Pirates v. Ninjas, Weekend and Forest Fire Updates

Well, lets start with the most recent and work backwards... haven't done that in a while, why not mix it up?

I just finished writing the intro to my new blog idea at: MHG-RPG

I decided to go with Tyler's idea of Pirates v. Ninjas, because it sounds fun. Both to write and for others to participate in. So if you've ever wanted to be a ninja or a pirate, you'd be doing yourself a dis-service by not checking out my new creative outlet and playing along! If you've never thought of being a ninja or a pirate, QUIT LYING!! If you didn't see my post a week or two ago about it, it is pretty much going to be a story that I write in the next two months, involving pirates and ninjas. You can have a character in the story, and influence what happens by commenting on the blog after every weekly installment.

Because this is my first shot at it, and I want a definite ending, this first game is going to have plenty of violence. The FINAL CHAPTER will be around the middle of August, and it will end with one character left alive, will that character be yours? Will it be a ninja? A pirate? Or will it be the not-so-innocent vixen bartender who spends most of her time "below deck?" Ho Ho! Come play!

You've got a week or two before the story starts up, so head on over there and post a comment. If you're like me, and get excited about things, then forget about them a few weeks later--no worries! I'll just kill your character sooner than later! :D

In journaling news, today was a very memorable day. The sky has been covered in smoke all day. It is almost like a dense fog has covered the entire Tahoe basin area. The fire is still under 10% controlled, and all the smoke has grounded any aerial assault on the blaze. The winds were picking up when I left work, which is never good when it comes to forest fires.





Allison wasn't at work today. Her house burned down. In a weird and twisted way, it is actually a very good thing for her. She's the one going through the messy divorce, and her husband has been trying to take her name off the title, and sell it out from under her. Now she gets half (or more?) of the insurance money. Her husband will probably be a handful to deal with, but at least she'll finally get the money she deserves. Her kids lost everything they owned, because they were still living with their dad for the most part, but all of her stuff is in the new place she is living.

My boss Chris, and one of the doctor's stayed the night at the Fracture clinic Sunday night, because they had been evacuated from their homes. Apparently they had a little bbq and sat by the fireplace. Not a bad place to be cooped up... but if their homes get caught in the blaze too, I feel very sorry for them. Getting through it as a single mom with two teenagers is tough enough for Allison, but taking a little kid away from his home and living out of a hotel or a friend's house for who knows how long, would be incredibly difficult on both Chris and the doctor's families.

Amidst all of the craziness today at work, we also had Chris's cat and the Dr.'s animals with us in the clinic, which was one of the few uplifting moments of the day. The work day was one I'll not forget anytime soon. More than half of the patients canceled, which is to be expected on a day where a fire is raging out of control just miles from the clinic. I never really put much thought into not going to work today though. And I think working at a medical clinic had a lot to do with that. If I had my insurance Admin. Assistant job in Portland and there was a fire downtown, I'd be sleeping in! But knowing that me being there helped patients get seen quicker, influenced me heavily in trying to get to work in time today.

I had to detour around a road block and take a few back roads, but I made it, and was surprised at how many people made it in to work. Allison was being a mom to her two kids, and stayed at a friend's house. Cory was busy spraying his home and neighboring homes with water all day, so he wasn't in. Trish wasn't aloud to travel into the city from where she lives in the boonies, so she wasn't in. Debbie was on fire watch, so she couldn't make it. We had a skeleton crew, but I'm still impressed with how many of us showed up for work. I feel a bit bad about leaving for Seattle tomorrow, knowing what Allison will be going through, but I hear she is coming to work tomorrow, and hopefully she'll be able to press through the day.

Yesterday night, after coming home from taking pictures of the fire, Cody arrived home and said, "Chris, I've got a present for you." Knowing Cody, I thought he meant Ichi had left another corpse out front, and I best be cleaning it up soon. Then I remembered Gina saying Cody was going to go get a puppy. A German-Sheppard puppy. Just like in those Bounty commercials, this dog is freaking cute:





Her name is Bella, and right now she is barking like a squeak-toy at Cody, who is in the shower. We played a bit, and Ichi swatted at her for getting a little too close. Ichi isn't pleased with the addition to the house, but he was even less pleased when I got home today and found Matt's pit bull licking me in the crotch. If Ichi and puppies don't mix, Ichi and overly-aggressive dogs definitely don't mix!

Before the fire was a lot of fun. Only two of us jumped into the lake, because it was freezing up there with those 35mph winds. But we hiked out to a rock on the far side of the lake, and the eight of us had a good time soaking up some rays, drinking PBR, and laughing a lot. We stopped beforehand for breakfast at The Red Hut, and I'll definitely be going back there before I leave Tahoe. Cheap and yummy.



I rode up to Tahoe from Davis yesterday morning, and was having a hard time staying alert and focused on the road, so I stopped in Placerville for a quick break. I stopped at a little bagel place, to find a very attractive girl behind the counter who gave me a healthy portion of whipped cream on my hot chocolate. We talked a bit, and it turned out that I wasn't the only one in the bagel shop hungover!

The night before was a good time. We ended at Conor and Kristen's house, with Kristen whooping us at Mario Party. It was pretty close, but she won, the computer got second, I got third, and Conor finished dead last. The cpu stole one of my stars on a battle-game on the 2nd to last turn, *@#$!

Before that, we hit the pool party, and had a fun time playing bouncy-ball volleyball in the pool, followed by a 10-person flippy-cup race. Flippy-cup did me in, but it wasn't the primary doer-inner. The primary doer-inner would have to be beer-frisbee, which I played a few points of while the semi-finals were going on at the frisbee tournament. You touch the disc, you drink. Your team drops the disc, social! You D the disc, but spill your beer? No D, and you drink! Needless to say, we got hammered pretty quickly. We then played fantasy-ultimate from the sidelines during the Finals game, which made it 100x more fun.

I had no idea Conor's team won 13-4, because we were having so much fun picking players each point and rooting for them to make a D (1point), throw a score (1point), catch a score (1point), or for other people to make a turnover (-1point). We created a pretty nice ruckus, from what I can remember. Kristen ended up winning, and ran out onto the field a few times to give her players hi-fives or kisses (Conor) for getting her fantasy points. Silly Kristen.

Before the Finals game, but after beer-frisbee, I swapped massages with my teammate Jen. That hit the spot. We exchanged numbers, and she might be joining a few of us in Grass Valley for the Ani concert and rafting. She's also a rock-climber, and might be heading up to tahoe to teach me a thing or two about climbing. She also started her first day of her Teaching Credential program today--eerie similarities!

The actual frisbee play was a lot of fun, we lost our first two games by 1 point and 2 points, respectively; then won our third game by 2 points. I don't think either team was up by more than 3 points in any of the games we played. Fun times. We threw a crazy defense against Jack's team in the first game, one I sort of invented on the fly.

They only had two handlers: Jack and Kendra, but the two of them could tear up our zone. So we played a zone with one chase. 3 people in the cup, 2 wings, 1 deep, and 1 person to just play man-to-man defense on Jack. It worked tremendously well, and we ran off 4 points in a row to take the lead in the second half, before eventually losing 11-10 on "universe point" where Ed made an amazing juke cut, but unfortunately I was the one he juked, and I was the one throwing the disc to him--doh!

Conor and I had a bet going--he was playing with Kristina, and I was playing on Kristen's team--so we bet which couple would make more assists together. Assists as in Kristen throwing it to me for a score, or vice versa. Hammer or other upside-down throws counted as 2 points. Kristen and I ended up connecting twice on the day, but one was a hammer from yours truly, so we ended up winning the bet. What did we bet? Conor had to be my beer bitch for the rest of the night! Unfortunately, I forgot to take advantage of it at least five times, but finally got a good opportunity during our game of flippy-cup.

The night before the frisbee tourney, I rode down to Davis after getting off a bit early from work. I did a bit of lane-splitting once I got into Sacramento, and zoomed through the parking-lot of cars. I love my motorcycle! We chatted it up a bit--Conor and Kristen had just gotten back from Vegas in the morning--then we went out for pizza at Woodstock's. They didn't have pitchers of beer, but they did have litres! Holy Jesus those things are fun to drink! We had a half-pepperoni and sausage, half Kristen-pizza. Her pizza is sun-dried tomatoes, feta, and pineapple on pesto-sauce. It was amazing. So was the meat side, mmm, best of both worlds, mmm. We finished up at the pizza joint with $2 worth of Family Guy Pinball. Kristen whooped us, and it turns out Conor is a pretty big pinball fan, and knew of "Theater Magic" the game Stacey and I pumped a lot of money into at Ground Kontrol, up in Portland.

After Woodstock's, we played a little 5-man poker tourney over at Conor and Kristen's friends Jon and Liz's house. I started off hot, winning the first few hands and showing my big bluffs, but my supreme strategy of portraying loose-maniac then hitting them with my monsters didn't work. I got riverred twice, and next thing I knew I was playing Mario Golf against Conor for pushups. I lost, and did my 25 pushups like they were nothing *flex*.

We headed back to Conor and Kristen's place, and Kristen was ready for bed, so Conor and I played a 20-round game of Mario-Party for 10-situps every mini-game. I'm pretty sure I came out ahead. Of course, we were drinking too, and that drinking/situp combo is devastating... devastating I tell you.

We also had a big bet going on winning the game, but we both ended up getting beat by the computer. If one of us had one, the other would have had to streak at the pool party the next night. Thank god for the computer.