Ammo Grot started school today. Yesterday was the school "open house" where the kids can go see their classrooms in advance and meet the teachers. Instead, the teachers are in contract negotiations (because, we, the taxpayers, agreed to give the school system more money this year, so now the teachers want their cut) and because negotiations aren't going well the teachers refused to show up at the open house. As a result, Ammo Grot is going in cold, and very nervous. The principal posted a letter on the teacher's door during the open house stating that the teacher had "dishonored" one of the most important dimensions to the teaching profession: creating a good relationship between student, parent, and teacher. Spell Familliar's teacher, who is super nice (she taught AG when he was younger) actually did show up because she realizes that this does more harm than good.
And I'm generally pro-union, but right now I have to agree with her. All this really does is piss off the taxpayer. Yes, it is two hours that are you are not contractually obligated for nor are you paid for it, and you should be. But as I've mentioned here, there's something to be said for occasionally going the extra mile, especially when it comes to making a good impression on the people who pay your salary by having their homes taxed. Right now the teachers are only working from bell-to-bell as well, meaning I can't stop by after picking up the kids or before school starts to introduce myself, discuss concerns I have about Ammo Grot in school (if I had any, which right now I don't), etc. Once I'm done with my "sabbatical" year, perhaps I will consider that term on the school board.
In other news, I managed to make a bit of money on the auctions, about $200, of which about $150 is profit, once you take out the initial costs of the miniatures and my low-balling shipping a bit. Still a nice haul, all told.
I mentioned two posts ago that I should look into games that I already own, like oh say, Starship Troopers. Well, I thought about it and realized that I had a bazillion box sets that I bought incredibly cheap during a game store sell-off. I also realized that I would never, ever get around to painting the minis, much less playing with them. So I put them on eBay, pretty cheap with a reasonable buy-it-now option. By day two, I'm up to $67, which just happens to be what the three D&D 4e rulebooks costs on Amazon. So, click and buy, and I've got a game I'm more likely to play in exchange for one that I would never use.
And I've still got five more days to go. My own DS Lite, anyone?
What's more, they actually adopt the shrill tonal quality of Ms. Underwood as well.
For those who don't remember, "Premise Beach" is where I pitch RPG adventure or campaign ideas to see how they sound. This one began with a kernel I gleaned from another gamer's blog, but I'm going to flesh it out my way.
The PC's are traveling through a remote village are the far and mountainous end of a region. The community is fairly large for the region, prosperous, and apparently gearing up for some sort of celebration: people are hanging ropes of flowers and lanterns, men are clearing an area and erecting pavilions, etc.
After checking into the local inn, the PC's may learn through gathering rumors that an annual celebration/games is coming up in a few days, an event linked with a good planting year.
Later that day, however, they are approached by a young woman. She is the daughter of the owner of the general goods store, and she has recently been betrothed by her father to a young man in the village. Rather than a reason to celebrate, the woman is instead quite worried. Generations ago, a dragon lived in a large cavern atop a nearby mountain. The dragon ate livestock and terrorized the village until the elders of the village were inspired to take a young woman from the village and hurl her into the cavern atop the mountain: a sacrifice to ensure that the dragon was fed/entertained/whatever enough to leave the village alone. A tradition arose around this now annual sacrifice: every young man engaged to be married that year would participate in physically demanding and dangerous games until one of them perished. The young woman he was engaged to would be then chosen to be the sacrifice. This young woman realizes that her betrothed may come from a wealthy family, but is likely to be the one who will be killed, ensuring her death as well.
The woman also has shrewdly realized that the dragon has not been seen or heard from in many years, and she suspects that it is either dead (unlikely) or moved on (more likely). She also believes that the entire practice, wholeheartedly embraced by the community, has some illogical conclusions, such as that an evil dragon would be placated with a single sacrifice anyways (the woman has been exposed to the outside world by her father's business and has a bit more of a cosmopolitan view than others). So, she wants to hire the PC's to investigate the cave, called "The Dragon's Maw" by the village and confirm that the dragon is in fact gone and then prove to the villagers that they can stop their deadly tradition. By the way: the games start in three days.
This adventure is essentially in two parts: the exploration of the caves (a more traditional dungeon crawl) and finding a way to convince the elders of the village to stop the games, or disrupt the games enough that the young woman lives (a more free-form problem-solving and roleplaying component).
In a few months we start another Warhammer campaign in my wargaming group. Right now, we've been doing a short "mini" campaign with just 300-500 point armies, which I'll admit was my idea. As such, I can also say it isn't all that much fun. I don't like whole battles hinging on one (usually early) bad roll.
So, now I need to scrape together three thousand points worth of troops. Second problem: my two biggest armies--already being played by other players. That'd be Dwarfs (I've got 2200 pts.) and Empire (~2000 pts.)
I've got about 1000 points of Chaos, perhaps more. I also might have 800 pts. of Vampire Counts (or rather, I'm babysitting long-term a small VC army).
The "Jungle Sandwich"
For those who don't want to click the link, it's gummi worms and fruit roll-ups on toast.
You know, for people who essentially encourage children to believe that sitting in front of the computer is the same as taking care of a pet, I shouldn't be surprised that their idea of a "snack" is candy on white bread toast.
For that matter, their Black Forest Sandwich is a cake, and their Lemon Lime Slushie is ice water, sugar, and a little lemon and lime juice. Also works for a hummingbird feeder.
I'm back home, having made the sixteen-hour trip in two fairly uneventful days. There was one hitch, however. One of the "perks" of having an RV is that you don't have to stay at hotels. You can stay at places like WalMart parking lots, or Flying J truck stops for free instead. This is a good idea in theory, but on the way down we discovered that some municipalities don't allow RV's to spend the night.
On the way back, we found a very friendly WalMart, but ran into a problem that it was a little too friendly, and the lot was crammed with semis during the night. Now for a little backstory. RV's have two batteries. The first is the regular ol' car battery that powers the headlights, the dashboard AC, and small 12V items like portable DVD players, just like a car.
There's also a "coach battery" that powers the big items like a microwave, the fridge (which also runs off of propane) and the big AC unit. The coach battery isn't recharged by the alternator, however, it has to be recharged off of the gas-powered generator. Now, during the trip we didn't bother running the generator or running stuff of the coach battery. We just left the windows that have screens open during the night. But the semis don't have a coach battery, and the one next to us just left his engine running the whole night so he could have his AC all night long. An idling diesel engine doesn't use much fuel, but makes a god-awful racket, especially when it is right next to us. And I'm such a country mouse that I'm not used to road noise and am a terribly light sleeper.
It is not exactly unusual, but it has rained every day since we got here. No complaints: the area could use the rain. But Tuesday we went to Busch Gardens and in the early afternoon it just poured on us. Today we went inner-tubing in a local park and appear to have beaten the rain this time. We're learning to get all our outdoor stuff done in the morning (when it is cool) and save the indoor stuff until the early afternoon, when it either gets very hot or starts pouring.
When Mrs. WQ runs, she listens to books on her MP3 player. Well, yesterday she noticed that the USB-USBmini cable that she uses to move stuff onto and off of her player was missing from her purse. We turned the house upside down looking for it, but it was gone. So we went to the store to discover that a replacement cable (which was about five and a half feet longer than the original) would be $20. But a new MP3 player with the short cable and twice as much memory as the old player was $25. So, WQRob got a new MP3 player, and we're sharing the new cable.
Otherwise, we're all good. Church was fine, but not very interesting. I have to say that the one who is having the most fun on vacation is my dog, who has surprised all of us by not running off when he gets outside of the screened-in porch but instead just meanders around, chasing squirrels and watching the lake. He lackadaisical attitude is at once both inspiring and trouble. Inspiring in that it reminds me to relax (especially about my anxiety that my dog will run away someday) and troubling in that it indicates also that he is getting along in years.
On a lighter note, I've been cruising around some of the free alt-D&D stuff on the interwebs. There's loads of "old school D&D" material out there, which I'm mining for good ideas for my own campaign
Last night I ended up being taken to the country club by my father-in-law (along with my wife) to have dinner with some friends, including a retired Dutch admiral who was sporting a red and yellow silk cravat, black shirt, and cream blazer with leather elbow pads. I'm wearing that to diocesan convention.
Today we went back to the library (in hopes of getting some better books) and I bought some supplies to make the kids marshmallow shooting guns. There's a blueprint in a book I bought Ammo Grot before the trip. All those marshmallows rolling around in the dirt reminds me of the strangest part about living here: caterpillar poop. The area is infested with these little black caterpillars that are all up in the trees. They munch on the trees and poop everywhere. We parked our RV under a tree in the driveway and now it looks like it is coated with chocolate jimmies. Blech.
