Cleaning my desk I uncovered an envelope with two stories scrawled on its back, stories I heard in two of the rare moments I wasn't carrying a notebook.

The top of the envelope is a list of curious but ultimately non-remarkable attributes pertaining to a friend's cousins. They add up to a compelling clan in a Hillfolk game set on the 7 hills of ( Read more... )

One of my co-workers at Fire Opal Media tells an odd number of stories in which his former bosses ended up in jail. Confronted with the observation, he coined the term ‘Madoff Number.’ He has a Madoff Number of 3, counting the businessman who turned out to be a con man on the FBI’s Most Wanted List and the Army Reserve officer who was selling ( Read more... )

My friend Steve said that one of our friends on the Peninsula just found $1800 in her wood stove. Which might seem like a bad place to keep flammable bills, but the stove was outside the house, not in use. She has a dim memory of having stashed the money there before taking a long road trip, but so long ago that she's not entirely sure.
  Today's ( Read more... )

A few years ago in the Stonington Gallery in downtown Seattle, Lisa loved the looks of this painting of Native American canoes by Bill  Holm. I faked disinterest, saying "Yeah, it's OK," when I actually loved it. I knew that it would mean even more to Lisa, since those were the Olympics looming beyond the wind.  We wandered out of the gallery and ( Read more... )

I spent most of the week working as lead designer on my new electronic game or orbiting soccer fields. Midweek, instead of running D&D, I accompanied Lisa and my dad-in-law and friend Nick to watch the Seattle Sounders play Boca Juniors, a game our Argentine friend didn't want to see because he hates Boca so much, favoring River Plate. It would ( Read more... )

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This was early in the 90’s. Lisa and I were camping out at her ranger station at Toleak on the Olympic Coast. The camp was near a former Native American village, nothing left but midden heaps overgrown with bushes, thickly populated by rabbits.

As we left along the beach in the morning, a middle-aged woman came up exclaiming about how much she ( Read more... )

Let’s call him Baggins. It’s not his real name but it captures his true name’s spirit. Lisa used to work with Baggins when she was a backcountry ranger in the National Park Service. At the time he worked in the front country. I didn’t know him well, only met him briefly a couple of times. I doubt he knows my name

I’m not sure that Baggins was a ( Read more... )

Eight years ago, my friend Steve was walking down a beach near his house on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. It’s a place he goes to look for rocks. Back then the beach was officially called Majestic Beach. The official name has changed, but Steve doesn’t know the new name and neither do I, the locals call it Cannonball Beach though ( Read more... )