Between here and there

Or, rather, between Toronto and Montreal. We just left Kingston.

Today is the start of my five-day mini-break to Quebec. I'm on the train - with complimentary Wi-Fi today, since the satellite is unstable and service might be a bit dodgy. Considering I've been scavenging service from the health food store due to our wireless router blowing up the other day, it's not a huge difference.

I reach Montreal in two and a half hours, where I'll have an hour and a half before getting on the train to Quebec. I'll reach that around 7 p.m. ish. Then I'll taxi it to my B&B, check in and probably eat, have a bath and then curl up in bed for the evening.

I'm so looking forward to it, you can't imagine.

I'll be around - the B&B has Wi-Fi because I'm a sad addict. ;) But I'll definitely be busy enjoying myself. :)

Regarding recent rumours about a certain other RP...

Apologies to those who read my LJ who are not involved in any of this, but I thought it was fair to make this post as accessible as possible, given secrecy and rumour-mongering have created a lot of the RP drama recently. For those not involved, these aren't the droids you're looking for, move along. ;)

For those who are involved, I have received permission from Sarah, otherwise known as [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com], to post the following excerpt from a conversation we've been having following her departure from XP. I do so in the interest of having the facts, instead of the half-truths and exaggerations that I've personally heard, and in the interest of trying to clear the air a bit.

If you have any questions about this, I will direct you to Sarah, since she is one of the modteam from Stronghold and a co-founder.

I emailed Sarah, since we've always been friends, and asked about the infamous "List of the Blackbanned" of Stronghold, given that I've heard from a number of sources that there is one and varying degrees of who is on it. This was her response:

As for the list... I really don't want people to think that we have a googledoc tucked away somewhere named 'people we hate' or somesuch with a list of banned players. As far as I know, there is no actual, maintained list of banned players, and if there is, I've never seen it. Fairly early on in the game (right after the mass XP exodus,) there was a discussion of players we'd like to invite into the game which also included mentions of people that SH players would prefer not to have invited because they had an issue of some sort with them. I hate to say that both you and Dex were included in the group of folks that they would prefer not to invite, but looking back at the discussion Nichole and IJ aren't mentioned at all. I would really like to stress that this isn't a universal 'everybody hates them' list. Not everyone in the game has problems with people who were discussed (I mean, hell, I like pretty much everybody,) but we're currently working under a model where invites are issued only when the entire group is okay with the potential player. One or two people who have problems with the proposed player are enough to nix an invite.

I'm going to screen comments, mostly since I'm on vacation and I don't want to have a flame war erupt in my LJ, especially since I haven't had the chance to go get booze yet. ;) If you want to know more about Stronghold, its invitation process, or the metaphorical list, Sarah would like to stress that she's happy to respond to questions and that she's not scary or threatening at all. ;) If you don't have her addy, leave a comment and I'll send it to you.

Similarly, if you have questions about XP, feel free to ping me, or any other of the XP mods, being Jen, Nichole and Dex.

To end... I'm in Quebec! It's pretty! They have snow!