Experiments in Woolgathering

This year’s Origins started last night and of course we were there, and will be through Sunday (hence the part 1 on this post).

We were preregistered and had one game scheduled for the evening, so we picked up our badges and game tickets and then found a place to sit down and get organized. Then we down to the food court to grab some food and went back up to wait for our game which started at 7.

There was some confusion about whether the room was going to be available and where the game might be moved to, but that cleared up when someone opened the room for us.

So, we sat down to play “Eight Bars More” which was fantasy-set game using the Savage Worlds rules. The entire game was set in a bar at the end of a pub crawl. Characters were pregenerated and I, feeling perverse, chose the ‘Clueless Psychic Hottie’ for whom I chose a gender of female and the name Ashley.

I had great fun with the character and R admitted that I played her so well she was about ready to kill me. R is not a fan of bimbos.

We’ve got 4 games scheduled today, lasting until 2 am. Which a couple hours in there to cruise the vendor floor and spend lots of money on games. Now I must go pack up some food for the day and shower and so on.

More on Origins fun later!

Since R’s folks where here over the weekend I didn’t make it to class, but I promised myself I’d go to most of the evening classes this week (we have class on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday during the week).

One of the nidans taught last night and it was a fairly advanced class. We started off with some basic rolling and then moved up to practicing breakfalls. Then shomenuchi ikkyo (which is a 6th kyu technique, so fairly basic – you can see an example here though we were not letting the person back up after the initial take down, but instead going into a pin). After that we did two koshinage defenses for shomenuchi (here and here but prefaced by the chop to the head attack of shomenuchi). The ukemi for koshinage requires a breakfall so we got a good bit of advanced ukemi in, which is nice, since we haven’t much lately.

After that we when through kume tachi (sword forms) #6 to #9, in descending order (no idea why, but heh). I hadn’t ever practice #7 or #8, and #9 only once before, so it was definitely a learning experience. I’m starting to feel pretty comfortable with #6 though.

It was definitely a class where I left remembering what I’d learned, which was nice. Sometimes you just aren’t able to absorb much and you leave remembering having done class, but without much ability to give the details of what you got out of it.

Of people who have died in my lifetime, I would have to list Joseph Campbell as one of the ones I wish I could have met – although I’d want to be the age I am now, I think, because of where my thinking about mythology, religion and personal development is. On the other hand, maybe meeting Campbell when I was 20 would have helped get me heading to where I am now more quickly – which is certainly a better spiritually than I was then.

As you’ve probably noticed I’ve been reading a lot of Lethem lately, it’s almost subconcious really. Yes, obviously it takes a conscious effort to check out or buy the book and to crack it open to read, but my TBR pile aside, I’ve not really be reading with any particular goal in mind. With that said it seems there’s something that keeps (subconciously) drawing me back to Lethem.

Not a novel, but a collection of short stories by the author of Girl In Landscape – and the first short story collection I’ve read in quite a while. Lethem Men and Cartoons consists of 9 stories totalling 160 pages. I’m not going to try to review each story individually, mostly because I’m too lazy, but I will give some edited highlights.