Splunge

We now have a name for the music project (Splunge), and had a session with four participants (Jason, Sal, new guitarist Jared, and myself) this past weekend. We actually have three guitar players now, and the plan is to play roughly every two weeks with whoever can make it, but we only expect two of the three guitarists to attend any given session due to scheduling issues all around. It's unconventional, and probably a little awkward when all three guitarists eventually show up for a session, but we never intended this to be a regular band. One of the guitarists is planning on working on singing lead, which would solve the problem in one shot if he turns out to be good at it. Even if he's simply passable, it'll be good to have someone else sharing the lead vocal load. I still plan to learn how to play all of the songs on guitar as well as bass, but that's looking wonderfully redundant at the moment.

Since we've had three regulars instead of two for the last several sessions, we're finally starting to develop consistent arrangements of the songs. Some of them are proving to be trickier than others. We're having a lot of trouble with Warren Zevon's "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" because we're combining aspects of his original version with the better known Linda Ronstadt version, so there's no recording of what we're trying to do. Still, if we can keep even one guitar player steadily coming back, we'll work it all out.

Another Mission from God

I finished my most recent In Nomine scenario today, largely because I was able to spend a lot of time on it over the last couple of days. So it looks like I'll have two new scenarios ready for DexCon after all. It turned out that I was able to do a few things differently with it than I have in the past. The PCs are all one team, and there are significant differences in the opposition from what I've done before (can't give those differences away here, though). My last IN scenario didn't draw at the last DexCon. I didn't see some of my IN regulars, so I assume they didn't follow the change in the con location, or had other reasons not to come. Looks as though I'll have to build a new audience for it from scratch, or move on to other things.

So now I'll take a short break from RPG writing to get the two new scenarios properly playtested and leave a little time for revisions before the con. Might take the time to write a couple of songs in the interim.

Next up, the Lovecraftian installment of my GURPS Cabal series, to be run next year.

Attacked by Small Children, Part II

My nephew's birthday party was this past weekend, and he'd chosen Star Wars as a theme for it. My sister got a little creative and made cheap foam light sabers for the kids, so in no time flat there were kids beating the crap out of each other all over the place, mostly in the intended spirit of fun.

The adults were staying out of the fray, for the most part, letting the kids be kids. I was a little concerned because the bulk of the kids had drifted down the long driveway and fairly far from the house, so I grabbed a light saber myself and ambled down to try to herd them back in the right direction.

Some of the kids were getting a little too enthusiastic with their weapons, leaving one on the receiving end in tears (though not actually injured), so I waded in and got between the combatants, using my own light saber to separate them. That might have been a mistake. The entire group turned on me, grinning all the way, including the one in tears. There must have been at least nine of them, including my niece and nephew. In a replay of the "ball incident" of a couple of years ago, I found myself at the center of the attack, trying to fend off the kids by gently tripping them, pulling their weapons out of their hands, and using a saber in each hand myself. I did manage to achieve the effect I wanted, which was to keep the kids from hurting each other and get them moving back toward the house.

After that scrum broke up, there were a couple of other minor incidents between some of the kids (there were simply too many of them for me to keep an eye on all of them at once), and the adults eventually took the light sabers away entirely for a little while. There were a couple of kids in tears at various points, but I knew they were actually okay because the tears dried up and the kids were grinning and back in the fight almost as soon as one of the adults had stepped in.

I have to admit that kids are largely a mystery to me, since I don't have any of my own. I like them and enjoy them, but can't claim I truly understand them at all. Their abrupt mood shifts always surprise me. I do know how to have fun with them, though, and my sister still says she wants to rent me out for parties.

Working on Long Term Back Pain

I've had an ongoing problem with back pain ever since a stupidly self-inflicted injury in my late teen years. The result was that I was taking some serious pain killers for about six months, and still have trouble sleeping through an entire night many years later. That may be coming to an end, though.

Several weeks back, I happened to be the only person who showed up for my yoga class. It's not a big class in the first place, and everybody else just ended up with something last minute happening. Rather than cancel, my teacher asked me if I was having trouble with anything specific, and I told her I had regular problems with back pain. She took me through a couple of poses to go after that problem in particular. At the time, I wasn't convinced that had been a good thing, because I had this nasty burning in my lower back by the end. I told my teacher that, and her response was that we'd probably really gotten into something that had been there for a while.

My back was then as bad as it's been since the original injury for about three days. I wasn't happy and was barely getting any sleep, but I also didn't call my teacher for help, in spite of my wife encouraging me to do so. I talked to her about it at my next class, and she suggested a couple of other poses I could work into my usual daily practice.

Here's the interesting part. After a couple of weeks of incorporating those other poses into my regular practice, I found myself walking and sitting differently, and sleeping through entire nights for the first time in ages. I had gotten rid of long term neck and shoulder pain after about two years of yoga, and this experience has turned out to be similar, though the process has been more subtle. It hasn't been a 100% solution, but I wouldn't expect one so quickly anyway. It'll be interesting to see if it turns out to be like the neck/shoulder problem, which has virtually disappeared over time except for occasional flare-ups due to stress.