Saturday I went to the Springfield Highland Games & Celtic
Festival, presented by the St. Andrews Society of Central Illinois. I
had attended the event three years ago, the first year that they held
it, but hadn't been to it since then. I must say that it seems to have
grown much bigger! I brought along my Hi8 camcorder, of course, and got
plenty of footage of bagpipes being played, cabers being tossed, and
dances being danced.
At the main entrance booth (where I bought a
couple of T-shirts), they had a signup sheet for classes in Gaelic!
Unfortunately, I'm fairly sure that they mean Scottish Gaelic, as
opposed to Irish Gaelic. However, it's not everyday that you see
someone offering to teach Scottish Gaelic in Springfield, so I decided
to signup and see what happens. It looked like there were perhaps 30
people signed up. Although some of them were from outside the
Springfield area, that still is quite a surprising level of interest.
When
things had started to wind down, I went over to David's for our usual
Saturday night Magic session. When I got there, Mary said, "Guess who's
going to start playing Magic again?" I said something like, "Well, the
only likely person would be Jennifer." Mary seemed amazed that I had
guessed correctly -- but apparently so had everyone else. Who else was
there to guess? Anyway, Jennifer's beau (Mike?) has apparently begun
playing Magic, having been introduced to it through the Portal set. He
would have some questions, which he would ask Jennifer. She hasn't
played for a long time (and didn't play all that much anyway), so she
said he really ought to get together with us. I'm not sure whether
Jennifer will actually be playing, so perhaps the correct guess would
have been "Mike."
The last time I saw Jennifer was at a cookout
at Bill & Mary's, either last summer or last fall. At the time she
told me about this week-long camping trip she had taken to Michigan (or
Wisconsin; I can never keep those two straight) and how important she
felt it had been to do this on her own. I found her tale to be
thoroughly inspirational, and I thought to myself, "hey, I'm making
good money, I'm single, I've get plenty of vacation time -- why am I
not doing anything?"
Now, when I say that she
was inspirational, I don't exactly mean that I leapt up and boarded the
next flight out of town. However, I did start rolling some ideas around
in my head, which I'm slowly working on implementing. One of those is
learning to speak Irish. What I actually would like to do is learn to
speak a little bit of several different languages. At the least, I'd
like to know enough to be able to pronounce things.
Then, if
things go as planned, I'd like to start traveling. If possible, I'd
like to visit a different country each summer. Currently, I have to use
up 17 days of vacation each year to avoid losing any, so I should have
plenty of time to spend, say, 7-10 days on each trip. I figure I'll
start with the most familiar, Canada, then move on to the less familiar
each year.
Here is my very tentative itinerary:
| 1999 | Canada |
| 2000 | British Isles |
| 2001 | Germany |
| 2002 | France |
| 2003 | Italy |
| 2004 | Spain/Portugal |
| 2005 | Greece |
| 2006 | Sweden/Norway |
| 2007 | Russia |
| 2008 | Mexico |
Out of that list, the place that I would probably most like to visit is Italy. (Why? I blame it on A Room with a View and similar E.M. Forster stuff.)
As
for this year, I don't really expect to be going anywhere, in part
because I plan on buying a car this fall and need to save my money for
that. The adventures start next year, though!
Sunday
was a wasted day. I played Ultima Online for about two hours, but
didn't accomplish much. Did I mention I was killed a few days ago? I
don't think I did. Well....
I was killed a few days ago.
Actually, it was back on May 10. (How time flies!) I went to the
dungeon, found some stuff, killed some stuff -- and then the doorbell
rang. Oh, bother. Being a real-time, online game, there is no "pause"
button, nor can you safely logout in the dungeon. Well, I just left my
character standing there and answered the door. It was my new landlord,
come to talk about mowing the grass (which really needed it). I told
him and his daughter that Mike would be bringing back the mower on
Monday, and that I would mow it then. After that, I could either
continue to use Mike's mower, or we could hire someone, or they could
mow it -- I was quite flexible. (Meanwhile, I'm thinking about my
character just standing there like a dummy in the dungeon.)
After
we had everything worked out, I went back to my game. It turned out
that another player had figured out that I was "AFK" (away from
keyboard) and had cast an invisibility spell on me to protect me from a
"PK" (player-killer, a player that kills other players instead of
monsters) that was nearby. (Follow all that?) That was quite nice of
him, so we hung out together for a time. Eventually I decided I needed
to head back to town, so I left -- and was killed just outside of the
dungeon by a PK named "Draven". Oh bother.
Well, nobody really
dies in Ultima Online. You just lose your body and everything that was
on it. I had plenty of gold and equipment safely stored in the bank in
town, so all I had to do was go to the shrine, get resurrected, then go
back to town to get my stuff out of the bank. Annoying, but not a total
loss.
Which brings us back to Sunday's session. As I was saying,
I didn't accomplish much. On the way to the dungeon, I fought a few
things, among them a snake. Snake, no big deal. Except, just before I
killed the snake, it bit me and poisoned me. Again, oh bother. I wasn't
sure how long the poison would last, but I figured I ought to go to the
shrine to be ready, just in case I died. Along the way, the poison
finally wore off -- just as I encountered a couple of PKs named "Fallen
Angel" and "Xena". They start shooting arrows at me while I'm running
through the woods trying to lose them. Due to Internet lag, that can be
a bit like running through taffy -- slow and frustrating. However,
after probably five minutes of rather intense unwanted excitement, I
was finally able to avoid the duo in the woods.
So... off to the
dungeon again! When I get there, I pop inside and roam about just a
bit, but things seem unusually dangerous. Among the monsters nearby is
a giant serpent. After my recent encounter with its smaller brother,
I'm not feeling too up on tackling it. I decided to go back to the
dungeon entrance and heal up. While I'm standing there, I decide to
hide, just to be safe. This, it turns out, was a good thing. While I'm
hidden, a war breaks out! About eight PKs show up and start attacking
about five players. A demon is summoned! Magic spells go flying
everywhere! Death, destruction, mayhem! Meanwhile, I'm still standing
there, hidden, hoping very strongly that nobody happens to stumble
across me! Eventually, the PKs killed off all of the players, then
stood around dividing up the spoils -- and I was still valiantly hiding
there! After that, they disappeared into the dungeon, at which point I
broke out of hiding and high-tailed it out of there! I figured that was
plenty of excitement for one day, so I hid behind a tree and logged
out. Like I said, not too productive.
Monday was the season finale of Ally McBeal. It wasn't one of their best episodes, but it was still good. John Cage finally lost a case, which I liked; he shouldn't win all of them. And that guy from The Practice
was on again, which I thought was interesting. For a time I wondered if
they might really go into uncharted territory and have an ongoing story
involving characters from two different shows on two different
networks, but it was (apparently) over by the end of the episode. Oh
well.
My Life by the Numbers
Sunday: 236 pounds. Walked 2 miles in 29:23.
Monday: 235 pounds. Walked 2 miles in 29:39. Reviewed lesson 5 of "Irish on your Own"; started lesson 6.
Today:
236 pounds. Walked 2 miles in an unknown time. (Somehow, I accidentally
reset the stopwatch. Oops.) Repeated lesson 6; started lesson 7.
thankful
stressed
Recent Comments