Pizza Party

It's Wednesday...time to blog something.

The school soccer season is officially over...actually ended the weekend before last, but we had our post-season "pizza party" last night (outdoors, in a covered pavilion, in the rain). It was great and everyone had a wonderful time (funny, since I was the one that "organized" the thing...and I'm pretty terrible when it comes to party planning). 

I'm not a big believer in participation trophies, but I did buy medallions for all the kids (with their names, their school, and the year) to commemorate the season. This was a hard season, but an important one...it was our first time playing a team sport as a school in the "time of Covid," after not having ANYTHING last year. It was rough and emotional and stressful (for the kids!), but they soldiered through and no one quit and everyone got at least a little better on the pitch and they all had a good time. 

And no one got sick. Masks helped.

We lost every game, but we were never shut out (my kid is a goal-scoring machine) and we just played better and better with every game. Still hopeless, of course (half our team was composed of 4th graders, several of whom had never played soccer before this season)...but we were at least becoming competitive. Our last game we went 11 on 11 (full sized field) and only lost 5-3. Everyone wants to come back next year. 

Everyone wants me to coach again. We'll see.

[I do enjoy the coaching thing, but it takes a lot of effort to coordinate four separate team activities for two kids simultaneously; and it's possible I might be working (a regular job) by next year]

Anyway. That's done. Sofia's school season will be done after this coming weekend, and THAT will lower the household stress level to manageable proportions, right before the holidays. Serious D&D action appears to be just around the corner...need to get back to my Dragons of Insanity project.

Around the blog-o-sphere, I've been reading some good things lately. "Good" because they give ME interesting ideas and inspiration. For example, this review over at tenfootpole: I have absolutely zero desire to actually buy or run this adventure, but it makes me want to try my hand at writing something "rat related," something I don't recall ever having done in the past. Hell, maybe I'll run some sort of contest, similar to the Fat Frog Challenge...remember that? I mean, it's only been a decade plus since the last time I did that (jeez). I wonder if I have any kind of glittering prizes to offer for such a thing; hmmm....

[EDIT: yes, I am doing a contest]

Other good stuff: Well, this review of Underground, gave me insight into one of the best premises I've heard for a supers RPG. A review of Under the Waterless Sea reminded me that I have to get around to finishing my own submarine adventure module one of these days (it has the rather unoriginal working title "Sea Castle") because there just aren't enough watery challenges on the market. Alexis has been working on a great series of which I think this post and this one are the best and most useful (though I'd recommend reading all his "Other D&D" posts). Oh, and GusL beat me to the punch with his recent post on treasure, though I still plan on writing up my own thoughts on the topic because (if I can find a way to communicate effectively) it gets to the heart of why treasure is such a vital component of the D&D game.

["adventure"is another, and I think there are some things to take to heart from this old Gygax interview]

So, there...even though I'm not offering much of anything in this post (other than a look into my family's activity levels), I'm giving my readers some reading material to peruse. Hopefully, I'll have some deeper blog material in the next day or two.