Category: minutiae

Last night’s D&D session contained one of the most wonderfully cinematic moments in RPG history. No, seriously.

We were tromping around in the woods outside of Manifest, trying to find the tree of an elf who had just been murdered. (Yeah.) Anyway, what should swoop out of the sky than a big-ass red dragon. This was a not-entirely-unrandom random encounter. This dragon’s name was Jaynog, and we had killed his brother while mucking about in the astral plane. (Come to think of it, there should be a pissed off githyanki dragonrider somewhere.) So he had a personal grudge against us. Anyway, he very smartly stayed far away from Cooper and Mynnyd’s ability to hit him with melee weapons. So, we were reduced to using arrows- good for Sagittarius (because that’s pretty much all he uses), not quite as good for the rest of us. And then Jaynog cast spells of repel arrows and shield, which meant we were doing very, very little damage. Thankfully, someone cast a targeted dispell and got rid of those just in time for Jaynog to swoop down and pick up the only person who had been doing damage to him- Sagittarius.

So, Sagittarius is hanging about 55 feet in the air from the claws of this dragon. The dragon decides to drop him, because falling? HURTS. However, Sag has a plan. He has readied an action to shoot the dragon with an arrow while falling if he’s dropped. (His bow was already out, and at an acceleration of 9.8 meters per second squared starting from a zero velocity, he’d have… over one second but less than two? Physics is not my strong field.) He lets fly an arrow while falling! The arrow strikes a critical blow! The arrow does 52 points of damage! If you deal a single attack that does over 50 points of damage, the creature has to make a fortitude save vs. immediate death. The save isn’t tough to make, especially for this dragon, whose fortitude save is already higher than the DC. The only way to fail it would be to roll a 1 on a d20. And it rolls that 5%. Sagittarius takes 24 (5d6) points of damage from hitting the ground! The dragon dies! And falls! Onto Sagittarius! He takes another 26 points of damage, is at 0 hit points (not dead, but “staggered,” and about to start dying), and pinned under a dragon that weighs 18,000 pounds! The rest of the party panics, Merreck casts reduce on the dragon (getting it down to 2,000 pounds), and Cooper and Mynnyd drag the carcass off of Sagittarius, who Cooper hit with the wand of cure light wounds so we could get back to town and find a cleric.

Good. Times.

And later we fought a human necromancer, a flesh golem, and an abyssal ghoul.

I think spiced nuts may become the new salsa/hummus/biscuits. I tried another recipe last night. I’m not going to post it, because it was not good. Using Old Bay for Cajun seasoning was the mistake- the pecans had the unpleasant aftertaste of celery seed. It was a big goof on my part. I should have investigated “Cajun seasoning” online. My bad. Thankfully (I guess), I only wasted a half pound of pecan pieces on the recipe.

Oh, dude. That’s my hair. The smell of cumin and Old Bay has been bugging me since last night, and it’s IN MY HAIR. Ugh. I’m showering as soon as I get home.

Bud and Eddie’s Holiday Hoo-hah was this weekend. It was much fun. The best snacky food item there was, in my opinion, a bread-cheese-butter combination deep-fried. I mean, seriously, how can that not be good? Only way for it to be better would be to add bacon. Other things there… sangria and punch, risotto muffins, tiny meat pies in puff pastry (I think). Oh, and cheesecake thingies- those were really good.

Gingerbreadfest is next weekend. I need to find something appropriately salty to offset our diabetic comas.

I need to make something, period, because I’m not going to have a recipe on the top page soon. Most recently, I made the not-good pecans, Jonsauce (already posted), and chicken soup (already posted, although I make it different every time). At last count, I was up to 67 recipes posted. Some of those were just cribbed off of Food Network’s site, but I figure those are offset by the times I simply linked to them (not counted in the total). Maybe I’ll do something when I hit 100. Maybe I’ll have a party, like Ryan and Leigh did for their 100th review.

Last weekend, I spent Sunday over at Lydia’s. We went out for an excellent brunch at La Note in Berkeley. She had an omelette, I had eggs scrambled with goat cheese on toast. Later, we watched episodes three and four of Yakitate!! as well as some episodes of Card Captor Sakura. It was a day of much cute.

On Friday, the family went out to celebrate my mom’s birthday. We went to the Oak City Bar and Grill and had a fabulous meal. Mom and Dad got the scallops, I got the pork porterhouse, Ryan got the salmon, and Jon got the pork tenderloin special. It was a fantastic meal, but I have to ask, what is up with waiters not writing down your order anymore? It’s so friggin’ annoying! Our waiter must have come back to our table twice to make sure everything was right when, if he had written it out in the first place, he would have known. Seriously, I don’t think you’re less of a person if you can’t memorize five orders on the spot!

I think I’ve covered everything that’s been nagging me to write about.

I bought some plain yogurt the other day at Trader Joe’s. It’s not as tangy as I’d like (I guess I prefer the Greek kind- it’s über creamy and tangy), so I decided to make yogurt cheese, using a colander, bowl, and two layers of paper towels. Now I have to figure out something to do with the cheese. I’m thinking some sort of dip or spread to serve tomorrow night as an appetizer before we go out to dinner for my mom’s birthday. Maybe I’ll go over to Jon’s and swipe some of his pesto. That’d probably taste good mixed in.

Made Jonsauce last night. Woo.

My car is riding awfully low today (just using hyperbole, Dad, don’t panic). Last night I went to visit Sara at St. Ned’s. Her friend, Peggy, was trying to get rid of a bunch of cookbooks so she could have shelf space to fill up with… well, newer and better ones, I guess. Anyway, wow. I have a crapload of new books. Including The Inn at Little Washington Cookbook! It doesn’t have the soup recipe Aunt Peggy gave me in it, but it’s got a lot of other good-looking food.

Last night’s D&D session was fun. And hard. And hilarious. Mynnyd came really damn close to dying. His hit points are 100 normally, 126 when raging. I was raging and down to 13 hit points before I killed the damn thing. If I hadn’t been hasted, I would have died when I lost my 26 temporary rage hit points. Thankfully, because of the haste, I had extra time and was able to pull a potion and get my health back to 1 before my turn ended. And thanks to the other players who told me that once you kill an undead creature, it’s dead, no need to coup de grace on it. Which is what I wanted to do, but then I would have been dead-dead-dead.

Oh, and who’s dead-dead-dead? Yeah, that’s right, everyone but Mynnyd and Cooper. We finished the area of our campaign dealing with the undead menace in Manifest, but then we decided to check out the rest of the crypt we were in. Phaedra was felled by a dread wraith which had a tendency to remain hidden in walls with 9/10 cover. She tried to fool it by playing dead when she was merely almost dead, but it had the ability to sense a creature’s life force, so no dice. We were all fooled, though- she’s an excellent actress. Then it killed her, she turned into a wraith, and Mynnyd had to kill her. Hee! That’s two of our party members who have been turned and Myn’s had to kill. Then, we found a secret chamber with a chest in it. Sagittarius said “I’m going to go check the chest for traps,” and we all walked into the room. However, the chest wasn’t trapped, the room was. It was a cry of the banshee or something, and Sagittarius and Merreck failed their fortitude saves and died. It was pretty funny. I would have been PISSED, though, if after all that we had fought, I died because of a failed fort save.

We had four encounters tonight- the first with the mummy lord that nearly killed Mynnyd, two other mummies, and a summoned girallon; the second with an atropal scion that resembled a huge naked fetus with Tyrannosaurus arms (which, thankfully, we killed fast, because it had gaze of slay living which would have finished us off quickly in a few rounds [and, in fact, hit Mynnyd once and did a crapload of damage]); a huge hulking corpse guarding a pool of water; and the dread wraith and Phaedrawraith.

I think it’s time for us to level, Jer.

It’s weird to lose someone you were friends with, but never met in real life. Eric was the moderator of a television message board I used to visit in 2002 – 2003. He had created this haven for fans of a few TV shows (Angel and Buffy, mainly) who were fed up with the crappiness of Ain’t It Cool News but not keen on the draconian levels of moderation at a place like Television Without Pity. I met some great people there- it was my favorite place to hang out online during the horror of my semester in Los Angeles. Anyway, eventually the boards got kind of unwieldy, some of the posters started annoying me, and I wanted to find a place where staying on topic was more rigidly enforced. (Also, I was the only person who loved cooking shows.) So I left for the draconian levels of moderation at Television Without Pity. I visited occasionally, but didn’t post anymore. Now tragedy has struck, and I feel awful for ditching those boards and the people on them. I guess that’s my own guilt and selfishness dealing with the situation. I’m sorry. Here’s to Eric. He was a good friend.

You know what sucks? Having a nightly habit of waking up at 4:30am, worrying. Usually, it’s about people breaking into my apartment, at which point, I get up and turn on the light over the dining room table. Last night, it was carbon monoxide. Since the dumb incident, I haven’t been using my heater at night. (Or really, much at all.) We’re in the middle of a cold snap over here in California (and yes, I can feel your tears, East-coasters), and I’ve been loading up on comforters and sleepwear to keep warm. Anyway, I wake up, think about turning the heater on, listen to my upstairs neighbors argue (seriously, people, at 4:30am?), get a headache, wonder if I’m suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, consider airing out my apartment, decide against it because apparently I’d rather be dead than cold, move my carbon monoxide detector into my room, spend the next fifteen minutes wondering if the detector even works, and then decide that my headache’s because my damn neighbors are arguing at 4:30am. I go back to sleep. I wake up, not dead.

Speaking of not dead- and how pathetic is that for a segue- no one died last night in D&D. Er, no players died. We killed some stuff. Phaedra returned to us. I have a feeling Mynnyd shouldn’t really trust her, because he only knew her for a couple of days, and the next time he saw her, it was actually a succubus impersonating her. So, Phaedra’s disguised herself while in town because people think she’s a demon. The party doesn’t, but I think Mynnyd shouldn’t be entirely believing Phaedra’s really herself. Of course, Mynnyd’s also only slightly smarter than a rock, so he may well believe she’s who she says she is.

Stupid Trader Joe’s hasn’t had refried beans these last two Tuesdays. I wanted to make some Spicy Bean Dip quickly for the session. I did make it, but it’s not really quick when you have to go to two stores.

Ryan made damn tasty spiced peppery pecans last weekend. They were really good. The recipe was from the Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating. I want to make them and, like, bring them into work. Because if they are in my home, I will make myself sick on them. So good.

I had a very bizarre dream last night. It was 1995, and the city I was in was under attack by Godzilla and Mothra. The population was scared but not panicking, even though we were going to have to sacrifice a lot of people to Godzilla for some reason. I was one of those chosen to get eaten, and he was picking me up to eat me when I decided I wanted to die in a classier manner. I ended up being coated in bread crumbs and wrapped in a huge flank steak- essentially, a human-stuffed braciole. So I got eaten, but apparently he didn’t chew (a pity, I bet that would have been tasty), because after some darkness, I was out and alive again. And not gross from like Godzilla poop or anything. I couldn’t find anyone, and no phone numbers worked except for 911. I got the county dispatch, and she told me it was now 1998 and my city had been completely wiped out.

Good dream, Sarah.

I went to BookBuyers on Saturday and picked up a Dungeon Masters Guide for 11.95, which isn’t a great price, but it’s a decent one. Considering that’s the only money I’ve spent on D&D stuff so far, it’s pretty good. Dennis gave me his Player’s Guide for free, and I found my brother’s old dice when we were cleaning out closets.

Game on for tonight. Here’s hoping Cooper doesn’t die. AGAIN. He’s died (I think) three times since I’ve started playing.

Homemade tortillas are good. Put lots of salt in them. I make a half recipe with the full recipe’s salt amount. (When I didn’t, they ended up tasting more like matzoh than tortillas, and yes, I know I’ve mentioned this before.) Mm!

Man, it’s cold.