I had really been looking forward to Thanksgiving Weekend. Now that it’s over I feel vaguely dissatisfied and I’m not sure why. I did some fun stuff, spent time with good friends, and finished several nagging tasks. Maybe it just ended too quickly or maybe I just didn’t reach that state of relaxation I was looking for. Hurm.

I did get a double dose of roleplaying over the weekend. Saturday we played Spirit of the Century at Tim’s for the first time in over a month. We kicked off a new chapter of the story and it’s going well so far. I learned that when you show up at the herbalist shop covered in blood, the most reassuring thing you can say is not, “Don’t worry, it’s not mine.” I still need a tenth aspect but can’t settle on one. We’ve now joked about calling it “The Tenth Aspect” and making it some mystical mojo, but that doesn’t quite fit my character.

Sunday we play Ray’s old school D&D; game for the second time. This is Rules Cyclopedia D&D;, where elves and dwarves are both races and classes and plusses on your magic shield subtract from your Armor Class. I must admit that this game is turning into a huge amount of fun. I am just embracing all the things that bugged me about those rules back in the day and going with it. Ray’s idea was to run the sort of deluxe game he always wanted to when he was a teenage but couldn’t afford. He printed out a huge map of the first dungeon scaled for minis for example. I brought along tac-tiles and two cases of miniatures. So far it’s been a blast.

It wasn’t all fun and games though. Nik and I watched No End in Sight, an excellent documentary about the quagmire in Iraq and how it got that way. This is a really important film and I think folks across the political spectrum need to watch it. This is not a polemic by a bunch of wild eyed leftists. The story of the war is told in large part by eye witnesses and participants. Soldiers, administrators, politicians, officers, and journalists talk about what they saw and what they did. The film lays out very clearly what was done and shows the consequences of those actions. I could go off on a huge political rant here but instead I’ll just say that I highly recommend No End in Sight.