so yeah, I missed this month but I'll still say Wolves.  They are fascinating.

Freak'n awesome man!  Congrats!

I'm sorry i was so absent during this.  Thinking and praying for you mother.  So sorry for your loss.  I do hope you are able to find time to do what Ben talked about it, too many people don't take time to truly grieve.

Now that's character I'm quite happy with, especially considering I look a lot like the Paul Bettany who played his character on A Knight's Tale.  Well I do when I'm clean shaven at least.

Good luck dawn, look forward to hearing all about your adventures at college.

Excellent!

Praying, praying, praying.

2!

For me the draw to history has always been the idea behind "a kid in Camalot." I can't help but ask my self what would I do differently with the knowledge, freedoms, and abilities if I was put in a place and time like the Middle Ages. It's one of the reasons I love playing paper and pen games like d&d.

So how are we doing man?

And thus began a beautiful friendship.

Thanks for playing guys, don't want to crash into the game show week so we'll have to wrap it up but I think staring this game somewhere else would be fantastic.  What Ajah, might start a thread like this in the bookish brown ajah board.  Keep your eyes open for it.

"Well not many people can handle a swirling storm of shadows bent on consuming them or a talking cat that can dispatch them" the cat said, motioning towards my unconscious sister.

"Well, you seems to built of stronger stuff, perhaps I won't wipe your memory." The cat said as it finished dispelling the shadow.

"I'm glad you drew out this shadow demon, I've been hunting it for ages." the cat said with a twinkle in his eye.

How could my sister not see the shadows, I thought as they pulled me deeper into the bushes.

I'm PST so it's 7:38 am, if that makes a difference.

Alright Led, get back on it!  Yeeha!!!  Post in tomorrow, we'll be here for you!

Oh ok, I'll join but I won't be able to do much until Monday.

I must also throw in a little about Charles Dickens as well.  I know so many people don't like his books but oh I love how descriptive he is.  He can reveal so much in each sentence and gives such deep and visceral character sketches.  And his endings, his real endings, the one where Scrooge and Tiny Tim actually die and it isn't a dream, the ones where the worst outcome is the true outcome, so good!  When I learned that he really intended to have Scrooge die flipped me for a loop.  He had to rewrite all of his stories endings because they were too sad for people.  That was a very influential author and story for me.  His stories were always a scathing rebuke or satire of the upper class at the time and how removed they were from the true plight of the common people and the effect of the start of the industrial revolution had on them.  Another one of his short stories called The Bells about how superficial people can be when they "help" the poor was very very influential on how I viewed helping others and how important it is to actually get your hands, and sometimes your elbows and your whole self dirty.

I once went to a Renaissance Fair and the meal the served was essentially a trip through the different classes of people during the middle ages starting out with common food and working our way up to the delicacies that the noble class would eat.  With the servers dressed up and a bard telling stories and food as an American I was not used to it was quite a great story.  My favorite music story is  The Planets.  That's an experience that takes you through space and ancient mythology at the same time, it's spectacular.  I've never seen it performed just listened to it, just wow.  I certainly can't go without mentioning comic books.  Right there is a wonderful medium that skips descriptive writing and plunges the reader eyes first into the story, it's wonderful how just the style of art can influence the tone and emotion the story tells without needing a single word.  Of course most comics do have words but when you stop and think how much it tells without the need of writing can be quite fun when the art's style can add to more than just a physical description and spacing.

I still remember the first time my dad read the Hobbit to me.  That was amazing.  But the first time I had ever felt truly transported to another place was when he read the Chronicles of Narnia.  I still constantly think of those books.  It has a very spiritual meaning to me as well as C.S. Lewis was a christian theologian and wrote the stories as an allegory about a christian's relationship with Jesus.  It had and still has everything I could want for me; adventure, a character with my actual name (Peter), a world so well written and fleshed out I can easily immerse myself in it, and a deep spiritual meaning and lesson in each book.  C.S. Lewis is still my favorite author, with his sci-fi series Out of the Dark Planet, as well as his other allegory called The Great Divorce, and his dark fiction about demons writing to each other about how they affect their human assignments called the Screwtape Letters.  He also has other non-fiction books like Mere Christianity based off of a radio series he gave during World War II that was consider a huge moral booster during the war and bombing of England and his book on grieving after he lost her in A Grief Observed.  Whether you consider yourself religious or christian or whatever, he's an amazing author and I have yet to read a book of his that hasn't impacted me greatly.  His works of fiction alone are well worth reading.

My sister looked at me amused and said, "Quit messing around, I know I threw a fit about the checkers game but you don't have to mock me by pretending to throw one too."

...the shadows began to reach for both of us.

Soon another shadow moved and yet another, it seemed as though they were swirling around me like a small twister but without any wind.

This was the last straw for the black cat so he began to yell at my sister.