Peter, you're a whale.

And Grace, you're evil.

No, I'm not angry at my children! And, no, I haven't become a nasty vindictive mother who hurls insults at her kids in a vain attampt to boost her own ego and deny her own insecurities.

Nope, it's just church choir musical time.

This year's musical was "Oh, Jonah"; it's (duh) the story of Jonah and the Whale. Peter was the whale; he mainly had to do a boogie-swimmy-ish sort of dance, and did sing a bit (solo, he sang a lot in the choir). Peter memorizes well, and enjoys choir, but he is not, generally speaking, a child that covets the spotlight, so it was interesting to see him! He did quite well, though, and got some laughs.

Grace had a speaking line at the beginning of the musical, but really came into her own when the choir became evil Ninevites -- let's just say my girl tapped into her inner bad-guy. She looked EVIL. E-V-I-L Evil. Good stuff.

It was a fun morning -- we went for brunch at the Waffle Shoppe after!

Lawful? Really, me???

LOL! DUH!

I found a site with a (very long) survey; if you complete it, the nice webpage will tell you what D&D character you are.

So, of course, I took it!


I Am A: Lawful Neutral Elf Cleric (5th Level)


Ability Scores:

Strength-12

Dexterity-13

Constitution-12

Intelligence-16

Wisdom-15

Charisma-12


Alignment:
Lawful Neutral A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs him. Order and organization are paramount to him. He may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or he may believe in order for all and favor a strong, organized government. Lawful neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you are reliable and honorable without being a zealot. However, lawful neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it seeks to eliminate all freedom, choice, and diversity in society.


Race:
Elves are known for their poetry, song, and magical arts, but when danger threatens they show great skill with weapons and strategy. Elves can live to be over 700 years old and, by human standards, are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. Elves are slim and stand 4.5 to 5.5 feet tall. They have no facial or body hair, prefer comfortable clothes, and possess unearthly grace. Many others races find them hauntingly beautiful.


Class:
Clerics act as intermediaries between the earthly and the divine (or infernal) worlds. A good cleric helps those in need, while an evil cleric seeks to spread his patron's vision of evil across the world. All clerics can heal wounds and bring people back from the brink of death, and powerful clerics can even raise the dead. Likewise, all clerics have authority over undead creatures, and they can turn away or even destroy these creatures. Clerics are trained in the use of simple weapons, and can use all forms of armor and shields without penalty, since armor does not interfere with the casting of divine spells. In addition to his normal complement of spells, every cleric chooses to focus on two of his deity's domains. These domains grants the cleric special powers, and give him access to spells that he might otherwise never learn. A cleric's Wisdom score should be high, since this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.


Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)




Yeah, pretty much sounds like me... :-)

Crazy Afternoon

Today my group at work had our annual Christmas Lunch. Yeah, Christmas -- we've discovered that having a group lunch during December is nearly impossible; in early December everyone is busy trying to get work finished, and then people are frequently gone for the holidays.

Anyway, I got out of lunch, and discoverd many missed calls, voice mails, etc. from Jeff (PF Changs is apparently loud). Turns out Grace had fallen off a piece of playground equipment at school, and fell about 5 feet, hitting her neck and back on the way down. She was complaining of a pain in her neck (and it WASN'T her brother), so the school tried to call me, couldn't (stinkin' Christmas lunch), called her Dad, and called the paramedics.

Jeff got there a little before the paramedics, which was good. They (paramedics) decided to put a brace on her neck and put her on a back board, then take her to the ER.

At the ER they examined her, then took her back for x-rays (at which point I showed up).

Luckily, all was well; nothing broken, and with an afternoon of rest (cause, yeah, nothing moves fast in the ER, so we were there for over three hours), the pain subsided as well.

She's now on th chaise, plaing NBA 09 with her brother, is alert, not in pain, and her normal, exuberant Grace self.

But I'd really rather not go through that again!

Well, it IS an appositive...

Grace's reading homework tonight was to read a blurb on Paul Revere, then answer some questions; all having to do with finding the appositive phrases. Then they had to write their own sentence that contained an appositive.

Grace's sentence?

"I am My Own Worst Enemy, the first song I played on medium, is my favorite song in Rockband 2."

Let's just hope her teacher isn't a Lit fan....

My Rock-n-Roll kids...

I got Rockband 2 for Christmas: TONS of fun, incidentally.

Theoretically, it was for me and my kids. I have to admit, I kinda thought that was silly at first: my kids are 8 and 10; the 10 year old has, to date, shown NO signs of wanting to live a rock-n-roll kinda life, even vicariously. The 8 year old would LOVE to live a RnR live, vicariously or really, but doesn't quite have the hand-eye coordination for RB (plus she isn't tall enough to play drums -- her feet don't reach the bass pedal!).

But, surprisingly, they LOVE it! And as a result, I'm loving it even more than I figured I would!

When we play as a band, Peter plays guitar, I play drums, and Grace sings. Quite frankly, G's singing needs work, but I think that's as much a result of not having a clue what the songs/words are as anything (not much Hannah Montana or Jo-Bros on RB). Peter's guitar work is not bad. Between the three of us, we can typically get 3 or 4 stars.

So, as a result of this, my son now knows who the Beastie Boys are (and that I hate them), who Elvis Costello is (and that I love him), sings along to Duran Duran and Paramore, and (finally) understands that the song is Kids in America (not the Future) and it's by Kim Wilde, not the Jonas Brothers!

Oh, yeah, life is good.....

A Big Ol' Shout Out, and Whoosh again

So, various levels of thoughts sent through the ether:

• Ecclesiatical ongrats to Bruce!
• Long-time-coming (WAY too long, IMO) Congrats to Pete and Richard
• And good karma wishes to David

And, yes, that huge time-wasting pit of doom that I downloaded earlier this week is, indeed, just that. I started playing at 4:30; I looked up and it's 8:30, I've only barely eaten, Dazzle is hungry, its the bottom of the 4th in the UNC game, and Carolina's down 2-1.

But now having mentioned both the big ol' honkin' waste of time AND the UNC game (as well as sending good thoughts to friends and family), I can tag this post tons of ways. 'Cause it's all about the tags...

What was I thinking????

A couple of friends have been telling me for about three years now that I should play WoW (World of Warcraft), a fairly popular RPG. I've been resisting, for the main reason that I was pretty sure that if I started, I'd get hooked.

Well, I was bored tonight, so I downloaded a free 10 day trial.

WHOOOOOSH

That's the sound two hours makes as they speed by....