Sunday Church and D&D

I rose a bit later as the cough and a runny nose had me run down. I also did much work at the house and may have overdone it. I wrote the blog, and Deborah and I talked briefly in the morning. We often speak on Sunday mornings while I am trying to write the blog. At 9, Deborah rang off so I could focus on delivering the blog. I got the blog out after 10, cleaned up, shaved, dressed, and headed in Air VW the Gray to First United Methodist Church in Beaverton, Oregon, near the fountain and park. I was wearing LL Bean gray slacks, a gray dress shirt with a button-down collar also from LL Bean, an LL Bean navy blue sweater vest, pride tie, and Cole Hann black plain shoes.

I was uncomfortable backing up the EV between two cars with only four inches on each side. I parked front-in, and the power cable at the library charging stations near the church had just reached. I was only a few minutes before church and would leave after service. I paid $1.81 and would get 33 miles of driving from the charge, which took 1 hour and 49 minutes to charge.

Church included communion, and I noticed there were no ushers, so I took over. I am the senior usher, but I have not been in rotation for years. When Susie was ill, the ushers asked me to ‘sit down’ and let them handle it. In the sometimes strange church logic, I have been an usher longer than anyone left alive, but I am not the head usher (we don’t have one now). I got Z to help me carry the food given for missions to the altar, and I then did the offering process and later directed communion.

Dondrea gave the sermon. It was a short but sharply focused sermon, “Widows, Orphans, and Aliens.” She mostly recalled that the Hebrew Scriptures often call out that the treatment of these disadvantaged groups (using a modern term) is the only measure of the success of a city, ruler, and Kingdom–this appears over and over. In the Greek Scriptures in the New Testament, the letter of James calls this out, too. Dondread points out that this is a fundamental  Judeo-Christian belief.

Our response was to carry the food items donated today to help kids have food over the weekends when school is out. Often, the only food they get that they can count on is at the school, which is not running during the weekends–this is food for their weekends. We don’t ask for papers. We don’t ask why. We don’t just help people like us. We just collect and distribute. Just like it says in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures: “(Give to) the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so they may eat in your towns and be satisfied.”

I returned home after church in my charged EV. Before that, I helped put the offering away, and then again, as often folks miss the offering. At home, I went slow as I wanted the cough to stop, and I was tired from the cough and the cold meds. I made just baked beans from a can for lunch. I was hungry but wanted something simple (and cheap). Corwin stopped by and traded the motorbike for a smaller item he could take home (yay!), and that was the end of the bike sitting outside. I thought if I parked it outside, someone would want it, and that happened. I got him a bill of sale off the Internet. Done. No longer my problem. Excellent.

Next, after emptying the bag of items from the once Air Volvo and putting some safety items and tools in Air VW the Gray, I reboarded the EV and headed to Dungeons and Dragons 5E (D&D) at M@ (i.e., Matt V) house. I had worked out a copy of my character as we have a spell that creates a duplicate with half-hit points and low-level replacement gear. A spare cleric, what M@ called a ‘spare-ic.’

M@ made us burgers for dinner at his house. We soon were back to the adventure of preparing for the final mission of a long campaign. I mispronounced the bad guy’s name, Vecna, and received appropriate razzing. I can’t include the details. We fought two tough battles. The ‘spare-ic’ did not make it through the struggle–we can make another. The night had us break as we faced the next challenge. It was a fun D&D session.

I returned home, read for a while, and batched some more Babylon 5, “TKO” being one of my favorite season one episodes (you don’t often have a story of a Rabbi and a celebration of a life ceremony, shiva minyan, in SciFi). After finishing the popcorn and the show, I showered, got in my PJs, and started to read “Ottoman Empire,” the Spring 2025 issue of Strategy and Tactics Quarterly, which takes a military/gaming view of history; theirs is always an interesting perspective on history. I enjoyed their recent deep dive into Gen. Grants final campaign in the American Civil War. It is one of the few subscriptions I have kept. I put it down as I started to nod off.

I soon slept.

Thanks for reading.