Out-blogged

Yeah, so ....

Hmm.

Been a while, as they say.

What with giving two talks at the FileMaker DevCon in August, and being like three months behind and an author down in finishing up the new training materials for FileMaker 9 (almost done!), and starting a new life/health/whatever regime that kicks me out of bed at 6 AM to walk sleepily, steadily uphill, and what with three trips in the last month and four more (yep, four!) in the next six weeks, and the kids starting school and E. getting into Cub Scouts ...

So, yeah.

So yeah, here's a really really short, true, story about gamekids. 'Cause that's all I have time for, it's past my middle-aged beddy time.

Two stories, I guess. E. has gotten out the AD&D books again, after a kind of hiatus. He's been studying the Monster Manual closely. This evening he had it outside and we were looking through it as he selected monsters he thought his half-orc barbarian might like to fight. We turned to the page with the ankheg on it. I opined that the ankheg had used to be one of my favorite monsters (thus implying that I actually knew something about it). So E says "Dad, how does the ankheg's acid work?"

Acid? Acid?? OK, that sounded familiar. Clearly it was obvious to E. I read the MM entry. Yep, not one but two kinds of acid attack. Ankheg may have been a favorite of mine, but clearly my son is now the facile one.

In the same vein, we were looking at some of my old painted figures this morning. Some of them are outlandish things I don't really recognize. OK, most of the those are explicitly Lovecraftian critters. But one bizarre creature, with a segmented body, big bug eyes, long snout and crablike claws, I just couldn't place, and said so.

"Dad!" said E. "That's a cave fisher! Here, I'll show you."

And he runs and he fetches my old Monster Manual II, lovingly sheathed in opaque contact paper and never used, and opens to C, and lo, the beast in all its glory ...

That seems to be a torch of some sort, going by there. And I don't appear to be holding it, just now.

Oh, and speaking of blogs that are actually funny or talented? See whether this doesn't just make the sn*t run out of your nose ...