Watch & Learn

Today is the 36th anniversary of the first time that I played D&D - and the first time I ever heard of D&D, for that matter.

To revisit the first post on this blog:

It was, I think, a Saturday night. I called up a friend, asked him what if he wanted to do something and he told me, “I can’t, I’m playing D&D.” I had never heard of it.

 A game? Yes. “Can you explain it?” I asked.

 “No, I can’t,” he said. “You have to play it.” Whereupon he invited me.

 My first time playing, I did not understand anything. I was told to be a fighter (it was the easiest to play); my “equipment” was rattled off at me, most of which I was unfamiliar with, and which I wrote down as a list on a sheet of paper under my “abilities.” Lengthy explanations of these things were not given, as that would have held up the game. Watch and learn I was told, and watch and learn I did.

There's more under the link - but the above is enough for this post today.

Since that time, I have done much watching and learning.  For some who read this blog, it may fail to resonate just how long I have hammered and sawed at this game.  I became enraptured immediately from the beginning, with a mental state that had already spent several years of my youth painstakingly making maps, compounding statistics from an Almanac, making lists of countries based on many things (area, population, resources, largest cities, etc) just for the hell of it.  D&D just 'clicked.'

So that the time I spend today, the drive and the effort, it was there 36 years ago, beginning within the very first week of my playing.  It was like I was ready to fall in love and then, there it was, first sight.

It has been thus ever since.

I have been working for a couple of weeks now, at a job which they pay me at (for those who remember I was not paid at all for my first cooking job!).

Today I was given an opportunity at another restaurant, better pay, better conditions, a better chance for advancement.  Then on the way home from the interview, I saw this:



I wish my camera work was less sloppy (and that my thumb had been cut off as a child).  If you're tuning into this right away, the youtube edit fix for sloppy film is just initiating - so this should look better by this evening.

Eileen is terrific, very friendly, spectacularly talented and completely generous in letting me take this video of her and agreeing to let me put it on YouTube.  If you see this Eileen, thank you again.

Now I'm going to go work on the second draft of the book I finished on Friday afternoon.  It is called The Killing Bequest, which I hope is a good title.  The first draft is completely finished and I think it is a marvelous, tight story.  I will be writing more about it in the coming months.

For those who have purchased How to Run, or who remember the Fallow posts from a couple months ago, the book takes place entirely in the fiction kingdom of Fallow that I've invented.

Edmonton Expo is coming in 18 days.  And it's my birthday on the 15th.  I hope all this is a sign.