Did I mention that I’ve joined an every other weekend Dungeons & Dragons game just outside of the city? I found the game online and had never met any of the participants before the first Saturday we met to create characters. But it’s been great.

A friend of mine, Ryan, tried as well, up in Chicago. He had the disturbing experience of walking into a room filled with legally-fixated (as in an obsession with the official and formal rules of the game, rather than actually being law school students) twenty-two year olds.

Fortunately for me, my little group is roughly my age – the six of us range from barely thirty and mid-forties (I would guess), leaving me pleasantly in the middle. The dungeon master is even a part time opera singer at the WNO (I admit to having been a little googley-eyed and fawning when I found out – I do love watching the opera).

This is the first time I’ve played D&D in at least twenty years (and I actually played Advance Dungeons & Dragons, which is a fine distinction that doesn’t make a big different to the lay person) and I no longer have any of the books I used to assiduously collect (but I am pleased to see that the starter set, the picture shown to the right, is exactly the same cover design was it was twenty-five odd years ago). I’m already being mocked for having purchased the Dark Sun Campaign Setting book from Border’s. And hell if I’m not getting into it.

Every two weeks seems like an abominably long wait, except that, if it occurred more frequently, each of us would miss more games. Every other weekend is something one can set aside as reasonably inviolable in one’s schedule in a way that every weekend cannot.

So, for your information, I am currently playing a half-elf wizard named Cavafy, after the great Alexandrian poet.