Avatar: The Last Airbender

Leesha and I started watching Avatar: The Last Airbender.



This is a series I've been aware of for as long as it has existed, but never bothered to explore. It always appeared to be some ninja cartoon that happened to have pretty good art and some imaging that resembled Miyazaki slightly.

What is this show about?

 

Avatar: The Last Airbender takes place in a fantasy world that is home to humans, fantastic animals, and spirits. Human civilization is divided into four nations: the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, the Air Nomads, and the Fire Nation. Each nation has its own natural element, on which it bases its society. Within each nation exists an order called "Benders" who have the ability to manipulate the eponymous element of their nation. The show’s creators assigned each Bending art its own style of martial arts, causing it to inherit the advantages and weaknesses of the martial arts it was assigned. The Bending types are Waterbending, Earthbending, Firebending, and Airbending.

link to more...

Leesha and I have developed a tradition of sitting and watching a show together when we can. I use this as incentive for getting chores done as well as spending time with her in an activity that truly interests both of us. We've watched Nadia: Secret of Blue Water, ROBOTECH, Haibane Renmei, Last Exile, Dungeons & Dragons, Oban Star-Racers, Sarah Jane Adventures, and now Avatar: The Last Airbender.

We're 4 episodes in and this show is good. It's aimed at an audience of her age almost directly, but has enough fantasy mixed with realism to keep geek adults interested. So far I'm quite impressed. Impressed enough to start this thread.

Very Good Saturday

The last week was coming close to overwhelming. At work there are people in training. That means the training department is putting in 9 or 10 hours a day all week as we cover or evaluate morning routes and afternoon routes with training for 3 hours in between. Sometimes that even includes afterschool routes like it did for me on Monday. Thursday I sat on a Minneapolis charter route which clears around the same time as a St. Paul after school route. Then I have small group bible study on Tuesday night. And we had a small group church meeting Wednesday night. Very busy week. One nice thing was every moment I worked on Friday was overtime. So I needed a fun-no-work weekend.

That's what I got.

Saturday was gaming. D&D at Rob's house. When I got home it was Jack and Leesha and Hazel in the back yard (Hazel is our friend's dog we're sitting for the weekend). Cara grilled brats for dinner. Pretty good day.

After dark and after Leesha was ready for bed we watched the 3rd episode of our new show - Avatar: The Last Airbender. This is an American anime. Three episodes in and its proving to be very well made. It's targeted to Leesha's age, I believe, and has enough fantasy elements to be interesting for adults with that geek gene. We're both really enjoying this show a lot.

It Never Seems To End

I caught something the very night of my last post. I thought and was expecting to throw up, but never did. Instead my throat became extremely sore and I was very chilled. This lasted through Friday and Saturday and is still going strong today. Saturday we did go to a clinic to get swabbed for strep-throat. Turns out that is not what I have and that would've been the thing to have to get a remedy. Whatever I have has to run its painful painful course. They said probably just over a week. If it goes for longer, I'd need to go back and get tested for mono.

At least everyone else is feeling well. Jack did throw up again last night. Not sure why, but he's acting fine today. Cara is going crazy from just being in the house for so long and battling Leesha's devious ways of finding attention. She continues to antagonize Jack. Its getting rare that he allows her to hold him. Sometimes he gets mad if she even comes near him. It's all her own doing, though. From day 1 she was in his face too much. No amount of warning from Cara and I could give her a clue. Now its Jack's screams that seem to actually give her pause. Sometimes they don't even do that.

With all of this literal down time I've been reading and watching old shows. Finally finished Edgar Rice Burroughs' 2nd book in the John Carter of Mars series - Gods of Mars.

I've also been watching old '80s episodes of Doctor Who when the Doctor was played by Peter Davidson. Davidson is a very dorky awkward Doctor. Not at all doing the right thing at the right time. He seems more flawed than most of the other Doctors I've seen. I never understood why he wore a celery on his lapel. Perhaps that will be revealed. I must keep watching...

As I watched these episodes some big Doctor Who news broke...

The official 11th Doctor. Here is a link to the article and a discussion board about it.

So all the things we cancelled on this week...

• Holiday Celebration with Mom and Dad at Greg and Mandy's
• Small Group Social with Parents
• New Years Day with Trelevens
• Work on Friday
• Gaming on Saturday
• Church on Sunday

Catching Up

Yesterday I had a day off and got some catching up done. There are now a couple more Jack videos online.



I read another Edgar Rice Burroughs book, At the Earth's Core. Burroughs is fantastic. These books I've been reading have all been fantastically pulpy. Having finished that one, I was on the search for a different author from the pulp era. Kirby O'Donnell or El Borak are some pulp characters by Robert E. Howard that I'm trying to find, but the books are either unavailable or expensive. But it turns out that my friend, Rob, has ALL of Howard's books and he's going to lend them to me. In the meantime I'm reading Burroughs' 2nd Mars book, Gods of Mars.

Leesha and I finished the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. It was fun, and I'm glad we watched it. I saw maybe two episodes back when I was on the air. We took a break for a while because she got into a website based on a toy. She bought a stuffed animal dog or something and in the packaging was a code for their website. She takes this code and logs on and there is the virtual version of her stuffed dog. She can name it, play with it, send it on jobs, and do all sorts of games and things with this online character. We discovered that if she doesn't put it in his bed before she logs off the site, the dog gets sick! And the next time she logs on she has to nurse him back to health. Its pretty cool. We recently started a new series called L/R or Licensed by Royal which is a light hearted espionage anime. I've seen it before a few years ago, but watching it now, I had forgotten how good it was.

Garage Sale

Cara sold that old blue car at our garage sale! Also sold the couch and chair and also the old cat-smelling air conditioner.

I played D&D with Rob, Paul and Pat at Pat's house. Left early to do lights at church. It was the new youth pastor preaching, Seth his name is. His 2nd time preaching and I've worked both times. He's great.

Greykell emailed me!

Greykell is the sister of Keith Baker. Keith Baker is the creator of Eberron. Eberron is a campaign setting for the role-playing game- Dungeons & Dragons. Keith has written a few novels and a comic book set in this world, some of which star a character also named Greykell. I really liked this character so I did a google search for her and found that Keith based Greykell on his sister.

I wrote him and asked him about that, but you can read about that here.

Today I got an email from Greykell, herself!

Here is what she said:

Hey there,

Just wanted to say hi.. I was vanity googling and found your post
where you had found MY post about my brother Keith writing "me" into
Eberron.

I've bookmarked your site so I can read more about your life.. after
all, if you like Greykell you've got to be cool *grin*.

Cheers,

Greykell (but not the one from Eberron alas, just a very proud older
sister!)

I thought it was awesome that she wrote me. Thank you, Greykell. Maybe you'll find this posting next time you vanity google.

Lighting and Climbing Trees When Goblins Attack!

Yesterday, gamed at Pat's. They took me off of switching at church and now I'm running lighting. There are a lot more things to be aware of when doing lights. We'll see how that goes.

Lights at church again for both Sunday services. Got home and...
nap
After that I whipped up a quick session of D&D with Cara and Leesha. We ran the encounters in the small town so it was almost all dialog role-playing. Leesha is still trying to get the hang of how to play this. I noticed that anytime I have the characters encounter anything dangerous or resembling combat, her character - Noel, hides or climbs a tree. I'm re-thinking the combat angle and thinking about completely altering the module to a puzzle and riddle fairytale campaign. We'll see.

Dungeons and Doctor Who Spin-offs

Patrick hosted today's session of D&D ran by Robert. Rob was saying that he heard the fellas at the Source saying they don't expect the Eberron Campaign line to survive based on the lack of sales they see there. This news makes me sad since I've recently thrown my D&D flag in that world. They do have 2007 already mapped out as far as releases go, so I'm thinking (and hoping) it was just talk.

I didn't go right home after the game. I explored Plato Road a bit. Found myself along the river- the other side of the river from Shepard Road. Very nice drive.

I'm pissed that I cannot find my book. I think I forgot it at Pat's house.

Cara was working tonight so I had some me time. I watched an episode of Torchwood and loved it. Torchwood is Doctor Who's younger vulgar brother. Its much more dark and they swear all the time. Paul was telling me that Sarah Jane Adventures has started over on the BBC. Sarah Jane Adventures is another Doctor Who spin-off, like Torchwood. I'm going to download the first episode tonight.

Very cold day.

Groundhog's Day

Today is Groundhog's Day. I used to blame winter on that stupid groundhog when I was a kid. This is the coldest day of the year. And the coldest day I've ever driven a school bus in. Because of the cold there was a sundog today shortly after dawn.

I sold my Palm Pilot on eBay today. I also sold a book.

It was too cold to nap on the bus, so I went to Schinders and burned up some time there. Found last month's Dungeon magazine.

Flipping through radio channels, on my way home, wishing I could listen to my David Bowie CD, when all of a sudden Golden Years STARTS on KQRS! Great song. That happened earlier this week with Peter Gabriel.

Got home, had dinner and Cara flew out the door for work. Leesha and I had the evening. She went to work cleaning her room. I went on inspection. I asked what if I found something in her closet?- it was fine. What about under her bed? She had confidence that it was going to pass as well. But I said "Hey, what about this?!" and pulled out a comic book I was hiding in my pocket and threw it on the bed. She had a reaction of a little bit 'how did I miss that', 'wait... I haven't seen that before', 'hey! this must be my reward' and she flew to it and started paging through. She was well behaved. Next I had her take 5 pennies out of her bank and I went down and grabbed 5 toys from the pile of toys Cara and I get whenever she leaves toys in her pockets from the laundry. 5 pennies vs 5 toys in a Connect-Four challenge. She wins she gets a toy. I win I get a penny. She decided to walk with a tie- 3 to 3. We finished off the night with an episode of Dungeons and Dragons cartoon I downloaded.

How this very cold day went

As usual we went to the 11:00 service at Woodland Hills. It was a very good message entitled Kingdom Healing and was about how Jesus healed vs how Christians today go about healing ministries. Based out of Luke 4:31-40. Best line from the sermon was a quote from St. Francis of Assisi:

"Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words."

I've made this quote my signature on my web forum.

Our small group coach, Mike, wants to have Eric and I over to watch an episode or two of Firefly. We're thinking Thursday if it happens this week.

Apparently, during the service, Eric got called to work for some heater issue. After church Cara and I went out to lunch with Keesha. We were hoping to hook up with Eric after he was done, but his job took too long. Keesha recommended the Grand Buffet down on Robert St. south of St. Paul. It's been a long time since I ate at an asian buffet. It was quite fulfilling. So we took Keesha home since we didn't have Eric. She didn't have keys to get in either, so we left her on her porch to wait for Eric (who was done by then and only a couple of minutes away, so she lived... I hope)

Cara and I headed over to Leesha's dad's house where he was hosting her birthday party. They were in the middle of a movie in the movie room (that room was very cool, by the way). I didn't feel like watching so I made my way back out to the lobby to read my new novel (see last post), which I was clever enough to bring- suspecting something exactly like this. Leesha's party looked like it went pretty well. She had a flock of girls from her class over for that movie and then they played Twister. Her dad's wife, Bri, has twin sisters who were also there. They're twins with each other, not with Bri. Leesha's half brother, Zech, was also there and perhaps a mite overwhelmed with all the girls there.

This evening I came across a website during a Google search for 'Christian D&D gaming'. The site is called Aquela.com and is the site for freelance writer James Wyatt who contributes a lot for the D&D Eberron campaign setting. How about that?! That's what I've been reading lately. Wyatt was a Methodist Pastor for several years.

By the way - Eric came home about 4 minutes after we dropped off Keesha.

Dungeons & Doctors

I'm feeling much better today.

Yesterday was pretty laid back. Went downtown Minneapolis for a nice long session of D&D with Rob, Pat and Paul. We're starting a new game run by Rob so we spent the first half building characters and just talking about anything- and we covered almost everything. The last couple of hours we actually played a little. Got the feel of our characters and how they'll work together. Rob is setting the game in AEG's publication- the World's Largest Dungeon. Should be fun. It was good time.

We all left just before 5:00. I stopped on they way home to pick up a novel. I bought the 2nd in the Eberron: Dark Dreaming trilogy- The Shattered Land again by Keith Baker (I just chatted with him a couple of days ago).

Cara was still out with her mum when I got home. After she arrived we had dinner and watched three episodes of Doctor Who. The last two of the first season and the first one with the new Doctor. Cara is really getting into this show. That pleases me.

Tomorrow is Leesha's birthday party. Not sure how that's all going to play out, but half the reason I got that book is if I'm expected to be there for a long period of time.

All in all, I'd say it was a rather high Geekflag day.

Day off

Time to get over this cold. Did laundry, posted some comics on eBay and caught up with some other stuff. Listened to a lot of Bowie, read OOTS.

In the mail, today, we got a package from Willis West (Greg's household). It's a DVD presentation of photos from Christmas. Greg produced this complete with a Star Wars text crawl + John William's music and photo montage with music including Chuck Mangione. What a great gift. Thank you, my brother.

Our house was full of relatives celebrating Leesha's and David's birthdays. We had Delane and Ron, Rubin and Donna, David and Darlene, and Cara, Leesha and me all for dinner in our living room. It was a very nice time. I gave Leesha her Gameboy. She was thrilled to get it.
It was a nice time. However, my cold peaked around this time and I was struggling to maintain the energy to be social.

Tomorrow, Rob is DMing a new game.

Bi-Polar Weekend, Switchers, Wet Hair and the End of a Book

As covered in the last entry, we went to the Bomberg's house on Friday night. Saturday was spent with our former Before-You-Say-I-Might class mates for our first reunion since we've all graduated and married. The nature of the two visits- Friday night vs Saturday- made for a bi-polar weekend.

One foundational factor with Friday night is that the Bombergs are Jewish. Now, don't take any of this the wrong way. But, that is a line between us that will never go away. There will ALWAYS be that difference. Saturday, that line doesn't exist. Friday there was a level of discomfort the whole time (at least for me). It was a biding of time till its over. Saturday was more of a time that you don't want to leave. There was a genuine relaxation. Its very interesting to have both experiences on the same weekend.

This weekend was my monthly service to Woodland Hills. Every third weekend I fulfil the media crew's switcher position for all three church services. There are several people filling various roles for each service and about half are on a monthly rotation. The two camera people are on the same schedule as I am so I will almost always end up with the same team- which really works out nicely.

This week's sermon was by Brenda Salter-McNeal and was about Jacob wrestling with the Angel. I really like that story. Its a brother story.

It also is from Genesis which I think is my favorite book in the Bible. Its in the last 10 years that I realized that a good chunk of my favorite Bible stories are related and sequential. Isaac, the same little boy that was almost sacrificed is the same old man who gave Esa's blessing to Jacob. Jacob becomes Israel, the same old man who was moved to Egypt at the end of his life. Israel's sons are the origin of the 12 tribes. No one pointed these small factoids out to me or I didn't put it together until recently. I love that book.

The one problem with switching at church is that I'm left mentally wiped out. This afternoon Cara had to work so it was just Leesha and me. Soon after Cara left, I crashed. Leesha took as shower and I took a nap. When I woke up she was not in the house. I looked outside and she was finishing up sweeping the entire driveway! I was impressed and thanked her, then scolded her for going outside right after bathing with her hair all wet.

I finished reading a book today. An Eberron novel- City of Towers by Keith Baker. Eberron is a new D&D campaign setting that has gained my interest lately. This novel is written by the guy who gave the setting life. They describe Eberron as Lord of the Rings mixed with Indiana Jones mixed with The Maltese Falcon. So basically its fantasy with elves and dwarves, but with pulp adventure and noir. I liked it and will probably be reading more.

Buses Don't Fit at the Post Office

I had to pick up a package at the post office, but to get there during their open hours I had to park the school bus in the parking lot. It was early so it ended up being no problem. But still. 30 foot vehicle, come on!

I heard "Another Brick in the Wall part II" on KQRS tonight and now I want to listen to The Final Cut.

I'm coming up to the end of the book I've been reading for the last week and a half. Its a D&D book from the campaign setting Eberron. Even thou this is the first ever Eberron book I've read, it still feels like the old Forgotten Realms books I used to read in High School. Its light. And fast paced. As apposed to George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series (which is way better, but much heavier- in content and actual weight!).

Got a good nap in on the bus this afternoon. In the mid 20's and sunny makes for a very comfortable bus as long as you park east/west.

I'm trying to write every day this year. I'll develop a format in time to come. This is just a mashup of ideas just to get them down.