Spring is here. A-sa-pa-ring is here.

Life is Skittles and life is beer.

It's a song.

I love the spring.  All this new life and growth and warmer weather.  It's a fantastic time of the year.

Here are some updates:

First off, snakes.  Not too many at all.  Two, in fact.  But nice ones.

The Midland Brownsnake (although I recently learnt that it's just "The Brownsnake" now, since there are no discernible differences in traits between and locations; there are no subspecies.  It's just The Brownsnake).

Another Brownsnake from the same place; different day.  A little smaller, but I'll take it.

The American Bullfrog.  Quite a big one - just about eating size.  Taken from the same pool that the snakes were found in - the second snake I got was small enough to be a feasible meal for this chap.

American Toads.  Five of them taken out of the same pool a day later.  As I took these fellas literally across the road to release them into a ditch, two more toads - an American and a Fowler's - found their way to the pool.  It's more dangerous at this time of year, since they can get more easily trapped in the lower water of the pool.

The Mississippi Mud Turtle.  I found this one in a large, shallow puddle in my front garden.  I was wearing my water shoes at the time so, as it smugly cruised into the middle of the puddle, I called its bluff and waded in.  I put it in the boys' water table so they could see it - they loved it.  Kid 1 a little more apprehensive than Kid 2, but it was a fun hands-on session.

We have rabbits.  They're cute to watch, and if they reproduce too quickly, they'll be tasty to eat.  That's a win-win.

As well as the budding wildlife, I'm also doing some projects.  Nothing new there, really.  Two of them:

I picked up this old hatchet head for a dollar at a yard sale.  It was pretty rusty, but a nice bath of white wine vinegar and a scrub down with some wire wool got that sorted super fast.  I then hit it with 120 sandpaper (a little coarse for this job), with the intention of using fine wire wool after that to clean up any of the sandpapers scratches.  Of which there are many.

A good friend told me that I should use a buffing wheel on a bench grinder instead, so I'll be heading round to his place sometime soon to do just that.  Get this baby nice and shiny smooth before having another friend sharpen it like never before on his whetstones.

I think they're still called whetstones.  I've only ever read about it.

Using a whetstone for an hour in D&D will make your blade fine and give you a +1 to damage with that blade.  Fact.

I've been taking commissions for a few weeks/this past month.  I read recently that it's good to have three hobbies: One to keep you creative, one to keep you in shape, and one to make you money.  This is kind of the "keep creative" and "make money" hobbies rolled into one.  I'm having a pretty fun time making them.

People are sending me their clothes (usually jeans, which are actually the easiest thing to work with), and then I simply make them into these dolls.  It's a nice way to cherish your old clothes without having them take up and wardrobe/closet space.

THEY ALSO MAKE GREAT GIFTS TELL YOUR FRIENDS

Of course, along with the hobby topic, I am still as immersed in D&D theory as ever.  With no time to run games, I've taken to listening to a podcast for DMs (Dungeon Masters' Block) and I've started to design my own world.  I think it'll be fun and fascinating to be able to open up a completely original storyline based in my own world in this game system.

That said, here's my world.  I've made several copies of it so that I can mark all over it with notes about the countries, cities and populations, races and clans, etc.  I'm very excited.  This is the first world design I've taken on since my Masters, so it's going to be nice to get some dust off the ol' cogs.

And Kid 1 is super into drawing out maps right now, too, so we sit down and map things for ages.  Here he is putting some more countries and trade routes on one of mine.  It was very fun to work with him on this.

That's about it for this update.  It's hard for me to think of a more viable way to use this platform, since a lot of what I post in on Instagram and there are fewer people, it seems, who are interested in longer forms of information.  I'll keep pushing and seeing what it is that really makes me tick when I write about it and what responses I get and thoughts about posts in the future.

It's nicer to be able to post a few pictures at a time with separate updates and information for each, even though they're mostly on my Instagram feed.  But it'll also be nice to find something that I can keep on here exclusively, so if you have any ideas, please let me know.

I appreciate it.

Peace.