Two Weekends, and the Reasons for my online absence

Two weekends back, we drove out to a rescue shelter a few hours out of Brisbane and adopted ourselves a cat. She’s going by the name Admiral Coco Marshmallow Flerkin-Wittingstall, and seems determined to win us over with the deployment of weaponised cuteness:

The week that followed was a mad dash to make the cat at home in our small flat, either accumulating new things for a feline co-resident or upgrading things we’d underestimated.

After nearly fifteen years of being pointed about not owning a cat in my long form author bio, it’s time to update and admit that I’m finally a pet person.

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The weekend just gone, I headed off to the State Library to volunteer for GoPlay, Brisbane’s resident Tabletop RPG and Board Game convention:

It was my first convention of any kind since the last GenreCon, and my first gamer-specific convention in over a decade. It was nice to catch up with a bunch of people, meet some new folks, and to see how these events have changed in recent years.

Almost all of these are for the better: the venue is definitely nicer, there’s a much greater focus on inclusion, and the vaguely awkward RPG-games-as-competetion thing that ended in awards ceremonies has largely fallen by wayside.

The downside, of course, is that I’ve been away from the gaming scene so long that I no longer recognise 90% of the games on offer once you move past “D&D” and “Feng Shui.”