Because my flowers just aren’t geeky enough.

I’ve been doing some various craft projects lately to keep myself sane. One new thing that I’ve started is something called garden books – ordinary bricks painted to look like books, that you keep in your garden.

I’ve done a few of my favorites so far – Don Quixote, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Green Eggs and Ham, etc. And, of course, the corebooks.

I’m putting together a little how-to video for them on my Awkward Labs YouTube channel. I’ll share a link when it’s live.

I also painted this, because when I’m waiting for paint to dry, I look around for other stuff to paint.

Stay safe and sane, everyone. I’ll have another review up soon.

 

A quick announcement about D&D’s 40th…

We’ll be back to the Quixotist after a brief message from my other RPG project, theescapist.com:

Dungeons & Dragons, the game that launched a whole new form of entertainment while unleashing our imaginations, turns 40 years old this month. While the exact release date of the game is difficult to pin down, Jon Peterson (author of Playing at the World), comes up with a pretty good justification on his blog for recognizing January 26th as D&D‘s “birthday.”

For four decades now, D&D and other tabletop RPGs have helped bring people together, forge new friendships, promote reading, storytelling, art, and creativity, and much more. So I’d like to commemorate the occasion with a special little section of the site, and I’d love it if you would help.

I’d like to do a sort of collage of pictures, quotes, and stories – pictures of your group enjoying a game of D&D, quotes about how D&D affected your life, and stories of positive experiences that you’ve had with the hobby, such as meeting friends or discovering new ways to look at the world.

If you’d like to participate, you can send any of the above to me via email, post them to the Escapist’s Facebook page, Google+ page, or Twitter account. And just to keep things tidy and polite, here are a few guidelines:

– Please keep everything family friendly, including language.
– Limit stories and quotes to ~100 words. (But if it’s such a good story that can’t be told in 100 words or less, send it anyway, and we’ll talk.)
– If you’re sending a picture, please make sure that everyone in the picture has our permission to have it displayed on the site.

I’ll reveal the finished page on January 26th, and continue to post new items to it through the remainder of the year – so be sure to spread the word!

 

Catch the mist, catch the myth, catch the mystery, catch the drift…

I’m listening to Rush and prepping for an online D&D game I’m going to run for my daughter’s boyfriend.

1982 just called to say thanks for the friendly visit, and we should do it more often.

Of course, back then it was my 8 track copy of “All the World’s a Stage” – the only Rush album I owned for a little while – and my battered, dog-eared AD&D hardcovers, some graph paper, and a pack of looseleaf. Today, 30 years later, it’s a flash drive with a jillion songs on it, playing MP3s while I read over the D&DNext PDFs and carefully arrange tiles and tokens on a virtual gaming table.

I’m not sure which one I like better. But I may get the chance to compare them directly – we’re supposed to play some face-to-face games soon.

Does anyone have a working 8 track player? Mine broke in 1985…