Under the gun Wordsmithery Popping out all over the place More craziness on Hephaestus Station
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Work has amped up a couple of zillion notches since I officially became a project manager at the end of last week. As is the way of things in the APS, this means (a) more responsibility and (b) no more money, but since I had basically nothing to do before, I’m not complaining for the moment. This endeavour to which I lend my countless years of experience, my drive and enthusiasm and my notable strategic powers (WTF?) is, however, an IT project, which means I have to be on my guard for the Forces of Doom and Entropy. As near as I can tell, fighting off said Forces is pretty much my job description (there’s also something in there about effective communicating, but I’ll deal with that absurd fantasy when I get to it), so expect lots of semi-disguised reports from the front lines over the next couple of months.
The novel’s still not done. All the characters keep jumping up and down and accusing me of ignoring them in my unseemly race for the finish line. Which is true. While I was writing last night, one of them just inserted herself into a scene and performed what I can only describe as a piece of character background improvisation, drastically changing her role in the story. And now I think there are other characters looking at her sideways and saying “Hey, if she can steal one last walk-on scene, then so can I”.
To which I can only reply “Keep your mouth shut or I’ll do to you what I did to her.”
Two sets of friends have had baby girls in the past week. Fiona’s cousin Erika and her partner Mal (a work colleague and cricketing buddy) had theirs at something like two in the morning on Friday the 13th. She was almost a week overdue, and in the end had to be delivered by caesarean, but Eks and baby Piper are reportedly fine. We’ll be seeing them tomorrow evening, I hope (although when I agreed to that I did forget that we have multisports after work, so I might have to double check that).
I’m getting this second hand from the answering machine, but it looks like Ange and Michelle had their baby girl (whose name I have temporarily forgotten) on Monday. I haven’t called to congratulate and find details yet, because I can’t seem to find their number, but yay!
Jimbo and ChrisT came over on Monday night for more Starship Manticore gaming. We’ve started putting the HeroQuest system through its paces, and I was very satisfied in particular with the way the Extended Contest rules smoothly added excitement and drama to a scene where the PC’s tried to overcome a malevolent AI and rescue some scientists (details when I update the campaign log thingy). Believe it or not, Chris’ idea to remotely control a lab manipulator arm to open a door was a dramatic high point, charged with risk and desperation. It’s that kind of system, and I’m loving how easy it makes the GM’ing job.
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