Recently bumped (virtually, via facebook) into Ellen from my days at the library – She and Teresa are the only remaining members of the old guard that I remember. I know what happened to Brent, but I wonder where Bill, Charlotte, Joy, Joyce, Jane and the gang are now… heck, I’d even be curious to know what Farace was up to these days.

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Gary Gygax, R.I.P. – thanks for getting the ball rolling on the hobby.

My first thought is of him on Futurama…. “Greetings! It’s a (rolls 20-sided die… pause) pleasure to meet you!” and signing his EGG initials into one of the crashed vegepygmy spaceship levels from Expedition to the Barrier peaks.

Oddly enough, the Library above is where I first met most of my fellow D&D players as a community – before that, Kevin Cummins and I sort of played the blue paperback version at Unity School… (7th grade)

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To counter the bad news with awesomeness, Mountain Wingsuit! Wile E. Coyote meets a Flying Squirrel outfit that seems to work. Holy Moley.

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I blame BHK for the Avril Levine song going through my head. “Hey Hey, You You, I don’t like your girlfriend”. AIEEGHaba! I fear I may have to consult the big book of earworms to counter this. I forgot that she wanted to buy Pye a bunny-head hat for easter. Ol’ Pye dodged a bullet on that one, but can BHK resist the allure of kitty wigs ?

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50 things I’ve done, continued from yesterday. 11-20.

11.’worked as a roofer in South Florida, in August – probably the most physically demanding job I’ve ever done, or ever will. Tar, mops, gravel, sun, drunken coworkers = some sort of Zenny Hell. I liked it for a while, and then pretty much burned out on it. Fortunately, I got an indoor, air-conditioned gig surrounded by books shortly after.

12.’Used to play in the band in jr. high and high school. Baritone / Sousaphone / Tuba were the primaries, though Alto Sax was there for a short period. I’m very slowly but surely picking up the electric bass, and look forward to getting into the stand-up bass, and going from there to a 6-string. I can read music, and should brush up on my recorder skills, too… a lot more portable than the guitar. Maybe the Ukulele will be a happy medium.

13.’Once scarred my leg as a result of swinging a trash bag in a circle while singing the theme song to the Godzilla cartoon. There was a glass bottle in the trash, and it smacked the ground, shattering as I swing it… it swooped back around and gouged a healthy gash in my shin.

14.’was wrestling with my younger brother after shooting at squirrels with bb guns, and rolled with him off of the roof our house in Boynton. I’m more ashamed of shooting at the squirrels than I am of flinging myself and him bodily into the void, only to come crashing down.

15.’has written and submitted (without an agent) 15 stories of varying lengths to assorted magazines and book companies. I fear that many are doomed to the slush pile forever…. despite this, I have been published in a few different paper-based publications thanks to my livejournal (popular science) and unknown armies 2nd edition,(for flavor text). I keep saying that I want to sit down and get back into actually writing some more, but finding that hour a day just isn’t there…. it’s much simpler to babble in a journal entry while on the bus than it is to write solid text, even if it’s just foolish fluff stuff.

16.’was once so soundly asleep that my charges couldn’t wake me up once the parents got home….I was out cold until daylight the next day. I still don’t know why they didn’t call my parents, but instead chose to have me just sleep over. If you couldn’t wake me up, I’d say call a doctor. I never sat for Abra and Tracy again. I was 13 or so.

17.’has seen a UFO, in the truest sense of the word… Just some unknown item flying overhead. I doubt seriously that it was anything extra-terrestrial. A red, slow-moving, cigar shaped cloud, sundog or balloon, maybe.

18.’lived on dry cap’n crunch and water for 3-4 days after Hurricane Wilma… Newton had more palatable food than me! No power for A/c, fridge or light for more than a few days.

19.’called the cops on a guy who was getting beaten up by two other fellows – turned out he was a drug dealer who burned them on a transaction. None of them were arrested. See Frankie the Mooch for a timeline of my encounters with him.

20.’was evacuated by a SWAT team with Newton from apartment, because landlord was despondent over the loss of his nose… was threatening gunfire to himself and others.

I’m beginning to wonder if I can make it to 50 items.

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1 year ago – more photos of my new environs. boardwalk, barns, bay, decapitated gnomes and sundry other stuff, dog day at the fire dept, assassination vacation

2 years ago – rs drops to part time, spoofcard, condo issues, newtcam time lapse, spore,

3 years ago – pomade, numbers, lumbee talk going strong, rat flies a f-22, ifbot, secutiry, scotto pic, zombie quiz, miami bridge, New York Public Library Digital Gallery , hurley episode of lost, mile markers

4 years ago – stress, bro, god wishes, font music, audio books, tofu “chicken parm”, he-man, owie-back

5 years ago – stupidity genetic?, pulp-it, sick folks, history of eating utensils, tree like, riblets are great

6 years ago – fiddled with tulpa, dream, oxycontin, naproxen, oxycodone, Domesday

7 years ago – CJ & Herman story 2, dangers of reading in bed, AOK2