I keep on trying to get back into the practice of updating my blog on a regular basis, but every time I turn around something major is happening.
Just before I started my vacation, I found out that Teksyndicate is doing a European Tour. I was getting ready to grill when a friend of mine, Angela, posted on Facebook that Vincent Zain (aka: Ian) was going to be in Germany with his good friend Ward Hale (aka: Logan) and she’d wondered if he’d made plans on visiting me while they were driving through the country on tour. Unfortunately with all of the crazy plans and meeting up with fans from Ward’s website https://teksyndicate.com/, he completely forgot about letting me know when they were going to be in country, so we didn’t get a chance to meet up in Frankfurt when they were on their way to Munich. There was no way I was driving down to Munich Sunday afternoon on a school night … I mean work night. That would have been an eight to ten hour round trip drive for me “IF” there was no traffic and that doesn’t even take into the account hanging out. I would definitely need more time for hanging out with those two since they are still hardcore gamers and metal heads looking to have fun and see the nightlife in Germany. Still, it was a big disappointment.
One of the things that I hate about living in Germany is that I don’t usually get any time to meet up with my old gaming friends. Usually when I head back to Florida I make sure to take some time to visit people one-on-one here and there, but unfortunately there’s no massive LAN party to hang out and BBQ at like old times. Don’t get me wrong, now-a-days I suck ass at playing, but for me it’s no longer about winning. I mean, of course I always want to win and try to win, but it’s not about gaming or winning, but just seeing those good friends I miss. Now for my friends, it might be more about beating my ass, since I was so hardcore to beat in-game when I was into playing.
Vacation started Thursday when I left work. Even though I had a lot to do, such as picking up my daughter and my wife’s nephew from the airport (a four hour trip), I surprisingly had a chance to get a lot of writing in. The plan was to take a week to relax and pack for our trip and then head to the south of France, but then Monday morning at 2 AM (02:00 for you Europeans) a river of muck decided to take a trip through the bottom portion of our house. Now Tuesday morning (around 00:30) I’ve finally had a chance to get dry and sit down before collapsing.
Coming from Florida, I have a long history with flooding and being declared a disaster zone. My home city of Rosdorf here in Germany would be close to hitting that “disaster zone” level. What I find really odd in comparison between Florida and Germany with flooding is that usually in Florida you get a warning when shit’s about to get bad. In Germany you find out when the shit just hits out of the middle of nowhere. While a lot of rain, a large hill and a farmer’s field might not sound as exciting as a hurricane, surprisingly enough I have learned to have some respect for this combo. It’s amazing how much water can start traveling downhill at once to create a flash flood. My wife sent me up to our backyard (we have a two level house since we live on a hill) and the amount of water I saw waiting to pour into our house made me realize there wasn’t jack I could do to stop it, so instead I came up with a great plan. Open up the back window it was pouring into and the front door. Sounds strange, but there really wasn’t any other choice. The water and mud poured through the house and then things got better. Better is relative. Better meant lots of water damage and a carpet of mud two inches deep, but better than the river that was passing through a moment earlier. Once things calmed down we were able to clean things up. The whole lower level of our house is thrashed and our landlords are going to have some major repairs to do, but it’s clean. Oh, we also found out that the flood insurance we have doesn’t count for natural flooding, only man made flooding. My wife had specifically requested to have full coverage, but the jack who wrote up the policy didn’t add in natural flooding and we missed that point.
Luckily it’s just stuff. The important things, such as our lives and health are good. The other stuff, although upsetting, is just stuff. I’ve lost everything I’ve owned before, this isn’t the first time … more like the fourth … but there is only so much you can do. We are still going to go on vacation. We’d lose too much not going and well staying won’t make things better.
Story wise tying up this last fight scene is time consuming. I’m not even bothering to worry about word counts or anything like that. I just want the scene written correctly. When of my plans with the Last Paladin Series is to have the story progress somewhat like an MMO’s major dungeon crawl. Each book needs to have a major boss to defeat or deal with that opens up the next book to the series. The “boss experiences” have to be unique and over the top, so I’m trying to come up with a scene that was as cool as the ending climatic fight scene in Flight. At first I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do this adequately, but now that I’m almost completely through the scene I have to say I think I hit it. It’s really sounding good.
Okay, I think that is enough for an update. I need to go collapse in bed.
I'm adding a link for those of you who are interested in seeing the flooding. The video is in German, but the pictures of the flooding is all the explanation you need. http://www.wetteronline.de/wetter-videos
Just before I started my vacation, I found out that Teksyndicate is doing a European Tour. I was getting ready to grill when a friend of mine, Angela, posted on Facebook that Vincent Zain (aka: Ian) was going to be in Germany with his good friend Ward Hale (aka: Logan) and she’d wondered if he’d made plans on visiting me while they were driving through the country on tour. Unfortunately with all of the crazy plans and meeting up with fans from Ward’s website https://teksyndicate.com/, he completely forgot about letting me know when they were going to be in country, so we didn’t get a chance to meet up in Frankfurt when they were on their way to Munich. There was no way I was driving down to Munich Sunday afternoon on a school night … I mean work night. That would have been an eight to ten hour round trip drive for me “IF” there was no traffic and that doesn’t even take into the account hanging out. I would definitely need more time for hanging out with those two since they are still hardcore gamers and metal heads looking to have fun and see the nightlife in Germany. Still, it was a big disappointment.
One of the things that I hate about living in Germany is that I don’t usually get any time to meet up with my old gaming friends. Usually when I head back to Florida I make sure to take some time to visit people one-on-one here and there, but unfortunately there’s no massive LAN party to hang out and BBQ at like old times. Don’t get me wrong, now-a-days I suck ass at playing, but for me it’s no longer about winning. I mean, of course I always want to win and try to win, but it’s not about gaming or winning, but just seeing those good friends I miss. Now for my friends, it might be more about beating my ass, since I was so hardcore to beat in-game when I was into playing.
Vacation started Thursday when I left work. Even though I had a lot to do, such as picking up my daughter and my wife’s nephew from the airport (a four hour trip), I surprisingly had a chance to get a lot of writing in. The plan was to take a week to relax and pack for our trip and then head to the south of France, but then Monday morning at 2 AM (02:00 for you Europeans) a river of muck decided to take a trip through the bottom portion of our house. Now Tuesday morning (around 00:30) I’ve finally had a chance to get dry and sit down before collapsing.
Coming from Florida, I have a long history with flooding and being declared a disaster zone. My home city of Rosdorf here in Germany would be close to hitting that “disaster zone” level. What I find really odd in comparison between Florida and Germany with flooding is that usually in Florida you get a warning when shit’s about to get bad. In Germany you find out when the shit just hits out of the middle of nowhere. While a lot of rain, a large hill and a farmer’s field might not sound as exciting as a hurricane, surprisingly enough I have learned to have some respect for this combo. It’s amazing how much water can start traveling downhill at once to create a flash flood. My wife sent me up to our backyard (we have a two level house since we live on a hill) and the amount of water I saw waiting to pour into our house made me realize there wasn’t jack I could do to stop it, so instead I came up with a great plan. Open up the back window it was pouring into and the front door. Sounds strange, but there really wasn’t any other choice. The water and mud poured through the house and then things got better. Better is relative. Better meant lots of water damage and a carpet of mud two inches deep, but better than the river that was passing through a moment earlier. Once things calmed down we were able to clean things up. The whole lower level of our house is thrashed and our landlords are going to have some major repairs to do, but it’s clean. Oh, we also found out that the flood insurance we have doesn’t count for natural flooding, only man made flooding. My wife had specifically requested to have full coverage, but the jack who wrote up the policy didn’t add in natural flooding and we missed that point.
Luckily it’s just stuff. The important things, such as our lives and health are good. The other stuff, although upsetting, is just stuff. I’ve lost everything I’ve owned before, this isn’t the first time … more like the fourth … but there is only so much you can do. We are still going to go on vacation. We’d lose too much not going and well staying won’t make things better.
Story wise tying up this last fight scene is time consuming. I’m not even bothering to worry about word counts or anything like that. I just want the scene written correctly. When of my plans with the Last Paladin Series is to have the story progress somewhat like an MMO’s major dungeon crawl. Each book needs to have a major boss to defeat or deal with that opens up the next book to the series. The “boss experiences” have to be unique and over the top, so I’m trying to come up with a scene that was as cool as the ending climatic fight scene in Flight. At first I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do this adequately, but now that I’m almost completely through the scene I have to say I think I hit it. It’s really sounding good.
Okay, I think that is enough for an update. I need to go collapse in bed.
I'm adding a link for those of you who are interested in seeing the flooding. The video is in German, but the pictures of the flooding is all the explanation you need. http://www.wetteronline.de/wetter-videos
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