I gave blood today without getting sick! WHOO!
I’m not sure what I did differently today, other than standing up slowly and eating and drinking double the normal amount at the canteen table.
Category: Exertion
I’d always thought that the route I ran–when I ran–was about three miles: my average plod is about 6mph, and I ran for roughly half an hour. Also it kind of… felt three-milesish.
This morning Leonard delicioused the GMaps Pedometer, which allowed me to discover that my route was… 3.0165352158455165 miles!
At least I know that for a while, I was still in reasonable shape to run a 5k (for which half an hour is a hideous time).
So I already put my bragging rights at stake in the Iron Game Chef contest, which means I need to design a game. This year involves not only the standard time limit and ingredient requirements, but a set of rules limitations as well. It’s a timed constrained game writing exercise! It’s a good thing those all make me gasp with excitement, because I’ve only got six days left and I haven’t so much “started.”
So here’s where I’m thinking of going. This isn’t an opinion poll–I’m going to make the game that I believe in the most; I just want to have a sketch-record in case I come back to some of these later. You’re welcome to steal anything here and make your own game, of course.
- Enemy of the People: Two groups of players work in tandem, able to communicate only via a shared map. One plays a group of Navajo scouts in 1360 AD, the other a modern-day group of archaeologists, both trying to unravel the mystery of the abandonment of Mesa Verde–the former group via the spirit world, the latter via science. The game is played on a strict time limit, because once the sun goes down, the mystery starts to reveal itself in a supernatural, lethal fashion…
Ingredients: Anasazi disappearance, 1300s. “Entomology,” “Accuser” and “Companion.” Multi-meaning die rolls and pregenerated characters.
Problems: Huge and clunky. Not sure I can do this without a very coordinated pair of GMs, which I don’t want.
- We Are Rock Stars: 1998, California. Brilliant geeks search for identity and social acceptance while struggling not to let their offbeat interweb startup get washed away in the tide of venture capital–or see the tide recede.
Ingredients: Dot-com boom, late 1990s. “Entomology,” “Wine” and “Invincible.” Multi-meaning die rolls.
Problems: InSpectres probably does this as a subsystem, and better.
- Alexandretta: Merchant caravans roam the highways and seaways of a young and exotic island empire, racing to clinch deals, watching (and affecting) the wash of supply and demand to maximize their profits.
Ingredients: Loosely based on the heyday of the Silk Road. “Wine,” “Companion” and “Accuser.” Color-based resolution and custom card deck.
Problems: I don’t know anything about economics. Also, not sure this is actually a role-playing game.
- Welcome to the New World: Accused criminals are denied trials and sentenced to hard labor at a lunar prison colony where all light is blue, and visible colors a jealously guarded luxury. The prisoners’ desperate secret is that only they can produce the physically inexplicable property of color–and only by their suffering and death. Lethal, oppressive horror.
Ingredients: “Wine,” “Companion” and “Accuser.” Color-based resolution, obviously. Historical basis: pick one.
Problems: I’m not sure I have the balls for this, and I don’t know anybody who would actually want to play it.
I’m kind of scaring myself, right now, by leaning toward the last one. I’ll pick for real tonight.
Terza
Aahhhh, I can’t do it! I did manage to write this within the constraints I imposed, but it ends up too incoherent to be a real story, so I’m sacrificing the basic premise in order to satisfy the extra ones. That’s weak. Ergo this isn’t going in Anacrusis, but I’ll gladly dump it on you here, where apparently I have no standards.
I no longer think it’s possible to write a terzanelle in 101 words that’s still a good story, and I’m positive it can’t be done in meter. I’d love it if you proved me wrong.
There’s little to Terza but her frame.
She rolls. Nine sixes again:
at the Thousand-Year Club they’re all the same.They gambled away bad luck, when
they thought they were wise.
(She rolls nine sixes again.)When age dulled their eyes,
they’d gamble that away as well,
they thought! They were wise.Terza chose to lose Hell
(she’d be different here);
they gambled that away as well.Risk can’t be where fear
is not. Alone she’d be different; here
she’s one more clone.There’s little to Terza, but her frame
is not alone at the Thousand-Year Club:
they’re all the same.
Actually I am quite good about commenting
I spent most of the past week and almost all of the last 24 hours writing code for my Master’s degree project, because I’m a terrible person. And then today I came in to work on zero sleep for the first time. This should be different.
On the bus here, I had a dozing dream about falling out onto a huge slick plain of PHP and whitespace. I knew it was stuff I’d written, but I couldn’t figure out where in the whole scheme it fit. I was lost! It could be miles to the nearest comment! It was pretty scary.
I have (wisely, I think) decided not to write an anacrusis about this.
Ninety minutes later, I still don’t feel well
I gave blood for the first time at GSP, which was, hideously, almost seven years ago. I haven’t gone a year without donating since then. At my current job, I’ve given at all but one (I was sick) of our company-wide blood drives, which happen every two and a half months. I’m fairly experienced at these things. I always prep with lots of water, and I eat a decent lunch, sans french fries.
But dammit, it keeps getting worse. I used to get nervous and shaky, so I started bringing my CD player along, and that helped. Then I started getting light-headed and hot at the snack canteen; last time I had to lie down with my feet on a box and drink nasty Powerade. Today I took twice as long as usual, so they had to reseat the needle–a new and disturbing experience–and I didn’t even make it off the donation table before I almost passed out. Giving blood sucks!
Not gonna stop, though.
The Kill Satan With Music Mix
Mix CD post. You’ve been warned. Also, this is actually version 1.1; I’m using 1.0 right now, but there are a couple of songs (Marilyn Manson and Rob D) that I need to cut out.
- Maroon 5 – Harder To Breathe
- Jimmy Eat World – Bleed American
- Jimmy Eat World – A Praise Chorus
- Lunatic Calm – Leave You Far Behind
- Pearl Jam – Do The Evolution
- Foo Fighters – All My Life
- Rob Zombie – Dragula (Hot Rod Herman mix)
- Beastie Boys – Sabotage
- The Prodigy – Smack My Bitch Up
- Lo Fidelity Allstars – Battleflag
- Propellerheads – Spybreak
As far as I can tell, this works equally well on straight through or shuffle. The only constants are that the Maroon 5 song must be first, because it doesn’t fit anywhere else, and the Foo Fighters song must be sixth, because that’s about when I decide I should give up running forever and go home and get fat. There is no song in the world as good at making you run as “All My Life.”
If you think this is interesting, let me know; if I get a few requests I’ll post the mp3s.
Running post
You’ve been warned.
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that I have a bad ankle–more specifically, chronic tendonitis, on the right. This is maddening because up until now, I’ve been able to overcome my physical defects by either waiting or just trying harder (see asthma, bad hair, being underheight, being underweight, being overweight, et al). I mean, even with myopia, I could at least squint without making the condition worse. Not so the gimp!
In an effort to prove that all of the above is untrue, I’ve actually been running more often recently, and surprised myself on Wednesday by hitting a Schrodinger Point. I always turn around after the fourth song on the Kill Satan With Music mix; since it takes longer to come back than to go out, this ensures a solid thirty-five-minute run. Normally I hit that mark before reaching an easily recognizable corner in Old Louisville, but last time I hit the corner first with an easy minute left.
That’s encouraging, and I want to see if I can repeat it, so I’m going to try again today. For the first time ever, I’ll be wearing my new ankle brace.
Oh, yeah, I should post the Kill Satan With Music mix when I get back.
Update 1930 hrs: To nobody’s surprise, I couldn’t! Repeat it. But the ankle brace did help.
Charity ad seen on the back of a bus:
Donate Your Car To Us
& End Homelessness
“The Hausenbildenmächina works at last, Greta! It could be change the future of the world! But the reaction only occurs at exactly 88 miles per hour.” Hans shakes his head in despair. “I can’t go that fast! Not even on my European racing-style bicycle!”
“Ach, Hans!” Greta takes his hands in her own. Her eyes are full and bright. “I always believed in you, always knew–if only we had some way to obtain one car! Any car! But our German-or-possibly-Austrian credit doesn’t carry over to these United States.”
“Greta,” says Hans, face suddenly alight, “I may just have a plan!”