Look out!

Okay, okay, okay. I haven’t written in a while and I know people out there are getting anxious ;)
So, what have we been up to? Lots, and at the same time nothing.

Lots of gaming in July, as is normal for us. Finally got the wall beside the table painted, and in a weird twist of fate, the paint matched the existing paint in the apartment. I wanted to go with something bold, but Brian wouldn’t agree, so I settled on an offwhite with slight bright yellow undertones. And it matches perfectly. I didn’t even have to tape in the corner where the walls meet. Strange... Lots of fun BBQ’ing with the guys, hanging out and chatting. And Pin finally made 11th level. Five shots/round, wohoo! And if you don’t have a clue what that means, that’s okay, we can ‘convert’ you too... We went to Conneticut for a weekend con and had a blast (mostly). The con was the inaugural event for the new convention center, which is kind of cool. Except they weren’t quite finished with all the construction. Or the construction dust and debris. My allergies took a pounding for it and made breathing just nasty. But the games made up for it. It’s kind of neat to get to go play in another region and see how things differ there. I had a great time playing “That’s Rhombstaff” with Jay running it. It’s usually super-cool to get to play a mod when the author is running it, and this was an absolute blast. And Jay’s a great DM.

We went to dinner at a friend’s place and got to play with their little daughter Kirsten, who was wonderful. She’s been a wonderfully unusual baby though, not really fussing, hardly ever crying, and sleeping through the night from the second week on. Heaven help them when they want a second child!

We went on vacation in early August for the first time in 10 years. Yes, you read that right, it was the first time we’ve taken a relaxing trip since our honeymoon. No schedule, no rush, nowhere we had to be. It was awesome! I *won’t* let it be ten more years before we do that again. We got together with Becky and rented a cottage just outside Lake Placid for the week. We did a lot of hiking, some sightseeing, climbed a mountain, and took a fantastic gondola ride. Well, I thought it was fantastic, Becky and Brian would disagree… Thanks for the tip mom! We didn’t end up doing any canoeing, but it was a joint decision not to. We certainly didn’t lack for things to do. We played board games or cards in the evenings, and had a campfire most nights. Turns out I’m not the only pyro in our little family. Brian *LOVES* to build/manage a campfire. I’ll be posting some photos from our trip here when I get a chance. I can’t do them from work, so the link won’t work until I actually get them posted from home... Look for the “Revenge of the Marshmallow Man” ones especially, they were fun! We had gorgeous weather, hot, but not “Ugh, I’m dying” hot. It was hazy a lot of the time, so a lot of the photos we took from the mountains don’t show how stunning the views actually were. And I want to play around with photoshop to ‘stitch together’ a bunch of overlapping panorama ones. With all my spare time that is . I didn’t get any stitching done, but that’s okay with me. When our week was up, we decided we weren’t done yet. I tried to convince Becky to come visit the island for a few days, but she didn’t want to have to handle driving in NYC, and I don’t blame her. It IS an adjustment from Sudbury traffic :). There was a stitching store not far from Syracuse that supposedly had over 15,000 leaflets that sounded really tempting and had been our ‘rainy day plan’. Since we had gorgeous weather all week, we hadn’t gone yet. So we pulled out the map and had a good look. We decided to head from Lake Placid to the store to Syracuse for the night, and head home our separate ways from there. Lunch was a blast with Becky wanting a Triple Chocolate Meltdown, but refusing to order it. On the way there, we passed a sign reading “Canada ”, and it was all I could do not to turn in that direction. But we didn’t have our passports, so c’est la vie. The store itself was an absolute bust. It was in the lady’s basement, horribly moldy/damp, and so cluttered and unorganized with everything in piles on the floor you couldn’t find a thing. Even some of the charts were starting to ‘grow’. I’ll NEVER go back there again. It gave both Becky and I asthma attacks. So we left and made it to Syracuse in the early afternoon. We relaxed, did a little shopping at the gigantic Carosel Center mall, had a great meal at a restaurant there (the name of which I’ve forgotten, darn it!). We’ll deffinately be eating there again when we stay in Syracuse. In the morning we finally had to split up and go our separate ways. Becky surprised us further (and herself too) by making it all the way back to Sudbury in one go. She must have made great time! I could go on and on about the vacation, but I’ll stop here. I’m depressing myself at work.

On to Madison news, since several people have been asking. Things are really up in the air there right now. As of the last I heard, the final test to confirm the CF diagnosis came back negative. So... now they’re trying to figure out what’s going on. Or what she actually has if it isn’t CF. And how to make this wonderful little girl feel better and be healthier! Keep the good thoughts coming folk!

We also have more wonderful family news, but I don’t want to post it here as we don’t officially know it. The couple involved haven’t told us yet, and I don’t want to say anything in a public forum until I know they’re going public. It’s killing me not to call and congratulate them, but this news really needs to come from them. But we’re both thrilled, we just want to get the news ‘officially’ so we can congratulate them and cheer in public! How’s that for cryptic, but not cryptic?

I’d better end this for now as it’s getting to novella length, but I’ll try to update the rest of Aug/Sept. soon. I promise soon!

Live life with joy and abandon.