Trismegistus

I hope everyone who celebrates [...] at this time of year has had a lovely [...] and that all others are having a lovely end to the year.

It has been a crazy *coughmumble* number of weeks since I've managed a post. Giftsmas yesterday was lovely: I have new board games! Books! Fountain pen inks! And (joy of joys) a ceramic burr grinder from the GC, who also seemed pretty happy with the things I got for him. These included two Adrian Tchaikovsky novels--signed!--which he had no idea he was getting. (This took some work--and a slight chance of missing an international flight--and the payoff was more than worth it.)

We decamped mid-afternoon for Geek BBQer DM's house, where we spent the next six hours going gluttonous on Virginia ham, salmon, winter veggie dishes, cheeses, brandied fruit, panettone, several bottles of very good wine, and more baked goods than is advisable with a dozen other Geek BBQers and adjacent family and friends. It was an excellent time and still going strong when we reluctantly excused ourselves and went home, as the GC's holiday leave was cancelled second-to-last minute this year for Reasons and

I spentGiftsmas Eve morning baking, with a break to make stuffed onions for lunch. The afternoon was filled with more baking, and then dinner: Balsamic pork roast, green bean casserole, homemade stuffing, and cranberry relish. We wrapped up in time to make it to Geek BBQ to celebrate with the manager, who comped us some very, very pours (Ardbeg Hypernova, Jefferson's Reserve, and Masculine Charms Of A Hairy Highlander) and half a pound of pulled pork. And we squeezed in annual watches of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and The Fellowship of the Ring.

Tuesday saw the GC working and me baking until dinner, during which we watched Community's Comparative Religion and then headed to Geek BBQ, where we ironed out the final details for Giftsmas dinner and compared notes on the week's EO shenanigans. On Monday, we wrapped up meal planning and seasonal shopping for gifts and the rest of the week, and then I headed to that evening's Monday session. Which I love playing at, but for someone who is asleep by 7:30 more nights than not, the 8:15 start time is...rough.

Sunday was, of course, the Solstice. I'd already finished this year's Solstice read (Howl's Moving Castle) so that was taken care of early. Otherwise, we got the greenery up and I spent seven hours on the annual kitchen clean, cleaning, reorganizing, and inventorying everything in the fridge, freezer, cupboards, and shelves ahead of concentrated holiday baking. After that, we had our final D&D Homebrew 2 Campaign session of the year and it was a banger. Sooooo much plot and character development, all of it unscripted, all of it excellent. There was zero combat, I did one dice roll the entire five-hour session (there were probably fewer than five dice rolls from all the players combined) and it did not feel like anything was lacking.) This is just a phenomenal group with a phenomenal DM and I am so happy to be playing with them.

Last week's Monday Session was rescheduled to Saturday afternoon, which: A+ Would Reschedule Again. I am just so much sharper as a player when I'm *cough* awake.

Last week's Geek BBQ was our annual Whiskey White Elephant. Fully a third of the gifts this year were Scotch whiskies (up from one during the inaugural), which was great news for me. We came away with a very good (although not the best) one, with two snifters into the bargain--a nice bonus, given that we'd previously sacrificed all of ours to various PPVs we've hosted over the year. As another bonus, the two other best bottles were both claimed by good friends RI and HA, meaning we basically own all of them in common now. 😝 Our contribution was also well-received by its final recipient and the other folks who tried it, so that was nice too.

In other miscellany, we watched The American Revolution, which had more of a military (vice political/cultural) focus than I'd expected, but still did a very good job of highlighting where all the vaunted rhetoric fell very, very short in practice. We also made progress on our Geek BBQ group watches of Vinland Saga and Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition, which has been a fascinating experience given that we're about equally divided between people who remember (with varying degrees of fondness and frustration) the original Eva(s) and people who are coming to the universe for the very first time.

これで以上です。

...makes a post!

Job stuff! February found me commuting to a new worksite that requires 2+ hours in the car each day, which has significantly cut down on the leisure time things I'm able to do in a day. That said, the work is awesome, and I'm having a blast doing it while I'm onsite.

Concerts! This time, Falling in Reverse and Disturbed.

I knew more about the drama surrounding Falling in Reverse (even predating the Paige/Suraya connection) than I did their music, which turned out to be...fine. It wasn't bad in a concert venue setting but also wasn't anything distinguished enough that I'd seek it out again on my own. What did distinguish the band was the lead singer publicly berating a member of his stage crew, at length and by name, after something apparently went wrong toward the end of the show. Like, dude, you have just generated a lot of sympathy from me for someone, and it isn't you. Super gross and unnecessary, particularly when it became clear the lead singer wasn't even capable of generating entry-level stage patter to fill the silence after he'd finished dropping f-bombs on the stage hand.

Disturbed, on the other hand, was excellent as ever. We'd seen them live last summer (with Jinjer and Breaking Benjamin), so the stage set and much of the set list were pretty familiar, but man they put on a good show. Just a ton of energy and excitement, which is exactly what I wanted from the experience. The audience energy was great: people were as into it as we were.

Side note: the Baltimore concert tee bootleggers' game is fabulous. Por ejemplo: they didn't even bother to photoshop out the vendor "low tix" warning icons out of screencap they used for the dates on their Disturbed bootleg tee. These guys dngaf and it's great.

Bonus beer: We had dinner at The Brewer's Art, whose Resurrection abbey brown ale I'm a big fan of. The food was great and so were the other beers, particularly their GPT green peppercorn trippel and Daytrip to Yorkshire English old ale.

Building Bullshit! Has been so egregious and frequent I've stopped posting about it as it happens. Suffice to say that the building was on fire three times in February, the upstairs tenants flooded our kitchen and closet again when they got high and failed to turn off the faucet in their kitchen again, and our bathroom flooded again after the management company failed to fix the crumbling pipes in our again. We called maintenance at 3:00 in the afternoon when we came home and discovered the problem, but wouldn't you know? The maintenance number listed on the building website and provided to the concierge and answering service was wrong—as has been the case since January when the building manager was first notified of the issue.

But wait! There's more!

On top of that, the management company erroneously sent out notices informing tenants that we hadn't paid rent and that the management company was going to initiate eviction proceedings, again. (Seriously, this is the third time this has happened in the last six months, and the notices to go pretty much everyone in the building, including people like us who religiously pay rent on the 1st of each month.)

This is especially ironic given that the management company didn't think to position the cameras they finally agreed to install in the lobby in such a way as to cover the rent drop box, which was robbed. (Following the robbery, the management company helpfully sent letters to tenants saying that we were responsible for making sure management company received our rent on time, would need to submit payment again if our payments were among those stolen from the rent drop box, and that tenants were responsible for assuming any costs associated with cancelling checks that had been stolen from the rent drop box, which management suggested that we do.

TL;DR—you would think that after this, the management company would reposition the cameras to cover the rent drop box.

WELL. THEY DID NOT.

And it was robbed again. Rinse, repeat. Following this, the management company informed tenants that they were doing away with the rent drop box and that everyone would have to submit payments electronically in the future. This is fine for us, but not for other folks in the building, for specific reasons. Following intervention from the Tenants' Association and city authorities, the management company has informed us that they will be installing a new rent drop box behind the concierge desk. Hopefully they don't put it in a camera blindspot this time.

D&D! Season Three of Oldest D&D Group's homebrew campaign reconvened. The party continues to be as ineptfective as ever. Por ejemplo: across two sessions, we somehow ended up guarding a caravan, ambushed the brigands who were trying to ambush us and defeated them by, among other things, conjuring octopi to drop on their heads, lost half the caravan to hobgoblin raiders, and then ended up with twice as many wagons after we raided the raiders, in a process that happened to involve polymorphing various party members into horses and setting a lot of things on fire.

Second Oldest D&D Group's Saltmarsh campaign reconvened, with a marathon seven-hour battle session that honestly was a bit of a slog, at least for me. (I'm the only player in the group who doesn't use my phone during sessions. In a bid to get the others to pay attention, the DM gave them four additional units to control. This did not lead to less phone usage but resulted in my having one attack per the other players' three to nine, each turn. Ugh.) Things picked up in the following sessions, however, once the DM rebalanced the play mechanics. Subsequent sessions have featured a lot of great combats against some pretty tough critters, as well as the chance use do outside-the-box tactics to defeat them.

D&D Pt. II! We randomly ran into two of the players from Third Oldest D&D Group while out preparing for Geek BBQ Mardi Gras (for which, see below). This group's campaign has been on hiatus since last summer, but will be starting back up again. That was welcome news. Furthermore, as it's an online campaign, I hadn't actually seen these guys in the flesh since the Beforetimes, so it was delightful to have run into them.

D&D Pt. III! Boy, I was not in the headspace to handle BG3 last summer. Last month, I jettisoned my previous games and started fresh. I am definitely in the headspace for it now. I'm really enjoying the tie-ins to Escape from Avernus, and wondering whether any of the Shar/Selûne stuff that's being hinted at ties back in any way to Shar/Selûne developments in BG/BG2 EE. Also, holy crap, this is a great game.

Deadpool 3 Trailer Release Party! Which also apparently involved some sort of major sporting event? IDEK. 😛 At any rate, the food and company were fabulous. I brought a ginger carrot miso dip that people seemed to really like, and people really liked the Aslin sour—Durango Doug—we brought.

Bonus beer: I also picked up a four-pack of Aslin's Orchid imperial stout + vanilla that may be one of my favorite things they've done since Padrino.)

Gaelg! The mid-February holiday meant I was actually able to join in to an online speaking thing. It was exceptionally fun, especially because this is one of the nichest of my niche interests. (Prior to a few years ago, I figured this was a language I would never actually get to, you know, speak to anyone with.) It's weirdly one of the languages I find most intuitive, and I was able to make some decently complex sentences. I got complements on my accent, too. And again, it's just a bunch of fun to be actively using it.

Geek BBQ! Following on the heels of Geek BBQ Friendsgiving, Geek BBQ whiskey white elephant, and Geek BBQ dessert potluck, Geek BBQ put together a Mardi Gras potluck. The music was excellent, the decorations were excellent, and I probably ate my body weight in homemade jambalaya and gumbo. Very good stuff with a very good group of people.

Ice Skating 2.No! Geek BBQ friend called out of the blue one morning to invite us to a free skate at the ice complex. We were skeptical we'd be able to make it in time but were ultimately won over by friend's enthusiasm. Fast forward a hectic 40 minutes later when friend called back to say that they + friend 3 weren't going after all. Luckily, we had not actually paid for the skate yet. We had, however, jettisoned our lazy day in to trek out to the suburbs. What to do? We ended up having brunch at a favorite old venue, which happened to be showing a Scotland vs. Wales rugby match to a probable majority of the area's very enthusiastic fans. It was great energy and a lot of fun.

Karaoke! We decided to eat dinner at a newly opened Thai place before going to Geek BBQ. The food was excellent. We were the only people in the place aside from the server and the manager, who coincidentally happened to be there. Which was amazingly fortuitous and cool, because they invited us into the basement, which they had converted into a karaoke bar, and we got to sing. For free. Whatever and for as long as we wanted. I knocked out a significant portion of Roxette's back catalogue and it was spectacular.

LNY! We went out for dim sum with second oldest D&D group. Our intended destination was a bust (pro tip: do not try to go eat somewhere in a busy shopping center during a major holiday where the parking lot has been converted into stages, seating, and booths). Luckily, we knew of a second dim sum place nearby with really great food, went there, and ate ourselves silly.

What's my language progress look like?

This month I primarily blew through the supplementary hangeul lessons. These are surprisingly useful because I learned Korean directly through hangeul, which means that I never actually learned how to romanize it.

• Chinese — 1/5 through Unit 5; legendary through Unit 2
• Dutch — 4/5 through Unit 3; legendary through Unit 1
• Gaelic — 4/5 through Unit 6; legendary through Unit 3
• Hindi — 1/2 through Unit 2; backburnered until I wrap up a physical textbook
• Indonesian — 1/5 through Unit 11; legendary through Unit 6
• Japanese — 1/5 through Unit 21; legendary through Unit 16
• Korean — 1/2 through Unit 8; legendary through Unit 5
• Latin — 4/5 through Unit 2; legendary through Unit 1
• Welsh — 1/2 through Unit 1; backburnered in favor of a physical textbook

これで以上です。