RPGs: We May Be Doing It Wrong

I play an RPG called "The One Ring" with a couple of friends on Sunday evenings (on the rare occasions when everyone can make it. So...once every month, maybe.), and it's a lot of fun. Other RPGs I've played over the years include but are not limited to, in reverse-chronological order, the Tomb of Horrors D&D module (which, as I look back on it, we *basically* "won," or at least, didn't lose, by running away from things), a rousing game of Mouse Guard (in which I forced a 15 minute discussion about what distances *really* meant - miles? or mouse miles? because human miles would be proportionally ENORMOUS compared to mouse miles! how fast can mice travel? etc etc etc. I am so fun!) and some AD&D stuff. Always very enjoyable.

Currently, I'm playing with a group where no one is any good at fighting. We should be okay at it, but our rolls are just the worst, and we've started handling this by running away. Often. During one fight, Ivar's strategy was to sign us an inspiring song, and then lasso a monster and kick it in the river. Now he's attempting to build an Athelas empire, a la "Breaking Bad." Lif (that's meeee!) is fixated on some severed thumbs we found AGES ago, because clearly they are important! Right? No. Everyone in Laketown thinks I'm creepy. And I've had limited success in trying to stab opponents in battle, even though I *should* be okay at things. I'm not. Terrible rolls. Avina isn't being generally ridiculous (though one battle strategy involved sending her dog to harass attackers), unless fluid dynamics are described in a manner that isn't consistent with real-world fluid dynamics, and this has actually been fantastic. "The lake water is still and mostly clear, but there is turbidity at the bottom." OH NO THERE ISN'T! (because the turbidity wouldn't be right at the bottom...you know what? Just trust me on this. Apparently, Carol is also someone for whom you should not run a module that includes any sort of sewer system. Because you're going to learn about how things do and do not actually work! I find this hilarious and educational.) The last major "fight" we had ended when we rushed our antagonist and pushed him down some stairs. I'm not kidding. The stairs were into a tomb, and in the tomb there was an angry mummy, so it was appropriately game-y, but we did not comport ourselves in a dignified battle manner.

This last session, we ended up using the power of local government to stymie some evil dude's attempt to get Smaug's teeth out of the lake at Laketown. Dragon teeth are never used for anything pleasant, and while we did float some ideas about getting the teeth first, or trying to destroy them, in the end, we suggested that it would be bad for the town's morale to disturb the bones of the dragon that burned it to the ground in its previous incarnation. We told, basically. We Parks and Rec'd that stuff.

We might be doing it wrong, but we totally lived to have another (fight-averse) adventure. And it's super, super fun.

Things to do on a Thursday in KC

Did you know that the Screenland in the Crossroads has an arcade? Did you know that they call it a bar/arcade, and not a "barcade"? Why wouldn't you embrace barcade? Did you know that it costs $5 to play as MANY arcade games as you want?

They have the Journey game.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="430"] Why does this exist?[/caption]

It is ridiculous, both in that it exists at all, and in its level of difficulty.

They had Tapper, and their website said they had Root Beer Tapper, but Root Beer Tapper wasn't...ahem...on TAP tonight. HAHAHA! Haa...Tapper is really fun, without being fiendishly difficult in the way that so many '80s video games are. Gauntlet has incredibly sarcastic narration! It was hilarious.

Other things: I am incredibly bad at Paperboy, BurgerTime is very difficult, Q-bert is also very difficult, Mortal Kombat II sounds like a Three Stooges movie if you can't remember what the actual moves are, and looks like it, too. Baraka and Shang Tsung in an epic slap fight to the anticlimactic "finish him." <slap> Ridiculous. Old arcade games are very hard! And very fun.

Four hours later, $5 poorer, many popcorns heavier, best Thursday night ever.

EDITED TO ADD: As of AGES ago, there 1. is no Screenland in the Crossroads, and the arcade in its $5 unlimited play incarnation is GONE. AND THIS IS SO SAD. I miss it every day.

Juicing: I Should Probably Keep Doing This

You may remember that I was *very* excited about juicing a couple of months ago, and I was making juice every day, and it was awesome, and I was keeping a ridiculously detailed spreadsheet, etc. Well, I got sick because that is how my body handles the transitions between seasons, and I stopped making juice for a couple of weeks. Then I got better, went to SXSWi, got a sinus infection, and ended up not making juice for a little over a month! (I know this because of the spreadsheet.) I did go to Jamba juice a couple of times while in Austin, but that hardly counts (it did reawaken my love of smoothies. Can't wait for summer!). Why didn't I make juice while sick? Laziness, habit, kept forgetting to buy kale, all these reasons and probably more. Actually, no. I think that's it.

When I was making and drinking juice almost every day, I noticed that my junk food cravings waned, and eventually almost disappeared. I'd have a soda once a week (at the Spectrum Live planning meeting), but I didn't really miss daily sodas, candies, or other traditionally awesome snack-type things. A couple of weeks ago, after not having had juice in several weeks, I started buying Kit Kats (when I say "buying" I mean "buying and immediately eating" and when I say "Kit Kats" I mean "like half a dozen Kit Kats") and drinking soda regularly and baking cakes (initially mistyped as "cats." I would never bake cats). It was very noticeable, and very weird. Today, I got a bag of post-Easter robin's egg candies (the ones that are basically malt balls) and ate half of it. Also I got a 2-liter of Dr. Pepper and drank several cups. These are facts. Another fact: My stomach hurts.

What I am trying to say is that, normally, I have a ridiculous sweet tooth (my ability to eat candy is legendary and terrifying) and absolutely no desire to curb it. What I noticed when I was drinking juice regularly, was that I just wasn't interested in the snacks that I would usually gravitate toward.

I've heard other people talk about not wanting the kinds of junk foods that they liked before they started making juice, and while I believed them, I was surprised that it was the same for me. I was also surprised by how *quickly* this shift occurred. So there's that.

This isn't to say that juice is a magical, life-changing thing. Juice can have a lot of sugar in it! I'm fine with that! I just think that I'm probably, personally, better off drinking juice than I am, say, eating 2 pounds of Twizzlers, which I WOULD have done over Easter weekend, but lately, every time I go to get Twizzlers, the regular strawberry ones are sold out and all they have are the pull-and-peels, which are disgusting, or the weird tropical flavors. Or Red Vines. Red Vines are *fine* but they're not *inspiring.* Not like strawberry Twizzlers. Other things, while I'm bragging about candies I have eaten: I used to pour Skittles into juice glasses and just eat them until my jaw hurt so much I couldn't eat any more. I also used to live on Raisinets, Mountain Dew Code Red, Twizzlers, McDonalds food and V8. The V8 was for health. Obviously. Also I'm not kidding. Shockingly, I do not have diabetes. Yet.

Back to things that aren't focused on my amazing ability to consume sugar, which I am weirdly proud of, and other people are openly horrified by:
Previously, I would make one particular juice recipe (mean green, outlined on this blog and many other places on the web), and if I didn't have those ingredients, I'd go to the store so that I could get them, and while that's an awesome and economical juice (about $3 per batch, which is just under a liter of juice), I decided that today was the day I was going to get back into juicing, and expand my juicing horizons.

Today's juice recipe:
2 large gala apples
7 carrots
1 lemon
a bunch of spinach (I stuff handfuls of lettuce into a container and then I use one or two containers per batch, depending on whether or not I have other dark leafy greens to use)
4 stalks celery

Yield: just under 1 liter of juice.
Taste: delicious.

I just have to remember to keep a couple of key elements in the house (haven't decided which those are yet - maybe apples. Apples are always nice to have around, since they make good snacks, and are a good delivery system for peanut butter. Apples, lemons because they last forever, carrots, dark green leafy vegetables. There! Solved it!) and I have to stay in the habit of making juice. Because it is awesome.

What to do when you have a bag of vegetables and no plan

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="639"] Vegetable dinner.[/caption]

My friend Steve came over with a bag of vegetables, and we managed to make an awesome dinner of kale stuff, Brussels sprouts, stir fry and rice.

Rice:
Make some rice in whatever way you usually make rice.

Brussels sprouts sauteed in butter, with salt and pepper. A classic, but delicious.

Vegetable stir fry:
Ingredients:
Broccoli
Asparagus
Onion (diced)
Garlic (minced)
Olive oil
Sesame oil
Fish sauce
Sweet chili sauce
Soy sauce

Everything is pretty much to taste. This is how stir fry works!
Saute onions and garlic in oil. Add broccoli. Add asparagus. Add sesame oil, fish sauce, soy sauce, sweet chili sauce and some water. Cook until broccoli and asparagus are ready.

Kale with stuff:
Onion (diced)
Garlic (minced)
Olive oil
Chicken broth - 1 can
Dijon mustard - 1 tbsp
Apple cider vinegar - just a quick dash
Sugar - 1 tbsp
Kale - as much as you can fit into the pot
Lingonberry preserves - 1 tbsp

In a medium pot, saute onions and garlic in oil. Add broth, vinegar, mustard, sugar. Bring to a boil. Add kale. Cover and let simmer for 5 minutes (or until kale is done). Add preserves and stir in. Serve over rice!

Things You Can Do Over a Weekend

1. You can go see a play!
I saw "Slashdance" at the Coterie After Dark. For anyone living in Kansas City, the Coterie is an institution. Their not-for-children productions are often very original and very good. The set design is inventive and the performances are excellent. I have never seen "Flashdance," so I don't think that I fully appreciated all of the jokes, but it was still an excellent horror/spoof/comedy. As good as "Sorority House of the Damned," and better than "Children of the Damned Corn."

2. You can subscribe to a hippie magazine!
After spending some quality time in the Barnes and Noble in Zona Rosa, I was sufficiently intrigued by "Mother Earth News" to subscribe for a year. Things I said to Mike this weekend, after reading the latest issue: "You could raise chickens!" "We could build a greenhouse!" "We should go to this hippie fair in Lawrence in October!"

3. You can prepare for a storm by going to the store!
I got chocolate milk, marshmallows, Reese's peanut butter cups and Kit Kats. Prepared!

4. You can make a terrible mocha and drink it very quickly.
Maybe don't do this one.

5. You can watch "Safety Not Guaranteed."
I didn't know what to expect going in, but it was so much more, and so much better, than I could have imagined. Given that the three leads are fairly prominent presences on sitcoms, their performances were familiar but not expected. Everyone was excellent. The story was interesting and emotional without being maudlin or overly contrived. There were two very slow chase scenes, which were unexpectedly hilarious. I felt more feeling than I expected to feel. The description of longing for something that has gone away was achingly poignant and beautiful. I really liked this movie. You should watch it.

6. You can shovel a driveway.
Ugh.

7. You can almost buy a mo-ped on Craigslist.
Don't do this one. You don't need a mo-ped. You have a bicycle! (right? no? get a bicycle! they are so great!)

8. You can do laundry.
Maybe it would be a good idea if you have some time!

9. You can get very paranoid about a wall in your basement that has ALWAYS bulged a little bit, to the point where you call your neighbor who knows about this stuff to make him come over and look at it and tell you that it's okay.
This is another one that I can't really recommend, but it's certainly how I spent part of my evening! (and yes, it is okay!)

10. You can sit on a couch so your cats can hang out and fall asleep on you.
This is probably the best thing you can do over a weekend.

When bored in gloomy weather, make some food

A few things happened today.
1. I have been reading too many finance blogs, and feel a little bit bad about driving to the grocery store, which is only a mile away from my house. Mostly because the one I stayed up until midnight reading last night is written by a bike evangelist. Bike everywhere! Stop driving! Why do you keep driving places?
2. It snowed and was all gloomy and grey all day.
3. I had a discussion with a friend about how it is much, much cheaper to bake an ENTIRE cake than it is to buy a single cupcake. Also, I don't particularly care for cupcakes, on account of the frosting to cake ratio (it is too high!). She pointed out that the downside to baking a cake is that you then have an entire cake. You could eat an entire cake. I disagreed with the "downside" assessment.

Because of these things, I ended up coming home from work, walking (I'm still sick! Biking was too much!) to the grocery store to get supplies, then making chili (I had meat in the freezer from my "I think eating meat is a great idea!" days and I hate to waste things. Also chili is one of my very favorite things to make and eat) and baking a cake.

The chili won't be ready for a couple more hours, which is disappointing, but I'm excited about lunch tomorrow. Also, this is a HUGE batch of chili. It's going to see me through the last of this lingering winter weather. It's not even my usual oddly vegetable-heavy "recipe." ("Would you like some chili?" "Yes. Wait...did you put a bunch of vegetables in it?" "No. Well, carrots." "You always put carrots in chili!" "Well I always have carrots in the house!" This is true. Sometimes I put broccoli and cauliflower in chili. That's...not the best. At some point, it just becomes an aggressively tomato-heavy vegetable stew.)

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Chili without a bunch of vegetables. Aka "actual chili.""][/caption]

The cake was supposed to have chocolate frosting, but the frosting I had was very, very old, and I didn't trust it. I thought about making frosting, and then decided to just have plain chocolate cake. Because that's totally good too!

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="The cake, in this case, is not a lie."][/caption]

Recipes!

Actual meat-heavy chili without a bunch of vegetables (this makes a LOT of chili. As they said in "Jaws," "We're going to need a bigger crock pot." You will, in fact, need a very large crock pot. You could also make this in a very large pot on the stove, but I like the crock pot because it requires very little supervision)
Ingredients:
1# ground turkey
1# ground sausage
2 tbsp minced garlic
2 onions
5 or 6 medium sized carrots
1 cup assorted dried beans (in this case, half Great White Northern beans and half pinto beans)
1 can light red kidney beans
2 largeish (14 oz) cans of diced tomatoes
2 small cans (4 oz? 6 oz? they were little) tomato paste
1 small can of sliced mushrooms
1 can cheap beer (Budweiser is great for this)
1 tbsp cumin
lots of chili powder
pickled jalapeno brine if you have it, to taste

Slice onions and carrots. Thaw meat, if necessary.
Saute the garlic and onions in a skillet until fragrant. Add ground meat and brown (I had to do this in 2 batches, it'll depend on your skillet).
Put everything in the crock pot. Add water if necessary, so that there's a good amount of liquid (you'll need it for the beans). Cook on high for 5-7 hours, or until the beans are done (the Great White Northern beans are the best ones to test, because they take the longest). Add water if necessary. Stir occasionally. Add hot sauce at the end (preferably something with cayenne and vingar).
Eat.
Feel better about this whole "cold weather in what is now technically Spring" thing.

Cake:
It's a box cake mix. It was $0.99. Read the box. Make the cake. Let the cake cool before you try to cut it or it'll just be a mess.
Eat some cake.
Think about how awesome it is that you have a WHOLE CAKE now!
Package up majority of cake to share with others.

How to make, and then make better, some gravy stuff

Last night, I essentially made a roastless pot roast in the crock pot. Sliced carrots, celery and potatoes, with half a package of stuffing mix that I'd had in the cupboard. I added water, set on high, and cooked for several hours. The result was uninspiring, as you would expect roastless pot roast to be.

Today, I took that disappointing roastless pot roast and turned it into chickenless, pieless chicken pot pie. I did this by cooking butter and flour in a skillet, then stirring in the stuff from last night.

Delicious. Given the various names, and math, all you are left with is "pot." But I'm going to call it "gravy stuff" instead. It is the latest addition to a proud line of "what do I have in the house, and what can I make with it? And can I use my crock pot to do this?" recipes.

Gravy Stuff Recipe:
Whatever conventional vegetables you have on hand (carrots, onions, celery, potatoes). Slice them.
Cook on high in crock pot with spices, or stuffing mix, along with enough water to cover about 3/4 of the vegetables. This will take a couple of hours, but not too long. It's just vegetables. You could also do this on the stove. Once they are done, stir butter and flour into a roux in a skillet, then pour in the liquid from the crock pot. Stir until the consistency you want. Add salt and pepper.

If you had cooked chicken (or canned chicken) handy, you could easily add that and end up with a "chicken a la king" type dish.