Indigo Incarnates

It was very interesting last weekend. I was invited to a Beltane Rite run by an Alexandrian coven. The Alexandrians are a pretty old sect of Wicca and have many similarities to the Gardnarians. So… It was a very structured ritual that lasted five hours. I feel really honored that I was invited to become a dedicant, but I think I am too eclectic to really fit in with the Alexandrians. The problem with membership in a closed coven is that it limits one’s opportunity to worship elsewhere. By contrast, Turning Circle is an open circle. So if I want to attend a Unitarian church service or go to a Catholic mass (not that the latter is ever going to happen), it wouldn’t transgress my membership with Turning Circle. So, it was cool getting the invitation from the Alexandrians, and I’m flattered that they thought I was good coven material, but I think I will stick with my open circle.

I had the dreaded community supervision duty at Pretrial on Friday. Amazingly enough, all the defendants on the itinerary actually had homes that existed and were not boarded up shacks. That’s the first time in a while that it’s worked out that way. Apparently the 2.5-year-old Dodge Durango bit the dust since we were given a Chevy Blazer to drive on Friday. Lemme tell ya: don’t EVER by a Dodge/Chrysler product. Despite having been driven only 2.5 years and less than 20,000 miles, the Durango assigned to Pretrial was in the shop *all the time*. The “check engine” light would come on, the transmission would make funky noises, the odometer would randomly show error codes instead of miles driven, and it got only 6 MPG. The last few times it was driven, it was obvious that the transmission was about to be dropped onto the pavement. When accelerating, the truck would sort of go “hmmMMMmmmMMMM… pause.. CLUNK… pause.. hmmmMMMMMmmMMM… pause… CLUNK… pause…” Add to that the fact that the suspension was so rough that you could feel it in your spinal column every time the truck ran over a cigarette butt. And to think: Barack Obama gave Chrysler/Dodge tens of billions of dollars worth of payment-free bailout “loans”. The company needs to go out of business because they build junky jalopies. It’s just unbelievable.

I did a 4-mile power walk yesterday before the game yesterday. I can’t imagine better weather. It was sunny, windy, and cool. The humidity was pretty low and the sky was clear. It was basically a perfect day. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to spend the whole day indoors if there was an option to do otherwise.

Last night was game night. As some of you know, I wrote a role-playing game (it’s a paper-and-dice variety, not a computer game). The odd thing last night was the sheer number of “critical success” die rolls I got. Theoretically, a critical success should only occur in 5% of the die rolls since it is a “20” on a d20 die when rolling an attack, or is a “1” on a d20 when casting a spell or rolling a proficiency check. However, the distribution of critical successes last night was closer to 1 in 5 rolls. I was very excited! It meant that the players really had to work to defeat the army of Ash Zombies I sent at them. Whoo-hoo. The hilarious thing was that the majority of my critical success rolls involved parries. It was delightfully frustrating to the players!