Saturday, I introduced half a dozen boys, (five 10-year-olds, one 7-year-old), and a couple of dads to the adventure of Dungeons & Dragons. (The dads had played D&D 20+ years ago, but none of the boys had any experience with the game.) I was the Dungeon Master, and afterwards, I was completely exhausted, physically and mentally — in a good way. Everyone, boys and men, said they had a good time and that the game day was a great idea. The excited talk and big grins on every face after the game showed the sincerity of the thanks. Every boy came to me and asked if we would continue the game another weekend — a couple asking for next weekend — and both dads said they’d be happy to participate again if I did it.

We used the Basic D&D rules (1981, Moldvay edition), and the Players explored the dungeon of the module In Search of the Unknown. Here’s how everything went down:

Each of the six boys had a 1st-level fighter, one dad had a 3rd-level magic-user (wizard), and the other dad had a 3rd-level cleric. The premise of the adventure was that the wizard and cleric were wanting to explore the dungeon to find a lost magic stone, and they needed the fighters as bodyguards. The dungeon was an old, abandoned fortress built into and under a hill in the wilderness. The original owners were long gone, and what might be left in the place was unknown. Monsters, treasure, magic, traps? All to be expected.

The party arrived at the location with a caravan of wagons, (for supplies and fighter replacements if necessary), but the wagons, drovers, and extra guards were left out at a camp while the core team of adventurers went inside the dungeon. The core team bravely entered the old underground fortress via a ten-feet wide and high corridor carved into the stone hill.

Sixty feet into the hillside, they came to the entrance door of strong wood with metal bindings. The group had their marching order: a double column with four of the fighters up front, followed by the wizard and cleric pair, and the last two fighters as rear guard. The lead fighters opened the door to find the corridor continuing deeper into the hill.

The party went forward down the hall, in a cacophony of excitement, sending echoes of their movement and talking and laughter far ahead of them. Immediately after the front door, they passed a pair of alcoves to either side of the hallway. They moved on. When they found another set of alcoves about fifty feet further in, they decided to search them in detail. A couple of the fighters searched each alcove while the other couple stood guard. One pair of searchers found a secret door in the back of the right-side alcove. But they hadn’t figured out how to open the door yet when they received their first combat challenge.

The party’s loud talking and laughing had attracted the attention of a pair of patrolling hobgoblins, who charged right at the guarding pair of fighters. The struggle was quick and painless for the party, as the hobgoblins fell easily to spear thrusts and throws.

Shortly after that, the alcove searchers discovered how to open the secret door, and they found a crossroads of corridors beyond. The group moved, still loudly, through the secret door and into the crossroads where they debated which direction they should go. The boisterously loud discussion attracted more attention from nearby creatures, and a group of goblins charged into their torchlight from both the south and east corridors. The party had to defend on two fronts, but the small goblins were well dealt with. A couple of fighters and the cleric took some minor wounding, but no one was seriously injured in the battle.

The party decided to explore down the east corridor. They moved down the hall, still loud and incautious. They came to a pair of doors on either side of the hallway, (which itself continued on further east). The fighter at the head of the party banged on the right-side door for some unstated reason — not that any creature in the dungeon didn’t already know the loud group was approaching. When everyone in the group finally got quiet, he listened at the door, and heard movement and voices somewhere on the other side. When another fighter tried listening to the door on the left side of the corridor, the party got noisy again with excitement over what grand battle might await them behind the first, right-side door. The lead fighter opened the door and the group charged through it.

The moderately large chamber they charged into was a throne room with tall columns reaching up to the ceiling twenty feet overhead. Half a dozen hobgoblins were staged about the area in a defensive stance, ready for attack. No leaders sat upon the thrones at the far end of the room. The party continued their charge and spread out to each take on a hobgoblin opponent. After a couple rounds of battle, and a few hobgoblin deaths, (with no adventurer death), a group goblins sprang out from behind the thrones to join the battle. The goblin surprise didn’t help the defense, and soon all goblinoid creatures were slain — even those mortally wounded goblins who had dropped their weapons and were trying to crawl away. A few of the fighters and the wizard were moderately wounded, but the cleric managed to heal everyone to at least near full health. (The cleric had a magic item that he could use to cure light wounds once per day for each person.)

After the battle, the party went about giving the throne room a cursory scan. There were three new corridors and a door leading from this room, and the group began another loud debate about what to do next. Then the wizard thought to cast detect magic. The yet unopened door began to glow, revealing a magic spell on it, and from the seat of one of the thrones, a small glow peaked out revealing something magical hidden under the seat.

Two fighters tested the door, and when it wouldn’t open, they set about smashing at it with shield and spear and sword. Another pair of fighters began searching the throne. They determined there was a secret compartment under the seat, and they also set about destructing their way into it. The door-workers made no way, but the throne-abusers managed to break the seat, and found the bottom filled with a jeweled crown, a pile of gold, and a glowing magical ring. One fighter grabbed the crown and gold while the other took up the magic ring.

Several ideas were suggested for using the ring to open the door, and eventually they had the fighter put on the ring and simply open the door. That worked. The group then lined up to move through the magical door into the next room.

The room was a worship area, with religious symbols covering the side walls, a large stone demon face on the far wall, a five-foot wide pit in the center of the floor, and four armored and armed skeletons standing at attention. The fighters continued into the room, stopping only when the armored skeletons animated and attacked. One of the fighters was badly injured pretty quickly, and he had to pull back from the front line. Another fighter took his place, and the cleric healed him. The other fighters handily defeated the undead.

The party began searching the room closely, taking time and attention to examine everything. The pit in the center of the room was three feet deep, blacked by fire and soot, with a pile of ash at the bottom. The demon face was carved directly from the stone wall, with a small concealed area down inside its mouth.

The group discussed methods of testing the room, and one fighter dropped a lit torch down into the ash at the bottom of the pit. Quickly, the ash started glowing and relit. In a puff of flame and smoke, a giant burning snake rose from the pit. The excitement was short-lived as one-two-three, the fighters around the pit destroyed the firey creature in seconds. After the fight, a fighter hopped down into the pit of ash and searched around. The dirty work turned out worthwhile, as he found a very large ruby concealed under the ash.

Then the group put their attention to the stone demon face. One fighter used a dagger to feel around in the demon’s mouth, and felt his blade bump and moved something within it. Another fighter incautiously put his hand into the mouth to feel around, and he snagged his hand on a sharp needle. A sharp needle coated with poison. Fortunately he resisted the poison’s effects. He then reached back into the mouth, again, but avoided getting stuck by the needle, and he pulled out a leather tube pouch. Opening the tube, he found three sheets of parchment with religious prayers written on them. The party cleric looked the papers over and found them to be magic spells: remove poison, continual light, and detect magic.

When the group was satisfied that there was nothing else to discover in the worship room*, they left to take a new corridor out of the throne room. The cleric used one of the just found magic scrolls to cast continual light on the spear tip of the lead fighter. This was useful, as having enough torch light for the party had gotten complicated.

Continued here.

* Note: The boys tried a lot of other activities and searches and ideas in this room, (and in other areas), that I’m not relating. The whole game session was four hours long, and I’m assuming you don’t want to take four hours to read the story in exacting detail, so I’m only writing about the activities and searches and ideas that actually accomplished something.

Bullgrit

Today is my birthday. Number 44. Forty-four magnum, I’m calling it. Like Harry Callahan’s hand cannon. “Do you feel lucky?” I do.

For this double-quad birthday post, I’d like to revisit my fitness efforts one more time. The last time I mentioned my exercise regimen was back in November last year,  when I showed my “final” results after the P90X and Insanity programs. Well, I’ve kept up my exercises, but I’ve dropped to working out just three times a week instead of the hardcore six times a week. I’m just in a maintenance mode, now. I’m happy with my fitness level and my physical appearance, so I just want to stay like this. I don’t need to buff up like a bodybuilder.

Forgive an old man showing his bare physique one more [last] time.

[And forgive the terrible lighting in these pics. Sheesh. Opening the blinds of the big front window just caused harsh shadows. Using the flash just washed out on my pale skin -- too embarrassing to use for this post. I thought I could improve on the bathroom shots. I failed.]

Anyway. Something I’ve never mentioned before is that I have a pretty severe case of arthritis. My spine, let my show you it:

This image is my lumbar spine, seen from my left side. Note the solid black cartilage space between the bottom vertebrae. That’s well-developed arthritis. That’s what pain looks like.

This MRI image was taken back in August 2007, almost four years ago. I posted about the experience, but I never came out and said what it was all about. I’ve never talked about having arthritis, here, because I didn’t want you readers thinking of me as some decrepit invalid. I’m only comfortable mentioning it in this blog, now, because I can post the fit pictures with it.

Four years ago, I went from a general doctor to a specialist to find out why I was so regularly having back pain. I always got out of bed achy and groaning in the mornings. I often, (at least once a year), “threw out my back” when doing heavy work.

X-rays and MRI photos showed the answer: pretty well developed arthritis. I was rather stunned. I mean, I was just turned 40 years old. Arthritis is something senior citizens have. The doctor told me that the disease had been developing in me for a while.

“But doc,” I said, “I was doing martial arts several days a week, just a few years ago. I earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.”

“You were fit and strong from the martial arts,” the doctor explained, “and that keeps the pain away.”

Core strength and flexibility, like I had while doing TKD, is the best — really the only — way to overcome arthritis without drugs or surgery. In the years after last doing any good and regular exercise, the arthritis caught up with me. That’s why I was starting to feel the disease as pain.

The doctor explained that there is no way to fix, cure, or repair arthritis, but I could keep it from getting worse by getting back into good and regular exercise. But I had to be careful and mindful of how to do exercise properly; I had to protect my back because with arthritis, it’s easier to injure, and any injury is more painful.

I may have be having pains getting out of bed then, but worst case scenario if I didn’t get back into good and regular exercise would be that one day I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed at all. Knowing how bad my back hurt sometimes getting out of bed then, I understood what that meant.

So I got back into good and regular exercise. Well, sometimes and sort of. I was on again and off again with the exercise. At my worst, I was never really “fat.” I was overweight, yes, but I’m also 40+ years old with a sedentary occupation. I and everyone with whom I ever conversed about body weight considered me average and normal for a 40-something family man. My middle was getting thicker, but my belly never plumped over my belt.

As for my arthritis, very few people knew I had it. I ran and jumped and played with my kids like all the other dads around — more than some dads because I wasn’t fat and completely out of shape like some men my age. Only when getting out of bed in the mornings, or maybe getting up off a sofa or chair after an hour or more sitting around, did I make any groans of discomfort. My inconsistent efforts at exercise at least kept me out of severe pain from normal activity. I only took any kind of drug for the pain, (usually just ibuprofen, but rarely something stronger), when it was particularly bad.

Every once in a while — once or twice a year, about — I’d do something to “throw my back out.” I’d pick something up wrong, twist or jump bad, or just sit too long in an uncomfortable position. It was Arthur Ritus letting me know he was truly moved in for the rest of my life.

When I started thinking about picking up the P90X workout, I honestly didn’t even think about needing it for arthritis control. But I was reminded by a person who loves me that I need to remember my back problem and not do something careless to hurt myself. Starting a regular exercise regimen is a good idea, but going extreme and permanently injuring myself would be just plain dumb. Good advice.

I completed the three-month P90X regimen with not a single back problem. I continued the P90X for another couple of months, and then completed the two month Insanity program, and still had no problems with my back. My core strength and flexibility was better than ever. I’ve been in close to peak physical fitness for a 40-plus year old for a year, now. And I’m still going strong.

Only once did I hurt myself during any of these workouts. Fortunately, (and maybe ironically), it happened during this maintenance period I’m keeping up, now, (not during the first/main rounds of the programs). I got a little cocky and rambunctious during a power jump routine, and lost the proper form and control. I woke up the next morning in back pain. I had to take four weeks off from working out to recover. Frustrating, that was. But after the healing time, I got right back into my exercise routine, and I make sure I keep the proper form and control when doing my extreme maneuvers.

* * *

So, I’m 44 years old today. Forty-four magnum.

Booyah! :-)

And my birthday party, next weekend, will be a wonderful nerd-fest.

Bullgrit

Calfgrit6 was feeling and acting pretty normal, a week after his tonsillectomy. After 10 days, it seemed all was over. Then Sunday night he came into our room around 10:30 p.m. saying he was throwing up. His mom was with him before I could shake the sleep out of my head. By the time I got up and to our bathroom, she had him over the trashcan. “He’s throwing up blood,” she said.

Oh crap. Okay, this had also happened with Calfgrit10, about 10 days after he had his tonsils removed back when he was about 4 years old. So we understood what was probably happening. His surgery wound, or both, probably popped a scab and so blood was seeping into his throat and being swallowed. After a while sitting on his stomach, it comes up.

“This is a lot of blood,” his mother said. They were both over the trashcan, so I couldn’t see the results, myself. Calfgrit6 mentioned he had thrown up in his room, so I was sent to check it out.

I walked down the hall and flicked on the lights of our little boy’s room. Sweet Mother of God! It looked like a horror movie had taken place in there. There was blood on his bed, on his nightstand, on the floor beside the bed, and there was a big pool of it right at his door, an inch from where I had stepped into his room.

I stood staring at the mess for a few moments, thinking, “I have no idea how to clean this up.”

I went back to our bathroom where Cowgrit was trying to keep our little guy calm so he wouldn’t make his pain and stomach worse. I informed her about the six gallons of blood in his room.

I was told to get dressed and to go get the doctor’s phone number. We had been given an information sheet explaining possible problems/complications from the surgery, and bleeding afterwards was an item to prompt calling the doctor’s emergency number. I pulled out that sheet, and called the doc. I expected to reach the doc’s answering service or something, but apparently it was the man’s personal phone.

“Hello?” said the sleepy voice on the phone.

“Um, hi,” I said started. “My son had a tonsillectomy about a week ago, and he’s now throwing up blood. A lot of blood.”

He asked for a little more info, like the patient’s age, and then he told me to take him to the hospital emergency room. He’d call his on-call partner and have him meet us there.

I finished getting dressed and got some clothes for Calfgrit6, while Cowgrit cleaned the little guy up a bit — washed most of the blood off him. He was calmed down, and seemed to have emptied is stomach.

As he and I were ready to run out the door, Cowgrit called her mother, who lives just a few minutes away. Calfgrit10 was still in his room, fast asleep, and we didn’t want to wake him and up and drag him to the ER with us. Calfgrit6 was calm but concerned about going to the hospital. We consoled him as best we could and then he and I left in my truck. Cowgrit would come behind us after her mother arrived to stay at our house with the sleeping older boy.

I and CG6 got to the hospital at 11:25 p.m., and check in and triage went pretty smooth and fast. 20 minutes after signing in, we were put in a curtained room in the ER. Calfgrit6 was doing fine — no vomiting or problems. His mother arrived within 5 more minutes, while the nurse was checking with us. “The doctor will be here shortly to examine him and see what’s going on,” we were told.

We sat down beside Calfgrit’s little child-sized bed, and waited. We tried to get him to go to sleep, and we tried to get comfortable in the hard chairs. There was just too much activity outside the curtain for him to close his eyes, and our chairs were too uncomfortable for us to nod off. An hour passed without anyone coming back to us. We continued to try to coax Calfgrit6 to at least just shut his eyes and rest. He hadn’t thrown up any more, and said he felt okay. 30 more minutes passed with no one checking in on us. I took a peek outside the curtain, and there was plenty of people around, and not much activity, (compared to what I expected in an ER).

At 2:45, we hit the two-hour mark of waiting in the room. I groggily stepped outside the curtains intending to flag down our nurse to ask what we were waiting on. I didn’t want to be rude or annoying — you know, “that” kind of patient’s-dad — but really, two hours? The doc on the phone had said his on-call doc would meet us at the ER, so what was the hold up? Our boy wasn’t in danger or pain, so I wasn’t wanting to demand attention, but with absolutely no attention since we first go there, I wanted to just make sure we weren’t forgotten or something.

I thought maybe they were just waiting to see if the boy vomited anymore or something. Were we going to be just sent back home? Was there something going on behind the scenes that was why we were just left with no word? While standing outside the curtain, I kept seeing our nurse zipping in and out of rooms and around corners, just outside the range of contact without shouting. But then another nurse saw me and asked me if she could help me. I told her we had been waiting in here for two hours, and I just wanted to know what’s up.

Now, it was almost 3:00 in the morning. I was tired, sleepy, groggy, with an anxious 6 year old in the hospital emergency room. I didn’t want to be an ass, but I fear I came across pretty rough and annoyed. This nurse said she’d check with our nurse and find out for me. I sat back down next to Calfgrit6′s bed.

A few minutes later, another nurse came to us to apply a pulse monitor to Calfgrit6′s finger. A pulse monitor? Really? The kid had been there for over two hours without any problems, or any other monitoring, and she was taking his pulse? I immediately figured this was just to give us some attention, and the fact that no attention was paid to the pulse display throughout the rest of our stay confirms to me that it was just for making us feel like we hadn’t been forgotten. I mean, I was just asking for information on what we were waiting around for; they didn’t need to make a false show of attention.

Half an hour later, the ER doc got to us and checked our boy out. The bleeding was stopped, his stomach was not upset, and he was not in pain. So the doc just told the nurse to let us check out. <sigh> About 3 hours in the hospital.

When we got home, it was going on 4:00 a.m. By the time we got Calfgrit6 back in his own bed, and we back in our own, it was 4:00 on the dot.

Half of our July 4th was spent cleaning up the mess of blood from the night before.

With Calfgrit6 recuperating from his tonsillectomy, and with no school because of track out time, (year-round schedule), the boys have had some time to watch some movies. Their mother borrowed a stack of movies from a friend, and I looked through it to see what was on the schedule: all the Harry Potter movies, plus The Princess Bride.  I’m not a fan of the HP series, but Calfgrit10 has read all the books, (as has his mother). Over the past several days, the family has sat down and watched a HP movie each evening. I’ve joined in for a little while during a couple of the movies, just to enjoy the family enjoying something. (I have to refrain from rolling my eyes at a lot of scenes in the films.)

But The Princess Bride is something I would enjoy watching again. The TPB package looked kind of “accidentally” included in the stack of HP DVDs, and no one had mentioned making time to watch it this week. I wanted to watch the movie with the boys, as I thought it would be something they’d both enjoy, but I knew they’d be immediately turned off just by the title of the film. “Princess” and “Bride” aren’t words that excite young boys, 10 and 6 years old.

When I mentioned to the boys that I wanted to watch it with them, they reacted exactly as expected: they scrunched their faces and slightly shook their heads. I intentionally didn’t show them the DVD package. Calfgrit10 asked, “What’s it about?” with a tone of doubt.

“It’s got sword fights,” I explained, “a giant, monster eels, rodents of unusual size, a six-fingered man, and a dread pirate.”

“Huh?” they both responded. Yeah, those aren’t things you expect to find in a movie titled, “The Princess Bride.”

“Trust me,” I encouraged. “You’ll like it.” Then I did my best Inigo Montoya impersonation: “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

Trust me they did, and like it they did.

There were several times that Calfgrit10 laughed out loud. He even often put in his own commentary on various scenes and lines, much to my annoyance. I was glad he was engaged with the story, but good lord, he talked over some lines I wanted him to hear.

And every time a new character walked into a scene, Calfgrit6 would ask, “Who is that?” before the character got three paces in. “Why is he doing that?” “Where are they going?”

I had to say, “Just watch and listen,” probably twenty times through the film. I was rather surprised. They didn’t do this during the Star Wars movies. Maybe they knew so much about the Star Wars story already that they never got confused for a moment about what was going on or who someone was. I didn’t hear any of this during the Harry Potter movies, but maybe that was because when I sat down with them, they had already been through a couple of the movies and, like Star Wars, already recognized the people and places.

Still, in the end, they both seemed to enjoy the movie. They didn’t even seem to mind so much the kissing parts. And they were pretty revved up and difficult to herd toward bed afterward — that’s usually a sign that they got worked up about a movie.

After getting them both calmed and tucked in for the night, I told them, each, “As you wish.”

Bullgrit