What a lovely fall day

[dorchadas]

Today we woke up and it was 12°C! There was a cool breeze basically all day, coming through the window in the morning, it was nice and cool when I ate my lunch out on the balcony in the early afternoon after taking Laila to school, it was nice and cool when I took Laila to the bus to take her to school and then had to go back and take the car instead because the bus never came, and it was cool when we went to sleep at night. After July and most of early August being insanely hot for weeks at a time, I'll take it. And it's going to last for all of this week! Amazing, 11/10, no notes. 🍂

Last weekend we briefly went to aaronhparker's housewarming. His girlfriend, long of Boston but now of Chicago, moved here a few months ago and got a job around the University of Chicago, so he moved down to Hyde Park and has been there for a couple weeks. We took the car that sashagee's parents are loaning us and drove down, stayed for about half an hour, and then left because we had to get Laila back home to bed. We met yoni-labow-5693413a and whoolia45 who were coming on as we were heading out--they had gotten a babysitter but we had not (sashagee is leery of babysitters because of Laila's baby brain troubles), so it was only for a moment, but we'll see them next week at their son's first birthday.

sashagee and I have both gotten into a game called Witch Spring R recently. I randomly saw it on Steam with an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating, looked into the reviews, and one of the top reviews was something like: "The main character is named Pieberry because her favorite foods are pie and strawberries. If that doesn't make you want to play the game I can't help you." It was on sale--and still is for a couple weeks as of this post--so we both bought it. She's already done with chapter one and wants me to play in tandem with her, so I started it up, but I'm playing in Japanese and I'm a bit out of practice so I'm playing through slower (I think I'm about half as far as her). You get to hunt ingredients and do alchemy, fight in turn-based battles, summon animal companions as your party members, fight witch-hunters and steal their pie, and leveling up involves a literal training montage--you pick various minigames and each has stats associated with it, like improving strength/speed has Pieberry doing pushups and improving pure magic has her throwing fireballs at targets. Do well on the minigame, and you gain extra stats. I screwed up pushups the first time because there was no tutorial popup and it went straight into the game so I couldn't read the instructions, but the same thing happened to sashagee and she's playing in English. Anyway, I was going to play Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia or maybe start up Final Fantasy III but instead I'm playing a game about a pie-obsessed witch. Review when I beat it.

A couple days ago, lisekatevans texted me out of the blue and invited me to a play/dinner, and I said I couldn't go to the play but I could go to dinner, so I met her and her husband and housemate at Beard and Belly and we spent a big chunk of time talking about D&D. She's running two D&D games--one for her friends, one for her coworkers--and playing in another game run by her husband, so D&D is now a big portion of her free time. She told me about a battle she was running set on a river, where they set up a boat (elevated, so it was obvious how deep the river was) and then put some tentacles around the boat from the water beast attacking the party, until her husband went, "Wait a minute, those aren't the tentacles" and went off and came back with some of his minis that lisekatevans hadn't seen yet and plopped them down like "These are the tentacles."

I've never played with minis, so this whole experience is alien to me, but it sure sounds cool.

I got the burger of the month, called the Afterburner, which had spicy whipped goat cheese, spicy peppers, spicy sauce, and I had to eat some fries every two bites because it was insanely spicy. It was very good, though, and then we all topped it off with pie from the bakery next door and went home. It was really great to lisekatevans after so many months--hopefully it won't be so long until the next time.

Comments

[omnipotent]

いい天気ですね ♡

I understand Mrs. being wary of sitters. Perhaps if y'all thoroughly vet a sitter through a service, maybe that might help a little when Laila is a little older? (At Laila's age, even though I'm not a parent, I, too, would be wary of leaving her with anybody.)

I have played with minis and I can tell you that the folks who are into minis are REALLY into minis, and seem to have minis for almost EVERY scenario.

"Spicy" and "goat cheese" seems like such an odd combo . . . I'm glad it was good, but just that combo alone would put me off, honestly.

[dorchadas]

Yeah--and at least at the moment, with Laila's baby brain troubles and her difficulty speaking, [Bad username or site: @ instagram.com name=] is very reasonably worried that Laila wouldn't be able to tell us if something was wrong. Maybe in a year.

I have played with minis and I can tell you that the folks who are into minis are REALLY into minis, and seem to have minis for almost EVERY scenario.

I have also met those people! It impressive, but it's so much work to get off the ground.