I think tabletop roleplaying games (e.g. D&D, Pathfinder, etc) are great, and it has been nice to see them gain some popularity over the past decade.

I've been emphasizing them as a hobby over the past couple years for a few reasons.

-All of my work is quantitative, so for hobbies I like totally different things. Fantasy, basically. Spreadsheets during the day, slaying evil clerics at night.

-I sit at a computer much of the day. I've been minimizing computer gaming over the past five years because I don't want my hobbies to also be at a computer. Outside hobbies are ideal, but for inside hobbies at least I don't want to be close to a screen or to have constant pressure on my wrist/shoulder from using a mouse.

-They are mathematically-involved strategy games in combat, combined with character decision-making outside of combat. Rather than read a fantasy novel, a player can participate in one. Active participation rather than passive consumption.

Active, strategic, whimsical, and social.

One of my son’s friends who is a born and raised local said to me, “Can I give you some advice Ms Susie? You need to loosen up your shaka; it’s way too tight. Shaka needs to be free with barely curled fingers. Just chill with it and you’ll see.”

😂🤙

That’s must’ve been amazing!!

This was a dream come true moment for me. nostr:note1dug96e6q2gsyy470mlsq5hnw5gphau52e0nzateynv2mp3vzgsxqdq6exy

I never dreamt of early retirement. I genuinely enjoy practicing dentistry. I’m good at it and it was very lucrative without my husband and I ever compromising our ethics. What I began to hate after Covid was running a practice. Keeping and retaining employees became an issue for the first time in our careers and something that had an even bigger impact was what happened to a colleague of ours who had a great influence on us. He kept postponing retirement after 65. He bought a huge home in a country club community around that time. He finally decided to retire in 2020 at the age of 75. He retired on a Friday and died Sunday night. He didn’t have 1 day of true retirement. This was a huge eye opener for my husband and I.

As for retirement, it’s great! I have become addicted to golf after a 20 year hiatus and we are training to climb Kilimanjaro this summer. We are travelling a lot, getting to spend more time with our younger 2 kids than we ever did with our older two, and Im finally getting proficient at Korean. Finally, I am working on the clinic in ES and we are doing mission work to not let our dental skills go to waste. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Sorry to say but Mastodon was always a failure because the “global” feed literally never worked. By design it has network effects working against it, rather than for it.

I used it for barely a few weeks before I found I couldn’t find anybody I was looking for, was trapped in a very small echo chamber, and had to make a totally different account when I was on a different instance at one point, and I just threw my hands up at that point.

I can’t see how it can ever actually have the momentum necessary to become a scale that matters. And honestly at this point the opportunity is already passed.

Wild times.

Mayonnaise is one of those things I don’t think anyone should ever buy

1883. One of the best western series i’ve seen in my life. Can recommend.

Which one are you?

1- hit the brakes at the last minute 😳

2- slowing down from a mile away 😂

#asknostr

Losing someone young, or losing an older person while you are young, is always hard.

When my father passed away from cancer while I was in my early twenties, it wasn't surprising at all. This fact had been coming for two years, slowly. But when it came, it hurt just as bad. And till this day it still hurts.

I was at work and got a call; it was a hospital. They said my father had been suddenly transferred to hospice, and it wasn't looking good. He probably had a week at most. He was in another state. The doctor transferred my father to me on the phone and my father was weakly like, "hey...." and I said hello, and I said I'm coming now. He said, "No don't... uhh.... don't worry... you are far and have work... I'm fine...." I asked then why was he transferred to hospice if things were fine. He was like, "uh well... well you know.... uh.... it's fine...." And I was like, "holy shit I'm coming right now."

So I went to my boss and looked at him. I had previously told him that there might be a moment where I would have to just immediately leave without notice, no matter how important the meetings and such, because of my father. So in this moment I literally just looked at him in the middle of a busy day and was like, "I gotta go" and he was like "of course". So I drove there, two hours away and went straight there. My father weakly said on the phone not to go, but he never sounded like that, so I went immediately.

I got there, and my father was in a hospital in the death ward, and the guy who greeted me was a pastor rather than a nurse, which was not a great sign. I asked what was going on and he told me straight up that this was not good, that my father was likely dying within a week. So he brings me to my father. My father is barely awake. His memories and statements are all over the place, but I just hold his hand and tell him that it's fine and I love him. I'm just there. He kept fading out and I was like, "it's okay, just relax". He could see me and talk in a rough sentence or two and thanked me for coming, but started to fade away.

And then after like 30 minutes, he went fully unconscious. He was still roughly gripping and shaking the bed headboard and so forth but wasn't conscious (and I was like, "Are you all giving him the right pain medicines, this doesn't look good", and even the pastor was like, "yes I have seen many and this is not comfortable" and I was like an angry 23-year-old so I went out in the center area like, "what do all of you even fucking do here?! He is shaking the bedframe and looks in pain, and even the pastor agrees. Holy shit." So I went and got medical attention to deal with this, but felt slow and ineffective at this. They gave him more morphine and it calmed him down, but while it relaxed him, he ultimately didn't wake up again.

I spent the next couple hours there, and then left and called various family members for my second round when he was unmoving. I said if they want to see him, come now, in the next day or two.

But a little while later after I left, I got a call and was told he had died. Only I (and the nurses) saw him while he was still briefly conscious.

During that call itself, I was stoic. I was like, "Yes, I understand. Okay." and then hung up. And then I sat there for like five minutes in silence... and then cried. I got over it quickly and we did the funeral in the following days. My father had been struggling with cancer for years, so this wasn't fully surprising.

But what lingered was the memory. It has been 13 years now, and yet whenever I am in my depths I still think of my father. The memory never gets weaker. I think of his love, or I think of how attentive he was, or how accepting he was, or what he would say about my current problems.

People we love, live on through us. We remember them so vividly, and we are inspired by them.

If he was a lame father, he wouldn't have so many direct memories 13 years later. But because he was a good and close father, he does.

All of those memories are gifts. All of them are ways of keeping aspects of that person alive in our world. It's how we remember them in the decades that follow. Their victories, their losses, and everything in between. Virtues they quietly did that you find out later. Virtues you realize only in hindsight how big they were.