All in all, it didn't go too badly. We didn't really discuss much, in fact, we didn't really talk that much. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just a thing. But things are generally looking pretty good. I'm happy. I've been smiling for most of the evening. Right up until we paid the bill, and the heavens opened up and it began to rain.

Stupid weather.

First, some Shakespeare...

Demetrius: Villain, what hast thou done?
Aaron: That which thou canst not undo.
Chiron: Thou hast undone our mother.
Aaron: Villain, I have done thy mother.

I'm not sure how easy it will be to engineer a situation where I can say "villain, I have done thy mother", but I'll try pretty damned hard to fit it into a conversation at some point. I'd say "perhaps this evening," as I'm due to meet people for dinner tonight. One of these people is my mother, however, so perhaps this wouldn't be the best time. Attempts to find a Tibetan restaurant have failed, and Sprog is currently suggesting Yo Sushi. I'm not quite sure if that's the sort of place she'll want to go, but we can negotiate and/or hit each other over the head until we come to some kind of conclusion / concussion.

Mister Pink has just handed me a DVD with a bunch of PDF files on them.

These are a collection of books for various roleplaying games.

I spot a copy of Cyberpunk v3 on there and all I can say is "Cyberpunk v3? You bastard!". If somebody gives you a copy of that book, they've probably been struggling for a while to find a way to say, hey, don't ever speak to me again.

Made it. May have cried a bit when the train pulled in to the station. It's like going home.

This evening, on the way back to Pink's flat, we went to Jerk City. Anywhere called Jerk City automatically wins points in my book. Heeheehee. Jerk City. Apparently, I need to try the punch next time. Anyway, heeheehee, Jerk City. You big jerk.

In what shall likely be remembered as the "I'm Okay, Thank You For Your Concern Tour '09" (catchily condensed to IOTYFYC-09, t-shirts listing dates and venues will be on sale in the lobby), I have booked surprisingly cheap tickets to visit Exeter for a few days. The current plan is to head off tomorrow morning, arrive in time to have lunch with Mister Ash at Let's Do, then spend a few days generally bimbling around Exeter, saying "hello!" to people I remember and other things. I'll head back towards London on Thursday afternoon, to meet up with Mum and Sprog (I think) for dinner. I'm not sure where we'll go - haven't had much luck finding a Tibetan restaurant in London, and I know that she was interested in eating at that sort of an establishment.

I'll head back to Oundle, then, on the Friday, and see what happens. I'm feeling cool, calm and collected, and I'm confident that, whatever happens on Friday, everything will be fine. Things will work out.

Stay classy, folks!

• Mister Pink has got his iPhone, I expect he'll be frothing about it all week. On the plus side, it did navigate us to the nearest pub. Oh yes, it's Pimm's o'clock.
  
• Will probably be going out to a club this evening. Haven't been to a rock night in years.
  
• Must remember to charge phone.
  
• Will probably get hair cut this weekend...

Edit (1546h): After stopping off at a pub, we ended up going for a waddle around. Forsaking the way of the Tube, and walking from place to place, I've come to notice how - because I usually use the Tube to get around while I'm in London - I tend to view the city in terms of the underground network. Because of my reliance on the Tube, the city may as well be a series of islands connected by the trains.

Will be in London for a while, in order to have long, hard think about things. My Mum is heading to London next week, a chat with her and Sprog over dinner and drinks is long overdue.

Feeling somewhat bewildered. Thank you to the folks who I spoke to last night, both online and on the phone.

"It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything."

Currently, we've got two spaces in our LRP Hotel tent going spare for this coming event. Anyone interested?

Sorted. What's not sorted is the fact that I made lasagne for dinner last night, had left-over lasagne for lunch today, I'm having left-over lasagne for dinner today and it looks like there's going to be enough for lasagne for lunch and possibly dinner again tomorrow. I cannot make lasagne for less than half a dozen people.

I was going to post something profound and meaningful, but then I stumbled across this again. Damnit.

Yesterday saw Miss Freddie and I driving over to Stamford, which is one of those pretty towns that seem to be dotted around the area. The vague plan was to get some fabric from there (there's no fabric shop in Oundle, and I've yet to find one in Peterborough) and generally have a look around. Sadly, the fabric shop that we found was tiny - about the size of our bedroom - and didn't really have that much in stock. A tad disappointing. After a round of sandwiches for lunch, we came back home, and I spent most of the afternoon decorating a large hat with tiny cogs. My heart decided to suddenly kick off at a thousand miles an hour for no discernible reason, which then led to a severe case of The Tiredness once it stopped.

Today, The Tiredness remains, which has meant I've spent most of the morning alternating between bouts of almost falling asleep at the desk to being incredibly nervous and paranoid about everything. We're off to lunch today with Miss Freddie's family at the Red Lion, so there's the promise of good food at least, but I can't help shake that feeling that something bad's going to happen - whether that's me falling asleep face first into a bowl of soup, or getting angry because I've misconstrued some innocent comment to be a scathing attack about my person, who can tell?

At the moment, it looks like the weather may be merciful, and today won't be the harsh lesson in heat exhaustion of Monday and Tuesday. It just isn't geek friendly weather. I own one pair of shorts, and even then, they go down to well beyond my knees. I am not equipped to deal with the summer and, because I have a tendency to count the days until autumn, I don't often go out to buy more "summer appropriate" clothes. I spent all of my childhood living on various islands that tourists flock to in the summer, mostly to sit on the beaches, yet I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I volunteered to go to the beach.

I might have to hit the shops at some point, sadly, to purchase a few extra pairs of shorts. Maybe some sandals. Perhaps, if I'm willing to make an effort to take part in summer, summer will meet me half-way and cool down a little.

Having finished Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk, and having almost finished Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, I'm now in the market for getting new books. I got a little excited to read that there's another Walter Moers book coming out - The Alchemasters Apprentice - but according to Amazon, it won't be out until October. I might have to brave the fiction sections of the local library. Sadly, the fiction area in the library seems to be divided into two sections; "crime" and "chick-lit". I'd rather withdraw a big dictionary, place my genitals on the page with the definition of "misery" on it, then slam it closed than read most of the fiction on offer there.

Miss Freddie purchased the two Bunny books - The Book of Random and The Book of Perpetual Bewilderment. She's taken the former to work, perhaps as a cunning ploy to find any fellow webcomic readers at work. She's left the latter with me at home, perhaps as a cunning way of making a statement about my, um, perpetual bewilderment. I did however make noises approximating "glee" when I saw that there's a note in the cover of each saying that the book belongs to Freddie and I.

In gaming news, my opinions on the Blood Bowl game are still mostly positive after repeated plays. There seems to be a steady stream of patches going out - I think we've seen three patches since the release - which implies, at least, that the developers are paying attention to it. I've still yet to try the real-time mode which, perhaps, I should try out of a sense of completeness. It's hard to present a proper review of a game which begins with "I have only ever played half of this game". Make that one-third, really, as I've yet to touch multiplayer. While I'm getting quite good at working out how to tackle the AI (in he last season, my Skaven team didn't concede a single touchdown against them), facing off against other players frightens me a little.

In other gaming things, we turned over the calendar to July, and suddenly Maelstrom seems very close. I'm in a bit of a fix, namely, I need to find two people who'd be willing to share a LRP Hotel tent with Sprog and I. The general rule of thumb is "no scary people". I can assure you that I tend to either go to sleep quite early, or at least am fairly good at stumbling into a tent quietly when it gets late. If Sprog does anything stupid involving sleeping arrangements in the tent, I will gladly look the other way while you administrate moral-boosting beatings.

Not really sure what to say about today; we went off in search of breakfast, which was a success, we wandered around Regent Street and the like to gasp at queues for shops and then went off to play in some games for the afternoon and evening. While yesterday's gaming experience was fairly good, the games today left me with a profound sense of disappointment.

( Gaming waffle and thoughts... )

So, short version, I'll probably be finding other things to do for the last few Zeitgeist games. It's not really a criticism of the games, I guess, but more of a "what I want in a game" isn't what these games are really about.

If all goes according to plan, and if Sprog hasn't locked me out of the house, I should be back home tomorrow morning...

Last night I went out, as planned, to Tokyo Diner, to eat large quantities of tasty food. I met up with Mister Martin (lokean), Miss Christina (downybearded1), Miss Jane (thalinoviel, I think...) and Mister Ian (who is a mystery wrapped inside an enigma, as far as his LiveJournal username is concerned). After a spot of confusion, Mister Pink (draxar) arrived, we drank more tea, and then moved on - for reasons I cannot honestly remember - to Ed's Diner, where we had milkshake. And I might have had some mud pie, which gave me enough sugary power coursing through my veins to be talkative to New People^TM for, perhaps, a whole minute or two. I may have waffled on about research involving crows.

This morning Mister Pink and I are going to brave the outside world in order to find breakfast. Sadly, Mister Pink has expressed a desire to purchase an iPhone, in order to replace his broken mobile. This means, amongst other things, a trip into the motherloving Apple store. I've already got my plan sorted out; when approached by staff, I shall either feign interest in purchasing an iPhone and ask questions about how easy it is to write homebrew applications for, and maybe about whether I can buy a replacement battery for it. May also see if I can waddle in a Camden-y direction, possibly not to buy anything, but just to look around and smile.

Have managed to make it into London, despite the best attempts of AC/DC fans* and angry businessmen**. I'm taking shelter in Mister Pink's flat for the afternoon - hurrah! - as it's rather jolly sunny out there, and I'll head off at around quarter past six to meet Martin & Company at the Tokyo Diner. For food. Mmmm, food.

* There were a lot of AC/DC fans catching the 1443h to London from Peterborough. Some old, some young, but... mostly, old. Many of them were drinking. Heavily. Drunken AC/DC fans on crowded trains? Not great.
** A few of us decided to enact mob justice by not making way for him to push past once the train stopped at Kings Cross. Mostly because he refused to shift his briefcase from a seat so an elderly lady could sit there. In the end, we watched somebody else graciously give up their seat for her, then come join us standing at the end of the carriage. The three of us standing up smiled at him, and he made some rude comments about people with sticks up their bottoms. Remember, kids, wearing a suit and tie does not give you permission to be a selfish eejit!

So far, so good.

I'll confess that I've not tried their "real time" version of the game, instead preferring to stick to the classic, turn-based mode. Their turn-based mode does appear to be a faithful recreation of the tabletop game - indeed, they've got a link to the Living Rulebook on their site to help people understand how the turn-based version works. It's not all sweetness and light; matches take quite a while to load even on a reasonably fast box, they could probably do with more sounds for the commentators, and the automatic tracking camera during the AI's turn seems to be a tad erratic.

Oh yes, and my Skaven team can't catch the ball, even when their life depends on it. However, I've found that Mister Rat Ogre solves a lot of problems; while my team have lost more games than they've won, he's ensured that we at least inflict a massive number of casualties on our enemies opponents.

It'd been a while since they've come round to hand out copies of Watchtower, so I wasn't surprised when the two old ladies knocked on the door today. It probably didn't help that my brother and I were half-way through watching a Richard Dawkins lecture (The Purpose of Purpose) when they came a-knocking. What was a bit more surprising is that they remembered my name from the last time they visited. I'm not sure where this is going really. It's almost Too Hot To Think^TM. In fact, checking the thermometer in the garden, it's a staggering 30^oC.

I ought to be heading into London tomorrow, for the purposes of gaming, geekery and giggles. If it's this warm again, though, I might have to give some serious consideration towards wearing shorts and a t-shirt for travelling.

Edit: Oh, yes! A comic thingy I wanted to link to! Preview from Fat Chunk 2 - Zombies. Go. Clicky.

Listen, and be amazed.

On Tuesday evenings, usually just before we fall asleep, Miss Freddie and I listen to a programme on BBC Radio 2 entitled "The Organist Entertains". It's become something of a weekly tradition, which is bizarre, as I'm not really a fan of organ music in the slightest. Part of the appeal, for me, isn't the music, but quite how keen the presenter is and how, quite often, there's less information provided about the piece of music scheduled to play, but the organ it's played on. Yes, I think Nigel Ogden (the presenter) is an organ geek. As a fellow geek, you recognise that you don't share his area of obsession, but you can generally admire his level of knowledge on his subject of choice.

Last night's programme was a special, hour-long recording from a concert at the Blackpool Tower Ballroom. It was going so well and, then - BAM! Out comes the Hammond B3 organ, and neither of us can stop giggling. I think Freddie and I giggled all the way through the songs played on it. What was supposed to be a brief tribute to the founder of The Organist Entertains became the set up for some silly jokes:

Howard Beaumont*: "(...)without Robin Richmond, I wouldn't be on the radio." **
Miss Freddie: "He was the guy who held the microphone!"
Me: "He was the guy who flicked the switch to turn the "On Air" light on. Or maybe the janitor, he gets in before him, unlocks the door, there's a knack to it..."

I guess the moral of this story is that the Hammond organ is inherently funny.

* I had originally thought it was Nigel Ogden who said it, but Miss Freddie reliably informs me it was Howard Beaumont.
** This is the general gist of what he said. I'm fairly certain some pedant will go back, use the listen again feature on the website, and correct me.