Cat toofs, anxiety, and such

Maebh the Merciless is at the vet. She started exhibiting a soreness on the left side of her mouth this weekend and I sort of knew that it likely means some teeth are comin' out. Maebh is over 14 now. So far, she's had no health issues and apart from her teeth, she's still in great shape.

Of course, I hoped that it would be a simple matter. I hoped Grendel's illness would be constipation. But no. It looks like 3 teeth need to be extracted, including her left canine, which is the worst. She had a chip at the tip, which the vet says is possibly how an infection set into the root. I don't know how she chipped her canine; maybe it happend by hitting bone the last time she bit Bogart.

I could get the teeth extracted tomorrow or April 13 or later. I'd rather get it done now, even though I was hoping to take her home today. The vet recommends leaving her overnight. Cats are calmer going into surgery if they haven't first had the trauma of being caught, stuffed into a carrier, and driven across town. But it's the first time I've left her overnight anywhere in the 12 years I've had her. She's very fearful with strangers and she's always been tough to take to the vet. I'm not sure, however, if she's more anxious or I am. For me, the worst is imagining what's going through her mind, enclosed in a small kennel in a strange place.

You're leaving me here? Forever? Don't you love me anymore...

When Bogart was at the vet for a week, I visited him every day. When Grendel had a tooth extracted some years ago, I brought him in in the morning and picked him up the same day. He was easier to get into a carrier. I figured getting Maebh back into the carrier later today (for overnight) or tomorrow morning would be traumatic (more for me than her, that cat can put up a fight). She yowled the whole way in this morning, but was silent at the vet.

So I left her there after the checkup this morning. I know she'll be OK, but I still feel bad. I'll visit this afternoon and leave one of my stinky shirts with her overnight. She often sleeps on my clothes, so I think having the stench of me with her will make her calmer.

I'll visit her first thing in the morning and, expecting the best, I'll have her home tomorrow night.

I paint with cats

Do you know how it is when you get your coffee just right, the perfect blend of cream, sugar, and life-giving liquid caffeine—and then the waitress comes to top it off and obliterates your perfect mix? (I don't myself, I drink my coffee black, but it's an illustrative point, so just go with it.) That's what it's like for me to have broken in one generation of cats to respect my painting space only to get a new cat who respects not the tradition, like the "new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph" (Exodus 1:8).

Such is life now with Bogart, a.k.a. Destructo-Cat, the new feline pharaoh of Casa de Los Gatos in beautiful, bucolic Lynnwood, WA. Behold the mighty works of Destructo-Cat:

A former paper towel roll, now Bogart fodder

Like someone went at it with an electric hedge trimmer

He's also sociopath cat. He's really sweet with me, but his attitude towards his "girlfriends" is decidedly offputting. Maebh hates him with a passion and fears him like the devil. He's chased her upstairs, downstairs, and all about too many times. I'll be surprised if they're ever friends. Rhiannon seems somewhat indifferent to him—at least she doesn't have the extreme negative reactions that Maebh has—but she would likely hate him once he got access to her.

Which he doesn't have.

For the last year, I've had to keep Bogart and the girls separated. They have the run of the house alternately in a kind of time-share.

Gotta keep 'em separated

Typically, Bogart has the run of the house from 11:00 a.m. to about 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. During this time the girls are ensconced in my bedroom. Otherwise, the girls are out from around 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. until 11:00 a.m. the next day. During that time, Bogart is holed up in my den.

Where I paint.

He being no respecter of anything, I have to keep him at bay lest he jump up on my painting table to rummage about my partially painted minis like Godzilla taking on Tokyo. It isn't conducive to productivity.

I paint in a cramped space in my den closet. It gives me the ability to close off the painting table when I'm not working at it.

The painting cave

The closet runs the width of the room, but has two openings. When I sit and paint in the right side opening, the closed left side of the closet is dark, mysterious, cave-like.

And the allure of the cave beckons. The urge to spelunk is too much for Bogart's primitive brain to resist. He has to explore. He crawls in past me and disappears back behind the shelving where he rustles about getting into who knows what (and destroying who knows what).

"And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places" (Isaiah 45:3)

Bogart's activity stops all my activity and I have to root him out from the recesses of the closet. I consider this a nuisance. Bogart considers it wonderful fun. And so it goes.

Most of his destruction is an attempt to get my attention—or get my goat, since he often has my attention.

There is some respite. When he's out and about the house, he will eventually settle on the back of the couch where Grendel wore in his permanent dimple over the course of 10 years.

Respecting the dimple tradition

Once he's zonked out there, I can sneak upstairs and paint uninterruptedly for a while. However, the thought will eventually occur to him that somewhere I may be doing productive work and he'll spring to action to impede that.

But I can foil him by shooing him out of the den and shutting the door. The girls are holed up in the bedroom, I am holed up in the den, and Bogart "as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour" (1 Peter 5:8). It's good for a couple hours painting time as long as there are no loud crashes I need to investigate.

Despite all feline-related hazards, I have actually managed pretty good output this last year. I chalk that up to the quicker method of The Dip. And, if I'm unproductive, it's more often than not my own dilatoriness. Nevertheless, it's easier to blame a cat for my own failings. They're convenient that way.

"The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way; a lion is in the streets" (Proverbs 26:13)

Bogart and the Great Wall of UR

Bogey is back. He came home from the vet on Friday afternoon after being monitored since his catheter was removed Thursday morning.

I spent an anxious weekend looking for any signs of a recurrance of his blockage. I followed him around like a parent potty-training a child urging him to pee—even if it's on the carpet, just go. Pleeeese. I'm happy to say that he went, and not on the carpet either (though the bathroom sink got tagged). His flow seems to be back to normal.

He's now on prescription veterinary diet food forever. He used to go crazy for kibble. Twice a day I'd feed him half a 3 oz. can of wet food, then a 1/8 cup of kibble. After that he'd rush to the kitchen going "MEEEEEEEEEP!" anytime I got near to it, with the expectation that I'd give him more kibble. I found it hard to say no and that may have been a factor in his blockage: too much dry food, even if it was premium grade stuff. Giving your insistent cat food just because they want it is bad cat-parenting.

Now it's just Purina prescription food, which he's kind of "meh" about. He eats it eventually, but he seems a bit disappointed in his daily repast. I give him two 5.5 oz cans a day, though he probably leaves maybe and ounce or so uneaten; you know, just to protest.

I bought two cases of urinary formula prescription diet food (48 cans!) from the vet. My cupboard is now home to the Great Wall of UR. So named for the symbol on the cans, which looks like an element in the periodic table.

On the plus side, the two girls (Maebh and Rhiannon) love the prescription food—at least for now. I expect a day will come when Maebh eagerly comes to the dish, sniffs a few times, looks up at me in disbelief, and then struts away fully prepared to starve herself to death on principle.

My plan is to wean them off kibble as well. It's better for them to eat canned only and it's difficult to try to maintain Bogart's kibble-free diet if the girls are noshing as much as they want and he goes without.

Bogey's still on some meds while he recovers. Last week was traumatic (for me as well as him, but I'm not on meds). He's a better pill-popper than Grendel. In Grendel's last days, I had to liquefy his pills and then wrestle him down to squirt the liquified pill(s) into his mouth with a syringe. The process usually involved reloading one or twice since I'd miss my shot when he'd twist suddenly just when I thought I had him. It left us both exhausted and Grendel stained with missed syringe loads. Then he'd sit an glare at me for an hour. With Bogart, it's still a bit of a wrestle, but I can pop the pill right in (covered with a bit of Pill Pocket) and he gulps it down.

I think the crisis is passed and we have a plan in place to mitigate the possibility of recurrence.

Now if I could only get Maebh to chill out and stop hating him.

Perchance to pee

Bogart seems to be recovering very well from his bout with a urinary tract blockage.

In my call with the vet yesterday I learned that the very elevated creatinine level (19+) was back down to normal (2.0). His electrolytes are also back in balance. It's really an amazing recovery.

He's due to have his catheter removed on Thursday. If he can pee on his own, he's good to come home. I'm very hopeful and all the indications are good.

Until then, he's in the hospital wearing a cone with tubes sticking out of him.

When I visited him on Tuesday, he was much livelier than after his bladder flush and catheterization on Monday. He got so excited to see me that I was afraid he'd pull all his tubes out and I had to restrain him from leaping out of the little wall cubicle he was in.

His appetite is back with a vengeance. He hadn't eaten anything since Saturday and was only just licking a bit of gravy by Tuesday morning. He had a mostly full dish of food when I visited him Tuesday afternoon, which he attacked vigorously and finished when I was there. Later in the day, the vet told me he was eating voraciously.

Assuming all things go well on Thursday and he's got through this ordeal, there are a lot of things to mind going forward. He'll be on a urinary health formulated diet in perpetuity (yes, it's expensive). I'll also look into other supplements for urinary health. I'm also looking at pet insurance. I'm hard-pressed to cover the costs of this unexpected emergency ($2000.00+) and fear the possibility of recurrence (see below).

I've read several heartbreaking accounts of people who've lost cats due to urinary tract blockage. Basically, after 24 hours of blockage, the toxins build up and become deadly. Untreated, the cat can die—painfully—within six days.

I got Bogart in after maybe 48 hours blockage. He seemed fine Saturday morning, though I recall that we was licking himself a lot and seemed to be trying to pee on the carpet. Saturday night he was clearly uncomfortable, but I assumed it was constipation. I honestly had no idea about the likelihood of a urinary tract blockage. It's a risk for male cats (small wee-wees = small urethrae that block easily). I was giving him a tincture to help soften his stool and expecting any time he'd push out a massive dookie and be OK.

Recurrence is a big concern. Most of the accounts I read, which are likely the worst scenarios, mention that the blockage came back and back. There is actually a procedure (perineal urethrostomy) to remove the male cat's penis and suture in a wider urethra. That's pretty radical. My hope is that diet, supplements, and close monitoring of his water intake will keep him healthy for years to come.

Here's looking at you, kid.

Bogart's in the hospital.

I came home Saturday evening to find him irritated and in some discomfort. I assumed it might be constipation, so I got some over the counter stuff and hoped it would help him.

By Sunday morning, he was worse, so I resolved to bring him to the vet on Monday, which turned out to be just in time. He had a urinary tract blockage, which might have killed him. I have to admit that I was unfamiliar with how common that can be in male cats and how deadly it can be.

They catheterized him and flushed out his bladder. His urine was quite bloody, though the bleeding subsided after some time on the catheter. The bleeding was likely due to the distention of his bladder.

He'll be an inpatient for the next few days as they continue an I.V. treatment to flush the toxins he built up.

I'm not sure what caused the blockage. X-rays revealed no stones or mineral build up in his bladder. In what reading I've done today about the condition, vets don't really seem to know exactly why it happens—which means it's hard to do reliable prevention, though diet can help. The urethra of a male cat is significantly smaller than a female cat's (male cats have very small penises, thus narrow urethras), which makes them more susceptible to blockage.

It's a very expensive treatment, but I'm glad to have saved my little boy.

Of all the shelters in all the towns in all the world...

I've pondered the question over the years whether I would adopt other cats after my trio (or any of the trio) died. With Grendel's cancer and death, the question became more acute.

My trio, Grendel, Rhiannon, and Maebh, have been such an intimate part of my daily existence for 10 years (or 9½ considering that Maebh came six months after I adopted Rhiannon) that I could never imagine any other pet situation than them. I figured at first that I would wait until all had died before I reconsidered a new cat (or cats). Then, after Grendel died, I figured I would wait a few months at least.

But like the serendipity of adopting Grendel, it seems that destiny took a hand.

I adopted Grendel from PAWS Cat City in Seattle in 2006. I went to their website to look for information about sponsoring a cat kennel in Grendel's honor. While there, I looked at the adoptable cats (as one must). There I saw a familiar-ish face. One of the cats was a 2 year old cow cat name Onyx, Jr. The face was vaguely Grendeloid, as if he were a son or younger brother. I was intrigued, even if I wasn't ready.

I wanted to stick with my idea of waiting at least a few months (or not adopting at all). I thought the girls might bond better if there were just the two. I wondered too if my career as a standard-issue bipedal humanoid cat-minder unit was on the wane and I should just let it run out. (But then I'd have to rename my blog I Lived with Cats.)

I halfheartedly decided to go down to Seattle on Saturday and take a look at Onyx, Jr. He sounded nice from the description on the website and I wanted to see him, even though I figured he may not even be there when I came.

After mass on Saturday, I stopped by for a bite of breakfast at Alexa's Cafe in Bothell, WA. The shelter didn't open until 11:00 and I had time to kill. While there, a friend of mine from the parish showed up unexpectedly and we ate breakfast together. She commented on Grendel's death and mentioned  her own cats. I didn't know she was a cat person until then. I told her about my intentions and misgivings about adopting again so soon. She provided just enough encouragement to get me to the shelter.

I was not disappointed. Onyx, Jr. was there, but before I could visit with any cat, I had to fill out a form and be interviewed by a shelter volunteer. I told the volunteer about Grendel (and cried), and about my remaining two. Apparently, they found me worthy.

Onyx, Jr. turned out to be a sweet cat. I found him lounging comfortably with a few of his fellow felines in one of the small cat rooms. It was hard. I found myself wanting to take him home, but still conflicted. I wasn't sure how the girls would react to a newcomer, I wasn't sure if I was ready for a new cat, I felt that adopting so soon after Grendel's death might be either a betrayal of him or an impetuous action resulting from my grief (Onyx, Jr. looked so much like Grendel).

I asked if they would put a 24-hour hold on him while I made up my mind. They would and I arranged to return early Sunday afternoon.

I went home and started sort-of preparing my den to be where he'd be isolated from gen-pop while he acclimated to the new home. I was still just 80% sure about this. I also spent a lot of time thinking it through. I was afraid that Rhiannon would go ballistic, but I was also confident that Maebh would love a new pal. She'd been such good friends with Grendel.

After mass on Sunday, I headed back down to Seattle still in my Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes. I went in to visit with Onyx, Jr. a bit more and all doubts were dispelled. He was a sweetheart and I figured that everything had come together so well that it was kismet. Just a short while later and I was headed home with a cat in a box.

I'd been sussing out a name for the new cat. I thought about sticking with a name from medieval literature. I thought about branching out to other sources and considered "Bonaparte" or "Charlemagne," but they sounded a bit hifalutin'. Finally, I decided on "Bogart." It took a few days to settle with me, but it fits him now, even if he still doesn't respond to it.

My fears about Rhiannon proved to be unfounded. While she didn't exactly welcome him, her reaction was more of cool indifference, i.e., no drama. My expectations about Maebh proved to be equally fallacious. She took one sniff of Bogart and deemed him unfit for feline companionship.

I kept him isolated for most of the first few days. Whenever he was out, Maebh would dog him growling and hissing. Her hostility made me wonder if I shouldn't have named him Cú Chulainn. She's come down a bit and Bogart's out in gen-pop now whenever I'm home, but it can still be dodgy.

Otherwise, he's settling in. He's found some favorite places, but he has yet to get cuddly with me, even though he's very affectionate. When I work at my desk upstairs, he loves to sprawl right in front of me in classic Grendel fashion.

He took to the high ground right off and I've fixed him a bed up there.

He's made a pretty thorough inspection of the house. He approves the library.

He loves the big glass door (one of Grendel's favorite places).

His full personality has yet to appear. So far, he's sweet and gentle, but Maebh's hostility has him a bit apprehensive. He loves to play. He tries to make nice with the girls, but so far without luck. He has a quiet little squeak for a meow. Once Maebh has settled down and accepted him, things will move forward. I'm looking forward to how things turn out.

And then there were two...

Grendel died on September 6.

In the six weeks from when his sickness started to his death, my life was in turmoil. Multiple vet visits and attempts at cancer-fighting supplements didn't slow anything down. It was hard to get him to take anything other than his prednisolone, which he eagerly downed in a pill pocket. He wouldn't touch food that had anything added to it and the capsules were too big to make him swallow. In the last days, he wouldn't even take the prednisolone. I had to crush it, liquefy it, and fight to give it to him orally with a syringe.

Grendel was a fighter. The cancer was already terminal before it was discovered. He'd suffered with it for a while without ever giving on that he was sick. Even in his final days, he seemed so determined to carry on as if nothing was wrong. He so wanted to be back to normal, but his body wouldn't cooperate. I thought he'd fade away until nothing remained but a shell, but it was the opposite. Indomitable to the end, Grendel remained strongly present; it was the shell that faded away.

He was terribly bloated from the cancer. He could walk only in short spurts. He lost nearly all of his prodigious appetite; by the end he would only lap a bit of milk from a saucer.

I'd resolved to let him die naturally at home, but by the afternoon of Labor Day, he was hunkered down just under my bed, where he'd been all day. I knew he was in pain. I lay there next to him weeping and praying and found myself crying out to God, "I don't want him to suffer any more." Later that evening I found someone who could come to my home in the morning and put him to sleep. I couldn't bear the idea of taking him away to die on a cold table at the vet's. It was the first time I admitted to myself that he could die.

I awoke Tuesday morning with foreboding. Grendel had gone downstairs during the night. I'd been unsure that he would even live through it. The morning was a bit rainy - weeping like me - and cold. I made a fire and to my surprise Grendel lay down by it for a bit. Maebh came and sat with him for a while. I'm glad they had a chance to say goodbye. She loved him and they often snuggled by the fire.

When the vet, Sarah, came, Grendel had gone down to sit in the foyer. I wept as I carried him upstairs. Sarah asked where I wanted us to be; I wasn't sure. I brought him to the couch where we used to sit together so often, but Grendel crawled back to the fire. I think he chose the place. He loved being by the fire. I have so many pictures of him there.

I wept and held him when Sarah gave him the sedative. I told him how much I loved him. I thanked him for choosing me. I thanked him for all the joy (and trouble) he'd given me for 10 years. When he was out, Sarah gave him the drugs and I held him until his heart stopped.

I can't begin to describe all that he meant to me or the desolation his death has been. I never realized how much he filled the house until he was gone from it. There are memories of him in every room, every nook and cranny. It's no consolation that I can now eat unmolested.

Grendel loved me as much as I loved him. My ex-GF Lorrin told me how he would watch me as I moved around the house and how he'd sit and stare at me while I wasn't looking. When I sat on the couch with my left elbow propped up on some cushions, he would come and curl up in my left arm and purr unceasingly. Those were moments of bliss I'll never forget.

He was always excited to see me come home. He knew the sound of my car and I would often be driving up and see him pop into the window of the den upstairs, stare at me wide-eyed, and then pop down and be at the door three floors below by the time I opened it. Even if I took him by surprise, I'd no sooner step in the door than he'd be running downstairs going, "Wah wah wah wah wah!"

We'd play hide 'n' seek. I'd see him peering at me from around a corner and I'd slowly move towards him until I got close when he'd run off to another corner to hide and peer. I'd do the same with him. When he saw me peering around a corner at him, he'd come running at me.

He gave me presents. I have two cat toys that are long, snaky fabric thingies on a wand. They were the first cat toys I got for him. He'd lost interest in actually playing with them years ago, but he used to carry them around and place them near where I was or where I would be. I could hear him coming to me through the house meowing with one in his mouth. It was a strange, muffled wa-AUUUGH sound that he'd make. All through the years I would come home to find them left at the top of the stairs or I'd get up to find them at the bedroom door or they'd appear outside my den while I was there working.

There was never a cat like Grendel. There never will be again. My world is diminished by his loss.

Goodbye Grendel. Goodbye old friend. You were gone too soon from my life, but you will always be in my heart even as the memories of you grow more distant.

Postscript

We are again three. Much to my own surprise, I adopted a new cat a week after Grendel died. But that's a story for another blog post.

And the long goodbye begins...

My world suddenly went turvy last week when my beloved cow-cat Grendel was diagnosed with cancer.

He caught a sudden, severe cold on Sunday afternoon and by Monday he was listless, withdrawn, and had lost all interest in eating.

A few vet trips later, the results of an ultrasound last Thursday confirmed that he had cancer. It's inoperable and untreatable with chemo. The vet said he had maybe a few weeks or few months to live.

I've been devastated since then. I can't imagine losing him. His outsized personality and beguiling charm simply can't disappear forever. I'm not prepared for this and I've had more than a few good cries over it.

Since the diagnosis, he's rallied back. The cold affected him badly; as he recovers from it, he seems as much himself as ever. If I didn't know otherwise, I'd swear he was the vision of health. The old behaviors that vanished last week have slowly come back: He's back on my bed before dawn tormenting me to get up and feed him, he's back to snuggling with me on the couch, he was down at the door greeting the pizza man with me this afternoon, he's pestering Rhiannon, mewling loudly to be let into the garage, etc.

But a lot of anxiety remains. I notice things that aren't quite the same, or maybe just seem not quite the same. I wonder if he always slept so much or that I never considered it before. Is he less playful? Is he less troublesome and insufferable? I don't know, but every perceived change worries me that he's winding down. I expect more of these observations and worries as time goes on.

The vet put him on prednisolone, which is basically a steroid. I have friends who swear it's a miracle drug. One friend's cat was at the vet to be put down because it showed no signs of quality of life. They put her on prednisolone and six months later she's going strong. My vet told me that her childhood dog was diagnosed with cancer and given just a few weeks to live. The dog lived another five years on prednisolone. There's hope.

I took him to the vet this morning for a follow up. She was amazed to see how much he'd recovered from his sorry state last week. We talked about supplements and what I can do to keep up his quality of life. I'll have a plan in place soon.

With Grendel back to normal, more or less, I'm optimistic that he can go on for a long time despite the cancer. I want him to live on with the same quality of life he's always had. But I know the clock is ticking now. I've had to face losing him, which is something I never wanted to face before.

And Grendel isn't my only cat. He's 12 now. Maebh is almost 13. Rhiannon is 15. They're all getting on in years. The girls seem to be in great shape, but so did Grendel. My world can unexpectedly go turvy all over again for them. It seems like only yesterday that I brought the cats into my life, but it's been 10 years. I hope that they'll all live to be 20 or older. I can't imagine my home being home without them. But I know that I have to start preparing myself for losing them.

I don't know if it's possible to love my cats more than I already do. But in the years to come, I will take them less for granted. I'll savor every moment with them and store them in my heart for the years after they're gone. It's a long goodbye that will outlast them and never end until I do.

The days that will never end

2014: Out with the old, in with the new

So another annual milestone is passed in relentless frequency. It's time for reflection, resolution, and resignation. I'm a few days late with this, but here goes:

Reflection

Looking back at 2013, I'm hard pressed to think of any big achievement in my gaming life. Most of my productive energy and gaming time was spent on Bolt Action. This is not a bad thing. I like Bolt Action. It has an energy and flow to it that makes our games enjoyable. Playing Bolt Action also meant a lot more playing time with Phil Bardsley, Bill Stewart, and Dick Larsen. Longer in the tooth now than when I first met them—as am I—they game less frequently than in their relative youth, so it's nice to be a part of the few times when they game. Our games are pleasant and exceptionally non-acrimonius, which is a good thing.

Bolt Action also has the virtue of not winding me up. For some reason, certain games that I have played a lot just get me going and force a rant. Kampfgruppe Commander is one of those. I played a few games this year and always found myself getting frustrated. I'm not sure why. I think that despite its qualities, the game also has inherent flaws. It's essentially a tactical game that was re-written, streamlined, and transmogrified into an operational game without really changing the tactical nature of some of its mechanics. The lineage of KGC II goes back to Clash of Arms Games' The Clash of Armor, a good, albeit complex, set of tactical rules than no one I know of plays any more.

I think my focus for WW2 gaming is getting more towards the skirmish level. Bolt Action is the current station of that pilgrimage. I had the opportunity to play Battlegroup Overlord just before the new year. This is a big lavishly-produced offering from The Plastic Soldier Company. I have the first set of rules for the series, Battlegroup Kursk. BGK and BGO are skirmish level games, like Bolt Action, with their own command/control system that emphasizes allocation of variable command points. Fire actions can be for pinning or for effect. Pinning has a major effect on the game in that un-pinning units requires a random pull of a numbered chit (1 to 5) that counts against a force's overall rating. Once the cumulative number of chits pulled equals the force rating, the side loses. This can result in a game ending even when there are significant units still intact, i.e., no fighting to the death of the last figure. In our game, we had remaining two Tiger Is, two StuG IIIs, roughly a platoon of infantry and some other assets (like off-board heavy mortars)—but still lost, despite having brewed up most of the American armor (not surprisingly when Shermans take on Tigers). I liked the game and will post more about it, and other WW2 skirmish games, later.

I managed to complete a lot of figures, terrain, and vehicles for WW2 skirmish. I know have decent forces for British in North Africa, Japanese, and US Marines. I also have made progress on French Foreign Legion for North Africa and Russians (lots of unpainted lead for Ruskies, but I did complete "The Beast," a.k.a. a big T-35 model from Company B.

I got back into board gaming in a big way. I attended Dragonflight and Bottoscon this year and had a great time. I tend to think, incorrectly, that a board game convention is all about playing lots and lots of boardgames. But actually, the average hex 'n' counter wargame takes as much time to complete, or more, than a miniatures game. Despite the expense of most board games, it's cheaper than miniatures by far. This point would be sensible if one were an alternative to the other. I do both. No money saved in that. I see board gaming as a continuing trend. Not only are there a lot of great games coming out, but I have several that deserve a lot of play. It's a matter of finding time and opponents. This, too, increases gaming overhead.

I made slight progress on finishing my two rules projects: Row Well and Live and Pike & Periwig. The former is further along both in finalization and in models painted. I have many more galleys to complete, but more than enough to play big multi-player games. Pike & Periwig requires more editing and significantly more figures painted (see Resolutions below).

I spent little time on painting over the year. My productivity came in spurts, but there have been long down times. Between the beginning of November until just after Christmas I painted nothing at all. Nothing. I somehow managed to migrate my painting activity from my little painting nook in my den to the dining room table. This migration actually started in the summer of 2012 when I was painting a lot of ships for Row Well and Live. It was more productive to have a large space to spread out on. It also gave me the opportunity to paint in front of the TV, which I can see from the table. The den has radio or I can play DVDs or stream video through my computer, but my back is to the monitor when I paint. When I prepared to go to Bottoscon for three days in early November, I cleaned up the table lest my cat-sitter think I was completely feral. I liked the clean table so much, that I couldn't bring myself to re-migrate to it. However, I never got things going again upstairs until I had two weeks off for Christmas. Now I'm set up in my wee painting nook again and have made some good progress on some ancients figures for skirmish gaming (about which I will post more later).

Resolutions

One has to be realistic. I am not going to invent cold fusion or perpetual motion any time in 2014. I will not paint Napoleon's Grande Armée in any scale, nor any part thereof. I can, however, take a stand on a few things.

Paint more - the most prolific painters I know (e.g., Kevin Smyth and Bill Stewart) paint at least one hour a day. Whenever I've put in a little bit of painting time over a few days, I'm amazed how much I get done. Part of it is the momentum of actually painting and seeing things get nearer to completion that impels me to paint further. Then again, the inertia of not painting can be almost insurmountable. This situation requires dedication. So, I resolve to paint something—even if it's just an eyebrow on one figure—every day.

Watch TV less - this resolution is a corollary to painting more. Actually, it's video-watching since I don't have cable. I do, however, have a lot of DVDs, Netflix (discs and streaming video), and Amazon Video. It's a cornucopia of flickering eye-candy. As I've mentioned, the painting place is once again upstairs where the TV is not. I'm chagrined to reflect that I spend a lot of time watching things on Netflix or Amazon Video. I blame the cats! It's far too easy to binge-watch several episodes of an old TV series. I have to confess that I managed to watch every episode of NYPD Blue from first to last this year—TWICE! That's a lot of sitting on my butt, even though with the painting table downstairs, I managed to paint a lot while watching. However, it has been all too easy to come home at night, fix dinner (or order in, like pizza), and collapse on the couch smothered in cats (whose lethargy is highly infectious). You can't hear it enough: as a grizzled old man on my death-bed, I will not lament that I spent too little time watching the boob-tube—though I will likely lament the opposite. So, I resolve to limit my video watching to five hours per week.

Eat better - I love to eat. Who doesn't? I managed to lose about 30 pounds this year, although I gained some (too much) back between Thanksgiving and New Years. I was on a strict fascistic diet that allowed only 500 calories per day supplemented by drops of HCG, which is a hormone that causes you to burn stored fat. When I was on the diet, the results were amazing. However, I discovered that after a week of eating 500 calories a day, I wanted to eat a whole pizza—and did. Mostly I found myself jonesing for Chinese food. I would see a week of steady weight loss flushed away after downing a large order of cashew chicken. I indulge myself too much. So, I resolve to stick to the HCG diet until I get to 180 pounds and then adopt sensible eating habits of 1500 calories per day with no empty calories. Wish me luck.

Read more - This resolution is a corollary to watching less TV.  I used to be a ferocious reader. Now I find that I fall asleep the few times that I pull out a book. I get home, eat too much, watch something on the TV for too long, then pick up a book just about the time I'm getting drowsy. I'm pretty sure I'm getting stupider as a result. I can't entirely blame TV; I must also blame the cats! (I did post about this some years back.) My reading also suffers from options overload. I spend a lot of money on books. My bookshelves runneth over and my iPad is stuffed with eBooks for my Nook and Kindle apps. However, I find myself often grousing that I have nothing to read. In fact, I have altogether too much to read. It's just my short attention span asserting itself. So, I resolve to spend at least an hour every day to reading.

Exercise - I have been a full-on Gold level 24-Hour Fitness member since about 2000 and was a Gold's  Gym member for years before that. I was never a gym-rat, per se, but I did spend several days a week working out. When I bought Stately Chez Dave in 2006—and acquired three cats!—I just stopped going regularly. I went from being 180 pounds in Jan 2006 to about 245 at the beginning of 2013. I'm fatter than Grendel! Through the HCG diet, I got down to 210 in late October, but its crept back up. In addition to dieting and eating better, I need to work out. Nothing too hardy. I'm 53 now, so I don't expect to be Charles Atlas, but regular aerobic exercise will keep me less tired and regular resistance exercise will keep my bones healthier. So, I resolve to spend at least three days each week working out.

Spend less - I have never kept a budget. Never. When I reflect on it, it seems absurd—even though I'm sure that most Americans don't either. Budgets are like dieting with money, and no one likes to diet. I indulge myself with gaming stuff: lots of expensive figures I don't paint, lots of expensive rules I don't play, and lots of paint I don't use (I'm a bit more than bemused at how many duplicate, triplicate, and quadruplicate paint colors I have. I just buy without knowing what I already have. Me: "Oh look, red. I think I need red..."). The excess causes storage problems. I'm not tidy in any sense of the word, but that situation is only exacerbated by too much stuff and too little space to put it. I also buy books, as I mentioned above. Sometimes, really expensive books. I like to think I'm a collector as much as reader (which is not untrue), but I do buy a lot of books that I can't possibly read. I also spend too much on food. Eating simpler and better (resolution #3) is not just healthier, it's more economical. To spend $20.00 on a pizza is not just a lot to spend on a meal, it's fattening. I also buy lots of boardgames that I don't play. Again, I think of it as "collecting," but I have to draw a line somewhere. When I look back on what I spend each month, I'm aghast. So, I resolve to set and live within a budget. I'm on Mint.com, which helps. I just need to be stricter with myself. I've budgeted $150.00 for hobbies and $100.00 for books each month. These numbers are much below my actual average...

Declutter - Spending too much and having no space to put the excess leads to clutter. My garage is in disarray so that I can't put my car in. I meant to clean it out, I just don't like doing it. Opening up all the boxes is somewhat delightful as well as disturbing. I have lots and lots of little metal men that I meant to paint (really), but never did. In some cases, I have got back to them. However, there are a lot of figures that I've had for 10+ years and expect to be sitting around still 10+ years from now. I have a closet too full of clothes that I don't wear—in fact, my actual wardrobe is very simple, so why do I have so much else? I gave a lot away last year and should do the same this year. The clothes I have left are too small for me. The ones I gave away were the larger sizes that I expected to be unneeded as I lost weight. Oops. (I'll do better this year.) I need to take stock of what I can get rid of. For a lot of stuff, the Goodwill beckons. For a lot of gaming stuff, it's bring-and-buys or eBay. However, I need to organize and make stuff ready for sale. Books are a more difficult proposition. I regard them as resources, which I may not want to read now, but will later. I have a sordid history of getting rid of books only to re-buy them later—often for a higher price. Game rules are similar to books; I find them to be useful references and, more so than books, are hard to re-find at any price. In any case, I have much more than I need. So, I resolve to reduce my stuff-load to at least the point where I have a place for everything.

Blog more - I see that I've managed only 14 posts for all of 2013. To be fair to myself, my posts are long and often heavily illustrated. It takes a while to put on together and I don't always have time (however, less TV time will help!). I also have a lot in the hopper. My Blogger dashboard shows that I currently have 25 posts in draft mode. Many of these are almost complete, I just haven't made the final touches and posted. If I post more frequently, I may draw in more followers. Everyone needs followers. So, I resolve to post—on average—once a week for 2014. That means 52 posts overall. That may mean smaller posts, too.

Blame the cats less - However well the cats deserve my obloquy, I run them; it's not the other way around (hard as that may be to imagine). I've often reflected that the infectious nature of feline languor has much to do with my own laziness and unproductivity. Time to human up and admit that I laze around with the furry munchkins because I like to. However, the quality of torpor is more important than its persistence. I shall spend less—though better—time lounging about covered in a layer of cat. I will not let that be a drag on getting other things done.

Resignations

This is what I resign myself to not doing.

Big projects - In my younger days when time and money seemed inexhaustible, I had dreams of doing big gaming projects. It never worked back then and certainly won't work going forward. My experience with Bolt Action has shown that I can get a lot of bang for my buck on small-scale games that can be added to over time. Less than 30 figures and a tank or so is more than enough per side for Bolt Action. I am more leery of anything that requires a lot of large units. My Pike & Periwig rules call for 18-figure foot units and 8-figure horse units. Also, the rules can be played with a small number of units per side, basically a reinforced brigade, even though larger games are possible. Like Row Well and Live, I envisioned P&P as a system that didn't require huge numbers of figures/models to play. Apart from P&P, I see my gaming trending towards skirmish games in 28mm or larger.

Totally new eras/genres - As I've mentioned, I have a lot of unpainted lead and a lot of painted lead that goes unused. Part of the ever-growing-lead-pile syndrome is the tendency to get sucked into projects that are terra incognito. These projects require buying new figures, new rules, new terrain, etc. which defies all my resolutions above. I will not start any new projects this year. I need to do someting with my existing lead pile that decreases it, whether that means selling it off at bargain prices or painting it for use in a project that's been on the back burner (I have a lot of these). Anything I've started in 2013 or earlier is fair game for new figures, etc. But I won't suddenly start painting for a whole new area.

No plastic miniatures of any kind - This is more of a resolution than a resignation. The last plastic minis I painted were some Airfix HO scale Confederate infantry in 1977. I have not painted plastic minis since, nor shall I ever. I only mention it here as a response to the alarming emergence of plastic figures in the hobby.  Chacun à son goût and all that, but the day that metal minis go away, I officially change hobbies.

So there it is. My 2014 plans in a nutshell. We'll see how it all works.

Enfilade! 2013

I arrived home from Olympia yesterday afternoon and crashed (after feeding the demanding cats, of course). Another Enfilade! has come and gone and I'm in recovery.

I took the week off, as I have done many times in the past. The goal of the week is spring cleaning around the house (not much accomplished there) and prep for Enfilade (again...). I always have more ambition than my efforts can support.

This year I originally planned to run just two games of my Row Well and Live! rules. I got another six heptiremes from Xyston last fall and planned on adding them to a game featuring a lot of big Hellenistic super-ships. Alas, by Wednesday night I had managed to clean and partially assemble the models and gave up all expectation of getting them done in time. I decided I would just use the ships I have already (about 20) and build the big ships later.

The urgent pre-convention calls from the events coordinator for MORE GAMES led me to plan on running a Silent Death game on Friday afternoon. However, I had no Silent Death ships painted. I ordered some from Metal Express, which took a very long time to arrive. Most of the last week was spent painting Silent Death ships and wee torpedo models for the game. In fact, I was still painting torpedoes at 3:30 AM on the first day of the convention.

I also wound up getting psyched to participate in a Bolt Action tournament that would be held at the convention on Sunday. I planned to run a 1000 point force of late-war US Marines. This was coincidental to the fact that I have been painting Marines for our regular gaming, so I had a good head start, but I still needed a few more units for the tournament force I would run. I spent a lot of effort getting things completed for our last Bolt Action game—time I might have spent painting heptiremes or Silent Death ships. As it turned out, I bailed from the tournament a week before the convention so that relieved me of having to paint more Marines before the convention.

Day 1

As I mentioned above, the first day of the convention started at 3:30 AM when I got up to feed the cats and continue working on my Silent Death ships that I needed for the game I would run 11 hours later. I had gone to bed earlier that same morning (12:30 AM). Thanks to the miracle of coffee, I was pretty well primed. I also had some house cleaning to complete so my cat-sitter wouldn't think I was completely feral (my week-off-from-work goal of deep-cleaning the house having gone by the wayside).

I finally left the house by 10:00 and headed first to Kinko's to get a couple copies of my Row Well and Live! rules printed and spiral bound. After getting more coffee from the espresso stand outside Kinko's, I was off to Olympia. It's about a 90 minute drive from Lynnwood if the traffic is good. Just south of Fort Lewis (a.k.a. Joint Base Lewis McChord), I had to pull off the road to keep from falling asleep at the wheel, an inauspicious event in light of the fact that I had two games to run before going to bed that night.

Silent Death

Silent Death was the first game I ran from 2:00 to 6:00 PM. I had a full contingent with a handful of nostalgic former SD players. I hadn't played in years, but everything went well and I had a chance to run my favorite (mostly mediocre) ship, the Epping.

The good ship Epping, scourge of the outer void

Our side took crippling losses right off the bat. I was off to the side with Dale Mickel's two Hammers mixing it up with Mark Serafin's two Sorenson IVs. We eventually took care of Mark, but our ships on the other end were facing a Betafortress and a couple Nighthawks, nasty ships—especially against little fighters like Blizzards.

Torpedoes about to rendezvous with Mark's Sorenson

By the fourth or fifth turn, It was just Dale and me left to face the little-damaged victorious enemy. I decided on a death ride through the mass of them. Fired at by blattguns, plaz cannons, torpedoes, and all kinds of what-not, I managed to avoid sure destruction for two more turns while dealing out misery to my tormentors. The Epping is a spacefaring missile battery and I put the hurt on the two Nighthawks.

The death ride begins with much nastiness ahead

Nevetherless, they got me in the end. I was one hex from exiting the board when I blew up. Dale lost one of his Hammers, but got the other one off the board. The sole survivor, like Jason McCord in the TV show Branded. ("All but one man died...There at Bitter Creek...and they say he ran away...")

Row Well and Live!

Game two started at 7:00 and ran until 11:00. By this time I was nearly incoherent—more so than normally. I had eight players and 13 ships in the game.

Into the narrow waters...

The squadrons mix it up

Being in a sleep-deprived state, I recall very little of the game except that Henry Thompson, with two little hemiolas, took on the world and managed to survive, although he caught fire a time or two.

Something's burning...

There was one fateful ramming attack, which was fortunate because I didn't manage to finish painting the other nine ship wrecks that I have.

Fire and Flotsam

Gamers are a curious species. They always do what you least expect and the result of the game left me needing to rethink some aspects of my rules. Overall, the game went well and I think the players had a good time.

By 11:30 I was in a nice king bed with a pillow-top mattress. I have never slept better in my life.

Day 2

Day two started at 7:00 AM. When I first awoke, I moved cautiously in the the bed so as not to disturb the cats lying all around me—but then I realized where I was. Cat wariness is a hard thing to just abandon.

My only scheduled event was another Row Well and Live! game at 7:00 PM, so I had the bulk of the day to wander, talk, shop, and have lunch with Phil Bardsley and Kevin Smyth in the hotel restaurant.

There were several interesting games. Chris Leach from White Rock B.C. put on an impressive Zulu game using his soon to be released rules Battles for Empire II. Tom Condon, who played in my Row Well and Live! game the night before was running an ancient naval game using his own Galleys & Glory rules. There was also an impressive game of the battle for Crete using Bolt Action rules.

Dave Schueler ran an event using his War of 1812 adaptation of the Sail & Steam Navies ACW naval rules. In the 2:00 period, he and Kevin Smyth ran their Sink the Tirpitz game, which resulted in a win for the Fleet Air Arm.

Shopping

There are things I usually only buy at Enfilade. My initial shopping netted me a Company B T-35 and LVT(A)1 Alligator. I also got a Type 94 tankette a bit later. That's a lot of tanks to paint.

I had a bit of serendipity in the much overloaded bring & buy. I found a bag of 28mm Crusader Miniatures WW2 Russians, all cleaned and mounted on Canadian nickels. The cost was roughly half price—not including the $1.83 rebate from the nickels (after conversion). I've been planning on painting Russians for Bolt Action, so this is a nice kick-start to the project. I already have some Crusader Russians and this extends it to a full platoon.

Wizard Kraft was there with some new dry riverbed pieces. I picked up a few of those to use with the river sets I bought years ago as well as some new swamp pieces. Wizard Kraft keeps getting better and offering new, interesting stuff.

I also picked up some resin terrain from Monday Knight Productions. MKP casts some Company B terrain products and I got five Japanese earth bunkers that will look very nice when they're painted and flocked. MKP also had some very nice bridges that were designed and mastered by Sven Lugar. I saw his painted versions in the Saga tournament he was running. He pointed me to MKP and I got two of them. They're a nice rustic foot bridge suitable for Dark Ages to WW2 (and beyond), although I shan't try to drive a T-35 over one.

Row Well and Live Game 2

The second RWAL game had fewer people so I was able to run a few ships (ingloriously) myself. This game saw some intense bow-to-bow ramming, which of course provided more thoughts about rules changes. The bows-on ram left both ships taking on a lot of water, but also going at each other like the Kilkenny cats. I must admit that it's a glitch in the rules that one player, whose ship was sinking, nevertheless attempted to keep ramming. He ultimately boarded the bigger ship and captured it, even though it, too, was bound for Davey Jones'. There will be changes...

Product of Scotland

The day ended (and actually the new one began) imbibing scotch in Gary Pomeryq's room (the "q" is silent). This is a new tradition that conflicts with the old tradition of drinking beer with the Canadians. We were all Americans in the scotch crowd except for one Canadian defector (Doug Hamm). I was well oiled by the time I went to bed at 3:00 AM.

Day 3

With nothing scheduled for Day 3, I got up around 7:00 feeling very cotton mouthed, showered and went to breakfast, where I met Doug Hamm. We chatted about my galley rules (he played the role of Henry Thompson in game 2) and I ran by some of my ideas. After breakfast I roamed the convention floor a while and then packed up my belongings and checked out of the hotel. After a little while more, I said my good byes and headed home at 11:00 AM.

The trip home was a little like the trip down. I was very sleepy at the midway point, but kept at it. I reached home without falling asleep and would have crashed immediately if the cats hadn't beset me on arrival wanting to be fed.

Home Fires

While I was at Enfilade! Phil Bardsley's wife Karen took care of my cats. Grendel was predictably pushy, Maebh was surprisingly friendly, and Rhiannon was sure that evil had come to town. She hid under the bed (her safe haven from whatever befalls) when Karen came in and had to be fed up there since she wouldn't come out even for food.

Is it safe to eat?

After feeding the cats when I came home, I sat down and leaned back in my recliner; I awoke some time later under a pile of cats, who were no doubt happy to have their warm-blooded furniture back where he belonged.

It was a good Enfilade! I wish I'd rested more beforehand and wish even more that I'd arranged to take the next four days off as well. Maybe I could deep clean the house like I'd intended.

Odds 'n' Ends

After expending much energy producing the rules, ships, terrain, game pieces, etc. for my Row Well and Live! ancient naval rules, I sort of hibernated from blogging. However, I feel a need to fill the gap so people won't think I have suffered the same fate as Kevin Smyth.

I have another game of Row Well and Live! planned for early November and I'm somewhat busy painting the wrecks that I got last month from Xyston. Now that the rules have progressed to the level of deadliness that I intended, I expect to need a half dozen or so wrecks to mark ships that have lost all flotation and are just semi-buoyant hulks. I'm about 50% there. I also have a handful of ships in the works. I think I have less than a dozen unpainted models, which I'll get to maybe this year. I already have more than enough for a game. The additional models will just allow more variety of ship types.

Bolt Action!
I discovered the joy of Warlord Games' Bolt Action WW2 skirmish rules when I stumbled one Saturday into The Panzer Depot and dropped into an impromptu game hosted by Chris Craft. The game was the German attack across a causeway held by elements of the 82nd Airborne (John Kennedy's old outfit in his younger, thinner days) in Normandy. It played pretty well and I immediately told John to hold a copy of the rules for me when the next shipment arrived.

Meanwhile, I started wondering if and what I should paint for Bolt Action. Like most things I get into, there is already a bulk of figures painted by the time I jump in and there seems to be no reason to paint a few more units. I thought about painting Germans, so I could be one of many players with German figures, then Americans for ETO (which still intrigues me). However, I realized that I've been sitting on unpainted lead for Japanese for several years. When I ran into Jerry Tyer at TPD and he mentioned he was painting Marines for Bolt Action, I knew the time had come to get to work on these guys, about which more in a later blog.

Conflict of Heroes
I've managed to play a few games of Academy Game's excellent Conflict of Heroes board game. Dan Carey contacted me through Board Game Geek and we've met a few times now to play at The Panzer Depot. I haven't beaten Dan yet, but I'm trying.

We've played scenarios from Storms of Steel, the Kursk variant, and Price of Honor, the Poland 1939 variant. I am waiting (and waiting) for Academy to finally release the Guadalcanal variant. It's been in the works for years (no exaggeration). It's also been 99.9% ready for years. I understand there has been a major production issue that involved losing original art and requiring a recreation of all that before they could start production. Their woes are greater than mine, but I'm still antsy.

Smyth Agonistes
Electronic media is more than ephemeral. All those 1s and 0s can go "poof" at any time. This makes me think that I should be saving my blogs in a more permanent format—or even just downloading them as PDF files (still 1s and 0s, I know, but my 1s and 0s).

It makes one wonder what will be left of our electronic medium culture. Newsweek magazine will go wholly digital by the end of the year (not that many will notice). The entire oeuvre of a blogger like me will one day cease to be when the electrons die. No big loss, since nearly everything I write is mere persiflage. My postings can reach anyone on the globe with an Interwebs connection, but they won't outlive me (or, for that matter, won't outlive my Internet account). Say what you will about the inconvenience of clay tablets, they at least had permanence.

Kevin's fate, alluded to above, was not so terrible as oblivion, but somehow he has lost access to editing his three blogs on Blogspot. He can't log in with his password and he is unable to reset it. I'm not sure what he did, nor is he, but Google is utterly useless for helping resolve it. "Free" remains worth every penny you spend on it. He's now had to abandon his blogs on Blogspot and move to new digs on Wordpress.com (which, frankly, is a better service than Google anyway). Still he has no way to port over years of blog posts, so he's starting from scratch at http://agamerstales.wordpress.com/. In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, "So it goes."

His older blog, Northwest Historical Gamer (http://nhmgs.blogspot.com/), remains for now and can be accessed through my Favorite Blogs listing to your right. So will A Gamer's Tales. I'm pleasantly surprised to see that Blogspot will allow a Wordpress blog to be listed, so there is it.

My cats are opaque
This may seem a very quotidian observation, but I raise the issue to point out that this bit of the posting is written by faith; sight being impaired by the interposition of Maeve the Merciless between my oculars and the computer screen. Any amount of time spend doing anything besides watching TV (when the cats can pile about me on the couch) is suspect to them. They get restless, they walk about the house making noise urgently calling me  away from what I'm doing to pay attention to them, they cause trouble. More to the point, they jump up on the desk and interrupt my work.

Of course I love them nevertheless, but I tell them that I only keep them in case of famine. That doesn't seem to faze them. I suspect it's because that's why they keep me.

Game on!

I'm almost set for the first play test tomorrow of my Row Well and Live! ancient naval rules.

It's been a whirlwind of little tasks this last week. Among the many things to finish (mostly within the last few days) are:

• The rules. These are a full draft, but I've been tweaking and reworking them—including a complete revision of the shooting and boarding rules. I spent a good portion of today going back through and editing heavily.
• Ship cards. I've been toying with these for a long time and probably even now don't have it right. They've been through several permutations and I've only just gotten an acceptable version. I'm at work now competing them.
• Counters. So many counters to make for shooting attenuation, ship damage, etc. I print these from Adobe Illustrator, cut them out and glue them to small plywood bases from Litko. Each counter is double sided. I got it down to a system, but it still takes time to cut, glue, trim, and finish each counter.
• Terrain. I finished another two island pieces beyond the three I posted about earlier. This task, too, is down to a system. With all the foam I have left, I can see making several more islands. (But there is still that storage issue...)
• Ship models. I've been working on another dozen for some time. These were completed just today—mostly, there are still a few last touches to do in the morning.
• Checklist. My big fear is that I will rush out to go to Tacoma tomorrow and forget something. I've got it all written down, so I'm set—unless I forgot to write something down.

In the midst of all this game-prep activity are other things like socialization with human beings, work around the house (who was I kidding about a "deep clean"?), and various randomizations.

Many randomizations come from my cats. I live to serve, or so they believe. They also have disdain for my computer time. It is a meaningless exercise from which they try to seduce me every time I sit down to it.

Their main tactic is to walk across the desk as I'm working or to sit on my lap. It's nice to have a cat purring away on one's lap, but it makes working at a computer a little awkward.

Rhiannon's favorite tactic is chair theft. While working this morning on my rules, Rhiannon (a.k.a. Ree, a.k.a. sweet pea, a.k.a. Miss Fussypants, etc.) was ensconced on my lap, but I had to get up. Ree protested this, as she often does (I live not only to serve, but to be a warm resting place whose sittings and risings are ordained by my feline masters). As soon as I got up, she grabbed the chair and would not be moved. Second only to actual leather, pleather retains heat well enough to be a desirable warm spot once the human's rear end has vacated it.

I busied myself with other things, hoping she would move herself once she saw me active elsewhere, but no. The only thing to do was to roll my desk chair away with Ree on it and use my painting table chair, which is smaller and much less comfy.

It also provides no lap-space. A deficiency Maebh (a.k.a. Mavis, a.k.a. Maebh the Merciless, a.k.a. Miss Fluffybottom, etc.) noticed with significant disapprobation. She paced from one thigh to the other, but found no suitable resting place. Eventually, she sat on the desk emitting her squeaky purr, nuzzling my face, and—most importantly—impeding my work.

At long last giving up (or merely executing a devious tactical withdrawal), she wandered off to snuggle with Grendel, who couldn't be bothered to bother me. As the day wears on—and after their dinner—the cats siesta until later in the day. It's the perfect time for getting things done.

My stuff is staged for loading in my inconvenient car:

• Ships. Two cigar boxes full.
• Counters. A nice plastic container with 10 compartments.
• Dice. My love 'em/hate 'em ancient dice. I'm up to 24 now, so I can use them in bucket o' dice games. I also have small dice for marking continuing turns and fire levels.
• Mat. Rolled around a heavy 5' long cardboard tube I got from Creation Station.
• Rules. Forgetting these would be a big faux pas.
• Ship cards. See above.
• Clown hair. This is actually a red-dyed cotton fluff produced by Flames of War to mark burning things. We typically used it for naval games to mark shipboard fires.
• Wet erase markers. For use on the ship cards, which are in plastic sleeves.
• Plastic sleeves. I found 5x8 clear pockets at Office Depot. I know I have some already, but like most things, they're lost somewhere.
• Terrain. The islands I made and the rocks I bought.
• Camera and tripod. I want to record the play test no matter how desultory or triumphant.

What else? We'll see tomorrow...