'I did mis-post but that was at the beginning of a 3 week long series of severe migraines'.  I would have just liked to hit reply and not had to made a post about this.  This is why I haven't posted on RPOL since then and the players in my game can attest, I'm sure.

There is! I think you just found it, and how to post a clickbait subject line. Multitasking; go you.

And to think Sittingbull was the 6000th post in Community chat.  I was going to think of something witty for such an auspicious post number...but couldn't.

56000 post actually. I thought on commenting, but did not want to appear goash (how ever that is spelled).
I hope your head aches are not indicative of something worse and they get better soon.

In reply to Sittingbull (msg # 1):

It would be nice to post a "user" status that propagated across all your games.

Like set you status to, "in the hospital" or "lost both arms" or "on vacation until xx/xx/xxxx" which would show in every game you're involved in.

Gauche.  Like a main-gauche - think of parrying daggers as being totally bad etiquette.  In polite society, you should always parry with the salad buckler.

I do not know if there's some actual etymology between those.  Now I'm curious.  Hm... main gauche apparently directly translates to "left hand", and "gauche" is indeed the "left" part of that, so, I bet so!  It's probably about the left hand being clumsier for most people, so when someone does something socially awkward, it's like they did it in a figuratively left-hnaded way.

Sittingbull - yeah, you've pretty much found it, I think.  Just post your apology and jump back in.  It's like getting back on a metaphorical horse - the longer you let it sit, the harder it gets to do.  Especially if you have players in your game, they will almost definitely be more happy to have you back than upset about whatever you're afraid they're upset about.

Main-gauche is a parrying dagger, yes...and as the majority of swordsmen were right-handed (because being a lefty has always meant being the odd man out, to some degree...there's a reason all the handwriting classes teach a right-hand slant...), the parrying dagger was the off-hand weapon...the left-hand weapon.

I would imagine gauche, as a commentary on someone's etiquette, springs from the right-hand-elitism mindset...everyone's taught, for instance, that proper table manners includes holding the knife and fork in specified hands.  If you're a southpaw, your inclination is to reverse that...so you're doing it wrong, somehow, even if it's only that you aren't hold your fork in the 'proper' hand.  It's a breach of etiquette that only a lefty would make...hence, 'gauche'.  And the term became widely accepted as a descriptor for violating 'proper' etiquette, in general...

The first part is verifiable, the second part is pure speculation on my part.  But I'm pretty sure there is, indeed, an etymological connection between the two terms.

And to address the OP...Utsukushi is right.  The best thing to do is just get back on and say, "Hey, sorry, things happened and it didn't go the way I expected and I'm sorry I was incommunicado for so long."  Four months is nothing...I had a GM that went silent for over a year...got back on, sent out rMail messages to all of the players to apologize and ask if they were interested in continuing the game and express understanding if they chose not to...we ended up playing that game for another couple of years before we finally played to its conclusion (or, at least played it through as far as the GM had originally envisioned it going.  I felt like there was plenty of story left to be explored, but it wasn't my game.)

Maybe not everyone will be happy to hear from you, or on board with the idea of tackling the game again...but those who do will be that much more invested in the game for it.  And I know I've had a lot of GMs that just up and vanished on me...I'd have loved to have gotten at least some notification, somewhere along the line, of what happened...even if they weren't starting the game back up, just knowing that they were alive would relieve a little section in the back corner of my mind.  So, go for it.

Gauche
From gauchir (“warp, distort”), a conflation of Old French gauchier (“tread”) + Old French guenchir (“deviate”). Gauche replaced the original word for "left", senestre, in the sixteenth century.

Thank you for the clarification!  I could remember 'dexter' and 'sinister' from heraldry, being 'right' and 'left', but I wasn't sure how that translated into using 'gauche' to reference the left hand.

That's also why "sinister" has come to be a word with negative connotations - because left-handed people were obviously dodgy in some way due to being, erm, left-handed. Because reasons. Just because it was different, I suppose. Meanwhile "dexter" spawns words such as "dextrous" and "dexterity", which generally are more positive-sounding. And "ambidextrous" is someone who's good with both hands...although the literal translation of the word would imply that they have two right hands or something. Given that the right hand was thought of as the, er, right (as in correct) hand, that's probably why ;).

I wasn't multi-tasking.

Never mind...

This message was deleted by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 04:34, Sat 29 Apr 2017.

"It's a joke. Tell your face." - Steven K Amos, Live At The Apollo.
This message was last edited by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 05:26, Sat 29 Apr 2017.

This message was deleted by a moderator, as it was moot, at 05:26, Sat 29 Apr 2017.

woah, that got weird quickly...