Joe Smoke

Since I'm bored at work and can't content myself hassling GMs with Albion stuff anymore, then I thought I'd jump aboard the memetrain.  Help me kill time!

Pick two or three of the words from the list below and name a character of yours and one of mine and I will write a short segment (drabble, paragraph, whatever) which features both your character and mine. Neither canonicity nor accuracy is guaranteed, and I may not do all of the requests if I can't think of something good. First come first served, each word to be used only once.

001. Beginnings. 002. Middles. 003. Ends. 004. Insides. 005. Outsides.
006. Hours. 007. Days. 008. Weeks. 009. Months. 010. Years.
011. Red. 012. Orange. 013. Yellow. 014. Green. 015. Blue.
016. Purple. 017. Brown. 018. Black. 019. White. 020. Colourless.
021. Friends. 022. Enemies. 023. Lovers. 024. Family. 025. Strangers.
026. Comrades. 027. Parents. 028. Children. 029. Birth. 030. Death.
031. Sunrise. 032. Sunset. 033. Too Much. 034. Not Enough. 035. Sixth Sense.
036. Smell. 037. Sound. 038. Touch. 039. Taste. 040. Sight.
041. Chains. 042. Name. 043. Wind. 044. Ash. 045. Blood.
046. Star. 047. Heart. 048. Diamond. 049. Club. 050. Spade.
051. Water. 052. Fire. 053. Earth. 054. Air. 055. Spirit.
056. Breakfast. 057. Lunch. 058. Dinner. 059. Food. 060. Drink.
061. Winter. 062. Spring. 063. Summer. 064. Autumn. 065. Sharks.
066. Rain. 067. Snow. 068. Lightning. 069. Thunder. 070. Storm.
071. Broken. 072. Fixed. 073. Light. 074. Dark. 075. Shade.
076. Who? 077. What? 078. Where? 079. When? 080. Why?
081. Dream. 082. Glass. 083. Gods. 084. Men. 085. Monsters.
086. Choices. 087. Life. 088. Lesson. 089. Work. 090. Home.
091. Equinox. 092. Solstice. 093. Tomorrow. 094. Yesterday. 095. Birthday.
096. Alternative 097. Luck. 098. Gamble 099. Past. 100. Future.

So my stag do was yesterday and was extremely enjoyable.  Thanks to  my best manchrisvenus for doing a topnotch job getting it organised and thanks to everyone who turned up.  Except the ones who shot me.

For those not in the know we went paintballing, which culminated in a delightful round of 'riddle the stag with whatever ammo you have left'.  Suffice to say I now have a fine collections of bruises to show off.  Further thanks to Chris, chaosdeathfish and unclegriff for sharing in the punishment as my heavily outnumbered bodyguards.
As has been mentioned elsewhere we definitely ought to organise a society paintballing trip; it was a lot of fun and it would have been great (were it not for the nature of the occasion) to have the ladyfolk out with us.

We went on to the Madding Crowd and then Zizzi's for a nice evening of drinking and chatting.  This was thankfully free of lampposts, handcuffs and other cliches.

So in conclusion I ache all over and I'm getting married in less than a fortnight.  Good stuff.

Since this meme is quite entertaining:

1. On your livejournal, list in order from most recent, all the characters you have roleplayed as in the last year or so.
2. Include the game you played them in.
3.People can then comment asking one question general enough for anyone to answer it, or ask a specific character a specific question.
4. You then reply with the answers each character listed would give.
5. People can ask multiple questions if they wish.
6. No giving away character's deep dark secrets. These are answers your characters would give. They could lie if put on the spot.

Transcendant Echo- Weapon of the Gods
Harold Haversham- Unknown Armies campaign
Sir Edward the Forgiving- Pendragon
Matthew of Winchester- Ars Magica
Sir Carlos de Mamushi- White City
The Adventurer Formerly Known As Tibbs- White City
Diego- White City
Bottle- White City
Edward Holtz- White City

So I started working at Oxfam HQ today. The job was completely dismal, my duties consisting entirely of feeding crumpled pieces of paper into a scanner. Fortunately Reed called with a new job so starting Monday I will be working at OUP as an admin assistant; probably the same level of work, but I may at least hope for some occasional variation.

That'll be a fail then. Ah well. Booking my next test now.

So yesterday finally saw the end of Toquell Velasquez, my longest running character at just under 3 years old. I had a lot of fun with him, and went out with something of a bang (hurrah, I have a new magic to write up), so I can't really say I regret it.
Toquell was always something of a guilty pleasure given that he had access to a magic that was denied to other PCs, furthermore I had a number of excellent GMs volunteer to run adventures pretty much to spec. for him.
I don't think it's a bad thing to write larps for specific groups; for high level characters I personally feel it's something of a must due to the difficulty of obtaining levels past 3, and the fact that by then you tend to be capable of pursuing your character goals. Still you start to feel a bit guilty when you're getting at least one a term, while many other long standing characters haven't had anything.

In ooc news I've got my first driving test on Thursday, wish me luck!

"Now that wasn't *bad*. I've had first lessons go much worse, believe me..."
When your instructor says that, you know that things are not going as well as they might. Suffice to say that while I didn't manage to put his car through a wall or anything, I have not taken to driving like a fish to water. There's a distinct lack of harmony in the coordination of my hands and feet when faced with a cockpit and the perilous obstacle of a (mostly) empty road.

Ah well, hopefully nothing that a great deal of hard slog can't help me overcome. It does strike me a deeply odd that no-one's thought to create vehicles with some kind of HUD showing the position of the wheels, still I imagine one must get used to it.

Got a 2:1 out of my finals which is what I was hoping for.

Now that's out of the way I need to motivate myself to learn to drive and find a job. Oh the hardship.

I made a serious error of judgement at the last session of Horizon. It's a galling thing to realise that your presence at a session did nothing but sully the enjoyment of others, however that's the reality of the situation, so all I can do now is apologise to those who suffered as a result.

I shall be on my guard against such mistakes in the future.

Should have stayed home and read a book. Shit.

I violated the fundamental law of having to get up on time- always have a backup alarm

So yes, overslept and missed any train that could conceivably get me to Oxford at a reasonable time for the LARP.

Curses.

So sorry to all those people whom I told that I would be there- hope everyone has a great time, and hopefully there'll be another LARP soon.

I have just decided not to apply for post-graduate studies this year. I've been thinking it over all through the holidays but only really sat down and made a decision this evening.
If there had been a one year long master's course available then I would have jumped at the opportunity to do it; unfortunately however my the only option that seriously interested me was a 2 year BPhil leading into a final year of Dphil. I'm not sure that I want to commit myself to another 3 years of education- tempting as it is to stave off entering 'the real world'.
So I'll give myself another year to think about it, to earn some money (useful given the no doubt extortionate fees) and to get a taste of the alternative.

Hopefully I'll be able to get a job of some description in Oxford next year- going by recent experiences job-hunting will be an absolute pain in the backside, but nothing much to do about that but wait and see, I suppose.

Heading back to Oxford on Thursday and looking forward to seeing everyone again.

That's about it for now.

Just signed up to be an organ donor, I'd been meaning to do it for ages but never got around to it. Suprisingly short online form to fill in, I'l be interested to see whether they send me tons of paperwork to complete, or whether that's it.

In other news...

Was up in Oxford at the weekend- liriselei ran a fine LARP, and a good time seemed to be had by all. Afterwards there was Pizza Hut which proved both economical and delicious. Hurrah!

Went to Salsa lessons again tonight. Have found that I am still rubbish, but not nearly as much as most of the other members of my beginners group- go me!

The house is getting decidedly chilly at night, I guess that autumn is beginning to show its teeth.

Well this has been a pleasantly lazy summer, resisting all attempts to convert it into a busy and productive holiday. Petersfield appears to have had a grand total of zero office jobs available, and my searching further afield was equally futile. Just have to chalk it up to experience that if I want work I need to look early and look far. This said I'm now looking for work to do in the Christmas vacation; hopefully if I start now I may actually manage to find something.

Anyhow the time has not been wasted so completely as it might have. I've been able to see Ellie regularly, thanks to us both having the weekends free and living quite close on the trainline. I've also been able to go on a fair number of LARPs, which have all been pretty good fun.

Looking forward to the start of the new term; it'll be good to get back into having a life full of both work and play. Still it seems amazing that I'll be entering my final year; the last two have just whizzed past. I need to talk to someone in college about post-grad work, though I fear that I'll keep putting it off. If I don't talk to someone about it in the next term, then I'd appreciate it if some you folks would spare the time to give my lazy arse a damn good kicking.

It's been quite a while since I last updated. A brief summary of events then-

Still have no summer job; have decided to concentrate on picking up useful skills like touch-typing and getting my driving theory done. If a job does turn up that'd be great, but to be honest I don't need one so badly that I'm going to fret about the current situation.

Played in liriselei's "Love Burns" larp a couple of weeks ago; had a lot of fun breaking in my new character, hope that my fellow PCs didn't take too much offense from the resultant emptying of their purses. Think I'll probably stick to stealing from NPCs in the future, taking from the rest of the party left me feeling rather rotten as a player, even if it wouldn't have bothered the character

Last weekend was kissifa's birthday thingy. A very enjoyable affair, which shockingly makes two parties that I've had a good time at during this summer alone; maybe I'm ill. Company was good and there was plenty to keep one entertained. Sunday we had a nice little larp one-off over at Ham Hill, an excellent place to play, particularly when the weather obligingly kept the casual walker away. Only down point of the weekend was having to go home to Petersfield whilst wishing that I could either go to the Oxford Thai or stay in Woking with Ellie.

Today my mother and sister bullied me into attending a salsa dancing lesson with them; unsurprisingly I'm rather rubbish. More surprisingly I've realised that I have absolutely no ability to shift my body weight via my hips; in fact I don't appear to be capable of swaying my hips at all. This calls for further investigation, and most likely a number of exercises that will make me look ridiculous; oh well.

I'm visiting Oxford this weekend (Yay)
However this will leave me without any reliable net access until Monday (Boo)
So if anyone needs to get in touch then give my mobile a buzz.

Anyhow hope to see a bunch of you at LARP on Saturday or the Thai on Sunday.

For no apparent reason my college has decided to give me an exhibition scholarship. This appears to mean that I can wear a funkier gown with my sub-fusc, and get to choose a book to be put in the college library. That said, it's a nice suprise and I'm now just hoping that they won't turn around and go 'whoops, our mistake, we meant someone else'.

Big discussion has been happening on rpgsocef, though it seems to have hit a lull now. Fortunately it's all remained pretty civil, so I've not had to beat anyone with my netrep stick. This has shown me, however, that it's important that future netreps should be involved in every game if possible. They need to be subscribed to all the lists anyway, so they might as well have an understanding of what's going on.

Will be going home soon to sit in front of the computer all day and attempt to find a semi-interesting summer job. Slightly depressing but oh well, I'll be back in Oxford in no time. I ought to look into the possibility of doing graduate work; not that being a doctor of philosophy is going to help me in later life, but at least it would be fun.

Well it's been a good fun term, but now the end draws close.

What to talk about...well work has been fairly normal so I may as well get straight onto the fun discussion of rpg stuff.

Conspiracy: Has been a fine, fine game so far. I've had a heck of a lot of fun playing The Librarian, and the last session was particularly enjoyable. There's nothing like wedging yourself in someone's ear and threatening to eat their brain for giving a power trip. Wheeeee!
Ahem. The GMs have done a good job of giving us stuff to play with as well as letting us do funky stuff in sessions, which has been cool. I'll admit though that I do often find myself hugely tempted to play silly buggers just to watch Dan's furious pacing as he works out the metaphysical ramifications of the tomfoolery.

The game formally known as FLRP: I've been lucky enough to be in the FLRP campaign this term, which has been a great deal of fun so far. Edward, my surgeon with dubious hobbies has been fun to play, although I do worry that he's rather too similar to the Librarian at times. I'll have to work on developing his character further. That said I've just got second level ash magic, so I'm going to have to struggle with my inner powergamer to stop myself from randomly turning important NPCs into piles of ash.

Tales from the Border World 2: James and Vickey have run an excellent tabletop game this term, and it's been fun playing a character who's a combat monster. Should prove...interesting next term when I run out of bullets for my gun and become the most useless member of the party.

That'll do for now anyway. I'll write another entry next time inspiration hits me.

Been a long time since I last updated so I'll give a brief summary of things of note-

Restful vacation period, in which there was a delightful absence of trolley-pushing and other menial labour.

36 hr FLRP was a whole bundle of fun. I do enjoy being a thorn in people's sides and Toquell is extremely well suited to that role. I did feel guilty for screwing up badly in a certain fort based encounter, which ended up landing the whole party in trouble, but oh well. Can't help the fact I'm playing an arrogant sod :)

Conspiracy seems to be doing very well. I'm certainly enjoying the game a lot. Recent high points include making the Sphinx get up and walk, and subsequently dying from a severe case of mercury poisoning. Fortunately my character has the odd trick up his sleeve for these sort of occasions.

FLRP today was fun. Started off with a duel between myself as Toquell and one Jac De Almedia, a fool of a noble who made the mistake of causing a slight to my family's h0onour. I proved this mistake upon the field, and walked away victorious. It was a fine little fight, and I came damn close to losing it thanks to the superior swordsmanship and weaponry of my opponent. Fortunately raw power won out and I took the day.
As a trophy of my duel I came away with some really very bunched up leg muscles. Ignoring their protests for the length of the FLRP, I finally went 'ouch' upon returning from Shotover, and realised that I really wasn't going to be up to Laserquesting later in the evening. Apologies to taigne for being crap after saying I'd come. Blame my stupid leg.

Righty ho then, haven't done a proper update in ages so here we go.

Personal stuff first, I've got together with Ellie and it's great. To be honest I wasn't really sure that I wanted a relationship when I pursued one, but now that I actually have one I'm extremely glad that I went for it. The vacation presents an unfortunate obstacle since we're both toddling off to be with our families; still we're both sensible sorts so I'm sure we'll be able to get on with other things while waiting for term to resume.

Things have been good on the rpg front; Victoriana ended nicely from my character's perspective, having saved the world from demons and got the girl. From a more objective view things were rather more dubious, but that's neither here nor there.
Victoriana was a fine game which means that I've had two excellent soc. games in a row. Three's the charm so hopefully Conspiracy will be equally good. If nothing else I've already had a great deal of fun messing about with the system building various character types, so it's off to a good start.

FLRP has been fun recently, particularly enjoyable was playing as my nutty thief Tibs and stabbing the rest of the party in the back at the last minute. I felt particularly sorry for liriselei, whose back must be well and truly punctured by now. Still the opportunity for revenge presents itself since we're both likely to be playing on the 36 hour and his character is rather more likeable than mine, even leaving aside the fact that we are adventuring with his kinsmen. Should be fun :)

Phoenix Empire continues to entertain, and I suspect that next term quetzyl will succeed in bringing things to a close. Last session I almost destroyed the universe due to a botched wisdom roll, but hey- shit happens, right?

Anyhow I'm feeling a sudden urge to scour the local charity shops for costumes and props before I head back to Petersfield, so I shall stop now.

I am the happiest that I've been in a good long while, and I'd like to think that normally I'm a pretty happy chappy.
Term is ending, but something new has presented itself and I'm going to give it my best shot.

I'll probably make a proper update next week, but for now I just want to crystallise my current contentment on the good old internet. So yes, huzzah for life!