Randomosity: Good things, past and future

GenCon provided a good excuse for a marathon gaming weekend, since several of us skipped the con this year. Beginning Thursday, we had two back-to-back sessions of Changeling (with pizza and delicious BLTs, respectively), a night off (for W. and I, anyway -- Edige had a third game to run), and then the Sunday 3rd continent game.

Saturday evening, W. and I stopped in at my aunt and uncle's to drop off some football tickets. We stayed and chatted for a bit, since they'd never met W. before; it was a pretty relaxed visit. My aunt restrained herself from asking too many questions (which she commented on proudly as we were leaving) and offered to take us to Red Lobster next week. So there's that to look forward to.

Afterward, we kept driving north and went to dinner in St. Joe. (There was lots of driving this weekend, as the weather was particularly good for it, for the first time in weeks.) Re: St. Joe, though -- there's a fine line, for me, between pleasant people-watching and claustrophobia, and the crowds up there this weekend were right on that border. Dinner was excellent, but even at 10 pm, the line at the ice cream shop was far too long.

Also, we decided during the course of the evening that our host at the Pumphouse Grill really needed to be an evil mage of some kind. He was perfectly polite, with perfectly manicured nails, and thick, shoulder-length stark white hair; a pure white Van Dyke, slightly hawkish nose, and dark-dark eyes. He needs to be a character, somewhere. In fact, I can't help but wonder if he didn't perhaps walk off the page of a book at some point.

I was supposed to make some zucchini bread this weekend with this amazingly huge zucchini Cher Mere gave me on Thursday, but it was so hot I have't gotten around to baking anything. Hopefully Tuesday will give me a chance if it cools off a little in the evening. I'm thinking I might be able to get three loaves out of this puppy. If it works out, I may have to drop off a loaf for them as a thank-you. Assuming they're edible, of course. ;)

Game-wise, I'm almost done with SMT: Devil Survivor. Unfortunately I hit a lull for a bit there; because I've been tearing through story points and haven't been taking on as much in the way of build-battles as I normally do in a MegaTen game, I ended up having to farm a fairly boring free battle over and over to get past the Belial fight because I didn't have enough ice in my arsenal. Once I went back and took a second stab at Belial with the revised strategy and updated fusions, it was a cake walk. I have now made it to the last "day" of the game, though, and I chose Gin's path -- but that's a subject for a whole post in itself. I've got my fingers crossed for a good ending, which is never a guarantee in these games. However ... I think I've played enough of them to figure out which ending leads to the "right" path for me.

I do love the SMT; it remains my all-time favorite game line. Once I'm done with this game, it might be worth taking a look at the whys and wherefores of that.

In other news, a group of us are going to see Miyazaki's Ponyo Thursday night. It's apparently an adaptation of the "Little Mermaid," with a Miyazaki twist, so I'm looking forward to that. A fellow gamers' daughters were watching Spirited Away while we played at Edige's last night, and it was hard not to sit down and watch the rest of the movie all the way through.

I'm tired today (far too much Devil Survivor last night after the game), and right now I'm hoping for a slow week. We only have a couple of things planned, so for the moment, I'm looking forward to enjoying the week's impending thunderstorms curled up on our comfy, comfy couch.