Heh heh, the idea of a 'padding party' sounds like fun. Of course my imagination ran away with me and I got the image of a dozen-plus guys and gals, each of them 'bulked up' to the point that that look like they're about a quarter-ton each, lumbering into an all-you-can-eat place...

I'm working on a short story (which due to the 'all characters must be 18+' rule can't be posted here) and have run into a problem: I want to check the viability of a female teenage character's weight doubling over the course of a year. I know I could just SAY it happens, but I want to know if it's physically possible. Does anyone have links to medical studies about rapid weight gain?

If tabletop miniatures are your bag, but you don't want to spend all that time painting up an army of hundreds of figures, I would recommend FROSTGRAVE from Osprey Publishing. It's inexpensive, easy to learn, and each player's 'army' consists of a dozen figures, at most!

Since there seem to be a very high portion of this site who openly declare themselves to be 'geeks', I just thought i'd ask: What are you currently geeking out over? I'm currently having a nerdgasm over the fact that the entire run of IF magazine, a science fiction magazine that ran from 1952 to 1974 is available online here: archive.org/details/ifmagazine&tab=about

I grew up gaming, starting with Holmes Basic D&D back in 1979. Since then I've played just about every form of game under the sun, adding casino games to the resume just last weekend.

I'm currently grinding my way through a bunch of romance novels to get a feel for the pacing and rhythm of the things before i start writing one myself...

After realizing that job opportunities in my hometown of Madison, WI are incredibly lackluster, I've been considering pulling up stakes. my sister lives in Las Vegas, and I'm looking at it as an option. Anyone have any clue about what the job scene there is like?

Hmm, sounds great! I've been looking for something unique to write about for a while, and this sounds like just the thing...I may have to drop some bank on a few romance novels for research...for a while I was batting around a sort of sci-fi/romance story where one of the two people was nice and big (if for no other reason than to use the line "After the first quarter of a ton you sort of lose track" but a modern story might be more challenging...

Hmmm, give me a few months and I could have one for you...perhaps I could create a new romantic sub-genre!

I'm not much of a fan of modern 'epic fantasy': If a book has the subheading of 'book X of the blahblahblah epic/chronicles/saga I tend to give it a miss.

My tastes tend to run towards more of the pulp-style 'sword & Sorcery': Robert Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, etc. The stories are more atmospheric and the writing is tighter: Howard could do in one short story what takes modern fantasy writers an entire novel...