Fridays have always been nice this semester because my afternoons are free. Consumer Behavior is a 7-week course, and is only held two days a week. So, I attended Literary Analysis and Sensation and Perception today. Recently we've been discussing sound in Sensation and Perception, including the anatomy of the ear, what sound waves look like (amplitude, wavelength, elevation, etc.), and examples of blind people finding their way around using echolocation. I've done plenty of research on human echolocation, so it was a pretty slow lecture for me. At least there were some video clips I hadn't actually seen.
Several days ago, I ordered a thermos for my birthday. It was supposed to be delivered on the 11th, but Amazon and I seem to have different definitions of "two-day shipping," because I received an email saying it was delivered around 10:00 at night. So today, I stopped by and picked it up. I'm pretty happy with it. I bought one that holds 25 oz, because it was $10 cheaper than the one that only held 16 oz.
My hand included for size comparison
Supposedly, if used properly, this thermos can keep hot drinks hot and cold drinks cold for 24 hours. The cap is a small cup. I've been wanting to eat healthier, and I decided to add more soups to my diet. I hate eating meat, but my biggest problem with meat (besides not liking the taste) is that I find it dry and chewy. Having small pieces of meat flavored by (wet) soup definitely helps with that. I heard that it's already started snowing in Salt Lake, so having a thermos of warm soup to keep with me on campus sounds like a great idea.
My thermos needed to be washed and dried thoroughly before its first use. I decided not to use it today, but I wanted to practice making soup anyway. The last time I went grocery shopping, I bought a few Campbell's canned soups. I've never actually made soup myself before. I'd noticed that I'd bought "condensed" soup, and I wasn't sure how to prepare that. "Condensed" sounded to me like it was missing some ingredients. The can had instructions for preparing in the microwave as well as on the stove, but they simply said to "Add a can of milk and stir."
The instructions seemed simple enough, but I'm a planner and since I only have morning classes on Fridays, I had an entire afternoon to kill. I ran several Google searches, checked WikiHow, and looked up YouTube videos to be sure I wasn't going to miss some obvious step in the process. I wanted an absolute basic walkthrough. I was shocked when both my Google and WikiHow searches turned up next to nothing on preparing canned soup. I guess I finally found something they can't answer. Maybe most people learn how to prepare soup from their parents or just from the can itself, and never write How-Tos for it online.
YouTube, however, was helpful. I finally had my question regarding "How much is a can of milk?" answered. Turns out, what you're supposed to do when preparing Campbell's soups is, pour the soupy contents of the can into your pot, then fill the now-empty can with either water or milk (depending on what the instructions on the can calls for) and add that in too. Ohhh, that makes sense. Obviously, I don't cook much beyond spaghetti, macaroni, and cake. I felt a little silly for not figuring that out myself, but this is one reason to be grateful for the Internet- I didn't have to ask a human person for basic help and risk being laughed at for not knowing what to do.
After October 15th, my afternoons will be free every day but Thursday. I'm hoping to sign up for a regular exercise class at the campus gym, and spend a lot of time learning how to cook, too. Since "learning how to cook" is a broad concept, I'm going to spend my semester trying to become an expert at making soup. I'll practice with canned soups and experiment with different flavors, but over winter break, I'd like to buy some vegetables and chop them up to make soup from scratch. It's just a good life skill to have. Then in spring semester, I can learn to cook something else. Maybe some actual meat and vegetable dishes, which would be a step up from soup. Tacos, chicken, steak... We'll see.
Soup boiling on the stove-
I sent this picture to Mom to show her I had no size of pot between "large" and "frying pan"
My clam chowder turned out well, although a little less flavorful than I was hoping for. In some of the video tutorials I watched, I saw people adding additional vegetables and spices to the canned soup, which in all honesty probably wouldn't have occurred to me for awhile, either, since I would have just assumed everything I'd want in the soup was already in the can. I don't have spices around my apartment right now, but I'll have to experiment in the future.
I worked on some homework and writing this afternoon, then went up to campus for my weekly D&D session. It was a night of stories all around. Where we left off, bandits had burst into the refugee camp where our characters were staying, and in a "scripted battle", managed to make off with several captives. Today, we approached the bandit camp under strict instructions to gather information only, and not engage. Yeah, that never works out.
Two of our players ended up failing their stealth checks by rolling 1s on the twenty-sided die. The instant "fail terribly" number. They tumbled down the hill. At least it was dawn, so no one in the bandit camp was really awake... Until these two fallen players had a brilliant idea. The first one picked herself up, brushed herself down, and then bolted into the bandit camp flailing her arms and screaming at the top of her lungs, "HELP! It's after me! Banshee!" Her fellow who'd tumbled after her followed suit.
One of our other players instantly got in on this action. He plays a wizard, and one of his spells is Dancing Lights. The lights are supposed to be used like flashlights, but apparently he was able to assemble them into a giant wall of light that looked like a ghost. He sent it running after them. Another player realized that she also had a spell called Thamaturgy that allows her character's voice to become "three times as loud as normal for one minute." She fell into step behind the "ghost" and began to wail. My character, as well as the two professional NPCs we had arrived with, stood in shock at the top of the hill for a moment and tried to figure out what to do. Especially when 35 bandits bolted out of bed and swarmed the camp. Our DM, Nicole, was stunned to say the least. She'd expected us to sneak about and try to free the prisoners while creating as little noise as possible... not this. Not this.
Our game map, about 15 minutes after the bandits first came out.
Blue dice represent bandits; my character is the magnetic rock on the left.
One character is raiding a large tent. A nearby tent is on fire.
Each square represents 5x5 feet.
The players controlling the ghost lights and the wailing rolled 20s on their Intimidation attempts, the highest number on the die and the instant "Something amazing happens" outcome. In fact, we rolled so many 20s and 1s tonight that Nicole walked away from the table with her hands up crying, "Guys, there are other numbers!" All the bandits failed to see through the illusion for several rounds of combat. 90% of them spent the entire event bolting as far away as possible. They left all their gold and supplies behind. A few bandits went insane from pure terror, which Nicole described as, "If they live through this, they're probably going to need to see a bandit therapist." One of our players also caught a tent on fire and a long debate was had over wind direction and how far fire can travel, prompting Nicole to grumble, "Do I have to play the fire now?"
In the end, we chased 34 of 35 bandits out of camp, rescued our prisoners without taking more than one hit of damage between all six of us, and only having killed one bandit who'd been guarding the hostages. We raided the tents for bandit gold, important documents, magic spellbooks, and packed the tents up to bring to the refugee camp for shelters. Nicole couldn't believe this had happened, since she'd designed this part of the story to be an unwinnable battle- after all, the plan had been for us to gather information and go back to collect reinforcements. She'd thought maybe we would find a way to sneak in, rescue prisoners, and sneak out- then have one of the prisoners insist that we search the other tents and find her stolen spellbook, which would of course incite more encounters with bandits.
Well, that's D&D for you. Player actions guide the story. Even the experienced players around the table were laughing and talking about how this was such a great story and they'd be talking about this with their friends for a long time. I appreciated Nicole's willingness to go along with our shenanigans. She did her best to make the bandits a threat, but alas, they kept rolling low numbers and running off in terror. It will be interesting to see what she comes up with next week. She spent her summer building up a deep, rich world and complex NPCs for us to play with. Our adventure was fun, but I do think I'd enjoy being a DM much more than being a player. Creating worlds and characters is more my speed. Standing awkwardly on a hill trying to improvise when my only good option is shooting arrows at people out of range? Not so much.
It was a dramatic night, to say the least. We'd arrived to play at 7:00 and were finished before 10:30. I appreciated that, because while D&D can be fun, I wouldn't really want to play from 7:00 until 2:00 in the morning with a group of people I'm still largely unfamiliar with. I remember Dad expressing interest in starting a family D&D game, which might be a fun thing to try this summer, even if we don't buy all the books and just make things up ourselves. Stockton and I were actually talking recently about how Preston would probably love D&D because there are so many complicated rules, and the strategy element really exercises your brain. Preston loves games with complicated rules and maybe he'd enjoy having that creative outlet. I guess we'll have to see how it goes.
