It occurs to me, in the aftermath of my first day back after some time off (took a trip, then got riotously ill), that this was a very intelligent choice. Good boots make your whole bearing more solid. You have good traction on the ground, support for your ankles, and your feet don’t feel like they’ve been put through a grinder at the end of the day.

Hey, I said I was back. Didn’t say I’d be relevant or interesting.

That is to say:
GAH, TOO MUCH SUN!
WHAT’S GOING ON?
MAKE THE HURTING STOP!

I have, in succession, been sick, busy, attempting to prove my existence to the government of Ontario, bumped up to full-time work from part-time, been stuck in a heat-wave, crossed the country, been sick again. And here I am.

I did get a lot done this summer, but none of it involved blogging.

All two of you who have still got me on your blogroll can now cheer. I’m back! Ish. I guess.

Thank you.

Yeah, I have bronchitis. It’s chronic with me, so this is just the most recent (and frustrating) flare up. It does interesting things to my voice, though.

Well, on May 9th, I departed to spend a week in Ohio with my girlfriend. It’s ye olde long distance, writ large; I live in Ontario and she in Ohio. But in May, hurrah, a visit!

We had a fine old time, doing… well, just regular things. We cooked together, watched a couple movies (Have I recommended Iron Man 2? Allow me to recommend Iron Man 2), played with the cats, I made her bagels, and I put a diamond ring on her finger and asked her to marry me. ¹ We went to the zoo, we visited a bookstore (she bought some history books; I, the fifth Hitchhiker’s book and Brandon San
derson’s Elantris). We played some video games (Little Big Planet, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Fallout 3). I introduced her to pool (a pool table in the basement and you don’t use it for a dozen-odd years? Tragic) and was thence roundly stomped.

Okay, so not entirely ‘just regular things’. The zoo had an exhibition of eminently adoptable pets from the local humane society.

This was the first and most exciting of the things that happened in May. You now have a minor update on The Life of Llan! Apologies that this is more of a newsdump than The Most Exciting Thing to Cross Your RSS Feed; they can’t all be gems.

So rather than ‘no news to report’, what’s actually been happening is ‘too much, too fast, too exciting to blog’. There’s been exciting stuff happening at Llanion Central, and I’ve just been too busy to sit down and write it all out.

So, yes, dusting off the old RSS feed, and we’ll be seeing some new activity in these parts. Stay tuned!

I have. I spent a fascinating two weeks one summer several years ago as a lifeguard and counsellor at a summer camp. Part of that involved supervision of children in canoes and kayaks, which necessitated me, myself, being waterborne and– unlike most of my family and friends– I’m not a fan of canoes. So as my craft of choice, I had one of the camp kayaks.

When I got home, I wanted nothing more than to get a kayak of my very own; at least, I did right up until I priced one, at which point I decided I wanted to keep a functioning pair of kidneys more (that being the only way I had at the time of raising that kind of money).

If you’re getting the gist that these aren’t exactly the cheapest items in existence, you’d be right. A cheap kayak can range into $400 at the low end. That’s a cheap kayak, mind you. An expensive one, you can just add a zero to the end of that figure.

My dream of levelling my STR and CON scores with a kayak was crushed².

It was only a couple weeks ago that I realized several things.

1. This is the internet. We have everything here.
2. People used to make kayaks by stretching waterproofed canvas over wood.
3. Boatmaking may be a skilled profession, but the way to learn is to make a boat.
4. When I want something, typically, I just make it. Pizza, bagels³, children’s toys, small items of furniture, computers, even beer… so why not a boat?

I started looking around the web. As of this evening, I have designs, plots, plans and measurements. I’ll be picking up materials in the next couple days. This has a fair few advantages over a purchased kayak; to wit, that I get to build it myself, which should be fun; that I get it at a hopefully much-reduced cost, and I can oversee every stage of its construction. Also, plastic and fiberglass kayaks are much, much heavier than a wood-and-canvas one (the quotes I keep hearing are around 25 to thirty pounds; something you can lift in one hand, basically).

Stay tuned, folks—it’s going to be a wild⁴ ride on the posts filed under this tag.

And now something to look at. Here we are:

  The music linked above is Vanessa Mae’s remix of Vivaldi’s Summer- her version, she called Storm, and it fits the picture more or less perfectly. The picture is of three of the pieces in Warmachine, a tabletop wargame, and my current game of choice.

See, as you may (or may not) know, while I am a gamer, I am finding increasingly (in, say, the last year and a half, or perhaps two years) that I’m really enjoying offline games as much or more than video games.

I’ll give you all a moment to finish screaming “sacrilege” and calling for my immediate execution, but it’s true. Whether it’s Agricola, RISK 2240, Munchkin (and its many, many varieties) Power Grid, SmallWorld, or Dominion, I really enjoy offline board and/or card games¹. All the games named above, while excellent games, have a… call it a quirk to them. They’re all excellent games, but—with the exception of Dominion and to some extent Munchkin—they are static.

What I mean by ‘static’ is this: Any single copy of the game plays like any other. Dominion I consider borderline non-static, given the incredible variations you can pull off² and, of course, Munchkin has that mix-and-match flavoring going on, but there’s no customization.

Now, there are other tabletop games that are non-static. The three big kinds are TCGs like Magic or the WoW TCG, role-playing games like Shadowrun and Dungeons and Dragons, and tabletops miniatures games like Warhammer, Warmachine (pictured above) or Monsterpocalypse³. While you are given a basic toolkit to start with, you ‘build’ your playing pieces to interact with the game the way you want to.

This is basically a long-winded way to say: I’ve started playing Warmachine. I really enjoy it. See the pretty picture? Those are three of my pieces. I’m playing as a team called Cygnar⁴, but with my own color scheme (purple, white, and rusted metal) substituted for the faction’s usual colors⁵.

You’re likely to see much more of Warmachine around here, so it is now its own category tag.

So, yes. This is an introduction and a warning; you are likely to see any or all of the following on this blog in the future:

• Battle reports.⁶
• Painted, unpainted, and in-progress models.
• Fiction. There’s a reason my units are purple and rust instead of gleaming blue-white and gold. And I am an incurable writer and roleplayer.
• Comparisons between Warmachine and some of my favorite video games⁷.

Yes, still alive. I’m working on some exciting business ventures (I’ll get further into those another time), not doing much in terms of video games at the moment.

Mostly, I’m waiting (with a truly desperate impatience) for my Cygnar battlebox to arrive at the local comic shop and gaming store. I have begun playing Privateer Press’ tabletop combat game Warmachine. Really enjoying it. I’ll have to throw pictures of my army up when it gets here…

/wanders off, muttering impatiently

So here I am, back in the as-it-were saddle of the internet, once again loading my digital cannonry to fire bytes upon bytes of pure chaos in your general direction.

So here we go: First post back, and, as I am gravely indebted to Lady Jess, I took a request: “Blog about pretzels!”

Here, then, I am: Blogging about pretzels.

First, so we can establish what’s going on, an illustrative picture.

Ladies and gentlemen, yours truly in kitchen battle garb:

Let’s begin. You will need (assuming you actually want to make pretzels here) the following:

1 tablespoon yeast;

1 tablespoon maple syrup*

3 cups all-purpose flour*

2 tablespoons margarine or butter, softened*

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup very warm water (but not boiling)

You will also need:

Two cookie sheets, a small or medium saucepan or pot partly full of water, and roughly a tablespoon of baking soda.

Toppings (coarse salt, black pepper, oregano, Montreal Steak Spice, dried crushed chilies, parmesan cheese, etc)*

*All these ingredients can be substituted for an equal amount of a similar ingredient; maple syrup can be replaced with honey, white sugar, brown sugar, or even Pepsi; flour can be replaced with hard whole wheat flour if you prefer it; I tend to use olive or vegetable oils instead of margarine or butter and, of course, toppings are completely at your own discretion.

Let’s Begin:

Place your yeast and your maple syrup into a medium-large bowl as shown below, adding the oil.

Add the salt

And stir it all up well. Then add the water,

one cup of the flour, and mix very well. The mixture will start to bubble; leave it alone for about five minutes.

After about five minutes, stir in the rest of the flour. The dough should be slightly sticky but not too difficult to work with; turn it out on a lightly floured board and knead.

If the dough persists in sticking to your hands or the work surface, work more flour into it as you knead. Knead for approximately five minutes, then return it to the bowl and allow it to rise in a warm place until it doubles in size (or about sixty to eighty minutes).

Remove the dough from the bowl, punch it down, knead it again for about five minutes, and divide it into twelve equal parts. Roll each of these pieces into a pipe between twelve to eighteen inches long. You now have two options:

1: Cut the pipe into three four-to-six-inch pretzel sticks, or

2: Twist each pipe into the traditional pretzel shape. As you can see below, I took this option with my latest batch.

As you’re shaping the pretzels, put the tablespoon of baking soda into your pot of water and bring it to a boil; you should also, at this time, begin pre-heating the oven to 475. You’re going to boil the pretzels for about a minute on each side, remove them from the water with a slotted spoon, allow them to drain for a moment, and put them on your cookie sheet.

You should add your seasonings to the pretzels the moment they come out of the pot; you can either have a dish of seasoning standing by to press the pretzels into gently, or sprinkle the toppings on.

The pretzels, once they are all boiled, bake at 475 for 12-15 minutes, or until they are golden brown, thus:

Enjoy!

Be sure to drop in on Thursday for “Things That Are Cool: LibriVox"!

Knights of the Old Republic- a game by BioWare, the geniuses behind Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate and Dragon Age: Origins- combines my love of Star Wars, my love of RPGs, and my love of swordfights in one glowing, fast-moving, lightning-chucking telekinetically-choking rumble.

I loved it, if you hadn’t gotten that impression.

Tonight, I was at The Heroes’ Lounge (my local comic shop) and I picked up the first couple issues of Dark Horse Comics’ treatment of Knights of the Old Republic. Will it follow the plot of the game? Will it dance around it, showing the story from secondary characters’ points of view?

I don’t know. But my inner ten-year-old is demanding I get off the internet, forget about being at work tomorrow, baking plans for the weekend, and just about everything else… curl up under the blankets, listen to the thunderstorm*, and read about the Knights of the Old Republic.

Should these comics be excellent, I will no doubt be raving about them soon. (Should they be terrible, the same raving will probably be occur, but it might be labelled more of a ‘rant’.)

*I have hooked up my iPod, with an ambient recording of a thunderstorm, on loop, to the sleep timer on my iPod alarm clock. I love thunderstorms, too.