Hispanic families in the area. There _are_ benefits to agricultural communities. This manifests itself is some absolutely freakin' amazing Hispanic restaurants and taco wagons. Seriously...there's probably 16 different restaurants around town (65,000 people!) serving everything from high-end fair to the aforementioned taco wagons to Tex-Mex. My favorite two are the high-end Jalisco's and the middle-range Pachanga's, which is more of a lunch-type deal. Both very tasty and very authentic. Plus, they serve Mexican Import Coke around here. Dunno if you guys have had Coke made with Cane Sugar, but DAMN it's SOOOO much better.
Proud Owner of:
Extremeicon's Hamster-balled soul
Istanbul's Soul, Bidder of Myself
votan's Linux-loving Soul
grappler12's Poop-smithing Soul
Sir Blakely's Fencing Soul
CraZedMiKe's Soul Transferred Back at His Request
HAWKEYE 7's Calvin and Hobbes Loving Soul
Tanthalas' Greek Alliance Soul
Avatar of Kokusho's Island-Hating Soul
Salubrious' Rather-Belatedly Added Soul
DCI Advanced Organizer