My mood has bounced back into violently happy. Alot of this has to do with the fact I had a lovely normal weekend with Rach. That’s right for the first time since she’s been back at work (getting on a good five months) she’s not been put down to work a shift. So we had a lovely little ‘normal’ family weekend. Nothing particularly exciting but it did my mental health a world of good.

Update on the health front, after a visit to the GP last week I’m officallly a fat bastard and now on a diet and have made a solemn and binding pact to increasing my exercise levels.  My little scare last week was a form of heartburn (as timgray suggested), but I’m taking it as warning sign I shouldn’t ignore. Heck I’ve been getting warning signs I shouldn’t ignore for years. Now time to do something about it, in a conistant sensible way.

Furnace threatens to suck me into vortex of pre-con stress, since I’m doing to much and have too little tiime to do it. Might have to drop some of the things I’m doing, because I’m now at the time I’ve not got any time to finish them off. I’ll be making a sensible measured decision about this later.  Nutter that I am, I’m already mentally making a list of stuff I’m going to work on post-furnace.

In other news I’ve started a new blog for Hearts in Glorantha, which as well as a preview of next issue has the start of a review of HeroQuest 2. See it here http://heartsinglorantha.ukrpgblogs.net/

Its took me until two this afternoon to get back to my usual cheeky self.  Conbination of a panic attack this morning, a fit of anger (mentally aimed at someone who deserves it) and bizarrly a short sharp pain in the chest (don’t worry it only lasted about 30secs), which left me a bit depressed until I bounced back this afternoon.  Ho hum.

In other news the weekend was good. On Saturday Operation ‘Clear the Jungle’ was well underway and the back garden is now covered with branches.  Sunday was lovely and sunny, but there was a poor turnout at GoPlayManchester and we were last to get a table at Fanboy 3, due to a Magic Convention. Less than happy about this. Looks like our days there are numbered….  Had a good game of Cthulhu Rising, despite it feeling like we were playing in the street.

So I’m back from the Newport family invasion of the Cotswolds. A nice time was had by all. Eve is now fully up and walking ran around the cottage and I’m glad we went for the next price bracket up so that she could do so. in fact the cottage, in Bibury, was one of the best we’ve ever stayed in. Nice roomy and comfatble.

Despite this being a ‘chill out and recharge’ holiday we managed to get out every day and do something. A walk round a park here, a visit to a musseum there. All of which was good for the soul, but reminded me with a bang how physically unfit I am these days. Tiredness aside from chasing small child around various tourist attractions, I do feel refreshed and I realise how much sitting at the computer takes it out of me since the holiday was a  computer free zone. Also how junky and crap my diet is. So more activity and fresh veg for Mr Newt from here in 🙂 

Being away from work gave me chance to reflect on it. Once again I’m falling into a comfatable state of complacency. Its time to step up a gear and get on in life. Working at the Uni on one hand can be an oportunity to take it easy and sit in the slow lane, with bosses and colleagues that will quite happily turn a blind eye, but its also an opportuntiy to really try out some new ideas and run with it. i shall be doing the latter from now on. The part of my brain that glowed with joy when I pushed myself during my masters will do so again.

The big realisation, this being very much a ‘family holiday’ was that I spend far to much time and energy on my RPG nonsense. On holiday I actually engaged with what I was doing with Rach and Eve and had a great time doing it. Some RPG writing did get done, but it was more focused and quick and got the job done in a tenth of the time than my usual meandering work. A lengthy chat with Rach on Saturday evening after we got back confirmed that some times me musing about by RPG nonsense takes me away from what’s really important in my life. Which isn’t fair to anyone. Don’t get me wrong I’m not going to be giving up doing D101games, GoPlayManchester, Furnace and my Sunday group. Its still a big part of what I am and more importantly a bunch of fun. But its just now I have a sense of perspective that its not the most important thing in my life.

Overall a much needed rest with some life changing realisations that I now need to act on.

Back to a bumper three days of work, so in true LJ fashion I need to take time out and post 🙂

Weekend was good if a bit challenging at times. Rach was on shifts both days, so I was left in charge of Evie who was suffering from teething particularly badly on Saturday. Had a bit of me time, courtesy of small child sleeping and Grandma’s taking her out, and as well as doing the housework reaqquanted myself with the joys of Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Quake3 arena on the PC (courtesty of the ID megapack on Steam being £20 for the weekend). It was like the last seven years never happened, but shiner.

Other highlight was the Black Horse County chaps (Rob, Mark , Steve) coming round on Sunday to kick off our Battlestar Galattica campaign. We are using the liscenced game by Margret Weiss productions, and actually as a system it is very good. A bit of an indie rpg in mainstream clothing. It has traits, hero points (called plot points) and a skills system where you roll characteristic +skill + trait all in a very glossy hardback book. Content wise the book was very complete, the players had everything they needed to create characters, the startship deckplans came in very handy, as did the stock npcs. It allowed me and the players to make the game up as we went along. I’ll probably witter on more about it, but it was very strange and exhilarating to be running something other than HQ as a campaign game.

Had a realization that I’ve been overdoing it on the RPG writing front recently, to the determent of Real Life. Since some pretty major things are happening or about to happen this is not good.  So I’m taking a bit of a break from the insane mad dash run of gettng SimpleQuest done and dusted for mid October. Appart from Hearts In Glorantha issue 2 everything I’m working on will now ‘be done when its done’. HiG has a weird energy about it which means that it will happen no matter what. I try not to analyse it too much…it scares me.

So three days of finshing stuff off at work (new Intranet and WordPress Mu install for Faculty blogs and mini sites) and then off for a week in the Cotswolds for a cottage holiday and mucho relaxation.

Life is busy, busy, busy, with a side order of…..busy.

I expected things to calm down after Continuum, but no getting intensly stupid again.

Partially this is my own fault, writing projects getting a life of thier own with people generally cheering me own and asking ‘when will it it be out’? Partially this is work screaming towards the end of two (or maybe three projects) all at once. Partially this is me and Rach planning on child #2 and house extendsion.

I may write more of this in detail later…..I may be too busy to do so.

In other news Evie is still cute and giggles all the time (sometimes more manically) and is enjoyiing walking.

This is one of those ‘hey I’m back’ sort of posts. Followed up swiftly by ‘ow I still hurt’ whinge.

So I’m back from the Mighty Continuum RPG convention, which doubled as a mini-short summer break for me, refreshed and invigorated but still a bit stiff from too much booze, crap food and even less sleep than usual. Oh well it was fun 🙂

Got

d101games

off to a truely amazing flying start, with Hearts In Glorantha selling out its small print run and me Ginger Matt and Neil Ford running 10 full games of Monkey and SimpleQuest over the weekend. Saw lots of old friends and it was nice to see folk who I only talk to online usually 🙂  It was also slightly surreal to have 100+ people at the closing ceremony chanting my name.

Eased myself back into work this week, after having Monday/Tuesday off and its with a bump I head towards the weekend which will probably be lots of gardening and sorting out the house, with the possiblity of a trip to Bakewell.

Time for an update?yar think its time for an updatey thing.

My brain has melted from all the work I’m doing at the moment. Home is intense as me and Rach move up a gear to become ……TIDY PEOPLE. Work is intense as two projects are coming to an end soonish. As for roleplaying nonsense, three out of five adventures for continuum are completely written up with pcs in a form that is suitable for two other Games Masters to run them for me. Another two to write up (but these are much shorter fortunately), two talks to put together (with slide shows). Hearts in Glorantha is in the bag, copies for Continuum have turned up today (BIG PHEW!), and I slowly move towards getting SimpleQuest ZeroEdition done, but alas my table fu in InDesign is weak and I’m doing the Equipment chapter at the mo 😦 Next weak I have fun doing posters, sign up sheets, setting up forums, designing T-shirts etc.

Our Evie becomes more animated and bonkers as the days roll on. She’s a cheerful little character, who’s very close to walking and very alive and awake. Its really inspirational watching her engage with the world in a full on intensity which I think us adults have lost.

This weekend I finsh off the layout for the first issue of Heart’s in Glorantha.

darransims  has come up with the goods cover wise.

Its a extremely suitable ‘wrapper’ for all the high quality articles and art . Oh yes we have art, some of it jaw droppingly good -cheers Darran for sourcing.

There’s more about the first issue in a preview up on the D101 Games website

I’m chuffed to bits with the first issue, which has been very much thrown together very quickly. Its a credit to the people who have submitted articles.

First off the bad. Its glorious weather outside, but I’ve been stuck inside since yesterday since I’ve pulled a muscle in my back. Yesterday was spent hobbling around like an old man, today my posture is back but I have sharp pain down my left side. OW!

The Good. I’m off work, and paradoxically the best place for me is at the computer! So as well as some crafty gaming (mmmn Stalker: Shadows of Chenobyl) I’m cracking on on my adventure for SimpleQuest, Life and Death. Already standing at something like 50 pages its a beast of thing, but over the last couple of days its really started to come together. Should get the first draft complete today!