zdashamber | A weekend in the life

Friday evening I ran the 5th session of my Amber campaign. One of the players has a flurried interesting post discussing it up here... Four out of the five players are ADRPG novices, and the different perspectives they bring to it all fascinate me. All these Amber royals et al that I've known for years, these guys are sort of "meeting" through me. I'm glad Brand came off in keeping with his massive amount of Bad Stuff...

Saturday morning I got up at 10 to move my car and go buy a mattress... My 15-year-old one isn't really so keen anymore. Dread Girl was also up at that ridiculous hour to move her car, and mentioned that Spiky Hair Girl got a great cheap mattress at the place on Grand across from the kosher bakery. I went forth into the world, stopping at the cafe next to the Lake Merritt parklands to get a latte, and then at the liquor store to buy $24 worth of Lotto tickets for the evening's $43M pot... I instigated an office pool. Mwa-ha. (Results: $1! Wooo!)

The cheap mattress place was daunting. It was a room full of mattresses on end... And by "full" I mean it was impossible to get from the front to the back without moving mattresses. It had enough floor space to lay one mattress out at a time. I would have to rely on a salesman for my every mattress encounter. As I was still lacking in coffee, for the insulated cup was doing its job too well, I stopped dead at the door, momentum causing me to waver a moment, and then retreated without crossing an infrared line.

Fortunately, the Grand Lake farmer's market was right there to wander through until the coffee cooled enough to be absorbed. I signed a petition to ask the California legislature to impeach Bush and Cheney; I've seen the black guy with the banner several times before, and I admire his dedication. "Warrantless surveillance is illegal!" he exorted the passersby as I left. Also awesome: I located a Vietnamese place. That delivers. To my house! Gourmet pizza, Indian, Chinese, and now Vietnamese delivery! Boo-yah!

Stopped by the Grand Lake theater to note the day's showings of "Snakes on a Plane". Return to the mattress place! (after feeding the meter). The guy only had one Full and wanted to convince me I needed a hard mattress. Ok, I agreed with my voice, but not that hard.

Off to the cheap furniture place on San Pablo that I pass on my bike en route to work, the one in the middle of a bad section of town, around 28th. The last time I bought a mattress, in 2000, I found it at a cheap furniture place on San Pablo in a bad section of El Cerrito del Norte... And it was a great mattress, and a fine shopping experience. As was this! I walk in, the only visible human in the enormous store. Cool with me. Lie on about 5 different mattresses, an Asian salesguy comes in to see if I need anything, I say I'm just trying out mattresses, he goes away. This is why I shop cheap stores, aside from the cheap. At the major stores I tried in February, there was always some fool hovering, trying to tell me about springs encased in bags. I do not care. Go away. Leave me alone with my flopping and mental questions about whether I could sleep on the flopped-on thing!

Tried all 20-some mattresses on offer, located a mattress that I could have fallen asleep on! Circled and returned. Yep. Wandered off to find Asian salesguy (behind counter in back, on computer). Showed him mattress, politely excused myself to leave when on top of not being available until Wednesday my old mattress would not be taken away free. Free removal thrown in. Half-hearted haggling about delivery price. Did not have enough caffeine in me to really make a go of the haggling. Did not much care as price was still nearly half what I was willing to pay. Bought mattress. Plan of more than a year comes to fruition! Yay!

Plenty of time to drive back down Grand to catch "Snakes on a Plane" matinee. Will possibly review elsewhere; it was gruesome, but reasonably entertaining.

Return to house ~2. Postcard from sister! Yay! E-mail about weekend plans.

Move car at 4; drove up to Mountain View cemetery to leave a Fate die on tetsujin28's grave. As I did not know him, I feel a bit like a poser, but perhaps his family will see it and be comforted to know others are still keeping him in mind. There are people all over the world who would visit his grave if they could, so perhaps I can represent them. Saw a wild turkey hen while I stood there. Pink flowering naked ladies in the wild eucalyptus woods. Nice place.

Carpooled down to poker at

motleypolitico and

malacissation's with

ericorange. Came out a dollar up, which leaves me down about $2.60 all told... Best part was chatting with Eric en route. Geeky discussions of ontology of Star Trek "aliens", etc.

Sunday: slept 'til noon. Yay! Went out for some short runs, in sprawling loops through the trees in the parkland by Lake Merritt, to get ready for the police officer physical test. Worked pretty well. Geese mostly unalarmed.

Realized had left phone in Eric's car. Ahwell, easy come, easy go, but regrettable that I couldn't phone sister and parents.

Gaming! Mike's place, again with the tasty chimichanga at the Taqueria el Grullense next to his house. We prevailed upon Bernie to run Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, which I had never experienced. "Is this the one with the ducks?" I asked. No, apparently that's RuneQuest.

Random chargen is one hell of a lot of fun. My character turned out to be a Lucky noble, with more Willpower and Fellowship than you can shake a stick at. Got a fine random name, too. Then we played ten minutes or so, and then Bernie mentioned that there were more tables we could roll on, for height and weight and eye color and age and... Wooo! So I got to be a 5'2" 120 lb dark-brown-haired copper-eyed 19-year-old with the star sign of the Dancer/attractive one... Mike and Jeff? Hi-larious. Jeff was a pockmarked redheaded soldier, 5'7" 170 lb. Mike was a 16-year-old woodsman, 6' 140 lb. They made quite a couple. And get this... Mike's character's eyes were violet. We laughed for about two minutes straight.

Anyway, there was an amusing amount of whiff/whiff, whiff/whiff, whiff... And I really mean that, it was fun and different that rounds went by in seconds once we all got the hang of rolling and reporting "Nope!" As the noble who didn't roll much in the way of fighting skills, I rarely hit things, which meant the things we were all ganged up on spent all their attacks on Mike or Jeff's characters, so mine came out smelling like a rose... Lucky weekend for me in general.

It gave me a good appreciation for Buffy's "ganging up" mechanisms, too. I was sitting there with a foil fighting 3-6 guys at a time, and I'm thinking, dude, there's no way I oughtta be surviving this. Fighting just one guy requires nearly all your attention, and once there's more than three, I can't see how you could possibly track the free ones in a melee.

Came home, looked up Amber threads for Eric; found that

mtfierce had an account on RPG.net, followed the link in her userinfo to her forums, found that the worst GM I've ever known was years later still taking every opportunity to l i e about me... Oy. Fortunately, at 3:30 in the morning, I woke to the crazy people that moved in three houses down screaming at each other in the street. As I lay there muzzily cursing the lack of my phone, and thus the lack of cop-calling ability, it occurred to me that Ginger's deal was very much like that of the crazy people who follow you down the street shouting about Lyndon LaRouche or similar things. What you say or do can never impact their snap judgements, because their entire view of themselves as good judges and good people is based around the lies they embrace to make themselves right.

This is what I love about living in the city, aside from the food delivery options. There are so many unusual people-related happenings, and even obnoxious circumstances can be vectors of enlightenment.