A Labor Day weekend at rest

Enjoying a lazy Sunday on Labor Day weekend. Yesterday was busy, with a dentist appointment in the morning and Call of Cthulhu in the afternoon, but I have nothing scheduled for today. Next weekend is novafigura and hopefulrefrain's engagement party, the weekend after that melishus_b and her boyfriend are coming from Seattle to visit, the weekend after that schoolpsychnerd and I are going to Seattle for t3chnomag3's wedding, and the weekend after that is Yom Kippur. But for the moment, I have very little to do.

I signed up for the pedometer challenge at work. This isn't really anything out of the ordinary for me, since ever since I downloaded a pedometer app for my phone that changes color I've tried to get 10K steps a day (about 8.1 km for me), but the team I signed is full of exercise junkies so we decided to compete in the 12K band. I got in my steps without too much trouble yesterday since I was already planning on reading while schoolpsychnerd was out, so I just walked around a bit with my book. Today I'm at 3.3K right now and we still have to go grocery shopping and clean later, but I'll probably have to do an hour of walking. It keeps me from spending twelve hours in a row playing video games like I used to and helps me keep up on my RSS feeds, and I actually enjoy walking. I just wish that we had our own house or a ground floor apartment sometimes. I try to walk softly and our downstairs neighbors have never complained, but...

I've started a new RPG project, because that's my primary outlet for creativity other than writing. I keep trying to adapt the old TSR AD&D setting of Dark Sun to something that I'd rather run it in, and after almost two years of Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom, I'm comfortable trying to adapt it into a hybrid of Exalted and NWoD. I haven't gotten very far, but I made a few changes (ported over Composure and Resolve, dumped Manipulation and Appearance, split Dexterity into Dexterity and Agility) and have some more in mind. The Essence stat in Exalted being universal means it works perfectly as a way to determine psychic potential, since everyone and everything in Dark Sun is supposed to be psychic. The way sorcerous motes work in Exalted 3e, where the sorcerer has to roll and accumulate energy, simulates the way Dark Sun wizards draw in life energy from plants to power their spells and allows me to give defilers an advantage by making their accumulation faster. There are enough dials on the weapon statistics that I can easily replicate the way most weapons are inferior because they're made of stone or wood or bone by tweaking them. I think it can work, and it'll be fun to work on, even if I never run it.

I have three maps on the wall of the computer room from the three fantasy settings that have most influenced me. One is the map of Vvardenfell from the Morrowind Collector's Edition; one is Chrono Trigger's Kingdom of Zeal, where dreams come true; and the third is a map of the Tablelands from the Dark Sun boxed set.

schoolpsychnerd has promised to make a special dinner tonight, but hasn't said what she's going to make. I'm not sure it matters, because I can think of only three times she's made something that I haven't liked it, and one of those didn't count because the flour had gone rancid. I'm looking forward to it.

I might have a Darker than Black later in the weekend, and probably a post tomorrow about a long-term personal goal that I've reached. I hope everyone else is having a good weekend!