Having come back from Spokane with more or less my full complement of hit points, it wasn’t that bad really; Spokane was a kind of scorched lily pad that I made brief contact with on the way to Priest Lake. There’s no reason you should know about Priest Lake! But that’s where I went and I think I emerged with more sanity than I had when I went in.

The Tales from the Loop game I run for Club PA takes place in Spokane, the Spokane I grew up in, which barely exists anymore. That time has passed is no great surprise, but time moves much slower there than it does in other places. I have to account for it every time I drive down the hill Division becomes after you pass the arcade. You pass Patterson’s on the left, a skating rink where I mostly played Gauntlet while trying to work up the courage to ask someone to skate. Agreeing to skate with me was an act of incredible bravery; generally speaking, such investments of faith ended in shame and injury. I know I’ve talked about this before but it’s apparently the axis my life turns around.

You would hear stories of trysts catalyzed by the sirenic gleam of the skating-rink; I once knew someone who knew someone whose brother knew someone who’d had sex there, outside, behind a dumpster. I want to say I wouldn’t have sex on a literal dumpster but it’s like… I’d have to see the dumpster.

I’m about to jump on the stream right now actually, like usual from 2-4, but tomorrow the doors open at 11:30am PDT for our first-ever live Acquisitions Intoxicated show at Two Beers Brewing. It’s a ticketed event, and it sold out somehow, but if you are interested in the surprisingly fertile intersection of brewing and tabletop roleplaying games we’ve been tilling for the last year and half please join us on the stream! We’ll be doing a tasting of our aggressively simple Human Fighter themed SMaSH beer “First Session,” prepared in two batches with Lager and Ale yeasts, rounding out the tray with the first beer we ever made on the show - the dark IPA known as WAR PRIEST.

(CW)TB out.