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Happy sigh.

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought;
and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
G.K. Chesterton

I’ll probably forget about deleting this while I gaze in wonder on another sunset tomorrow.

I’ve now been initiated into the world of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). Our newest daughter-in-law (DIL) crafted a short introductory game for my husband and I to play while they were here for Christmas. She was the Dungeon Master (DM), and there were four of us playing the game, so five total.

First impressions: confusing but intriguing. Our DIL patiently helped us work on filling out the character sheets ahead of time. This involved picking a race (I chose to be a dwarf) and class (Hexblade warlock for me) and then throwing many dice to determine numbers for strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma. While she was helping Kris, I doodled an illustration of my character, Herda, in which she looks vaguely like she might have a beard, but I want to state for the record that she does not.

I wrote down what I was supposed to on my character sheet involving weapons and ammunition, attack ranges, my character’s dark vision range, walking speed, languages spoken (common, dwarfish, elvish) and the equipment I’d be bringing along.

As DM, our DIL did a great job of creating a short quest for our merry little band to accomplish: we were to try and find a red gem that had been stolen from a halfling who worked for the wizard to whom the gem belonged. Each of the players could contribute suggestions for action depending on the scene set for us by the DM. I was feeling very unsure of myself and didn’t contribute much as Herda, but enjoyed seeing how things played out as we went along. I took some notes and decided to tell Herda’s story in fiction form on this blog, so keep an eye out for that.

Would I play it again? Maybe. It’s more complicated than I thought it would be and if you really want to delve into it, there’s a lot of studying to do to get up to speed. One of our sons has about 6-7 fairly large books of reference materials for D&D. In other words, you can’t just show up for a game without any preparation. The role of DM is especially intriguing because the DM has to be prepared for all sorts of scenarios and outcomes depending on the suggestions of the players and the roll of the dice.

When we successfully completed our quest, I was a bit relieved to be done – it felt a little stressful for me trying to keep up with what was going on. Poor little Herda.

I Am Herda Part 1
I Am Herda Part 2

I’ll probably use Herda’s hex-blade to destroy this in the morning.

What do you do when you’ve accumulated some “art” pieces that no one really wants? Asking for a friend…

I spent a fair amount of time coloring some pages in a book I bought back in 2009 or so. The phrase “adult coloring book” hadn’t been invented yet, but the concept was already alive and kicking. It seemed a shame to leave them in the book, so I cut them out, mounted them on black paper and put them in cheap frames. And there they sat, in my craft room collecting dust for years.

Well, this is why walls were created, right? The Time of the Art Gallery has arrived. My daughter is home visiting so she and I have been working on possible arrangements.

An article I read suggested making paper cutouts the size of each frame to try out on the wall.

That’s as far as we’ve gotten. It would be a very sad commentary on my propensity to procrastinate if my make-shift sketches stay on the wall for longer than a day or so. There are still two illustrations that I haven’t colored in, so we left room for those on the wall as well, which is amazingly optimistic, considering the fact that I haven’t worked on them in probably five years.

Feel free to jump in with opinions about the art placement.

To be continued…

I’ll probably delete this make-shift post in the morning.

Happy new year, friends! Having had a festive respite, it seems meet, right and salutary to begin the blog anew. The title for this post doesn’t actually mean anything – I just liked the sound of it. But looking at it now, I think it would make a good book title, obviously some sort of mystery having to do with the murder of a popular blogger who stumbled into a scandal of some sort. His last post didn’t appear to reference anything out of the ordinary, but a text message to a friend indicated that the post would reveal something important. Now he’s dead and the game is afoot!

Or maybe it could be a fantastical story about a Blogwheel that generates stories that can come true under certain circumstances. The one who holds the cog holds the key to entering the world of the Blogwheel, able to guide and direct the narrative that it creates. When the cog is stolen, the Cog Master must find and secure it before untold mayhem and chaos results.

Or could it be the memoirs of the daughter of a world-renowned blogger? She reflects on what it was like to be a mere cog in the great blog machinery generated by her mother. Longing for the warmth of motherly affection, she had to learn to live as a character in her mother’s blog posts without any real life connection. But one day, the blogwheel stopped turning and things long dormant came to life.

Possibilities abound! Which story would you rather read?

I’m looking forward to another year of writing and I hope you continue to join me. It’s no fun without you.

A random post like this deserves a random photo to go with it, so I give you the very first photo taken on my Nikon in 2023.

Maybe I can work it into my murder mystery.

As the saying goes, I’ll most probably delete this in the morning unless I find a cog in the blogwheel.