Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Netflix Rewind and Stuffed with Stuffing

Has anyone else sat down to watch a show on netflix, only to get so distracted that you find yourself restarting the show a few times?  I just did on Saturday.  I felt pathetic, and I really should have just turned on some music.  For instance, for a solid half hour, the show was playing in the background and I just couldn't pay attention so I restarted it about five times.  I blame myself, and my inattentiveness when surrounded by my cell phone and laptop.

Then again, I was very distracted all weekend, anyway.  A lot has happened lately in my life and I needed a decompressing day.  Thanksgiving was nice, but fell into the chaos category.  The day was tasty and fun, and I'm still trying to squeeze into my pants after feasting my face on pie and stuffing.

Speaking of stuffing, I tried a new recipe!  I cut up harvest bread from Nashoba Valley Bakery.  It has candied ginger, walnuts, cranberries, dates, apricots and multi-grains.  I toasted it up, then mixed it with some sauteed onions, celery, rosemary and sage.  Add some broth and a beaten egg, toss it in an oven for 30 minutes at 350 degrees and you're in for a tasty treat.

Then again, nothing beats stuffing in the bird, but my mom was doing the bird.  I was just doing backup stuffing.  I'm the backup singer of stuffing, and that's okay.

Monday, November 21, 2016

Star Wars: The Force and Destiny, Day 2

So, let's just start out with this; what I thought was going to be a couple hours after school before a much needed day off became an hours long laugh fest that ended close to midnight.  The best way to sum up my day of role playing was basically to imagine the magical opening scroll to Star Wars.  I'm still giddy thinking about how fun a time I had!

My buddies and I decided to go to one of their houses, since they live close to work.  We got cookies, drinks, dip and chips to snack on during out campaign.  They really liked the dip I made, and I've written the recipe below if you'd like to try it out - so easy, indeed!  Anyway, back to the game.  We started off on a ship trying to escape three tie fighters.  We learned flight and fighting mechanics with this opener, so that was fun, albeit a little confusing for me, as I have never played this system before.  The system is really great, it turns out, because you're not rolling really against anything, but against yourself.  Your dice pool changes each time, depending on various skills or factors like disadvantages and advantages.  Collectively, then, your dice will determine how things pan out for your character.  The interesting part, however, if that the group can actually take artistic license on what constitutes advantages or disadvantages.  The situation just determines how many of the die you roll, then you get to creatively figure out what the outcome means for the story.  That aspect adds a rich texture to the story telling process, making the whole game play very involved and creative.

So anyways, back to the story and the tie fighter dogfight.  We played a few rounds and managed to take out two of the ships.  We figured it was time to turn tail, though.  Next, we landed on planet and found a moisture farm to hide at, thus evading our enemies.  However, we lost track of our NPC team member and ran into a arms deal gone south.  We busted outta there and managed to make it to a local town.  There, we found ourselves indebted to a Hutt after taking sides on the arms deal.  Our task to pay our debts was a heist from the local Nikto crime syndicate.  The gala held at the Nikto group's palace provided us a good cover to get in and steal the computer files we were after, but unfortunately it turns out the syndicate is run by a black sun boss.  We were left in the lurch after managing to steal the plans successfully, not know what would happen until next time!  The suspense..ooh my.

Now....if you followed along to all that, congrats - you're a big nerd.

If you came down here just for the recipe and skipped over that other stuff, well, shame on you.  I'm nice, so I'll still give you the recipe:
1 cup of non-fat greek yogurt
2 Tbsp Frank's red hot
1 Tsbp Cholula Green Pepper sauce
1 Dash of sriracha
1/2 tsp of onion powder
Salt and pepper to taste
Mix all the ingredients in a shallow dish and let sit overnight.
Before serving, sprinkle with chedder or mexican blend cheese, then shredded lettuce. (I like baby romaine for some flavor).

Head of the Charles - you will be missed, sorry!

This time last year the start of my hip problems really escalated.  It began when I went down to the head of the Charles, which is a crew regatta.  I went with my friend, Katie, and I walked with her the whole length of the river in my heeled boots.  Bad idea.  I had just started to workout at orange theory with her and my hip had been tight, twingy and generally just felt 'wrong.'  Wearing boots for that length of time while standing and walking was a BAD idea.  It made my hip feel the worst it had ever felt before that time.  I wish I had listened to my body back last fall!
So, this fall, I'm not going.  However, it isn't because my hip.  Instead, I had a really fun weekend planned and I just don't have time to visit the regatta.  Oh well, that doesn't bother me in the least.  I typically hadn't gone and it won't be missed, really.
In other news, I'm actually getting a little brave and I want to try to return to orange theory workouts.  I have some credit at the place, since they totally charged me for two months even though I had put in a medical waiver.  It is expensive but I liked going there.  I hope I can redeem my refunded credit for a pack of classes, instead of a month of unlimited, because I can barely attend once a week.  Let's face it...I don't even know if I can go and hack it at all.  Ugh I hate my hips.

Saturday, November 12, 2016

Star Wars: The Force and Destiny, Day 1

The past year or so I have been playing a table top game with two coworkers after school.  It is called Star Wars X-Wing.  It basically involves piloting a ship across the gaming area, then taking turn based actions and defensive moves to destroy your fellow players.  Think, dog fight in space moved into the miniatures world.  I started playing two A-wing fighters with pretty great maneuverability but not a ton of fire power.  Since then I've moved up to Han Solo and Chewy in the Millenium Falcon and it is pretty rockin'.  There's a defensive feature that allows me to restore one shield per defensive action from other player's attacks.  That, and the ability to re-roll for offense at least once per action really makes the Falcon pack a punch and take a lickin'.

Anywho, that game is held pretty much weekly but since I can't really always make it every week my coworker suggested we play a Flight Fantasy Games rpg that he had and was keen on trying with all of us.  We all figured that if we could make it an ongoing game we can pick and choose dates every month (or more) to make sure we can all attend.  I thought it was pretty cool of my coworker to consider my busy schedule and I appreciated that a lot!

We decided to go for it, and met the first time to build our charachters.  He brought in the game book and we took a look at all the character builds, species, careers and force abilites.  I decided to choose a Sentinel, which is basically a remnant of the Jedi Order from the Old Republic.  They used to be Jedi, in a way, in so much as they would not solely rely on Jedi skills and the Force.  They could utilize more practical skills.  In fact, I was reading a message board today on FFG's website and someone was discussing how Luke's memoirs included notes about Sentinels after Order 66.  Apparently, many of the surviving Jedi were the Sentinels, having the skills and know how to blend in with normal people and rely on practical skills instead of their Jedi powers.  Sounds plausible to me, right?

So far, I was assigned homework after the character building day.  I needed to figure out my name, backstory and why I was in the situation that my coworker has presented.  The situation was that I was on a ship soaring above what seemed to be a desert planet, with two ships being me in hot pursuit.  Also aboard the ship was a archaeologist of some sort played by the GM and my other coworker's character.  The three of us are ready to roll!   (haha see what I did there?  roll? dice? tabletop rpg?  nerds?  yeah...totes punny)

I've got some homework - how exciting!  Stay tuned for a post on what happened next.  (fyi: it was one of the most fun days of my fall, FTW!)

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Next year, I'm playing Bingo.

I missed my opportunity this year to play Allston Christmas Bingo.  I did, however, assemble a long list of items to fill my bingo board.  Some examples are: a discarded matress, a street with at LEAST four moving trucks parked, a car getting towed, a discarded ikea sofa (specifically ikea), a car going the wrong way on a street, and finally the ultimate; a truck stuck on storrow drive.

Well, any other suggestions for next year's mega bingo game?  We could play in May too, when the students leave and grant peace once again to a neighborhood in yearly upheaval.