people and fantastic places

Hello everyone. Church today was interesting. The sermon was about how we should all be prophets and not be afraid to do extraordinary things in God's service. Other than being a general encouragement to continue with my staggeringly large project, there wasn't anything else in it which I can immediately make use of. I've never been afraid to discuss my beliefs with people presuming they're at all interested. Sticking out certainly isn't new to me. That's for certain. Should opportunities to do more immediate good present themselves, I'm absolutely willing and eager to pitch in where I can.

I got to know a couple of people after the service and they now have a bit of a better grasp of my situation. Making inroads socially is a very slow process but I feel like it's at least proceeding. I'm very optimistic that I'll eventually get beyond the "see you next sunday" stage with this congregation.

Yesterday, I saw Allison, Ava and Amia who came over for a visit and dinner. Dan had to work this time. Ava and Amia were very cute and up to their usual chaotic standards. I taught Amia the word "chips". There were potato chips out for people to nibble on and she was very interested in them. She's getting better at indicating audibly what she wants but not quite at the stage where she can ask directly. She'll raise her arms when she wants to be picked up. Ava still doesn't like to eat her dinner and needs to be talked into it or bribed to keep going. Even dessert doesn't always do the trick. I wonder when she'll grow out of that. Her little sister certainly enjoys her food. They'll be going to Canada's Wonderland for the first time pretty soon and I'll probably go with them. It'll be interesting to see what they think of all the attractions for kids. I still remember my first ride on the Ghoster Coaster. I have a whole lot of good memories of that place.

Tonight, I'll be having dinner with Mark and Wendy. It'll be good to see them again. I believe we'll be trying out a new burger place. Other than that, who knows? Going out with excellent friends like them can hardly fail to be interesting. Over the weekend, I've been reading To Glory We Steer by Alexander Kent and have very much enjoyed the book as I usually do with the Bolitho series. I'm almost done. They're about to square off against the French fleet so I suspect I'll finish it up this afternoon. Kent has a terrific way of making you feel as if you were right on the deck with the book's characters. I just hope I'm up to doing even half as good a job when I at last come to the story-writing stage of Enchantment's Twilight. That's still quite a ways off although there'll certainly be bits of it throughout the design document.

Adam and I certainly had a good time on friday evening. Turtle Jack's was up to its usual good standards. Their new summer menu had a Thai chicken dinner which I quite liked. The Score brownie for dessert was even better but a little on the rich side. Adam has found a splendid new fantasy board game the name of which completely escapes me. Many of the concepts gave me ideas for how Enchantment's Twilight should work. One thing I definitely want to incorporate is to have battles potentially take place over multiple rounds of play so that other players have a chance to become involved. Incorporating that into the original three-round-per-day mode of advancement ought to be within the realm of possibility. It does require a break from strict realism though. Given that each segment of day, morning, afternoon and night, is an eight-hour chunk of time, it would be a rare fight indeed which would last even most of one such time period. When divising board games though, I'm beginning to see that one must be willing to introduce elements which somewhat stretch the suspention of disbelief in order to achieve overall gameplay objectives. Thinking through such implications seems to be what I'm in for over the next week. No real character inspirations have occurred to me for quite a while so I have to concentrate on other areas. I'll be looking over the current rendition of the game board and see if I can resolve the history and function of various places in greater detail. As more of this builds, I expect it'll become easier to come up with a roster of characters who would realistically compete for positions on the island's ruling council.