Genghis Khan

Howdy folks – just a quick note today, since I’ve been pretty busy setting up work-from-home and not thinking a bunch about gaming stuff.

My wife and I did a jaunt to the nearby Sprouts grocery store to pick up a few things, and boy was it a normal, boring shopping trip. The place wasn’t super crowded, but there were plenty of shoppers, and everybody was calm. There were a few shelves picked over – mostly of staples and at the meat counter – but we got what were were after without too much trouble. If you’re having trouble finding things at the larger chains, you might check out smaller chains or shops, assuming they’re open.

Folks were eating at the Sonic (in their cars – they had removed the outdoor seating) when we went through the drive-thru for some fountain Cokes, and the roads weren’t empty. Looks like people in Vegas are getting through this pretty well. Now, during the week I’ve been driving into my office to get things done – most of the people who work near me are working from home (you didn’t have to ask them twice), so I’m pretty much all by my lonesome there. As a confirmed introvert, I’ve been training for this situation my entire life!

The morning commute to work has been reminiscent of what it was like 20 years ago. I have worked for the same company in the same general place for 25 years, so I have a basis for comparison on such things. Since the resorts on the Strip are shut down for the moment, and visitation is at a minimum, the central core of the city is pretty quiet. It’s weird, but not super-weird – it looked pretty similar the week or so after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I hope this little missive finds people safe, reasonably happy, and not panicking. Spend some time with your family – we had a rousing game of Dungeon! the other night, which I lost pretty soundly. I recently found an intact copy of the one I used to own – love those graphics so dang much – and I’m really looking forward to the similar game being produced by Sean Aaberg in his Dungeon Degenerates line. My daughter is spending some of her lost Spring Break (she and her friends were going to go to Disneyland – her first trip like that without the parents) sewing on of his weird patches on my denim jacket. Actually a good patch for the times:

We’re doing some comfort-viewing of TV shows and movies we like (and what would the world do without cute/funny animal videos right now?), getting some reading done (just finished Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler and Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis by Michael Ward – both good books), and I’m still working on my own projects. Now’s a good time to renew ties with friends and family, and if there’s a brick-and-mortar store or restaurant that you dig, but cannot visit, think about getting a gift card from for a later date. A good measure of a person or a people is how they behave in tough times, so be kind, supportive and generally groovy to one another, folks, and we’ll hopefully emerge on the other side relatively intact!

I’ll leave folks with a bad movie that would have been better if you had replaced all the “real” people with characters from Robert E Howard’s Conan stories. Ann Blythe sure was pretty – such an interesting face.