Damaged Morning Stars

My daughter has been playing D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) on Alexa a lot lately.   Her brother is jumping in, playing some, but she’s really the expert in the family now.   When I was young, we played with pencil, paper and physical dice.   I brought them a set of the various dice used in the game so they could see what they looked and felt like.   Alexa was saying how they had to get higher than a certain roll on a ten-sided die, for example, and the only thing they’d seen before was a standard six-sided die.

I haven’t paid much attention to it in general.   I’d come into the room and hear my daughter tell Alexa to block up high or go north or use a potion and then Alexa would give them the status of where they were or how much health they had left.   My daughter has gotten fairly serious about the game though.   I came in the other morning and she said, “mom, I have two damaged morning stars now.”  I asked her if she knew what a morning star was and then described what the weapon looked like so she could picture it in her mind.

Over time you move through the dungeons by telling Alexa which direction you want to go.  I was up in the bonus room working on something yesterday while my daughter was playing the game.   She was typing on her braillewriter at the same time.   I didn’t know what she was doing until I asked her to end the game to get ready for bed.

I asked her if it remembered where she was or if she had to start over.  She said it remembered where she was in the game, so I asked how she knew where she was in the dungeon and did she get lost?  No, she said, she didn’t and then pointed to what she’d been typing.  It was a history of the navigation directions she’d gone on the left and the items she had in her inventory on the right.   Smart girl.

The Big Boy Update:  My son didn’t want to go to the mountains at one point because it was an unknown.   Now that he’s been there since Monday, I fear we’re going to have trouble getting him to come home.   He’s been spending time with Rainey, who is just about the same age.   My mother and Rainey’s mother have made sure the two of them have been more than busy, doing fun things all week.   We’ll never measure up to the level of fun he’s had back here at home, I guarantee.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Tomorrow our dog, Matisse, comes home from a two-week training program.   My daughter wrote a letter to Sammy, our trainer and to her dog, Abe, thanking them for all the help:

That Crazy Balloon Update:  Remember that balloon that floated for an entire week instead of eight hours?   It’s now been two full weeks.   This is what the balloon looks like as of an hour ago: