D is for the Dice on my Desk and Deliveries

D

Yes, I have this set of dice.  No, they are not the ones on my desk.  I couldn't find a picture of those.

Ah, the dice on my desk.  There they sit, cluttered up with telephone cables, old post-it notes, pencils, tippex bottles, dead lighters, security passes, the wooden penguin I use to hold my headphones, the exciting geode I like to keep there, the mini-stapler, the funny putty, the copy of Sims 3 Pets that broke my computer, my ashtray and all the other paraphenalia of a computerised life.

These are my GMing dice.  As distinct from my player dice.  Those live downstairs.  They even have a bag.  Lucky them.  The desk dice just sit there waiting for the many moments throughout a day when I'll need to roll them. 

Unlike a lot of gamers, I'm not particularly anal about people touching my dice.  This is not reciprocal in the home group.  My rolling is so universally horrible as a player that everyone does their utmost to keep their dice away from me in case I infect them.  I do see their point.

Everyone knows that a die has a finite number of high rolls in it.  If someone borrows your die and rolls well with it, that's one good roll gone.  Everyone also knows that bad luck is contagious.  Don't let the person who spends entire sessions rolling single digits touch your treasured dice.  Particularly don't let them near your lucky d20.  Logically it would make more sense to pass your lucky dice to the unlucky player and get them to use up the stock of horrible rolls for you, but nobody seems to do this. 

Not my study.  Nor my desk.  It looks good though and I've always loved this picture.  Vittore Carpaccio painted it on the wall of the Scuole degli Schiavoni in Venice. 

The desk belonged originally to my grandfather and then later my father.  It's heavy, Victorian and much loved.  I love the fact that it has seen my grandfather planning out his assault on the Derby fruit and vegetable market and my father think his way through the early days of cybernetics.  I love that it has now come to me and I use it in ways grandfather would have loved and my father predicted.

On a random, but irate note, today I must wait in for a delivery.  Joy of joys.  I swear some delivery firms just wait around the corner in their vans, telescopic lens trained on the house to watch for the one moment you are in the loo and can't answer the door.  That is when they hurry past, dropping a  "Sorry you were out" note through the letter box.  Then they drive away laughing, leaving you to negotiate the minefield of automated phone system hell.

"Hi!  We're so glad you have to call us about the enormous box we couldn't put through the door.  Just tap in the 13 digit number at the top of the card and we'll be right with you."

Tap in 13 digit number.  Wait for inevitable cheery "I didn't quite catch that, would you like to try again?"


"Great!  I have some options for you.  To select a new time for your delivery, press 1.  To collect your delivery from our depot, press 2.  To get your delivery delivered to another address, press 3.  To have your delivery destroyed by our special services team, press 4 ..."  

And so on.  At no point does the option "speak to an actual person" appear in all this.

I cannot possibly be the only person who finds this sort of thing drives them into a tooth-gnashing rage.  Support group anyone?