Friends, I hope you had a good Presidents' Day weekend. Although I wasn't able to attend the funeral or shiva call for Steve M.R.'s mother, I'm glad that many of our mutual friends paid their respects and shared their condolences with him and his family.
Unfortunately, college chum Dexter V.H. had to cancel his visit to Massachusetts at the last minute this past weekend due to concerns about the health of his father, who is 90+ years old. Understandably, while Dex wanted to get away from New York, asking his parents to take care of four of his children would pose a challenge. We have stayed in touch and hope to arrange another visit in April, when Erik B.L. and Carolyn M.P. also plan to come up. David I.S. may also be in town for work at some point.
Speaking of houseguests, high school friends Damon F.P. and Steve M. may be in the Boston area this coming weekend. I don't generally recommend that people visit Janice and me in Needham Heights during New England's long winters, but we've had a relatively mild season so far, and it's always good to see friends, since we get fewer visitors than when we lived in the capital area. I hope to visit family and friends in Virginia later this coming spring.
After some last-minute reshuffling, I ended up running another one-shot of my D20 "Mutants & Masterminds" 2nd Ed. "S.J.I.: Drake's Port" superheroic game (previously run using "Vortex," D.C. Heroes, and GURPS "Supers/Powers"). The five local role-players who made it had fun, as novice metahuman vigilantes met and fought a Sentinel (a mutant-hunting robot from Marvel's "X-Men" comic books). See my Yahoo/eGroups Web site for Greg D.C./"Electric Slide's" amusing update. I also played some "City of Heroes," the multiplayer online game that Dexter and I hope others will join.
In addition, Janice and I got our taxes done at H&R Block this past weekend (we'll be getting refunds from both the federal and state governments), and we made our travel reservations for our trip to Las Vegas in May for the Society for Technical Communications conference, the Best Friends animal sanctuary in Utah, and the Grand Canyon. We were pretty tired from recent colds/flu and the workweek, so we laid relatively low. We also got a telephone call from Ann W. in New Zealand.
I caught up on reading and videotaped episodes of "The Boondocks." I also recommend Nickelodeon's computer-animated sci-fi comedy "Jimmy Neutron" and anime-style fantasy "Avatar: the Last Airbender." The latest episodes of "Justice League Unlimited" have also been pretty good, and I understand that the same creative team is working on a futuristic "Legion of Superheroes" television series for the Cartoon Network…
I've also got the latest D&D3.5 "Vanished Lands: Seekers of Lore" heroic fantasy session tonight to prepare for. When we left the privateers, they had just begun exploring the barbarian-held port of Gisar in search of its lost magic school/library… Due to being busy at work, I've fallen behind a bit with the role-play by e-mail folks, including Carolyn M.P./"Grace," Byron V.O./"Ibrahim," and Greg/"Janus," but one-shots should help us focus.
As you can see, my calendar fills up rather quickly, but being busy always leads to creativity, if at the risk of burnout. Let's hope that spring is around the corner….
Gene's Worlds 