shannon_a | Entries tagged with roleplaying

The last year hasn't been a great time for writing, because so much time was taken up by preparing for the move (and the ever-ongoing sale of our house). The last three months haven't been a great time for writing, because I've been busy settling in to a new routine and a new house. And, the last month hasn't been a great time for writing because COVID-19 has settled upon us like a miasma.

That's not to say I haven't done any writing, even in the last few months when it's been the most busy and/or troubled. I've actually written three complete Advanced Designers & Dragons articles, one on 2019 and a two-part article on the '10s generally. And I wrote two more strategy articles for my beloved Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (though the new articles on Valeros and Lem haven't appeared yet), and even two Mechanics & Meeples articles (though with my old gaming groups left back in California and my actual tabletop play non-existent right now, it's probably time to put that on hiatus again, as has happened from time to time). But, that total of seven articles is pretty limited.

(Mind you, the 40 journal entries since we arrived is way over average.)

And I want to be doing more, and I want to be doing more on my most substantive projects, the books I'm working on.

And that's what last Friday was about.

See, here's my long-term plan for working in Hawaii. I'm going to be doing up to two days of blockchain-related tech writing freelance, if I can get it. Right now, Chris has asked for those days. And I've got one day for two old clients that I'm sticking with: Rebooting Web of Trust and Bitmark. If they have work for me. RWOT is of course between workshops due to COVID-19, and I think Bitmark is changing gears. So I'm unsure of how much this will be right now, but I've always figured it wouldn't take up a FULL day every week. Finally, the last two days, and whatever's left of that third day, are supposed to be for my own big projects.

I've got a lot of them:

The Designers & Dragons TSR/WotC product histories. My Michael Moorcock book. Designers & Dragons: The Lost Histories. Designers & Dragons: The '20s. Maybe a history of Bitcoin. The next cooperative books with Christopher. Maybe additional work on our comics.

But April has ended up being a transition, because I'm not quite done with Skotos yet, and so I've just given myself Friday to get started on those projects.

And, I was wrote last Friday, that was only somewhat successful, because I had the interruption of physical therapy appointments in the morning, and then I spent most of the afternoon standing in line to buy groceries and drugs. Fun.

But, it wasn't as unsuccessful as you might think. I got a good start on my next product history, on the World of Greyhawk Folio, one of the last totally unwritten articles for what should be the first product history book. And I was enthusiastic enough that I carried that work into Friday afternoon, Saturday, and Sunday.

Oh, I also swam (on Saturday) and walked (on Sunday) and napped (whenever I could) and read. But I consistently went back to that history.

It's now drafted, at a big 'ole 2500 words. (It's an important product.)

And I've got all my notes laid out for the connecting history on the World of Greyhawk box.

Meanwhile, something even more unexpected came up. One of my German friends from Tradetalk suggested that I might want to think about my long-lost ElfBook — which I wrote for Greg Stafford for Issaries about 15 years — as a Jonstown Compendium product.

I looked at JC, and discovered it doesn't have the ownership provisions that keep me away from DM's Guild, and I agreed that it might be cool to finally get that lost manuscript out. So I ordered the RQ:G books, something I'd always planned to do after our move here. Fortunately, I'd just gotten some money for my birthday, and it was the perfect amount.

The slipcase of core books arrived on Saturday, and I posted a picture of them online and to the Glorantha FB, and said that I was thinking about a JC release. When someone said they hoped it was elves, I said yes.

But then a bit of a surprise: Chaosium might be interested in an elf book after all. They weren't when I asked them last time, about a year and a half ago, but since then RQ:G has done well.

If I produce something for them, it's not exactly going to be the lost Oak and Pine book, but I think the first several chapters will be entirely relevant, and then I'd love to put together some very playable, entirely new material for the heart of the RQ:G world: settings and adventures. So one of my goals is to read through RQ:G and write up an outline this month, for what I would love to be an official "ElfPak".

(And then after I hopefully write an official ElfPak, I can see what I still have left from the original book, and publish that to the JC as originally planned! That'll probably end up being my overview of all the elf forests in Glorantha.)

So, I guess I'm adding one or more books to what was obviously already a too-long list.

But finally, finally, finally I've got some real scheduled time for them, not just what I scavenge in the evenings and while out hiking.

And that time should increase next month, as was always planned as one of benefits of this move.

Something else of note: after the weekend, I felt pulled out of the funk I'd been in over the uncertainty of the future. Part of that was surely that the sun has come out, but part of it is also the refreshed creativity, and making use of it.

We've now seen our first play in Kauai, "She Kills Monsters" from the Kauai Community Players.

I guess it wasn't technically our first play in Kauai, as we saw "South Pacific" some years ago, but that wasn't the same thing: we were still "visitors" then, and it was a pretty touristy activity, put on at a hotel with a fancy dinner and such. This, instead, was very much a local thing.

And, it was a pretty great experience.

The play immediately had my attention, because it was about a young woman who connects with her late sister by playing a Dungeons & Dragons adventure that her sister wrote. And the writing by Qui Nguyen is really top rate: clever and funny and touching.

There was a lot of really clever framed, multi-layered storytelling, of the sort I adore. You at some points could tell that the late Tilly's adventure was being translated through DM Chuck's gamemastering, and so you'd get strong female adventurers filtered through the male gaze ... and it was delightful. (And funny.)

The staging of the play by by KCP was really excellent. There was a lot of great '80s (and '90s?) music set between scenes that really underlined the storytelling, and there was great use of lighting, such as when they strobed the level-boss fights. I couldn't tell which of the staging was in the original play and which was chosen by the folks at KCP, but I'm pretty sure some of that was KCP, and I guess we'll learn more about their style as as we see more of their plays (spoiler there!).

But what as really amazing was the choreography. No, not the hilarious dance off (though that was amazing too), but the fight choreography, which was just stunning. I mean, I literally don't think I've ever seen such well choreographed fights in live theatre. They were swinging around swords and axes in pretty real-time (except in the strobe-lighted slo-mo fights) and there were kicks and hits and people being thrown violently to the ground. I dunno how they did it and made it look so real.

Kimberly has been having new problems with her foot, so we had a front-row seat (so that she didn't have to climb steps), and when no one else sat in the front row at first, I joked to Kimberly that we were in the "splash zone" ... and it turned out that we were really in the splash zone. The fighting was pretty naerly on top of us, and both Kimberly and I wondered at various times if we were going to get hit (but we weren't: the actors were very good at what they were doing).

And beyond that, it was really an inclusive play. I won't spoil it except to say: if it's ever put on near you, see it. I was soooo lucky that this was put on just a few months after we moved here.

And I also appreciate the fact that a few of the actors in the play are gamers over at Eight Moves Ahead. I haven't done much more than say "hi" to them a few times ... because they've been getting in late most Thursdays because they were putting on the play until 9pm or so. But they're folks I'll know better in the future, having seen them play a hilarious DM Chuck and an even more hilarious Orcus.

After the play, Kimberly and I detoured into Koloa for some ice cream, really having a nice, proper date night. Even if I did have to drive down the windy, poorly striped, poorly lit Tree Tunnel Road.

And we decided to definitely become members of the KCP. In fact we'll sign up for one of the higher patronage levels, because we feel we can make more of a difference for such a small theatre than we could have for one of the big theatres back in Berkeley (even the semi-pro ones like the Berkeley Playhouse).

Today was Greg's memorial in Berkeley, a gathering of 40 or 50 friends and family in the same backyard where he and Suzanne were married long ago. Fortunately, the smoke wasn't nearly as bad in Berkeley today, so we were able to congregate as planned.

It was an amazing gathering of tribes: Greg's roleplaying tribe, Greg's sweat lodge tribe, and Greg's home clan (his family).

It was great seeing the Gloranthan tribe again. There were a lot of folks that I hadn't seen since the '90s, when the Gloranthan fandom was at its height: Jeff O., Mike M., Neil R. I also got to finally meet Jeff R. The Gloranthan fandom was really something amazing in the '90s, a vibrant and creative community. I got to interact with it briefly at RQ-Con and RQ-Con 2 and one of the UK cons, but I also participated as an author, in Tradetalk and Hearts in Glorantha. Seeing those people again, so many years later, makes me very sad about the dissolution of that community in the '00s due to any number of circumstances, but very happy that some of them have come back together to push Glorantha forward. But I wish the old fandom was still there, still existed as more than a shadow on Facebook, because I'd like to be a member of it again.

It was also great seeing the Pendragon tribe. Steve W. represented, along with some of line's current editors and authors like Roderick R. and ones that I didn't previously know like David L. and David Z. There were also a number of people there who were just fans of Pendragon, each talking about how Greg had shown them his marked-up, underlined Le Morte d'Arthur (which I also remember seeing back in his office in Oakland). Glorantha is Greg's big flashy masterpiece, but Pendragon is great in a totally different way: it was enlightening hearing a few different people say how it had helped to bring real life to gaming, where people could have families, die, and pass on their legacy, where they could live and love.

It was an impressive assemblage of gaming personas, some of whom had travelled quite a distance to get there, which is reflective of Greg's importance to the industry. (I travelled a mere two miles, but wasn't quite the only person who'd biked over.) I was amused when one of the authors asked for an introduction to someone, only to learn that person was the ultimate publisher of what he was writing ... and then a few minutes later he started talking about this five-book history of the industry that he'd enjoyed and Steve W. smiled, pointed to me, and said, "Shannon wrote those."

Greg was a spiritual person, and many of his fellows were there, his sweat lodge tribe. Much of what they said went over my head: discussion of ceremonies and dances and men's groups and women's groups. But they also sang several songs, and I found them moving. They had a native American feel to them, and they were about coming together in unity, about living love, about helping each other. It was entirely uplifting, and I could immediately see why you'd want that in your life.

And Suzanne was there too, and their kids, and it was great to see them and support them.

Damn, just a month since he passed. It seems forever ago.

Greg Stafford passed away last Thursday. I've written a historical memoir for Designers & Dragons about his importance to the industry, but it's entirely inadequate for someone that I counted a mentor and a friend.

I came to Greg's part of the hobby relatively late, and in large part due to another friend, Eric Rowe. Oh, I owned copies of Stormbringer and Hawkmoon when I was in high school, because I was already a great follower of Michael Moorcock, but those were some of Greg's peripheral masterpieces, which came into existence almost accidentally, thanks to his mere presence in the gaming industry. And, I played RuneQuest a few times in high school.

But I truly came under Greg's influence in college, after Eric began running his RuneQuest game, which he started the week I started at Cal, and which would continue, with a run of a year here and a year there, sporadically over time, until 2004 when he moved out of the States due to the deteriorating political climate (and he was clearly a seer for what was to come).

I loved RuneQuest. Eric's game was the most fun I've ever had while roleplaying. That was one part Steve Perrin's rules, one part Eric's own world of Erzo, and one part a great group of college friends ... but Greg's influence was clearly there too. And then when I learned that there was a whole other world of Glorantha out there, I devoured it. I remember reading the red box (Gods of Glorantha) and the orange box (Genertela: Crucible of the Hero Wars) and eventually starting to turn up the old Chaosium products at various gaming conventions, about the only way to find old, out-of-print RPGs at the time. King of Sartar with its contradictory stories won me over entirely. I was a fan for life. David G. was able to get me copies of the old Tales of the Reaching Moon, and poof, I was a member of the fandom.

In those college years, I also came to appreciate the breadth of Chaosium's production. I fell in love with Greg's Pendragon and I also began to read H.P. Lovecraft's stories and the mythos that it created, thanks to my introduction from Call of Cthulhu.

In 1993, as I was nearing the end of my time at UC Berkeley, I decided to start an electronic fanzine called The Chaosium Digest. It was in part a reaction to Andrew Bell's RuneQuest Digest, but a chance to highlight the rest of Chaosium's catalog. And, I had an unlikely dream: that I could get the attention of Greg and the rest of the folks at Chaosium, and maybe get a job there after I graduated, because their office was just a few miles away.

Everyone's been writing about their well-remembered first meeting with Greg, and I honestly don't remember my own. It could have been a DunDraCon or Pacificon. But it was mostly likely January 1994, way out in Maryland, when I attended David Cheng's RuneQuest-Con. We probably interacted in the "Home of the Bold" LARP and I certainly listened with rapt attention at his Lore Auction and his panel on HeroQuesting.

I know I began to talk with him on a more personal level over the next year when I helped Eric to prepare RQ-Con 2 to run on this side of the country. We also were preparing a LARP. (Spoiler Alert: never run a con and create a LARP at the same time!) It was set at the Broken Council, and Greg happily brainstormed with us on the people and places there. I vaguely recall being in his office at 950-A 56th Street for the first time with Eric, talking about Glorantha's Dawn Age. Greg was copying out the materials from his files on that time period. Later, when we went beyond his meager sources, he let us create out of whole cloth the details of the history of his world. I've got a "Red Goddess" manuscript that he signed to me and Eric in the middle of 1994, part of his Lunar Book. That tangible memento is my only real link to 1994, because the memories of that busy, crazy year are otherwise faded.

At the con the next January, I remember that we had a secret back room for staff, special guests, and LARP preparation, but the thing I remember best about it is when my friend David S. Asked Sandy Petersen for signatures on some of his books and Sandy happily agreed and added the inscription: "Signatures increase value!" But I don't remember much about interacting with Greg at that con either.

(And yes, I regularly ask people to remember the minutia of their designs from the '70s and '80s; thanks, guys, you're more use than I'd ever be!)

My actual memories of Greg tend to revolve around the two and a half years that I worked with him at Chaosium, from 1996 to 1998. I suppose it's no surprise that the day-to-day life of working with him made those older memories fade away because (happily) these new memories were so much more plentiful. They started on the day I interviewed, when I spent most of the time talking with Lynn Willis, but when I briefly stopped in to talk with Greg afterward. It was obvious that Lynn was making the staffing decisions, but Greg got the final say on everyone who joined his company. (And yes, my work on the Chaosium Digest helped, because everyone knew who I was and that I loved their games, but moreso it was Eric's running RQ-Con 2.)

After that, there are many wonderful fragments of memory.

I remember talking many more times in Greg's cramped office, book shelves off to the right, clippings covering the walls. He leaned back in his chair, wearing a flannel shirt, wrist braces on his arms. We usually talked about Glorantha, which at the time was mostly lost to Chaosium, not about the Call of Cthulhu books that I was laying out and editing.

I played around with the Dawn Age for a while after the Broken Council LARP, but I soon moved on to become the resident Gloranthan elf expert, and I remember Greg eagerly expanding upon the ideas that I had about the Aldryami, sketching out a series of "plantings" that took my mundane musings and turned them into something mythic. (I just went hunting, and no longer seem to have that piece of paper; alas!)

I remember sitting up in the loft at Chaosium, after work, as Greg gamemastered the early versions of Hero Wars, years before its publication. It was like there was a spotlight on him, in that dim, tight space. That was a spotlight on him wherever he was, in whatever room, always.

I remember how the smell of pot would start wafting down the hall from his office, past my desk, in the early evening. He'd always wait until 5 o'clock, or thereabouts. And I'd start feeling hungry, and know it was time to head home.

I remember going over his timelines for Pendragon which I later translated into some nice diagrams for the reprint of The Boy King, the one creative project for Chaosium that we worked on together.

I remember his solid handshake, I remember him clapping me on the back, I remember him laughing, such laughter. He was jolly, he was kind, he was erudite, he was creative, he was generous. It's almost impossible to conceive of a world without him.

I left Chaosium in 1998 because the decaying financial status of the company was literally giving me nightmares. It was not long after a private meeting between Greg, Lynn, Charlie, and Anne over in the kitchen that was full of raised voices which I tried to ignore until I was finally able to flee the building at 5pm. It was like hearing your parents fighting. Maybe that was the day that everyone acknowledged the problem of unpaid personnel taxes, maybe it was the day that Greg announced he was leaving, but it was certainly the day that Chaosium split apart.

Lynn was angry at me for leaving. He told me I was killing the company and afterward was politely cold to me whenever I called Chaosium to discuss some bit of business. But Greg, his attitude toward me never changed. He asked me to edit Hero Wars for release as Issaries' first product, a huge honor that I don't think I even realized at the time. Unfortunately, it was also beyond me. I didn't yet have the editorial chops to manage a manuscript of that size, and I also didn't have the self confidence to mold the work of master designers like Greg Stafford and Robin Laws into a publishable form. I did some editing on the manuscript over the next months and eventually handed it back to Greg and told him I couldn't take it to completion. He was entirely kind about that too. He didn't complain; he made sure my name was on the published book as a developer.

Around 2000 I shyly asked Greg if I could put together a book on elves, expanding on the material we'd been discussing for a few years now. Greg agreed and I was soon working on a roleplaying supplement to be published by Greg's new company, Issaries, as part of the Hero Wars (later HeroQuest) line. Greg continued to offer great support for my creativity, to offer ideas and new thoughts — most of which complemented what I was doing, but some of which made me rethink something from the start. (That was Greg.)

Unfortunately, a number of events came together that ended that collaboration and my work with Greg. The d20 industry collapsed, then Eric's Wizard's Attic died, and suddenly Issaries was without a home. Greg decided he couldn't stay in the overly expensive Bay Area and moved down to Mexico. He fell out of communication. Steve Martin took over running Issaries for him. Conflicts among the various members of fandom were escalating, but Steve did keep the torch burning for a little longer. I finished my elf book around 2004 and handed it off to Steve ... but Issaries never published another book. It's still sitting on my hard drive almost 15 years later. I've tried to find a home for it from time to time, but I've since moved on to my own creative niche, Designers & Dragons.

I've sometimes said that my experience with that elf-book was the reason that I stopped working with other peoples' properties. And, that's true. I'd completed a 100k word manuscript, my biggest work to that date, and it ended up wasted. I didn't want to ever end up in that position again. But, that had nothing to do with Greg. It was just an unfortunate coincidence of timing, a business and financial obstacle that none of us could overcome, and I did manage the next best thing, at the time: a book on elves for Mongoose's RuneQuest that made public many of the ideas that Greg and I had come up with over the previous decade.

In my mind, Greg was in Mexico for years, for a decade, but it was really just more than a year, from some time in 2004 to 2005. But it was the end of my creative relationship with him. More sadly, it was also the beginning of the end of my creative relationship with Glorantha, which sputtered out over the next several years. My interest in the books faded out during the time of Mongoose's uninspiring MRQ1 publication and Gloranthan fandom was dying away due to Issaries' fan policies and fandom's disagreements over HeroQuest and the new directions that it was taking the world.

Tradetalk and Hearts in Glorantha were the last fanzines standing, and I contributed to the scant issues of both during the rest of the decade, but the end came in 2009 and 2010 when I wrote some expansive articles meant to complement my work in the elf-book, which I then still hoped would see publication: "The Posionthorn Forest" in Hearts in Glorantha #3 (2009), "The Vale of Flowers" in Tradetalk #17, and "The Hellwood" for Hearts in Glorantha #4 (2010) I also wrote some articles for Mongoose's Signs & Portents including a pair of articles on the red elves which complemented the Mongoose book that actually did see print.

And that was the end of my creative input to Greg's mythic world.

I still miss it.

I'm happy that I stayed in touch with Greg in the years that followed. He helped me with histories on both Issaries and Chaosium that eventually went into Designers & Dragons. He contributed a bit to RPGnet, and sometimes he just told me about something fun. I remember once he wrote to me to verify that there had been no second edition Pendragon game, something that I'd worked out with him and the rest of the Chaosium staff some years before. He was my first choice to write an foreword for Designers & Dragons, and he was kind enough to introduce the '70s book.

By the end, I might hear from Greg once a year or so. Honestly, I was somewhat jealous of the folks who were now engaging in creative partnerships with him, but I'd had my chance, and I'd moved on.

The last thing I spoke with Greg about was the passing of Stewart Wieck. I wrote up the story of Stewart's life in the industry, and since Greg had been working with him on Pendragon in recent years, he was one of the people that I asked for comments. Greg suggested I humanize the piece, ending it with: "We are all impoverished by the loss. We extend condolences to his wife, children, and other family." And, I did add those condolences; Greg was always very human.

The last letter I had from Greg came after I posted Stewart's eulogy and simply said, "Thank you for [the] post".

I never would have imagined that my next historic eulogy would be for him.

Injuries. Managed to hurt myself again. Darn it. And this time it was a recycling injury. Sigh.

I was tearing down a heavy corrugated cardboard box on Monday and I was holding it up against my chest as I did, and somehow throughout all of that I managed to spasm my muscles and bruise my sternum and/or ribs. Or something like that. It's been aching for days, especially if I do anything spectacular like breathe. The worst has been sleeping. I can't cuddle with my cat at night, because that requires lying down on that side, and I can't escape her in the morning, which I usually do by turning over. Overall, the result has been a week of poor sleep.

It's been getting better day by day, but slowly. Frustrating.

Computers. I've laid my old MacBook Air to rest. Or, at least, I'm filing it away for use as an emergency backup if I ever need it. Sadly, of all the Macs I've bought, that was the one that seemed to have some serious manufacture problems of the sort I don't generally expect from Apple.

In the end:

The "1", "q", "a", and <delete> on the keyboard often stopped working, usually just when I opened it up and especially when I had it out somewhere cold. This was apparently a well-known problem with the MacBook Airs and had to do with the keyboard circuitry contracting away from the plug.
The wifi constantly cut out, but would come back if I hit the little wifi icon at the top of the screen. This was not a well-known problem. Or, at least if it was, the only suggested solutions were software, and they didn't do anything.
The battery was starting to die, and though it was still getting decent time with my usually low-energy use, it was to the point where the Mac was suggesting I replace it.
The 120G of hard drive space was becoming inadequate as I continued to add PDFs for my work on the next Designers & Dragons book, on the entire set of TSR & WotC books for D&D. (After 4+ years of working with DTRPG, we've almost covered the full ~1000 or so, and that's a lot of PDFs.)

Only the first two were really manufacture problems, though they were extremely annoying, but the first three probably required hundreds of dollars worth of repairs, and that still left me with inadequate hard drive space. So, after getting the OK from Kimberly, I ordered a new one instead, on Monday, pretty much as soon as Apple announced the new MacBooks.

My new computer is a 12" MacBook. It's a little smaller than my 13.3" Air was, and that's taking a little getting used to, but it's still a full-sized keyboard, and my eyes are still good enough to read the screen at an increased resolution, so I think I willl get used to it. And it's 2 pounds rather than 3 pounds, which will be notable when I'm carrying it around up hills and on long hikes.

Oh, the process of migrating was a pain though. It just wouldn't work, and I eventually came to the conclusion that it was because the Air was one version back of the MacOS software, and the migration didn't work from that to Sierra. Not that Apple documents that, but some forums seemed to confirm it. So I had to unsync my RPG PDFs from my Dropbox to have enough space to upgrade to Sierra. (That's why I hadn't previously.) Then the upgrade wouldn't work either, because it couldn't install a helper. I finally managed to get the old computer upgraded after a reboot. Then I finally managed to get the Migration going after a reboot. Shockingly the Migration with both computers set next to my wifi router only took 30 minutes or so. But it took another day and a half to resync all those D&D PDFs, off of Dropbox.

Still, new computer. Very happy because of all the annoying problems with the old one.

Not being ble to type an "a" can make rticles hrd to write.

RPGs. I've been running my Burning Wheel campaign since sometime left year. I'm enjoying creating an original campaign world in conjunction with the players and I'm enjoying slowly unravelling their story. I have some qualms that the story might be too mundane thus far and that I need to be more accepting of sea changes as the campaign goes forward. But, so far so good.

My only real issue is a pretty common one: I find the prep of adventures stressful. Usually I feel like my Friday nights before games are very rushed as I try to jam together adventure prep along with my usual writing prep. And, I also feel pressure that I prep well so that we can have fun the next day.

So this week I tried something new, based on a thread on RPGnet. I modeled my prep after a game called Agon: prep an adventure with one goal, three sub-goals, and one or more complications for each sub-goal. It's very similar to the system of three complications that I was laying out for Mouse Guard that helped me to minimize my prep time there while still producing good adventures.

I've varied this up a little. I try to introduce at least one notable locale each adventure and at least one notable NPCs, and I try to reuse one or more NPCs from past adventures. So my notes include all of that too. But still, that's less than a page for an adventure, and the actual plot-ty part of the adventure is minimized, making the prep easier and keeping options more open for the players during play.

But there's another thing in Burning Wheel: it's very player-focused. So I bit the bullet early in the week and I prepped four adventures in this style, one for each player in the game. Voila! I now have full prep done, well before Friday. And hopefully I'll be able to do the simpler prep necessary for a replacement player-oriented adventure after I run each.

Sure enough, this Friday I was unstressed. Or little stressed.

The next test was whether my slightly shorter prep was sufficient to run an exciting adventure ... and sadly I didn't get to find out. When I got to gaming on Saturday, Mary could tell that I was in low spirits due to lack of sleep (from my ribs) and due to exhaustion (from offering support for K. in a hard time). So she asked without prompting if I wanted to play board games instead, and I nearly collapsed in relief into that idea. We played 7 Wonders and Agricola. I did horribly in the first and came in second in the second, probably highlighting how worn out I was.

Vacations. And we are already making plans for Hawaii next year. My step-mom is putting together a family vacation, where she, my dad, my sister and her husband, and Kimberly and I will all spend a week together on the Big Island next year. We had a lot of fun hanging out with everyone at Melody and Jared's wedding, so I'm quite looking forward to this, and it'll also be a nice opportunity to visit a different island.

Mary has also talked about doing the same thing on a different island in 2019, maybe. If that indeed happens, then we quite amusingly will not see Kauai again until we move there in 2020.