eddyfate

I finally got a chance to see the end of season four of Doctor Who.

( Doctor Who canon geekery. Spoilers a-plenty. )

But, regardless, it was an amazing wrap-up. Thank you, Russell T. Davies.

Note: This is what happens when your family watches three and a half seasons of Doctor Who back-to-back, and you haven't written an RPG in a while. You have been warned.

( Doctor Who Risus (v1.0) )

Time to catch up on the life thing. Life is actually pretty sweet right now.

Work has settled back into a good rhythm (New York + Morocco + bronchitis really threw off my work flow for a while), and I'm making good headway on the development of the Scion Companion, which is turning out to be a very fun book. I'm also deep in research for a new book I'm developing with the help of Russell and Joe which also promises to be really cool. This is the third book I've developed from the beginning, but it's the first that's completely my idea and vision; Mind's Eye Theatre: The Awakening I was given a lot of leeway on, but I chose to be faithful to Awakening and Mind's Eye Theatre, and the Scion Companion was developed with a lot of insight and input from John and Rich. It's been exciting and nerve-wrecking to stretch some creative muscles that haven't seen use since Midway City.

One thing that combining my main hobby with my work has done is given me more time to invest in other interests (when I'm not working 50-hour weeks, that is). I've been playing Grand Theft Auto IV a fair bit, although I'm currently stuck on a couple of difficult missions. I've also been playing a lot of Rock Band, and with the new drum pads we got so we don't annoy the neighbors, I'm developing a solo career on drums to complement my career on guitar. I've also been catching up on some graphic novels that Kelley loaned me (as well as a stack I got at New York Comic Con), and I'm actually back to reading for my own enjoyment. I finally caught up on Torchwood Season Two, and I'm a few episodes into Doctor Who Season Four. I'm caught up on House (curse you, season ending cliffhanger!). I've been watching Raw every week, ECW most weeks, and Smackdown once in a while. I watch movies in the theater as well as at home. I had forgotten how much I gave up juggling a job and a freelance career.

Also, my social life in and out of work is far, far better than it was in St. Louis. Easily three times a week we're going out and doing something, whether it's dinner with friends, a movie with a group or just the three of us, or a party with my co-workers. Last Friday Michelle came to work for a BBQ at the office, and we expected to stay for only an hour or so, but ended up staying until midnight talking with some of the Icelanders before they headed back. This Saturday we're going to the Ren Faire with the company, and then there's a birthday party that evening. We've also been going to see live shows like Jon Stewart and Jeff Dunham (who will be in town next weekend). I've been playing in the local Camarilla LARPs, I'm in a Mage tabletop game that Joe's running for a few of us at the office (at least, in theory) and once again I've gotten that bug of kicking around a tabletop game of my own.

---

See, here's an example of how cool things are right now. Russell just came into my office to talk about a project idea he had, and we spent ten minutes just talking about ideas for it, intermixed with just bullshitting about old Choose Your Own Adventure style game books (not the actual CYOA books, but the slew of knockoffs that had you rolling dice or characters fighting each other and the like) and the original Vampire: the Masquerade -- Bloodlines video game.

I am apparently the only person[1] who actually liked the season finale of Doctor Who, Season Three[2]. It made an especially nice break during my marathon session of pre-gen building last night. For those who have been waiting to see Season Three of Doctor Who on Sci-Fi, I recommended it. I liked it more than Season Two, and about as much as Season One. While there's a lot of story arc this time around, I particularly liked "Blink" as a stand-alone episode.

[1] Well, me and banzaigrrl. But then again, our tastes in British sci-fi are about identical.

[2] I am referring, of course, to the new Doctor Who Season Three. I suppose I could call it Season 29, but that ends up being more confusing, I've found.

Some people have way too much free time. Some of them use their free time to make what appears to be an extremely cool Doctor Who collectable card game, except for the fact that it would require printing up about three thousand cards to play.

I'm not sure yet if this is cool or frustrating.

What I did on my Christmas vacation: Not a lot.

Sure, lots of stuff happened. I played Burnout 3 and Burnout Revenge. I watched The Cave, Bruce Almighty, some Doctor Who, some I, Claudius, and some The Prisoner. I tried to read Werewolf: The Forsaken, lost interest by chapter two, and switched to The Deryni Adventure Game. I played with Puck, did some chores, and bought some stuff from Borders with a $50 gift card I got from a co-worker (including three of the Hard Case Crime novels).

However, what I didn't do was any writing. I did very little email. I printed up a few things for future consideration, and then filed them away. I took a vacation.

Granted, now I'm behind a bit. I have one review to write, as well as more work on "IndyPirates" and "PunkRock." I need to update my notes for the next Midway City playtest session in January. School starts in a few weeks, too. I'm hoping to be able to take Thursday and Friday off of work and use the five-day weekend to catch up on things. But it was nice to just blow off for a few days.

Edit: I feel it important to point out that both my birthday and Christmas were made awesome because of greebotrill and garchangel.

Mostly for the Doctor Who and legal fans who read this.

Patent Claim: BBC vs. British Metropolitan Police, regarding the appearance and color of the Police Box, aka TARDIS

Actually feeling a touch worse today -- near-constant mild dizziness, and a general inability to stay focused or concentrate on much of anything. So, I took it easy today and just transcribed some of my previous research onto new notecards.

660 / 200 (330.0%)

I also played some video games, finished up my Oscar Wilde reading, and watched some more Doctor Who.

Last night was casual hanging around the house, and then the Requiem game. I had a good time; I've reached that point as Prince where the politics start to ebb and flow and people start seriously scheming. I also got into a couple interesting personal IC scenes, and looking forward to a few more soon. I'm finding it very therapeutic in a few ways (since Nick has a mindset that's so foreign to me as a player in many ways), and I was so keyed up afterward that I couldn't sleep well last night [1] -- something that hasn't happened to me since I was playing Sabbat LARP hardcore. Afters was also entertaining, and allowed me to see some new sides to people that I hadn't noticed before.

Because of my odd sleeping schedule last night I just got up a half an hour ago, and updated my character sheet and Prince notes, and drafted my court report for my Herald. Answered some email about Midway City, and I also made an announcement about the LARP playtest I'll be running the next few months (thanks to greebotrill for helping me out with a thorny problem in the IC premise for that). Plan to poke at my project again today, but I'll probably skip research today to keep myself from brain-frying before I go to D&D tonight.

( Dr. Who Love )

A quick recap of the last few days:

Midway City

Thank you.

...

Oh, and I got my parts for the computer, and garchangel was nice enough to try to put it together while I was out, but I was told today that the motherboard was mounted with the wrong screws (hence why it burned out) and the RAM doesn't fit, so we need to buy both today, as well as pick up/buy a monitor from onecrane. Because the universe enjoys kicking me in the junk.

But hey. Dalek!

Blah - so much little stuff has happened.

* Got my wedding ring resized, finally. Went from a 9.5 in 2001 to an 8 now. Think I might have lost some weight.

* Picked up another package of DVD-Rs and DVD cases.

* Midway City continues apace. Chapters 1 and 2 are laid out, chapters 3, 5, and 6 are in edit right now, and I expect to polish one chapter a day of the remaining ones to get them to edit and most of them to layout by next Monday. As such, things still look to be on schedule for a GenCon Indy release. I'll have favors to ask of all of you once I get to that stage.

* Watched a little classic Who - parts one and two of "Four To Doomsday" (Fifth Doctor). Also watching the first two episodes of fucking cocksucking Deadwood. Apparently historically inspired, and thus far an interesting show, but the profanity is almost childishly gratuitous.

* Read a bit more on The Fountainhead. Also reread Batman: Year One, and I was wrong - there's only a few minor pieces that are similar to Batman Begins.

* Hung out with various cross-sections of the Tribe this weekend for a little while, as well as hanging out with greebotrill and garchangel.

* Got a cool toy from banzaigrrl - a folding meterstick that has the history of Western Civilization on it (with each millimeter equaling a year).

* greebotrill got use out of one of her birthday gifts, and emptied out my office closet of her tools. I got to claim a little more space in there now, discovered where my BattleMat got to, cleaned that off, and realized that I need to put something up on the walls of my office.

* Got gangpressed invited into a thinktank of Mortals stuff for the Cam. I'm hoping it's something I can contribute to as I get energy (since I've been assured it's not plotkit writing or anything like that). On the flipside, I'm behind on a lot of nickebon stuff, as I've been focusing on getting MC done.

* Had some interesting thoughts about where I am as an artist, and my potential (or in this case, my lack of it). I probably won't end up sharing my thoughts, as it will probably come out as much more morbid and morose than I intend it to be (I'm actually comfortable with the idea), but it did spark a few more ideas in my head.

* My tags are getting obscene already.

A nice day. nickebon is a letter-writing fool. Computer still chugging along - I think the fragged slave drive was the major problem. Revised two chapters of Midway City for banzaigrrl, in exchange for two and half chapters back from her to send to layout. Re-watched "Aliens of London" and "World War III" with banzaigrrl as well. Plan to do some more MC writing today, along with refreshing my DVD and DVD case supply.

Had a beer with mrogre last night. And when I say "beer", I mean "two-and-a-half-hour conversation that involves a gyro sandwich, fries, and a beer". It was an extremely enlightening conversation in a number of ways, putting some things I had noticed into context and filling me in on other details. It's one of those conversations where you learn a lot about something around you, and as a result end up learning a bit about yourself as well.

Prior to the conversation (at around 2pm) I started getting a headache, and I never really lost it until I got home from the beer at 8pm. So I took some medication and watched the season finale of Doctor Who and Iron Chef, as that was about all my brain could handle. I have to say, the season finale threw me for a loop, and it was odd to see Sakai actually lose a battle.

Work today, then Midway City tonight.

As the latest series of Doctor Who winds down, I've been watching old episodes (right now, the Peter Davison/5th Doctor years) between bouts of Midway City writing. Some of it I look back on and cringe (like special effects and loads of inane technobabble), while rather a lot of it still holds up really well.

However, as an American viewer, my recollections of Doctor Who are of two-hour episodes that seem to spike and drop rather oddly during the plot. Watching them again in their original format of 25-minute episodes is much more satisfying - sure, I have to sit through two minutes of recap every episode, but the cliffhangers make SO much more sense this way. Looking back I can see how the show was inspired by the pulps, and ideas of a Doctor Who Adventure! campaign briefly went through my head, but I defeated the urge.

Time for another episode and a quick burst of productivity before game.

After some poking around with LiveJournal, I finally have a Ninth Doctor mood icon theme up. Bask in it's glory. (Details can be found here).

Just saw Episode 12 of Doctor Who. I am SO obsessed with this series. Between that and the weekend I had, I am full of squee.

Last night was kind of blah - wasn't really up for doing much of anything, and forced myself to do some token work on Midway City. I did get to watch "The Empty Child" though, and was excited to find that yes, Doctor Who can still be creepy.

Tonight I have a confab with my MC fiction author, and then get to run what might be the last episode of Midway City. But for now - work.