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Just as I was making excuses in the comments of the last entry about not having wedding pics, they start showing up in my inbox. So, you can go check out the Wedding link at left to see some pictures. Only a small sampling for now, but I expect that to grow quickly.
Another new edition is Dan s livejournal on the ever growing list of BlogFriends. If you re up for some profound and esoteric musings go check his page out.
-bampf |
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Looking forward to another Guild weekend. Tonight is BloodBowl against Tipping. He s undoubtedly the best player in the league as far as playing experience goes, but I still think I ll be able to beat him. He may smash my team pretty bad, but my next game is against a relative newbie so I should be fine even if I end up with a few hobbled players.
There will be much Angies and hanging out with the Guild guys. I ll probably try to do some painting. I have my one Jyhad deck in tow just in case. I m prepared for a plethora of gaming. Brings back memories of the old days.
In other news, we saw Once Upon a Time in Mexico last night. Very cool. Again, not unlike Underworld, an excellent movie in spite of its flaws. It was classic Robert Rodriguez. I don t think the film was quite as epic as he intended but it was a fun ride none-the-less. Plus I must agree with Zephrin s assessment, that even without eyes, Johnny Depp is friggin badass.
Completely switching topics yet again, I wanted to broach the subject of facial hair. Namely mine. So I got this weird thin beard/moustache combo thing going on. I kinda like it-- it does nicely frame my Jay Leno/Bill Cowher jaw. I ve never even attempted a moustache before as my facial growth is way too sparse for that kinda thing, but with the rest of the beard it s not bad. Not exactly good, I have what Kristyn calls the redneck gap in the middle where no hair grows, but I still think its passible. If I could get the moustache and goatee to connect then I d be in business, but alas I have the dreaded Smith Summer Beard (as in summer here, summer there). The plan is to let everything grow out for another week or so, re-assess and then hack off whatever fails to pass inspection (or more specifically, Kristyn s inspection).
I ll be sure to make some pictures available so those who don t see me regularly can pass their own judgements. Maybe once I have pics posted I ll finally update the poll and let people vote. That d be kinda cool.
-bampf |
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I know I ve heaped praises on them numerous times here on the BampfBlog(tm) but I can t help... The Onion never ceases to amaze me. Today s issue has a fantastic article concerning the death of Detective Encyclopedia Brown. I devoured Encyclopoedia Brown books at a feverish pace when I was a kid... the article was sublimely ingenious... brought back quite a few 20+ year old memories. Bless you, Onion, bless you.
-b |
| 9/24/2003 8:13:19 AM Ever-expanding blog-friends | Comments (1) |
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New addition to the BlogFriends today. Zephrin. Hopefully she bothers to read this. As I apologize to her in advance in case some of the unwashed heathens who frequent my site follow the link to befoul hers as well. Oh well.
I almost bumped the Klog from the list, but KBN has pledged to make some new entries some time... I ll harrass him some more this weekend.
One other thing that I wanted to mention last week and forgot. Kristyn and I did a ton of reading while in Jamaica... which allowed me start the first George R R Martin Game of Thrones book. So far I am very impressed... it s everything Robert Jordan isn t. Intriguing characters, a fluid writing style, and most importantly: something happens every chapter... each chapter advances the plot in some way unlike in the Wheel of Time series where you have to slog through 100 pages of meaningless descriptions of every insignificant town and inn before anything remotely relevant happens. Horrible.
Anyway, thanks to the Edogg for pushing me to the series and adding them into my wedding gift.
In other news, looks like Kristyn, Zephrin, Mena and Karri are gonna have a girls night out weekend... which means I ve been banished from the house. So I ll be at the Guild much of the weekend... there will be much Bloodbowl! I get to play Tipping, which will be a battle... it s pretty clear that the two of us are the best players in the league so it ll be a clash of Titans (Jkarr may argue that point, but I don t think he s as good when he s not playing his Skaven speed rats... the Edogg is good also, but his team is something of a one-man show). I m looking forward to the challenge.
-b |
| 9/23/2003 3:36:01 PM ...all the damn vampires | Add Comment |
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Went to see Underworld last night. Despite it s flaws I really enjoyed it. It was, as I first predicted a pretty blatant White Wolf rip-off. But it had some great stylistic cinematography and action sequences along with a few novel ideas to add to the usually stagnant Vampire genre. All in all I recommend seeing it. The music was also excellent.
-b |
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Great weekend. Saturday was Bloodbowl! It had been well over a year since I played a serious game... I had forgotten just how wonderful the game is. Truly the greatest game EVER.
Uthus Bathu ruled. Hardly a surprise. Two games, two victories, and 4 TDs for Uthus. Both games were closer than they should have been... I made a few mistakes and a couple untimely rolls. The real bonus was I kept all my players alive and well against two bruiser opponents.
I can t wait to play more games.
Sunday was football. Steelers looked great. That doesn t mean much against the Bungles, but Cincy is actually a much better team than most think.
Other highlights of the weekend included a Cringo and a Cristo... sweet! I miss Angies.
Pig slaughtering was postponed till next weekend (possibly) due to a prolonged power outage at my parents. Fun fun fun.
-b |
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Talk about a lame storm. Weak, weak, weak. Round here it was little more than a thunderstorm and everyone was in a frenzied panic. Just another example of the media blowing things exponentially out of proportion (can anyone say Anthrax?)... and of course the general public is as much to blame as they flocked to the store for bread and milk like media controlled automatons. Sad.
People just annoy me.
-b |
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It was a pretty painful transition from Jamaican slothfulness to regularly scheduled life. I m glad we had Sunday to allow the realization that were no longer in paradise to sink in. Made returning to work slightly less painful.
Things are slowly getting returning to normal. Ran my second Hyborean adventure on Tuesday and I think the session went OK. Didn t get through as much as I had hoped... after two full sessions we still haven t had a real combat. What I need to adjust to is planning for short sessions--usually maybe 2 hours of quality game time... a far cry from the marathon sessions I was used to at the Guild.
This weekend should be a BloodBowl weekend... and the return of Uthus Bathu to the BloodBowl pitch. I wrote new league tracking software that will track standings and league leaders and such... I m pretty proud of it. I m looking for Uthus to dominate. A couple years back when we were playing heavily, I would always draw a crowd whenever I was playing as people were anxious to see what kinda crazy crap Uthus was gonna do next... we had plans of printing up Uthus jerseys... at least three or four people expressed an interest.
Hopefully the hurricane doesn t waylay our plans... oddly enough it looks like driving from Philly to the midstate is gonna take us directly in its path rather than away from it. Shouldn t be bad though, it s a class 2 before hitting land... by time its through VA should be little more than a stiff breeze. I m hoping the excess rain will get me a day off work tomorrow, as Liquent is in a serious flood warning area.
-b |
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Alright... finally I m back. Our link to the outside world was down most of yesterday so my Jamaica report was delayed an extra day.
Anyway. Jamaica was awesome! We had a wonderful time. The trip down was quick and painless. The airport at Montego Bay is incredibly shitty, but otherwise things went well. It was almost a two hour bus trip to the resort. The Jamaica s infrastructure is near non-existent. Imagine the crappiest back road of central PA... that was very similar to the main highway leading from Montego Bay to Ocho Rios. Dangerously narrow, pock-marked, and eroded. Made for an interesting trip. The scenery ranged from incredibly beautiful and lush mountains and vales to dilapidated shanty towns. It was a close up look at a third world country. I had read some horror stories from online reviews about the terrible squalor... however it simply reminded me of the 'country-folk' back home in the good ole Susquehanna Valley. At about the midway point we stopped off at a rest area for drinks and bathroom break. I was accosted by no less than a half dozen locals attempting to sell me pot. They were all perfectly pleasant though and were never pushy or hostile... on the contrary, they were quite friendly as I attempted to explain my drug-teetotaler ways. The Jamaican stereotypes really rung true... everyone was very laid back and friendly.
Anyway, we arrived at the resort none the worse for the wear. It had rained right before we got there (the only sign of rain during our entire 8 day stay) so that coupled with the tropical climate made the humidity really oppressive... we were a bit worried at this point... we didn t sign up for a week long sauna. Luckily the ocean breezes took over and the heat and humidity was reduced to a noticable but certainly tolerable level.
The resort grounds were incredible. Lush and colorful. Tropical trees, flowers, koi ponds, pools, wirlpools, hamocks. Everything was immacualate. I swear they had an army of groundskeepers constantly in motion. The room was very nice... not spectacular but nice. It did have an uber-AC that had no problem keeping the room in the high to mid 60s.
The beach was incredible. White sand, crystal clear water. You could wade in up to your neck and still discern your toes. And it was as warm as bath-water. Amazing. All my previous ocean experiences have involved the shores of New Jersey or Maryland so I was taken aback.
The food and service were amazing. The staff was incredibly friendly and really went out of the way to accomodate you. I can t count how many times I heard, "Is everything Eyrie?" or "No problem, mon."
We had candle-lit dinners on the beach (the tide literally lapping at our feet), and on a terrace overlooking the beach... it was amazing. There were tons of activities... trips, tours, tournaments. We had planned to: visit the Dunns River Falls, take a horseback trip into the mountains, take the free scuba lessons and scuba trip, visit Dolphin Cove where you could swim with dolphins (for an exorbitant fee), go snorkling, and I had planned to play some tennis and attend the clinics with their onsite tennis pro...
Well... we did none of this... zip. And mind you except for the dolphins and horses these were all offered for free. We still did nothing. We were absolutely lazy and slothful bums. We laid on the beach... we frolicked in the water... and we spent a lot of time just relaxing reading and watching movies in our room. Anything that required getting up early or more than a modicum of effort was eschewed. Total sloth and gluttony. Beautiful.
We did partake of some of the watersports... a breif sailing stint, kayak and giant water trike. That was cool. We also took a trip over the coral reef in the glass bottom boat. Also cool. But for the most part we just slept, read and basked in our marital bliss.
The free food and drink was cool. I had more pina coladas than I could possibly count. I indulged in countless girly drinks... white russians, mudslides, Alabama slammers... it was beautiful. The food was also very good and plentiful. I probably ate near my bodyweight in jerk chicken and pork by the end of the week.
I also lucked out and caught the Steelers game on Sunday, our first full day there. So we sat in a beachside bar, with unlimited Jamaican rum drinks and saw Hines Ward shred the Ravens... truly, I had reached paradise.
Our last night there we finally got motivated enough to visit Dunns River, the Sandals sister site a few miles away. We had a great dinner and walked around the grounds. It was a nice resort (slightly higher rated than Ocho Rios and a few bucks more expensive), but we agreed we liked the garden grounds at our resort better. The only downer was when Kristyn (in typical Kristyn fashion) stove or broke a toe while writing messages in the sand. So she quite literally limped home the next day.
We were loath to leave Saturday and spent considerable time trying to come up with a financially viable timetable for coming back as soon as possible. Needless to say I d recommend the trip to anyone. The plane trip back went smooth untill we hit some traffic on the Philly tarmac (sitting for half an hour on a runway all of four miles from home is really frustrating). Despite all our talk of wanting to stay in that island paradise forever I have to admit it was nice to be home.
So that was our honeymoon. Good stuff.
As an aside, there were no nearby nude beaches for me to be 'that guy'. Oh well... next time.
We have a ton of pictures... I ll get around to posting them in the next couple of days.
-b |
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Mere hours away from Jamaica! T minus 14 hours and counting. We are packed and bursting with excitement!
I ll be back in a week!
See ya then, mon!
-bampf |
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Everything is excellent.
NFL 2003 season football is playing on my TV right now. I am very happy about that.
I ve seen trailers for three movies that I can t wait to see... Mariachi III, Underworld and a new Coen bros film. Doesn t get much better than that.
Jamaica in two days. Both of our passports arrived today (we both forgot ours at our respective parents and were reliant on the postal service to get them here in time)... we are ready to go.
Had some fresh corn on the cob tonight (picked from my parent s field Monday) and some zuke bread hot out of the oven (made with a zuke picked from my parent s front yard... situated inexplicably among the rose bushes).
Life is pretty damn good.
Excellent.
-b |
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Forgot to mention... Jamaica count is down to three. Hot diggity!
I picked up our flight coupons and such tonight. Here s an added bonus... because we upgraded our rooms to the Premium level (whatever that means... cost about $100 more) we received a $300 spa credit! Fucking-A. There is gonna be some serious massaging going on.
Oh yeah... Kristyn s in the kitchen cooking her final. Mind you she s not taking any cooking courses... her independent study prof decided she could cook him a meal in place of writing a paper since she did so well in his class all semester. That is the legal definition of madness.
-b |
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Ran my first session of my Hyborean Adventures II campaign. I think it went reasonably well. Little to no action but great character exposition. I m really excited about the campaign and the group of players. The first time I ran the Hyborean Campaign it began with a bunch of complete strangers... so it took a while for players (and characters) to get used to each other. This time around everyone is already well acquainted and people stormed right into their own character development... makes my job a lot easier as DM.
The biggest hitch was my complete inability to affect an arabic accent. Thereby the boisterous Al Sharoq (some readers will remember him as the son of the gregarious Al Shaddir) at times sounded more like Count Dracula than a Turanian. Ah well.
I realized the other day that I haven t compiled one of my trademark lists in a while and was pondering topics. I was considering a list of my favorite influences... from there I got the idea of making a list of the esoterica that unite my various circles of friends... the recondite non-mainstream stuff and obscure quotes that immediately identify some one as gamer, or geek (or any number of other sub/counter-cultures I find myself in cohorts with). Does that make sense? Maybe I need to quit tryig to explain said list and just start writing it. Right. I ll get on that right now.
-bampf |
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Busy long Labor Day weekend. Friday featured the long drive to Shippensburg... for a change the traffic in the mid-state was worse than Philly traffic. Go figure.
Friday night was Two Towers on DVD. Nice. I still like Fellowship more... quite a bit more actually... but it was awesome none the less. I was upset that our copy had not shown up in the mail (we were watching Kristyn s dad s copy), it was only today that I realized that the extended version (which is what I ordered) won t be released till Nov... d'oh. Although I am now officially salivating for Return of the King.
Saturday we visited some of Kristyn s family and then went to a Moose picnic... not a picnic attended by mammals of the Cervidae family nor a picnic featuring tasty moose dishes, but rather a picnic hosted by the Moose fraternal organization. I think it could be best described as: horrific. A redneck paradise... Miller Lite on draft, country music blaring, scary buck-toothed inbred women wearing super-tight 80s clothes (and not just clothes reminescent of the 80s... but clothes they had owned in the 80s and still wore proudly). And then started the karaoke... yup.
Sunday stood in stark contrast to Saturday. We got up early to go play D&D with the Hbg gang. Good session I guess. It s so rare that we get together though, that sometimes I feel I should have masterpeice adventures to present since I have so long to prepare between sessions. Ah well.
Afterward, Alan and Michele hosted a D&D group picnic with tons of tasty food and numerous babies. Kristyn was fawning over the little ones, but seemed happy to give em back at the end of the day so I was glad to see her keep her maternal instinct in check.
Monday we spent some quality time with my family and then made the long trek back home. As predicted it was a ton of driving... well over 350 miles for the weekend by my rough estimation. An added bonus to the forthcoming honeymoon... nine days without getting behind the wheel once. Nice. The Jamaica countdown stands at 4. Woo Hoo!
Tonight is the first session of my new Hyborean campaign with our local group. I m really looking forward to it. Hopefully I won t disappoint.
-bampf |