Week 25 of 2026: long days

This week I obtained the Nederland Dal Vrij subscription, which means I can travel all across The Netherlands outside of rush hour for just €49 per month. Apart from my usual trip to Utrecht on Wednesday I haven’t used it that much yet, but gives a great feeling of freedom. Oh and I guess we’re in the period of the year with the longest days. I love it.

Read

Slow progress in the same books, but progress it is.

• continued Gebarentaalwetenschap by Baker, Van den Bogaerde, Pfau and Schermer
• continued In Deeper Waters by F.T. Lukens

Played

On Tuesday I played the first session of Wanderhome at the Queer RPG Night. I have played this game before in Utrecht, but in that context it was more of a guided game where we didn’t really interact with the core mechanics of the game as written in the book. I was a bit nervous to “run” this game as written (without a guide) after the Utrecht warnings that it might be hard for beginners. Indeed, we spend more than half of the session crafting characters, Kith (side characters) and a Place and were left with only 20 minutes of “actual” game time. This was fine, because I already adjusted the expectations that creating these things was an act of play, and the whole table was on board with that. Also, the D&D table went a bit longer, so we went longer too. It was an interesting experience, but I guess I want to dedicate a separate post about it once I played some more sessions.

On Wednesday I played the fourth episode of our ongoing Pasión de las Pasiones campaign. I was a bit tired and worried that it might not be the greatest of sessions, but somehow all fell into place and it turned out to be my favorite session so far. I don’t think I have enough room here to fully explain it – “je had erbij moeten zijn” – but all the events just snowballed in a very satisfying way into one big dramatic scene at the end.

On Saturday I went to Comic Con in the Jaarbeurs Utrecht, and I accidentally bought three new RPG books. I guess it doesn’t count as “played” – I also could not find the RPG play area – but I’ll mention them here anyway. Stacking up on the classics, I’ve got Fiasco Classic, Fate Core and Alice is Missing, with the expansion. (Returning readers will notice I have actually played two of those games last week.)

Ran

On Wednesday I ran 7.7km from the office – it had been a while since my last office run and I am glad I added it to my week again.

On Thursday I ran 3.2km to and 3.2km back from volleyball, playing some volleyball in the middle. There were a lot of people, so we had three teams and thus I was not continuously playing. This allowed me to have some energy left and not take the metro home.

On Sunday morning I ran the 10k at the Gaasperplasloop, around the local lake Gaasperplas. Due to the weather they shortened it to 8.5km, but I ran the 1.4km from home to compensate. I ran with E., an RPG Night regular, and it was nice to talk a bit during the run, trying to keep a conversational pace while showing the neighborhood.