Wolf n' Moose Spoor

::: Thursday, October 31, 2002 :::

Happy Hallowe'en or Samhain or in at least a couple cases, both!

Taking off a half-day today to get ready for the trickertreaters, plus it takes a while to get into costume and our panhandling hours start exactly at 5:00. Stupid township. Hallowe'en is supposed to happen from 6-8 pm. Don't even get me started on those foul localities that have it from noon to 2pm on a saturday. ::shudders::

Spending the first part of my day at work though; but at least I'm listening to my favorite fall fare. A recording I made of a radio program some years back on the language of Robert Burns. Several songs and a recitation of Tam o'SHanter. A lovely poem for Hallowe'en.

. . . Warlocks and witches in a dance:
Nae cotillon, brent new frae France,
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels,
Put life and mettle in their heels.
A winnock-bunker in the east,
There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast;
A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge:
He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a' did dirl. -

::: posted by Wolf at 8:32 AM 296 comments

::: Wednesday, October 30, 2002 :::

Two neat links pulled from boingboing.net:

Dialect survey very extensive but you can take it a little at a time. Very interesting maps for each question. However since i'm color-blind I have trouble telling some of the colors apart.

::: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 :::

Wahoooie! Snow & Rain & Sleet & Hail but most of all Wahooie SNOW!! Which means, among other things, I can put my razor away :) Time to start drawing the attention of every security guard and cop in the county!

::: posted by Wolf at 1:07 PM 1 comment

::: Thursday, October 24, 2002 :::

Save the Boobies! Part Deux

Ye think ya had a fine time at Maryland's Pirate Weekend?... but
ya aint seen nuttin yet, ya scurvy dog! It may be five months away,
but you'll want to save the date and send us yer gold to reserve your
spot at the Second Annual Save the Boobies Privateer Feast.....

See the two she-captains rally their crewes for the glory of being
awarded "best boat" by the Pirate King himself! Partake in a gauntlet
of games to test the crewe's brains, their brawn and their
backstabbin' tendencies! Arrr!!!

Raid the Booty Raffle for some of the finest treasures worth tradin'
yer pieces of gold fer. Our artisan compatriots have been
(ahem) "encouraged" into contributin' their goods for the
sake of the cause. And they LIKED it too… Arrr.

A donation of $35 covers all yer feastin' and the merry-makin' that
will support the members of TeamWench partaking in the Avon Breast
Cancer Walk in April 2003.

`Tis the piratical event of the season as we fill the coffers for
breast cancer research and screening… Pony up, ye salty dogs, and
SAVE THE BOOBIES.... if ya dare…

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Lori Beard
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Lori Beard
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::: posted by Wolf at 3:58 PM 0 comments

::: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 :::

Well, last night I did it, my first TPK (Total Party Kill).
It was the penultimate battle in the Green Ronin Freeport trilogy. I kinda feel bad about it, I really didn't expect that the party would all snuff it like that. But I really couldn't think of any way to nerf the encounter without making it obviously nerfed. Well sometimes evil wins. In one way it solves a problem, I was worried about taking the group into a very tough dungeon crawl (necromancer games' Rappan Athuk) and having their characters die repeatedly when they've been using those characters for several months. Heh problem solved :)

So a quick 2 weeks off as Chad and Kanto get married this weekend and we're not playing next week. That should give everyone time to make new 6th level characters up for the meat grinder, er Rappan Athuk. A nice old-fashioned stroll into a dungeon that no one knows why it's there, how the monsters survive, or understands the geo-political rationale behind the local constabulary.

::: posted by Wolf at 9:05 AM 2 comments

::: Monday, October 21, 2002 :::

There's an Early Review of the Huge Honkin' 4 Disc Special Edition of Fellowship of the Ring here

After reading about the 30 minutes of footage that was re-included in the release i'm as giddy as a school girl!

::: posted by Wolf at 9:16 AM 1 comment

::: Saturday, October 19, 2002 :::

Wow, before posting this message I had a month's worth of posts on this front page, for me a month's worth is about 5 :)

Anyway as I sit here watching Fellowship of the Ring on my new used 16x9 TV I guess I'll catch up on some boring posts.
Racked the Blackberry mead today, I just racked it a month ago, but since I only have one spare carboy and I had planned to put the Metheglyn in a carboy today, racking the blackberry one more time was better than not racking it at all I suppose. So I did that, then racked the metheglyn into the recently vacated, cleaned, and sterilized carboy. The metheglyn tastes Foul, blecho. 89 octane at least. but I imagine that it will mellow out in time :). The blackberry is a little less astringent than it was last month when I brought it to MDRF for Trask to taste So I expect it's going along. I topped off the blackberry with honeywater and karo syrup. That should sweeten it up some, I'll just have to watch to make sure that the fermentation doesn't take off again, but I think all the yeasties in the blackberry are dead.

Fermentation on the metheglyn is slowing down, but not quite done yet. I just topped that up with honey water. So that's where the mead is right now.

Otherwise, things are moving right along, our gaming group has picked up a new player (Hi Megan! :)), a new new player. It's fun to have someone in the group that has never played before, and you can relive your first experiences through them vicariously. She's coming in right at the end of the story arc that is the Freeport Trilogy. They are finishing up Monday night with freeport. Then We'll have a brief break while Chad gets married and has a brief honeymoon without having a honeymoon. Then I hope we'll start back up again with another new player (Hi Kanto! :))

In other news, there is no other news, we're as boring as mouldy toast :) Went shopping today isnt' that exciting? Woohoo

::: Tuesday, October 15, 2002 :::

Ahhhh public school cuisine is well and truly embedded in my psyche. Tomato soup and toasted cheese, just the thing when you feel like lark's vomit. And you know you never can find fresh Lark's vomit.

::: posted by Wolf at 1:34 PM 4 comments

::: Wednesday, October 09, 2002 :::

Ok, I'm perfectly willing to suspend disbelief, but when watching Enterprise, and they decide to go exploring in the cooling ducts it just kind of busts my bubble when they remove a 3M Filtrete air filter just like the one I bought at K-mart for 13.79 on Sunday.

::: posted by Wolf at 10:09 PM 2 comments

::: Monday, October 07, 2002 :::

From BoingBoing! the answers to my dreams! New Curling Video Game! I just hope there's a mac version or that it'll run on Virtual PC!

::: Tuesday, October 01, 2002 :::

MDRF 2002 Invasion photographs are now up. Also if any of you want the full sized pictures of these, drop me an e-mail and i'll send them your way. The full size pictures are something like 2200 x 1500 roughly. Can't remember the exact measurements. They should print out good 8 x 10s if you wanted.

::: posted by Wolf at 11:41 PM 0 comments

Maryland Renaissance Faire Invasion weekend report, Part the second.

We arrived about 40 mins before gate which gave us time to mingle a bit and get our tickets, We would have been there an hour before which is cast call since we were following wolfie and peg out but there was an accident in progress on the beltway when we hit that particular stretch which caused delay getting traffic moving again.

Today was Gareth's special plan, a rogueing of Celly which turned into a proposal of marriage, which Celly accepted. It was a 3 tissue moment. Of the 20 pictures I took about 3 of them are in focus, but it was hard due to the crowd and the distance involved, didn't want to get in their faces or anything like that. But at least the 3 pictures are of Gareth and Celly.

I'm surprised to say that most people here remember April and me, which is kind of embarrassing since we remember so few, but they're the locals and we're the strangers so I suppose that has a lot to do with it.

Chris, you should have come, there was a red-head in the drench-a-wench booth. ;-)

As far as archery goes, I did pretty well today, about 10 in the center target and 6 in the white and 2 "others" :-) I even robin-hooded an arrow almost perfectly down the center, however it was one of the "other" targeted ones.

I feel so special, we got to sit in the Pirate petting zoo! Whaw! We decided that we were going to spend more time bullshitting and less time running thither and yon all day. Much more productive that way. I was able to get Trask to taste the blackberry, and all seems well with it, nothing wrong with it that some time won't cure. Got to taste a 2 year old cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove? Metheglyn that he brought despite being 2 years old the metheglyn still had quite a bit of the aroma of the spices.

Also tasted Vicki's Rhodomel a rose-mead it was interesting you could really get the aroma of roses in it but not something I'd go after myself.

One thing I noticed it seems like everyone and their 2 year old nephew, Mordicai, have cell phones grafted into their ears. I literally heard this as we were waiting for Shakespeare's skum to start ". . . Yeah, we're in the Globe. . . Right in the center, yeah you can stop waving now I see you. . . " � yeah could tell he was a doctor on call there. Oy vey!

Well more later if I can remember anything, I'm dead tired. Oh had great crab Rangoon appetizers for dinner, it's so much better when it's brought out fresh. Pope you didn't think you'd get off that easily did you?

::: posted by Wolf at 8:51 PM 0 comments

Maryland Renaissance Faire Invasion weekend report, Part the first.

Left Youngstown at 2:00 pretty much on the dot.
We wanted to make sure that we arrived at casa di peg after Scott would be there. Since Hurricane Isadore was just sweeping through Pennsylvania and ohio, we drove most of the way through rain ranging from drizzle to squall. I really need new tires for the car, I was hydroplaning quite a bit once over 60 mph and the people on the turnpike were not slowing down, at least until we came upon the wreck. There was a van that looked like it had been rolled down a cliff, and maybe it was. When we got there, there was still one paramedic on the scene and they had the one van up on a flatbed, we saw that both front airbags had deployed and that both of them had blood all over them. Not a friendly sight. Thereafter I decided that at least I was going to slow down even if everyone else wasn�t. So the speed was one thing, the other thing that torqued me off was people driving without their lights on, hello? You can�t see more than 10 feet in front of you, what makes you think that people can see you? Morons, of course, I�m the best driver upon life so I can say that.

Anyway once we hit the breezewood area, the rain slowed down quite a bit and eventually we had some periods where there were dry roads. The drive is much nicer when you can get traction.

The trip is about 306 miles total, and we arrived in exactly 5 and a half hours. Scott�s directions were perfect and we had no trouble negotiating the freeways and the dc beltway.