Happy birthday, Shylo!

A big happy birthday to Shylo Bisnett, the smartest person I’ve ever worked with, which is why she got away with coming into work in pajamas.

Thanksgiving fun

Everyone else in America is probably taking it easy today, as it’s the day before Thanksgiving — OK, not the grocery store employees — but today I’ll be putting together next week’s paper and cursing you all under my breath.

But here’s some fun Thanksgiving stuff for everyone whose thoughts are going to turkey and pecan pie:

• Thanksgiving wallpaper.
• Mark Twain’s “Hunting the Deceitful Turkey” story.
• Turkey trivia from the Old Farmer’s Almanac.
• Garrison Keillor in praise of turkey loaf and instant mashed potatoes.

We’re going to see the new Harry Potter movie after work tonight, to celebrate my brother-in-law’s birthday.

On another note, happy birthday to Jonah, who is now, in his own words, an “old bastard.”

I got published in a D&D book, again

Like last time, it pays no money, but it’s still kinda cool.

Suck Da Head, Squeeze Da Tail is a Dungeons & Dragons compilation whose proceeds benefit Habitat for Humanity as a way of helping out the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

I wrote the Swamp King prestige class to model the scary dude in the swamp who seems almost supernatural in his mastery of the environment:

They are figures of legend, moving through swamp and marsh as though they were kings riding through their realms.

Some are predators, hunting those who enter their territory with a mix of animal cunning and a mastery of their swampy domain. Others are heroes, protecting the weak who stumble into dangerous wetland territories. But most are mysteries, seldom seen, more known in rumor than in fact, lords of a domain few will ever penetrate and return to tell the tale.

The greatest of swamp kings are said to move through a swamp invisibly, able to appear and disappear at will and are said to command all the beasts of the swamp wetlands.

The five-level Swamp King prestige class starts on page 156.

BlizzCon: Save the Murlocs

The Murloc Guy was an absolute star at BlizzCon, and now all his wacky hijinks are compiled online at Save the Murlocs!

(For the uninitiated, a murloc is a small fishy biped that lives around Azeroth’s coasts. In recent years, they’ve been moving further and further inland, and the rumor is that something in the water is driving them in from their normal habitats. They’re encountered everywhere young adventurers go, and thus a lot of baby murlocs get orphaned. Blizzard gave away in-game World of Warcraft murloc baby pets to BlizzCon attendees.)

• Strange in a totally different way: The George W. Bush Speechwriter. Assemble sound clips from previous speeches (no “new-clee-ur,” alas) and make the president say almost anything you want.

Los gatitos locos

It was a kittentastic weekend around here, as you might expect. We got a few toys for them (and a carpet covered “kitty jail” to hide and climb through and besiege your sister in) although, as all parents probably suspect, their favorite toys ended up being things that we didn’t buy them at all, like the pulls on the blinds.

The two kittens are showing distinct personalities already, with Lucky being essentially fearless (just too busy having fun for much cuddling yet), and Hanna showing the impact of being raised in a house with a lot of children and a lot of dogs. Hanna guards her food like she’s in a prison cafeteria and when she gets a toy she likes, she will puuuuuull and try to take it back to somewhere she can savage it on her own. And this kitten, who is probably less than a pound weight still, has broken not one, but two toys this weekend, by yanking them and engaging in a tug of war, determined to take an entire pull toy (and the ~200 pound guy at the other end) with her under the rim of the waterbed.

Saturday photos:

Sunday photos (all by Jenn):