Happenings

So much has happened since I last posted. Let me explain... no, it is too much. Let me sum up. December has been a difficult month. We had not one, but two or three major crises at work over the course of a two week period. Mostly involving our incompetent hosting company taking our servers down. We simply can't go down, especially at this time of year. Too many of our clients run 24/7 and for us to go down during the holiday rush is unacceptable. There was much screaming and gnashing of teeth. The bad part was that I was the one on call during the first week that we started having these issues. It has been officially dubbed "The Nightmare Before Christmas". Fortunately, we have almost finalized moving to a new hosting company and things are now fairly calm. Plus, I'm no longer on call.

In other news, the corporate consumer machine continues unabated. We've nearly bankrupted ourselves trying to cover the family's Xmas wish lists. Personally, I prefer the more spiritually significant Winter Solstice of Pagan tradition than the overly garish, artificially promoted, modern Christmas. I have no issue with Christians' reason for celebrating, but in my eyes, the *Season* is the reason for the season. Still, we are programmed practically from birth to participate in the orgy of consumerism that marks the Winter holiday here in America. And I have to admit, I generally get some good swag for it. I'd rather not go into massive amounts of debt, but at this point, it's more or less expected.

Our gaming group has finished up our Serenity campaign (based on the Firefly television series by Joss Whedon). The final adventure involved a heist on a space liner (netting us 1.5 million credits), having our ship taken over by my character's sadistic brother and his para-military goons, and after taking out all twenty of his guys, me getting to have a "showdown at high noon" scene in which I (barely) out-drew my nemesis in a pistol duel, killing him and leaving my character gravely wounded. Good times. The next thing on the gaming horizon is a Dungeons and Dragons campaign using the Ebberon game setting. I'll be running that one to give our regular DM a break. Plus, I really love that particular world. It has a great "cinematic" tone that is reminiscent of the wild and woolly adventure serials of yesteryear. Think "King Solomon's Mines" and "Indiana Jones" meets "Lord of the Rings", with a little "James Bond" thrown in for good measure. If I know our game group, it should turn out to be a real hoot.

One last thing of note. As many of you know, Ysabel broke her finger a few weeks ago in a longsword tourney. I'm happy to report that it is healing nicely and she is starting the physical therapy phase of her recovery. She's out of her cast/splint and just has a couple of velcro straps holding her pinky to her ring finger now. She can even take them off to do her exercises. So, that's a positive note among all the upheaval and chaos.

It's been a rough month, like I said, but we are looking forward with hope to the coming year. Whether you observe the Winter Solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah or nothing at all, may you know peace, comfort and contentment this holiday season.