De Fenestra

So it's been a something something year.

Work continues apace. I have to accustom myself to the creeping speed and inefficiency of the world of local government. I have a couple of chunks of training coming up in the first quarter of 2014 that should get me ready to do most of the work I was actually hired to do. Let's hope there aren't any major disasters before then.

After months of delays and frustration, the basement project is finally complete. Five hacked IKEA Billys and a Benno are installed, giving us what's effectively 65 shelf-feet of "built-in" bookshelves in the basement. Most of the gaming, fiction, and reference books are moved in and clean-up is more-or-less done. Dining room has a new table and chairs, which elalyr and I procured last month as our graduation present to ourselves.

I'm done with my first freelance work since the clusterfuck that was Twilight: 2013. It's a drop in the inkwell compared to some stuff I've done but it was rewarding: 11,000 words for Onyx Path's Trinity Continuum reboot. Redlines are in and my developer is mostly pleased, so I'll have minimal work to do on finalizing them next month.

Currently getting ready for a couple of days with aureus_videre and furison. Typical last-minute game prep, this time for a semi-secret playtest of [REDACTED] [REDACTED]th Edition. Back to the plot mine.

New dining room furniture arrived yesterday. We can now seat (and serve!) six in relative comfort or eight-plus in knee-knocking cramped inefficiency. Cats have sniffed it and pronounced themselves indifferent. Wife has sniffed it and pronounced herself satisfied.

Couch to 5k continues apace (so to speak). Yesterday was two unbroken miles for the first time since November 1992. I am surprisingly not-hurty, which is a good sign in and of itself.

Played in tracker7's Star Wars: Edge of the Empire pick-up game yesterday, in which he ran this year's Free RPG Day scenario. Well-written and well-executed - we got an in media res beginning in a chase scene, some investigation and social stuff, a clue chain that didn't feel contrived, and a couple of final fight scenes that went quickly and smoothly. The only point of friction was a particular player's one-note sense of alleged humor and characterization, but I can filter. To a point. Regardless, though, I'm growing more and more enamored of Fantasy Flight's rules system. The weird symbol-based dice are pretty quick once you figure out what they mean, though the automatic results aggregation of the five-dollar iPhone dice roller app helps immensely. I still don't intend to buy the rather expensive book unless I get into someone's extended campaign, but I'm impressed.

Today, we're under a wind advisory until midnight, as there's a possibility of weather equal to or heavier than what we got on Halloween. I'm taking the precaution of hunkering down in my basement office and working on some of my freelance assignment for the Trinity Continuum reboot. Later, there will no doubt be more XCOM: Enemy Within, about which I really should write separately. The problem is that time spent writing about it means time spent not playing it...

So, a post of updates not about running.

Friday was odd. I resigned from my job - the first time since high school food service and retail that I've voluntarily left a position rather than being booted for corporate budget reasons. It wasn't an easy decision but I have something new lined up which will be a massive step forward in terms of career progression. It's a major financial hit - elalyr and I spent a good chunk of the previous weekend figuring out the household budget revisions - but we can make it work.

I have a lot of regrets about leaving the current gig. The pay is good, the people are good, and most of the work (less the software documentation) is very interesting. But this new thing, which I shall refrain from naming until I start on the 28th, is likely to be better for my resume, skill set, and networking over the long term.

Also scored an iPhone 5S on Friday. My previous 4 was showing its age, mainly with a balky Home button, and I'd been hammering the Apple site to catch the new model in stock at the local Apple Store. I don't think the new machine is any better as a phone but by Kibo, as a pocket computer, it's phenomenal.

Saturday began with a run, shower, breakfast at Magee's, and a trip to the farmers' market for apples, pears, and fresh pasta. We returned home to drop off the spoils of our raid, then headed for Cincinnati. There's a relatively new REI store up there and we acquired some gear for running in cooler weather - we're about to run out of comfortable mornings, I'm afraid. Swung by Yottaquest, where I acquired a couple of Shadowrun modules from previous editions. We tried to get into one of the outlet malls north of Cinci but were stymied by a complete lack of parking, so we just parked and sat in the car with the windows open to enjoy the afternoon.

Dinner was interesting. On the recommendation of a co-worker, we tried a cook-your-own-food-and-eat-it dinner class at The Learning Kitchen. I prepared (!) filet mignon with whiskey/mustard/cream sauce and a sweet potato and parsnip puree - which is a hell of a lot better than it sounds, especially with nutmeg and honey in it. E produced a massive ribeye with cherry sauce - again, not a flavor combination I would've expected to be good - and sauteed snap peas. Om nom nom.

The basement remodel has been slow because weekends have been taken up with so many other things, but all the IKEA shelves are now assembled and we have all the other components necessary for fastening them together and bolting them to the walls. We just have to figure out the assembly sequence and do the work.

Aside from the minor issue of my job ending on November 1st and no replacement income on the horizon, this hasn't been a bad October.

With the summer drought behind us, weather in central Kentuckistan has been just about perfect lately. Cool, crisp, with only a few days of cold snap so far. My usual morning commute route runs through a swath of horse farms here on the south end of the county and it is painfully picturesque. The trees are just about at the peak of fall color. If I'm particularly lucky, there'll be fog along the creek where the road descends to the one-lane bridge spanning it.

The weather's also good for walking. elalyr got a FitBit this spring, and her father was sufficiently enamored of it to buy copies for most of the immediate family (he does things like that). It is useful, if a bit disturbing, to see just how sedentary office jobs make us. The web site's food tracking function follows suit: utilitarian and unsettling. I began using it mainly to support E's own weight loss efforts, but the data kind of scared me - and showed me how I got up to 208 a couple of years ago. Between a conscious effort to stand up and walk around the building periodically during the day, more walks with E in the evenings, and paying attention to what I'm cramming into my gaping maw at all hours, I'm down from 185-190 in July to just brushing 175 (I actually dipped below that mark briefly during September's sinus infection - the hidden benefit of several days of sub-1,000-calorie intake and no hydration).

Walking. A few weeks ago, we finally got around to exploring the slightly larger of two city parks within walking distance of our house. The one we'd been visiting on our peregrinations is usually somewhat well-populated and distinctly suburban, surrounded on all sides by houses with little to no vegetation cover. The new one seems to be the product of a rare intelligent decision by some urban planner. It abuts a branch of South Elkhorn Creek and has a small walking trail along the bank. The floodplain in that part of the park is a no-mow zone, making it an excellent habitat for small birds (and the cats what stalk 'em). It's rare to run into more than one or two other groups on the path, so while not exactly private, it occasionally has that vibe.

It has, unfortunately, been an autumn of illness at the House of Cats and Dice. Both E and I had the aforementioned sinus infection in September, which has trailed off into weeks and weeks of incrementally-decreasing sore throats and sinus drainage. More disturbingly, though, Komatsu came down with a urinary tract infection last week. If you've never lived with (or had to clean up after) a cat with a UTI, consider yourself fortunate. The effects are sanity-blasting. As is typical for him, though, he's been remarkably brave and placid about all the trauma we've inflicted upon him: emergency vet visit with two shots last Thursday night, regular vet visit with IV fluids this Tuesday night, and twice-daily squirts of kitty amoxicillin down his gaping maw. The good news is that the UTI and the crystals that caused it appear to be on the way out. The (latest) bad news is that now he has some sort of cold - acquired, we suspect, at the emergency vet. Hearing and seeing a cat of his size trying to clear his sinuses is horrifying. We felt awful while petting him a few nights ago - he couldn't purr through all the horking. He is slowly recovering but still prone to fits of gargling.

Although the budget crunch of incipient unemployment has curtailed almost all entertainment expenditures, I am getting something of a regular gaming fix. drlucky was kind enough to resume last summer's Space: 1889 game recently, so we've been back on Mars for intrigue, forbidden archaeology, and other shenanigans. The good doctor had to wave off this week's session for trauma related to his day job, so tracker7 broke out his Nightfall set. I am still undecided on the deckbuilding game genre. This was my first exposure, and my initial thinking is that it has some of the gameplay of simpler CCGs but little of the tactical depth or self-determination that make CCGs appealing to me. It did get me thinking about breaking out my old collections, building some decks, and trying to get group play going, but I'm not sure anyone but me would actually dig on that.

Made tonight: Brother Alton's granola bar recipe with the part of the "dried fruit" component played by 2 ounces toasted coconut, 2½ ounces semisweet chocolate chips, and 2½ ounces dried cherries.

I was hoping the chocolate chips would maintain some degree of structural integrity but they melted immediately on contact with the hot toasted grain/nut mix. The gooey mass of delight is now cooling. I'm not sure what the end result will be... other than tasty.

Also, we made fresh limeade for the first time ever. OMFG. I have a new respect for the amount of work required to juice enough limes for key lime pie.

For those among my three loyal readers who are out of state, Kentucky hosted a major storm system yesterday. The House of Cats and Dice was under two tornado warnings but we didn't see anything more than some high winds and brief torrential downpours. I'll get out and do a damage check once I'm wearing pants but I believe everything is okay here.

Despite the lack of major impacts in Fayette County, this one was serious - as is to be expected when a storm system gets a classification that NWS issues about ten times a year. News reports this morning have 12 confirmed deaths statewide (update: 18 as of 11:30), a couple of county hospitals dealing with mass casualty incidents, and some SAR activations to extricate entrapped victims. The biggest hit reported so far was in West Liberty, which is about 50 miles east of us. By preliminary reports, the center of town is pretty much gone.

The good news is that a lot of systems appear to have performed as they should have. Warnings went out well in advance of actual weather. When it became evident that the storm system would be hitting slightly before or during rush hour, most of the school systems in the region dismissed students early so the buses wouldn't be on the roads. Likewise, our mayor advised local businesses to shut down early to get commuters off the road before things got ugly. My employer, which hasn't closed for the last few ice storms, told all personnel to be off-site by 3:00. These precautions turned out not to be needed here - this time - but I think they were the right calls. This could have been much, much worse.