Three Quests

Hello Internet.

This weekend was one of those weekends that saw all members of this family scattered to the Four Winds. Friday saw all schools in the area - including mine and the girls' - being cancelled due to insanely cold weather (-20 with wind chill, far too cold for kids to be waiting at bus stops and walking to school.) That afternoon, Kris ventured north to somewhere outside of Gaylord to a friend's family member's cabin on a lake (somewhere) for a low-key Mom Weekend (they've hit up this place before, a few years ago, for one of their not-nearly-as-cool-as-Brocation weekends.) She only took like three pics (she's horrible with pictures), but it more or less had seven or eight wives sitting around in pajamas, doing nails, listening to 90s music, and drinking wine for an entire weekend.

Sounds boring to me, but whatever - happy wife, happy life.

Meanwhile, Abby accompanied her best friend, Ella, and her mom, Courtney, up to Northern Michigan University up in the U.P.'s Marquette (where Courtney and her husband went to college.) Courtney had been wanting to take Ella up there for a hockey game this winter, and decided that this was the weekend to do so. . . regardless of the fact all her friends were away on that Mom weekend, and there was a giant snow storm forecasted to barrel down on the region (which you'll see in the following pics.) They invited Abby along because, as I've said before on multiple occasions, our kids are basically siblings at this point.

That left Alayna and I to hold down the fort here in Midland. She ended up having to work most of the weekend, which was good for her 'cause she's been wanting to recoup some hours after a dry spell over the Holidays which depleted her spending account. Yours Truly, therefore, more or less had the run of the house all weekend, which was f***ing AWESOME. I didn't have any errands or work crap to take care of, so my schedule was wide open to undertake the one, single obligation I had for the next three days. . .

Dungeons and Dragons.

WMU, 2002. Left to Right: Russell, Yours Truly, Adam, Mikey and Zack.

I never got the appeal of this back in the day, I always thought it sounded like nerd crap for dorks (and it still kinda is.) I had some friends get into it back in high school, and I tried it out once back in the late '90s, but it really wasn't for me. Thirty years passed and I didn't think twice about every playing it again, until one day, about a week ago, when an old college buddy (and former roommate/band member) of mine, Zack, texted me and asked if I'd be willing to join him and two other of our friends from Western Michigan University - Russell and Mikey - in a DnD campaign. I asked how he planned on accomplishing this, seeing how I'm in Midland, Russell is in Grand Rapids, and the other two are in the greater Detroit area, and he said they were going to do it all via Zoom and a few different online apps.

So I said 'screw it,' and signed up.

I'll get into the super-nerdy details regarding all of this later when the pics come up, but HOLY SHIT was it ever fun. Had I known how much f***ing fun this was I would have done it years ago, nerdy or not. I'm too old to care about stuff like that anymore.

Anyway, here's some pics and video detailing how the Hough Family spend their three-day weekend, scattered across the snowy state of Michigan.

Behold. . 

Abby and the female Johnsons hit up a Starbucks on their way north Friday afternoon, because no feminine undertaking would be complete without it.

With Kris and Abby already on the road to their respective weekend destinations, Alayna and Samson joined me in the Study to listen to some vinyl and drink some coffee in the Study.

A couple hours later, Abby prepares to cross the frozen straits of Mackinac (hard pass for me, this looks terrifying.)

Castle Rock (I haven't been there since like 2022, I think - that Brocation we did Mackinac Island.)

As Courtney drove further into the Upper Peninsula, the roads got dicier and dicier. Multiple 'highways' (if you can even call them that up there) were closed off and impassable, so she had to take a bunch of alternate ways up in order to reach Marquette. The amount of snowfall up there is absolutely insane; the pics you see here are not hills or rock formations, but drifts of snow.

Carving a path through the wilds of the north.

I used Google Gemini to add an Imperial AT-AT to this random pic Abby took from the window as they continued their drive north. I think it makes it cooler.

That evening, the three of them went out to the Berry Events Center for their scheduled hockey game. . .

(These two often add text to their social media posts like this - must be a Snapchat thing or something.)

Not sure what's going on in these videos, I just took them off Abby's Google Photos. . .

Walking back to the car, a block or two away, after the game, the weather had fallen far below zero (with the wind chill), and Abby spotted a bunch of locals clearly unprepared for the weather. Boys will be boys.

This is, like, the one pic Kris took all weekend (aside from two pics of her friends doing stuff that, to me, wasn't noteworthy at all, but I guess you had to be there in order to understand why the pic was being taken.)

After leaving NMU, Courtney and the girls continued driving west in order to get to her dad's house, where they'd be spending the next day and night. Abby was bundled up for warmth, chilled to the bone after having to walk a couple blocks out in the U.P. cold. She later told us that was the coldest she's ever been in her entire life.

One last selfie of these two weirdos at the end of the night.

The next morning, Courtney and the girls and got up to once again hit the road for a small day excursion up to Houghton/Hancock, halfway up the Keewanaw Peninsula.

Backseat homies.

Meanwhile, back in Midland, Yours Truly had some coffee on the couch while Samson kept watch over the front yard. Ever vigilant.

Later that morning, I hopped on Discord with (clockwise from top left) Russel, Zack and Mikey for the launch of our DnD campaign. All three of these guys - especially Mikey - are well-versed in how this game works, so I was just kinda along for the ride. Russell's setup was badass: we used this in-app rolling bot on Discord for dice rolling (which is how one determines successes and failures in the game - whether you can pick a lock, strike an opponent, decipher ancient texts, etc.), we used another website for maps and character placement, and yet another website for character information in order to keep track of our stats and inventory. Required me to use two different computers, but once all set up it was perfect.

Russell generated AI images of our characters for use on the online maps during gameplay (so we could keep track of where the characters were in relation to everything going on in the game.) My dude is a Rogue, with a Thief specialty, so he's lightly armored and relies on dexterity and stealth; good at picking locks, sneaking around, springing traps, infiltrating, that sorta thing. Can't use magic at all, but make up for it with swordsmanship and shitty one-liners.

Z-Baby's character is a Fighter, so all brawn and zero magic. . . basically Zack in college.

Mikey's character is a Warlock with a noble background, so he's our resident spellcaster - whipping fireballs around all the time.

Russell's the Dungeon Master, so he's the one driving the story, playing the enemies, setting up the maps and organizing everything. He's got like four monitors running during gameplay, using various AI platforms for dialogue and story descriptors - it's pretty impressive. He also is playing a character as well, a half-orc Paladin, which is like a Knight with healing abilities (which comes in handy when the rest of us take crossbow bolts to the shoulder, which happened to my guy in the opening part of our campaign.)

A screenshot of the map screen, which started out with all of us locked up in the bowels of a dungeon. Russell applies a 'fog of war' to the map - see the circles above - that black out parts of the map we haven't gotten to yet, opposed to having everything revealed right from the get go. Makes it more realistic in gameplay, and all of us being able to move characters about the map is super helpful when playing online. We played for about four hours when, due to the frigid temperatures Michigan is experiencing this weekend, the pipes in Russell's washing machine burst and he had water leaking all over his floor. So we scheduled to continue the game the following weekend, and will hopefully be playing on weekends for the foreseeable future. Like I said, this game is beyond nerdy, but incredibly fun. . . and being in my mid-40s now, I'm too old to give a shit about being labeled a nerd for playing it.

Back up in the U.P., Abby and the female Johnsons were driving up the Keewanah Peninsula towards Houghton/Hancock. This is Abby showing off her gas station snacks, which doesn't look ideal for one's stomach, but whatever.

Nap time.

Not sure what all they ended up doing in Houghton while they were there, but they got a couple pics posted in front of the bridge that spans the river dividing the two towns.

I can't imagine driving on those roads in the winter time, when we went up there a few years ago during the summer Kris' van could barely make it up the steep inclines on bone-dry roads. You couldn't pay me enough to live up there during the winter.

Eating dinner. . . somewhere. Ella looks thrilled.

That evening Sophie came over to spend the night with Alayna, and after dropping her off Morgan hung out for a few drinks with me and we listened to some Rat Pack on vinyl while having a couple drinks. Erik, Mitch and Collier were out bar-hopping at dive bars around Pinconning, but the two of us didn't feel quite up to that (we sent this pic to the three of them after getting one of them sitting at some towny bar.)

That evening, Courtney took Abby and Ella to some arcade somewhere, I assume Houghton 'cause there's not a lot to her hometown, which is about the size of Farwell.

She was probably able to buy a pencil topper or silly putty or some shit with all these tickets, arcades are total scams.

Kris and I are seeing Rise Against at the Soaring Eagle Casino on March 14th, the same day we're headed to the Clare Irish Festival (which we'll have to cut short in order to head to Mt. Pleasant.) Tickets were like $92, which I'd have no problem paying for some bands, but not Rise Against (a punk band that I really like, but wouldn't pay that much to see.) Fortunately, Morgan's boss gets a few complimentary tickets to every concert at the Soaring Eagle, and gives them to his employees for free on a first-come basis, so we were able to get them free of charge. Can't complain with a free punk concert.

While chatting on the Sausage Pad text thread later that night, after Morgan had left, someone mentioned our old, inflatable mascot, Suckie Fish, which we acquired from Damon's mom's house at one point (forget how and when.) We would take it with us on all of our group adventures throughout college - Key West, road trips, etc. and they wrongly assumed it was long gone. I sent them this pic of Suckie Fish to assure them otherwise (I hold on to everything, I'm the lore master in every group I'm a part of.)

Abby's social media is filled with videos like this one (as is all her friends' - their generation is weird.)

Later that night, back at Courtney's dad's house, sitting around playing some kinda game.

Yet another video for TikTok, interrupted by Ella's grandpa's dog. Thus concludes another weekend for the Houghs - we'll see you guys next time.

- Brian