blackhawk_13

• Joe was the Dungeon Master at the time; it was Joe's job to come up with a scenario for the game and take the gamers through it, making sure that everyone has fun.
• Fritz was playing the group's thief...it was his job to make sure doors were unlocked and traps were disarmed so the group could find treasure.
• Kelly was new to the game, and at the time, she was Fritz's girlfriend.  She was playing the group's fighter mainly because it doesn't take a lot of game-knowledge to play a fighter.  Since she was new, she usually was pretty quiet.
• Sherman was a country boy who, unfortunately, was also a pot-smoker.  He was a really nice guy, but he was a bit scatterbrained and naive.  He played an elf fighter/magic-user...which is pretty self-explanatory, yeah?  A fighter who can cast spells.
• Biggun (a.k.a. Steve) was the bane of my existence when I played with him.  He was a real munchkin gamer -- wanting the biggest and best magic items and doing whatever he could to make sure his character had an edge over everyone else...even if it didn't make sense. He played a kensai...an Oriental character (hence why he's referred to as the Chinaman...it's not meant as an insult in any way) who had different powers and stuff.  He wasn't human...he played some kind of bird creature...a hengyokai...but he never used that to the party's advantage...he would never transform into a bird and fly because he couldn't carry his gear when transformed.  So, basically, he only made his guy a hengyokai because it had benefits to how well he could attack or something.

"THE DOOR"

      Joe looked around the table, eyeing up the players over the top of his DM's Screen. Fritz, Kelly, Sherman, and Biggun (Steve) looked back anxiously. After five hours of tricks, traps, orcs, and distractions (courtesy of Steve), their characters were about to reach a serious challenge.

      "The hallway ends in a large, iron door, the torchlight casting eerie shadows across its surface. A steady, metallic tapping can be heard from somewhere beyond the door. What do you do?"

      Joe gazed at each player for a second, his heart racing at the diabolical challenge behind the door.

      "Is there a keyhole?" It was Fritz, master of the party's thief, "I look through it!"

      "No keyhole. Just a solid, iron door."

      "What about one o' them sliding window thingies?"

      "Nope. Just a door."

      "What side are the hinges on?" Biggun spoke up.

      "Huh? The other side, why...?"

      "Because! We could smash the hinges off the door with a hammer and let the door fall in, surprising whoever's behind it. Then, Sherman's elf and Fritz's thief could fire arrows into the room!"

      "Biggun...you GOT a hammer?!" Fritz snapped, tired of the delay.

      "No...but somebody's got to."

      Character sheets were quickly checked, but nobody had one.

      "I picked up a battleaxe somewhere," Sherman chimed in, "We could chop the hinges off!"

      "Is that what you do, Biggun?" Joe asked, a wicked smirk on his lips.

      "Sure!"

      "Wait..." Fritz tried to intervene, but Joe raised a hand and silenced him.

      "Why?" Biggun asked, perplexed.

      "I bet it was trapped," Sherman offered, opening his dice bag, ready to make a Saving Throw.

      Joe spoke in his narration voice:

      "The Chinaman takes the elf's axe and walks up to the great, iron door, ready to hack away at its hinges. As he gets within a foot, he sets his swing, only to notice that there are NO HINGES ON THIS SIDE OF THE DOOR!"

      "Huh? Where'd they go?" Biggun asked.

      "An illusion," Sherman whispered.

      Fritz was holding his face in the palms of his hands, laughing.

      "You idiot! Joe told you the hinges were on the other side!"

      "He did?"

      "Oh...damn. You looked stupid, Biggun," Sherman began doodling demonic faces on his character sheet.

      "I said the hinges were on the other side, Steve, and before you ask, yes, the door opens in."

      "Well, I still say we do that bow thing. Who's all got bows?"

      "We all do, Biggun," Fritz was getting a little annoyed...not that Joe blamed him. Steve grated on everybody's nerves.

      "Yeah...but I don't get any bonuses or experience with it, because I'm not proficient in it yet."

      "WHAT?!!" Joe and Fritz spoke as one.

      "It's a Kensai thing. I used all my weapon proficiencies for martial arts moves. If I use a weapon I'm not proficient in, I get no experience for the combat."

      "So? Use your frickin' bow!" Fritz was close to losing it.

      "Well...no! I don't want to use something that will make me forfeit experience."

      "Yeah...this is the big battle where we get all the good experience," Sherman added his two cents, rationalizing Steve's reluctance.

      "No! That's frickin' stupid!! If you're not gonna use it, why do you HAVE a frickin' bow?" Fritz was gone now. Getting through an unlocked door was the party's biggest problem.

      "The bow's magic, and I'm gonna take it eventually!" Biggun didn't understand what the big deal was.

      "Can we just go?" Kelly piped up, getting bored and frustrated.

      "Fine! Forget it! Whatever. My guy checks for traps."

      Joe rolled the two ten-sided dice to determine the thief's success at detecting a trap.

      "In your professional opinion there are ABSOLUTELY no traps whatsoever on this door!"

      "Oooookay," Fritz looked nervous, wondering if the dice roll had failed, "I guess I try to pick the lock...uh...wait! Is the door locked?"

      "No."

      "Ahhh...Jesus!" Fritz shook his head in disbelief, "Okay, I take out my bow and nock an arrow. Biggun, open the door."

      "But drop to the floor after, so we can shoot over you," Sherman added.

      "Okay, I open the door."

      Joe, finally, switched back to narration:

      "The Kensai crouches in front of the door, shoving it open and then rolling into a prone position. The iron door opens wide, and you see a huge ogre hammering a large iron spike into the chest of a man in robes, gagged and bound to an X-shaped platform. Blood is everywhere, and you notice the spiked corpses of four other men on similar platforms. Upon seeing you, the monster roars and begins advancing on your position carrying a huge, steel mallet."

      "You guys have him dead-bang. Now what?"

      "I fire two arrows...what's his AC?" Both of the thief's arrows hit.

      "I also fire two arrows," Kelly's mercenary missed one, but hit with the other.

      "The ogre looks really pissed, ripping the arrows from his body and still advancing."

      "You're next Sherm."

      "I drop my bow and cast Sleep."

      "You what?" -- Joe

      "Huh?" -- Kelly

      "Arrows, Nimrod! Fire arrows!" -- Fritz

      "He just rips 'em out. This way he'll be down and we can slit his throat!" -- Sherman

      "Is he close enough for me to hit with my katana?" -- Biggun

      "Who? The elf?" -- Joe

      "No! The ogre!" -- Biggun

      "Hang on. The Sleep spell has no effect and the ogre is now in melee range, Biggun." -- Joe

      "Anti-Magic Shell," whispered Sherman.

      "No, Sherm, he's just too tough for Sleep." -- Fritz

      "Or...it COULD be an Anti-Magic Shell. Besides, my character doesn't know he's too tough," Sherman tried to rationalize a lot.

      "Okay, I'm doing my Chi power thing. I do 45 points of damage." -- Biggun

      "What? Christ! Okay," Joe shifts back to narrator:

      "While the thief is arguing with the elf, the Kensai screams some kinda weird-ass Chinese crap, and cleaves the frickin' ogre in two!"

      "What?!" Fritz screamed.

      "Yessss! Nice one, Biggun," Sherman smiled.

      "I roll him," Kelly threw in.

      "WHAT?!!!" Fritz had finally gone crazy.

      "Kelly, all you find is the ogre-sized steel mallet," Joe said after checking his treasure list.

      "A mallet? I don't want a mallet." -- Kelly

      "Give it to Biggun," Sherman was full of suggestions tonight.

      "What? Why?" Biggun was always clueless.

      "So the next time we come to a door, we can use your idea and beat the hinges off!"

      "No...I don't want a mallet. I'm not proficient in it. Is it magic?" Biggun was the archetypical greedy player.

      "You don't know," Joe refused to give out such info freely.

      "Sherm...cast Detect Magic and look at my hammer," All of a sudden it was BIGGUN'S hammer!

      "No."

      "Why not?" Biggun and Sherm were going back and forth now, "Don't you have it memorized?"

      "Yeah, but I'm not gonna waste the spell."

      "Waste it?"

      "Spells don't work in here. I cast Sleep and nothing happened. My character thinks it's an Anti-Magic Shell."

      "WHAT?!" Fritz had calmed and had remained quiet for several minutes now, but Sherman's idiocy set him off with a vengeance, "It ain't a God-damned Anti-Magic Shell, you idiot. Ogres have too many hit dice to be put to sleep!"

      "But my elf doesn't know that."

      "Then your elf is as stupid as you are!!" There was no calming Fritz now, "While the elf and the Chinaman are doing this, I check out the bodies."

      "The thief discovers that the five dead men are the diplomats you were sent to rescue. Too many delays had caused you to fail in your mission."

      "Crap!" -- Fritz

      "Great." -- Kelly

      "Does this mean we don't get paid?" -- Biggun

      "Awww man!" -- Sherman, "We may as well look for secret doors."

      "The party searches for hours, finding nothing, and returning to town disheartened..."

      "Hey, Steve, did you keep the mallet?" Joe asked.

      "No. I can't use it."

      "...never realizing they left the powerful Hammer of the Storm Giants behind with the corpses."

THE END

Hopefully that wasn't too confusing for anybody out there who isn't a gaming geek.  Anyway, see you next post!


-Hawk

Valentine’s Day is an awkward holiday; ostensibly it’s a holiday solely for the enjoyment of lovers…couples…boyfriends and girlfriends. However, not everyone on this Big Blue Marble (anyone else remember this TV show from the ‘70s?) has paired up like some animal queuing up to board Noah’s ark!

Fun fact: only the UNCLEAN animals paired up; the clean beasts and the fowls of the air were taken into the ark in SEVENS (Genesis 7:2-3). And y’know, I understand that seven is a holy number and it has, like, mystical and spiritual significance, but really, SEVEN? You realize that means those clean animals came onto the ark as 3 couples and one poor shmuck who couldn’t get a date! I mean, really God? Seven? You had to make it so there’d be one single goat (or sheep or whatever else qualified as a clean animal) feeling like complete shit about himself (or herself) while all his friends are doing goaty, couply things and he/she’s all by him/herself??? 

Yeah, that’s fair. But, then, I always did say the Old Testament God was a bit of a dick…I mean, he SMOTE one of his own people for trying to keep the Ark of the Covenant from falling. There they were…the Israelites…marching through the frickin’ desert with the Ark being carried before them by the priests of the tribe (the only ones ALLOWED to touch it) and somebody trips! WHOOPS! There goes the Ark! Some guy rushes up to stop the Ark from hitting the ground and BIGGITY-BAM! God kills him.

Y’know, really, that was a No Win Situation for the Israelites back then. I mean, somebody was gonna get smote over the thing; it was just a matter of who. I mean, if God’ll fry a guy for just trying to be helpful, what do you think He would’a done to the guy who actually DROPPED it and let it hit the ground?!

Okay, shit. I totally went off on a tangent there. Valentine’s Day. Awkward. Right. I’m back on track.

Valentine’s Day is awkward from the MOMENT we go to school in this country (the U.S. in case you thought I was, like, posting from Albania or the Congo or something). When you’re a little kid, in grade school, they MAKE you give a Valentine to EVERYBODY in your class! Even if you hate the person, and even if they’re the same gender as you, you HAVE to give them a Valentine. (At least, that’s how it was done in Catholic school…what about public school? Anyone…?) AND they make you give the teacher one, too. Luckily that only continues until about the 4^th grade, but still…by that point, it’s almost ingrained in you to hate Valentine’s Day because it’s so awkward!!

Then, of course, there’s the whole family Valentine thing. Do you give a Valentine to members of your family?! Who deserves to get one, and who doesn’t? And if you give one to your mother (because she’s your mom, I mean, c’mon!) does that mean you have an Oedipal complex????

And if you’re in a relationship, Valentine’s Day is just one more opportunity for you to screw up and disappoint your significant other…if you’re a guy. If you’re a girl, no worries. A guy’s not gonna throw a hissy fit and dump you if you forgot Valentine’s Day. But God forbid you’re a guy and you forget!!! How is THAT fair?! When you’re in a relationship, there are so many OTHER stupid occasions you have to remember and most likely give gifts for (anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas, just-because days), it doesn’t seem fair that the calendar has another one built right in.

And, of course, how much is too much on Valentine’s? When you’re first starting a relationship, you’re tempted to go overboard because you’re wrapped up in the heady rush of new love…but that sets a dangerous precedent! You can’t get away with giving her jewelry on your first Valentine’s and then try and give her a stuffed animal and some candy on the next one! The ideal thing to do here is to start slow and build your way up, but that won’t work because if your gift to her on the first Valentine’s Day isn’t something major, she’s gonna be all pissy because her friend Joan got two dozen long-stemmed roses, and Sally’s boyfriend, well, he went to Jarrod! (Those commercials are so stupid! And you gotta feel for the OTHER guys in them. Because you KNOW the conversation starts like this as soon as the party’s over. “HE went to Jarrod, but did YOU? Of course not! I don’t mean as much to YOU as she does to him!! He went to Jarrod and I have to settle for your stupid flowers and candy! My mother was right…I should have married Bill!”)

There needs to be an official handbook of what is acceptable as Valentine’s Day gifts based on the status of relationship (dating vs. married) and the length of the relationship, and the age of the people in the relationship. It needs to be mutually agreed upon by delegates from both genders and ratified by a representative body of some sort. Then, once it’s taken care of, the government can pass them out to everyone.

Luckily, the next calendar holiday we need to deal with is St. Patrick’s Day…and all you gotta do for that one is pin a shamrock to your shirt, drink green beer, and learn the words to “Danny Boy”.
 

My earliest cognizant memory of Christmas was when I was three years old and received a teddy bear...a teddy bear that I still own to this day (he was recovered from an old trunk in the back of a closet when my parents moved a few years ago), although me and Teddy aren't as inseparable as we were back then (you should see the picture of me around the age of four, in a pair of shorts with a shirt that was a bit too short -- all dimpled knees and exposed bellybutton -- as I posed with a cowboy hat on my head with two cap pistols holstered on my hip and old Teddy in my arms...damn I was cute!!).  I can still remember the falling out my mother and I had when I was five...I packed my bags, fully intending to run away from home...I sat on the front porch, Teddy in hand, waiting for my dad to come home from work so he could drive me somewhere away from home.  Eventually, I got bored of waiting and lost interest in running away, and wandered off with ol' Ted to find something more interesting to do.  My father was understandably curious as to why there was a packed suitcase sitting on the front steps when he got home.

Some Christmases were memorable for the bad things that happened.  There was the year the cat attacked the parakeet cage and ate my sister's parakeet while mine broke his neck flying into a mirror.  There was the year my mother nearly died on her way to work, when her car hit a patch of ice and she wound up in a totaled car facing oncoming traffic in the middle of the Interstate.  There was the yar my best friend started a bar fight because the stripper he was dating was being ogled by another guy.

Other Christmases stand out for the presents I received...my first bike that WASN'T a hand-me-down from my sister, the entire line of G.I. Joe figures including all the vehicles and accessories (that was AWESOME), a stereo system, a radio controlled hovercraft, the Atari, the Nintendo, the TV/VCR combo, the Casio keyboard...many, many great gifts, but none of these are the single most vivid Christmas memory I keep locked up in this crazy-ass melon of mine.  That memory is a memory that has haunted me for years and years and years!!!  No surprise, then, that is a memory that involves my mother.

Allow me to fill you in on a bit of background information, first.  My mother and my Aunt Biddy (NOT her real name) were born two years apart and as such were closer to each other than they were to their other brothers and sisters (Janet, Chucky, Ellen, and Gary).  As such, growing up, my sister and I went to visit my Aunt Biddy every Thursday and Sunday and for Christmas, New Years, and Easter (although, since it falls on  Sunday, that goes without saying).  Also pertinent to this take is the fact that my mother's family was poor when she was growing up (can only afford shoes for one of the kids each year, let's see how far mom can stretch this loaf of bread for seven people, if dad loses this job we'll be living in the car again, poor).

Her stories from her childhood always haunted me, simply because when I was growing up, while we weren't rich by any means, and I in no way was spoiled, I knew I had it better than my mother did at my age, and it made me feel guilty.  None of that guilt could compare to what I felt when she told me the tale of one of her childhood Christmases...every...single...year.

Every Christmas, on the long drive through the city, from the suburbs of Northeast Baltimore to downtown South Baltimore, I heard this story:  When my mother was a child, each of the girls got a baby doll and a lollipop for Christmas (not sure if the boys were born yet, so I don't know what they might have gotten).  The baby dolls consisted of celluloid...the very first synthetic plastic, which happened to be susceptible to catching fire if exposed to flame and deteriorating and crumbling if exposed to moisture.  My mother, not knowing this as a little girl, took a bath with that baby doll on Christmas night before being put to bed along with her sisters.  If exposure to moisture can cause celluloid to deteriorate, well, it's not hard to see that complete immersion in water for an extended period of time might cause it to completely disintegrate...which is what happened.  She owned the doll for less than one day, and it literally crumbled to dust...all except for the head, which she managed to save.  And if THAT wasn't enough of a story to make a person feel bad, the next words out of my mother's mouth was enough to break my heart as a little boy and still chokes me up as an adult.  She loved that doll so much, she told me, that she kept that baby doll head and slept with it for years until it, too, crumbled.

I felt so guilty hearing that story because we had so much more than my mother did as a child.  Of course, my sister mocked me cruelly since the first time I heard that story it made me cry (I was four or five).  For years I vowed that one day I would find one of those dolls and get it for my mother, no matter the cost.  As a child, it was a desire to want to do something nice for my mother (I was always something of a momma's boy...disheartening, then, that my sister was always my mother's favorite), but as I got older, my desire to find the doll was more about exorcising the demon of that guilt I felt for NOT being as poor as my mother was when she wasa child.  When I first discovered eBay, I began combing the auctions whenever I could in search of the doll.  I thought I would never find it, but lo' and behold, last year I found the doll.  I bid on it and fought for the doll until I was high bidder...however, at the last SECOND (literally, at 2 seconds to go, I was the high bidder, at 1 second to go, I was outbid and couldn't post a bid fast enough) an auction sniper snatched the doll out from under me.

Utterly defeated, and feeling about the size of the crystals that make up a snowflake, I told my mother how close I came to replacing her doll, and that I was still looking and I would find one for her one day.  The next words out of her mouth nearly drove me to walk out into the middle of traffic and toss myself under the next eighteen-wheeler I saw.  My mother laughed at me and told me that she'd found one on one of her trips to Amish country, antiquing with my father...about five years ago!  Five extra years of Christmas guilt for me that would'a been alleviated had she told me she got that doll.  When she showed me that cursed thing, oh, I just wanted to toss it in a bathtub full of boiling saltwater just to watch it melt away!!!

But, of course, I didn't do that. 

It's Christmas, and I hope you all have happy, trauma-free experiences today, and that your holiday was a nice one full of cheer and good tidings.  (Mine wasn't, but I can hope you guys did better than I did!)

Happy Christmas!!

This Saturday, however, something happened that had us pulling up the tent stakes and heading our separate ways before 10:00 had even hit!  We were discussing something...I don't remember what, exactly.  My eyes were getting heavy (around 7:30...8:00) and I'd been LISTENING, but not really paying attention.  Someone asked the question "Well what do you think we should do with him?" to whit I answered "Put him in the church with the water!"  The sudden quiet followed by "What did you say?" snapped me out of my reverie and brought me back to full consciousness.  Shame-faced, I had to explain that I'd fallen asleep...sorry...because I hadn't been sleeping well.  They were all surprised by this, so I had to explain my sleeping habits to my friends.

Now let me first off say this: I do NOT talk in my sleep.  HOWEVER...if I am talking to you (on the phone, perhaps...just ask my ex!) and I begin to drift off while we are talking, I will continue to converse with you, but MY portion of the conversation will turn from whatever it is we were ACTUALLY talking about to WHATEVER I START DREAMING ABOUT!  This has led to some embarrssment on my part, such as when talking on the phone with a friend of mine a few years ago, out of nowhere I said to her "I wonder if I can get away with wearing the armor across the casino floor."  I had to explain that, while we were talking, I fell asleep and began dreaming that I was at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, dressed in gladiatorial armor (who knows what happened to my clothes?!) and trying to get OUT of the casino without being spotted!  Another conversation with her had me bemoaning the fact that "Someone spilled the coffee in the gutter!!" because I was dreaming about...well...I guess that one's self-explanatory.

So, my friends had their first experience with me and my ability to drift off and freak people out with a complete non-sequitor comment that is in no way apropos to the conversation.  I still don't remember what we were discussing Saturday, and what the question "What do you think we should do with him?" referred to, but I do know that "Put him in the church with the water" was NOT the right answer!!!

Sadly, about an hour later, my friends would have another chance to listen to my sleep-induced inanity, as I drifted off again in the middle of the conversation.  I don't recall the question I was answering this time, but my answer of "I'm going out to the Quidditch pitch!" not only stopped the conversation dead but had me explaining to my friend the gun-nut what exactly Quidditch is.  Doubly embarrassed, I vowed to stay awake for the rest of the night, and a rousing conversation over Alexander the Great and other historic figures who may've been gay or bi (I have NO idea how we got on THAT tack!) had me awake until, finally, at 9:45 we called it quits because I was not the only one falling asleep.

So, should you ever find yourself having a telephone or face-to-face conversation with me and I start to drift off...don't be surprised at the complete non-sequitors that come out of my mouth, no matter HOW bizarre they might seem!  That's just the cost of doing business when you're friends with ol' BlackHawk!


'Hawk

As I sit here at 3:30 on a bloody Monday morning, I can't help having the song "Once in a Lifetime" by the Talking Heads reverberating through my mind.  Odd thing, that, since I can't tell you when was the last time I heard that song...but the Subject of this, my very first (God help me) blog entry is taken from that very song.

"...And you may tell yourself...My God, what have I done?!"

I'm no blogger; frankly, I always thought the word "blog" sounded dirty...like some British euphemism for something two people (bloggers) do in the privacy of their own bedroom, perhaps involving Astroglide and a safe word.  However, someone suggested that I might think about starting a blog of my own...supposedly, I'm quite witty, and the things I write tend to make people laugh.  So, this is it...my attempt at a blog.  The safe word is "kerfuffle", but alas, I have no Astroglide.

"...And you may ask yourself...well, how did I get here?"

I certainly hope that David Byrne will forgive me for taking the lyrics to his song out of order, and that those of you foolish enough to read this (isn't there some sort of fanfiction or porn that your time would be better served downloading?) will forgive me for rambling a bit.  I just thought that particular line of the song was very fitting as I explained to you...whomever you might be...how I got here.

I've been writing a Harry Potter fanfiction entitled Aftermath that I've been posting over at FanFiction.net, and one of my reviewers told me I ought to look into writing a blog.  I won't name any names, in case she winds up regretting her suggestion.  She said something about "daily blogs" but God's sake, didn't I learn my lesson on trying to post things daily for people's amusement already?

Are any of you feeling lost with that last sentence?  If so, let me explain.  For those who don't know, Aftermath is a multi-part story that is currently up to 34 chapters with a 35th on the way...eventually.  Within...two weeks at the most.  For the first 33 chapters, I posted a new chapter each day.  The pressure of keeping that kind of schedule had me very stressed out and without so much as a word (well, that's not ENTIRELY true...I mentioned taking weekends off from posting on a Tuesday, I think) I promptly disappeared.  I did post a new story in the interim...a one-shot entitled Happy Birthday Hermione, which I posted on September 19th.  Anyone want to hazard a guess as to the SUBJECT of that story?  This served to prove that A) I wasn't dead, and B) I was still writing.  However, Chapter 34 of Aftermath was still somewhere on the horizon.  I was working on it, but with everything I was trying to fit in the chapter, it was going to be HUGE!  I was taking my time to make a quality chapter and not stress myself out.

Is anyone else getting bored yet?  Cuz I'm kinda boring the Hell outta myself right now.  Uhm...right...so, long-story-short (too late!), I was stressed with the whole daily posting schedule of the story which is why...pay attention, cuz we're getting to the POINT now...me trying to post a DAILY blog is probably a bad idea!

"...Letting the days go by..."

Hell, Jon Stewart gets away with only doing "The Daily Show" four days a week, plus he takes several two-week-long vacations each year during which time Comedy Central airs re-runs...so, if you want to think of this as a DAILY blog, by all means, go right ahead...but it will be DAILY in the best tradition of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart".  In other words...don't be surprised if I disappear for two weeks at a time!

"...And you may ask yourself, how do I work this?"

That right there, old son, is what we call an excellent question!  I'm new to this blogging thing and LiveJournal as anything OTHER than as a spectator...so bear with me.  There's so many empty blanks and pull-down menus and radio buttons and tabs and whatnot...I half expect to be inundated with e-mails for penis enlargement and laser-eye surgery as a result!

"...Same as it ever was..."

As I said at the beginning of this blog entry (that doesn't sound dirty to anybody else?! blog entry???), it's early in the bloody morning...and worse, it's a Monday.  Maybe I should've chosen the Boomtown Rats' song "I Don't Like Mondays" to cite during this blog instead of the Talking Heads' song...but that's neither here nor there.  Ahem!  As I was saying...it's early in the morning, although since I've yet to be to bed and the sun hasn't risen yet, I pefer to think of it as late at night...it's late, I've got to be up and alive and awake in less than three hours, so I really should get this over with and posted.

And for that special person who suggested I have a go at a daily blog, let me say this...I spent 45 minutes working on this that could have been spent getting Chapter 35 to you and everyone ELSE 45 minutes sooner!  Ah well!!  :-)  I'm off to bed and glorious sleep...


'Hawk