Back again

So, as you may know if you look at the last post, I moved over to my old Wordpress blog for several months.  The thing is, it felt like nobody moved with me. In addition, for whatever reason I found the Wordpress blog interface to be full of bells and whistles that not only did I not want, but also made it harder to write.
So I blogged less.  And nobody read it.  Around the same time I stopped reading blogs, which meant I was losing a lot of inspiration as well.  So this part of my hobby life basically dried up and died.

But, I am gaming, probably more than I have in a while.  So what have I been up to?
Roleplaying Games
My regular gaming group has been slogging slowly through the Dungeon of the Mad Mage, and honestly it has really not hit its stride.  We are only on the second level, and the odd bits of randomness is getting to be a bit much sometimes.  For example one room is full of water, which rushes down upon the players when the door opens.  The book texts says it is the result of a miscast spell in the past, but why would that be something the players could ascertain.  They have begun just shrugging stuff off and soldiering on.  I'm not sure how long I can keep this going if it doesn't start to feel interesting to me.
In the last couple of months a group of college students from the local campus ministry house associated with my denomination approached me asking if I would be willing to run a D&D game for them.  Most of the players are novices except for my son, who grew up playing in my house game before going off to college.  Putting a campaign together from scratch for a mostly new group of players starting off at level one has done more to get my creative energies up than a lot of things lately.  It's still D&D, but I like fantasy well enough to find it interesting.  I'm putting together a sandbox-style campaign with lots of small adventure venues rather than one huge mega-dungeon, just to try out that style instead.
Wargaming
This is another area where I've seen a surprising amount of enthusiasm.  What every wargamer needs is a steady, regular opponent, and I was approached by a father and his son about playing them in the most recent edition of Warhammer 40K.  And I just want to say that while I have had a lot of problems with 40K in the past, the new edition is significantly simpler and more user-friendly than in the past (you own opinions may differ).  You can play a decent game of one or two hours with a small army and have fun, which is exactly what we are doing.  I painted up an Ork army to go up against their Space Marine and Death Guard armies that came with the starter set.  Now my daughter is showing interest, so who knows where that will end up...
Speaking of Macy, this morning she stated she was thinking of starting up her own D&D group.  She has a new friend, really the first real friend she's had in a while, and I think Macy is looking for things to do with her.  Apparently her friend finds Macy's stories about D&D interesting, so we will see what happens there too.
Real Life
Over the last year I started to put on a lot of weight.  I had stopped participating in my sport because of repeated head injuries, and the lack of regular exercise combined with no change in my diet was beginning to show.  It had gotten so bad that I was starting to show early signs of serious medical problems.  So last February I started to do real work about exploring my relationship with food and its connection to my emotional health and well-being, made some real changes, and dropped thirty five pounds in the process.  Presently I weigh less than I did ten or fifteen years ago and am eating better than I ever have.  I don't get to brag often, but this is something I'm pretty proud of.

Anyways, I'm back here (for the time being) and thanks for reading!  As always, comments welcome.