Gourmet Weekend

For my 30th anniversary, my wife treated me to a gourmet weekend in Burg-Reuland, a small community in the province of Liège, Belgium. As a special bonus, she also invited our close relatives (brothers and sisters, parents, and children) to join us. My father-in-law had some prior engagements, so he couldn't join us. We also decided it would be best for our son to relax in a familiar environment with not too many people (what with all the hospital-adventures he's been through in the last few months), so my mother-in-law volunteered to stay home with him (for which we were, of course, immensely grateful!)

We arrived at the hotel on Friday afternoon, and stayed until Sunday afternoon. All meals were included and most were four courses, except for the meal on Saturday evening, which was a six-course dinner. Other than eating, we relaxed on the terrace overlooking the fishpond, went for a stroll through the village and surrounding country, or played boardgames. We all had a terrific weekend, despite one of the playing cards from my Shadows over Camelot boardgame getting caught in the wind and sinking in the fishpond. Which reminds me, I still have to order a new one.

Now, this wouldn't have been a blogpost, if I didn't have any musings on the topic. In fact, I have two.

First of all, it occurred to me how much happier our daughter was, with her brother not around. Not that she doesn't like him, though - she always enjoys watching her brother play and they both get along very well - but he always takes the center of attention, leaving her to mostly entertain herself. This time, though, she got passed from one person to the other, was fed bottles by nearly everyone present, was constantly played with, talked to, and cuddled. I've never seen her smile so much. She's an amazingly sweet girl, and I don't even enjoy half of it, so I've decided to pay her a lot more attention and spend a lot more time with her from now on.

Secondly - and this one wasn't a musing as much as it was a hammer on the head - I've come to realize, since I live in Dendermonde with my wife and children, how much I miss my parents, brother, and sister. The little time we spent together this last weekend reminded me so hard of our childhoods, the fun my brother, my sister, and I had together, and the conversations we held with our parents at the table, that our parting and saying goodbyes hit me like a train; I've been overly emotional ever since we got back, and I admit to breaking up in tears on more than one occasion by now. Much of it might be because of the exhaustion of the past half year, but some of it roots in these family ties for certain. So, I would also like to spend more time with them.

This might turn out to be a problem, though. I also decided to spend more time with our son, because he needs the care and attention now more than ever; I need more time for myself to blow some steam every now and then; and I don't want to spend any less time with my wife, because she deserves a lot of love and attention too (because if it weren't for her...)

I think it's about high time for some changes.

Game on!

I have the best wife a gamemaster could wish for.

Due to serious time constraints, what with a family and a demanding job, I've been deprived of my games for the last half year or so. Last week, though, I read an article about playing solo campaigns, and it suddenly dawned on me. If I could get my wife, who had played in my group sessions before, to agree to a solo adventure, we might just squeeze in sessions during evenings between dinner and bedtime.

And she agreed. We decided that D&D Pathfinder would be the best system since she was somewhat familiar with 3.5, and the Pathfinder rules don't change much. During the last couple of days, she rolled up a character she wanted to play, while I decided which adventure to run. She chose to play something completely unlike her: a male dwarven barbarian; I decided to run the first Pathfinder adventure path, Rise of the Runelords, slightly modified to work for a single player, and with the Pathfinder Beta rules.

I'm very anxious to see how this will turn out; it will certainly have a couple of positive effects. I will be able to spend time on at least one hobby again; I can improve on my GM and narrative skills; she can improve on her rules knowledge; and I finally get to see hands-on how the Pathfinder adventures play.

Baby, you're the best!

In the wake of a tragedy

What was supposed to be a routine grocery run this morning, turned out as an awkward, but touching trip down sympathy-lane.

The Belgian people among you need no introduction to the drama that occurred on Friday last week. Those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, read here.

This thing happened not far from where I live. In fact, I pass that nursery every Saturday when my son and I have our walk to the baker and the bank. Strangely enough, I have been able to remain calm and sober about this situation this last week, even considering the fact that I have a two year old son and three months old daughter myself. But today, that changed.

When we approached the nursery this morning, it was the first time I saw the scene since the incident. The entry was taped off, with an official memorial wreath barring the entrance to the building. Next to the wreath, I could see from afar some flowers and children's handiwork adorning the pavement. I remember thinking that it seemed very little, considering the impact this drama had caused, but assumed that most of what was left behind by sympathetic people had already been 'cleaned up'.

To my surprise, when I continued around the corner, the entire side of the building was stacked with toys, teddy bears, flowers, cards, candles, and who knows what more! It was a big mass of hopeful colors, a true sight to behold! I regret not carrying a camera at the time; you're just going to have to imagine it.

Continuing our walk, I started to notice how deserted and somber the streets around the nursery seemed, in contrast to the Big Prismatic Wall. The air was heavy with sorrow and fear, and I couldn't help but feel that the white balloons and ribbons attached to the front doors were not so much out of sympathy for the unfortunate families, than they were to ward off some evil spirit at their doorsteps.

As we came closer to the bakery and bank, we also approached the town's church. I guess it came as no surprise when I saw a hearse parked out in front of it. What did strike me as unusual when we walked around to reach the bank, though, was how the entire parking lot around the church was blocked from traffic, and several police officers were patrolling the church -- most likely to make sure no press would intrude on the privacies of the burial ceremony. I assumed either one of the two deceased children or the deceased nurse was to be buried today.

Having finished our errands at the bank, we set to return around the other side of the church to head home, and at that moment the bells started their funeral toll. The solemn ringing cut right through me, as my son and I watched from underneath up to the tower.

That was the first time since the tragedy that I've realized how extremely lucky I am with the family I still have.

Boozehounds!

Every morning I arrive at the train station of Oudenaarde, and every morning I see at least 2 people in a pub drinking beers. At 9 am. Every day.

It irritates me. I don't pay taxes so some people can spend their unemployment wages on alcohol every day. They should be finding a job, instead of wasting their lives and my money, damn it! Mind you, I have nothing against people drinking; just people drinking in the morning, when they should have better things to do.

I know it's not my business, and I know I shouldn't get riled up about it, but if I had some power in this country, I would submit a law that states that public places cannot serve alcohol before 12 am. Period.

Power-party

Last week was a scary week at our apartment. On monday, our electricity started to show peaks in voltage, which caused our lights to occasionally flash brighter and dimmer. As we advanced further into the week, it became intenser and even caused some household appliances to shortcut.

Thursday evening, Christmas day, was the culmination of the whole fiasco, when suddenly the lights in our living room went down. Then we heard something click in the kitchen, at which point I tried to turn on the lights there. They immediately went down too. Suddenly I smelled a distinct burning coming from the living room. We got out the flash lights and saw smoke coming out of our printer.

I immediately shut down the main circuit and called the technical services of our electricity provider, and they sent someone by to come measure the voltages. I also called our landlord to let them know about the problem. They promised to drop by as well -- on Christmas day none the less!

The guy from Electrabel, our power supplier, measured no abnormalities in the power coming into the building, so from their part it was all okay. However, at our apartment, he measured 400 volts on the sockets (where it should be no more than 220V). Since there was nothing he could do, he left and we waited for our landlord to arrive.

At around 22h, the landlord, his wife, their daughter and son-in-law arrived at the scene, and immediately set to work, trying to figure out the problem. At 23h30, they found and fixed the problem: an old powerline (I believe they called it 'line zero') had burned and caused a shortcut.

The resulting damage beyond repair includes:

• 3 cable modem adapters destroyed
  
• 1 cable modem destroyed
  
• 5 lightbulbs destroyed
• 1 halogen lamp destroyed
• 1 printer destroyed
• 1 computer screen destroyed
• 1 computer 6.1 surround speaker set destroyed
• 1 radio alarm clock destroyed

All this happened with two kids in bed, in pitch black darkness, while we had planned to leave on holiday for a week the next day. We are very grateful, though, that our landlord was kind enough to leave their home on Christmas day, to come and repair it as soon as possible. That way, we were still able to sleep a little and be gone in the morning.

Right now, we're still on our holiday, so I hope everything will still be okay when we get back home in a couple of days...

Week of Bad Luck

I think I just had my unluckiest week of the year.

• On monday, while driving from work to the train station, I got hit by a car. Well, perhaps 'tagged' is a better word; while driving along a bicycle path (with right of way), a car from a crossing street didn't see me and tried to advance slowly onto the intersection, when his bumper hit my left shin. I lost about a square centimeter of skin.
• On tuesday morning, after a night of severe freezing, I slid with my bike on the road and hit the ground. I still feel my ribs and hip when put force on that muscle.
• That evening, when returning from work, I noticed that one of my brand new bicycle lamps didn't work anymore. Apparently, I managed to leave it burning inside my pocket for an entire day, effectively draining the batteries in one go.
• While trying to remove that same bicycle lamp from my bike when I arrived at the train station, it was stuck in its placeholder. While trying to force it out, it suddenly sprang out, making two small cuts on the inside of my wrist from scraping it across the sharp borders of that light holder.
• On wednesday, I learned that our daughter was allergic to milk. It's the reason why she's been crying of belly-pains all the time. My wife had to stop the breastfeeding, and we had to buy special milk powder for our baby girl.
• On thursday, our son had a really bad day, throwing his books and toys towards his sister whenever she ate. He ended up 5 times in his box that day, as punishment.
• On friday, the monitor of our computer broke down.

In hindsight, none of these incidents actually got me down, though. I took them all with a good laugh, except of course the allergies of my daughter.

There were some good moments too, by the way. The new milk for our daughter has its effect; she has no more pains, is gaining in weight, and seems a lot happier now. We've also bought a new, 20-inch flatscreen for the computer yesterday, and on wednesday, we finally restarted our D&D campaign at work, after almost three months of downtime. So it wasn't all that bad.

Looking for D&D players

The D&D campaign that I was playing with a couple of friends for the last year has unfortunately died a slow death. Due to some major personal changes for almost all players, it was getting very difficult to get everyone together on a regular basis. Furthermore, interest waned as the story progression was grinding to a snail's pace -- at best, we played for four hours every two weeks.

Now that our daughter is born, our free time can be shaped again around our busy lifes. I'm hoping to fit a new D&D campaign in there, preferrably a little more intensive than the previous one.

So, this is a call to everyone who is interested in playing a new Pathfinder RPG (which is a slightly modified D&D 3.5) campaign. I'm looking for 3 to 5 players who

• live near Dendermonde, Belgium;
• can find the time to play one evening (or afternoon) a week;
• would like to play seriously for an extended period of time -- it's a full adventure path, which is going to take at least 2 years to finish.

If you meet these criteria, and are willing to meet new people in a friendly and fun environment of gaming, drop me a line. Also have a look at the Obsidian Portal wiki I've set up.

I can't wait to hear from you!