4E!!!!

I first heard that they were coming out with a new edition of D&D back at GenCon in August (if history is any guide it was probably on my wedding anniversary). Since then it's been nearly 10 months of anticipation. But tonight is the night. The FLGS is having a midnight release party and I'm going to be there. Today was the kids last day of school, so I don't have to get up early. Which means I may stay up late reading the books. I often say that's what I'm going to do, but in reality I'm old and I get tired pretty easy. I'll probably end up just coming straight home as soon as I have the books and going to bed. But we'll see. I'm trying to remember what I did when the last Harry Potter came out. I'm pretty sure I didn't start reading it until the next day, but in that situation there's not a huge benefit from reading only part of the book, the same can not be said of the D&D books.

Two days ago my sister called me up. She mentioned that she and her husband were planning on going out for their anniversary on Wednesday but that they couldn't find a baby sitter. So they'd called my wife and she'd told them that she would be at a rehearsal, but that she was welcome to call me. So she did. I figured, well I'm going to be home anyway with my kids, so I guess I might as well take two more... Of course I forgot that she had just had a baby, so it was actually three. I almost backed out when she corrected my mistake, but I'd already sort of mentally made the commitment, so I went ahead with it.

I grew up in a family with 7 kids, and let me tell you even so I didn't realize how much of a pain it is to be the lone adult with 7 kids 11 and under... The big problem is that the baby doesn't like women. I know, weird. So as soon as I left the room to order some pizza (that was the big concession I got out of my sister, that they would pay for pizza) and left her alone with my wife she started crying. Once she started she basically didn't stop. There were a couple of times when she was mostly calm, but they didn't last that long. I guess once she was spooked she wasn't going to easily calm down. The real trial was getting everyone dinner. Even without a sad baby the logistics of getting everyone set up with everything they needed for dinner. My oldest daughter wasn't home yet, which actually made it more difficult since she could have helped me with all the young kids. In any case I met my stated goal of not having to take any of the kids to the hospital so I feel good.

Increasingly glad I stopped at 4