Last Thursday, my regular D&D group of 25 years gathered on Zoom and I ran the last session of a long-running campaign. It was a relatively rare situation of us wrapping up a full start-to-finish campaign, and it was particularly notable for two reasons. First off, it is the last campaign that I will ever run in the bespoke game setting that I started building over 20 years ago. Second off, it was my last regular game session of any sort with that gaming group for at least six months. I'm taking an extended leave from running table-top RPGs and significantly limiting my participation in table-top RPGs until Autumn.

Bastion shook his head, and the ghastly images faded away. Glancing up, he could see that the others were watching him. No one was shocked or concerned; they wore their professional detachment like masks. He blinked, glanced up at the cold winter sun through the tree canopy, and then back to the dead forest floor. Signs, patterns, stories. Two people had come this way, one supporting the other. Bastion read their desperation and their determination in lurching footprints that broke the frozen carpet of leaves. He read it in the dried pools of blood. A cold sweat had sprung up on the back of Bastions neck, but he made a broad sweep of his hand and began walking again, deeper into the woods. Taking the cue, the others started walking as well, spread evenly in a line perpendicular to Bastions course.

Last Friday, my dad performed the last surgery of a career that has spanned over thirty years. By my conservative guess, based on a minimum of two scheduled surgeries per week plus countless emergency room calls, his total career count would have to be somewhere in the vicinity of 5000 operations. For the obvious reason that I have no place in an operating room, I never saw his work first hand, but I have looked over his shoulder at the never-ending x-rays of anonymous reconstructed knees, hips and hands. To me, they were bones and screws, plates and stitches. To him, they were his craft, his passion, his profound responsibility.

Last weekend I had the privilege of DJing at the wedding of some friends. I've unofficially DJed a few parties, but never something as involved (and DJ-dependant) as a life-changing ceremony followed by several hours of dancing. Annika will tell you that I spent a lot of the preceeding week in a heightened state of, well, being nervous as hell.

Jane Immelheim leaned against the wall of the situation room, her face a picture of zen-like calm. Her hands were wrapped around a coffee mug, and the mug in turn was wrapped around a viscous, day-old sludge. She sipped absent mindedly as she watched the semi-organized chaos around her. After a few minutes more of the buzz of people and machinery, one man glanced up from his computer screen. “Got him. ST-7, near the midtown line.” Jane smiled.