Written last night at about 6:15 PM

I’m writing this from the seats in the Shimberg Playhouse of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, waiting for rehearsals to begin. Much to my dismay, there are no wireless networks in the area for me to leech off of, so I’m forced to actually sit down and write as opposed to wasting my time surfing the net.

I suppose I could be going over my lines or something productive like that, but at the moment I’m in the mood to just kind of take a few minutes to collect myself and regroup for the rest of the evening. As such, I’m going to just jot down a few things and see wherever my rambling thoughts decide to go.

The last week was a pretty hectic one, but it was a hell of a lot of fun. Our friends John and Random, who we met while playing World of Warcraft, came down and spent the week camped out at our place. They were great houseguests, and in an amusing side note at the end of their stay Alex opined that they could stay forever. Always a good sign of a nice visit, don’t you think? Of course we spent a good deal of time promoting the area, as those of us actively recruiting more cool people to live here are known to do, but I think that for the time being at least they are staying put up in Cincinnati. Who knows what the future could hold, though? For know, at least, it’s safe to say that they have a place to visit any time they feel the need to get away.

On Friday night we took them out to The Castle, where we met up with several of the locals who play WoW with us. It was a hell of a good time. Sometimes I think we should go out there more often, but to be honest it isn’t the locale itself that makes the evenings there enjoyable. It’s the people. Hell, these days we usually end up spending most of our time out on the patio just hanging out and listening to music. We can do that at our places. Still, it was great to get my dance on and have a few drinks. Nothing quite to the extent that I used to when I was a regular denzien there (Ok, when did I get home and who was I making out with in the back seat???), but enough to certainly make it necessary for Krystalle to drive home. Speaking of the drive home – We decided to stop by our normal late night breakfast spot on the way, only to discover that it had been closed! We went to another one, closer to the house, and while the food was typical Denny’s fare the service was horridly slow. I don’t think it was entirely the fault of the kitchen, either, because by the time my Nachos made it to the table the cheese had kind of started to harden up into a congealed mass. Obviously we weren’t expecting a five star dining experience, but you’d think that the late night shift on a Friday night would be better equipped to handle the hordes coming in from the club to get their greasy food fix before hitting the sack.

Saturday night was game night, and for the second week in a row we opted to do the card game thing instead of our typical D&D session. Between our guests and rehearsals I just didn’t have the time to get anything ready for the session, and to be honest that might end up being the case more often than not until this process is over. I honestly don’t remember it taking quite so long to put adventures together when I was a kid, but that may have something to do with the fact that back then it was a lot more about senseless blood and gore than developing story or real challenges. Actually putting things together that make sense and require the players to actually do more than just “attack the orc” isn’t as easy as it sounds!

Speaking of which, I finally have a copy of cavalorn‘s first book in the Drow War series. As it is designed to take characters all the way from level one to twenty, I haven’t quite decided how we’re going to approach starting the campaign. Maybe we’ll switch back and forth between the two campaigns. Ah well, we’ll work it out.

Well, maladr1n just got here, so I’m gonna finish this up and get down to business. Will post this when I get home.