9th day, 2nd ride, March, 1372 DR
We walked. I took point. We were forced to stop after about six hours because Roland wasn’t able to continue any longer. We decided to start sleeping early and travel by night.
Dead Zhents
10th day, 2nd ride, March, 1372 DR
I was woken by Abel around two hours after midnight. We spoke a bit on guerilla warfare and its tactics. After we walked for a few hours we stumbled upon twelve men – Human, Orc and Half-Orc – whose badly mutilated bodies were crucified in the middle of the forest, on display, like grotesque scare-crows. Three of them showed signs of old scars and badly set broken bones, indicating, to me, their martial history. The rest looked like workers and craftsmen. I thought at first that the smell of rotting flesh were the signs of the undead. With Abaddon’s guidance that was quickly disproven as I felt no signs of the Restless.
The bodies were about two days beyond death. Strange how Zhentarim woodsmen seem to have been logging for wood three days from the Flaming Tower. We couldn’t find any signs of attackers, but the wounds didn’t seem clean or precise.
Daggerdale
10th day, 1st ride, March, 1372 DR
I finally reached Daggerdale, and I have a room at the Teshford Arms, just outside the city, across the river. It’s run by a woman called Olavia, who charges a ridiculous one gold piece per day. Abaddon give me strength!
I talked to a Sembian called Roland, and a Cormyrian sorceror named Abel, they are new in town as well. The three of us are going to find work at the garisson tomorrow.
Tuesday Morning Musings
Sexual Maturity:
I wonder why our bodies mature, sexually, before our minds do. Perhaps our mind’s process of maturing is kickstarted once the body starts producing all these hormones, or perhaps we’re just so indoctrinated by pious morality to believe that sex is a sin that our mental sexual maturity moved further and further away from our physical one.
Disturbing Dream:
I’ve been watching a lot of war movies lately. By lately, I mean the last few years. They leave an incredible impression upon me. Black Hawk Down, Harrison’s Flowers, Tears of the Sun, Behind Enemy Lines, Hotel Rwanda, the list goes on. Most notably, I’ve watched Band of Brothers, a mini-series that I watched with my gaming group, and then again with Eva. The last, I believe, inspired my latest disturbing dream, in which I was part of the resistance in the Netherlands, and was assigned to kill a German tank commander. It was very disturbing.
Todo List:
I had a thing, on my todo list, probably from way back in 2002. I had an idea to create a script that could automatically generate a web-form based on a table in the database. The script had to be fully automated to insert, update and delete records from the table without me hacking and coding a table-specific script each and every time. It’s relatively simple, but I hadn’t really given the solution a lot of though yet, until I sat on the train going back home from Hoorn, and I had an epiphany of how to handle it. It shouldn’t be a script, it should be an object-class, only then can you do things like incorporate drop-down menus with items from another, secondary table. Anyway, I’m not done yet, but I’ve already got a few things running on this script right now. Like the webform in which I’m typing this journal-update right now.
World of Warcraft:
I hit level 60 two weeks ago, and I have to say that I do miss a bit of the joy of achieving quests, due to the fact that you don’t get the XP reward any longer. Right before I hit 60, I only had 45 XP to go, which is not a lot at all. I handed in a quest, and got 6600 XP, vaulting me into elite status. Strangely enough, even though you’re not supposed to be able to gather more XP once you hit 60, I did get 6565 XP on my XP bar, which is now a painful reminder of how I can’t get any more. I wish that bar was just empty, you know?
Anyway, I must be the poorest level 60 character on that server, because I’ve been working on leveling up my leatherworking. I’ve also been exploring Winterspring a bit, which is fun, but not exactly a profitable endeavour. The whole purpose was to start questing for my Winterspring epic frostsaber mount, but I keep getting distracted by other quests that invariably send me all over the globe. I also hit Alterac Valley every once in a while, and I’m looking to start some quests in the Eastern and Western Plaguelands. All that undead…it’s right up my alley.
Dungeons and Dragons:
I’m having a lot of fun playing roleplaying games again. For the first time in a longlonglonglong time, I’m not GM’ing but playing, and I have to say that it really rocks. I’m playing Leman, a priest of Abaddon, the God of Lightening and Primal Energy. It’s like being a priest of Talos, only without the destruction part. Dennis will be wrapping up his campaign in a little bit, hopefully before Edwin fucks off to Sudan for a month. We’ve asked one of their friends, Frank, to join us next sunday to see if he would like to join our campaign. Seeing as how he lives 2 minutes away from Dennis, in the same apartment block, it would be quite convenient to have another player there. After Dennis is done, I think I might pick up D&D as well, so that Frank can get used to the group and not have to dive headfirst into a new game like Shadowrun or Call of Cthulhu. I’m looking forward to it, because I started a D&D campaign in 2003 that never really got off the ground.
Birthdays:
My father’s birthday was yesterday. Luckily he and I have an understanding, so I didn’t have to worry about getting him a gift. My mother’s birthday is in a little less than a week, and I ordered her gift, which was promptly delayed. Last year I gave her my gift in March or April, I believe, so I think she’s used to me being a tad late. Then, mid-January, it’s Wai and Moulsari’s turn. Wai hasn’t given me my present yet, but like with my mother and I, he’s always late, too. I should really find something uber-ridiculous to punish him for his tardiness. Moulsari…*sigh*…Moulsari, it’s always very hard to find a gift for Moulsari. Last year was a good success, though. Perhaps I can come up with something while she’s here. I’ve never been able to give her a birthday gift, on her birthday, while looking her in the eye.
Relationship:
After my relatively successful trip to India two months ago, Moulsari and I are looking into her moving over to Amsterdam. Since she’s from India, that’s not really very easy. It wouldn’t be a problem if we could live together, because then I could simply vouche for her (lord knows, the required income is so low that even I amply exceed it), and she could start looking for a job at her leisure. But in her culture it’s not done to live together while not married, and since we’re not looking to make such a definitive commitment just yet, that’s not an option. We’re mostly still in the information gather and planning stage, which requires a lot of bickering. We’re radically different people, and we handle things in different ways, so it’s a point of friction. But I’m wholly confident that we’ll get there, and once we do, we’ll be the better for it.
Jealousy
For the first time in my life, as far as I can remember, I’m feeling jealous of others. It’s a very faint, and almost imperceptible, but after some time of wondering what this discontentment was that was seeping into me, I come to the conclusion that I am just jealous of either the success or the posessions of others. This feeling is new to me, which is partly the reason why it took me a while to identify it, and I don’t really know what to do about it, apart from achieve that which I’m longing for, of course. I have to be careful, however, for not falling in the trap of wanting things just because someone else has it. Perhaps it’s because I am, for the first time, falling behind on the curve. I’ve had such a head start on a lot of things, that I was never really worried or concerned…but that might just be the result of a tortoise-and-the-hare situation. Rest assured that I’ll be thinking on this for the coming few days, while I try to expel this feeling, for it’s not really making me much happier.
