A Variety of Things

To make sure I cover the various topics I'm gonna break this down into sections. But you should note that I just had my first wedding anniversary Saturday with my gorgeous wife. Unfortunately, it was also my first day of class, and she had to work. We still had fun just hanging out together, though.

Spring 2010 Semester

So my last class in the History program at Middle Tennessee State University was a European research seminar on the Third Reich. My project studied OKW Chief of Staff Alfred Jodl, particularly his trial at Nuremberg and the justice (or rather, at least partially, injustice) of his sentence of being hanged. I enjoyed the class, and overall I think I learned more than I did in my Road Culture research seminar, but the latter class taught much more about the researching, writing, and editing process. I guess each had its merits, but the former's teacher was cooler, and I got to write about cars in cyberpunk lit. Sounds like the scale tips that way.

During the semester I worked at the Albert Gore, Sr. Research Center on MTSU campus. The project aimed to work toward constructing a historical electronic simulation (read: game) about Gore and his role in the passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 (which he voted against, FYI) using primary sources from the archives. The project was not disastrous; it was merely unfruitful and a wasted effort for various reasons that I won't go into. It was, though, the highest paying hourly job I've ever held, and that was cool.

Moving and School Part III

After graduating the first week of May, the Mrs. and I began to fully shift into panic, pack, and move mode. We moved the 18th to the town I grew up in, which leads to various mixed feelings of happiness, nostalgia, anxiety, and annoyance. We did it for school.

You see, after the obstacle-ridden path that was my experience at MTSU, I was tired of school and ready to just get a job. I spent the spring semester applying to various governmental jobs, but after none of those called back, I decided to get licensed to teach high school. Hence the move. As my parents remain in Freed-Hardeman University's employ, I reap the benefit of cheaper tuition, even for graduate classes. At the moment the plan is to be in and out of this program by December 2011. Then, hopefully, I can get a job teaching history, philosophy, or English in a high school somewhere (anywhere), and we can settle down for a few years. Maybe I'll go back someday and get a Ph.D. in History, but that's sort of in deep-space travel hibernation for now. Heck, if one of the jobs I applied to decided to offer me a position, I'd probably drop all this to go for it, depending on the variables.

TV, Movies, etc.

So most (traditional, American) shows have aired their season finales. Heroes was first, and was meh. Hearing it was canceled phased me even less than I thought it would. 30 Rock was pretty funny, but I'm just not very invested in the story arcs of it. Human Target was really good, and I like all the main characters and am excited to see where next season leads. Flash Forward wasn't spectacular, but it did suck me in with the various characters' story-lines, and I suspect this is how LOST fans feel about their show. Dono, I've only seen like one full episode of it, and have had more experiences with LOST fans than the actual show.

Fortunately this summer I still have Doctor Who with Matt Smith and the fun companion Amy Pond, played by Karen Gillan. I think Burn Notice should be starting a new season, too. I also plan to finish watching a few shows that I've been watching by season (My Name is Earl, Chuck, etc.). [that period, parenthesis, period felt very wrong grammatically. hmm]

Haven't seen many new movies. I did get to see This Film is Not Yet Rated, Choke, Up in the Air, and Where the Wild Things Are. I liked the first and third of those, but the second and fourth were just pretty good. Oh! Iron Man 2 was good, but not as good as its predecessor. Sam Rockwell's and Mickey Rourke's performances were both excellent, but my man-crush on RDJ didn't keep me from thinking he was just doing more of the same with too much of that talk-under-his-breath thing. P.S. Super excited about Thor. D'oh! We also watched Kick Ass! and it was as good as the comics (which were great). Wife and I are excited about both Avatar: The Last Airbender (calling it wrong title purposely) and Scott Pilgrim VS the World.

Gaming

Bah, I'll save this for the next post. Running late for dinner and games at my brother's house. Needless to say, I've been playing World of Warcraft, Lego Batman, Fable 2, and Dungeons and Dragons.

Last Semester!

So I kept delaying posting in hopes that I'd post all about my holiday trip to Heidelberg, Germany or about the 2000-2009 period or the best of 2009, but any of those topics would take lots of work so it never happened.

That being said, I'm still having a blast being married to the most sweet and beautiful woman in the world. I'm taking my final class for my M.A. in history at Middle Tennessee State University, and it covers the Third Reich. Should be better than my road culture class (of last semester) in interesting-ness, but much worse as far as awesome people and teacher coolness. Oh well! Also, the professor of my Colonial America readings class last semester offered me a job researching for the Albert Gore, Sr. Center at MTSU. So I finally have a part-time job, and it pays pretty well to boot! I'll be researching the Clinton High School desegregation controversy, and traveling to various archives for that, but I'm not gonna go into that at length for the moment.

I hope you all are doing well.

DCM: Arwen, Parts 5-8

Venturing into the Library(and a bag of beans)

Characters:
Arwen, my fighter/mage
Galen, Allen's paladin
Tak, previously Matthew's thief now henchman of Arwen
Clifton, D.M.

After a while, Galen and Arwen decide to venture into the next level of the ruins. Two weeks had passed, Galen had gotten a two-handed +5 Holy Avenger, and I had recieved information about a book of brewing a restorative potion. Fortunately, the book was rumored to be just where we were headed. We traveled there and found a vast library. While looking around at the books I got attacked by several golems standing on the tops of the bookshelves. We finally destroyed them (after me being knocked out once), and rested for several days. After we felt better we sorted through the books we finally left. I brought a few with me and Galen brought some with him. I stuck the books at home and rented a wagon. I took the wagon there and got 160 more books for myself. I went back to find Galen had gone off and killed me a hill giant for the potion of restorative brewing (to make it I will need a unicorn's horn, trolls blood, an eye of a giant crocodile, and a giants bones). I was delighted and got the bones I required. We were on our way to go adventuring on the rest of that level(with Tak he had just gotten out of jail) (there had been a door leading out of the library), and all of a sudden, there were a band of thieves from the guild after Tak. We beat the crap out of them and got a bunch of stuff. Incuding a bag of beans. We threw a bunch of them and all sorts of magical things happened. I got a dollhouse, too. In this dollhouse I could enter it even though it was really small. I went in and was greeted by pne of the invisible servants who serve the master of the dollhouse. I went ahead and took my stuff home and spent a few weeks remaking my spellbook(it had been destroyed by the effects of a bean).

Quests for the Restorative Potion

Characters:
Arwen, my frickin' awesome mage/fighter chick
Galen, Allen's paladin
Hakkan, Adam's cleric
Clifton, D.M.

Okay, I went to consult a sage(It took 12,000 gp!!!) to find out where I could find a unicorn's horn for that had been on the list of things needed to make the brew. He told me that there was a renegade warlord named Ock to the south who had one. We ventured south to find him. After some time, we found some tracks of an extremely large foot. We followed the tracks untill we finally saw it in the distance. It appeared to be a large humanoid on top of a metal encased, tusked beast. I was about to fireball it when he distracted me by shooting a handgunn(no misspelling) at the ground next to me. Then he ran. We finally caught up to him after about 3 days. We battled him and eventually killed him. Apparently, the beast is Galen's "mount", and I got the unicorn's horn.

Gotta get Galen back!

Characters:
Arwen, miss spell-sword the awesome
Galen, Allen's paladin
Hakkan, Adam's cleric
Clifton, D.M.

After Galen dropped us off at the town, he went off to pollish his armor. After several days we realized he had been gone a bit too long. We( Hakkan, Tak, and I )ventured out following the tracks and found bandits had stolen some of Galen's stuff. We slew them and took the stuff into the swamp the tracks led to. We encountered some lizard men who said that he was staying in their villiage( the witch doctor of this town had given Galen a map to his holy avenger in exchange for an eye ). So we went there to see him and return his belongings. When we got to him he was happy to get his stuff back, but he wanted to slay this monster that had been killing lizard men from the villiage. So we went and got to the cave. When we arrived we found a lake that we had to cross first. Once across we climbed the cliff walls. After we got over them, we went throught the caves and came upon another lake. there were step-looking things in the water, and I threw a rock at one. It sank. Then the giant crocodile attacked. We fought it off and I took its two eyeballs( one for the potion, another for a backup ). We went across the body to get to the other side and came upon a vast cave with a large lizard-thing with wings( dragon ) was perched upon a mass of treasure. We attacked it, and it flew up and then attacked us. Suddenly, Tak shot the lizard through the eye into the brain with the hangunn( 2 or 3 natural 20's in a row! ) and killed it. We grabbed some treasure and went back to the villiage, but they said they wanted us gone so we left without a word of what we had done. We got back home and went to Pete's to see if he had gotten troll's blood by now. He, being Pete, had, so I bought some and mixed the potion for stat restoration. After a week I had my stats back and was better than ever. Galen pulled out a Deck of many things. Tak, Galen, and I each drew some and I got some XP, Galen got a 4th level fighter henchman, and Tak got 18 Charisma, a keep, and lots of XP. It's easy to say Tak sucked the luck out of the rest of us for that night, and he's only an NPC! After that, Hakkan bade Galen and me goodbye.

Rusty and the Skull of Chargg

Characters:
Arwen, my elven mage chicky
Galen, Allen's paladin
Rusty Senisas, Adam's one-eyed half-elven fighter/cleric(also known as Ol' Rusty Eye)
Don't Forget This, Kyle's human fighter
Clifton, D.M.

We started this adventure meeting up with Rusty and DONT FORGET THIS who came to visit our home because it is all of the adventurer's guild our town has. We decided that the more the merrier so brought them with us to the library and we unbarred the big double doors and out jumped a Greater Yugoloth. So we were getting whooped till Rusty cast moment on himself and shot an row right square in the middle of its head, killing it. Beyond it was a room with a pedestal with a skull on it and stairs beyond it. The skull was human in appearance and had two horns coming out the top. I later identified it to find it was an anti-demon magical item, that when willed to do so, will cast the spell fireball 3 times a day. The fireball ignored all imunities of fire! Naturally, since I was the best suited to it, being a mage and all, I got it.

Dice Chucking Memories: Arwen, parts 2 and 3

Further adventures of Arwen

Adventure of the Abandoned Mine

Characters:

Arwen, my mage/fighter
Galen, Allens paladin
Clifton, D.M.

Okay between these two adventures, Arwen bought an old warehouse and made it into a house with her hoards of money. Well, We went to this shop called Crazy Pete's(I know it's a big rip off of wierd pete) and he gave us a map to this mine and said that there were tales of demons originating from this place. Well, we traveled there and went from room to room, beating up all sorts of undead and stuff. We ended up in this room where this guy was holding a big double headed hand axe and attacked him. He knocked Arwen out, but Galen finished him off. When Arwen came to Galen had burned the body and the weapon(darn him) so I went and looked in the next room to see if there was any good loot. Unfortunately, there was only a few gp and a bunch of cp. There was this other room we found where there was a lake, but in the middle was an island with a shaft in it. On the way back, me and Galen had both just leveled up. So, we bugged Clifton into generating a random encounter up on Core Rules. We encoutnered a guild of thieves. Yup, that's right, kiddies. 108 1st level thieves(all named ferris!) and one 6th level thief lord(who we couldn't pick out to get his Red Dragon Slayer Short Sword +2, ARGH!!). Anyway, hours later, after one firebal and five burning hands, Arwen, Galen, and Arwen's, war dog, Lunger, emerged from the battle while 41 thieves ran away screaming. HAR HAR!

Into the Antechamber of the Demon Gate

Characters:

Arwen, my mage/fighter
Galen, Allen's paladin
Clifton, D.M.

We went back to town and healed up. I went to Crazy Pete's and bought me 2 or 3 swords. We went back and went down the shaft. We reached the bottom of the rope we used and we were above a crapload of dead bodies. We swung off onto the ground around the pit-o-bodies and in each of the four corners was a hole in a different shape for each corner. There were four exits, each one on its own wall. As we went in one the door snapped shut behind us. We pulled a lever and entered a room with a pedestal across a big pit. On the pedestal(don't ask me how I got over there, I don't remember) was a piece of black onyx that was in the shape of one of the holes. Each hall was like that only each room was different(one with lots-o-bugs, one with a bridge, and one with sloped ground. All with different onyxes). We rested up, then put all the little thingies in the wholes where they belonged and the bodies in the center became a big monster and we kicked its butt, but lost some points of stats (DARN CLIFTON!!!!). Then went back to town.

A couple more posts for Arwen before we move on to Spike's campaign starring Adam's Mithril Adamantite and the first cleric of Bitemeaten.

Dice Chucking Memories...

So I recently hooked up my desktop computer (ca. 2002), since Allison's laptop died. Today I found the folder containing all my old webpage stuff. I always particularly enjoyed the details about Dungeons and Dragons (2nd edition at that point) games. The following is the character summary and the first adventure of that team: Arwen (my silly rip-off), Galen of the Plains (or is it the Giantslayer? Either way, it was Allen's paladin with stupid 2nd ed. charisma requirements), and Tak (Matty's only attempt at playing d&d with me, pretty much). Warning: these are pasted from a 7th or 8th grader's webpage, so ignore childish error, please.

Adventures of Arwen
Name:Arwen
Race:Elf
Sex:Female
Class:Mage/Fighter
Allignment:Neutral Good
Age:118
Height:4'11"
Weight:98 lbs.
Notable magic items:Scroll of lightning bolt(3 charges), Hand axe +2, Fire Slinger(long sword +2, shoots fire for 1D8 damage. 3 times a day), Periapt of wound closure, Scale mail +3, manual of pussiant skill at arms, manual of the cullinary art of preparing fine enchanted finger foods, manual of restorative brewing, spellbook of first level spells, spellbook of conuration/summoning spells, log of accurate transcription, spellbook of all my spells, potion of stone giant control, Skull of Chargg

Adventure of the Goblin Raiders

Characters:

Arwen, my mage/fighter.
Galen of the Plains, Allen's paladin who kept giving our cash away.
Tak, Matthew's thief.
Clifton, D.M.

So we were hanging out in a tavern or something and this kid came in. He had been part of a carravan, but it had been attacked by a party of goblin raiders. They got beat up, and all that was left was him. So we thought hey, why don't we go beat up some of those goblins and take their cash? We went after them and went to their last known position. We tracked them down until we found a cave. We went thru and every party of goblins had a leader and he always weilded a magical weapon. No one in the party even noticed so I got 'em all! A mace+1, a dagger+1, a spear+1, a mace+1, and a hand axe+1. The goblin king was wearing a crown and was protected by some gnolls. So we beat the crap out of them and on the throne was a secret switch which, when pulled would open a secret door leading to a big 'ole treasure trove. I went in first so when i got in there I dove in and stuffed 1000 gp in my backpack, then the others came in and we divided the rest evenly(he he he).

Toys!

Thanks to the arrival of the Christmas season in the retail universe, I've been running into more and more neat toys. While I'm not a consumer of random toys, I do collect the ones from Marvel comics. Even this category is so broad that I limit it to only Superhero Squad, Marvel Universe, and Mighty Muggs--and within those, only X-Men related figures. So what new X-Figs do we have today? The new line of Marvel Universe figures (H.A.M.M.E.R. Wave 1/MU Wave 6) collects Vision, (another) Spider Man, (another) Wolverine (mask-less in Jim Lee uniform), Jean Grey (Jim Lee uniform), Sunfire (Giant-Size uniform), and Warpath (X-Force uniform). I first saw them at Wal-Mart, but this news site has them for your viewing pleasure. I really want the Sunfire and Warpath figures, but we're saving up for our trip to Germany in December. There's the whole why factor that keeps me rethinking buying toys, but they sure are nice to look at. An $8 price tag makes buying them worse than groceries. Perhaps I'll just stick to superhero squad in the future, but who knows?

Speaking of such, I recently got the 2-pack with (Jim Lee) Bishop and (Jim Lee mask-less) Wolverine.



I can justify them more because the figures are cheaper and I could actually foresee letting a kid play with them. It's interesting that they're making so many figures with the Jim Lee (late 1980s, early 1990s) costumes. Perhaps Marvel and Hasbro are hoping to corner people like me who latched onto the X-Men during that time, but who knows? If I had a podcast about this kind of thing, I'd try to get a representative on there to interview about their decisions.

Either way, I know one thing for certain. The chances of me getting more Jubilee toys will be drastically increased when she comes back to the X-Men in Nation X #2 (Jan. 2010)!! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I loved her short-lived miniseries, and her time in the New Warriors demonstrated her leadership abilities. Hopefully she'll join the lineup of one of the main X titles, but I think the best fit for her would be in X-Men Legacy. If the Carey plans to follow Rogue helping mutants, Jubes would totally work well with her experience both as a leader and an ex-mutant support volunteer (Generation M #2).

Oh and one more thing about toys and such, I heard that Jan. 2010 will mark the arrival of Lego Harry Potter (years 1-4) to the Lego video game series, which I have enjoyed greatly.

need to leave?

Perhaps I'm channeling my intense lack of interest in my research seminar on American road culture, but I've recently been pondering. This post is just sort of a mental adventure, and it sort of serves as the opposite of Elizabeth's post. Does the imminent desire to pack up and go adventuring suggest some form of idolatry? What I have isn't good enough, so I should give up everything to go find something better. I can appreciate the need to appreciate the world around me, but much of travel literature uses such romantic imagery that it vaguely (or sometimes, outright) suggests worship. Many motorists journey for spiritual goals, but perhaps rejecting our surroundings for personal growth is just another way to retard its development.

Then again, perhaps I just focus on personal contentment as the first step to spiritual development. Then again, part of development and growth is change, which often requires a catalyst. Maybe the act of journeying on the highway readies one for inner growth, and I'm just trying to throw the pejorative label of idolatry on travel to add further negativity to a class I dislike. Or possibly there's bits of truth within the idea.