No time for love, Doctor Jones!
or, "Where the devil have you been, Grim?!"
One aspect of my job is that is it can go from zero to sixty in an instant. One minute I'll be happily daydreaming about a post for my friends on Choose Death and the next I'll be drowning beneath a wave of students, faculty and parents.

I wear a lot of hats for my school and one of them is school nurse. But those lines blur quite a bit when you realize that in the eyes of the student, I'm not "school nurse" but "that guy who makes wrong things right." (This especially true of the younger grades.) Forgot your lunch? Ask Mr. Stroh. Have a tummy ache because one of your parents is out of town? Ask Mr. Stroh. Your parents forgot we have early dismissal on Fridays and forgot to pick you up? You get the idea.

Early last week I heard running in the halls and the voices of children calling my name.

"Someone fell off the roof!"

Our building is three stories tall, plus change.

Zero, meet sixty.

I make it outside, and it turns out that it wasn't our building, but one of the houses next door. A house was getting having roofing work done, and the workers weren't wearing harnesses. We stabilize the man who fell, call in an ambulance, and get all the kids back inside. As I sat with the man, waiting for the ambulance, I was struck by an awareness of just how little I could really accomplish in this situation. The children had seen something terribly wrong take place in the universe, and they needed me to correct it, but I'm just Harley Stroh, average guy numero 6,394,250,575. They needed me to tell them that J, who had fallen two stories onto concrete, would be okay, but that was out of my hands.

I went to the hospital on my lunch break to see if I could find out J's condition. Of course the staff wouldn't tell me anything, but I was able to puzzle out who his relatives were, and met them in the waiting room. I offered my condolences, but things didn't look so good. I checked in with the remaining roofers the next morning, and it was more of the same. Of course, they were all wearing harnesses then.

So if you've been wondering where I've been, there's the answer. Special apologies to Wallace, Noise and Alrunic, who have been trying to run a PBP game in my absence.

Now back to your regularly scheduled blog.

And if you're going up someplace high, damnit, wear your safety gear.

Goblin Tails, in stores now!
Just when you thought I was a chronic liar, Goblin Tails is here! Or at least, it was here. I sent out copies sent out to all the trusting folks that pre-ordered, stocked the local bookstores, and sent the remainder off to Chris and Christina so they'll have copies for NECRO. I didn't even keep a copy for myself. I've put in another print order, and made sure I reserved enough for the authors and artists.

What's up with RPGNow?
The hard working folks at RPGNow are fluent in English, and are very kind. I'm fluent in English most of the time, play poorly with others and am easily frustrated. So why we're having trouble getting the GT listings straight is a complete mystery to me. But I'm working on it.

GT Release Party, NYC...
...was a complete blast. Think dark dance club, lots of shiny, black clothing and all the Red Bull and vodka you can drink. In one of life's perfect ironies, the club was non-smoking (?!), but they had a smoke machine running all night long. Heh.

I'm such an old geek; the Sisters of Mercy get me onto the dance floor every time.

Certain subway exits were shut down due to 9/11, so getting home was a lesson in jumping turnstiles. We were left trying to puzzle out subways maps at 4 in the morning, making it clear that all those vodka and Red Bulls might not have been such a great idea after all.

Eberron
I had my first Eberron dream last night, from the point of view of Peter Archer. I (Peter) was going through the submissions and decided to buy Kam's. I'm not sure if this qualifies as a nightmare, but I remember waking up and being pretty bummed out until I figured out it was only a dream. ;)