Subplot Kudzu

Twelve and half years ago I was living in Boston, where I had a group of friends who were and are more dear to me than words can express. We had very little money, scraping together enough for the occasional night out, but we did a lot of gaming, which is blessedly free. For my birthday that year they chipped in their funds and bought me a beautiful amber letter opener, which I have cherished ever since.

In the intervening years those friends have had a falling out, and while they all speak to me, they don't speak to each other. But I could always pick up the letter opener, finger it with nostalgia and both remember how things used to be and dream idle daydreams that they might be that way again. (these daydreams are, by the way, totally unrealistic.)

We've been using that letter opener to slice open the tape on the many boxes from our recent move, and while searching for boxes of Christmas ornaments it slipped from my fingers, hit the bare concrete floor of the storage space under our stairs and snapped in two. There's no real way to reconnect it, and it just brought home the finality that in objects, as well as in relationships, some things just can't be repaired. But I do wish that I could visit the Sunset Grill in Allston tonight and hoist a drink or two as a final good-bye to the past.

Finally hit a week when I didn't finish a book.

We did move out of the old house, however, and signed all the paperwork to finish the sale assuming the buyer can get their act together to close the deal - it was supposed to happen Friday but now we're looking at Tuesday.  We're now in a short time apartment for 3 weeks. Nice enough, in a very big, very crowded complex in Tarrytown NY. I am looking forward to getting a new house, however, and just finishing this whole process. 

And for getting more gaming time, obviously. 

drcpunk  is sending me copies of The Shackled City campaign (which I epxect to read and maybe steal something from) and, more importantly, Conan d20. Given that Conan was one of the clear foundations for D&D's eneric fantasy environment it seems natural that the character would have a gaming property, especially since 3E finally had a working Barbarian class mechanic. I'm very interested to see what the book reads like, and if there are things in it I can steal for the island northerners in my Emirikol campaign.

Last weekend, during a hellish ongoing work problem, my lovely wife dragged me out of the house for a date - cheeseburger's at Harry's in Colchester and a matinee of Pixar's UP. It was a lovely afternoon and the movie was fantastic. It was nice seeing a film where I couldn't predict everything that was going to happen based on the opening 10 minutes because it was a clever and novel story concept (rather than because the plot had enormous holes and the characters kept making incredibly stupid and/or out of character decisions - I'm talking to you Star Trek). Plus, there was a nice visual depiction of a game mechanic in it. 

( Minimal spoilers behind cut )

Two Blues Clues notes:

In the one focused on reading there was a label on everything in the house and all I could think was that Blues Clues was now ISO9000 Certified.

And in one cooking bit the box they used to indicate sugar was a stylized Domino box with the name removed. I see my corporation is starting its branding at age 3. Well done.

I've been using my Netflix account to watch the Dr. Who reboot and have been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the first season. I enjoyed the show in my youth until Colin Baker became the Doctor, and being borderline disgusted with the 1996 TV Movie I stayed away from the reboot until just recently.

In doing a little Whovian research I came across this bit on Wikipedia "It has been said that watching Doctor Who from a position of safety "behind the sofa" (as the Doctor Who exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image in London was titled) and peering cautiously out to see if the frightening part was over is one of the great shared experiences of British childhood." It got me thinking about the nature of communal entertainment experiences, and how I really wish my daughter's generation will have one. I just don't know what it might be.

More specifically, I wish that by the time she is nineish there is a TV show or book series that is reasonable intelligent, well made and by turns funny, tense and scary. Violence can be lethal but not bloody. Romance is present but sex isn't. And the characters are lovable because of their flaws. and something that everyone watches. In other words, something like Dr. Who, or the original Star Trek (though in my youth we all caught it in mid-afternoon re-runs), or Harry Potter.

I don't know that this will happen, because as it stands all of the early evening time slots have been ceded to shows about sex (the current sitcom staple, and very little of what's on right now rises above insipid in my arrogant opinion), and the later shows are about death (murder and forensics), and even those things that aren't precisely those are still way more sex and death than I'd like for the age I'm thinking of. And the books are all about magical teenage vampires in co-ed gothic boarding schools, mixing sex and death and Harry Potter all at once. But in six years, who knows. (Don't think I have a problem with sex and death, but I don't think, say, How I Met Your Mother or Criminal Minds are really appropraite for a 9 year old). Sure, I'll be introducing my daugther to Dr. Who and Star trek and Harry Potter, but those connections won't be shared with her peers.

It's easy for an iconoclasitic pseudo-intellectual like me to pooh-pooh the power of communal experiences, but I do have to admit that there is a power to them. The truly mass consciousness ones make sure that you're part of the society, while the smaller, subtler ones help you pick like minded people out of the crowd (many of my friends read the same books purchased from the same Scholastic book fairs, so that years later we can reference things that none of our friends at the time enjoyed with the other people of our age who also found themon our own). Both are useful, and powerful things. But I'd like my daughter's to be built on a foundation of quality rather than drek.

While the text on the web page is very, very small, reading it convinces me that this guy might have been the most successful Cleomancer in history.

Well, actually it's "cell phone taken away when I left old job, don't have a new cell phone yet", but this is a general warning not to try to reach me at my old cell number.

The day I found out about the elimination of the regions (and hence my position) at USF I called one of my former bosses, who was now heading up HR at a different company, to see what he might have available. By the time I finally game up on securing an ongoing position at USF and got him my updated resume the job we had discussed had changed several times, becoming something more and more suited to my skill set and locational needs. I had my final - and at this stage somewhat pro forma -  interview today and walked out with a signed offer letter and a weight off my shoulders. 

Comparable position to my current one (Going from a Director to a Sr. Analyst, but in a smaller company with fewer directors and much closer to the decision makers, so it's not so much a step back as doing the hokey-pokey), working from home for at least the next year, slightly more travel early on but tapering off later, and better promotional opportunities. It starts the Monday after my current job ends, so I don't even have a break in paychecks.

This is why, when you're lolling around the afterlife filling out the character sheet for your next incarnation always spend the points on "Luck". I suppose in this case investing a point in "Patron" helped too.

Thanks to everyone for the kind thoughts and good wishes.