Down the Rabbit Hoel

Stories of family, creativity, and diverse distractions.

Save VS Boredom! Keeping Documents Interesting in an RPG

Sometimes in the course of a roleplaying game (RPG) the characters come across documents. These are often very important to the overall plot of the game. But documents are boring. Players don’t want to sit around and sift through pages of text to find important clues. They want to roll some dice and move on to the next scene.

You probably don’t want to write pages of text either. What’s a poor GM to do?

The birthday that almost snuck past us

So we were talking and realized that our blog had it’s second birthday! That’s right, we’ve been writing this blog for two years now! It has been an amazing ride and we are so glad you have all come along with us.

Restoring a Gerstner Tool Chest: Part Two

In part one of this set, I discussed how I acquired my Gerstner tool chest and the how I started the restoration process. I carefully taped over the hardware I couldn’t remove and cleaned the chest with Murphy’s Oil Soap and with a rag. I scrubbed it fairly hard to get all the dirt off. A bit of linseed oil to brought the shine back up on the chest.

Celebrating an anniversary of really shirttail relations

Sometimes it is easy to dive way, way too deep into the family history research. We’ve talked about shirt tail relations in a couple of other posts – here and here. Well, I think we may have found one of the most shirttail relations on the tree.

Restoring a Gerstner Tool Chest: Part One

A few years ago, Walt and I were at a model engineering show checking out the many cool engines and tools. There were a couple of dealers who had older Gerstner tool chests for sale. I managed to sweet talk one of them down in price a bit and walked away with a rough looking but solid tool chest – for my studio.

So who did Rhoda Hole marry?

In last week’s family history post, I talked about a relationship mix up for one of Walt’s great-great aunts. We had originally thought Rhoda had married a man named John Christy. Turns out that was another Rhoda Hole. So now we had to figure out who our Rhoda Hole had married.

Easy roast for dinner or sandwiches

As I mentioned in my post about cooking a turkey breast on the grill, we have found it is less expensive to cook up meat and then slice it for sandwiches rather than buy it at the deli. Here’s my easy roast recipe.

A good idea shot down with facts

I had originally planned to write about the anniversary of one of Walt’s great-great aunts, Rhoda Hole. Our information had her marrying John Christy on January 13, 1861. But it turned out not to be the case.

The family information we had told us that she was John Swisher Hole’s younger sister, born in 1846. The notes also mentioned that she had been married twice, the second time to someone with the last name of Monroe, but that was all the information we had.

My Favorite Tools: Gunsmith Screwdrivers

Have you ever had trouble with an ordinary slotted screwdriver, and the screws it purports to drive? Did it slip, and mar the object you were working on? Perhaps it left the slot scarred up, promising an even more difficult job the next time you have to take out that screw. I have had those troubles too. And the reason is simple: ordinary screwdrivers aren’t made to fit screws! That’s where gunsmith screwdrivers come in.

Using Online Genealogy Services as Research Sources

You most likely noticed that there have been a bunch of documents showing up on the blog lately – census reports, marriage certificates and the like. We have a temporary subscription to Ancestry© and I have been using it to gather information.  Using an online genealogy service like Ancestry© has the potential to provide huge amounts of information. They have family trees, census records, marriage records and other resources located in one place.

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