Every Day an Adventure

Oops, I guess I went to sleep last night without updating. I thought I had, weird. Friday at work, I was a bad girl and ducked out of yet another all-hands meeting, to go down to the IT guys and beg someone to make my laptop work for remote VPN stuff. They were all like "Bah, we are very very busy, file a ticket and we'll get back to you in a couple of days," and I said "Can't I just plug it in and show you the error I got since I already installed all the stuff and I'm just getting a weird message or two?" So they gave me a cable modem to plug it into, I booted it up, showed them one message which turned out to be that I needed to uninstall Norton, and the second was some arcane Lotus Notes problem, but the IT guy typed a few random incantations into it and it magically worked. I think I wasted a total of maybe half an hour of his time, so I guess I do feel a little bad, but it wasn't like I had some huge hours-and-hours-long issue to work through.

After work we had D&D at Cory's house. We now ACTUALLY have one session remaining. As in, our final boss to fight is in the floor above the room we're at. We've worked our way up the outside tower thing, found the ethereal plane portal, went up the other side, had a few fights, and are now there. We were going to do the shopping thing, since Cory got turned to stone (for like the third time -- honestly, he had sprung a prismatic spray trap early on and got turned to stone but Justin decided that'd be lame so instead he just got hit with a lot of damage by a ray. Then later, we had prismatic spray cast on the party and AGAIN Cory got hit by the "turned to stone" ray and AGAIN failed his save) but Josh decided to Miracle him back since I didn't have Stone to Flesh memorized, and so in theory we'll just plow through, next session. Though next session might not be until mid-December at this rate thanks to travel.

Today I meant to do some shopping and then go visiting people, but I was exhausted and slept until 2pm. Oops. So instead, I got up, called oren, went and picked him up around 4ish, and we drove down to Tacoma.

First I stopped by Narrows because the In The Groove nationals qualifying tourney was going on and I just wanted to stop by and say hello to people. I didn't see many people I knew -- darknote and toastercookie and Jedi and Shakespeare by the 5th mix, and cynic573 behind the table, and bobsyouruncle and crackoon getting ready to actually compete, and keevon over by the Beatmania III machine. There were bunches of other people there, but I didn't know who they were. I played a game of Beatmania so I could play 20 November just in case, and I also played a game of Drummania for the hell of it. Oren played a game of Initial D, and in the meantime Jeff had called me, so I called him back and we headed even further south down to Lakewood.

We got to damienroc and wooko's place, and they were there, as was Pete, and Julianne. Wooko took Pete home for some reason or another, and Jeff and Julianne and Oren and I went to grab pre-HP dinner; we ended up at Applebee's. It wasn't too bad. islandergirlro and Brien caught up with us to give us movie tickets at Applebee's, and then we all ended up at the theater a bit later, and we saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I'll talk about that in a second.

After the movie we came back and watched a 5-minute episode of some weird anime (Magical Play?) with "The 2-D vs. 3-D fight!", and then I suggested we watch the Simpsons softball episode, which was of course vastly entertaining, and then we all headed home. Whee.

Tomorrow I might go try to play IIDX at that new arcade thing, or maybe stop by Illusionz or such, but more likely I will just go shopping for my trip and maybe start packing. I will make sure to play 20 November on some Bemani game one way or the other, though.

I guess I'll LJ-cut in case people haven't seen the movie, but is it really possible to spoil it?

( Harry Potter And The Triwizard Tournament )

(A story of a young pitching wizard, by D. S. Rubin.)

Continued from Part 1.

Felix was sitting around in the Hogsmeade Rainiers dugout during batting practice a couple of days after the Drafting. Sure enough, first-year rookies weren't permitted to play on the big club, but Felix hadn't given up hope yet. Weasley Gonzalez, who had been optioned to the Hogsmeade team to work on his catching stance, had come by to hang out for a while and go over their plan for the evening's game. They spent a while talking about the opponents while their teammates ran around the field or took their swings in the cage.

It was a sunny but chilly afternoon, and most people were wearing warm jackets, including the mailroom boy Al, who ran by and dropped a rather large box in front of Felix's feet with a loud thud. Everyone looked over for a second, then went back to what they were doing.

( Read more... )

"This," said Moyer, "is the Royal Curveball, and it's the most important ball of the lot. It's very hard to catch because it's so fast and difficult to see," he said, winking at Weasley. "But that means it's also very hard to hit. It's going to take you all the way to the Hall of Fame, mark my words. I can't wait to see Derek Malfoy of the Slytherins swinging away at it."

"Fastball, slider, curveball," repeated Felix blankly.

"Yeah, you can use these pitches anywhere," said Moyer. "You can use them at the office, or on camping trips, or even at PTA meetings."

Weasley and Felix looked at each other quizzically. "Uh, what?"

"Nevermind."

(To be continued...)

Author's notes: "Royal Curveball" was a phrase coined on USSM... and yes, Jamie Moyer's dialogue may seem somewhat familiar if you've seen the 2005 Mariners commercials. Heh heh.