I took another step into the great world of self-sufficiency today: I bought some shoelaces.

There’s probably a great parable here about One Man’s Need for Shoelaces and what it means in his relationship with the world, but it probably doesn’t apply to me, because I have bought shoelaces before. True, this was the first time I bought them whilst I’ve been living on my own. (First full day today!) However, it’s not really that important. They’re also slightly too long. Oops. I don’t think there’s any deep meaning to be found here. Sorry about that.

More interesting are the April issues of Dungeon magazine and Dragon magazine I picked up yesterday. Yes, I actually get the April issues in April. I find that astonishing – my experience with comic books was that the date printed on the cover had nothing to do with the date they were available.

I’ve got issues 1-250 of Dragon on the CD-ROM Archive they put out a few years ago. (I used to buy it for issues 172-200). I started collecting it again when 3E was released, so I have every issue from 274 to 318. (That last is the April issue).

I didn’t get Dungeon before 3E came out; but I have every issue since it did. (About #82 or so, I think). At least, I did have every issue, but I lent a couple to a friend – I haven’t got them back yet.

I find both magazines to vary in usefulness, but as I never know when something good will come out – and I’ve no other source of adventures – I get every issue.

The best things about Dragon of late (excepting Gary’s “On a Soapbox” column and Aaron William’s “Nodwick”) are the articles on the D&D Miniatures Game. The April issue (#318) has one of the better articles to date: Fang & Shadow: Campaign Play for D&D Miniatures.

It expands the campaign skirmish rules of the D&D Miniatures game in a number of interesting ways: adding a few new scenarios and magic items and providing new ways for your Warlord to advance.

All I need now is to get into a Skirmish Campaign. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough friends who play the game yet to do so.

This might be changing, though. A couple of new players are likely to be joining my Sunday group in the near future, and Greg’s been making noises about getting some of the miniatures soon. I hope he does. 🙂

Of course, the miniatures campaigns will have to contest with my play of various board games and the D&D RPG, but that’s usual for me.

So many games, so little time!

Postscript: I’d intended to end this log there, but I was hearing odd noises from the chickens outside, so I wandered out to investigate. It seems that one of the hens has been broody on the sly, and has just hatched out a few new young chickens.

A few months ago, a fox took all our chickens except for that one hen. We bought a rooster, and that hen has taken it into her small little mind that she’s going to replenish the henhouse all on her own – and she’s doing a good job of it. There were seven chickens hatched earlier this year, and I now have to find out how many she’s hatched this time around.

I just hope the foxes stay away.