Skiriki's Chaotic Pad

So! It is that time of the year already, except we had to delay our not-Halloween party from 1st of November to 8th, because one friend could not attend otherwise, and then again, 9th would be a birthday for an another friend... soooo... we crunched the parties together.

( Pictorial evidence follows. )

Current Mood: tired

How come no one told me of this thing of beauty? 

I suspect I have to get something like ten of these and go wild.

Current Mood: amused

<Lolth> My fucking face wants to peel off and run away, while the brain peeks out of the resulting hole and considers the same.

Current Mood: sick
Current Music: Mike Oldfield - Flowers of the Forest

So! I got some guests to my den, this time krfsm and the Baroness; they came here from their travels on Wednesday, and they are staying till Friday. Yesterday was mostly letting them just chill and rest after long, long journeys in gods know where, and today we're going to head off to a Finnish air force museum plus air force surplus depot by its side. After that, grilling stuff and spending time with my friends, playing board games and card games and maybe watching something from DVDs. Right now we're having breakfast, feasting on leftovers of the Epic Spinach Soup since it will be fairly late when we can finally get to grilling various food items.

Plans for tomorrow include a stroll in the crowded city (that goddamn car race is here again), pizza and then packing my guests to a bus leaving for Ropecon.

Whee! Fun! :)

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Music: Sister Machine Gun - Loser

Psychic Warrior 9
Alignment Neutral Evil; Medium Female Razorclaw/Longtooth Shifter (Humanoid [Shapechanger, Psionic])
Init +6; Senses low-light vision; Listen +3, Spot +3
Languages Common, Halfling, Sylvan

Power Points from Class: 23
Power Points from Wisdom: 13
Power Point Total: 36
Powers Known: 9
Maximum Power Level: 3
Manifester Level: 9

Powers Known:
2nd, cost 3 PP: Body Adjustment^{A, full round}, Psionic Lion's Charge^swift, Power Claws^{swift, A}, Sense Danger^{standard/immediate, A}
1st, cost 1 PP: Bite of the Wolf^standard, Claws of the Beast^{A, swift}, Force Screen^{A, standard}, Metaphysical Claw^{A, standard}, Vigor^{A, standard}

Shifter Feats (4): Extra Shifter Trait (Longtooth Shifter), Healing Factor, Razorclaw Elite, Shifter Multiattack
Daily Uses: 3
Duration: 3 + 3 (Con modifier) + 4 (number of shifter feats) = 10 rounds
Razorclaw (Su): +2 to Strength, 2 claws: 1d4 + 1 per 4 character levels
Longtooth (Su): bite, 1d6 + 1 per 4 character levels
Razorclaw Elite: Full attack in the end of charge with claws.
Healing Factor: When you stop shifting, you immediately heal a number of hit points equal to your character level. This benefit does not occur if you die (at -10 hit points) before the period of shifting ends.

What other PCs know:

Durga is a shifter with a razorclaw trait (and notable fangs as well — she has manifested the longtooth trait later on); her ears are far more bestial than an average shifter's and she does have more fur around as well. The actual lycanthrope breed that has contributed to her ancestry is hard to guess, but it must have been something really nasty. In hot and humid weather she clearly becomes more agitated and irritated, so a cooler climate is a good guess for her native homeland, but she does not have the same pattern of speech as shifters of Eldeen Reaches.

According to stories that go around, she came to Sharn couple of years ago, and ended up in conflict with the native shifter population, drifting from one job to another, most of them mercenary in nature. Even then she had established a pattern: what money doesn't get spent on food and lodging, must be turned to liquid bliss followed by a good fight with the natives. For this reason alone most native shifters of Sharn avoid her whenever possible (especially if she's been already drinking the night away), others (especially dreamsight shifters) call her a bad omen of things to come.

To an outsider she seems dense, even dullard, as she doesn't seem to show much interest beyond sating the immediate needs of food, drink, rest, and fighting. In more social gatherings she has a tendency to stare at people, follow them with her eyes, and very much behaves like she's sizing up prey and trying to spot the weakness in the herd before striking; this, of course, unnerves people and she does not make friends too easily, unless the ruffians and thugs of the civilized underworld count.

To an insider... she just doesn't talk much about herself and her wishes beyond the obvious needs of food, drink, rest and fighting (which is done with ferocius gusto that borders barbarian rage — she has absolutely no problem with batshit insane battle plans that put her as a meatshield as long as it means a chance to tear an enemy to bits with her claws and teeth). While Lamannia was coterminous, she expressed brief interest to other members of the adventuring party, but most of it was done in her typical drunken stupor and thus went nowhere. Both the dwarf and the human seem to be mildly traumatized, and the warforged just amused/confused.

As far as her drinking habit goes, she says "If I'm not sleeping — and the drink helps me to sleep — no one else is sleeping either". It may be a joke, or not, but so far the party has accomodated this bad habit and she's relatively happy in her hazy cloud; going prolonged periods of time without alcohol seems to make her edgy and irritated up to the point of lashing out verbally (so far). The first time she woke up from non-booze-induced sleep she reacted as if something was chasing her, or she had to go and do something very urgently — what, exactly, no one knows since she vanished into the jungle for a couple of minutes and then came back looking like "she totally meant to do that". This has repeated itself when she drank from dream-inducing well in an old Quori observatory.

She doesn't talk about the beliefs of her tribe; so far, she has just told "they don't matter in here, in this city, do they?", although she does have braids typical to other shifters who assign great tribal and religious importance to them. If there's any significance to them, she hasn't told. It is, however, fairly clear by now that she's not what one could call as "good" or even "undecided" — there's a ruthless and merciless bent to her base nature, starting from ripping downed foes to death and comments such as "more things to kill", showing general (even callous) disregard to life. On the other hand, she seems to prefer her life with a "pack" since there's an instinctual understanding of strength in numbers.

Her general outlook is that of a fighter: a suit of armor, greatsword, her claws... but later on she created an effect which deflected blows with ease and made a humming sound. An another trick she seems to possess is calling a weapon out of nowhere, and now she's also seemingly more vigorous before a battle is joined. Her injuries also seem to heal with some concentration, and some of the damage fades after she stops shifting, much like she had rested overnight. But the most notable addition is the way she can grow even longer claws than a normal razorclaw shifter could: the damage output is phenomenal, as is her endurance in battle.

Current Mood: amused

So! I figure it is time to write something about my favorite pasttime fun, and muse how unexpected turns things can take in RPGs.
( Onward with RPG rambling! )

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Joe Hisaishi - Adagio of Life and Death

So! Today I got a new stove. The old one had developed chronic hottus loose buttonitis, which is mock-Latin way of saying that whenever the stove got hot, the temperature control knobs had a nasty tendency to suddenly come loose all the way through. So it was time to get a new one.

This one has a ceramic stovetop, hot air circulation, more oven-space than the previous one and it is supposedly self-cleaning. Yay!

Current Mood: bouncy

...with a glass of cranberry juice.

I've used computers for nearly 20 years by now, and for the first time in my life I turned into a complete butterfinger while eating in front of the computer: a glass of cranberry juice fell from my fingers on top of the keyboard and mouse.

A wad of hankies had fallen first from the upper level, and there was a soaked through lump of paper on top of the keyboard, while the mouse was swimming in a widening pool of red, which turned into a cranberry juice fall and splattered to the floor, on my clothes and feet.

I shut down my computer immediately, and began a salvage operation: I have the keyboard and mouse drying up, but the temporary replacements weren't any good, so I ended up buying a new mouse and keyboard. Argh. I'll open up the old ones tomorrow and see how bad the existing damage is and clean them up if possible at all.

On top of everything, my new mouse seems to be as depressive as the previous one: as soon as I had it attached to the computer, it tried to commit suicide by leaping down from the keyboard level to the floor.

Maybe I need to stop buying black mice. They seem kinda emo.

Current Mood: blah

So, this weekend we had a birthday party for two friends who share the same birthday (though different years; their combined age is now 70).

As I wrote before, I started cooking two days in advance, and had a furious preparation orgy on Sunday, getting everything else done in nick of time. And here are the results, right after LJ-cut!
( Yes! Show me the goodies! )

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: Sister Machine Gun - Red

...cooking done, baking done, partying done, now shuddup and let me keel over and sleep the sugars and carbs and everything away...

Pictures shall appear later. Watch this blog.

Current Mood: tired

...cake #1 is now baked and cooling. Decorations for it have been created, though not finished. Now is time to chill and relax and hope that the brief pain on my back wasn't a new wave of kidney stones deciding to make their appearance tonight or tomorrow.

Tomorrow, a frenzied orgy of cooking awaits.

Current Mood: accomplished

...when cooking and baking for friends' birthday party begins two days in advance and continues on the birthday day as well.

Cake #2 was done today, tomorrow will be the day to bake the "main cake". And do the... decorations.

Heh, heh, heh. Gonna be epic.

Current Mood: amused

So, today I noticed that I had some tofu I should use away before it rots away. Since I was going to do wokkish dish anyway, I figured I could make this as a some kind of sideshow to the main dish. And since my wokking proclivities were filling up the entire stovetop, I decided to tuck it into the oven instead.

• A block of firm tofu
• Peanut oil
• Salt
• Optional: various spices. Whatever you like, such as soy sauce or paprika, five-spice etc.

1. Cut tofu into neat blocks, about 1 cm thick, and 2.5 cm wide and tall.
2. Spread the blocks on a cutting board, place a dry cheese cloth or some paper over them and top with an another cutting block and pile on some weight. Let drain for an hour or hour and half.
3. Heat oven to 225 C.
4. Spread the blocks of tofu to a pan, on baking paper.
5. Smear the blocks with peanut oil and sprinkle with salt. Spice as you like.
6. Put into the oven for 15 minutes.
7. Turn heat to 250 C, and continue roasting for 10 minutes, until the blocks are golden and puffy.
8. Eat with things you like.

Current Mood: giddy
Current Music: Joe Hisaishi - The Dragon Boy

Tadah! As promised.





Still rejoicing about it!

Current Mood: giddy

The apartment complex where I live decided to renew the kitchen doors and drawers, and today a handyman came over and worked for half a day, replacing the doors and drawers. The end result?

AWESOME.

It was the first combination of this door color and workspace levels with certain model of handles he had installed, and he was also surprised about how good it looked like in the end; the kitchen is now like a part of the whole with the rest of the apartment.

Just totally AWESOME.

Out of curiosity, I decided to ask for a price for the rest of the doors done in same style, and now I'm awaiting for the answer; I'm fairly certain that the price is pretty high, but I just want to know, if it is in any way within feasible range. I'm sick and tired of plain white doors with icky plastic handles that tend to break too easily.

Pictures will follow as soon as I find my crappycam and can get it recharged.

Current Mood: happy

I nipped to the city to do some bureaucracy and mail the prizes to the winners. coeli and nexan can expect to receive their goodies in seven to thirty days. Yay.

Had a good lunch. Bacon.

Current Mood: okay

Ingredients:

• 75 grams of butter
• ground black pepper and grated nutmeg
• 3 heaping tablespoonfuls of wheat flour
• 1 1/2 litres of boiling water or vegetable/chicken stock
• 1 vegetable bouillon cube and 1 chicken bouillon cube
• 200+ grams of smoky striped bacon (Finns: HK:n Amerikan Pekoni is the best for this)
• 150 - 200 grams of frozen chopped spinach or 500 grams fresh spinach (lightly boiled and chopped small)
• 150 - 200 grams of mixed Swiss and Mozzarella cheese, grated (Finns: Pirkka emmentaali-mozzarellasekoitus is the best for this)
• 6 hard-boiled eggs, chopped up
• 2 1/2 desilitres of thick cream (Finns: Lidl's cream in 5 dl package is the best for this)
• Optional: white truffle oil to season

1. Put butter into a good kettle with the pepper and nutmeg; heat until it boils and brings out the nutmeg scent.
2. Add flour, stir like crazy.
3. Add 1 litre of boiling water/stock, toss in bouillons if you're not using stock already. Continue stirring.
4. Chop up bacon (easiest to do with scissors) and add to the soup. Let simmer and boil on low heat for about 30 to 45 minutes.
5. Add spinach. Increase heat until soup boils again.
6. Add cheese. STIR! STIR! Add water/stock as necessary.
7. Add chopped up eggs. Keep stirring.
8. Remove from heat and add cream. Stir, stir, stir.
9. Serve. If you have any white truffle oil (and why not? It is the cheapest way of having a bit of luxury in your life and can easily last for a couple of years), pour some on top of the soup in bowls before serving.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Jean-Michel Jarre - Magnetic Fields Part 1

Bacona: Bacon-wrapped banana. Fried on a skillet.

That's what I just had for breakfast.

It wasn't as bad (or odd) as it sounds like; the banana was not too sweet to begin with (as it wasn't ripe), and smoky bacon added flavor of its own to mingle with the banana's own. It wasn't much different from the time when I had crispy bacon with maple syrup, maybe less sweet.

The only thing I'd change would be the method of frying (needs a slosh of oil) as the banana soaks up bacon fat and the bacon wrapping threatens to get stuck to the skillet and then unravel from its softening banana core.

Current Mood: contemplative

...is now over and once I get a shred of coherence/the flu goes away I will re-read every poem submitted and see who wins and what.

Breathe at will!

Current Mood: drained

I got a kukri as a Christmas present. And a camo stick as a bonus.

And a box of Green & Black's organic chocolate plus hand-made Belgian choccy.

Plus more awesome loot things...

...but I got a kukri.

Awesome.

Current Mood: giddy