Weasels Bearing Gifts

Hob arrived for game on Saturday with two lovely gift bags -- belated birthday presents for me and my daughter from him and jillwheezul.

Hob and I have been friends for more than 15 years now(!!) and he's always been very good with gift selection -- usually more so than the men I've dated. Highlights from this year include an Anne Bonney action figure and Dave Barry's Pirattitude, and a gorgeous bear necklace made by jillwheezul. The necklace has the feel of prayer beads: alternating crystal and small black beads with larger brown-and-black-spiral beads between every group of three. There's a three dimensional, black and brown bear hanging from his own spiral bead, and he can be twirled on his setting. I put the necklace on immediately and wore it to game, and will be wearing it to work today.

jillwheezul had also made simple lace-and-bear-pendant necklaces for both my daughter and _storyteller_ -- which they too both put on immediately. It was only later, looking at _storyteller_'s during game, that I realized the three necklaces marked us as a family.

There were other gifts as well, but the most precious of all were the two birthday cards and what he had written in them. There's no way I could share what he wrote without providing a lot of backstory, but suffice to say they made me laugh and warmed my heart in equal measure, invoking past shared experiences that I will always cherish.

Quick Update After a Busy Weekend

It was a very full weekend, and I haven't had time to do more than glance at LJ from my Dash since Friday late afternoon. And while I can read LJ on my gadget and make posts of my own, I still haven't figured out how to make it submit comments.

In brief: game was a lot of fun on Saturday, even though an angry ghost murdered several of our passengers and a couple of crew members. I managed to combine diplomacy and fast-talk to persuade three security cruisers not to "purify" us by blasting out of existence, thus winning the extra experience point awarded by my fellow players.

On Sunday I experienced embarrassment to the point of mortification when returning to my old church for a visit, followed by disappointment by the spa treament I had been looking forward to. By mid-afternoon, _storyteller_ and I decided to just go back to my house and spend time with my daughter rather than venture out to a workshop we had been contemplating.

Life got much better then. I made a fire in the fireplace. We cuddled. The daughter announced that she is ready to have her own room! So we spent some time looking at how we would transform The Yellow Room from catch-all space into a pre-teen's bedroom. uncrowned_king showed up a little later, and the grown-ups watched Dangerous Beauty while the daughter played a computer game.

Now it's back to the routine of the day job, made more pleasant by the possibility of lunch with Jeannie on Wednesday, a definitely lunch date with kateri_thinks on Thursday, and some ideas for a new story hopping around in the back of my head.

Oo La La!

There's a gorgeous man stripped to the waist doing the dishes in my kitchen!


(Who insisted that I take some overdue time for myself and get caught up on LJ and few other personal tasks while he cleans up.)