Thursday, February 27, 2020

In Effigy

Inspirational song: Respect (Aretha Franklin)

As long as we can still safely gather, game night happens on the regular. For the first time this week, I mused aloud what we would do if quarantining becomes recommended for the general public. I asked the engineers whether they had a favorite videoconferencing platform. It felt like I was just spitballing based on some movie thriller not on real life. Still, having a simple, practical plan isn't out of bounds at this point. I'm pretty sure I count as part of the "vulnerable population."

For now game night still goes on as usual. I spent all day making dinner, as I love to do. I put a pork shoulder in the crock pot at 9 this morning, and it was fall-apart tender by the time they arrived. I had homemade coleslaw and cornbread (GF), and a vegetarian main dish of zucchini and yellow squash. It makes me so happy to be able to feed my big extended family this way, and I've done it at every opportunity since high school. Maybe I have been training to be a grandma my whole life. I'm gonna be great at it when it finally happens.

Our game entered the absurd by the end. We were using figurines from other, very different campaigns as stand-ins for monsters as we battled. We faced four giant hyenas. We had two oxen figures from the campaign that ended last year, dating from the week before I joined it. (We had a pet known as Goldi-ox.) It felt personal fighting them, even though they were just on the map to mark spots. But they were nothing compared to the ones at the tail end of the party, opposite of where my character was. The two foes there were represented by an ogre and the miniature Mr S-P made for his other alter-ego, Sant'a'a Klaas. I wasn't following the back battle entirely, but at one point the Santa hyena was electrocuted and set on fire. There was an awful lot of glee from the other side of the table at the idea of taking out Santa. I'm not sure I was entirely comfortable with it.

Harvey came down and made sure we all saw how cute he was. He waited until the battle was essentially over before he walked across the map. He parked himself next to stacked plates, and studied a leftover piece of pork for several minutes before swiping it. So he's good, but he's not perfect.

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