Good morning. It’s a rainy morning here in northeastern Ohio, and I have the house to myself. Everyone is off to work and school allowing me to work on…well…whatever without having to speak to another individual. I enjoy this kind of quiet from time to time; the radio/podcasts/music playing while I putter around. It allows me to clear my head.

This morning I have three things going:

• I made roasted chicken last night, and I have bones and other pieces-parts left over. I tossed in some veggies and now there is chicken broth cooking on the stove. I’ll dish that up into some soup cubes (an ice tray made in 1 cup compartments) for using later.
• I’m baking some Italian bread from a recipe out of my wife’s family cookbook. I wanted to learn how to knead bread properly, so practice, practice, practice. The family does not seem to mind based on the consumption.
• Dinner tonight is chicken sheet-pan fajitas, so I’m marinating the chicken thighs in lime and cilantro.

Podcasts

During all of this, I have my podcasts going. I’ve known this for a long time, but retirement (or at least not working at the moment) has shown me that I am not a YouTube guy. I watch TV to shut my brain down into low gear. When I want to engage, I read or listen to audio. So that’s going in the background.

Today’s podcasts;

• NPR’s Up First
• Maintenance Phase
• History Hack
• Today, Explained
• The Ezra Klein Show
• Lair of Secrets
• The Sporkful

I’ve been looking for a decent gaming podcast to catch up on the industry, but so far, I’ve not really enjoyed anything I’ve heard. If you have any suggestions, drop me a line.

Projects Update

I’ve got two writing projects underway which are on a slow simmer at the moment:

• My friend David Moore reached out to work together on a campaign world he’s had floating in his head for a while. We have a git repo set up and we drop new files into it from time to time, just trying to keep the project moving.
• I have something I’ve dubbed The August Project which is a from-scratch campaign setting intended for D&D5e, or at least the most recent SRD. I’m using James D’Amato’s book The Ultimate RPG Game Masters Worldbuilding Guide to give the process some structure. This is less about creating some sort of magnum opus and more about knocking the rust off the machinery and building a regular pratice of writing. Still…I have Ideas(tm) people. Ideas.

Other than that, not much to report today. How are things on your end? What’s exciting you these days?