Take the cilantro, leave the zamboni

But today has been funny.

New tactic for happy rooming: if roommate decides to sit at the breakfast table with me while I'm reading a gaming book (the SG book in this case), she should expect to get ranted to. The topic this morning was why the hell was there a boating skill, reasons that actually made sense, and general riffing on the idea that there oughtta also be a fishing skill. (There isn't. The rationale for boating is that a character could be from the US Navy, and it has nothing to do with Jack O'Neill's interest in fishing, though certainly Ms GM here will be happy to accomodate characters interested in fishing or boating. Though you might wanna proceed with caution if you're into catching eels or watersnakes, as you might have colleagues who are grossed by that. I'm just sayin'.) It really amazes me that she'll listen to it for long as she does; I explained some of what GMs do and she was interested.

Last night was also odd. I got treated to my first episode of Forever Knight. I like it. It's satisfyingly Canadian and I understand more now why there are all those flashbacks on Angel. And we went to Pier 1, where we found the cutest little iron tealight holders shaped like stylized snails, each with a coil of wire where the shell would be, to hold the candle. They're horribly cute. Jennifer took one look at them and intoned, very dramatically, "Snails... on... fire!" And a running joke was born. Pier 1 is like crack for me: it's WAY too easy to go there and buy lots of cool stuff.

I now have two Snails On Fire on my plant table, Jennifer was right, they look good there. And did I mention that the prayer plant, the rosary plant and a spider plant are blooming? It's amazing. Prayer plants put up tiny purple flowers that only last a day or two. So cute.

So now I'm trying not to think about Snails On Fire and get some work done. One cool thing I picked up today: A nifty article about buffering against traumatic stimuli, which makes me think about my previous remarks about how watching gross stuff in movies is much worse for me than real emergencies that I can take an ACTIVE role in fixing.

Me: [reading from Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt] "Perhaps because of its central dietary role, beer was a key economic commodity. The values of goods were calculated in terms of beer-jar equivalents, and rations might be paid with beer." Paid in beer?
mrmoonpants: Wow, why can't we have a beer-based economy now? That might still work.
Me: I'm not that into beer, but I still like the idea.
mrmoonpants: Well, you know, you could trade me for Jack Daniels we could set something up.... Gotta tell payroll about this....

What a fun culture. Now I want to know what this "Hippopotamus incident" was that the encyclopedia refers to as having been one of the events in the famed conflict between Seth and Horus. That's right, the Hippopotamus Incident. It sounds like a band name.

What's weird is that just now, a faculty member came by needing to take out some Biblical Archaeology Review so he could scan in some photos. He's doing something on winemaking in Egypt. He says they use pictures of wine bottles to talk about drinking, but when they talk about being DRUNK, well, that's depicted with a beer bottle. Some things don't change, I guess.

Some of you may remember the wonderful story of my family's friends who had a little boy named Logan; this child called himself Wodat until he could actually say Logan.

I am SO naming something in my campaign Wodat. Dunno who, but I'll use it.