[Kishi]

I remember I had a similar experience with food and COVID. The first day, I lost my appetite completely, and when I tried to eat even a single spoon of almond butter it tasted like ashes and I had to force myself to swallow. It took a couple days for me to want to eat anything, but it didn't last. I bet it'll pass for you too.

[WhiteGhost]

11 hours ago, Shello said:

Qbert likes to watch these too but I have such little patience for them.  I find them hard to watch and even harder still to give them my view so they can make money. 

I prefer to watch other people's hot takes on them.  That way the ranting gets interrupted by snide commentary to break things up, plus it doesn't monetize the crazies   

 

4 hours ago, Kishi said:

I remember I had a similar experience with food and COVID. The first day, I lost my appetite completely, and when I tried to eat even a single spoon of almond butter it tasted like ashes and I had to force myself to swallow. It took a couple days for me to want to eat anything, but it didn't last. I bet it'll pass for you too.

Yep, it is a weird disease.  Luckily I seem to be pretty much over it and my taste buds all went back to normal yesterday.

 

--------------------------------

 

Yesterday we got a bunch of eggs and 4 chickens dropped off by our farmer friend so I spent a lot of the day processing the chickens and carving them up.  Other than that my day was spent mostly just sitting around scrolling through random Youtube videos.

[Mad Hatter]

Those were some wild symptoms! Glad your tastebuds went back to normal so quickly, months and months later my mum still can't eat raspberries.

[WhiteGhost]

16 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Those were some wild symptoms! Glad your tastebuds went back to normal so quickly, months and months later my mum still can't eat raspberries.

Long-Covid is nuts.  It boggles my mind that symptoms can last so long after getting over it.

 

-------------------------

 

It has been a slow couple of days.  I finished reading the Hobbit and have started now on Fellowship.  I was also feeling well enough to pay some xbox but I wasn't feeling in the mood for Assassin's Creed so I just ended up going for another Skyrim play through.  It isn't really holding my attention, though, so the bulk of my time is spent reading.

[deftona]

4 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

It has been a slow couple of days.  I finished reading the Hobbit and have started now on Fellowship.  I was also feeling well enough to pay some xbox but I wasn't feeling in the mood for Assassin's Creed so I just ended up going for another Skyrim play through.  It isn't really holding my attention, though, so the bulk of my time is spent reading.

 

I've just started Red Dead Redemption 2 and it's fantastic. 

[Kishi]

I'm on a major Hades kick since the sequel got announced. Most of my reading is in Sanderson's Cosmere literatic universe (:'D), although I think I'm going to take a break and read some Kim Stanley Robinson when this next book is done.

[WhiteGhost]

18 hours ago, deftona said:

 

I've just started Red Dead Redemption 2 and it's fantastic. 

For some reason I thought this was another zombie game but I looked it up and apparently it isn't so there'e that.  I will look more at it.

 

4 hours ago, Kishi said:

I'm on a major Hades kick since the sequel got announced. Most of my reading is in Sanderson's Cosmere literatic universe (:'D), although I think I'm going to take a break and read some Kim Stanley Robinson when this next book is done.

I hadn't ever even heard of Hades and from the context I wasn't sure if it was a game or a title from the Cosmere   I have since googled it and everything makes sense    Sanderson is a great author and I have loved everything I have read of his so far.  I have not yet touched the Stormlight Archives, though, because I  don't like getting most of the way through a series and then having to wait for the next books to come out (Looking at you GRRM!) 

 

-----------------------------------------

 

I don't have a whole lot to say about yesterday.  I am still testing positive for Covid so most of my day was spent reading Fellowship.    I also spend a little bit of time in the afternoon playing Halo 2 with Ghostlet

[deftona]

4 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

For some reason I thought this was another zombie game but I looked it up and apparently it isn't so there'e that.  I will look more at it.

 

There was a zombie expansion pack for the first one but nope, just cowboys! Red Dead is like San Andreas and Assassin's Creed III had an even better baby. 

[WhiteGhost]

23 hours ago, deftona said:

 

There was a zombie expansion pack for the first one but nope, just cowboys! Red Dead is like San Andreas and Assassin's Creed III had an even better baby. 

You talked me into it.  I decided to wait util it goes on sale but when I got up this morning the ultimate edition was 70% off so it it is now downloading and I will give it a go once it installs.  That used up all of my gaming money so after this it's just whatever I have in my library.

 

----------------------------------------------

 

Yesterday was a pretty slow day.  I had church in the morning but I was just watching the stream since most of the people are now back in person.  I spent most of the afternoon reading Fellowship and then in the evening we had our D&D game.  It was our first session with our current group and even though we are only level 1 we still somehow managed to kill a troll with only a little outside help.  DM @Jarric had us covered with a pretty powerful NPC who probably could have handled the troll by himself, by the time he got there it was already looking pretty bad.  We then spent the rest of the time trying to find a missing person but we weren't getting very far with our limited clues.  I was having fun playing up my character's lack of intelligence, but I hope it wasn't a little too much

[Jarric]

On 1/9/2023 at 7:42 AM, WhiteGhost said:

I was having fun playing up my character's lack of intelligence, but I hope it wasn't a little too much

 

Can't speak for the others, but I think it was spot on. You managed to provide useful information and help the party, even while spending a chunk of the session wondering if anchors could fly

 

[WhiteGhost]

12 hours ago, Jarric said:

 

Can't speak for the others, but I think it was spot on. You managed to provide useful information and help the party, even while spending a chunk of the session wondering if anchors could fly

 

Thanks, I always worry that I am going to hog the limelight which can get really old really fast.  I have a feeling there is going to be more to this flying anchor conversation in future episodes  

 

----------------------------------

 

I have no idea what I did on Monday but it probably involved a bunch of reading from Fellowship and a fair amount of xbox.

 

Yesterday we had the cleaning lady come over in the morning for our last deep cleaning before CNY.  In the afternoon a couple of friends stopped by to buy a pearl necklace from Ghostess and then I spent the rest of the day playing Skyrim.  I was hoping to play Red Dead instead but as of this morning is still only 40% downloaded so that is going to ave to wait

 

 

[WhiteGhost]

I am way behind on updates, but mostly because I have nothing new to update.  Every day is the same, consisting of Skyrim, Fellowship and piano practice, plus cooking food for everyone.

 

The only thing that is new is that Ghostess is now symptomatic but still testing negative.  She was saying yesterday that her heart hurt (I don't think I have ever experienced any non-emotional kind of heartache) so we took her over to the hospital to get it checked out.  The doctor ran a battery of tests which all came back normal, but the doctor did say that this is a normal covid symptom so the mostly likely answer is that she is positive (She has all the other symptoms) but just isn't testing positive 

[Kishi]

On 1/10/2023 at 11:29 PM, WhiteGhost said:

I have no idea what I did on Monday but it probably involved a bunch of reading from Fellowship and a fair amount of xbox.

 

I have those kinds of days too and it bothers me that they're so unmemorable. You'd think, given the relative simplicity, that those'd be the easiest to remember, right?

[SkyGirl]

Ugh I'm so sorry Ghostess is sick! How are things toward the end of this week?

[juliebarkley]

On 1/17/2023 at 9:42 PM, WhiteGhost said:

I am way behind on updates, but mostly because I have nothing new to update.  Every day is the same, consisting of Skyrim, Fellowship and piano practice, plus cooking food for everyone.

 

The only thing that is new is that Ghostess is now symptomatic but still testing negative.  She was saying yesterday that her heart hurt (I don't think I have ever experienced any non-emotional kind of heartache) so we took her over to the hospital to get it checked out.  The doctor ran a battery of tests which all came back normal, but the doctor did say that this is a normal covid symptom so the mostly likely answer is that she is positive (She has all the other symptoms) but just isn't testing positive 

Oof, and just as the rest of you were getting over it too! I'm glad that the heart pain is a normal, non-dangerous(?) symptom.

 

I'm sorry to hear that your release from the bunker keeps getting delayed.

[WhiteGhost]

On 1/18/2023 at 11:30 AM, Kishi said:

 

I have those kinds of days too and it bothers me that they're so unmemorable. You'd think, given the relative simplicity, that those'd be the easiest to remember, right?

You would think so.  For me the thing that makes it so hard to remember is that is is the same thing I do every day, so all the days just blend together

 

On 1/21/2023 at 11:17 AM, SkyGirl said:

Ugh I'm so sorry Ghostess is sick! How are things toward the end of this week?

Thanks, things are doing much better now  

 

9 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Oof, and just as the rest of you were getting over it too! I'm glad that the heart pain is a normal, non-dangerous(?) symptom.

 

I'm sorry to hear that your release from the bunker keeps getting delayed.

Yeah, apparently it is just of the long, long list of possible, but known, symptoms.  My days in the bunker are coming to a close, although the exit has been postponed now to the beginning of February

 

---------------------------------------

 

So a few days again since my last update.  

 

There were a few days when I really did very little other than taking care of Ghostess.  After that she was feeling better but resting so my days were mostly spent playing Skyrim while keeping an ear out for her if she needed anything.

 

Yesterday was Chinese New Years Eve, and by then she was feeling much better.  I spent the morning doing some baking, making a cheesecake, some cookies and some blueberry muffin bread.  We then went to the store and bought some more snacks for the evening and some ingredients for dinner.  In the evening we had hot pot and then played mahjong while we watched the national Annual New Years TV Program.    Today we planned to watch Avatar 2 but since it has been so long since watched the first one we watched that in the afternoon.  By the time we finished we didn't have time to watch the second one and still make it back in time for my D&D game, so we decided to watch Avater 2 tomorrow instead.   I had a fun D&D adventure and was pretty sure we were all going to die when, ans a party of level 1 adventurers we walked into a room with a Mind Flayer.  We may yet die, but when we left off it looks like we may escape without having to fight it.

 

Also, I have some really, REALLY good news to report.  So a few weeks back, Phantom was chasing Wraith around the house and she somehow managed to get her tooth knocked out.  After that, she decided that Phantom was an existential threat and would attack him on sight.  Ever since then we have had to keep them separated.  Yesterday as we were enjoying our new years eve celebrations, we felt bad that Phantom was alone locked in the other room and so we decided to let him out for a bit (with close observation for aggressiveness from Wraith).   Well, it seems that things have now cooled down between them, and as long as we are in the room with them they seem to be behaving themselves.    I expect we will still need to keep them separated when they don't have supervision, but while we are home they can all hang out together without anyone trying to terminate another with extreme prejudice.   I can't tell you how happy this makes me   

[Rhovaniel]

4 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

  I expect we will still need to keep them separated when they don't have supervision, but while we are home they can all hang out together without anyone trying to terminate another with extreme prejudice.   I can't tell you how happy this makes me   

This makes me also very very happy. Poor Phantom. How is he with their mutual offspring? 

 

 

4 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

I had a fun D&D adventure and was pretty sure we were all going to die when, ans a party of level 1 adventurers we walked into a room with a Mind Flayer.  We may yet die, but when we left off it looks like we may escape without having to fight it.

ooh, I remember Waterdeep Heist, it was our first module with my current group. Ha, that mind flayer... he was fun to fight. That whole module is really good to be fair, I look forward to updates! 

 

 

How goes your Fellowship reading? I have just reached Moria with my current readthrough. 

[WhiteGhost]

On 1/23/2023 at 5:09 AM, Rhovaniel said:

On 1/23/2023 at 12:19 AM, WhiteGhost said:

  

This makes me also very very happy. Poor Phantom. How is he with their mutual offspring? 

They both love Lich and Lich loves them both.  I have adjusted the gate so that Lick can fit under it while neither of the others can and he spends quite a bit of time with his dad 

 

On 1/23/2023 at 5:09 AM, Rhovaniel said:

ooh, I remember Waterdeep Heist, it was our first module with my current group. Ha, that mind flayer... he was fun to fight. That whole module is really good to be fair, I look forward to updates! 

Uh oh, this doesn't sound good.  We are very low on resources and have a player already unconscious and we haven't even engaged the mind flayer yet...

 

On 1/23/2023 at 5:09 AM, Rhovaniel said:

How goes your Fellowship reading? I have just reached Moria with my current readthrough. 

You are still ahead of me, I just finished the Council of Elrond

 

-----------------

 

Well, our plan to watch Avatar 2 failed because it turns out it is already out of theaters.  Instead we went and watched a Chinese movie called Full River Red which was a murder mystery show set in the Song Dynasty and was really quite good.

 

The rest of the day was spent reading Fellowship, cat herding and playing Mahjong.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

1 hour ago, WhiteGhost said:

You are still ahead of me, I just finished the Council of Elrond

My favorite part is the part between the beginning and the end.*

 

 

*and a bit of the appendices.

[WhiteGhost]

23 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

My favorite part is the part between the beginning and the end.*

 

 

*and a bit of the appendices.

To be fair, that is the best part

 

--------------------------------

On Sunday night, Ghostlet was watching me as I played my D&D game and remembered how much he used to love our family games, so he asked me to revive our old D&D game that we used to play with just the 2 of us.  I was running him through the Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign and were in the middle of Cragmaw castle when we left off.  He is playing 3 characters (Fighter, Wizard and Rogue) but to help him out I have a couple of players as well.  One of them is a druid healer who is also a complete pacifist, and the other is a paladin whose only quest is protecting his druid.  Well, we got the boss fight and things went badly.  At one point the paladin, fighter and rogue were all down and both the druid and the wizard were out of spell slots.  It was looking very likely that it could end up going TPK so I decided [Spoiler]

Spoiler

to have the doppleganger stay out of the fight.  In the end they barely pulled through but the wizard was the only one left standing and he only had a couple of HP.  Instead of having him try to fight off the doppleganger by himself, the doppleganger offered to let them live if they promised to leave and never come back.  Since the doppleganger was only there to murder the dwarf and destroy the map, letting these folks escape was not a concern.  Now, my concern as a DM is how I am going to move the story forward now that the doppleganger has succeeded in killing the dwarf and destroying the map

 

 

I read some more of Fellowship in the afternoon (insside Moria now).  and then in the evening I was going to make some Yakiniku but our hotplate suddenly self destructed.  We ordered some food instaed, and then Ghostess and I went out to watch another movie.  This one was a very asrtsy spy flick called hidden blade (No connection to Assassin's Creed) that was set during WWII and was super hard to understand.  More than half of the movie was in either Shanghainese, Cantonese or Japanese with Chinese subtitles and I could only read the subtitles or try to follow the story but I didn't have the mental capacity for both.  To further complicate the matter, the movie was extremely non-linear in the way it was presented so it kept skipping around in time and locations so even for Gostess it was really hard to follow.  I was pretty impressed with myself that by the end of it I actually understood the story   

 

 

[Rhovaniel]

On 1/24/2023 at 2:15 AM, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

My favorite part is the part between the beginning and the end.*

 

 

*and a bit of the appendices.

Hey, mine too! 

 

I have a thing I say when people ask me which LOTR book or film is my favourite one: yes. 

[WhiteGhost]

 

9 hours ago, Rhovaniel said:

Hey, mine too! 

 

I have a thing I say when people ask me which LOTR book or film is my favourite one: yes. 

In my edition, the very first words after the table of contents are:

"J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is often erroneously called a trilogy, when it is in fact a single nove, consisting of six books plus appendices, sometimes published in three volumes."

 

--------------------

 

Yesterday we had some good friends come over and so we spent the saying playing Mario Kart, Mahjong and Uno.  The lady who came over grew up with Ghostess as sisters and her two daughters have been friends with Ghostlet since they were all tiny tots (they are all between 13-16 years old).  After dinner we went out to watch a movie.  We originally planned to watch Wandering Earth 2 but we found a place that was still showing Avatar 2 so we watched that instead.

[WhiteGhost]

Yesterday was pretty basic.  I played some Skyrim in the morning and then read a bunch of Fellowship in the afternoon.  The Fellowship is now in Lothlorien and Galadriel just refused the ring from Frodo.

 

Maybe I should have spoilered that last pert?

 

Today is looking to be pretty much the same

[WhiteGhost]

21 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

Today is looking to be pretty much the same

More Skyrim, less Fellowship, but otherwise accurate

[WhiteGhost]

Yesterday morning I got up before dawn and took Ghosted to the airport for her first Post-covid business trip.  I then came back and spent most of the day playing Skyrim.  In the evening Ghosted finished his homework so I was a terrible parent and let him play Cyberpunk 2077