I just noticed this on top of the fridge. At least it was only about 1/4 full.

1.) Come home from work and make a baked potato for dinner.

2.) Slather with butter and sour cream and chow down.

3.) As you eat, realize that you haven’t seen Miranda in a good while. Call Miranda.

4.) No Miranda. You’re pretty sure you saw her this morning, but memory is a tricky thing.

5.) Get up and look around downstairs for Miranda, calling all the while.

6.) Go upstairs and look for Miranda, still calling her name loudly. No Miranda.

7.) Go back downstairs and start searching all her favorite hiding places, still calling.

8.) Back upstairs, searching some more. Look in attic. Look in closets. Look in empty dresser drawers. Look under couch.

9.) Repeat several times. Look between piles of boxes. Look in cupboards. Start to freak out.

10.) Think back to the last time she was seen. You THINK it was this morning, but you spent 30 minutes carrying stuff to the cars on Sunday afternoon and the door might have been left open during one of those trips.

11.) More searching, more calling. Start looking in really unlikely places, like bags of clothes for Goodwill.

12.) Freak out because a.) she’s been sick and may have crawled off somewhere to…well, you know and b.) you might have PACKED her in a BOX.

13.) Grab scissors and cut open all the boxes you packed in the past 24 hours.

14.) Search house again.

15.) Inform sweetie via IM that Miranda does not appear to be in the house. Sweetie immediately offers to come over and help look.

16.) Walk outside and start calling for Miranda. Call sweetie on phone and take him up on his offer to come over.

17.) Knock on next door neighbors’ door and explain that you may have a missing cat. They offer sympathetic ultimately happy lost-cat story of their own and kindly offer to keep an eye out.

18.) Spend about 15 minutes calling Miranda while wandering around outside.

19.) Go inside, bring out bowl of food to set on porch, and keep calling.

20.) Go back inside and do another tour of the house.

21.) Back outside, more calling.

22.) Back inside for yet another round of the entire house. For some reason, go to bedroom and check in the little space between the big storage headboard and the platform bed frame. There is Miranda, tucked neatly away. GAAAAAAAAAAH.

23.) Sweetie arrives. By this time, a rather quiet and not-entirely-well seeming Miranda has nevertheless gobbled down a half can of food.

I’m pretty sure this whole moving thing has caused me to lose IQ points. When I opened my fridge door this evening to put away some half & half I bought for work (it’s amazing that I even remembered), I saw this. Gives a new meaning to “cold cereal”.

I haven’t been at 100% or even 75% for a week or two now. At the doctor’s office today I had to go to the front desk 3 times because I couldn’t figure out what the receptionist wanted from me (you need a picture ID? I need to pay my co-pay before I’m examined?) and I harassed the other staff members equally (“Um, sorry, where did I need to go to provide my ‘sample’ again?”). I hope my coworkers can forgive me for being a blithering idiot for the past several days, a state which will likely continue until I’m moved. I’m not normally this dopey, honest.

One of the things that can make packing up your entire house for a move momentarily not awful is finding stuff that you haven’t seen in years. Case in point, I stumbled upon this unassuming burgundy IBM binder, one of many such IBM-logoed binders I was privileged to have access to as the child of an IBM employee. (And you thought we just got moved around a lot.)

I have been wondering for some time where my old D&D Basic and Advanced sets ended up; I had seen the boxes around, but the contents were missing. Well, I found them.

This is Old Skool. Check out those copyright dates. ’74, ’77, ’78, ’81.

I was very into D&D and AD&D from late elementary school. I still clearly remember getting Gygax’s classic Dungeon Masters Guide for Christmas one year when I was in 5th or 6th grade and reading it from cover to cover to cover to cover. (It was this cover.)

It was First Edition, but we didn’t call it First Edition, because it was the True Word of The Gygax and there was none of this “2nd Edition” or “3.5”, or, god forbid, “4th Edition” nonsense yet. However, in the lame Ohio rustbelt town where I grew up, girls didn’t play D&D. I think I knew of boys at school who might have played, but all I could do was crayon in the dice for my D&D Basic Set, pore over the DMG, Monster Manual, Deities & Demigods, and Dragon Magazine, and write my own campaigns.

And boy, did I write. In the binder are several maps on graph paper, and page upon page of flavor text and encounters and numbered room content:encodeds in black and blue pen on lined notebook paper. Wandering monster tables, notecards with pre-prepped NPCs, lists of noises the PCs might hear if they listened at doors (chanting, creaking, groaning, rustling, shuffling, and whispering. Roll a d6.) The adventures seem to have been an incoherent mix of D&D Basic/Advanced and AD&D, mainly because the availability of TSR stuff was limited to what was sold at the B Dalton at the mall and maybe what the various K-marts and local equivalents stocked.

A selection of maps:

1.) The town of Rodeilus (home to The Red Dragon Inn (#1), which boasted the archetypal jovial, alcoholic, gossipy innkeep and listed “Chop of Beef”, “Stew”, “Roasted Fowl” and “Arby’s Beef n Cheddar” on its bill of fare).

2.) Some kind of keep or monastic complex (a 2-pager!):

3.) A very densely built Level 1 Dungeon:

4.) The most dense dungeon ever. I was apparently determined to use every single inch of this graph paper.

Perhaps I would have had better luck using Dungeon Geomorphs!

My dungeons were overpopulated and rife with treasure. The first level dungeon mapped above featured a happy multicultural mix of evil humans, gnolls, bugbears, various types of undead, kobolds, goblins, ogres, green slimes, and orcs, although the goblins and kobolds are mainly to be found chained to walls or performing menial tasks like turning spits of meat that “look suspiciously like human remains” (what the humans living in the dungeon think about this fare is left undocumented). Handfuls of gold pieces are available for the taking, hidden in piles of rags, and bejeweled earrings and ivory armbands are a sp a dozen. Each room is apparently guarded by a sigil of “Do Not Disturb”, because no one ever seems to get curious and check to see what’s going on 10′ down the hallway (which works out well for the Ghouls Next Door). Most monsters are to be found gambling, snoozing on “crude bunks” or stuffing themselves in refectories while swilling from the barrels and barrels of “cheap but drinkable wine” supplied by vintners unknown. Which also begs the question of where all these scores of booze-guzzling creatures go to use the bathroom. Maybe there’s a potty on Level 2.

I spared no expense in making the role-playing experience as realistic as possible. Just look at the Actual Burned Edges on this scrap of map.

Just don’t look at the back, where I screwed up.

At various times, I was able to sucker my mom and sister into playing with me. Given the lack of players, I vaguely recall having to play an NPC in the party so they wouldn’t be slaughtered immediately. I also remember at least one session ending early because I got pissed off that Robin made fun of the name I came up with for a red dragon central to the plot. (It was “Crispus”. I had just gotten done with an American History unit where we learned that freed slave Crispus Attucks was the first casualty of the Revolutionary War. Give me a break here; for some reason the “Crisp Us” meaning didn’t sink in.)

I also had a tendency to treat the die rolls as law. Basic D&D had something called a “monster reaction roll” where you rolled a d12 to see what a group of monsters would do in a given situation, if the DM hadn’t decided in advance. (It was extremely stupid; the reactions ranged from “Immediate Attack” to “Enthusiastic Friendship”, with stuff in between like “Uncertain, monster confused”. WTF?). During one session, Robin and my Mom encountered a kobold, rolled a d12, and ended up with a new party member.

My mom played a Lawful Neutral Cleric-Ranger, and here’s the proof:

I didn’t get to play in a “real” D&D game until I was in college, and I’ve never DM’ed for anyone other than my immediate family. (Based on my middle school scribblings, this is a very Good Thing.) Also, I still think Gygax’s little-known but awesome Dangerous Journeys system, which he developed after leaving TSR, totally kicks the ass of AD&D 3.5. Just saying.

Caught myself accidentally labeling some boxes as “CHICKEN” instead of “KITCHEN”. Craving for KFC, or something more?

Decided that I can’t pack my digital scale yet because I might need to weigh a partial ball of sock yarn in the next week or so. At least I know my priorities are still straight.

If anyone might be interested in any of the below free items, email me or leave a comment.

Still hate packing.

Still have too much stuff.

The first casualty of the move was one of my little fairy figurines. It was me, with the heavy metal candlestick, in the foyer. Jag also has a fairy figurine whose wings have broken off, so maybe they can form a wing amputee support group until we can locate the Super Glue.

Also, I have too much stuff.

That is all.

I was pretty productive craft-wise before the holidays, and I’ve started a couple new projects, including a Liesl sweater in a bulky wool from handpaintedyarn.com:

…and some socks in Araucania Ranco Multy, using a pattern from the very nifty Little Box of Socks my parents got me for Christmas.

However, my existence for the next several weeks is going to be centered on this.

Jag and I have packed up 30 boxes of books since yesterday evening. That’s on top of the 26 we had already packed, and doesn’t count the boxes of books and magazines we moved over in my car a few weeks ago. And I still have everything else to pack.

One of the most time-consuming things about moving is figuring out what to ditch. I used to buy a lot of technical books, and these have proven to be some of the most annoying things to get rid of. They’re big and heavy. The information in them is now so outdated that they are utterly and completely useless. Up to the minute info on the same topics is available online for free. I can’t in good conscience dump them on Goodwill, because they’re no good even for teaching someone who might want to learn Perl, or Oracle, or whatever else, unless they happen to be sucked into a time vortex and transported to the mid-90s. I have waist-high stacks of these things, and the only thing I can think to do is haul them to the recycling center. This is why I haven’t bought a technical book in a very long time.

Anyone want to learn Exchange 5.5, Perl 4 circa 1993, or need a manual for an IBM Proprinter (dot matrix, tractor feed…)?

This holiday season, I made a lot of gifts. Nine woven placemats, one woven stole, one woven table runner for someone who doesn’t know they’re getting it yet, a pair of knitted socks, a knitted/felted ornament, an 8×10 cloth collage on canvas, 5oz of handspun yarn, and a handpainted platter. So it feels decadent to get to work on something for myself again. I started these handspun socks back in October and set them aside for 2 months. I finished them last night, and I love them. Soft and cushiony and visible from space.

Mister Happy Moon says, “Yay!”

I’m just now finally getting around to blogging about the family Christmas celebration. At least I managed to do it before the new year hit!

On Christmas Eve, we had our usual appetizer and gift-opening extravaganza. The table was covered with snackage, including deviled eggs, hot beef dip, Parmesan cheese profiteroles, ham rollups, sausage and cheese balls, baked Brie, and dill dip with veggies.

Here’s a closeup of the baked Brie. Mmmmm. Cheese.

There was much giftage. Dad’s socks fit….

….and Mom liked the wrap that I wove for her.

My mom crocheted up a storm this year, and made lots of great stuff, including some potholders/hot pads that are far too cute to actually use. Robin got a piggie:

And this steer (which, um, bears more than a passing resemblance to Thumper in shape and coloration) is now hanging up over the sink in Jag’s kitchen. The cows are taking over!

My mom also made me a crocheted shawl which she mysteriously instructed me not to wear out of the house. I can be seen here shamelessly parading around Brightleaf Square in flagrant disobedience to her instructions.