It used to be that you could get a donut whenever you wanted. That isn't true anymore, it seems.

Last night, my wife wanted a donut. She loves donuts. And being that I'm one of those guys that likes to make my wife happy, we went on a donut run. At 9:30 pm. On a Sunday.

I didn't think twice about it. I've had the cravings for donuts many, many times in the past, usually late at night seeing as how I'm a night owl, and I've run down to Dunkin Donuts and bought myself whatever looked good. Last night changed the way that I think about donuts, and not in a good way.

For almost two hours my wife and I scoured the area looking for an open donut shop. We never found one.

The places that I used to go at 2:00 in the morning to pick up an apple-filled delight were closed. "No problem," my wife calmly stated, "there is a 24-hour place over in Roswell. Let's go there!" So off we went. No luck.

Being a Dunkin Donuts guy, I reluctantly decided that it was okay to go to the Krispy Kream shop over in Marietta, near the Big Chicken. I lived in that area for years, and I passed by a light reading "Hot Donuts Now!" more times than I can remember. It was always open, and seemingly always busy. So we made the long trek from Roswell to The Big Chicken. And when we got there...it was closed. Not out-of-business closed, just closed for the night. And obviously we weren't the only ones disappointed, as there were three other cars that had pulled into the parking lot and were turning around with the same confused look on the driver's face.

It seems that something in America has changed--at least in the southeast. It used to be that I was feeling a little swelling of pride, thinking that this part of the country was becoming like other places in the sense that you felt you could get what you wanted when you wanted it. Not anymore.

I can understand not being able to go buy things like a new car at midnight, but a donut? What are we coming to? Is our society so much in economic decline that we can't even get a glazed delight at any odd hour of the morning? Oh, how I mourn for our children's future...

Personally, I blame Wal-Mart.

Signs can be wonderful things. They let you know exactly what's what with what...or something like that. But when they go wrong they can be very entertaining.

My friend Cliff Biggers recently touched on this in a post, where he talked about one of his favorite phrases, "No Purchase, No Refund", which appeared on a sign at Dr. NO's when he first bought the store. And driving around last night I was reminded that some of the best signs that I've seen weren't supposed to be what I saw.

Last night I passed a sign that read "Disco Tires." Sounds like a great place: get some tires, do the hustle.

One of my foavorites has always been the "Waffle Hose" sign. I'm not sure exactly what you would get at that place. I don't know if it is a hose made of waffles, or a hose that delivers waffles.

I have often passed a place that, for a time, called itself "Iffy Lube". I didn't have enough confidence in the place to stop there and have my car serviced.

Similarly to another place already mentioned, I have passed a place calling itself "Waffle Ho". That seems like a very specific fetish to me.

I know that there are others like this that are escaping my memory, but I'll mention those another time.

So, some signs aren't what the designer intended. But they are still very memorable.

I had a nice Valentine's Day.

Actually, I had a very nice Valentine's Day. I took Allyson out for sushi, which she hadn't had for a couple of months due to money constraints around here, and I can now honestly say that I've seen my wife eat a boatload of food. Normally when we go to the sushi place she gets chirashi (at least I think that's how it's spelled) and I get pad thai with chicken. Sure, it's a routine, but we both like those dishes so what's the big deal.

But on Valentine's Day restaurants feel the need to change things up. They want to present a special Valentine's Day menu. Thank goodness. This means that the menu that you go in to have isn't there. Or if Valentine's Day is the first time that you are eating at a place you have no idea what their normal food is like. Great for business.

Now, I do understand that Valentine's is the single busiest day for restaurants across the United States, and that most places have to make adjustments to be able to feed that many people in a quick turnaround so that they can maximize profit, but it just seems like you aren't getting the best that a restaurant has to offer if you judge it based on food served that one day out of the year.

Oh, about Allyson's food boat. We got the special dinner for two. She got the sashimi selection, while I got the hibachi steak and lobster. They served her sashimi in one of those large wooden boats you normally see the large selection of sushi. She loved it. And she ate a boatload of food. But she was happy, and that's a good thing.

I do want to take another moment here to talk about the cards that my wife gives me. Most people get very nice cards that are bought for them, reflecting either (in best cases) how they feel about their partner, or (in worst cases) how they are supposed to feel about their partner.

My wife makes the cards she gives me. One of the benefits of being married to a graphic designer, I suppose. My Valentine's Day card features the very cute lion and tiger from the Weebls "Kenya" video, each holding a heart and dancing, while song lyrics appear over their head telling me how much she loves me.

I love my wife.

I have two electrical outlets that don't work. They worked last week, but they don't work today. Now, I know a little bit about wiring a house, and I don't understand how this has happened. I traced the wires, checked the connections, and couldn't find a break. The volt/ohm meter told me there wasn't a solid connection, which is I'm sure the problem, but I don't know what caused it. What's more, I have no idea how it happened over a course of the past week. Well, that's not entirely true; I have one theory.

I think that my house is cursed.

Every time I turn around it seems that there is something else that is happening to this house that defies explanation. Whether it's light bulbs burning out far too regularly, or our hot water heater running out of water too quickly, or even our wine going bad far too quickly, things around here sometimes just don't make sense.

I don't think that it's haunted or anything quite as supernatural, but I do think that there is something about this house that brings bad things to the forefront. We don't get good cable reception, or good cell phone reception, or...well, you get the idea. I think that the house might be built on a lodestone, or a pocket of toxic gas, or maybe an ancient indian burial ground. I dunno.

But anyway, I'm gonna call an electrician tomorrow. If things go well he'll get the problem fixed quickly. If not, then the house will burn down and the curse will be lifted. Either way, it's a good thing.

Well, I didn't make it. I forgot to post something last night, mostly due to the fact that I was very tired when I got home last night. I don't know if that was due to the fact that I'm getting old or the fact that I'm fighting a sinus infection, but I do know that it was late and I didn't even think about the blog.

Well, I did send a couple of people to my blog, so i did think about it, but I didn't think about writing for it.

Oh, and as I'm writing this, I thought about something that I want to say about today. It's Saturday, and I have to wonder: what happened to cartoons? None of the network stations in Atlanta show cartoons on Saturday morning. There are Saturday morning cartoons shown on Sunday morning, but nothing on Saturday. I have no idea why this has happened. Apparantly somewhere along the way someone at the local affiliate's offices decided that there were no children in metro Atlanta on Saturday morning. Either that, or children these days don't like to watch cartoons.

In either case, I'm a little saddened by this fact. Some of my fondest memories, as well as some of the events that formed my life, can be found in the moments of a Saturday morning cartoon. True, there isn't a Looney Tunes on network television at the moment--and no, Lunatics Unleashed doesn't count--but there are some entertaining shows out there still. I just wish that I could watch one this morning.

Suddenly it's 1982.

I say this only because I see my wife, sitting on the floor of our rec room, surrounded by a variety of game manuals, preparing an adventure for this Saturday night.

When I first started playing role-playing games I was a sophomore in high school. When I first started running a game, I was a junior. I would spend hours--more hours than I spent on homework, if I'm forced to be totally honest--scouring through the four Dungeons and Dragons manuals that were out at the time, carefully constructing game worlds and scenarios for others to enjoy. And I loved it.

The act of creation is cathartic. Amazingly so, in fact. It gives you a sense of accomplishment unlike almost any other thing. To have your ideas brought to life in any way brings a sense of satisfaction, a belief in yourself, and a sense of completion. Something that you thought of has seen its way to the finish, or at least the start of a finish.

You see, unlike most stories, when you are playing in a role-playing game, you aren't the only storyteller. If you are running a game, you are simply presenting the situation where others get to step in and tell you what happens. You are the archetect of the tale, but in this case the characters truly have their own lives. The players are just as important as the gamemaster, since they dictate what happens.

Of course, the gamemaster is still the archetect of what happens. So, even if you have the best players in the world, the story can still fall flat if the gamemaster hasn't created the right tale. Or worse, if they have too much ego involved in the game. I was in one game where, when the story reached its pinnacle after several weeks of play, the characters got to sit out and watch as the gamemaster told us what happened in the game. Our characters were nothing more than sideline participants as he told us--over the course of almost two hours--what happened around us. Perhaps the worst game that I've been in.

Another gamemaster was so egotistical that if the player's in his game ever came up with a way around what he had set for his plot, he found a way to cancel what they did. At every turn, the players were upstaged by the antagonists of the game, making everything the players did with their characters seem futile and pointless. The players lost interest and the game lost all manner of direction. (Sadly, that game is still going on, and I dread having to go back to playing it...and I hope that gamemaster doesn't read my blog, because he is a good friend and I don't want to hurt him.)

And now I sit here, watching my wife prepare for the game that I will play in two days from now. She is an amazing storyteller. She has a unique voice and a powerful imagination. And she runs a hell of a game. That's not just me saying it because I love her, either; all of the players in her game feel the same. She has been able to create something that we all look forward to playing. And she prepares better than anyone I know. Far better than I ever have.

Still, no matter how much preperation you do, you can't control what others do with what you lay before them. But if you prepare well, and you have the right mindset and trust in your players, you can create a storytelling experience unlike any other that is offered in this world today.

I've been playing role-playing games for over 26 years, and I love it to this day. Sitting here seeing my wife happily immersed in her game creation moments only tells me that the stories that in my future are only beginning. And I couldn't be happier.

Well, I said that I was going to post something every day, so here I am. And that's pretty much the only reason that I'm posting this one, because I am in a really bad mood, and I don't feel like sharing why.

So, let's remember that sometimes people have bad days.

So anyway...

I'm heading to work in about two hours, which wouldn't seem that odd if I hadn't got home from work about an hour ago. You see, tonight is the night that Stephen King releases his first comic. Well, I guess you could argue that it isn't directly his comic, but it is a comic of his imagining.

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born is the new series from King's imagination, brought about by one of his aides, and a couple of comic veterans. Is it any good? Beats me, I haven't read it yet. But I'm going to go sell it at midnight tonight. And I will sell it. There were enough calls about it today to convince me that we will have people showing up at our store to buy this book. I'm all for it.

However, we can't sell them the other books that come out on Wednesday. Sure, any time after midnight is technically Wednesday, but there is a clause in our contract that says that we can't sell them before 9:00 am on Wednesday. Which means that there are going to be some people who show up wanting to get all of their books for tomorrow, and we have to tell them no. I hate that. I understand it, but I hate it. I don't like to look at a customer and tell them that they can't buy something, and worse, there are going to be people who think that I'm going to be doing it just to be mean.

So, in about two hours I'm heading to work. And I'm going to be happy to be selling books to happy fans who are showing up to get the first crack at what is bound to be a very popular comic. But I'm far more concerned that what I'm not going to sell is going to be the issue, and I hate that.

Here's hoping that I don't leave anyone disappointed.

Someone recently said that I don't post enough on my blog. So, for the next week, I'm going to make a post a day. I mean, why not? I don't promise anything inciteful, but at least it will be voluminous.

A week or so ago I mentioned the network shows that I've recently been watching. If you don't remember, then...well, then why are you reading this? I don't have that many posts. Just go back a couple and read. I can wait.

hmmmhmmmhmmm...hmmmhmmhmmmm.

Okay, welcome back. Anyway, I like the show Scrubs. I watch it every Thursday. But the other day I wanted to watch it some more, so I watched two straight hours of Scrubs. On four different channels.

There is just something odd about being able to channel surf from one area of the dial (does that even make sense anymore? Does anyone actually use a dial to change channels these days?) to the opposite area of the dial, and watch different episodes of the same series four times in a row.

I haven't been paying too much attention before now, but this seems to happen more than I realized. It seems that there are only a few shows that make the rounds at any given time, and as such you end up getting a small selection of shows being shown again and again. If you like what's on, that's a good thing, but if you don't...well, just realize that in a few years, or maybe months, there will be a new group of shows that you can see. For a couple of hours at a time.