Ame and I are hosting a Dungeons & Dragons game at our place with a bunch of people that I’ve known through the years – all from my alma mater. I’ve mentioned Chad and Bobby before, but Dave and Matt and their wives have joined in as well.

I haven’t played or DM’d in awhile, so it’s a lot of fun. I’m running a 4th edition home-brew campaign and so far, the players are really liking it. Ame started off as the Dungeon Master, but I have since taken over duties and made the campaign my own.

The first week, Ame and I thought Snickers would be a big butthole and get in the way. In reality, he caused the least amount of trouble and people spilled their drinks on the floor at least three times. Eris wanted nothing to do with the whole group and sulked in the furthest corner she could find.

Since then, it’s been hard to get people together due to real life getting in the way, even when we try to hold it on Saturday. So far Ame, Chad, and Dave and his wife Traci are the core members. Matt and his wife have since dropped, not because they don’t do D&D, but they’ve moved quite far away to be practical.

This last session though was a blast: Under cover of darkness, my players infiltrated (ala Rambo: First Blood Part 2) and torched the bandit camp west of town and discovered the trapped, secret vault of treasure. Chad’s character, a druid named Elgar, brazenly walked into the main building and threw a Molotov cocktail at the guards and caught them all on fire. As that fire quickly spread, Traci’s cleric, Sam, blocked the door and wailed on them as they vainly attempted to escape.  Ame (Orianna) and Dave (Lyfe) have just discovered the vault of treasure that I’ve yet to roll up. They should hope I roll well!

These characters and players (except Chad) are all still new, so this whole bit of adventure should push them over the top to level 2. I hope they don’t find the treasure disappointing though – they are level 1 still after all. It shouldn’t too bad though, they’re all gamers (except Traci), so they should understand a level 1 treasure might not be the best, but should only get better.

It’s that time again! What does the weird shit I say really mean? I’ve roped Ame into some of my habits and some of hers as well, so let’s get this party started!

• “Potato, potato.”
  Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends has a character named Eduardo. In one episode, he was handling potatos and would regularly say “potato, potato” in his goofy little way. Now whenever potatos are mentioned, I think of this and sometimes I break out with my own “potato, potato.”
• Belt Line
  In Dallas, there’s a road called Belt Line. This road sprawls allll over Dallas in a giant loop, and if you travel pretty much anywhere in the city, you’ll encounter it. For a short time, I did a fair amount of driving around the city and it seemed that Belt Line was everywhere. Eventually, I saw it as my nemesis (memesis!) and cursed its name every time I passed or crossed it. “Belt Line!” I’d say through gritted teeth, and shake and pound my fists in anger. Silly of course, but definitely cathartic. Now, I live kind of close to Belt Line and I got really tired of doing the whole theatrics thing, but Ame and I still use it as an expletive every now and then.
• Bananaphone (Boop-Boop-a-Doop-a-Doop!!)
  Another expletive for Ame and me, this is of course from Raffi’s instant classic, Bananaphone. Instead of saying “bullshit” or “what the fuck?” we might just burst out with “what’s all this bananaphone?” or simply “Bananaphone!” Another part of the song is “Boop-Boop-a-Doop-a-Doop!” (apparently the sound dialing a bananphone makes). We usually reserve this one for when someone is acting like an idiot or oblivious to their surroundings and we make fun of them to eachother.

  Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring. Bananaphone!

• Fuzzy
  When the animals are acting bad, usually Eris, Ame and I say their being fuzzy. Eris’s pupils dilate to the size of small planets, and she gets super-alert. Welcome to FuzzCon 5. She tears around the house, jumps on things, terrorizes the dog, through chair legs, and over and under everything else. I’m not sure if the newspaper comic Get Fuzzy has anything to do with this phenomenon, but I do want to explain the FuzzCon sub-meme here. If you’ve seen War Games with Matthew Broderick, you’ll know that DefCon stands for Defense Confidence. DefCon 5 means the defenses are at their most confident, and DefCon 1 the least. With FuzzCon, the opposite is true, but it makes sense. Fuzzy Confidence 1 means there’s almost no fuzziness, and FuzzCon 5 means Eris is full on fuzzy.

Snickers is a loveable dog, he really is. He just does things that are gross. Most notably, he eats his own and the cat’s poop. Whenever I take him outside to do his doggie-business, it’s a race to the finish with him. The apartment complex management puts out little doodie kiosks from which cheap plastic bags are dispensed, complete with trash cans at their base after business has concluded. I almost have to dive in for the kill with one of these flimsy bags to get to the poop before the dog does.

This is ridiculous!

Why should I have to fight the dog for his poop. Obviously I’m only reinforcing the behavior by acting so excitable when he poops. This tells him that the poop is worth something, and, being a dog, he then must have to have it more than anyone else! He performs, what I call the poop-whirlwind. Snickers doesn’t poop in one place. He’ll pop a squat and then meander around, still in a squatting position. This poop-whirlwind allows him to lay a circular pattern of droppings and continue to poop, all while he eats it. To bolster the technique’s effectiveness, he spins with his butt away from me so I cannot see what he leaves, if anything. I have to assume he has, so I investigate. All the while he has already (*) left another prize for himself in which he will happily partake.

Fortunately for me, I firmly believe my sense of sight is better than this poor dog’s sense of smell – and I wear glasses. It’s sad though really. I think it’s an effect of his upbringing, and it’s all here and the links therefrom. Ame attributes his poop-eating habit to the conditions of his life before living with us, but I know better: He’s a dog. I digress, but I can see six feet away, even in the dark, better than he can sniff out his quarry from mere inches.

The best is when I defeat him and get all the nuggets he leaves. Bad is when I know he beats me to one or more. The worst is when I’m not sure if he gets any or not. I shiver in disgust as I write this, but would you want a dog with maybe-poop on his tongue? At least when I know he gets one I know to tell Ame, “don’t let the dog lick you!” Sometimes she’ll ask me and all I can say is “I dunno…”

Another similar and fun (read: gross) thing he does is eats the cat’s poop. Eris poops in a litter-box like most indoor cats, and when nobody’s looking and the laundry room is accessible, Snickers usually pilfers some litter-covered poop. The latest few times I’ve caught him, he just digs out the turds and places them in cachés. For later I guess? Who knows…

* It was at this point – not before, no no! – I realized I was making a post all about a dog who eats his own shit. Not in the planning phases, not in the ‘twinkle-in-my-eye’ phase… No. During.

Let’s start with Friday. That’s today.

Friday
I wake up at 6:00 a.m. and feed the cat and dog. While the dog is eating, I put on the previous days’ clothes so I can take him out to poop. He usually does, and, more often than not, I have to race him for his produce because he likes to eat it. Gross. We come back inside and I have to close the laundry room door because that’s where the cat’s litter-box is. Guess why? Gross. Next, I make an oatmeal and orange juice breakfast for myself. If I’m especially hungry, I’ll eat a banana too.Sometime during breakfast, Ame wakes up and I turn the shower on for her and start the clothes drier to toss what’s in there – wrinkly clothes are no fun. I finish breakfast and make up a small lunch for Ame: a peanut butter sandwich and a soda. We’ve had granola bars in stock lately, so I toss one in the plastic bag for her. She finishes up getting ready and goes to work. I shower up and go to work myself.

Work is a drag. All day I listen to people and their problems. A majority play by the rules and go in and out of the revolving doors just like they’re supposed to, but there are always those that believe they are special. There’s a rant dedicated to just this somewhere in my head, I just know it.

Just like everyday, I come home for lunch and, depending on what leftovers there are, I have some, or I make a sandwich. Before I can eat though, I have to take the dog out to potty. My lunch break is an hour, so I go back shortly, but I have yet to have a day where I didn’t come home for lunch.

Work stretches on and 7:00 p.m. rolls around and I punch out. If I’m lucky, I won’t be stuck on the phone past quittin’ time. I come home and feed the animals and take the dog out again, and get dinner going for Ame and me. It could be frozen food, leftovers, fast food, whatever. We eat, then I’m to clean up the kitchen including any dishes, clean the litter-box, and possibly move clothes from the washer to the drier. I fI have any time, study and look at homework. It’s probably calculus. Crawl in bed and go to sleep at 10:00 p.m.

Saturday
I wake up at 6:00 a.m. and tend to the animals. It’s Ame’s weekend now so she won’t be waking until well after I’m at work. I eat and shower at a pretty plodding pace; I don’t have to go into work until 8:00 a.m.. Work until lunch, and depending on what’s going on with Ame, we eat or have leftovers after I take the dog out, and then I go back to work until 7:00 p.m. and do the same routine for the evening as Friday.

Sunday
See Saturday

Monday
See Friday

Tuesday
No work! I wake up at 6:00 a.m. and tend to the animals and eat like normal, and take Ame to work. We leave at about 7:00 to 7:15 and I get back at about 8:15 to 8:45 depending on traffic. At 9:45 to 10:00 I leave for class that starts at 11:00. It’s about a 30 minute drive, but traffic is unpredictable, so I like to get there at least 20 minutes ahead of time.

After class, I come back home and work on homework and personal projects. I’ve been doing some for-hire work for my parents and also my sister lately, and they’re not boring (art and webmastering) so that’s not so bad. I have some time to cook dinner before I leave to go out and pick Ame up from work at 3:00.

Tuesday nights are exciting! After I pick Ame up from work, we’re free to do pretty much anything until bedtime at 10:00!

Wednesday
Wednesday mornings are the same as Tuesdays, except I have even more time for whatever during the day because I don’t have class during the day. I pick Ame up from work and we go to school from there. We have night classes until about 9:15. We come home, get ready for bed, and that’s the day.

Thursday
Thursdays are the same as Tuesdays except with the added bonus that Ame has a night class. I don’t, so I just go with her and sit in the seat next to hers and work on my own homework. We sit in the back, are quiet, and no one is the wiser. Again, we come home and that’s it

…or at least that’s the way the schedule is supposed to work. Sometimes Ame’s teacher, Professor Football, is an ass and we ditch at break, or my physics class lets out early and we come home sooner than expected. Sometimes we pop into a restaurant on the way home for dessert or a specialty shop. Still, the time is filled, and I value the short time that Ame and I have for together on a given day – that’s why Tuesdays are great.

So, if ever you talk to me and I say I’m tired, I want you to get my full meaning.

Disclaimer: I make it sound as if Ame doesn’t do anything around the house. Not true. For example, she gets the laundry folded and washed among other things.