The furniture is moved, the boxes are moved, there’s a little bit of mopping up of stuff to do back at Spring Lane in terms of things I need to bring over to the new place, but for the most part it’s time to move on to the next stage. So it’s time to unpack all the books and decide where everything goes, settle in, try to see if stuff fits, unpack all my clothes and see if they fit, that sort of thing.

Did I mention that it was kind of hot moving stuff today? Oh, and that twisting/spraining your ankle the night before you’re having to move is a really bad idea. In case anyone was wondering. But enough complaining.

My only real concern is getting the key for the wireless network at the new place. Right now I’m back at my old place (obviously) and will be taking over a few more things). But I really don’t have anything left here, as far as I can tell. Oops, except that I just remembered that my Blades from Oxford are still here. Better bring them over this trip as well.

Do I have too many books? That is the question. As I’m packing up all my stuff to get it ready for moving on Wednesday, I’m struck by the fact that it would undoubtedly be much easier to do this if I had rather less stuff. In particular, the boxes of gaming books do rather stand out as being… voluminous.
I am dropping off one box of books to the Friends of the Library Booksale on Tuesday, since they only take donations a few days a week. But it has occurred to me that I’ve only got one little box going to them and I’ve got something like ten boxes going to my new place. I think I’m going to try to not go to the booksale this year, though.

And somehow, although I continue to pack down more and more stuff, my room still looks like a complete disaster area. Surely at some point it will start to look empty?

Well, I’m back in Ithaca now after a pretty strenuous and unpleasant trip. I was originally going to have been back here on Friday evening, but I ended up not getting here until Saturday late afternoon.
Things went fine with leaving from Copenhagen and we seemed to be doing ok as far as making decent time in crossing the Atlantic. We’d even got to the point where they’d shut off the in-flight entertainment system. At this point, the pilot informed us that weather conditions in Newark were very bad and that as a result of this, we were going to have to land at an air field near Newburgh and refuel (I guess we didn’t have much in the way of extra fuel for the flight?). So we did that. At this point it is about one-thirty or two pm (US time), and we had been originally supposed to land at 2:20pm. So we’re sitting on the runway at this little air field, watching the other planes landing behind us, waiting to hear what will happen next. Eventually we get more refueled, but conditions are still bad at Newark and so we can’t take off again. We are allowed to use phones, so I call up a couple of people to say hi and let them know what an incredibly exciting time I’m having.

A couple of hours later we’re still sitting there and the other planes are starting to leave, as we have finally been allowed to take off. However, we have a slight snag. The flight crew and cabin crew have exceeded their flight points (based on number of hours flown plus number of take-offs and landings and time zones crossed and things) and are therefore not allowed to take off and take us to Newark. It seems to me that they should have been able to realize that this was going to happen and start getting another crew up to us sooner, but apparently they didn’t start getting the other crew headed our way until around five pm or so. So we’re still sitting on the runway. And there’s no real food on the plane, of course, since we were going to have landed three hours earlier. They have some drinks which they’re handing out along with a few bags of pretzels and pieces of candy. But the last real food we had was at noon US time. I was trying to drift in and out of sleep by now, but they were playing movies for us by now in order to try to keep us occupied, but since they had taken our headphones, they were broadcasting it over the PA system, which meant that I had to have ear plugs in if I wanted to have any chance of sleeping, and even then it was kind of difficult. The little kids were obviously having a hard time of it as well. Overall, however, people were fairly cheerful and in good spirits.

By this time I was realizing that there was no way I was going to catch a bus back to Ithaca that evening and was trying to think of where I could stay in NYC. Josh and Cathy had left for England the day before, and I didn’t have Geoff and Ellie’s phone number. The only person I could really think of was Stephanie, Beth’s friend whom I had met a couple of weeks ago right before we left for Denmark. I thought of her as I was scrolling through my list of phone numbers trying to think of anyone who might be useful or helpful. Liz (Beth’s friend) was listed, but I didn’t know if her number was still actually active, since she is now chiefly living in London. But I tried it, and it did indeed work. So I managed to get Stephanie’s number and called her up and left a message. And she very graciously said I was welcome to come and crash at her place, so that meant I wouldn’t have to spend the night at Newark airport or Port authority, at least.

The other flight crew finally got there and we took off around ten of so, by which time we had been on the ground for almost eight hours. And then we landed at Newark around 1030 or so, and I was through customs by 1100, at which point Jess called me to tell me that there was in fact one more bus from Port Authority, but it turned out that it went at 11, and not at 1130 as she had thought. So it wasn’t actually useful for me. Oh well. So then I made my way to Port Authority and then to the subway. At this point I was pretty tired and out of it from lack of sleep and food but I really just wanted to get to Stephanie’s place and collapse. I got on the N train (which was the right train) and took it in the right direction, but didn’t get off at the right stop, so I got off at the next stop, thinking I would just go to the other side of the tracks and take it back one stop. But it turned out that that station was one where you can’t do that without leaving the station and coming back in. Grr, I thought. Well, I’ll just suck it up and pay the extra $2 to go back into the subway. So I go up the stairs to the street, cross the street, and go back down, and through the turnstile. And realize I’d crossed the street in the wrong direction, because I’m on the same platform I was a minute ago.
At this point I was close to wanting to sit down and cry.
Okay, I thought. I’ll just take the train down to the next station and do it there.
So the train arrives, I get on and get off at the next station. And discover that it has the same problem as the last one (meaning that I have to leave the station in order to get to the other side of the tracks). Fuckit, I think. This time I’ll just make sure I’ll cross the street in the right direction. Forget about the extra $2. So I leave the station, cross the street, and as I’m about to walk down the stairs, I run into a woman who tells me that the station is closed in that direction. You have to take the train down one more station to Canal St and take the uptown-bound train from there.
So I go back to where I was and get on the next train (again, again) and go to the next station. Then I go uptown to Union Square (where I’d meant to go in the first place) and walk to Stephanie’s apartment. I’m not really sure what source of energy I was running on at that point… something beyond fatigue, I guess.
There I take a shower and get to sleep on an actual horizontal surface, which is utter bliss.

Saturday morning I take Stephanie out to breakfast, where I try to make up for not having eaten in close to twenty-four hours, have a bit of a relaxing morning, and then take the 12:30 bus back to Ithaca.

So there’s the saga of my trip.
Now I’m packing up boxes in order to have everything ready to move by Wednesday. My plan is to get all my books packed up today, and then I’ll move on to other things tomorrow. It seems that I have an awful lot of books. Oh well. I hope they all fit in my new apartment.

Well, I brought my AGOT book over to Denmark with me because I was going to make huge strides forward in my planning for the campaign I’m going to run and stuff. Alas, I’ve spent too much of my time working on my thesis work instead. I suppose on the whole that’s a good thing, but it does mean that I feel rather silly for lugging a very heavy book across the Atlantic for no purpose.

And what thinking I have been doing about gaming has been trying to come up with a character concept for JP’s new Amber Game. I’m currently lacking any original ideas and thus trying to decide whether I should try to reuse an old character concept. In doing so I realized that my characters in Jason’s games became dramatically more cautious after MLD. Drake was rather reckless and would leap headlong into things (like oceans of Primal Chaos), and Jaime was only slightly less so. Castor, Aerion, and Connal, on the other hand, have all been of the rather cautious variety, tending to play things extremely safe and doing everything to ensure that they survive every encounter. The thing is, playing someone impetuous is a lot of fun, when you get down to it

Anyway, the brief summary of the AGOT game idea is that it would be a noble house style game (everyone playing characters related to a noble house in the Reach) set around the time of the Blackfyre rebellion). Things are at relative peace in the Realms, so there is time to explore more of the day to day life and interactions between people without the backdrop of a war. The idea would be to have challenges like sorting out wedding alliances, fighting raiders, dealing with bandits, poachers, trade delegations, and a fair bit of internal politics. My problem is that I’m struggling with coming up with decent challenges that won’t be just combat and won’t be too boring. I think the problem will be making sure everyone is entertained, basically. I may try to have some of the PCs play certain NPCs when their characters are offstage, which will undoubtedly happen. I’d like to avoid having it be too Amber-like where I would be running things with each player individually, though. I’d like it to be a game of inter-player interaction and a game about being, rather than just about doing, so to speak.

There are some basic thoughts. Still need to find players, of course, but that’s another matter entirely.

Well, I saw Jason had done this quiz and thought I’d try it out. I can’t say I’m surprised by the result at all. I would tend to describe myself as a storyteller and tactician, actually. And then there’s the whole pretentious navel-contemplationist roleplayer thing, of course, so it all makes sense.

Well, we’re safely in Denmark, but the travel itself wasn’t the most fun in the world and we’re all pretty wiped out. We just went for a walk in the beautiful sunshine, so hopefully that will help in resetting our biological clocks. I don’t really have any plans yet of what we’re going to do while Beth and her mother are here but perhaps this evening we will figure something out.
In the meantime I’m left to wonder how much caffeine is an acceptable amount to consume so as to be awake and alert and yet not end up having trouble sleeping tonight. Did I mention that I hate jetlag?

Well, Beth has headed off to NYC to look at dresses for her bridesmaids, and I’m following on Saturday to spend at least a little time with Josh and Cathy before we fly out to Denmark on Sunday. I’m beginning to realize that I’ve done nothing in terms of preparation for the trip yet, so I should probably be getting started on that. I need to get some things to take over for my parents (stuff that’s hard to find in Denmark mainly) as well as make sure I’ve got all my laundry done and have everything packed.
At present I have only one suitcase with wheels, which I plan on taking. It’s rather huge, however, so I’m thinking that asking for a smaller wheeled suitcase as a birthday or christmas present would be very useful. This means I’ll be able to overpack terribly, of course, and bring lots more stuff than I can hope to use. So I’ll be bringing my running shoes and various things in an overly ambitious attempt to be physically active while there. The fact that there are no real hills does make the prospect of running somewhat more appealing, though.

I’m also debating whether or not to bring my AGOT RPG book with me. I’m trying to get things sort of set up for starting a game and would like to work on that some more as well. I’ll post some thoughts about that soon (hoping for helpful comments).

Oh, and it’s been unseasonably warm in Denmark lately, which means it’s been much more like a typical summer is over here. However, I don’t really trust that weather to last, so it’s perhaps just as well that I’ll be able to bring lots of clothes so that I can have a complete set of warm and cool clothes for the trip. It would be nice if it stayed nice at least for the part of the trip where Beth and her mother are going to be in Denmark though. Having them show up only to have it be rainy and miserable would be kind of disappointing.

Well, I watched the Italy-Germany game this afternoon and was rather disappointed that Italy ended up winning. Actually, I think I’m just generally disappointed with how the game was; I was expecting something much better. It’s sort of vaguely some sort of consolation that it didn’t end up going to a penalty shootoff, but not much. Overall not a very impressive game. I hope tomorrow’s is better, in any case.