Things to Make Me Smile

E Gary Gygax died. That doesn't make me smile. But, one of my friends who is still in touch with the old college D&D gang sent out an email to us all, using the old avatar names. And my old college pals have been hitting reply all and talking about specific incidents we remember, and how much fun we had.

I have to say, I gamed with mostly men, and by golly, they were good guys. Not perfect, but good guys. I've heard about some nightmare games where female characters were virtually raped and stuff. But it didn't happen in our world(s). We tended to trade off DM duties, and different people tried different stuff, but by and large we were decent to each other. We all drank, but I don't remember anyone being drunk much (well, one guy on the rare occasion).

Almost every adventure started at an inn. Chocolate kisses will always be orcs. Always.

And X, who was pretty much always invisible, his motto was he's "gotta be good looking 'cause I'm so hard to see."

Gygax's work made my college life a whole lot more fun than it would have been because of the people I hung out with. But it probably didn't help my grades!

Elsewhere on the web, I read a women populated-forum for bikers fairly regularly, and recently someone posted about getting some jewelry. I sort of shrugged mentally, since jewelry doesn't do much for me, but the post had a paperclip on it, which indicates a picture, so I took a look. The "jewelry"? A beautiful derailer and stuff. Bright and shiny and looking very nice.

What makes me smile, though, are the other responses, all of which really get into admiring the "jewelry" and talking about what fun it is to get it dirty and clean it off, making jokes about their own "jewelry."

I don't know any of these people, but the forum makes me laugh most days, in a very good way. People post pictures of their bikes to much admiration, talk about their rides to great encouragement, and ask questions about ingrown hairs and saddle sores that have helped me avoid some serious problems.