For about half an hour today, I thought I'd lost my mind.

It all came down on me. No lease. Movers coming. An endless list of minutiae to accomplish and a very full apartment to pack. Miles to go before I sleep, and all that. I couldn't decide whether to smash something or just break down sobbing, so I sat down on my sofa and waited to see which it would be.

Eventually I got up and started packing again, but it was a close call. Something had to give, and it was looking like it would be me.

Then Karin the Realtor called to say that Her Royal Highness the Landlady-to-Be had deigned to spare a few of her precious minutes leaving a message with the management company that the rewritten clause in the lease was fine, and that I could come in tomorrow and sign it. I made arrangements to meet Karin at noon, then crawled into bed for the most satisfying and delicious nap I've had in weeks.

Something could still blow it; the deal isn't closed until the lease is signed. So keep your fingers crossed. But it looks like I'm finally getting a tailwind.

And a blast from the past. When I was sixteen, I was a dungeon master for a MUD called Scepter. The other DMs were friends of mine from the BBS network (each BBS kept lists of phone numbers for other BBSs, the equivalent of links pages). We were all smart, quirky kids who didn't exactly fit in with mainstream America and found each other through the alternate reality of computers. And a lot of us got involved with Scepter eventually.

The last I heard of the guy who created Scepter was that he'd been indicted for running seminars on how to achieve tax-exempt status by setting up a church in your home. Eventually Scepter just sort of disappeared. I stuck my DM manual in with my other notebooks and moved on.

But Scepter is still alive. I got an e-mail today from one old friend to a whole group of us with an interesting link. It's the same game. It's called Scimitar now and it's running from a system in Canada.

A flurry of e-mails followed. "This is wild that Scepter (Scimitar?) has survived for so long, especially in the days of modern MUDs," one said, summing up my own feelings. Think about this: something I was part of in 1986 is still going. I mean, that's just beautiful, people. What are the odds?

During our MUD's last week, I put a little white pony in the town square which would attack when approached and couldn't be killed. Absolute power. I'm such a geek.

And now I'm a journaler. With, I think, a lease.

Note: as I mentioned, I'm suddenly back in contact with a large group of old friends. We were all part of the computer bulletin board system (BBS) subculture in the DC metro area in the 1980s. Anyone unfamiliar with BBSing should read this. My BBS crew was my core group of best friends and favorite people. Viva computers!