And so i have gone and gotten married. It was unpremeditated, spur of the moment second degree matrimony.

My new wife is not actually new. It’s her second marriage too, she we are both seasoned. We have been hanging out for ten years or so and know each other well.

We have chosen not to live together, and this seems to confuse people a great deal. I don’t know why it should. We live about half an hour apart. My kids go to school here, my current job is here and she lives in a small town she likes, close to her job and in a house she likes.

Would it be more convenient to live together? I’m not sure. There would be more travel and less space and who doesn’t appreciate space? We may spend as much time together as we wish. We also may pursue our own interests and ideas in our own homes.

Generally men seem to be more shocked by this. They can’t understand why anyone would want to do this. Woman nod knowingly and say...

I went to visit a friend of mine the other day, to play some games. He has a large game collection and I suppose he has a collection of friends that he carefully matches with the game he wants to play that evening. I can’t blame him but it does feel strange to think of oneself as part of someone’s collection.

I had a headache I couldn’t shake but my friend has asked me to come anyway. We played Arkham Horror and a few other things.
The other people there- I’ve met them before- were the crazy man with the black beard, his snarly girlfriend and the large man who seldom speaks. We played games and shook dice and made comments and generally a reasonably good time was had by all, even headachy me.

We met in a basement, did I mention that? Unfinished. Pipes and beams and cobwebs. Ghosts of games that had happened before. The lighting was dim, conspiratorial. We could have been mafia dons in a movie. It also gave me a lot of time to just...

Pigs, apparently, are the best way to fight war elephants.

Alexander the Great, the Romans, and other ancients all new this. In Pliny the Elder’s Natural History he writes that elephants are terrified from the smallest squeal of a pig.

If you dig a little you can find reports of battles where pigs were driven towards massed war elephants causing them to stampede and trample their own troops. Or where squealing pigs on ropes were lowered from fortifications to break besieging war elephants. Bungee pigs? Or the most extreme- pigs set afire and sent out to scare the elephants away. (and after the enemy and elephants had run there was a rib fest)

Roman elephants roamin'

I admit I was delighted to find this out. I’m not sure how much impact this will have on my life- but the next time I am attacked by an elephant you can bet I will make pig noises....

This isn’t about missing playing with the Dzu Teh, although they don’t get used all that much at our house. We just don’t use the snowy set frequently. Those Sasquatch Hunter dudes appear on our board much more frequently. It’s hard not to like feral rage.

This isn’t about shooting at Dzu Teh and missing them, which would be easy with their glacier camouflage. We have some cats with bows and one squad called The Furies that have tree camouflage who see a lot more use. But they are ranged, whereas the Dzu Teh are not. Usually we just ignore them when they’re next to glaciers and find another way around.

This isn’t about that fateful day when I bought our one Dzu Teh set. Toys R Us had them on clearance- $10 a box. There were about 30 boxes, beside the bin of $5 clearance flag bearers. We were poor, and it was after much thought that I bought one box of the glacier set. We were just getting into Scape and Scape was just disappearing. I still wish...

Today I embark on a new adventure. I have published two novels and they are now available on Amazon and Kindle.



Bloody Blue Skies is an adventure/war/fantasy about a young dwarf who runs away and joins up with a dwarven mercenary company.

The Red Handkerchief if a mystery/police novel about two police detectives working on a serial killer case. I’m afraid I could not keep my strange sense of humour out of this one.

Firstly let me thank you all for all of your encouragement.. You might not think a little blog comment here or a drip of rep there would make a difference, but it certainly has made a difference to me. If you think of a drip (and I’m not talking about me being a drip; but rather your influence) think of a drip falling into a pool- you’ve heard the reference before- one drop sends ripples and repercussions throughout the whole pond....