_www.FantasyLibrary.com [Visit Who Is Joseph Teller?] Synthesis & Synchronicity 015

Synthesis & Synchronicity #15

As I write this we are on the final week of Kiralee's three weeks of vacation... a vacation that hasn't been fully successful, but has helped reduce some of her stress.

Thanks to the ongoing building construction and other factors we've had a vacation that has pretty much kept us at home, or at least in the Cambridge Area, for most of the three weeks. No great travel, no distant adventures, no major parties and most of our expenses have been of the ordinary type that go with our lives.

We will (hopefully) get to go see a movie in Harvard Square today (The Italian Job), sandwiched in between dance rehersals and yoga classes for Kiralee.

Cindy has acquired a new computer, replacing the problematic one she bought custom built from a now long gone Comp USA. She's gone with an HP system. 2.4G system with 512m Ram, with HP moniter, scanner & printer. So far its working ok, though the scanner software is not as good as what we're used to (we'll have to get her a new version of Paint Shop Pro to work with... her old version 4 is not compatible with Win-XP). By buying everything as one package deal we have better system compatibility on it.... now if I can just pry her away from Morrowind long enough to get the needed additional software installed.... :-)

They've gotten the new support beams in, but need to weld everything in place, but the house is in better shape then it has been in months in regards to support. Progress... slow but steady, Is better then stagnation.

Kiralee has been scheduling herself ragged, trying to catch up on everything she failed to get done in the past 2 years (she didn't really get a vacation last year), including yoga, rehersals for a dance performance on this coming Sat.; accounting projects, computer projects, spending time with friends, clothing projects, plant maintenance, shopping, costuming, reading, writing, etc.

The Dance Performance will be at the BCCA, the new community center in Coolidge Corner (14 Green Street to be exact), 7:00 - 9:30 pm. The cost is $15. The event is a Hafli, a dance party, so in addition to the performances there will be open dancing to live music. There is also a workshop for dancers before the Hafli at 5:30pm - Sabrina is teaching floorwork.

Along the way we've discovered our back porch decks for the building are having major structural problems that need to be repaired this summer, the building also needs to be repainted, etc. Nasty additional costs we were not planning on in our budgeting to say the least...

So Kiralee's vacation for me has meant less control of my day, more housework, more running around to get done what she needs to get done, less writing time, installing computer hardware & software, waiting for packages, waking up way too early for construction guys, my annual medical checkup (I'm not dead yet... actually I appear to be fairly healthy for my age, if I can get the stress levels down), etc.

There has been no word, as yet, from Whole Foods about the decision on the fate of the Putnam Cafe (which Kiralee and I have been acting as Community Representatives for, as I mentioned last few columns. The manager has changed, the new one has been out of contact, and the folks involved in trying to get it reopened as a non-profit have been out of state for the past 2 weeks and out of contact. I fear the worst and that the cafe will either end up vacant for years or end up a less than friendly business of a totally different nature, reducing the available venue space for the neighborhood.

The Western Ave Irregulars have continued to meet with no problems over the last few weeks. Greg is now running his Cosmic Encounters 'Puzzlebox', which is not my favorite (sorry, but I have a preference to settings with magic, psionics and a different kind of feel.) Its pretty much a near-modern setting thats become a post-apocolypse-by-plague thing that's just not my cup of tea for long term play. It's not that Greg isn't doing a good job, he's improve as a GM over time, but I prefer to be more active then reactive and to have more control over my destiny in games (scrambling around the ruins of New Mexico for supplies to live off of is not exactly heroic cinematic roleplaying). I'm looking forward to its completion and the return to Dave Jackson's Greenstone campaign.

The Wed game has a 1 week hiatus.... and then probably a BESM Fantasy game starting up for the next couple of months. Its not my favorite system, so again I'm in a wait and see mode as to wether it'll be fun and interesting. Still it's the only choice with one player away for the summer, a second away for July and no one else willing to take the helm right away for Quartermain or something else. Quartermain will go thru a setting update by me over the next few months to expand its files and detail level.

Attempts to find someone else running a non-D20 game in the Cambridge area on, say, Saturday afternoons, has proved a failure. The Evil Empire of WOTC/Hasbro has just eaten all the creativity and life out of gaming beyond our gaming group in the area, along with the large numbers of folks fleeing the economy problems in the area (1/3 of all people in Massachusetts would move out due to the cost of living in this state, if they could, and students etc. tend to be the first to go. Not good in a student run economy like Cambridge).

I've just today gotten into an interesting online game of sorts, www.nationstates.net an experiment in nation building. I'm ruling over the Holy Empire of Lenoir, located in the West Pacific (an Island) with a population of 5 million people and categorized as a Democractic Socialist organization by the UN. It has Average Civil Rights, A Fragile Economy and evidently current Political Freedom below aversage (we hope to improve on all three during my reign).

I've decided that Diablo II Lord of Destruction is badly designed and weighted towards the Barbarian class to be victorious over all the others in solo play (and several of the others are nearly unplayable except online.... but without a good online capability, since we're on dialup, the whole game becomes very disappointing).

Anyway, that's about all I have to pass on. Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings.....

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