DMMike

The horns blared. In the village, warriors grabbed spears, bows, and axes, and ran to the outer defenses. The she-giants bundled up their goods, wrapped babies in slings, and started filling containers with water; the coming humans were known to cast fire-arrows. The clan and tribe shamans said prayers and cast spells of blessing. And the chief...he knew it would be the tribe's last stand. He painted himself for war, blessed his son, his heir, and donned the sacred mantle. Stepping out of his hut, he siezed the royal spear, and cursed the heavy clouds that slowly filled the sky.

"The giants will soon be gone," thought he. "If the Mage comes, it is too late."

Then he promised safety to the villagers, and strode out to his last stand.
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Wednesday (today) is a good day for the players (and DM) to confirm their ability to attend or host on the weekend. If by Thursday we don't have a venue or enough players, you can consider the week's game cancelled. This will hopefully prevent wasted Saturday mornings. It also requires you to stop in, early in the week, and read game updates, and let us know what you're doing.
I don't want to be too rigid about this - if some hardcore players want to throw something together on Thursday or Friday, I'll see what I can do.

Weapon breakage! Everyone's favorite topic. Here's how I'd like to do it; feel free to weigh in. Weapons take a point of damage for each day of battle they see, I'll record that for you. When they're out of hit points, an attack roll of 1 will break it, as could other special circumstances.

To prevent weapon loss, PCs should:
1) have backup weapons available
2) get enchanted weapons (with 10 extra hit points per +1 bonus)
3) use the mending spell to replace a hit point, or the make whole spell to restore all hit points.

Note that Make Whole is only listed as a cleric spell - no reason why another caster couldn't use it too. Repairing objects hardly requires divine healing magic. Just check with me on the spell level.