Been a while

I think this may very well be the longest I've gone without blogging. It's not that I don't want to do some sharing of life events, it's more that most of my readership (if not all) already knows everything I've been up to.

Kerry and I were lucky enough to be able to take a vacation this year, and we drove out to Colorado. It was amazing -- we ditched the kids with my parents and really had a great time together in the mountains. I'm a big fan of taking relaxing beach type vacations, but I also love road trips to cool places.

We took off from Benson one Friday morning and drove straight to Estes Park, CO in one shot. It was about 14 hours of driving, give or take, and it seriously seemed like about 2 hours without the kids in the car. We just took in the scenery and arrived at our destination with little fuss.

We spent a few days in Estes park, mainly hanging out in Rocky Mountain National Park or checking out shops in town. Then we headed back by a northerly route, making fun stops at Mt. Rushmore, Wall Drug, and finally camping in Badlands National Park. It was a fun time with great company.

We get to take another road trip this weekend to go and see Phish again. It's going to be a blast, and I'm ecstatic. I can't wait to hang out with friends and see awesome live music.

The job's been going well. I'm keeping busy and learning a ton still. I can't believe that in a couple of months I'll have been here a year. It's freaking insane. I love the job, love the town, but wish we had more friends here. These things take time.

Last weekend, I went to a birthday party for Corey's uncle and had an impromptu reunion of my college band Alterego. It was awesome. The four of us hadn't played together in over 10 years and Chad hasn't even touched his drums for the last 2, but we were pretty much spot on with our performance of the three songs we chose to perform. So fun.

That's all I know. I'll try to blog more. Heh. Bye!

LOL

This is just a photo upload for jabberboard revenge. ;)

Grandpa, Pt. II

So my Grandpa's funeral was yesterday, and it was amazing. There were more people in their church than are in attendance on Christmas or Easter. The fire department was there, in uniform, and they made an honor guard type thing to the sides of us as we recessed to the graveyard. The american legion was there, and my grandma was presented with a flag, taps was played, and Grandpa got a three-volley salute (due to his service in the Navy during WWII). It was moving. I think at last count there were over 450 there, but I'm not sure about the exact count.

The service itself was very celebratory. My dad gave a tribute speech to Ray, who is actually his father-in-law. I sang a couple of songs with my cousin, Gretchen, and my cousin-in-law, Dan. My cousin Eric, a baptist minister, gave an excellent homily. Gretchen read a piece on my grandpa that she'd written for his 90th birthday, the choir sang (I've never seen a funeral where the choir sang!) and other cousins did the readings. The pastor of the church gave, hands down, the best sermon I've ever heard him give.

It was just what grandpa would have wanted.

Rest in Peace, Grandpa

As is obvious from the title, my Grandpa passed away. It's been a hard weekend and a hard week, but I just have to take a few moments here to celebrate this man's amazing life, because he was an extraordinary guy. Also, he lived to be 90 and his mind was as sharp as a tack. He died peacefully in his sleep, surrounded by family, at 4:30 a.m. this past saturday. Death comes to everyone, but that's about the best way to go possible. Still, it's really difficult for those of us who have to say goodbye. A mighty oak has fallen.

Here are some tidbits about my Grandpa, because in a lot of ways this guy is larger than life:

Grandpa was born in 1920 and grew up during the Great Depression. He was the son of a Democratic State Senator, and grew up to be the strongest Republican I know, so that says a little something for his rebellious nature. (Wait...he was a rebel because he was a Republican? LOL.) Besides being a Senator, my Great Grandfather (A man I never met) was also a farmer, and my Grandpa was a farmer for much of his life.

Grandpa was an Ensign on a Destroyer in the south pacific during World War II. His boat was somewhere near Hong Kong, mainly after the war had ended.

Grandpa was a recreational pilot. When he first started dating my Grandma (an amazing woman in her own right), he would fly to her place (About 133 miles away) and pick her up for dates. Once, a storm kept him from flying home, and he slept outside on my Grandma's parents' porch.

My Grandpa and Grandma got married and got a farm near where my Grandpa grew up. They raised 5 kids -- four boys and my mom. After Grandpa retired from farming (and his other job of insurance sales) they built a house on the farm property and one of my uncles took over the family farm.

My grandparents have been all over the world -- Norway, Sweden, Russia, China, Singapore just to name a few...in my Grandpa's office there is a map with red stickpins shoved into every place he's been. The northern hemisphere is pretty much covered, and the southern is getting there.

Most importantly, my Grandpa was a conversationalist. I have never met (and likely will never meet) a person more genuinely interested in what other people have to say. In one of the books that my Grandpa published (there are 3, short paperback memoirs) he mentions that everybody has a story to tell. He actively sought to learn a piece of that story from everyone he met. Those of you that met him likely had interesting (and sometimes wacky) conversations with him.

He was a heck of a guy. I'm thankful to have known him my whole life -- not many people get to keep their grandparents around this long, and I know that my family is fortunate.

Workin' on my game cuz life is taxing

The weather has finally warmed up enough for me to play some golf again. There were two solid weeks where it rained every single day (and even snowed once...in May...barf). It was depressing and grey and lame as all get out. But finally, Spring decided to spring for the second time, and I made it out to the course again.

Last night was the first night of Men's League here. It was a lot of fun, and a perfect night for golf. Unfortunately I shot a horrid game, mainly due to a very unfortunate tree-and-sand-trap related 11 on the last hole. (My partner shot a 16 on that hole, with two OB shots and 4 attempts to get out of the same sand trap) All in all, it was a good night for setting my handicap for the rest of the season.

Tomorrow I'm leaving work at 10:30 to go play golf in a scramble. It's the hard knock life for me.

Last weekend I went on a road trip with the boys to Fargo, ND, to see some awesome bands (and one crappy one). Mastodon was the headliner, and I had never seen them before. They were phenomenal. The first openers were the ever-awesome Valient Thorr, a band I've now seen three (or four?) times and who continue to kick all kinds of arse. The second band was Baroness, and they also completely blew me away. I had a copy of their Red album, which was ok but never really did it for me. Their Blue album is excellent, though, and seeing them live solidified in my mind what a great band they are. Then there was Between the Buried and Me, who looked like a bunch of frat boys playing Atreyu-ivium crap and sounding pretty much like garbage to my ears.

It was a lot of fun to go on the road trip, catch up with friends, and have a good ol' time with the boys. P-A-RTY, we don't need no alibi, we party!

Even more nerdination!

This is seriously getting ridiculous. Being a DM and making awesome terrain has become a bit of an obsession, and hopefully the payoff will be worth it when my players see the fruits of my toils. This all began with a graveyard scene for one of the encounters in Shadowfell. I created it with folded paper mausoleums, walls, and gates, and paper gravestones with funny names on them.

I put quite a bit of work into the graveyard, and had a lot of fun doing it. For the road and some other terrain, I used some Dungeon Tiles and some homemade terrain tiles that I printed. I taped it all down onto my "battle board", a creation of my own involving a dry erase board with permanent marker. After getting done with it, though, I realized that I would have one awesome looking encounter that lasted for exactly one encounter, and then I'll have to retire my awesome graveyard. That's a bummer. So, I got to thinking about how I could make sweet looking terrain at home without spending a fortune, and be able to use it for more than one encounter.

I've invested in a few packs of Dungeon Tiles, and they're great and look cool, but they have their problems. My biggest gripe is that you don't know what's in each pack. Wizards likes to create surprise packages -- I think it stems from Magic: The Gathering. They're really into not letting you know what's inside. The other gripe with Dungeon Tiles is that there aren't enough duplicates to make really big rooms. They've designed them so that you pretty much need to buy two of each set in order to make a good looking dungeon.

Other tile sets are even more incredibly awesome, but ridiculously expensive. Case in point: Dwarven Forge. They look amazing and are much more customizable because the tiles don't often have things like furniture or dead bodies permanently painted on them. However, they're really pricy. So, I discovered a way to replace the money part with good ol' sweat, and I've come up with some rad tiles. First, I went to Home Depot and dropped 20 bucks on some tile. Like actual, bathroom tile. They had sheets of these 1-inch stone tiles for 10 bucks for an 11x11 square of tiles. However, the tiles are glued to a plastic mesh and spaced for grouting, so there's about an eighth of an inch of space between them straight off the rack. That won't do for my gaming. ;)

The other issue is that they come off of their plastic mesh rather easily. So, I decided to take them off, and use some wood glue and glue them to cardboard bases, to give them stability. I started by making some 2x2 inch squares, which will be good for creating hallways and also for setting side by side to create rooms.

Then I started making some larger pieces. So far, I have a couple of 3x3 and one 6x6 as well. It's fun spending time making stuff like this, but I wouldn't recommend it for anyone that's not a fan of modeling, because it gets monotonous. The glue from the mesh sticks to the tiles as well, so I found that in order to create a tight fit between tiles, I needed to use a little sandpaper to get the old glue off.

Happy gaming. I can't wait until the next session.

Nerdination!

So, based on the acquisition of 4th edition D&D books, I've gotten back into D&D in a major way. I was always into it, and have been playing fairly regularly since I was about 14 or 15 years old. That's well over half my life, and just contemplating that is astounding to me. Very few other games have been such a mainstay for me. Super Mario Bros., perhaps, but I don't play that with anything near the fervor of a good D&D session.

I remember getting my first copy of a Player's Handbook (2nd edition) back one summer long ago. I was doing some corn detassling at the time, and invited four of my friends over after work to play some D&D. The first group ever consisted of my friend Corey as DM (because he'd played before), and Myself, Chad, Nate, and Mike as the players. I played a Halfling Thief (that's right, we called ourselves thieves back then, noobs, because Bards are Rogues as well!). Mike was a Dwarf Fighter, Chad was an Elf Mage, and Nate was a Human Cleric. You know, you just don't get a more vanilla group than that. And we had a lot of fun and played a LOT of D&D over the next several years.

Eventually the DM hat got passed in my direction, and I enjoyed the helm. I had a few stints as a player in college, but I knew that DMing was the place that I belonged. Still, I never felt like I could possibly know all of the rules. That hasn't changed to this day, but I figured out the secret of being a decent DM -- Use good judgment, make it up, and don't waste time looking up rules. If you really need it, the players all have PHBs, so they can look it up for you. That's it. Other than that, be as descriptive as possible and only as restrictive as necessary. OK, I could go on and on, but the truth of the matter is that as long as everyone is having fun, that's all that matters.

Back to the crux of the discussion: I now live farther from my friends than ever before, yet we play more D&D than we have since high school. It's a very social activity, and it's extremely awesome to have the excuse to get my friends to come over (or to go to their places) to sit down, have a few beers/mountain dews/whatever and immerse ourselves in an afternoon of slaying monsters and performing epic acrobatic maneuvers. After moving to a new town, this is pretty much the pinnacle of my social activity.

The game has grown considerably since my days in a 4-player party. So many of my friends play D&D now, and all of them want to be part of the action (which is awesome). This has resulted in a HUGE party of players. At the last session, we had 9 players. There were moments where the potential player turnout was somewhere around 14, but there's never been a time where everyone invited has showed up. I had a 9-player session in my basement in Robbinsdale back when we were playing 2nd edition, and it was utter chaos. There were actually several sessions back then where we only got through one fight. That's not the case anymore -- 4th edition moves a lot quicker for a number of reasons. First, you only roll initiative once. When we played 2nd edition (whether this was in the rules or not I don't rightly know) we rolled initiative every round. That adds up to taking a lot of time. Also, just figuring out whether you hit or not was more difficult.

This is getting to be a long blog, but I wanted to mention a couple more things. I totally skipped 3rd edition and 3.5, but was immensely pleased to find out that 4th edition relies heavily on miniatures. D&D started as a miniature game, but by the time 2nd edition rolled around they weren't nearly as necessary and in fact we didn't even play with miniatures until I became a DM. Even then they were only used for placement and facing, not for movement. That's right, we ignored movement rate (it was just too dang complicated). Now my 4 pewter miniatures have become 25 pewter miniatures, although I only actually own 4. My players tend to leave their minis with me. I've also assembled an army of monster miniatures, and crave more. The visual aspect that the miniatures adds to the game allows players to continue to be interested in the board and to strategize their next move even while it's not their turn. They stay engaged, and it's awesome. That helps a ton with 9-player groups.

However, miniatures are expensive. You can get some for under 1.00, but some are ridiculous (like the gelatinous cube that sells for $40 and is just a plastic cube. come on. Some of my dice sets have come inside perfectly good gelatinous cubes. LOL.) I'm so INTO the minis, though, that I've decided to try my hand at making my own, as soon as I can get my grubby mitts on some fimo. Also, crafting cool looking encounter grids has become an obsession/goal of mine, because it really brings the scene to life. So, in addition to the fimo, a woodburning kit might be on my list of stuff to get. Oh, and a tackle box for my minis. This stuff literally fills me with glee.

If you can't tell...I'm excited to play more D&D.