This week’s blog post is a bit rambling; you have been warned.

• I was re-reading “Of Dice and Men” by David Ewalt, which, if you haven’t read it, go and do so – it is a very accessible & enjoyable history of D&D. In the first chapter, he refers to the fact that D&D, with all of its statistics and charts, tends to appeal to people who like math and science. I am the odd man out, then: I am horrible at math. I like science, but math has always been my Achilles heel. How bad could my math-skills be, you ask? You’re reading the words of a man who managed to squeak through high school despite never progressing any higher in his math curriculum than Pre-Algebra. I’m not proud of this, but then again I’m not really ashamed of it either: it is what it is. I’ve made up for it since then – kind of hard to get a Bachelors degree without math.

• Some sad news: Yvonne Craig has died. For fans of a certain age (read: my age, mid-40s), she was Batgirl on the Batman TV show starring Adam West. When I was in the third grade and living in San Mateo, CA (south of San Francisco), I used to race home after school to watch the daily Batman reruns, hoping that she would be in that day’s episode, looking for her to ride her motorcycle past the end of the opening credits. How much did I like Batgirl? I pestered my dad to get me the Mego Batgirl action figure (“it’s not a doll!! It’s an action figure!”) because I was afraid I was never going to see her on the show again. I don’t know why I thought that, but I did. I was 7 years old, what do you want? I took it to school for show & tell once and, as you can imagine, once was all it took for the teasing from the other boys to commence. *sigh*. Rest in peace, Ms. Craig – a little boy at St. Timothy’s Catholic School loved you.

Wow, I’m revealing all sorts of things about myself today, aren’t I? Think I’ll stop while I still can. See you next week!

Take care,

~Rob