I’m watching the Sprint Cup race from Watkins Glen right now that has dragged on because of 2 red flag sessions to repair the track safety barriers after they were destroyed in wrecks. The last restart is just rolling, with 2 laps to go. And now it’s over and A.J Almendinger just barely rubs ahead of Marcos Ambrose. The ‘Dinger is driving for a really small, underfunded team, and for him to win just says volumes about him as a driver. The driver he beat is no slouch either, Marcos Ambrose is a former V8 Supercars champion from Oz, one of the most competitive series anywhere, especially in the era Marcos won in when they only had the 2 manufacturers. So Wow! so Race, much competition.
Last night was RPG night again, and I shared my beans and rice with the gang, who pronounced it good. I’m not going to take that as a ringing endorsement, I have seen these guys wipe out Sloppy Joes extended with a package of mixed veggies, so it’s not like they are all that discriminating of what they eat. But describing the costs of making the dish (about $1 worth of beans, $0.50 of brown rice, and a few pennies in spices cooked for 7 hours total in a crock pot) and mentioning I could do this every week if required and have dinner at any time after cooking was completed was met with a resounding approval. That’s 10 servings of main dish for less than $2. That’s even cheaper than ramen.
So we played a Heros game with some pre-made villains. I was a gadgeteer named Waylon Talos. We had a group of us who were raiding an illegal bio-tech lab in New England (bad guys stealing from other bad guys) and getting paid a decent amount to begin with but there was a substantial bonus for successful completion of the mission objectives (destroy the lab, steal all the data, grab as many physical samples as we could carry) which we made in spades, as we “kidnapped” one of the lab techs as well. The lab had clone guards, gene-spliced baboon-squid hybrid guard animals, toxic exploding flower booby traps, and goofy password security systems. My character was about as useful as a broken leg but I did have one contribution during planning/prep for the mission that saved the mission, I built everybody a sealed air system with unlimited air (rebreathing with O2 replenishment), that saved everyone when we triggered one of the flower booby traps accidentally and the lab tech triggered one on purpose. I was originally going to give everyone sealed environmental suits but one of the party was stretchy and couldn’t use a sealed suit. Anywho, we “won” and got our reward.
My permanent character for the game is a flying speedster capable of sustained Mach 2.5 speeds and super strength, with a disadvantage of “theme music” whenever he flies that is loud enough to make a stealth approach impossible from the air, and the need to have a “power up” of a bag of tortilla chips every hour to retain flying powers, and for some reason the Scientologists really don’t like him. Oh yeah, he really doesn’t like bugs where he flies.
I’m thinking a character I really want to play is a bicycle-based speedster of some kind, where he has limited endurance on foot but slap him on his bike and he’s got full speed and unlimited range. I will have to send a text to the GM for this particular game to see if he’ll bite for this particular disadvantage. I could really work with this guy. I’m already thinking of who’s going to be on his case all the time since he can exceed the posted limits on the freeways by orders of magnitude. Digital orders of magnitude, not binary. 😉 We are talking riding a bicycle on the freeways at more than 500 MPH! Wheeeeeeeeee!
And it’s about time to get ready for evening services, so I’ll end this now.
PSA, Opus
Witch on a Bicycle 