The Kobold in the Cellar

     This is the first installment in a series of adventures specifically written by Chrissy for the purpose of playing with children. Min maxers are not welcome here.

     The Kobold in the Cellar is perfect for first level characters.

     Start with this music

     The story takes place in the Red Dragon Inn, a small place in a little village called Willow Creek. The village has many houses, a few businesses, and a small creek that flows all year long.

     The characters are in the tavern doing their thing, when they hear word that the innkeeper has some work for them.

     But the innkeeper isn't behind the bar, instead his wife Becky is there, an overweight and overworked woman with long hair pulled into a bun.

      Sitting at the bar is a young man named Leif. He's unshaven and unkempt, and drinking the cheapest beer dregs the Inn has to offer. Leif hears things at the bar and is a good source of rumors. He will accompany the characters if they need some help, is a level 1 fighter that wields a dagger and a shortsword. He wears no armor, as he lost some of it gambling and sold the rest for beer money.

      Becky shouts rudely for her husband when the characters ask her about the work that needs to be done, and Mr. Henderson appears from the kitchen. He is a very large man wearing a big greasy apron, which he dries his hands on. He tells the characters that he has a theft problem in the cellar of the inn,  and he thinks it might be rats. He wants the characters to go take care of them, and will pay a reward.

     The cellar of the Inn is a large rectangular room. On the left are bags and bags of flour, dried fruit and vegetables,  and beyond that a large rack spanning the wall of wine and mead of different ages. On the right are boxes in disarray, and beyond that many barrels of beer. 

     As the characters round the corner they are attacked by three kobolds.

      After the battle, spot check (8), if successful there is a tunnel behind the far side of the wine rack where the kobolds came in.

     The characters tell Mr. Henderson what they found. In return, he pays them three silver for each kobold killed. If Leif is with the party, Leif takes 4 silver from the loot and heads to the bar.

     The next day, the town magistrate finds the party. His name is Oglethorpe, and you get the impression that he is not just an elected official, but rather, a resident who genuinely cares about the community. He tells the party that later on the evening Mr. Henderson discovered that the inn's savings box had been stolen,  presumably by the kobolds, and could the characters find it? Oglethorpe says that Mr. Henderson has offered a magic item as a reward, and that the town will give them a place to live if the characters can take care of the kobold threat permanently.

     The adventurers set out to find the kobold nest, following a trail of destruction through the tunnel under the inn. After an hour of travel, some of which was crawling throigg the tunnel, they come upon a narrow entrance to a cave. The sounds of kobold activity can be heard echoing from within.

     Play this music 

     The Nest: As the adventurers enter the cave, they find themselves in a large chamber filled with kobolds. The creatures are armed and dangerous, and they immediately attack the intruders. The adventurers must fight their way through the kobold forces, facing traps and obstacles along the way.

 

    The Boss Battle: 

Play this music 

     At the back of the chamber, the adventurers face off against the kobold leader, a cunning and powerful foe. The battle is intense, but the adventurers ultimately emerge victorious. With the kobold leader defeated, the rest of the nest scatters, and the adventurers are free to search the cave for any valuable treasures.

     The Reward The adventurers return to Willow Creek and present their victory to the village elder. He thanks them for their bravery and offers them the promised reward. The village is now at peace, and the adventurers have made a name for themselves as the heroes of Willow Creek.

      From here, there are some additional rumors about a wizard in a tower who has been performing experiments on young people that he charms to his tower.

     Only to find out that he was trying to create a slave to pilot a spelljammer he acquired.

Where did all the Supermoms go?

Last week I was at the park with the youngest one. He needs exercise, and he loves to play with rocks and sticks. So the park is a natural outlet for him. 

It was a nice day, about 78 degrees, sunny, and clear. It was early in the morning, but after I had taken all the older kids to school, so not too early. Here in Florida you have to hit parks early in the day before it gets too hot, and we have been going to the park early for years and years, since the oldest was a tot.

But we were there all alone. No other kids at all. Just older adults playing tennis or giving out religious pamphlets.

Do you think the parents and grandparents were all working? It seems odd that over the years there went from some kids at the park to none at this time of day. They say the unemployment rate is very low nowadays. Do you think that's the reason?

Are the kids better off for that, or not?

Overnight Ferment (Fake) Sourdough Dill Bread

         The best thing about this bread is that it has all the benefits of being sourdough bread without the necessity and mess of maintaining a starter, something that I did for years. What are the benefits of sourdough? Better gluten for a better structure, better taste. To make this bread, you mix some of the ingredients together the day before you make the bread, let it sit out overnight on the counter, and then add the rest of the ingredients for the loaf. This is called making a poolish. Dill bread is exceptionally tasty and makes for a mean grilled cheese sandwich.

For day one:

One cup of water

One teaspoon yeast

One cup of flour

For day two:

Take the day one ingredients and add:

2 1/2 cups of flour

Three tablespoons water

2 teaspoons of dill

1 teaspoon of sugar

1 teaspoon of salt

2 or 3 tablespoons of oil, I use lard

Put into the breadmaker on 1.5 pound setting.

This State Park is the Perfect Zombie Apocalypse Survival Location

      Have you ever considered what you would do to survive the coming zombie apocalypse? That's a loaded question, because it implies that there is going to be a future apocalypse requiring survival. Still, it's a fun thought experiment, and I have often wondered what would happen if there was a societal reset. Who would be the survivors and would they prosper?

     Ellie Schiller State Park in Homosassa Springs is my go-to for a survival situation. Clean water, mostly gated park, with the possibility of growing an abundance of land-based food. In the coldest part of winter, manatees float lazily around. During the warmer months, the place is teeming with fish. Not that I'm saying I would eat the manatees, but in a survival situation who knows what would be on the table.

     I would bring my rabbits with me and some of the water hyacinth. Water hyacinth is a survival food for sure. I would probably bring the cannas too. They grow in water pretty well.

Early Retirement Extreme

 

    

     I finished reading all of the blog posts from one of the first financial independence blogs, called early retirement extreme. Jacob, the author, does a fairly decent job of pointing out one way to get financial independence, which is to slowly adjust your lifestyle expenses downward so that your investments can support your life. 

     While he never really gets into the meat and potatoes of his investments, he does state that they are all financial and from earned income, rather than inherited or heavily real estate based, which I appreciate. He speaks a lot about his journey, with his wife, as they move from an expensive apartment into an RV, which I appreciate.

     And then things go sideways.  He gets a lot comments from people that he is not really retired because he does things that he wants to do that also earn money, like editing specialized scientific texts and writing online for cash. Then the posts slow down, and Jacob sells the website. He later writes to sat that he and his wife have moved into a real house and he found an amazing dream job.

     So all the posts have a happy ending, whether true or half true. 

     I have no doubt that all the wussipants naysayers on the internet cajoled Jacob into retreating from writing, sadly. Or perhaps he came to the end of his inner content, which, if true, is fine. I would like to read his book sometime when I get the chance.

     That being said, this website is about one man's journey with financial independence. It does not really talk about investing other than to stay heavily stock invested.  

     One thing Jacob doesn't talk about much is that he retires from working but his wife still works. She splits all the bills with him and does half of the shopping and cooking. While I think that is admirable and something we should all aspire to, it decreases his cost of living by half. Or it increases his cost of living due to needing to be near her job. It's unclear what the case is with them during the time of the writings, but it is interesting.  

Save Money by Hand-Washing All Your Laundry

     One of the ways I have been experimenting with getting things done is to wash all of my laundry by hand. Supposedly clothes will last forever that way,  and I find it especially helpful for washing those delicate synthetic clothes like my work uniforms. 

     Now, I'm not saying that I wash all of the family's clothing by hand. For one, it would take me quite a while to do that. Each load takes at least 10 minutes, and the overly large laundry basket full of clothes would take about 2 hours to wash. Really that's not longer than the machine takes to wash that amount of clothing. For two, spinning the laundry agitator takes quite a bit of upper arm strength, as I don't have a really good counter to use the washer with so the suction cups are usually not deployed. One arms spins the agitator, one arm stabilizes the washer. 

     I think it would be pretty easy to use outside sitting on the ground, or perhaps on a picnic or folding table. It has a small drain pipe which could easily hook into a larger and more permanent drain pipe, to take the laundry water away from the table area. Right now I have it next to the sink for easy drainage, and when I'm finished using the washer I drain the soapy water into the sink.

      What kind of soap works the best? After doing a little bit of experimenting, I have decided that standard clothes washing detergent isn't awesome. It tends to be hard to rinse clean and also it really dries out my skin if I manually squeeze the extra water out of the clothes. What I really like to use is Meyers hand soap, which has a nice smell and rinses well. I previously used to make my own laundry detergent, and I may start doing that again in the future. Homemade laundry detergent, recipe featured here, has washing soda and borax as main ingredients so will require significant rinsing. I recently bought some bar soap to use on the clothes, if using fels naphtha or something similar you would grate a half teaspoon of flakes for each small load.

     One obstacle I have yet to overcome is wringing, right now I do this by hand.

     Whether washing cothes by hand or by wasing machine, bra hooks still catch on everything.

The Wonderwash, the Best Washing Machine for sale at Amazon

The Prosper Experiment

      Years ago I decided to try out peer to peer lending as an experiment to see how to invest some money. I originally started with $100 in lending club and $100 in Prosper. Since that time, lending club stopped allowing Florida residents to be lenders, so have dumped them. Prosper seems to not have a problem with my residency

     In the last 6 years I have added more lending money to my Prosper account, so that I now have a total of $1000 invested. The money has grown, it says that its growing at an 8 percent return rate, but the balance shows that I have $1400, all invested in loans. That's kind of amazing, because other than the occasional email statements I had completely forgotten that I had this account. And Prosper had been quietly reinvesting my money into new notes.

     The downside to this investment is that it is really quite difficult to get your investment back quickly. To withdraw your money, you have to turn off auto investing, and then wait. And wait. And wait. Which makes sense, as most of these loans are over a 5 year time frame. As your money becomes liquid again it can quickly be transferred back into your checking account.

Egg Suzette

     One day I went deep diving into my antique cook book collection to try to find out some more interesting recipes to cook eggs, as I had a surplus of duck eggs to deal with. We had been loving the scrambled eggs and egg salad sandwiches. But honestly, I was getting tired of it. 

     But check this out, the finished picture is on the bottom left.

     Yep, you got it. It's deviled potatoes made with eggs and sour cream. The kids also love this recipe. I like to scoop out the cooked inner potato, give that to the rabbits, then pour the eggs mixture into and around the potato shells. Then add cheese and bake in the oven for 20 to 30 minutes until the eggs are cooked.

     The internet says Princess Diana used to love this recipe and would eat it every morning for breakfast.

Another kiddie pool water garden

     Decided to put together a nice little pond garden at a friend's house so as to have something to look at. This served the purpose of encouraging me to put to good use an extra kiddie pool and to repot some overgrown cannas. Both the cannas and the water hyacinth are edible perennials that look incredible when planted in the right place.
     The pool was simply thrown onto that spot, which receives full sun for about 7 hours a day and dappled for the remainder. It has no overflow holes in it, so if a storm comes it is possible for water hyacinth to be washed out and released into the yard. I felt comfortable doing this, because this area of this property is not near any natural or unnatural standing or moving water sources. Water hyacinth is known for its exponential growth here in Florida. I like it because it is edible after cooking and edible raw for the rabbits, plus high in plant protein. It also has an amazing purple flower sometimes.
     The Cannas were replanted in layers of rabbit manure, then mulch, then dead leaves lining the bottom of the pots. I have been perfecting this mix for a long time, and it works well for the cannas. The manure is so high in nutrition that the water in the pool promptly browned up, causing supergrowth of the water hyacinth. Not only that but a few days later tadpoles spontaneously appeared in the water. I suspect the parents were tree frogs, likely the Cuban tree frogs that also live at my place.
     I also tossed a mosquito dunk into that water. I know, it's got genetically modified bacteria in it, but it is the most natural simplest prevention of mosquitoes outside of seeding fish. With the virus running rampant I wasn't about to hit the pet store, even supposing they would have something that would be able to survive in water that was likely to get very warm. Words have been said about burying the kiddie pool so the plants are more at ground level, but words are just that.
     I look forward to building more of these in the future. The kiddie pool gardens seem to be a great way to keep the cannas warm in the winter and hydrated in the dry season. Maintenance is the same as every other garden - weeds have to be removed, extra water hyacinth may have to be eaten or composted, mosquitoes will have to be controlled.
   
   

Lake Louisa State Park Picture 7