Okay, I don’t get a summer vacation. Even my school-age child doesn’t because they have summer school and only get part of June and August off.

But I have been busy, even if I have not been blogging.

First, I got into yet another hobby, making my own cards. The appeal was that it is a fairly simple hobby that I can do easily given my skills and the product can be used to connect to family and friends, or be donated to my church for our St. Nicholas Craft Fair this fall.

Second, I have been continually playing (as much as my schedule permits) in a Dungeons & Dragons game run by my friend Derek. He’s using a pre-gen adventure, complete with digital maps that can be displayed on a large screen that doubles as the gaming table. It is interesting playing rather than running the game, and the group is a nice bunch of guys who are becoming friends.

But third, I am now running my own game. I had been thinking about this ever since I moved into the new house for the new job, but had not really found the way to coalesce a group of my own (I considered running the earlier game, but Derek wanted a chance). But serendipity worked out because my wife and I had a Memorial Day cookout where I invited the D&D group and she invited friends from her roller derby team. When the roller derby people heard about the D&D group, many of them expressed a lot of interest in learning how to play the game, having seen lots about it on social media (i.e. Critical Role or TikTok) and asked if I would teach them.

So with a couple of experienced players and a handful of newbies, my own D&D game kicked off last night with an adventure designed specifically to teach the rules and introduce players to roleplaying. It went very well and everyone had a lot of fun.

Finally, I got another dog. This was not in my plans at all, but fate got in the way. One of my wife’s teammates fosters stray dogs, and was fostering an elderly dog that had been abandoned and was in really bad shape in Philadelphia. He had been in three foster homes already because few people are interested in adopting elderly pets, but this guy was incredibly adorable and we are suckers for a sob story so we agreed to give him a good home for whatever remains of his life. He’s a scruffy looking little toy terrier whom we thought needed a fancy name to counter his rather humble appearance and history, so we named him Fitzgerald (or “Fitz” as we call him).

So that gets all of you up to speed on my life these days. I will try to post more regularly as I continue to create more content that I can share. Until then, thanks for reading and comments welcome!