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| | I am back and situated after consecutive vacations.
First off, Chicago and the Chaos Cup. Jkarr and I decided, perhaps foolishly, to make the trip to IL thru the night. Leaving around 7 pm we took turns at the wheel until exhaustion forced a changeover. I drew much of Ohio and managed to get a speeding ticket from probably the most pleasant officer I ve ever met. The whole ordeal was so pleasant I talked alot about speeding through the same area on the way back to try to meet up with him again. Anyway, we somehow managaed to hit nasty Chicago traffic at 5-6 in the morning and finally arrived at Tipping s at around 8 AM. Whereupon we collapsed into frazzled heaps.
It was great to see Scott and hang out. We toured the limited gaming shops offered by Shermer, IL... err Rockford and had some very tasty Chicago style pizza and then set off for the Chaos Cup Saturday.
I ended up playing Scott in the third round, largely because of a crappy scoring system, and he narrowly defeated me for my only loss. So I finished 4-1 and 6th overall out of 38. Not bad. I was really on my game though and accomplished that record despite pretty poor dice most of the tourney. Damn you, Scott, for robbing me of the Cup!
I probably had the 2nd best painted team there, far behind the winner which was an amazing team completed by a professional painter. So my long hours of painting last minute were only nominally for not.
It was a ton of fun though. Got to hang out with our dark lord, Jervis Johnson (the creator of BloodBowl for you heathen readers). Scott took great pleasure in seeing my "Sexy Dance" which I performed repeatedly by our hotel window to the delight of many a passerby. We re sure he s been re-enacting the dance all week for his wife (much to her dismay, no doubt). Scott also pledged to come back out East and return the favor by visiting us for a while sometime soon.
The drive back Sunday night was largely uneventful, fueled by cup after cup of overpriced Starbucks.
I had a day to recover from that drive and pack before Vegas.
Since it was Meghan s first time to Vegas we were hard pressed to see as much as possible in our limited time there. We never left the city limits (to see the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam etc) but covered quite a bit of ground in our small window of time. That s big acheivement for the two of us who are so heavily inclined toward slothfulness.
We did a lot of walking up and down the Strip, trying to take in all the casinos and trying to catch the outdoor shows. We milled about a lot and did some shopping. We never actually gambled until our last day. Our schedule was just too packed. Wednesday we saw Amazing Jonathon at the Sahara (what a dump that place is!) and he was awesome! He really put on a fantastic show. Largely new material. The guy is awesome.
Thursday we saw Penn and Teller at the Rio. Their show was decent but we both left kind of disappointed. The show was very short (a little over an hour), with almost no new material. I had seen them in Easton probably five years ago and half the material was the same. What is up with that? Almost seems like they ve been doing this for so long they just go through the motions for their live shows and concentrate all their real creative juices on their other projects (Bullshit, writing, TV Specials etc). It was still a cool show and all, but just seems weak for $80 a seat!
Friday was our last day and we took the bus on the long trek north to Freemont St and the old Strip. We hung out there for quite a while and did most of our gambling there. We ruled the Craps tables. After a few rounds of losing, Meghan went on a nice run and then I followed that up with a monster run. I think I hit at least 6 or 7 points including a (hard) 4, and a couple 5s. It was insane. I was doing so well one guy placed about $30 worth of bets for me! One of which payed off nicely. As soon as I crapped out we gathered up our winnings and walked away, unwilling to tempt the fates further.
That was about it for Vegas. We made our way back to our hotel heavy with winnings and caught a taxi to the airport to begin a horribly sucktacular return trip. Our flight left Vegas at midnight heading for JFK. We hit NY just in time for some of the nastiest weather of the year. Winds were wreaking havoc and we ended up circling JFK for nearly an hour, being horribly buffeted the whole time. After a scary landing we found ourselves with about 5 minutes to make our connecting flight to Philly. We hurried about the concourse only to find our flight had been canceled. Instead of a 9:00 flight, we had to wait for a 1:30. Problem was the weather was still causing really bad delays accross the board and our new flight was delayed 3 times. Finally at 3:45 (after almost 7 hours sitting in that shittiest of shitty terminals) we boarded our puddle hopper for a 35 minute flight to Philly!!! Yeah, we waited 7 hours for a 35 minute flight. We could have driven there twice in that time! Anyway. We made it home battered and beleaguered... it was a small taint on a very good trip.
So that was my double vacation. Great fun all around. Still have quite a few days I need to spend before the new year so we ll have to see what else we can fit in...
-bampf | | | Leave for Chicago tomorrow and I m madly trying to get everything done in time. Two projects for work, paint my team, pay bills, run errands... not enough hours in the day.
Team is coming along nicely at the expense of sleep. Fair trade. I guess. Hopefully I ll at least be in the running for best painted. The field will be huge... 40+ with coaches coming as far across the pond.
Trip to Vegas is booked for immediately thereafter. Really looking forward to that. Returning to the Luxor. The casino I stayed at in my first trip to Vegas oh so many years ago... when was that, Chad? 2001?
We ll basically have three full days to spend exploring. That s not a lot for Vegas. We ll be hard pressed to come up with a schedule and to figure out what warrants a visit and what doesn t.
Should be an awesome week and a half.
Steelers are back to awesomeness. See, told you guys they would be fine. And that impressive victory was without three starters. I think we ll be rolling for a while and the AFC North is a weak division despite the misleading records of Baltimore and Cincy... truly 2 middling teams.
Well, gotta run. More painting to do.
Jeremy | | | The beard is gone. Long live the goatee. And maybe some chops... Clooney is bringing them back.
We ll see.
Sunday was paintball. Good times. There was a speedball tourney and some questionable reffing that tainted our experience slightly but I still had a primo time. I actually captured and returned a flag during one scenario. That was awesome. The run back to our base with flag in hand was exhausting. Moving as quickly as possible all the while expecting an ambush or hail of paintballs around every corner. Good stuff. As soon as Summy gets off his butt and gets us the scoop on Linglestown we try it out.
D&D tomorrow. Sweet. With cake and treats, hopefully.
In other news I ve been ramping up for Chaos Cup in Chicago in two weeks. Should be awesome. Have a couple more nights of painting to get my team ready. Should be an awesome time.
Meghan has the week after Chaos Cup off so it looks like I ll just burn up some more vacation days and do back to back trips. Maybe to Vegas for a few days. Should be sweet.
As for football... what s up with the Steelers? Good question. It s combination of things. We haven t played nearly as bad as the record would indicate. One thing I ve noted that being world champs sucks... you get everyone s A game. The real glaring issue besides special teams, is Ben. What s up with him? Certainly his receivers haven t helped, but clearly he has been off. He has been throwing into stiff winds... or while being hit... there are possible excuses, but his decision making seems weak... Maybe he s just in a rut. It happens to QBs. Maybe he has lingering effects from the crash or apendectomy. Only time will tell. I m not ready to write the season off. I m sure we ll have a decent record and make a good playoff run, just need to right a few things. No need to panic yet...
-bampf | | | Well here s yer F n content...
All right so I ve been away for a while. But I ve been busy. Mucho busy.
Work has been both great and arduous. Three weeks ago I went to see The Bare Naked Ladies in Philly while at work. I m serious. We met with clients in downtown Philly in the morning and then took a taxi to see BNL and drink micro-brew beers in the afternoon. Great show, btw. Afterward I walked over to the Reading Terminal Market for a late lunch (Morrocan) and some fresh produce. Glorious.
A couple weeks later and I m wedged behind the 8 ball and working my ass off evenings and weekends to finish a project on time, only to have the client push off delivery date until they re ready to implement it. Ouch. Even skipped out on a training class to work on it. That sucked.
Anyway. The project is done. It was working weeks ago, it just took over a week of teeth gnashing to get it to work with our antiquated product.
Somewhere in that stretch we held the 1st Annual Mafia Massacre BloodBowl Tourney. It went off really well. A number of locals bailed on us last minute and that really sucked, but we had a good crowd of out of towners and the competition was fierce. Good times, good fun.
Speaking of tournies, looks like Tubby and I will be making a trip to Illinois to hang with Tipping and play in the Chaos Cup. Should be a great time.
This past Saturday, played paintball with my brother and his friends in their homemade field in Plainfield. Was a really good time and surprisingly safety conscious. There was food on the grill, a keg of beer and paintball galore.
The day after that, Meghan and I made our annual trip to the Renn Faire. Good times. For the first time ever I managed to make it through the day without running into someone I know (well, save Jay who works there). Normally I run into half a dozen acquaintances or more... would seem strange until you think about it for more than a second... then it seems perfectly natural.
Had a movie night at TGM s yesterday with some tasty J. Watched V for Vendetta. Such a good movie. I ll need to compile a list of best comic book movies considering the crazy spate of the things we ve had lately. In any case, plans were made once again for me to host a movie night with ye olde Stoner crew... I really need to do that this time... hound me about it, guys.
Hm. I m sure I did some other stuff while away... just drawing a blank.
We ll hafta see if I can keep up with the posting and let the Wanderer wander back to his sad compiled-code site (how silly is that?).
Later, all.
Oh, one last thing... Paintball at WannaPlay this Sunday... come one and all!
-bampf
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