By request, Jan has been leading a family Dungeons & Dragons campaign. We spent the first night rolling characters. Liya decides her character is an elf, and suggests everyone else make their characters short too, so Bree makes her character a gnome, Angela is a half-elf, and Jan creates an extra non-player character whose a dwarf.
On the first night of actual play, Jan had read from the beginning of a stock campaign, “The Dragon of Icespire Peak”, focusing on the section of the adventure called “Gnomengarde”. Bree’s eyes widened in recognition — she said that it was, unfortunately, the exact same adventure she and her friends were currently going through on their own semi-regular D&D campaign. So Jan had to toss out a couple of hours of preparation and hastily improvise a start to a completely different stock campaign, “The Sunless Citadel”. The first night went okay.
After some more preparation, tonight’s play is much more fun. Bree is proving to be an impetuous player who often announces that her character does something rash — like jumping into a hole without first seeing what’s down there. Tonight her impetuous play ends up gaining the group some magic that prove advantageous in their first real combat encounter, leading to the fiery but hilarious end of some foes.
While washing dishes after dinner, Bree drips a lot of water on the floor. A short while later: “Now my socks are all wet — ugh! It’s almost like my actions have consequences.”
At dinner we discuss the prospect of giving Angela’s apartment in Enumclaw a nickname. Liya proposes “The Outpost”, but Bree wins the discussion by proposing that it be known as “The Mom Cave”.
After many months of clouds and rain, we finally have a few dry days and even a bit of sun. The crocuses in our front yard say that spring is coming.
Jan spends hours processing our kiwi harvest from December into kiwi syrup. We often end up with lots of kiwi, and kiwi syrup is an efficient way to use up what we don’t eat. That said, a couple of hundred leftover kiwi still takes a long time to peel, puree, boil, and strain. Jan ends up making 3–4 gallons of syrup. (The photo only shows some of what was made.) We like using the syrup to make kiwi soda, but that’s still an awful lot of kiwi soda to consume.
After over a month at home, Liya’s supposed to fly back to Yale this morning. Given the Omicron spike, Yale had elected to have everyone start classes remotely. Liya’s been getting up very early this week so she can attend a class that starts at 6:00 am Pacific time.
There’s a big snowstorm on the East Coast today, so her flight is postponed until tomorrow.