Tag Archives: rockville

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9382 – Thursday

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Tooth is still giving me minor fits. Antibiotic seems to be taking it down, though. It was a little hard to chew supper, but it was quite tasty.

BHK went thrifting yesterday with Tina – got some good loot – a few chick-lit books for herself, a kepler and his mom on witch trial book for me, along with a white dress shirt, also for me – some brand new kitchen knives. (as opposed to what… bathroom knives? office knives?)

Additionally, when she got my antibiotics at the drugstore, she picked me up yellow and red canisters of drying model clay. could be handy to make some game pieces, or just silly fun sculptures and items. It’ll be good practice for future sculpey stuff.

Seeing BQ.. erm, SaH reminded me that BHK and I are long overdue for a meal at the vegetable garden. Rockville isn’t all that far away and despite what R.E.M. says, I could hit the Micro Center up there, too. I’d also like to visit Yuan Fu, which was our alternate plan if VG was closed.

I guess that since I do crab and shrimp that I’m more of a pescetarian than a true veggie.


One of the most nifty game ideas in a long time – levelhead – it uses a hand-held solid-plastic cube as its only interface. On-screen it appears each face of the cube contains a little room, each of which are logically connected by doors. In one of these rooms is a character. By tilting the cube the player directs this character from room to room in an effort to find the exit.

check out the video demo to get a good idea how it works.

Also – it looks like the Ghostbusters game is in a bit of trouble… may not get released – at least for a while. It looks good, and the chance for another year of development might even make it worth the wait.


Looks like LJ usership is drooping – Stats as of the moment –

How many users, and how many of those are active?


  • Total accounts: 16234592
  • … active in some way: 1801088
  • … that have ever updated: 9622881
  • … updating in last 30 days: 973782
  • … updating in last 7 days: 550314
  • … updating in past 24 hours: 194650



1 year ago – friendship amnesty day (fizzle-pop), tasty food, pictures of said foods, artomat, scribd, project gutenberg, gaming thoughts, nomnom kitty in comments

2 years ago – good thoughts, Danny gets me Wonder Woman on DVD, Saw Monster House with TW, walkabout pix of constrution/graffiti/etc, punk rock girl

3 years ago – what’s in my fridge, cosmic treadmill, 37 inches of rain, falling people, sky high powers

4 years ago – went out w/Dan to ole ole, riverwalk pics, SAD Dave, Daimajin added towish list (and it was gifted to me before the hurricanes came!), star wars kid gets an ipod

5 years ago – Web design, poo, web stat, psa, orange newt-head!

6 years ago – broken links, spamdemic map, floppy poll, dinner sick, new semagic client

7 years ago – hinterland, kickshaw, I like cooking, planet of ??? poll, Champions Spectre, my gal wants to leave me for the Asian prince, shaking hands,treat pack

8 years ago – idiot, the good and bad of the day, Good Chinese food, bad AprilGeotarget Geotarget

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9245 – Saturday

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Extremely tentative plans for a little yard-sale review (sale-sailing?) after my shots today. Hopefully we’ll find just stuff that’s awesome… the whole town of North Beach is having a village-sized yard sale next weekend. Maybe I’ll put out my old computer monitor for some lucky strong-backed mule to cart off the property.

Potential other things post needle-stick are the Eastern Shore, Marine Museum and maybe General Tanuki’s.

Or Maybe something different! It got to 87 degrees yesterday.. we might have to find a place to play in the shade!


Evening update- 

Saw a yard sale on the way to shots – Neighborhood cul-de-sac family collection on Limerick Lane. BHK got a spiffy cap for 50 cents – another Mao-meets surfer girl type cap. Not much else out there for us.

Got Stuck for allergies. Hardly a soul there, so it went quickly. 

Skipped the Eastern shore – Decided to hit the Vegetable Garden in Rockville, by way of a long, meandering tour through DC. Flew through Chinatown and some of the more seedy parts of town en route.

From there, a bit of an extended shopping trip. Eyeballed some workout equipment, picked up some ram for my laptop at Micro Center,  (checked out the EEE pc  – cute, and maybe in a month, once the 900 model is out) – Bought the father in law a e-tuner keychain, bhk an ipod clock-radio dock alarm clock, and myself an evil universal remote keychan. 

Continuing on – Dream Wizards for Balloon Cup  and Gloom (and a ten in ten die – opaque d10 inside a transparent one. pretty nifty.)

Casual Male XL for a few pairs of work pants, some v-neck shirts, and a new pair of shoes.

Back home the short way, for supper of pb&j on rice cakes. (sideline – made hot dogs for in-laws and BHK last night – both dinners were dandy)

Watched some TV, and now, it’s time for bed. g’nite dear journal. 


Hey, WotC have a bunch of classic D&D modules available for download – Including White plume mountain ! Probably the third commercial module I ever played after Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread – certainly the first one I played that wasn’t included with a set of the game rules itself…

Wiki info on White Plume Mountain here.

Of the three, White Plume was the most fun.. I had characters that had a decent skill set and abilities, but it was still tricky – held a goodly dose of puzzles and challenges. All of the S-modules were fun, but I liked plume more than tomb of horrors, and  Barrier Peaks. (Peaks was cool – great setting, but just too deadly for my lower level guys to deal with. It could be nicely reworked into something a bit more survivable and plotted, I think.)

If I had to pick my favorite low-level module, I’d have to go with Against the Cult of the Reptile God – I think the setting was a lot more fun than any of the other 1-3 level modules we played back in the day, and it was the first one I successfully ran for the library group as a DM. Sort of funny to see them listed as classic – I remember picking them up when they came out – still wrapped in plastic, most of them 3-hole punched at the factory.


Larry’s coming along nicely with the electric guitar. He’s got the body just about done… needs holes for the pickups in the back, and then some stain and coat next. This is the first time in a while that he’s taken time to work on it – it’s a beautiful bit of craftsmanship thus far, and I look forward to hearing how it sounds. There’s talk of him making me a bass after this one is finished, too. (Made from the maple that’s growing far to close to our house’s foundation… not to mention the branches that could take out the roof in a bad storm.

I wonder how his projects will be affected when they rent out the blue house? The workshop half of the two-car garage there… not sure how tenants would feel about him running power tools here and there. Of course, that also begs the question of where I’ll run off and hide to wrap Christmas presents, come next Yuletide season.

Ah well, no big fears either way.  I expect he’ll continue to do projects for many, many years to come. This weekend, we’re tilling the garden – and hopefully planting my blueberry seedling.  BHK has already potted the daisies and put them outside – I’m looking more forward to plants that produce food items, and the possibility of keeping a beehive.


1 year ago – falafel with the gang, adapting to a higher house-population, personality test results,

2 years ago – how to glue 2 things, sketch-it, mgum, moonies and sushi

3 years ago – on call techs, residence addresses, 45,800 scottobear entries [now 84,100], flickr letter gizmo, krypto cartoon, Tomi says hi, speech recog test, luxie_loo, pics from tv interview, monkey swat team, new Sophocles, Euripides and Hesiod, new pope

4 years ago – using lappie (broken big brain), teleconference prep

5 years ago – got all 30 eggs, there folks, palm pictures and more doodles, bro n upswing, SQ/EQ, brain chart

6 years ago – Vampires around the world and how to snuff ’em, mushiness, good, simple food.

7 years ago – mix CD, flying capybara quote, missing girlGeotarget
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8938 – Sunday

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Crashed hard last night once we got back – comfy weekend, sort of like this found shot of Newt from Friday.

newtcamroller

This morning BHK and I lazed in bed for a good chunk, spending a little time reading or fooling on the laptop, before getting up and heading off to points non-bedlike. We played a bit here and there in yucata, superdupergames, tribal wars, and bella sara – I’ve discovered that I do better sitting cross-legged over laying back with the lappie.

Post-laziness, we headed out for a random road trip, and ended up going to Dream Wizards which was exactly like what we were hoping for (but didn’t get) when we hit the Strategist a couple of weekends back. A large gaming area, very well-stocked collection of games of every stripe, and attentive personnel. Of course there was the standard “teen-boy scent” – BHK noticed the was one half of the female population (the male population was maybe 25 or so) – the other a young kid, probably 12-13, playing Pokemon happily amongst the sea of boys. BHK also got to see a low-grade temper tantrum from one of the other players in a tournament… complaining that his purchased booster pack was useless… stomped and slapped the pack down amongst the poor counter-folk. I suspect that he was maybe about a half-hour to an hour to being ejected from the premesis.

I couldn’t resist picking up a copy of Polarity (thanks again for the hint, Keethrax!) and Cosmic Wimpout … a Yahtzee-like dice game I used to enjoy back in high school. I think the last time I played it was about 20 years ago in Mr. Eck’s Marine biology class, fourth period. Not sure of the exact day, but it was near the end of the school year in 1987.

Still no leads on the Pirates “Glittery” boosters, like Amy’s. BHK must have a giant crab covered in glitter to destroy ships with!

After that, we hit the Home goods store, shopped the Halloween goodies and got a few little household treats.. Some green cups, sugar free blueberry syrup, and Halloween sprinkles for cupcakes later in the season.

We consulted our good friend Zagat, and found an entry marked Lighthouse Tofu – a total wildcard as there weren’t enough reviews to give it any scores for service, menu or whatnot. (The link goes to the yelp page, which would’ve been more helpful, had we thought to look it up first). I think we stumbled upon a local Korean fave… The place was packed and we were the only non-asian couple in sight.

We ordered more than we thought, as everything was served home-style – even though we didn’t ask for it, we got an appetiser of Miso soup, followed by a broad assortment of dishes with a little sampling of this and that – Bok Choy in some Oyster sauce that was tasty but quite spicy, some minced garlic in clam sauce, some manner of peppers in a cool/spicy soup, cucumbers (my fave of that lot… sweet and spicy), and some sprouts in sesame oil. – all came before what we had ordered. BHK had the tofu vegetable soup that came to the table still at a rolling boil and served with a raw egg on the side – to be added to the soup manually. I got an assortment of sushi, of which I think the Tofu sushi was the winner. The “prima vera” one of mixed veggies was tasty, but the weakest of the lot – Tofu, tempura lobster, and cucumber all were just amazing.

They serve water with a little green tea added, which is disconcerting at first, because it has an off-yellow/green color that I have seen come out of the pipes in some well water communities – suffice to say that it was clean and delicious. No worries there.

As a palate cleanser, they also serve a little rice cooked in green tea at the end of the meal – I liked it!

Our host was friendly, and I think that he assumed we had never been out to eat at a place like theirs. He was kind enough to move us to another table when we realised our little 2-up location wasn’t going to hold all the food we had coming. – and then explained the difference between light and regular soy sauce.. also warned us against wasabe (he seemed pleased when I was enjoying a healthy dollop dipped from same mixed with the soy on my cucumber roll)

Oddly, he didn’t give any food consumption tips regarding the egg in the soup, which I think was the most culturally mysterious of the lot.

On the way out, he took me aside, and passed me a pair of strange little bottles covered in text that I couldn’t read, and a small oval with larger text inside (picture to follow – maybe I can get talonvaki or pilarcruz to translate it for me)…. said it was dessert, and to enjoy.

It looked like milk, and smelled faintly of vanilla, so I shrugged and took a swig. I was not expecting the lemon flavor at all, but it was pretty dang tasty. I don’t think BHK was as impressed, but she liked it fine.

Also on the way up and back, we got to see the Mormon Temple which is amazing to watch rise up over the horizon as you approach. The place is huge and beautiful – while lovely, the pictures don’t do it justice at all.

We had one last stop before heading home… the in-laws. Chris and Larry did a great job of pickling our cucumbers – about 30 mason jars worth. We won’t be needing any store-bought pickle-type product anytime soon. BHK is planning on using the remaining 3 or 4 jars to do some pickled peppers ala Peter Piper, although we don’t quite have a peck.

I’m just wondering where we’re going to store 30-odd jars of preserved veggie. I guess the garage is a reasonably cool, dry, dark place for ’em. They have to steep in the brine for a brief period before eating. I wonder how long they’ll stay good? If you don’t break the vacuum seal, I imagine we can store them fairly indefinitely – not sure how long they stay good once that seal is broken, though. I imagine that won’t be an issue, as this family loves ’em.


1 year ago – bow beats atlatl, newt trip out, 11:11, California pizza kitchen, interview meme, cpap ick, electroe pic

2 years ago – bro picked up, last Danny day, blue-ringed octopus, konfabulator, tags, high speed cat photos, bus-sleeper, taser vs rennies

3 years ago – malam bails, lyric, BttF / Mr Fusion, busy, dream, neti pot, bro’s court visit, avocado memories

4 years ago – isketch, dan’s last summer day, ebay phishing, earth as art, kitty swf games, vampire game, dirty bathroom poll

5 years ago – pleasant dreams, headache passes, Bailey the puppy, puppet play!

6 years ago – code, up late, F/X porn, coloring book, jack-in-the-box

7 years ago – house to myself, foodies Geotarget