Merry Christmas!

Midnight Mass, Immaculate Conception Church, Newburyport MA

The Met

Visited the Metropolitan Museum today. Big place. I took some pictures
with my real camera that I'll post later.

I'm waiting outside now while the rest of my group does one last lap.
The weather has cleared up and it's quite nice.

Times Square

I haven't been to NYC in like 10 years. It's as cool as I remember. :)

NYC Trip

In New York City for the weekend. First stop: M&M World :)

Hike up Mt. Washington

I hiked up Mt. Washington with my dad & aunt yesterday. It was...very hard :P That last half mile was a killer. I'll start at the beginning:

Before we started hiking, we had to figure out logistics for coming back down. Lots of people simply hike back down, but we were not interested in that (good thing, too. We would totally have fallen and died if we had tried to go back down.) There is a little shuttle from the top that drives you back down, but it's like $26 per person, and you're not guaranteed to get a seat on one. They fill up really fast.

We decided to drive two cars up and leave one at the top. Worked out great. We drove my car and my aunts car, then the three of us came down in my car and we went to the Pinkham Notch lodge, which is where Tuckerman Ravine Trail starts. We got started on our hike just before 10:30am.

2.4 miles up from Pinkham Notch lodge is the Hermit Lake Shelter area. One of the few shelters on the mountain. This part of the hike felt like it took days. The trail was a pretty steep rock & dirt patch through a tunnel of trees. Every time we got to a turn we were sure we would be at the Hermit Lake Shelter, but no, it just kept going. We did eventually make it, and it took us about two hours. We were encouraged to see a sign indicated that we only had 1.8 miles to the summit. We'd already come 2.4 miles, so we were over halfway!

We stopped for 20 minutes at the Hermit Lake shelter, from 12:10 - 12:30. We had some snacks, a quick breather, and then got back on the trail. I will quote a description of this part of the ride from the Mount Washington Website

Beyond Hermit Lake, the Tuckerman Ravine Trail changes in its character – it becomes much narrower, and has several quite steep sections. It ascends along the "Little Headwall" to the "Connection", and then travels into the "Floor" of the Ravine. The steepest and roughest part of the climb comes next, ascending the "Headwall" of the Ravine. This is an area that is typically wet, and extra caution is needed to avoid slipping. While thousands travel this trail each year without incident, the trail ascends a cliff, and travel off the Trail would bring you over a precipice with disastrous results.

This is where the hike started getting really hard. The 2.4 miles to Hermit Lake Shelter was somewhat tiring, but not particularly difficult. This next stretch was quite tough. We had to use our hands quite often to get over big rocks and maintain balance on wet rocks. I did get some great pictures during this section, which I need to upload from my camera (I didn't us the iPhone for this, it wouldn't have done it justice ;)

Once we we had ascended the headwall, which took roughly 2 hours, we reached Tuckerman Junction. Here's another description from the same site:

After the ascent of the Headwall, the trail becomes marginally less steep, coming to "Tuckerman Junction" (5383 feet), where it turns a bit to the right and ascends the rough boulders of the summit cone of Mount Washington, eventually reaching the summit parking lot and then the summit itself (6288 feet). From Hermit Lake to Tuckerman Junction is 1.2 miles, from Tuckerman Junction to the summit is .6 miles. Total distance from Pinkham Notch to the summit via this trail is 4.2 miles, with 4,250 feet of elevation gained.

That last 0.6 miles was absolutely brutal. It was literally just boulder-to-boulder climbing. And if you do the math, you'll see that in that last 0.6 miles we ascended 900 feet. It took us about an hour to traverse this last stretch. By the time we got to the top, I was completely spent. I'm not sure I've ever been so physically exhausted. Plenty of people climb this mountain without any issues, but they are all in much better shape than I am ;)

We did make a final push to climb some stairs and touch the "Mt Washington Summit" sign, which I guess now I'm glad I did. At the time I was perfectly willing to just wait in the car ;) Speaking of which, it was such a relief to have a car waiting for us. There is no way I could have walked down. I never would have made it in one piece.

Anyway, it was a great trip, and I'm glad I did it. However, I won't be attempting anything similar without getting in significantly better shape. Time to hit the gym!

I'll try and post some more pictures soon. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the actually summit. I was so out of it I completely forgot :P

Mt. Washington

Heading up!

Goodbye GenCon

GenCon 2008 is over! As usual, it was a great time. Sad to leave,
happy to be heading home.

Last Game

The final dungeon delve. Earned enough tokens to get an RPGA creation card, which is cool. The delves are very fun. I look forward to more next year :)

Warning: Mature Content

Watching Machine Girl. Hyper Violent . Can't see it in the pic, but
that's a dudes face being blown off :)

Boba Jawa

Finally done with the annoying RPGA game. Those players were so annoying. And it's really a shame since the DM was quite good.

This is a random photo from the dealers hall. The big cardboard ships behind them are really cool.

Second fight

Somehow I don't think were going to finish this adventure in 20
minutes. These people need to stop BSing and just play.

Slowest group ever

This event is scheduled to run until 5 and we just got to the dungeon at 4. Sigh. I hoped to get back to the dealer hall before it closes at 6 , but I guess I'll have to wait until tomorrow. :(

Final RPGA Event

Last scheduled event of this gencon. After this I expect to play a few more dungeon delves.

Huge Success

The dungeon delve was great fun. Earned two tokens towards prizes.
I'm definitely going to do more tomorrow.

I don't know how the chocolate cake got there ;)

Dungeon Delve

Back in the RPGA hall waiting in line for some pickup D&D. This Dragon
Banner is a regular fixture at gencon, and it's totally awesome.

Team Blu -- Roll Out!

Heroscape Team Fortress

Getting setup for the game. Customized heroscape rules based on the
video game :)

Dragonage: Origins

Now at the demo for biowares upcoming game. Hope it's good. :)

Taking a break

Taking a break from the chaos of the convention center to sit outside
and relax. My only event today is a heroscape game from 4-8, so I have
some time to chill out and read some of the books I've bought.

Sultan gaming table

This gaming table is fantastic. I'm totally going to build an entire
basement around sonething like this someday

Hymyu

Found some likely hymyu minis at the con:

Day 2

Gencon exhibit hall

Bloodied and Marked

The red rings indicate the target is bloodied (half hp). Pink is
marked. That's harder to describe, but basically the monster incurs
serious penalties for attack anyone other than the one who marked them.

4th edition is pretty fun :)

Going swimming

There was something shiney in the pool, so I dove in. Now a bunch of
monsters appeared and we get fight. Everybody wins!

Energy

Very important to keep up energy while adventuring. ;)

Outdoor combat

Outdoor combat is kind of a novelty in RPGA, so this is nice. What you
don't see are the 6 orcs we already killed :)

Prepping for more D&D

BJ and I are getting ready for more RPGA. These are our minis, Vactor the rogue and Matlokk the Paladin.

Chronx?!?!!

It lives!

Slava

Slava is at gencon this year, promoting his game SAGA. www.playsaga.com

WoW minis

D&D is done for now so I'm in the dealers hall, spending money. Here a
shot of some of the pieces from the upcoming World of Warcraft minis
game. Fortunately it's not for sake yet, or I'd be in a lot of
trouble. They look so cool!

Zhentarim farewell

Stupid guards don't want us to leave town with all the stuff we found
in the catacombs. Guess we'll get to add their gear to our pile of
loot :)

Thagdol

This poor servant of mystra is convinced he's still alive. Too bad
we'll have to kick his butt to prove him wrong :)

Boss fight

Guardians of mystra. Good thing we took an extended rest before this
fight :)

Undead

Fighting some undead. Thankfully, sneak attack applies to undead now,
so they're going down fast.

More combat

Rpga adventures are full of combat. This is our third fight of the
adventure, second in this room :). Pretty fun having two rogues in the
party. Lots of flanking.

Let the games begin!

4th edition combat #1

The dwarf decided to fight instead of talk. :)

Wednesday dinner

The Indian restaurant we planned to go to is gone so we ended up
here! Yay pasta! Good for the upcoming gaming marathon :)

Welcome to Indy

We have arrived. And what a view!

To GenCon!!

Waiting at the airport!

Blurry Workout

Today's workout. I know the picture is blurry, but I'm lucky to be
able to lift my arms at all.

Dad = Lucky!

Yesterday my dad had a very lucky escape!  He was driving home after taking the dogs out for a jog when a sudden snowstorm whipped up that knocked a tree onto his car!  He and the dogs are all ok, thankfully.  There's a writeup in the local paper:

http://www.newburyportnews.com/punews/local_story_042002239.html

Because I can

Did some shopping. Posting this pic from the iPhone. ;)

My Desk

Here's a photo of my desk that I took with my iPhone. I'm also
submitting this post directly from the iphone. This rules :)

Weigh-In 1/10/08

Weight: 241.2
Week Change: -0.7
Total Change: -67.8

Good to be losing again!

Weigh-In 1/2/08

Weight: 241.9
Week Change: 1.1
Total Change: -67.1

Ok, it's the New Year. That means it's time to get back on track. First challenge: 5 fruits & vegetables a day. I have definitely let that habit slide.