It is hard to imagine that we would be into this lockdown now 218 days. From what I can tell, we are now at the half-way point. The virus death-rate is lower–likely from younger and healthy people catching it and medical procedures now better understood to help the seriously ill with Covid-19. Still, there is no significant improvement for older people and those with reduced immune systems. A vaccine is still months away in a large and safe, and effective application to the USA and European populations.
Today started as do most Mondays at 6ish with me trying to find my way and catching up with the emails and other communications. Despite that the world is round and that many folks sent emails on the other side of the earth when I am still sleeping, I had a pile of issues from India and some leftovers from the weekend. The world runs non-stop, even before Covid-19.
I spent the morning drinking a lot of coffee and trying to untangle items left over from the previous week. We managed to find our way, and I get some things started. I read emails on one screen and watched Zoom and documents on another screen; I had my two screens running. One is email and Slack channels, and the other is for Zoom and composing. I have a third screen using my personal laptop; I watch the news and my personal email.
Lunch was New England Clam Chowder from a can. While I was having lunch, Susie was off getting hair, nails, etc. done by Zerida. This is every Monday morning. Her driver was a few minutes late, but she got going and had Chicken McNugget fav for lunch.
Susie finished her ballet today and they all went out with today’s mail.
Susie had a dentist appointment today, so I had to stop the Zoom and emails and text and Slack channels early. Susie has an appointment to return on Thursday for a filling fix.
Tonight we returned to playing Roll20 with six players now, the perfect number. We had to skip last week as I had a computer conference, virtual, on Monday night. We stopped in the middle of combat. Thus we picked up combat there. Matt Vincent joined us as a dwarf war cleric. We added him as a survivor from another party of explorers. In my story, he was driven to the lower levels by the confusion effect from the umber hulks (think if a cross between a beetle and an ogre) that broken in and rediscovered the “lost level.” The adventurers finally made short work of the invisible stalkers that attacked them. Matt’s cleric O’Mi was being stalked by some evil dwarves, and he joined the other players who then helped bring an end to the evil stalkers.
Aside: We are running the massive Mad Mage adventure available in book form from your local gaming store or in the electronic version on Roll20.
In the applications, they explored a bit more and found a huge room filled with more evil dwarves who hailed them and eventually got the players to trip the defenses for the altar. There were literally flattened remains of some evil dwarves near the altar, think something from Indian Jones movies. When the players tripped the trap, the altar unfolded into a clay monster (golem). Still, the players put it down–they had expected it and managed to cast dispel magic on it to slow down its transformation (I went with the idea that dispel magic spell in 5e rules can remove a magic ability for one round), giving them two full sets of attacks.
In Roll20, all the evil dwarves and their allies attacked when they saw the golem was destroyed. As the Dungeon Master, I decided that. The bad guys were driven off by the adventurers.
The last of our story from today is that the grand doors to the treasury did not open when they pushed them, and a giant incorporeal hand is now trying to crush them. We will pick-up the story next week in Roll20.
I did have some issues with the Roll20 software. I had to go out and come back in once. That cleared all the issues. I had to wait a few times for the information to appear. I used two screens again. I put the text items on one screen and the map and controls on another screen. This works best for me.
After the game, I learned that Susie has a vision problem tonight. She has gone partially blind in one eye. She has a larger “floater” in the good eye. We will contact the eye folks in the morning. Often they clear-up in a few weeks, but you always want them checked.
We really did not need a new problem. We will, avoiding Covid-19, deal with it.
I received my Open Enrollment papers from Nike today. Nothing has changed. That is not bad; Nike has decided to absorb the additional cost for health insurance next year and offer the same insurance. Something nice from 2020.
The stock market had a large loss when the stimulus package again did not materialize.
The reports are that more than four-hundred forty people in the USA died today from the infection. The charts are also showing a third wave starting here and in the world.
I decided to go with something to make us all feel better, Puff The Magic Dragon. It is sort of a hymn.
Alohawild (Michael Wild's) Website 