Monday is, allegedly* my last “in-the-office” work day for 2017. Tuesday through Thursday, I’m off-site (at that nice training facility around the corner from my house) taking a not-so-exciting three day course on Earned Value Management, as I believe I may have mentioned. This is not something I’m excited about at all, but it’s required for the fancy certification I’m supposed to earn for this job, so whatever.

The weekend wasn’t awful, I guess. My wife and I legitimately tried to go to the cool vegan-pop-up/holiday bazaar at Hardywood Park Craft Brewery in the city on Friday night, but after knocking out a little shopping first, the snow and freezing rain were in full swing, and while the roads weren’t awful yet, the drivers were, and it was getting colder, so we settled for dinner out at the nearby mexican place (she got a margarita, I made it home without the requisite bottle of Gingerbread Stout, which is really good stuff), then home.

The storm kept up for most of Saturday, though the roads weren’t awful – we ended up with an inch or two depending on where you took your sample, but I still ended up venturing out once or twice for some things (cornbread to go with the chili I threw in the crock pot, etc) and to catch the new Gen III pokemon (because I still play Pokemon Go – sue me).

Sunday, I ran the usual D&D game with the post grad students legit PhDs (congrats Kat and Will), where we had a good time with a classic “on-rails” one shot dungeon crawl, where the druid managed to get her hands on a Cloak of Billowing (a “common magic item” that does nothing useful other than to billow dramatically on command); and chose to continue wearing it while wildshaped into a velociraptor (I allowed it, because “rule of cool” is my DM mantra). As a dinosaur, she couldn’t speak, but continued to puncutate interactions by billowing the cape whenever appropriate (or not), mostly to taunt the barbarian in the party, because why not. It was fun, and the boss demon, for whatever reason, was fond of metagaming (telepathically telling the party about his employee evaluations, and sacastically wondering why they just don’t come on in for the fight, rather than continuing to confer outside the big doors with the symbol of Vecna on them). I also gave out Inspiration for dick jokes. It was fun, and a good send-off for Will, who’s off to a post-doc fellowship in Texas for a while.

That’s about it, really. Otherwise, I’m continuing to work on shutting down the program for a couple of weeks while I’m in class/on leave, figuring out when we’re going to get out to see The Last Jedi this weekend, and working to deal with the unfortunate lower-GI symptoms of the iffy leftovers I had for dinner last night, and thanking the maker that I forgot the other batch I’d packed for lunch.

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*- I say allegedly, because although I’m in class the rest of this week, I’m likely not going to be able to put the last bit of business I talked about earlier without another meeting with people I’d rather not deal with.