Of Mothers Days and Fathers Days

Mothers Day and Fathers Day are promoted all across this country by businesses.  Restaurants, florists, greeting card manufacturers, and a host of other small and large industries rely on and promote the holiday to drive sales.


And this is not what this post is about.


I think a lot of people have a lot of stress on these two holidays.  Every family has issues, and it seems like no matter what issues you might have, you are expected to set these aside one (or two) days a year and tell your mother and father how great a job they did, and by-the-way, here's some flowers, or a tie, or a lunch.


But there's a lot of people that really would like to skip that holiday altogether.  If you grew up in an abusive home, why would you want to tell the abuser that they are a great parent?  For that matter, it's a reminder of just how crappy you had it growing up.  Let's rub some salt into that wound.


What if you have lost one or both parents.  You get a yearly reminder of that empty spot in your heart, and the phone calls you no longer get to make. 


Even worse.  What if you are a parent, and you don't get that phone call, or card or lunch?  Is it a condemnation of your parenting?  Or is your child simply forgetful, or very busy?  What if you've lost a child?  God, to think that every year, other parents are celebrating a holiday with their kids that you will never ever get to celebrate again.  There's a Lifetime-For-Women movie in there somewhere because it makes me sad just to consider abstractly.


Then there's sibling issues.  What if you have a brother or sister and they celebrate "better" than you do?  Now somehow you have to start competing to show your parent that you love them just as much as your brother who by-the-way also lives in a nicer house and has a wife with a better ass?   As if you didn't have to worry about enough things in your life that you really wanted to add "Do I show my mom I love her enough?"


Or what if your parents are aging, and you start wondering how many holidays they might have left with you.  Do you make them into bigger celebrations in some morbid "prove my love before he/she dies" kind of thing?


Anyway.


All of this seems like a lot of stress. 


I love my parents.  I hope my son loves me.  He texted me "Happy Fathers Day.  Relax and have lemonade!"  Which was nice, but I'm not sure on the whole lemonade thing.  I don't have any strong memories of us ever sitting back and enjoying lemonade together.  And I'm going to puzzle over that one for at least a few days.


Maybe we should get rid of these two holidays, and just tell the people in our lives that we appreciate, that we appreciate them. 

Savage Worlds - Old West

KEJR ran a Savage Worlds one-shot last night at the Gopher.  (Best game store in town.) 

We were a group of old-west outlaws with a price on our heads.  The run started with us encountering a set of slightly less outlaw types who wanted to kill/capture us for the bounty.  We took them down fairly quickly, except that the very first round my character took two wounds, that he had for the remainder of the night.

We met some city-slicker guy named Gabe, who gave us directions to a town - Revelation.  In the town, we met up with various people who had been killed by a corrupt Marshall that we knew from our outlaw days.  Except these people were all undead of one sort or another, and we had to take them down.

Eventually we met up with the marshall himself in th church.  A difficult fight ensued, but we won - only to meet some other guy named Lu who wanted us keep going down the dark side, while Gabe encouraged us to be good guys.   We eventually decided that maybe Gabe was a better friend that that Lu guy, and made the choice to try to be better people.

All in all it was a fun one-shot.  KEJR did an awesome job, as always.

Long time, no post...

I've been meaning to post, but I haven't had a reason to write much.

I've been trying to stop bashing Paizo in print (electronic or otherwise), so no matter how high my frustration level is with what's going on with the Paizo messageboards, I haven't commented.  Much.  Lately.  And I can't really go into any details without breaking my own posting fast.  (Though KEJR and I email back and forth a lot.)

My wife and I celebrated our 24th anniversary on Monday.  It was really a weekend of celebration.  We went to Silvercreek restaurant on Friday to see David Howie play.  (Local guitarist/singer/songwriter - he's really talented, and a very nice guy.)  We told him that we were celebrating our anniversary, and he sang "All you need is love" for us.  Very very cool!

On Monday, we went to Boomerangs because my wife wanted to see and possibly play in their open jam.  We had a great time, and she got up on stage to play for the first time in many years.  Awesome fun!

We did Trivia at another bar last night, and teamed with Team Funk.  We won the music round thanks to my wife's awesome song knowledge of 80's music.

But nothing controversial, or particularly interesting.

Tomorrow I have Pathfinder with KEJR's Council of Thieves game.  That should be great fun, and I'll hopefully write up a recap.

Other than that, I'm trying to get a lot of coding and hardware done before the end of the month trip to the Home Office.