With apologies to John Updike, whose work I have not read. And with apologies to my friend Michial, who has published works on Updike.
It’s hard to believe that tomorrow will be the last day of January; the new year is running right along, and I with it. Or at least, I’ve been trying to.
Next month my oldest brother and I will be running a marathon together. We’ve been planning this for some time, and it’s been postponed a couple of times, but it finally looks like it’s going to happen. But weather and sickness seem to hinder my training. My neck of North Carolina rarely sees snow, and yet the last two weekends have seen the town shut down as winter storms brought wintry mixes. In other parts of the country, this would only mean a few more minutes with the defrost on in the car. Here, it means that road conditions are dangerous.
Now, it’s not that people here can’t drive in snow, it’s just that they don’t know how. When a winter storm only comes maybe once a year and lasts at most for a few hours, there’s not much opportunity to learn to drive in cold winter weather. And as such, we just don’t have the infrastructure to handle it.
Although to be fair, at least this time we actually got the weather they predicted. Too often we get a prediction, things are cancelled or postponed, and then we only get a few hours of cold rain.
What that means is that I haven’t gone above 15 miles on my long runs. But it appears my brother is in the same type situation. So we won’t be letting either of us down and are only planning to finish the race no matter the time.
One thing the weekend spent indoors has done is allowed Krystal and I to finish the cosplay for my D&D character, Garrett. Garett is a Rabbitfolk (also known as a Harengon) artificer. It felt really good to have this finished, do a photo shoot, and begin filming some TikTok videos.
Enjoy a photo gallery of that heartwarming afternoon:
The crossbow was designed by me and built by Krystal. In out game, Garrett has the ability to shrink ballista bolts and fire them as if they are regular crossbow bolts. Here’s some production photos:
In addition, I also purchased some accessories. I got a set of enamel pints from DoizeDemos, and a fragrance from Mad Labs Studios, who’s come out with a D&D-inspired line. Of course I chose the Artificer scent, and it’s exactly what I hoped it would be: metal and ink balanced by nutmeg and amber make it smell like an artisan’s workshop. It hits all the right sensory receptors for me.
Other TTRPG games continue apace. I haven’t visited former war correspondent Dex Fields (Call of Cthulhu) in a while, but he’ll be waiting when next out table takes a break from D&D. K2, my Rockerboy in Cyberpunk: Red is still settling into his party, but has made connections with most of the party in one way or another.
Cyrus, my Silver Fang Galliard in World of Darkness was involved in a pretty epic fight last session. I had a god time as well since this was the first time my character was involved in a fight were he could use all his powers and weapons. Most of the time my characters are not the best fighters and rarely bring down the monsters we fight, but this session was slightly different. Using a special sword and a gift known as “Hand Blade”, Cyrus was able to deal a significant amount of damage and even delivered the final blow to one of the monsters, slicing it like a Christmas pudding. Or, as I also described it in-game, a Vienetta dessert from the 1990s.
My reading seems to start and stop. After a relatively active first weeks of January, I haven’t read much of anything. I tried to get into House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz, but I find that I enjoy his own original works than his Sherlock Holmes stories. Perhaps it is because the Sherlock books have to meet certain parameters to be allowed by the Doyle estate.
But I think my reading will pick up as Krystal placed an order for me for the second book in Kevin Hearne’s Ink and Sigil series. At the same time, she found the Discworld Roleplaying Game guide.
Running In My Head 