I had intended to do some work on this massive post I’ve been working on, and/or look at bit more at horror within D&D. But life has thrown more obstacles in the way. Or excuses for doing neither, depending on your point of view.

Yesterday we said good bye to a much loved furry member of the family Toby.

He had lost weight, and recently been less than solid in the number 2 department. But at the weekend Toby started struggling to get up without help, and had little energy to go out to answer the call of nature.

It was time to make that heartbreaking decision. It’s one of the hardest decisions a person who has dogs has to make. But as strange as it may seem it’s the loving decision to make, repaying all that love and devotion that they give.

Toby was a gentle, mischievous soul. Who will be greatly missed.

With Mum’s birthday finally passed, and my prep and planning for it (mainly baking) over, I have time to at least write an update post to prove I’m alive.

My activities the last few days have been none board gaming related. Although with recent real world events thoughts are finally starting to consider the possibility of gaming in meat space again at some point in the future.

I had some light reading arrive. Some of it for a future project (Super Mario Bros 3), another for a current project (Baldur’s Gate 2) and the final one just for pleasure. Although lack of motivation and being able to stay focused are big obstacles to getting through my reading backlog.

One or two new Pop Vinyl Star Wars related figures “mysteriously” arrived.

I got a waffle maker. I’d been dithering about getting one for a while, and finally caved once I decided on a surprise dessert for Mum’s birthday involving waffles. Which means I’ve started to test various waffle recipes to find one I like. The sacrifices I make for my Mum!

I’m making slow progress on a project for this blog that once complete will give you the difficult decision of reading a long pretentious blog post (the first of many possibly) or going off and doing something less boring instead. Like the lack of progress on bringing Aliens to Last Days apathy keeps putting up major road blocks. Which is saving you from having to make that hard choice, for the time being anyway.

Right I’m off to try and get motivated.

Well it’s been over due but I final got round to trying the Carolina Reaper flavoured biltong or jerky as it’s also known.

Feel free to skip this post and video, it’s not terribly exciting. Not that any of my videos are exciting. But hey ho for your viewing pleasure…

Ok bit of a sensationalist blog title. And this blog post and it’s embedded video has absolutely nothing to do with board gaming!

But it is me trying some chilli noodles that were given to me by my brother.

Apparently these noodles are too hot for his wife so he wanted me to try them.

Forgot to say in the video I really liked the noodle itself.

Plus I think my brother is a little disappointed I didn’t find them too hot.

This morning I had a delivery that I had no clue was coming.

Why?

I never ordered it!

Some-one sent me the rather cool tee pictured below.

So just like the 16 odd one-shot adventures in the just released D&D book Candlekeep Mysteries, I have a mystery to solve.

I have no idea who the very kind and generous sender is. There was no invoice/receipt inside. Which would be possible if they ticked a box to say it’s a gift. The return address is to an industrial estate in Peterborough.

There are a couple of suspects but until life events allow it, a more aggressive investigation approach can not take place. Unless extraction teams are hired and rendition to another state with dubious questioning techniques is used. But that might by some seem to be on the extreme side of things.

But seriously whoever sent the tee I’m deeply grateful for their generosity and kindness. It made my day.

Animal Crossing New Horizons (ACNH) has usurped Minecraft as my chill out game. I usually log in once a day around 8am, pick fruit, dig up fossils, then sell them to raise funds to fuel my Mario merch purchases (which Nook limits to 5 purchases a day) and buy stuff from the local store.

The goods that the store sells changes on a daily basis. This morning I was able to buy a boardgame!

The game doesn’t appear to be any game particular. Just general game components thrown together to look like a game.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could interact with the game in a limited way. That interaction was limited to throwing a die. But still I could imagine I was playing god knows what!

Here is a short video of my mii throwing the die in the boardgame. Yes my life would appear to be that sad that I get excited about this sort of thing, and even worse I put a video of it up on YouTube and share it!

Hopefully I’ll get a new life soon before the next post.

There seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel in all of this darkness that has been plaguing the world for a year now.

Which means it’s time to remind myself that I have a list of games that I want to play once things become safe again to do so.

I have to admit it’s been frustrating not being able to play these games with my friends. Plus there has been more than a touch of envy seeing photos of people playing games with family/partners on various boardgame Facebook pages I belong to. The drawback of being single.

Below are collages of the games that make up my list of games to play once in person gaming is a thing again.

This list is just games that I have new expansions for, or are new to my collection.

Which means this list doesn’t even cover games that I’d like to get to the table again because I haven’t played them in a while like Scythe or Battlestar Galactica.

The list also doesn’t include RPGs either. Maybe I’ll do a separate list for those.

I think all these sort of lists prove is that even though not able to play games, this doesn’t stop people adding to their collection. And that when able to get together again we will all need a months holiday to get through the backlog.

What games/expansions are on your list?

Today is a day of celebration as we celebrate Nan’s birthday.

Nan turned 94 today.

Below are some recent photos of Nan with her little guardian angel, Loki. He really is a Nannies boy. A bit like me I suppose.

Before opening Nan’s birthday cards, I asked her what day it was, and if she knew the date. Her reply was it’s not my birthday. So I pointed out it was.

Reading Nan her birthday cards this morning made me feel like those presenters on Anglia tv from my younger days who did the birthday club spot between programmes during the kids part of the tv schedule.

I’m wishing Nan many happy returns for the day. With many more ahead.

Let’s keep this post short and sweet. I hope you all have a Happy New Year. Be safe. And hopefully later in the year we can all get back to playing board games in person!