Happy Birthday Little Sister!!!

We are about to head off to my little sister Josalyn's birthday at my mom's house. Yay for steaks and birthday cake! So I will see you guys tomorrow.

Until then:

For your viewing pleasure:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Trailer!!


Monkey/pirate/robot/ninja/zombie rock-paper-scissors

AT-AT day afternoon (Super cute)

Nicolas Cage wants cake

He-Man said Hey

P..P..P..Poker Face

I have no poker face. None. At all. It's kinda sad actually, especially since Brad, our friend DT and I have been playing Magic: The Gathering at least once a week.

Inevitably this is how it goes down:

I get something awesome in my hand, and, before I have time to stop it, a look of triumph flashes across my face. Now if you play any sort of card games at all, you know that if you have something in your hand under no circumstances do you let anyone else see what you have in your hand. Ever.  But noooo, I just get so excited by the awesomeness that is my hand that I have to let everyone know.



This happens every time we play.

At this point, I know I am doing it. They know that I do it. So instead of the awesome play that I could have pulled off, had I kept quiet, both Brad and DT know to smack me down, and they do...hard. Sometimes I still manage to pull off some crazy stuff, but it is few and far between.

I am trying to think of some solutions until I can get my face's act together, but all I have come up with so far is the whole "Look a dragon riding another dragon...Oh you just missed it," or maybe wearing a colorful mask (Magic...Mardi Gras style), but I don't think either will work.

Until then I will just have to be content with the constant face ownage or get Botox.

Handy Dandy GM Guide: Part One (Combat)

As a new GM, I realized that, though most systems have GM Guides, none of them really prepare you for dealing with real life players. From min-maxing to know-it-alls, players will try every thing to derail your carefully laid plans. Something happens when your friends are players in your campaign. They change into this mass of hideous, whining,  Cheetos and Mountain Dew fueled creatures, and your only thoughts are of destroying them in insidious ways.

So, being the helpful, generous, and all around great girl that I am, I bring to you my Handy Dandy GM Guide: Part One (Combat).

Keep Your Fights Interesting:

Often times combat is the worst part of gaming. It's slow, there is often a lot of bickering about rules, and one word...THACO (such a bad four letter word, that it's a five letter word).

It's a GM's job to keep the players engaged, and keep combat interesting, so here are some tips to help in that situation.

Give player's a challenge:

All players love the feeling of accomplishment when they win that particularly hard fight, so why not up the stakes?

Level one players fighting a dragon? Good.

Level one players fighting two dragons? Better.

Level one players fighting an army of dragons riding other dragons? Best.



Throw in random easier fights:

After your group finishes with the harder fights, throw in one or two easier battles. Do not allow players to rest- that will only slow down the game.  As an added bonus, if you plan it right, you could wipe out a whole party with just a few small creatures.

"The weight of the dragon's body hitting the ground causes the floor to give way. You fall into a pit littered with bones. 12 Kobolds look over the edge of the pit, their spears and arrows at the ready."

Putting these tips in your game will not only enhance the gaming experience for everyone, but will also garner you lots of praise from your players (remember the cursing of players when you do something, means you're doing it right).

Happy Gaming Everyone, and until next time....May your crits be many, and your 1's few (unless your playing GURPS or something like that).

ITWSSG Saturday!

Happy Weekend everyone! I am in a particularly good mood, so I thought I would bring you another ITWSSG moment.



See you all Monday everyone. It's Brad's day off tomorrow, so no update.

Step One: Steal Forks, Step Three: Profits!

Sorry about the lack of post yesterday. Sickness+Peanut reaction+Sleeping pill+Benadryl= lack of coherence.

I wanted to talk today about a serious problem I have. As serious as herpes on a promiscuous celebutante.....

Fork gnomes.

I have fork gnomes in my house. I don't know how it happened, and I don't know when it happened, but they are there...stealing my forks...one by one.  I buy a pack of forks (at least eight) and within a few months they're gone. We have started buying plastic forks for now. They seem safe from the fork gnomes, though are more prone to breakage, but now our spoons seem to be disappearing as well.

It got me thinking about what kind of lives these fork stealing beings must have. So here it is:

A Day in the Life of a Fork Gnome.

Each morning the fork gnomes awake in their country of Forknovia to the Forknovian national anthem (the sound of forks on a chalkboard).  The fork gnomes then put on the national hat (fork shaped of course) and head to the fork mines (my kitchen). Every day they toil under the harsh florescent lighting gathering the much-needed export of Forknovia. All the while the emperor of Forknovia (he's named Carl) sits in meetings with various cutlery companies to buy the countries wares.

It is a harsh and unforgiving life in Forknovia, but on the whole (ha, ha, on the whole) its citizens are a happy bunch.  Every year they have the 'Running of the Forks' festival, and every winter  Father Fourchette comes and gives all the good little boys and girls presents (bad children get sporks).

So there you go. Fork gnomes, man, I hate those chipper little bastards.

On a serious note:

My friend Ashleigh is leaving for Africa (Peace Corps) in less than a week. She is leaving for two years (which feels like forever). She is one of the most kind, thoughtful, helpful, and all around wonderful people I have ever met. Though, I am sad she is going (because we are all gonna miss her), I know she will do absolutely extraordinary things over there.

So here's to you Ashleigh.

Have fun changing the world, and we'll be here, waiting for you to get back.

Check out her blog here

Sickness/Weather

I am sick, so I am fitting this post in between bathroom runs. Yay for dedication.

I have lived in Oklahoma all my life. I've come to determine that in the summer there are only 4 types of weather that occur here.

So here they are:

And last but not least:

So there you go. Oklahoma weather. I'm gonna go back to bed now.

Today is a good day to dye...

I recently had the good fortune to get a gift card to my local beauty supply.  So, braving going out in public (which is a huge freaking thing for me), Brad and I went there with the intention of getting hair dye.  I don't know if you have ever been to a beauty supply, but you can't just go in and pick a box like at Wal-mart. No, there you have to get the color, and then the developer, and then gloves (also I am pretty sure you are also supposed to buy a mixing bowl and brush, but we'll get to that later). The upside is that they have hair swatches, so you can see what color your hair will turn out to be.

Not that the swatches help me though. You see, I have this fear that no matter what the box, or in this case hair swatch, says, it'll turn out lighter in my hair. I think this every time I dye my hair, and I dye it pretty often. Anyway, I see the color I want, grab the next color darker, ask about which developer I need, grab it and some gloves, and we head back home (me full of hair color glee, and Brad good-naturedly rolling his eyes).

Now let me take a minute to explain. I have blond hair. Not as blond as it used to be, but still pretty light. If you have ever dyed blond hair you will know the flaw in my reasoning up there. If you dye light hair, you just get a better sticking of the color. Just because my hair is lighter does not mean that the color will lighten. In fact, the lighter your hair is, the closer it will look to the hair swatch. Yet, every time I buy hair dye I have the thought that I need to buy the darker color.

Yep.

Every.

Time.

Back to the story.

We get home, and I head to the bathroom (grabbing a bowl I am never going to use again on my way). I read the instructions and mix the stuff. Then the smell hits me. It's like a thousand cats used the dye as a litter box. Seriously, that bad, I still smell it today.  "Okay," I think, "I've done this before, I can deal with the smell. It wont be that bad."

Then I realize another flaw in my plan. The only brush I have is a makeup brush, also I can't do this with my glasses on. The brush- good for applying blush, terrible for hair coloring,  So I decide to take the matter into my own hands...literally. I take off my glasses, grab a hand full of the stuff and goop it on my head, and, because I am basically blind, miss with about half of it. Thankfully I was wearing a throw away shirt.

I get the dye all worked in and breathe (very lightly because the smell is staggering) a sigh of relief. That's when the stinging started. It felt like the flesh of my scalp was being peeled off by angry hair demons. Okay, so it wasn't that bad; it was more like someone set a phaser to stun, and aimed it at my scalp. Just when I thought it couldn't get worse, I realized I had 30 minutes until I could rinse my head.

So I stumble into the bedroom, blind, stinky, and covered in what looks like blood (because I was using dark red dye). I can't even imagine what Brad thought.

Even though I have spent like, 500 words, complaining about the whole experience....I would do it again in a heartbeat. You know why? Well, because I may be stinky and missing chunks of my scalp, but My Hair Looks GOOOOOOD!

Gamer Girlfriends

I'll admit, when I first met Brad I wasn't a RPGer. I'd played video games before (mostly first person shooters), but I didn't know my butt from a d10 (yay! hyperbole!). Brad, however, played every week with a well established gaming group. Every week I marveled at their epic exploits, but soon that wasn't enough, so I, in what I now see as an insane attempt to impress him, asked to join their weekly sessions.

I became a gamer girlfriend, and not in a good sense. No, I was the quintessential idiot at the table. Creating characters was like assembling a jet fighter, blind-folded, with the instructions in Korean.  Actually playing was even worse.  I got the whole 'being' my character thing, but the mechanics (especially combat) eluded me.  I am surprised that my friends did not shoot laser beams of fury out of their eyes at me for asking so many questions.



That was about 5 years ago.

I am slowly but surely getting better (well, at least I hope I am). I get the eye laser fury looks less and less now, and sessions are not so bogged down with my questions any more (yes, I still do ask questions, but in my defense NWoD is so full of rules and words it's hard for me not to). I am even taking a crack at GMing (Game Mastering) my own games now. It's super fun, if not just a little terrifying.



In retrospect, I am kind of glad I was a RPG virgin (insert your own dirty joke, I'm tired) when I met Brad. It was a really good bonding experience for us for him to teach me (Yay! extra credit!), and I didn't come into it with any pre-learned bad habits. It didn't hurt that he, and the rest of the group, are all excellent explainers of things (or that I am an excellent student....and humble).

Welp, I am off to prepare for my game for tomorrow, but how does combat go again?

Something, Something, Clowns, Something.

Clowns, man.

They creep me right the eff out. They creep me out to the point where if I see one, I will turn around and walk the other way. It doesn't matter if the freakin' cure for cellulite were over there; if there are clowns-  I'm out. Anyone who has ever seen IT or Killer Klowns from Outer Space as a kid (or heck, even as an adult) knows that clowns are scary MoFos.

I guess I am just a little too cynical when it comes to clowns. I just don't see how any one can not be suspicious of them. They cover up their real faces, always carry a bag full of child distracting stuff, and spend most of their time around unsupervised children. Yeah...mull that one over.

The problem I have with clowns is the same that I have with mascots (or anyone else in a giant anthropomorphic animal suit), it could be anybody in there. I'm not even going to bring up John Wayne Gacy as a factor (oops, I guess I just did), but as far as I know there is no clown union (though there is a world clown association), so, unless you have access to background check software, you have no idea if Mr. Bobo is a crazy axe murder (who really uses an axe anymore these days...really).

I know rationally that not all clowns are evil. Irrationally, not so much.

Apparently it's a pretty common fear too. My hubby is scared crapless of them, so is at least one of my good friends (maybe even more than one, but we try not to discuss clowns as much as possible). According to an article by INS News (http://www.insnews.org/health/focus/2006/01/clown.fear.htm), though there aren't any definitive statistics, as many as 1 in 7 people may be scared of clowns.

I think I know where my fear comes from (I know Brad's comes from IT). When I was little, like younger than 10 little, we went to the state fair. They had one of the standard dunking booths, but the dunkee was no standard guy. He was one of the hobo clowns, all patched clothes and bald in the middle wig. I don't know if he had a cigar, but in my head he does (and it seems like something he would have, so go with it). I remember thinking that his whole job was to harass people. He would shout horrible, insulting things at them, and I remember being terrified of him. I was so afraid he would see me, and yell those horrible things at me.

So that's where it all started, and it's only gone down hill from there.

And that's enough thinking about clowns for one day.

Happy thoughts....shoes, kittens......kittens in shoes...there we go.

Happy Father's Day B*tches

Happy F Day everyone.

I know my father is out there somewhere, and who knows, he may someday read this, but this post is not for him. This post is for all the Fathers out there who did not royally screw up their kids life.

So, yeah

Happy F*cking Father's Day

“That’s what she said”

'That's what she said' is the 'yo momma' jokes of our generation (the next iteration 'that's what yo momma said' jokes).They both basically function the same, laughter and humiliation of a target. Though, 'that's what she said' (hence forth TWSS) jokes are more insidious because they are subtle. By taking out of context what the person is saying and adding the TWSS line, you are shifting the focus of attention away from what the person said and making it humorous (there by making it harder to take the person seriously).

Every group has the TWSS person, and if you think to your group of friends and can't tell who it is...it's probably you. I'll admit, I am my groups TWSS girl. Not because I want to humiliate my friends, or because I don't take them seriously, because I do. No, my TWSS Tourette's comes from the fact that I am shy (like social phobic, two steps away from being a shut-in, shy), and even though I love and trust my friends, I still find it hard to speak up around them (for fear of sounding stupid). TWSS allows me to interject into a conversation, get some laughs, and feel included, without actually saying anything relevant.

In the big scheme of things TWSS is pretty harmless, but it got me thinking.

So I am proud to introduce....

Inappropriate 'That's What She Said' Guy! (ITWSSG, Yeah I know it's long, so sue me)

At A Funeral

Fighting Zombies

I'm thinking of making him a regular thing, because lord knows I'm good at thinking of inappropriate things.

We'll see.

.....That's what she said....

I was washing my face earlier today and I saw a bug. I fear bugs, and hate them, but mostly it's just fear. I am trying to not be such a wuss-face about them though, so I decided to kill it myself (also, Brad was at work, so there was no other option). I grabbed some toilet paper, squashed the little bastard, and before I even thought about it threw it in the toilet and flushed.

I knew as soon as I did it that I was made a huge freaking mistake. I stared at the toilet and realized what I had done. The thoughts flooded in...What if it's not dead? What if it can swim and creeps back up when I least expect it? What if it crawls into the sewer and rallies an army of its little buggy friends and they take over my bathroom? I don't know how to negotiate for the peaceful return of my commode.

(Apparently my toilet causes mutant growth as well)

And then I realized I was standing over my toilet, thinking these thoughts, and how silly I must look (again I was the only one home, so I'm not sure who I thought was seeing me).

I have to pee now though...I wonder if the neighbors would let me use their restroom...

I rolled up a new blog...

Hi there everyone,

I hate introductions. They all seem so forced. The whole happy, I love long walks on the beach (I don't), romantic movies (I really don't), and holding hands watching the sunset (meh, I could take it or leave it). That being said, the introduction post is socially obligatory...so here it goes....


Let me introduce myself, well in the internet friendly, I-don't-want-anyone-to-stalk-me sort of way: Your humble narrator is a struggling, unemployed, over-stress and under-worked writer (I didn't know if I could fit more cliches in that sentence before the writing police/ninjas broke down my door). Also, I love to use hyphens, and penguins (love them, not love to use them).

Anyways, I thought I would start this blog as a sort of writing prompt for myself, and for posterity when I (inevitably) get all published and stuff.

So...um...yeah