Sleeping in strange places

Posted on July 30, 2010 by maiki

I don’t sleep well in places that are not my home.

I don’t like to admit that, I feel as if I have some weakness, an inflexibility that disallows me from joining the jet-set crowd. But it is true. I can’t sleep right now because there are strange sounds and the lighting is different. It is like moving to a new place, but without the familiar smells of your own stuff.

When I first lived on my own, it was on the beach in Oceanside. I lived under a rock, and I mention that because it was a very nice rock, and it was significant in my development. I slept in sand, which incidentally is very cold at night, but has good insulation. I used an over-sized flannel shirt to cover myself, and then I would pack sand on top of it. My rock sat atop other rocks, and that formed my “beach house”, which sheltered me from the elements, unless it was high tide, in which case I had an elemental alarm clock. Fortunately, the tide comes in gradually enough that it was never a threat.

I slept like a baby, under that rock.

It was the stress. From being kicked out/running away. From scrounging for money and food. From not knowing enough to be as frightened for myself as I am for that past me, now. There was a lot going on, and it was all in the moment, intense, in-tense, and the puzzles my brain worked out had direct results and consequences. Fascinating.

Now I stay at friends’ houses, and in hotels. My worries are about making a certain amount of money over months, rather than by teenage curfew. I can’t sleep because I know a lot more than I did then.

I am reading Rework. I should probably be sleeping. ^_^

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Encounter 2-2: Fine Strands of Death

Posted on July 27, 2010 by maiki

Doh, I am late posting this.

So, with such a name as Fine Strands of Death, you would think that this encounter would really push the envelope on the survivability of the party. Not so. In fact, not only was this the easiest encounter in the season, it may have been one of the easiest encounters I have ever run. Of the ten creatures in it, nine were minions. Huh?

Despite that, I still had fun with it, and I think it is a good idea to put something like this out there, since the party is special, and needs to occasionally just wipe the floor with the baddies. The baddies, in this case, were three decrepit skeletons, six crawling gauntlets, and a crystal spider. Also, the spider had a crystalline web (trap), which lends itself to the name, as it is made of fine strands of glass. In fact, it was the most dangerous thing about this session.

The party quickly dispatched the minions, before the spider even got to attack. However, they all felt something was weird about the hole that the web covered, so they weren’t too surprised when the spider gathered together its radiant energy and blinded Barcan. Okay, Barcan was surprised.

I think that had I planned it a little better, I could have used the crystal spider to drop down on the other side of the party and use its Radiant Agony attack to push them into the web. But I followed the tactics, and this spider wasn’t particularly smart (its been a long time since anything living came here [wait, do they even have a reason to attack living creatures {what does it eat, anyways?}?]!).

The three skeletons reminded me of three other skeletons, and no one at the table had heard of them, so I give you The Skeletons in Link’s Closet:

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Sialolithiasis

Posted on July 23, 2010 by maiki

Sialolithiasis, also know as salivary gland stones. I have this, I think. And it sucks.

I would post photos, but oral photography is up there with food photography, in that it is kinda gross, and I can do without. I am going to see a doctor about this, and I will probably post photos here later, so other people can figure it out without looking all over the oral photography archives to figure this out.

My symptoms are this wicked growth on my lingual frenulum (the flap that connects my tongue to my mouth), about the diameter of a dime, and growing (since yesterday). It freaked me out, because I have never seen anything there, at all! Then late last night it began to form white heads all over it, and flattened into more of a disc with rough edges. I believe those are the tiny stones try to extract.

It isn’t serious, I don’t think. I can suck on sour think to increase salivation to try to pop them out. I know, that sounds weird to me as well. At any rate, this is apparently more motivation than a hole in my foot to take a step back from my fast-paced web developer’s life, and do some maintenance.

Also, hydration! Not only do I feel great in the moment when I am hydrated, I also feel great in the long run. Invest some water in yourself, today!

Update (4:07PM): So, I just popped a rock out of a gland in my mouth. That is pretty much the easiest way to describe it. It immediately felt better. I don’t think I will ever get the visual out of my head.

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