Challenge: Small Talk

(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews.)

Prompt: My thoughts on small talk

Honestly, my first thought on small talk is simply that I'm bad at it. Simple questions, polite questions, kick my brain over into some sort of weird assessment mode and by the time I work through that people are staring at me and wondering why I can't just give a rote response like everyone else. Like this:

Co-worker: "How are you doing?" 

Me: I don't know, I haven't checked recently, how am I doing? No aches or pains, sinuses are just a bit stuffy but worth complaining about, work seems to be piling up faster than I can get it done but that happens sometimes, things are going pretty well at home... All right, add all that up and I'm doing pretty good. "Doing all right," I reply, a full thirty seconds later. Or, even more awkwardly, "Eh, could be better. I'm not getting enough sleep and my knee's acting up again." Nobody wants to hear that. That's not what the question was for. But you asked me a question, and by all the dark and forgotten gods my brain is going to try to answer it. 

Add to that the fact that I'm incredibly slow to warm up to people I don't know, and it's all just incredibly awkward.

Challenge: Things I Wish I Were Better At

This is part of the weekly Blogging Challenge over at Long and Short Reviews. If you'd like to participate, you can find the prompts here. They also put up a post every Wednesday where you go and link your response -- and see everyone else's. Check out their homepage to find it.

The challenge for this week is "things I wish I were better at."

And of course, the first answer that leaps to mind is, "EVERYTHING." I mean, who wouldn't want to be some sort of genius polymath capable of building their own Iron Man suits in the garage while composing songs that would touch hearts for centuries to come in dozens of languages?

But right now, if I had to pick one thing? It would be going to bed at a sensible time. It makes everything else (including me) work so much better, and I am soooooo bad at it.

I think it's mainly because the only time I really get to myself is after about 9:30, when the boys are usually in bed and the house is relatively quiet. That used to be the time when I got things done. Nowadays, I use that time to recharge, or I try to anyway. (Last night I got on Twitter, and boy howdy was that a mistake in terms of having a stress-free evening. But I did get some writing done later, so I guess it wasn't a total loss. Except now I'm still tired, which is the thing I was trying to avoid in the first place, and also the reason why it took me so long to gear up and do writing.)

It seems a little silly, doesn't it? But I do everything so much better when I'm rested.

"Just In Case"

Well, it's here again. Happens every month. It's just an email to notify me that the Online Account Statement is ready. Which means it's time to pay for the service for all the pagers that this company supplies to us.


Yes, you read that right: "pagers".

Pagers.


Do you know how many pagers we have active right now?

None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Not even one.

Haven't used 'em in years.


And yet, every month, I get an email explaining that my bill statement is now available for online viewing. There's a link for it and everything.

For the pagers. Of which we have none.


It's a working link. I mean, it takes me to a webpage, and there's a login and everything.

Of course, we don't have an account anymore, so I can't log in. I can't even reset my password, because the login page doesn't recognize my email address.


That would be the same email address at which, every month, I get an email explaining that my bill statement is now available for online viewing.

For the pagers. Of which we have none.


I could, of course, have myself removed from their Electronic Invoicing Program. All I have to do is log into Account Manager.

Account Manager: that thing for which I have no credentials. That thing that doesn't recognize my email address. The same email address it keeps sending alerts to.

For our bills for our pagers, of which we have none.

I have called the company.

They tell me they cannot remove me from the mailing list, because I'm not in their system. I don't have an account, you see. We haven't had an account with them in years.

They can't even find my email. The one which receives the notices from them.


And yet, every month...

Well.

You know.

Pagers.


Seventeen years ago, when I switched from being the Helpdesk to doing something else, I asked if I should get myself taken off the account.

My former boss told me not to. She wanted me to be able to get into the account, just in case.


And in the seventeen years since then, I have never once needed to log into that account.

But every month, I receive a notice that our billing statement is ready.

For an account that we don't have.

Using credentials that no longer exist.

For the pagers.

...Just in case.

Still trying to find a rhythm

First up: No new scenes for Dark Armor today, no new scenes for Into The Black tomorrow. It's just not going to happen.

So we're... trying to keep everything going, but it's hard. Beautiful Wife and I are both still employed, at least, but that's hard too in its own way. (Though admittedly, a lot less hard than not being employed would be.) The boys are doing their schooling at home, which makes it hard for Beautiful Wife to get her work done -- Firstborn has pretty well organized himself and is getting his work done independently, but Secondborn still needs to be prodded and monitored. I'm not sure what I can do to help with that; I'm still going into work, but having me work from home (even on the limited basis that I'd be allowed to do so) really just makes our house more crowded, which hurts more than it helps. And, of course, it's hard to stay focused what with the sense of impending doom hanging over everything and the federal (and state, to a somewhat lesser extent) government's absolute clusterfuck of botched responses and counterproductive messaging. Even my own workplace (municipal government) which I normally think of as fairly sensible and proactive seems to be making financial and economic decisions when it needs to be making medical and humanitarian decisions instead. And trying to be on a regular schedule at work is all sort of detached and surreal; I would have missed a meeting yesterday if somebody hadn't skyped me a "You're late, are you coming?" reminder... either because I'd lost track of the fact that it was Wednesday, or I'd lost track of the fact that we have this meeting every Wednesday, or maybe just because I'd lost track of the fact that I'm me and therefore supposed to attend.

We're doing what we can to stay sane. I'm running the Firstborn-and-friends DnD game on Saturdays and a Saltmarsh campaign for some of my friends on Tuesdays, and playing in a Curse of Strahd campaign on Saturday nights and (starting tonight) (I hope) an old-school Vampire: The Masquerade campaign. This is good for my emotional health, but it's not helping me be productive on my writing projects since I'm putting those energies into creating new characters and getting a feel for them instead. Beautiful Wife is experimenting with online movie nights and just talking on the phone a lot. But all that requires new arrangements, and a different rhythm for our weeknights.

We're doing all right, I think. I'm sure we're doing a lot better than a lot of people, and I feel a little self-conscious about pointing out that despite that, it still sucks. But I'm going to bring dinner home with me tonight (and I cooked dinner for everyone the last two nights - yay me!) so that Beautiful Wife doesn't have to worry about that; and I'm going to try to put away some laundry; and then I'm going to try to play Vampire: The Masquerade.

We do what we can.

How are the rest of you holding up, gentle readers?

The Golf Course? Really?

I do not understand why we seem to think that keeping the firk ding blast golf course open should be any kind of priority right now.

Normally, sure. We have an award-winning golf course? Good look! Applause! Bragging rights!

We're determined to keep it open during a pandemic? Maybe... and I don't want to go too far out on a limb here... maybe not such a good look.

Gonna be erratic!

We've finished a busy weekend going into what's usually the busiest two weeks of my year, with another busy week coming up after that and...

...Look, I'm just saying, no promises for what gets posted over the next month, how often, or whether it's even remotely been proofread. I can never tell, going into one of these, whether I'll be too busy to write, too stressed-out not to write, just in the mood to post a lot of music, or picking fights with people online. (Well, okay, probably not that last one. It's not actually that entertaining, and I have other ways of working out aggressions.)

I expect things to settle down again about the middle of June. That, or I expect to have a nervous breakdown. Whichever, really.

See you when we get there? Good, good.

Blogging Challenge: Things I wish more books talked about

This is part of the weekly Wednesday Blogging Challenge over at Long and Short Reviews.

I have one big, glaring one and I'm to write it out right now, and maybe if I think of something else I'll come back and add that later.

1. Women have periods. This is... this is one of those weird blind spots. It's one of those Things We Don't Talk About. At least, it is in my reading. And that's deeply weird to me, because we're talking about something perfectly normal that happens to better than half the population at some point, but... {{crickets chirping}} (Like, seriously: I think I've seen it referenced twice - once in a post-zombie-apocalypse comic, and once in the otherwise-completely-horrible movie Showgirls. Oh, and it's an actual plot element in Pitch Black.) But, I mean... We've reached the next stage of the Hunger Games. Does Katniss check the calendar to see if she needs to add some pads to her pack? Our heroine is scouting the Shadow Tower so she can report back to her friends before they enter its fearsome depths. Has she missed a period? Is she worried about it, or is this normal for her? Who the hell knows? I'm not saying it needs to be a major focus, but if you're going to have a go at realistic worldbuilding maybe consider that this is a normal thing that normally happens to normal people on a pretty regular basis? Because I feel like leaving those considerations completely "off screen" just contributes to an unnecessary and harmful taboo.

Late update: Nope, apparently that's it. That's my soapbox issue on this topic.

Neighborhood Shitshow Continues...

So, a while back we had some issues with the house directly behind us, which we were beginning to suspect was actually being used as a chop shop.

We eventually decided that that wasn't what was going on. Unfortunately, we're still not quite clear on what actually is going on. Whoever is living there is clearly a hot mess (and not in any sort of good or exciting way), and at one point a whole bunch of people - probably extended family - showed up and hauled a whole lot of trash out of the house. (And basically piled it by the alley in a way that essentially guaranteed that the city wouldn't pick it up.) Since then, various of the extended family have been there at various time, including a few more cars that seemed to be on their last legs. (Yes, I wound up helping a teenager/early twenties guy push the car with no transmission around to the front of his house, and yes of course it was that same house.)

So on Sunday morning Beautiful Wife and I took a walk, and went by the front of the house. There are two cars (both in pretty bad shape) parked out front. (This is pretty typical.)

In more or less a straight line from the cars to the front door, we found:
-An unopened bottle of Michelob
-A cell phone

How drunk do you have to be to manage that? (Don't answer that. It's rhetorical.)

I took the items up to the door and knocked, but nobody answered and I couldn't hear anybody moving around. Oh, and also? The front of the house has acquired two new broken windows, which have been covered over with cardboard from the inside. Plus, there's one of those realtor's boxes, the kind that holds a housekey and requires a combination to open it, clipped around the door knob. These people are a grade-A mess.

So I tucked both items between the wooden main door and glass door, and we went on with our walk.

Which really should have been the end of it: just another entry in the growing catalogue of oddities and mild unpleasantness associated with that house and its current occupants, whoever they actually are.

But... no.

At dinner time we were interrupted by the sound of screaming. Long, loud, repeated screaming. It sounded, I swear to god, like someone was in the process of being beaten to death. So I went outside to see what was going on, and of course it's coming from that house. Only I can see along the side of the house to where an ambulance is parked in front of it. The flashing lights are hard to miss.

So I give up and walk around the corner.

The screaming is coming from a young woman who's with a handful of other people on the front lawn. An ambulance and a fire truck are blocking the street in front of the house, and after a minute I spot a police car as well, kind of wedged in between two other cars.

I shake my head, go back inside, and eat. But of course, things are still going on out there, so after a few minutes Beautiful Wife and I go back out there. There are now more people on the lawn and sidewalk, and from the way they keep moving around each other I'm not sure whether this is about to be a family reunion or a minor riot. Nobody starts anything, though, and every so often one of the family demands to know if somebody is going to be okay. The firefighters say reassuring-but-non-committal things; the EMTs are still busy inside. I must not have been the only one concerned about a fight, because two more police cars show up and all four new officers head inside for a look, then come back to stand with the crowd on the lawn.

Eventually they wheel in a stretcher, and a bit after that they wheel somebody back out on the stretcher and put them in the ambulance. One or two of the family members hop into the ambulance, and off they go. More family members arrive. The EMTs start bringing their equipment back out to the fire truck. Another family member arrives, and there are shouted accusations, recriminations, objections.

Finally it starts raining, and the whole crew files into the house while the last of the emergency personnel leave.

I'm going to have to get in touch with the local emergency services and get somebody to provide a copy of the actual report on this, because I am baffled by the whole situation. Best guess? The old guy who I'm pretty sure is living there gave himself a near-fatal case of alcohol poisoning, was found by family members, and is now in the hospital. But that's only a guess. All I'm certain of is that whatever is/was going on over there is messy and horrible.

My job, my career, my co-workers...

I have now received, for the first time in my life, an interoffice envelope filled with empty/used toilet-paper tubes.

I feel like this is both the culmination and the perfect summary of my career.

I'm not even the one collecting them. For fuck's sake, I just send out the emails. But here I sit, at my desk, with an envelope full of depleted toilet-paper rolls.

I long for the sweet embrace of darkness.

Spring Break

The boys have begun their Spring Break, and I'm not entirely sure we're going to survive it. I'm not sure of this because I'm still working, and Beautiful Wife is still teaching. (Her spring break is next week.)

So the boys will spend a week being supervised by their mother (when she's home and not, say, entering midterm grades), their grandparents (when they're available), and bro-sitting (when nothing else is available). Plus, a week off from school is the perfect length of time - using "perfect" in much the same sense as it gets used in "perfect storm", of course. It's just long enough to get them completely off their sleep schedules, but not enough to make it worth scheduling formal activities. Plus, it's coming right after the time change, so it's uniquely positioned to make sure that nobody is on schedule when they go back to school.

And yeah, if I had any sense I'd have scheduled for a week of vacation for myself this week, but... I don't, so I didn't. And honestly with some the things going on at work right now, I really couldn't even if I'd planned to. Capitalism would be a lot easier to deal with if I were ridiculously wealthy already...

Anyway, by the time you read this I'll be back at work and coughing on people. Onward and upward, my friends! Nothing but good times ahead.

Just so you know...

I once drove a frozen, severed goat's head wrapped in newspapers from Stephenville, TX to Dallas, TX. It's about a two hour drive, and I spent the entire time in absolute terror of getting pulled over and having to explain.

It may be old-fashioned of me...

...but I miss having a president who spoke in sentences.

Well... Probably not car thieves

So on Saturday an actual moving van arrived. And the same guy was there, and was definitely directing the movers, and with a bit less familiarity than he'd shown with the the tow-truck driver. And at this point, the covered car in the driveway is no longer covered.

So I'm forced to assume (contingently, and also grudgingly) that he's actually just a guy moving into a house, albeit in the weirdest way possible.

I still feel like there's something going on, but now I'm wondering it's much more sordid and mundane than what we'd originally suspected: divorce, maybe, with the husband moving into the former-couple's rental house? Or maybe it's just like I said, and he's just some guy moving into a house in the weirdest and most suspicious way possible.

Regardless, he seems like a decent guy so far.

I Think The Civil War Was Run By Idiots

Compiled from Twitter:

So I'm reading a history of the Civil War, and... Y'all, I knew it was a huge, long, sometimes-bloody mess, but I hadn't realized the full scope of what a comedy of errors the whole thing was. I mean, some of that was down to the limits of intelligence-gathering and communications at the time, and some of it comes from trying to lurch from a functional peacetime economy to a state of total war with absolutely no preparation. But it sure doesn't help that activities on both sides - both military and political - seem to have largely been directed by idiots.

You want an example?

Well, all right: the one that prompted this post was the expedition of Henry H. Sibley, who offered his services to Jefferson Davis in the form of a plan to raise troops in Texas, then advance up the Rio Grand through New Mexico to Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Once there, he'd drive out the federalists and turn west, eventually extending the Confederacy all the way to California (and picking up some gold and silver mines to help replenish the Confederate treasury along the way).

So he recruits his brigades and heads north from El Paso. And... well, the situation is really messy, but he basically is able to march north all the way to Albuquerque with only minimal resistance (from Fort Craig) but also with minimal supplies, in some very harsh desert. He then arrives in Albuquerque to find that that the Union garrison has set fire to their supply depots and fallen back to Santa Fe, so he takes what supplies he can find and moves on to Santa Fe, with the same result: no enemy soldiers, but no supplies to be taken.

At this point, Sibley is *shocked* to discover that the local population isn't going to greet him with cheering, parades, and floods of volunteers eager to swell his ranks. In fact, they're not very friendly at all, and they certainly aren't eager to let Sibley & Co. buy supplies with Confederate currency, which they regard as completely worthless.

Meanwhile, all the troops that have been retreating as he advanced have gathered at Fort Union. Sibley decides to attack, and... well, again, it's messy, but he meets the Union troops in Apache Canyon in a sort of horrible battle-by-attrition at Glorietta Pass. Except one unit of Union troops slips completely around the battle and torches his entire supply train. Sibley retreats to Santa Fe, and the main body of the Union Forces cautiously decides to hold Fort Union rather than risking a pursuit.

Meanwhile, the guy from Fort Craig - which Sibley had disdained to finish off after defeating its troops fairly decisively in one battle - comes north to Albuquerque, exchanges fire with Sibley's troops there, and calls for the Fort Union troops to come reinforce him.

So this should have been the set-up for a final, decisive battle to drive the confederates back down into Texas. Only Sibley has finally figured out his troops can't live off the countryside, the locals aren't going to help him, and he has no supply lines. His artillery is nearly out of ammunition, and his wagon train is gone. So he just... leaves. Heads back the way he came. Through the desert. With no supply train.

The Union forces at this point are basically just pacing him - like, they're not so much attacking as just escorting him out. This goes on for several days, until finally the Union forces wake up one morning to find that they're camped across the river from an empty camp.

Sebley has decided to make a hundred mile detour to the west, to avoid Fort Craig. Through the desert. With no road, no guide, dense brush, and only five days' worth of supplies for something like a ten day trip.

By the time he gets back to Texas he's lost something like 1700 of his troops, of which less than 500 were lost in battle. A lot the rest were lost in that last 100 miles of marching.

Sibley survives, but his idiot certainty that naturally he was the hero and the people of New Mexico would rise up to support his glorious arrival does not. His follow-up report is basically a long essay on what a horrible place New Mexico really is.

"I cannot speak encouragingly for the future, my troops having manifested a dogged , irreconcilable detestation of the country and the people."

Because, you know, invading armies and occupying foreign forces should really expect to receive *better* from the local populace. They deserve it for being so gosh-darned noble and heroic, don't you know?

Pretty Sure Those Are Car Thieves

So, the house across the alley from us has been a rental property ever since the elderly couple who lived there moved out and sold it off about a decade ago. It's gone through a couple of families (generally pretty congenial) until a few months ago when the most recent set of renters moved out. (I think that was because the owner had raised the rate.)

The time since has been... weird. For a while the house was just sitting empty. Then, starting a few weeks back, we had people going in and out through the garage, and producing a lot of trash in the bins. Mostly, it looked like they were just fixing the place up, though there was an odd moment where there were people inside and a minivan parked in the (open) garage, honking for/at them.

For the last week, the house has been sitting there empty with the garage door open. Which, even in our very-low-crime neighborhood, is odd.

Then last night at about 8:30, there was a large truck in the alley, which I didn't get a very good look at; I thought at the time that it might be a moving van. There was also a car parked on one side of the garage (which I also didn't get a very good look at) and a second car parked in the driveway in front of it, effectively blocking it in. The car in the driveway has one of those car covers on it, though it was either thrown on hastily or it was designed to cover an entirely different vehicle. I honestly didn't pay that much attention to it, mostly because aside from the large truck beeping loudly when it backed up, there wasn't any reason to. I mean, yeah, that seemed a little late to be trying to move in, but that kind of thing does happen.

Except that about 10:30, I heard the large motor and the beeping again, and opened the back gate to find that a very large tow truck was in my driveway, apparently trying to angle itself to deliver a car to the house across the alley. I bent down to inspect the license plate on the truck, which was when another guy (not the driver) came across the alley and half-shouted some sort of defensive explanation about how the tow truck hadn't hit my garage door. I asked him what it was doing here at this time of night, and he said he was moving in. (I was dubious but didn't contradict him.) I told him that the thing was awfully loud, and that I had school-age children asleep inside, and that he should finish this up.

So... that took until about 11:00, by which point I was increasing suspicious that something nefarious was going on, so I went outside again. I got out there to find the guy (who's "moving in") directing the tow truck in how to get angled so it could drive back out of the alley without hitting any of the various obstacles around it (fences, electricity exchange, etc.) Now, I'm sure the driver needed the help, what with trying to drive a ridiculously oversized tow truck (this is the kind of thing where the card actually rides up the bed of the truck, which can tilt down to be a ramp) in a suburban alley... but Guy Moving In was shouting directions to him by name ("Angle left, Michael!" "Okay, you're clear Michael!"), which seems a bit odd if you've simply hired someone to transport your vehicles for you. (And why would you transport them that way in the first place???) Then, once the truck was properly lined up and it drove off down the alley, he apparently hopped into yet another car and drove off after it.

The house itself doesn't look ready to be inhabited. There's little if any furniture, and there's still some stuff visible on the floor through the living room windows - looks like a pile of pulled-up carpeting or something similar. But now the garage door is closed (at last) with two cars presumably inside and a third (covered) car parked outside.

Now, maybe in a couple of days he'll get settled in and he'll turn out to just be a guy who collects cars and owns a towing company, and we'll find that Michael was one of his employees who got commandeered to help the boss move.

Maybe.

But the whole thing looks dodgy as hell right now.

My Father Takes The Next Step And I Am Weird

My father is not a man who was built for solitude. He needs to have people around; he needs talking and touching and interaction. He's an extrovert to an extent my introverted brain frankly finds a little hard to understand.

My mother's death hit him very hard. I mean, Hell, it hit me pretty hard, too. But for him it wasn't just the grief. It was also the solitude. Despite the best efforts of family and friends, and even despite getting a renter to live in the house with him, he was just spending a lot more time alone than was really good for him. There were also some medical issues that interfered with several of his hobbies (playing and repairing musical instruments, for example) and left him even more cut off. It was bad enough to have us all pretty worried even as recently as last June.

Somewhere in there, though, he acquired a girlfriend. Or -- I suspect more accurately -- she acquired him. I'm not certain of the exact timeline, but then I don't think my dad really is either. But this was someone he'd known for years, who'd been part of his music-playing circles, someone who'd also been in a long-term marriage and (relatively) recently lost a spouse. And it seems to have grown gradually out of the two of them spending time together.

Y'all, for the past several months my father has been happier than I've seen him since my mom died. He's out of the house, he's doing things, they're doing things...

So this past weekend, they got married. It was a relatively quick ceremony -- they plan to have a big All The Friends And Family party later. Possibly more than one.

And I thought I was okay with this. I still do, actually. Think I'm okay with it, I mean. Like, I can't think of anything about this that really bothers me. I don't see it as a betrayal of my mother; I'm not worried about how this might affect finances or inheritance; I honestly like the woman; and like I said, my father seems to have undergone some sort emotional resurrection and I'm grovelingly grateful for that.

Which makes it deeply weird to me that this one, relatively brief ceremony (with a nice meal afterwards) seems to have completely consumed my emotional energy for the weekend, but it did. I mean, I wasn't completely useless for the rest of the weekend, but there was an awful lot of I Shall Sit In The Back Room And Play Video Games and at one point I actually fell asleep while still holding the controller in my lap.

I suppose it's just the intensity of it. I suppose good emotions can be just as draining as bad emotions, if they're strong enough. But I really didn't expect to react this way, whatever "this way" actually is, and I'm bothered both by the reaction itself and by the fact that I don't really feel like I understand my own reaction.

Anyway. My dad is married again, and enjoying life again, and I'm deeply grateful for that.

Human Nature

I'm beginning to think that a surprisingly large number of problems in our society actually boil down to the fact that a large percentage of the population can't tell the difference between Decisive Leadership and Basic Assholery.

Political Reptiles

Beautiful Wife, reading off a poll on MSN: "It asks, 'Is the government secretly run by reptile-people?'"

Me, sleepy: "Yes. It's called congress."

Firstborn: "I mean, yeah, but those are snakes."

Me: "Snakes are reptiles."

Such are the political conversations we have before coffee.

Firstborn Runs His First DnD Game

So, on Wednesday the boys had a couple of friends over, and Firstborn decided that he would try running his first Dungeons and Dragons game. He's using (a very abbreviated version of) 3.5, though it's so abbreviated that it barely makes any difference -- it's almost its own, different edition.

The two boys who were visiting were brothers, so let's call them Olderfriend and Youngerfriend. They're a little younger than my own boys[1], but they're bright and engaging and fun.

So Firstborn called Olderfriend and spent over an hour on the phone, putting together his character. And he was, I think, planning to run just a two-person gaming session... only Secondborn decided that he wanted to play, and then Youngerfriend jumped in as well. So by the time I got home (work day, remember) they were trying to throw characters together ten minutes before they were supposed to start playing.

I helped. Specifically, I fired up my laptop, opened up a character generator that I have installed, and threw together the two other characters that Secondborn and Youngerfriend wanted.

This... wasn't as easy as it could have been.

Secondborn had looked at the available minis and chosen a wolf. He wanted to play a wolf. Standard D'n'D isn't wildly well equipped for that in 3.5, but okay: I managed. The generator has an interface for companion animals, so I made him a wolf with an additional level of ranger.

Youngerfriend had picked out a giant orc with an axe, so that was pretty easy: half-orc barbarian, greataxe, a couple of throwing axes, a chain shirt, and we were good to go.

Youngerfriend, however, is very young. So by the time I got everything printed, he had the orc miniature hopping all over the board, and Firstborn (our would-be Dungeon Master) had his head in the "I have face-palmed so hard I actually hurt myself" position. He can see where this is going. We all can.

But we hand out sheets and dice and get everybody settled long enough for Firstborn to announce that they're all in a tavern, only the barbarian is getting thrown out for bouncing around and breaking things and looking for something to fight. But the other two -- who are, I think, a fighter-mage and a wolf from the pack who raised him[2] -- hear the barbarian stumble into a couple of weary travelers outside, and step outside to make sure nobody gets hurt.

At that point, the village is attacked by Dark Forces. "Because," as Firstborn puts it, "reasons." It turns out a couple of mimics have wandered into town, and are Tearing Things Up. The battle begins!

...I don't have stats for mimics handy, and my laptop's in the back room. I make some up on the fly -- armor class, hit points, attack bonus, damage -- and have Firstborn write them down. There are two mimics, because that's how many miniatures we have. Then I spend the next few minutes walking the boys through the (very abbreviated, mind you) process of resolving combat. It's... brutal.

I really didn't make the mimics strong enough, and while the wolf is the only one in the party with multiple attacks, the barbarian is a freaking combat monster... who promptly rolls maximum on both his to-hit and his damage, and one-shot-kills one of the mimics. The other two characters make successful attacks on the other mimic, and the barbarian steps in on the following round to finish it off. ("Whack!")

He hasn't even raged, because I don't have it in me to explain rules that only work sometimes.

Nevertheless, Our Heroes are victorious! And now the time has come for them to make introductions and forge new bonds of friendship, and...

"Die!" says the barbarian.

So the barbarian and the elf resume combat, only this time with each other. And, unsurprisingly -- I should never have maxed out strength on a barbarian run by a small child -- Youngerfriend's barbarian kills olderfriend's elvish fighter/mage[3]. Olderfriend accepts this philosophically, but decrees that this means that the townspeople arrest the barbarian and execute him. Youngerfriend accepts this philosophically. Firstborn looks completely appalled. Secondborn announces that he's making a run for the woods, flees the town, and vanishes.

And then I announce that well, okay, we're done, and averybody gets up from the table and goes outside to play.

There is a marked lack of tears, angry screaming, or dark recriminations. The adventure has essentially imploded, but nobody is upset and everybody had a good time, so I advise Firstborn to take the win -- which he does. The boys' mothers -- who were off at the far end of the kitchen having a conversation about something that had nothing whatsoever to do with orcs, half-elves, wolves, or mimics -- look up in surprise, and throw out variations of, "Are we done already?" They're only a little more surprised than I am, and they weren't paying attention at all.

So I gave them a quick recap, kissed my wife, and went off to play my Elvish Ranger/Rogue in a completely different campaign, and finally have that drink.

Quest completed.

--------------------------------{o}--------------------------------
[1] Who are now twelve and eight, and how in the nine hells did that happen?

[2] Don't ask. I certainly didn't.

[3] I think. I don't know, I'd just come home from work, I hadn't even had a drink, and I was barely keeping up as it was.

Abolish ICE

So, one of my wife's students has been arrested by ICE, because he's one of the DACA kids. And apparently they have until close of business tomorrow to submit letters attesting to his character. Odds are good that he's going to be deported regardless, and by "deported" I mean arbitrarily exiled to a country that he's never so much as visited before. This is what "justice" looks like in Modern America: somewhere along the line, we've decided that the Gestapo had the right idea.

(And yes, I'm aware that justice in historical America is frequently no better.)

I mean, clearly this is the only way, right? We can't let him get away with, well, being a good student and a leader in student organizations and a contributing participant in American society and civic life. That would just be wrong, wouldn't it?

If this is who we are, then we are absolute shit: morally shit, socially shit, politically shit. And make no mistake about it: this *is* who we are.

I firmly believe we can do better. I firmly believe we can *be* better. And we have to start now.

Abolish ICE. Defund them. Dissolve their charter. Whatever it takes. And then hold its leaders responsible for their human rights violations.

Leviticus 19:34 if you're scripturally inclined.