Urgh. I really, really hate being ill. Ever since the surgery on my vocal cords back a couple of years ago, any new infection goes right to them and does horrible things to my ability to speak. I am really, really, really grateful that Peggy’s birthday is this Friday and I don’t have to run a session of D&D. The next session should be really fun (as it’ll deal with the consequences of Adam’s betrayal), and having it run by a DM who can’t speak would likely cause it to be not as cool as otherwise.
Instead, I’m off to the Magic prerelease on Saturday. I’m hoping my voice will have improved somewhat, but nonetheless it’ll be my first Magic in a year (since the prerelease this time last year). I can also buy Peggy’s birthday present whilst I’m down there, so win-win for me. Shards of Alara looks like a fun set – you’ve got to say that about any multicolour set, especially one as wacky as this one.
I’ll play in one flight and then wander back to the city for a little shopping and a trip back home. I’ll see if Mind Games has any nice 3rd party D&D supplements I want to pick up – possibly not, given the horrible state of the GSL, but you never know.
I’ve survived a week without my father! Hooray! I’d be enjoying it more without this cold, though. Yesterday, when I was supposed to be getting some kindling in, I watched it rain instead. Why is it that when I’m home and I have a cold, it gets really nasty outside?
So, I watched a bunch of JAG yesterday, as well as rewatching The Stolen Earth, the penultimate episode of Season 4 Doctor Who. Boy, I love that episode, and I can’t wait until Sunday when the final episode shows, all 65 minutes of it.
My digital camera still hasn’t arrived. Hasn’t been sent, actually, so at least I haven’t paid for anything yet. That’s annoying me. I want to write a couple of ASL session reports, but they need a camera to really make sense. 
Boardgamingwise, we had a great boardgameday on Saturday (my last day of almost full health). I got to play Brass, and that was really, really, really good. It’s England during the Industrial Revolution, and you’re building industries, canals and railroads. What makes it very interesting indeed is that the resources you need are often built by other players, so by taking them, you actually help them. It’s a lovely design.
I’ve been looking at For the People, a American Civil War game at home on my own, although I expect I’ll give Randy a game sometime in the near future. Deluxe SPQR is sitting on my table just at the moment – I’ll have a solo game of that tonight. And, to celebrate the release of the Living Rules for Blackbeard, I had a couple of solo games of that yesterday. KCs are now terribly, terribly tough to defeat – and if you fail the roll, your pirate dies! No damage, just dies. It’s actually always been that way, but I think we thought they worked the same way as Warships. We’ll have to give it a game soon at a BGD.
Thursday night, assuming I feel up to it, I’ll be at Randy’s playing Combat Commander: Europe and Twilight Struggle, both great, great games we haven’t played much recently.
I tried brass the week after gen con on my vacation, and was also impressed by it. It was also a game I didn’t have a good handle on any sort of strategy. I crashed and burned… which means I really want to try it again! I tried taking out a few loans at the beginning of the game for a later payoff, and it didn’t really work too well.
Randy won by quite a bit, but I came from last in the canal age to being not last in the steam age, so I’m happy with that. 🙂
It’s now on my “must buy” list along with Age of Steam, but I’m going to have to wait until it’s reprinted.
I didn’t get to play Agricola, alas. Played Settlers and Carcassonne with a couple of the newer gamers instead.