It's possible that I am responsible for sending us down this ridiculous alley. A few hours ago, when we gathered for our Wednesday night game, I showed the youngest of the group a tweet from Wil Wheaton, for an "Owlbear Conservation" t-shirt he is selling to raise money for an animal rescue operation in Pasadena, California. We have a running gag about owlbears in our D&D campaign, from several weeks ago. What followed the first few nights was that same young man in our group buying an owlbear plushie that has a zippered pouch to hold dice. Naturally, when I saw the t-shirts, I had to show him.
Our group was completely unfocused and made excruciatingly little progress. By the time the evening was drawing to a close, we were starting to act out, and be weird. We found a room where someone was brewing a potion, which sat in a glass vial, over a candle flame. The abovementioned man's character impulsively grabbed the potion and drank it. It was hot and burned his throat. Then bits of his skin went translucent/transparent. We could see into his insides. Through all of this, it was hurting him, and in a frantic hope to stop the damage, he tried to transfigure himself into an owlbear (which he has done before, without telling us so he ended up getting attacked by the rest of the crew). He didn't succeed. He had one elfen arm and one wing. He had bear legs and human feet. He had fur on his humanoid head, but with a beak. He was a total freak of nature, somewhere between SouthPark's infamous man-bear-pig and the Simpson's Treehouse of Horror frog prince who begged for death. We all laughed so hard we nearly blacked out, and Mr S-P, who was trying to lead this game just shook his head trying to control the direction of the event. Needless to say, he failed. It has now been more than an hour and my head still hurts from all the laughing.
I had an idea planted in my head this afternoon that I never expected. I have wanted to upgrade my car for one slightly bigger so that driving clients to real estate showings is a little easier, but I don't feel like I'm to the point where I can afford or justify such a purchase. At the same time, Mr S-P has started actually enjoying this time-waster side hustle where he uses my current car to drive for Lyft. He does it compulsively, putting in way more hours than we thought this would be, and he's putting more miles on my car than I want. In two weeks, he's put almost 2,000 miles on it. I don't like that at all. (Also, I get creeped out when I drive it, feeling like my own skin is unclean. Every time I drive it now, I run it through the car wash. This doesn't feel like a healthy reaction, but it calms me down.) I have been nagging him for two weeks to get a dedicated car he can use for this if he's going to stick with this much longer. He and I wandered through some small dealer lots this afternoon, just to see what's out there. At the third dealer, there was a car that seemed to fit both needs. It was all wheel drive, the correct vintage (younger than 2012), in great shape, big enough to hold passengers comfortably, reasonably close to what he wanted to pay, and the exact car I was thinking of changing my cute little blue car out for. We didn't leave the lot owning it, but we did take it for a test drive, long enough for us both to sit behind the wheel. (To be honest, I sat in four different seats, to get a good idea what passengers would feel. I approved.) So the big question now is, if we decide tomorrow or later in the week that this one is the right car, who gets it? Does he use it for Lyft, or do I give him my beloved Focus and take this Escape for my job? Or do we just wait a few weeks and see what gets turned in when people start getting their tax refund checks and a flood of gently used cars hits the market?
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