Blog: October 2008

Most of these posts were originally posted somewhere else and link to the originals. While this blog is not set up for comments, the original locations generally are, and I welcome comments there. Sorry for the inconvenience.

How do I get this cat to gain weight?

2008-10-27 from Dreamwidth

Tags: Family & Friends

I stopped by the vet's tonight to have Erik weighed. He has lost half a pound since early September. :-( I thought he was feeling bonier, but it's hard to tell when you pet him every day.

His appetite has been varying -- never absent, which would warrant some amount of force, but it's been lighter than it ought to be for the last couple weeks. Sometimes he won't eat cat food but will eat baby food or tuna; sometimes it's the reverse. Surprisingly, he currently seems to like a certain type of dry food, which he usually only picks at.

I have (finally!) noticed a possible correlation; both this cycle and last his appetite has done this at a certain point in his drug cycle. We're going to vary that next time and see if the behavior follows the drug.

The doctors who did Erik's ultrasound in June said I should do another if his weight drops. But the surgeon I saw in July said the ultrasound was hard to read because the surgery he had a few years ago rearranged some bits. Tonight my vet asked if I'd consider another ultrasound and I asked her to explore whether it would actually tell us anything we could act on. What outcome could an ultrasound serve up that we could treat without surgery? (If all roads lead to surgery anyway, what does the ultrasound tell us?)

In July the surgeon postulated four possible causes of Erik's woes: the hepatitis we're already treating, a pancreatic tumor that would be untreatable, IBD that would be treated with prednizone, and lymphoma that would be treated with prednizone and chemo. Of those, only the tumor could be visible on an ultrasound; exploratory surgery could diagnose all of them (via biopsy), but surgery is risky. Prednizone interferes with biopsies; his recommendation was to either do exploratory surgery or decide not to and just treat with prednizone speculatively. I delayed on making a decision on surgery (and thus not doing the prednizone) because surgery is scary and Erik seemed to be doing ok; now I find myself leaning toward "just hit him with the prednizone". The surgery poses non-trivial risk; I don't see enough benefit to put him through that. But my vet will talk with some folks and explore these questions. And I forgot to ping her about diet changes (she didn't have any ideas there this summer), so I'll do that. (She did give me a tube of NutriCal tonight as a possible way of getting more calories into him.)

Simchat Torah

2008-10-22 from Dreamwidth

Tags: Judaism

The last of the flurry of fall holidays was this week. The Reform movement follows the Israeli calendar, so we had Simchat Torah on Tuesday along with Sh'mini Atzeret (cue chorus of "what's that?"). Simchat Torah means "rejoicing with the Torah"; we're supposed to sing and dance a lot, and this is when we read the last bit and immediately start again at the beginning.

We had a huge crowd on Monday night with lots of kids. There was a lot of singing; the hakafot (dancing/processing with the torah scrolls) didn't go on very long, but everyone who wanted a chance got one. My congregation mostly does not dance; a few of us started a circle dance up front but it didn't catch on. I have heard rumors of places that dance for hours, but I haven't experienced this myself. (For the dancing I took one of our scrolls of the prophets, which are much smaller than the torah scrolls, which meant I could hold it overhead and jingle its bells and stuff.)

I had asked my rabbi last week if I could chant B'reishit (the beginning of the torah), reprising my reading from Rosh Hashana. Just an hour earlier he'd discussed that with our associate rabbi and they'd decided the associate would do it, so I said "no problem" while my rabbi said "but we can change that" and we did this "no, after you" style dance until he told me to do it. The associate rabbi later assured me that this was not a problem for him and he commended me on my reading, so it all worked out. Our new education rabbi was there too (he was one of the checkers) and he seemed impressed; nifty.

Tuesday morning we had a much smaller crowd with a much higher average age. (I read again; it's the same torah portion.) This was one of the four days in a year that Yizkor (memorial service) is added in; I think this was the shortest I've seen at my congregation, coming in at about 15 minutes including remarks from the rabbi. It might have been a few minutes longer had our cantorial soloist not been home sick, but that's a fine length for this service in my opinion. When we do it on Yom Kippur it drags out for close to an hour, and our prayer book for that day is filled with readings that just don't connect for me. Mishkan T'filah is much better in that regard. (And my rabbi's remarks are always good and on-point.)

On Simchat Torah (well, technically, Sh'mini Atzeret) we begin praying for rain for the winter. So it rained. :-) Fortunately for me, it stopped by the time services ended; I hadn't brought an umbrella. (Mind, what we're really doing is praying for rain in Israel, but still...)

And now, back to a normal schedule. Next week should be a novel one at work; I'll be there every day.

BTW, this post from xiphias on LiveJournal does a nice job of explaining the arc of all these holidays.

New glasses, take 2

2008-10-18 from Dreamwidth

Tags: Life

The Monday before last I took my new glasses back to the optician for two reasons: acutely, one lens had fallen out (heat + new plastic = bad; wash them in less-hot water, she says), and more seriously, the placement of the left bifocal was subtly off.

She measured the glasses, re-measured me, and then measured my old glasses. Verdict: the new ones are "right" and the old ones were incorrectly made. (Given all the trouble NeoVision gave me over the old ones, I'm not surprised.) The old ones had the wrong pupilary distance, she said, off by a total of 6mm between the two eyes. Why did my brain accept that? Dunno, but it probably got masked by the whole taking-a-week-to-adjust-to-new-glasses thing. My brain learned to cope with the error, I guess.

She asked if I thought I could get used to the new glasses. They were, in fact, ok for everything except working with my computer at work -- but that's pretty important, and I'd spent most of a week trying to get used to it. I asked if the bifocal could be moved without affecting the distance vision; nope. I asked if I could have a bigger bifocal, and she said that was possible. (Alas, the jump to the next size was 7mm, when I was hoping for about 4mm.)

This was about to lead to the uncomfortable conversation about who pays for this (it's not their fault the previous guys did something wrong, but we did use that as a partial baseline), but she called my insurance company and apparently they will pay for one "no-fault" remake. So I sent them back for a wider bifocal and no other changes. (I considered asking them to lengthen the focal distance on the bifocal, but decided that would be borrowing trouble and risk leaving me with nothing usable.)

I picked the new glasses up Friday morning. It took me a little while to adjust distance vision to work around the extra bifocal width, particularly when looking down. But I was able to read the computer at work more easily (after moving the monitor some). Reading paper (after minor adjustments) works fine. I read torah this morning with them. Ironically, I was having a little difficulty with my computer at home tonight, but it's gotten better over the last couple hours, so I guess I'm adapting. At one point I wondered if I was seeing worse with the new bifocals than the old, but three seconds with the old glasses told me otherwise. It is a crisper image; maybe the light is reflecting differently or something, and these lenses aren't yet as dark as the previous ones (plastic does that and transition lenses do that over time, apparently). It's almost certainly all really minor stuff, but I'm really sensitive to minor stuff. I'll get used to it.

But, as I said, it'll take a week, probably. It's annoying in the short term and better in the long term. Given that, I wonder what the optimal frequency of changes is. I used to keep glasses for, oh, 5-7 years before changing, because they were good enough, manual prescriptions were a crap shoot, and glasses were expensive. Now automation gets me better prescriptions and lenses have actually gotten cheaper in the last two decades (huh?), so it really just comes down to the transition period, I guess. Hmm.

It's the 21st century. Where are my high-tech adjustable glasses? :-)

In response to a comment about the last sentence:

My ideal pair of glasses would start with the technology that's in the machine they use to get a starting point for your prescription. I don't know what that thing does, but it seems to somehow scan the eyeball and bring an image into focus without the patient's active involvement. So my pie-in-the-sky glasses would be able to do something like that and would then have controls for fine-tuning focus (and also for tinting, to be light-adjusting), with programmable pre-sets for fast, tuned adjustment (computer, reading, default, bright sunny day, etc). The advantage to this sort of approach over just buying new glasses every couple years is that it would allow gradual fine-tuned adjustment, avoiding the shock factor that I currently get.

Maybe the auto-adjusting part isn't necessary; that would depend on how many variables it's controlling. My prescription notes four parameters: sphere, cylinder, axis, and add. (This last is probably the bifocal.) Presumably I could be taught to intelligently vary three parameters to zoom in (so to speak) on the optimal combination. So maybe occasional visits to the machine to re-baseline would be fine. I'm thinking out loud here. I can't afford to sponsor the research, alas.

Sukkot

2008-10-15 from Dreamwidth

Tags: Judaism

Monday night at Sukkot services our new educator rabbi did something nifty. Monday night is a school night (for the teens), so he told them they wouldn't be skipping that for the holiday. Instead, they all gathered in the congregational sukkah for dinner before, and partway during, services. The whole group came in after the introductory prayers, and during the "sermon slot" they explained what they'd been doing.

There is a tradition during Sukkot of metaphorically inviting extra guests to meals -- the patriarchs, Moshe, King David, etc (one per night). It's sort of like how Eliyahu is invited to the Pesach seder (among other things). Egalitarian-minded Jews have added prominent women to this list. The rabbi explained that while the class knew all that (and did so), tonight they had focused not on reaching back but reaching "sideways". Groups of students then got up and talked about members of the local community who were significant in various ways -- a teacher, a leader in social justice, and so on. These people, unlike the historical guests, were actually present. It was nifty because while, yes, it did honor those people, it seemed like it was more focused on teaching the values for which those people were being honored.

My rabbi invited me and one other married-but-there-solo person onto the bimah for "candles and kiddush", though it turned out to be just candles because there's a special kiddush for the holiday and the rabbi chanted it. (I could have, but it's his prerogative.) This invitation is significant because this is usually owned by couples, and I've commented to my rabbi that this feels a little isolating to those of us who aren't. So yay! Maybe I've been heard.

Tuesday morning my rabbi asked me to be one of the readers for Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), the special reading for this holiday. (We read in English, so this can be given to anyone, so I never volunteer -- I defer to people who would be challenged by other roles.) We read from the JPS translation (which isn't online so I can't easily share), and there was some stuff at the end of chapter 7 that I found challenging (seeming to say that women are traps for men who would be wise, and stuff like that). But here's something interesting: this Jewish translation seems different in small but important ways, and tracks with another I found of unknown background. So what's up with this, I wonder? Time to see what I can glean from the Hebrew myself, it seems. I want to improve my text skills anyway.

The weather for the opening days of Sukkot has been lovely. It's supposed to get colder now, though, and it rained today (but was clear by dinner-time). So we'll see. But at least I'll have gotten a few meals in my sukkah.

I met a new neighbor while I was putting the sukkah up, by the way. The house next door apparently changed hands this spring (based on the appearance of realtors and moving vans), but I hadn't actually seen anyone yet (other than the crew doing renovations). There's a fence between the houses in the back, so usually we can't see each other, but one of the new owners happened to be walking out while I was standing on a ladder rolling out my s'chach (roof). I think she was startled to see me. :-) So at some point we'll spend more time talking; she was on her way out and, well, I was standing on a ladder putting up my sukkah. But it's nice to know that we do in fact have neighbors.

I'm starting to feel a little left out

2008-10-15 from Dreamwidth

Tags: Work, Judaism

The original post was locked.

My company, like many, has an annual winter party. It used to always be on a Saturday night, but two years ago they had it on a Friday instead, so I couldn't go. I commented to one of the folks in charge that this was unfortunate as it meant I couldn't come, and she said oops, they'd be more careful of that. Last year's party was announced as specifically for adults (not kid-oriented), which is wonderful as far as I'm concerned -- and it was on a Friday again. So I talked with our business area manager, who looked mildly horrified and said this would be fixed for this year.

The email just came out: same adults-only scheme (yay!), same Friday scheduling (boo!). I sent off email inquiring and the manager said something like "this was the best date", with no reference to our prior conversation. So much for his well-intentioned assurances.

Now granted, not everyone will be able to go no matter when it is. And I'm not really even a big fan of these things, though they can be nice occasionally. But I get the sense that I'm high enough in the organization now that I ought to be there for "face time", especially if any corporate masters will be there, and what started out as unawareness or carelessness is now starting to feel somewhat different.

I do not think this is willful, or that anyone involved in the planning has anything against me. In other respects the organization is very mindful of people's various limitations, certainly including mine. So I just don't know how to interpret this. I guess the view is that it's a non-work thing so it doesn't have to be accessible to all? (I wonder: would we hold a party in a place that people with mobility problems couldn't navigate?) Once is a fluke; three times is systematic even if there are no bad intentions. Should I care? I don't know.

Added in a comment:

Now that I think about it, these kinds of problems were a lot less frequent before the Jewish CEO died unexpectedly. I wonder if, all this time, it wasn't general cluefulness but Steve keeping things on track.

Yom Kippur theology

2008-10-10 from Dreamwidth

Tags: Judaism

This year the contrast between two statements in the machzor (special prayer book for these holidays) struck me. We have both of the following statements:

For transgressions against God Yom Kippur attones, but for transgressions against other people, YK does not attone until you have made peace with that person. [1]
The "release": I forgive those who have wronged me and please don't punish them on my account, and I hope they say the same about me. (This is a paraphrase.)

If I am "off the hook" for something I did via #2 (the other person made this blanket statement) but I never actually made amends, how can I attone under #1 -- we didn't make peace? Or is the point to be strict on my own actions (I must make peace) but liberal on others'? I could think that #2 is for unknown offenses (I can't make amends if I don't know I wronged you), except that the text of the release says "intentional and unintentional".

(Am I correct in assuming that #2 is not a liberal innovation? I've never actually used or studied a traditional machzor, though I am motivated to find one now because a number of the translations [2] in ours struck me as wrong and I want to know what the Hebrew really says.)

[1] There's what amounts to a good-faith exclusion here, so you can't be hosed by someone who consistently refuses to forgive you.

[2] Reform prayer books before Mishkan T'filah feature a mix of loose translations and "alternative readings" (usually but not always marked as such). I am in the position of knowing enough Hebrew to see the issues but not enough to be able to just translate the text myself.

There is a lot of good discussion in the comments.

Yom Kippur

2008-10-08 from Dreamwidth

Tags: Judaism

Yom Kippur begins tonight. To those who observe, may you have a tzom kal (easy fast) and an uplifting day. To the rest of you, happy Thursday.

My rabbi will be speaking tonight and our new rabbi will speak for the first time tomorrow morning. I'm looking forward to both. In the afternoon we will have our by-now-traditional beit midrash -- classes to fill the time between services, so you can just stay at the synagogue all day. I find that helps me a lot in maintaining focus. Mind, by about hour 22 of the fast my focus is fading anyway. I spend yizkor (we have ours late in the day) in a fog, but that's ok because I'm not really into yizkor anyway. (Traditionally speaking, I have no reason to go -- thank God.) I do find that the energy returns for ne'ilah, the final set of prayers. Someday I'd like to find an analysis of the whole Yom Kippur experience taking into account physiology and psychology; I'll bet the day and its liturgy are structured the way they are for reasons beyond theology.

I learned some years ago that the secret to fasting is a large, proteinful lunch (not dinner). And because we can't do it on Yom Kippur, we're supposed to have a festive meal beforehand. We had a lunchtime meeting today (bring your own). Later I received some inquiring comments about my sushi spread. :-)

Oh, that makes it easier...

2008-10-05 from Dreamwidth

Tags: Judaism

Yesterday the person in charge of this asked me if I can read torah in two weeks, which will be the Shabbat in the middle of Sukkot. All the holidays (and their intermediate days, as in this case) have special torah readings, so I asked what it was. No one present remembered. I said sure, I'd take care of it; I could look this up at home. I hoped I wasn't biting off something that would be too hard on that timescale, but figured I could roll with it, whatever it was.

I pulled it up in Trope Trainer today (forget about its cantilation features; it lets me print nice big copies to practice from!) and started to read. I fell into chanting it easily -- too easily. Err, wait a minute, I recognize that turn of phrase. Heh -- I chanted this exact passage last winter. Ok, this just got easier. :-)

The Sukkot portion is from Ki Tisa, after the incident with the golden calf when Moshe talks God into giving the people another chance and they make the second set of tablets. There's a reference to Sukkot somewhere in there, which might be why it was chosen for this holiday, but I can't help noticing the parallel between the servicable fragility of the sukkah and the fragility of our people's relationship with God at that point in time -- and, perhaps, individually since then. So maybe I'll work that idea up into a d'var torah.

Rosh Hashana

2008-10-05 from Dreamwidth

Tags: Judaism, Reflections

Rosh Hashana went well for me this year. Services were good, I got to participate, I had guests both days, and I feel like I've gotten some introspection time this season (need more work there, though).

My rabbi gave an excellent sermon that's hard to recap. (That's not a complaint; he is very good at sermon-craft in my humble opinion. Sermons are not mere bullet-points; they should settle in somewhat deeper.) He started (after making a connection from that day's torah reading) by talking about Rivka, who, on finding out that two nations were struggling in her womb, asked "lamah zeh anochi?" -- "why am I?" Why is she what, one might ask -- the thought seems incomplete. Or maybe it is complete, and she's asking "why bother?". From this he made a connection to other situations where we might ask "why am I?". There was a lot of good thought-fodder there.

We have a second-day service, which this year filled but did not totally pack the chapel. That's still pretty good for a Wednesday! I chanted torah (which I'd been asked to do the previous Saturday, but I did this portion last year so it was a faster prep). The other two readers read rather than chanting; I didn't know that in advance and I hope no one felt upstaged. I must remember for the future that the reading desk in the chapel is both a little too small and a little too tall, especially if the scroll is wound all the way to one end. We read B'reishit on the second day, so I read the very first verses of the torah. It was hard to see due to the physical setup. Next time I will ask for a step-stool!

Tuesday my friend Gail joined me for lunch. We had: the standards (wine, challah, apples with honey), baked chicken with peanut sauce, roasted potatoes/carrots/onions, something green (was it broccoli?), and pizelles for dessert (maybe something else too). Drat; should have written that down sooner. Wednesday I invited some fellow congregants (including a pescetarian), and we had: the standards, starfruit, raw veggies with hummus, camembert with crackers (all that was a pre-set), and foil-poached salmon (served cold), brown rice, broccoli. Dessert was a yummy plum tart brought by a guest. I had, but forgot to serve, grapes as well. Wines were Rashi Claret (Tuesday, with leftovers Wednesday) and Rashi "white" -- not further specified, but tasty. The red was labelled "semi-sweet" so I wasn't sure how I'd like it, but it was nice. I'd drink either of these again. (My tastes usually run to pinot grigios or rieslings.)

Shabbat morning the "goofy question" was to name something we like about this season -- a piece of music, food, some aspect of liturgy, family connections, whatever. While there are many things I like, for me the big thing is that there is both the obligation and the opportunity to correct past problems. Opportunity? Yes: see, I have a lot of trouble approaching people to say "that thing I did many months ago? I'm sorry about that", not because of any issues with apologies, but more because I feel awkward -- I imagine that the other person is thinking "so why is she bringing this up now?". If I didn't spot and correct it at the time, I don't know how to go back later and fix it. Having a formalized time during the year helps with that, at least for other Jews. (Of course it doesn't really help with others.) As for the obligation, well, it's pretty easy to just keep putting things off; even with this time set aside I sometimes find myself doing that. If we didn't have the Yamim Nora'im (the days of awe, aka "high holy days" but that misses some important flavor), I'd probably never act. That would be bad. And looking around the room, I think my answer resonated with others too.

D&D fourth edition

2008-10-04 from Dreamwidth

Tags: Games

Today I played in a test run of D&D fourth edition. None of us (except maybe the GM) had read all the rules in advance, though all but one of us had played extensively under the third-edition rules (3.0 and 3.5). And the GM had a module with pre-fab characters and quick-start rules, which is what we played.

It's different from third edition. Better? Worse? Don't know yet -- just different, with some interesting twists. We'll need to play more before I can make that judgement.

They have made first-level characters much more effective than in previous editions. That's a win in my opinion; it used to be that first-level characters were both fragile and lightly-powered, so you'd start an adventure, have one fight, hole up somewhere to lick your wounds, try again the next day, and so on. One bad role could send a healthy character into near-death (or actual death, if the party couldn't act immediately to intervene). Heroics were pretty much impossible.

Contrast this with the following sequence involving my first-level dwarf fighter under the new rules. The enemies were a priest with half a dozen underlings. They ambushed us and the priest opened by attacking my character with a spell. (And the underlings threw spears and stuff.) This knocked me down almost to half my strength (which is to say, down to 16 of 31 hit points). Our cleric gave me a quick burst of healing and I charged the priest, hitting him but not hard enough to kill him (no surprise there). In the next round the following happened, in order: the priest and about four underlings attacked me, knocking me into negative hit points (and to the ground); another party member attacked the priest from the other side and pushed him into my spot on the board (so he was standing over me); another party member gave me some (ranged?) healing that brought me back to consciousness; I, from the ground, made a big power attack (this character's once-per-day special attack), killing the priest and sending him flying; I stood up, looked at the line of underlings, and said "who's next?". It was fun. :-) And it was fun that I don't think would have been possible under previous editions.

(Now, mind, D&D is as unrealistic as it ever was: I asked if I could make that attack, the GM (and other players) concurred that it was legal, and I said "let me be clear: my dwarf is going to make a big power attack from the ground... with his two-handed maul?". You've got to be willing to suspend some disbelief to play this game, but if you are, it can be fun.)

Characters have a variety of types of abilities. There are the things you can do (for the cost of an action) at will; for the dwarf fighter these were things like cleave attack, and for the wizard they were things like casting cantrips (light, ghost sound, maybe others). I didn't study the other three character sheets enough to speak to them. There are also abilities you can use once per encounter and once per day; for the dwarf these were both stronger attacks, while for the wizard the once-a-day ability was to cast either a sleep spell or an acid arrow attack (substantial damage to one opponent plus splatter damage).

Every character has the ability to do some self-healing. A character has a certain number of "surges" that can be used daily, and each surge does some number of points (these stats vary per character and appear to increase with level gains). During combat you can heal yourself once; outside of combat you can do as much as you want up to your daily limit of surges. This means that clerics, who in past versions were largely responsible for party healing, now get to do other things. When I mentioned earlier that our cleric gave my dwarf some healing, what actually happened was that the cleric did something that allowed me to use one of my own surges at a time when I wouldn't have been allowed to otherwise. Meanwhile, the cleric was making attacks. Also, this healing is no longer variable; I know that each surge is going to get me (in the dwarf's case) 7 points, and we don't have to roll dice and possibly expend extra healing potions because the rolls sucked. It's just bookkeeping.

Wizards now have magic missile as an attack (at will) rather than a spell. It is no longer automatic, which would be unbalancing; you roll to hit as with any other attack.

Everything offensive is now a roll against some stat, rather than a spell that might be automatic or might get a saving throw. I noticed on my character sheet a notation along the lines of "+N for saving throws against poison"; I'm not sure what that means in this context. Is my fortitude stat boosted in that case, or are there still saving throws?

They've changed how character death works. When a character goes to 0 hit points (or negative), he falls unconscious and is on his way to dying. On his next turn he makes a straight die roll (needing 10 on a d20); success means he's stabilized and failure moves him closer to death. Three failed rolls means death. This means that a single large hit can no longer instantly kill you (even if you're at -20 or something), and that the party has time to react (administer healing, pull you to safety, etc). [I was told in a comment that this is wrong and you can still die instantly.] Yes, this is unrealistic in cases like "a nuke exploded in front of you", but see previous comments about realism. I think this will make players a little more willing to take risks, which in turn makes for more exciting (and story-worthy) games. (Note that in the fight I described earlier I never actually had to make this check; by the time my turn came around I had been healed. But knowing that this is how death worked influenced my decision to make that charge in the first place. That and the fact that this was the first session, so if I died and had to start a new character I wouldn't be too far behind...)

Everything we've done so far was combat-heavy, and that's how the character sheets read too. This doesn't mean you can't have a game more focused on role-playing; I think the system is largely agnostic toward that. Earlier editions were somewhat that way too. A lot of what happened in my last campaign wasn't really well-covered by the rules, either. We haven't seen skills come into play yet, and I don't know very much about feats. The feats I've seen have all been combat-related; most but certainly not all of the ones in third edition were too.

The game feels like it was significantly influenced by games like World of Warcraft. The tabletop system (figurines and the corresponding style of play) is part of it; another part is that you no longer have to do investigation to find out what magic items are. You find treasure and you can just know what it is; the days of testing potions or paying for analysis are over. In one way that was tedious in prior editions, but it also meant the characters might have to do some work before benefiting from their loot. I don't know if this is good, bad, or neutral; I'm just noting it.

I don't know how level advancement works. I understand from the GM that you don't tend to accumulate lots of new skills/spells/attacks but, rather, upgrade existing ones. Apparently the designers wanted a character sheet to fit on two pages no matter what level. I appreciate the goal but wonder about the loss of variety. It's true that in my last campaign, by the time my sorceror reached 8th level or so, combat problems could be largely sorted into two groups: ones that called for polymorph and ones that called for fireball. But it was still nice to have the lower-level spells "on tap"; sometimes they were the right tool for the job. Now, some of that "right tool" aspect was "right level"; if my goal was flight, the 3rd-level fly spell was better than a 4th-level polymorph into something with wings. I don't know if spell level is relevant in the new edition. So this might not matter as much.

I also don't yet know how character-creation works and what the points of variability are. These characters were pre-generated. I don't know which of my character's characteristics come from being a dwarf, which from being a fighter, which from choosing option A over options B and C, etc. I don't think I could make informed decisions in generating a character now, though; I have to learn the system first. So prefab characters to learn on are good for bootstrapping.

I had fun today. We'll need several more sessions to finish the module, and by then we should have a better idea of how a campaign, as opposed to a session, works. I'm looking forward to doing that.