Awkward encounter with the Invisible Man

This morning, I had to go sit on the toilet shortly after I got to work. Luckily, the bathrooms are well-kept-up and clean. For such occasions, I have a habitual stall in the bathroom that I prefer. I have no idea where this preference comes from... never stopped to think about it - do you have stall preferences?

Anyway, the preferred stall's door was closed. Sometimes it swings into a shut position on its own, though, so I tried to discretely glance through the gap between frame and door as i passed it to the next stall, just to confirm presence or absence of a user. No-one was in it. I then felt free to look a little closer and confirm the stall was empty. so i pushed the door, glad that the stall was in fact available.

The door was latched shut. It didn't click at first, what was going on. I sat down in the next stall and while performing standard operations, I evaluated the options.

1) The door had gained sentience and locked itself, which is a bit absurd
2) Someone had gone to the trouble of latching the door, which is only really feasible from the inside, then crawling out of the stall under the wall. This would violate almost every law of men's bathroom behavior (except urinal selection rules, but thats not applicable here), and is thus about as likely as me having a winning lottery ticket suddenly appear in my mouth.
3) The Invisible Man was using the stall - likely, except there was no smell.
4) Someone in the GI department is a wizard, and was using the stall while magically veiled from sight to gain arcane boons to his experimental results, or perhaps direct a curse at someone who threw out his lunch while cleaning the breakroom refrigerator.

Did I miss anything? In case there was someone in there, I didn't try glancing in again on my way out, even though I could have done it subtly, in the mirror as I was washing my hands.

I had a very fun weekend away with Audrey! We went to Lesley and Nick's wedding in St Louis, where we stayed in a nice hotel room with a full sized refrigerator (for the cake and cupcakes audrey was doing for the wedding) and a fireplace (for Quality Beeking). The hot tub and pool amenities were under construction, and while the pool technically still had water in it and was not closed, getting to it would require sidestepping Bobcats and having aquatic hiking boots to go from in pool to peri-pool overturned cement/rock/gravel/.
We also went to the City Museum, which was everything that had been described to me and then some. This is a building that was once a factory of some kind, and has been re-purposed as a playground for all ages. the outdoor section has an enormous ball pit, more strategically placed climbable metal walkways and slides than you can shake a defunct aircraft at, and a pair of defunct aircraft suspended high in the air amongst the climbing equipment, also to be climbed on. Inside there is an elaborate 'cave' system which is very easy to get lost in, but if you keep heading up, you get to a funky series of spiral staircases which end at the top of a ten-story curvy slide. The roof also collects many cool points, with a fountain full of stepping stones to play on, a bus that partially hangs off the building to climb in, and a ferris wheel on top of everything. Yay many times!

The actual wedding was simple and beautiful in a greenhouse-y location called the jewel box, and the reception involved much dancing for Audrey and much chatting for me. Taken together (with cream and sugar), it was a marvelous weekend (teeming with memorable moments).

Teem is the word of the day.

WotD

Lucifugous: avoiding light

what a boring definition for a fantastic word. Sound like it should be part of the latin name for a bipedal sentient fungus that's ultra-sensitive to UV radiation.

In fact, maybe it is...

in other news, I am very excited about my trip this weekend. We're going to stop in Des Moines for dinner with Frizzonkity, then take the kids to their grandparents in Omaha. Friday morning Audrey gets a haircut (and I might, too), and we hit the road for St Louis, where we'll be attending lesley and nick's wedding! And I think we get to play at the city museum, which i have heard much of and never visited. And i get to help audrey assemble many cupcakes.

And I will try to avoid any run-ins with Lucifugous Megapoidia

Very fitting WotD

Cachinnate - to laugh loudly or immoderately.

This is awesome. I even like the word immoderately from the definition. I actually need to practice cachinnation, because I just got cast as Willy Wonka! I imagine this will require that I cachinnate frequently, or at least occasionally.

I am very, very excited, especially to see what the director and design team have come up with as presentation style for this show. I hear that the design team is the same group that delivered Snow White here last season, which was wonderfully rich in concept and fascinatingly slanted in presentation. In particular, I want to talk about what sort of hair/make-up/costume ideas they have for Mr. Wonka. I'm hoping that if i keep growing my hair, it will be long enough to use without a wig, maybe dyed orange and gooped into a wild, spiky mane.

A couple other cool words of the day that I have missed, but liked: bilocation, the state of being in two places at once (I believe this is the next scheduled update for the wonkavator). Also beek, which had somethign to do with getting cozy in front of a fire, and made me think of Audrey sitting, nay beeking, in front of the computer with a blanket and space heater. My wife is a very skilled beeker.

Okay. This update was just written from a gadget on my igoogle homepage, so lets see if it works before I go any further.

Anacoluthia

i like just saying this one - but it gets better. Anacoluthia is a term for garbled grammatical structure. And an anacoluthon is a rhetorical term for 'a construciton involving a break in grammatical sequence'.

It also sounds like a good name for a very small European nation, probably where everyone speaks in an agrammatical manner. Already sounds like someplace I want to visit. And probably someplace that will quickly turn up on a map of some new fantasy world I create.

Speaking of, I decided to play with Obsidian portal by using it to collect ideas. I can make personal notes to myself on each page about what I stole the idea from, or what i was reading or doing that influenced me. Maybe it will turn into a new campaign world.

Today I am auditioning for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! In keeping with the valorous ideal of honesty, I will say that I really really really want to play Willy Wonka. I don't know what age they want to cast him as, or if I have an animated enough look to pull it off, but I would have ever so much fun. Ever. So. Much. Assuming I don't get sucked into an Anacoluthian Vortex between now and 7-9pm tonight, I'll audition and know the result on Friday.

Best WotD EVER!

Shenanigan

i LOVE this word! My problem with this word is that because I like using it so much, it tends to lose meaning. I just want everything I do to be classified as shenanigans, or at the very least monkeyshines (and once in a while as hooliganism). I have even adopted the phrase from the marauder's map, "Mischief Managed", as a generic way to say 'I'm done with whatever it is i've been doing', which is typically finishing a miniprep or transfection or cloning step at work -- stuff that probably gets classified as mischief only when the definitions are loose to the point of falling off, or at least instigating wardrobe malfunctions.

BUT ... because it is the word of the day and i love it and strict definitions are for nincompoops, here are some of my shenanigans from the last couple days:

I installed drywall in the room/closet under the stairs. Now we (probably mainly Audrey, since she'll likely do it all during the week to get it overwith) can mud and tape and sand and paint, and we'll be ready for Harry Potter to move in! It is actually to be used for storage of legos, D&D materials, and various other bits and bobs.

I cleaned up the garage after cutting drywall all over it

I replaced/hid the tupperware containers I was using as makeshift sawhorses for cutting drywall after noting i had made a couple incisions into their lids.

I signed up for an account on obsidian portal, which is a wiki site designed for keeping track of game-world settings. I don't know if i'm ambitious enough to transfer everything from my current wiki there, or if i'll just use it to log interesting new ideas I come up with. I'm leaning toward the latter.

Mary got two more fancy staplers for the lab, and i abducted the green one for my desk.

I completed my blog post while waiting for my maxiprep gravity columns to drip! Mischief managed!

Bank Rant

I got a call from Audrey, who was already frustrated from having to make two trips to the bank, wells fargo, trying to deposit the insurance check into our account so we can pay the roofers when they show up. Did I blog about the new roof? anyway, we're getting a new roof, mainly with insurance money, which is great... but the bank today. Audrey first went in with the check, and they said no no no you need the detailed report the insurance adjuster e-mailed you before you can deposit this check, made out to you, into your bank account. Audrey probably sighs with mild frustration at this point, gets the kids packed up, and goes home to retrieve the paperwork, and returns to the bank with everything they told her to bring. They get slightly further into the process this time, before revealing that actually she isn't allowed to deposit the check because she is not the primary name on our mortgage. What does this have to do with anything, when this is supposed to be between the insurance company and our bank account? i don't know, but our mortage is through wells fargo, and her name is prominently on the account, just not in the primary position. Still, that isn't good enough. Thomas A Rinkoski has to handle the transaction personally. So she calls me, and I take my lunch break, she drops the papers off (she was headed downtown to take the kids to the library anyway), and I go to the downtown branch armed with the check, all the paperwork, and photographic ID proof that I am, in fact, myself. I left a centrifuge spinning with my maxiprep DNA, figuring it would finish the last 20 min of its spin, slow down for 5 minutes, and I'd be back to get it out. So I am in the bank, and present my paperwork to banker 1, who is immediately joined by a presumably more experienced banker 2, who will show banker 1 how to process an insurance claim check. They call the insurance company to find the web address of the online claim check application, which makes it so easy, because you don't have to call them on the phone anymore! Then they fumble around on the online application, and call back because they can't figure out the tab system of progressing through the claim. They input a few numbers seemingly at random from the stack of paperwork I've given them, and we seem to be at a point where we can proceed to depositing the check. They take the check and my ID and go to photocopy it, then return with a pained expression, because the check is made out to Tommy AND Audrey -- not Tommy OR Audrey -- which apparently means that it needs both our signatures. Audrey never got this far, so she has not signed the check, assuming that when they told her that I had to do it, that included endorsing the check. Luckily, a phone call reveals she is still downtown at the library. So i run over there, get her signature, and run back to the bank. Then we can proceed to depositing the check. The only stumbling block remaining is that we need a manager to sign off on the whole thing. The managers are both in a meeting. When they let me know this, I use my 4 years of training as an actor to downplay my expression of frustration to a reasonable level, and they go knock on the door to interrupt the meeting and get the signature. So now everything is ready, and these bankers have everything they need! All that needs to happen now is to simply deposit the signed-off, doubly-endorsed, insurance-approved fucking check. The banker's eyes go to the longish line in front of the tellers. I make the realization that the personal bankers with their nice little offices and individual computer stations, cannot deposit a check into my account. A teller has to do that. The banker offers to wait in line for me, and mail me the receipt. I know its a bad move to accept this, based on the incredible level of efficacy they have displayed over the course of the day, but I do, because I have been at the bank (or running to the library) for more than an hour now, and if there is any chance of salvaging my prepped DNA back at the lab, I need to get there fast. They almost manage not to return my paperwork, and I finally make a getaway.

So today, I deposited a check into my checking account, and it took two branches, four entrances into the bank, 4 bankers, a bank manager, and at some point a teller, over the course of about 2.5 hours.

However, on the bright side, and I feel I must remind myself of this - we're getting our roof paid for by insurance, and that's pretty cool.

WotD

Vellicate:

1. To touch (a body part) lightly so as to excite the surface nerves and cause uneasiness, laughter, or spasmodic movements.

2. To irritate as if by a nip, pinch, or tear.

3. To move with spasmodic convulsions.

So, today's word seems to have everything to do with sensory nerves in the skin being stimulated. The first definition brings to mind running a feather along skin, the next seems far less pleasant, and the third is doing its own thing.

I've got Dexter on the brain, and all I'm thinking about is how to make an interesting segue out of 'vellicate'. There are certainly plenty of interactions with sensory nerves in the skin on that program, but most of them involve blades, and it doesn't seem like 'vellicate' quite covers that sort of interaction.

I finished season one last night, and was completely glued to it. I found only very minor disappointment as I rushed through the first season in the last week, and lots of interest. I'm generally interested in a novel sort of premise or show, and having a serial killer for your POV character/protagonist certainly counts as a deviation from the norm. The writing and acting and rate of plot discovery are engrossing enough that I have a lot of fun trying to put together what is going to happen next. The characters are nearly all three dimensional, with flaws and strengths, and I liked watching the relationships grow and change through the season. I might start season two as early as tonight, but for now, my verdict is that if you're not immediately put off by the gore, you should check this series out.

Book report - Colour of Magic

I just finished reading the first book of the discworld series/saga/collection. Over time, I've read a couple of the discworld books, and I thought maybe it would be fun to start at the beginning.

Pratchett certainly has a gift for satirical comedy, and he plays with the fantasy genre in a fun way, but I think that I'm much more attached lately to the deeper storytelling kind of novels, and finding authors that write characters that engage me and pull me through a colorful and deeply realized alternate world. The Song of Ice and Fire books by George RR Martin are great for this. I also like R Scott Bakker's series, the name of which i can't remember. I recently finished 'Red Wolf Conspiracy' the first book by Robert VS Redick in a series/trilogy? with a bunch of adventure and intrigue aboard a ship ...

and i am now apparently listing books i've liked instead of writing something about pratchett's novel.

What's fun to me is how he turns the wacky mythology of a fantasy setting into something that is very real to the characters, and is an integral part of the story. Trying to make up a counter example, a fantasy book might take place on a world with two suns and four moons that square dance in the sky every 24 hours, but then the books are really about the interpersonal interactions of the characters, or the intrigue of competitors vying for a throne, or a small band of heroes slaying something and taking its booty. The story doesn't have anything to do with the fantastic setting. Colour of Magic does almost the opposite - focusing closely on what living in a world with magic means, from the eighth color, octarine, to the the way that gods directly interfere with mortals, the book is almost about looking (satirically) at the details of a fantasy world that might get glossed over somewhere else. The book starts with a description of the flat world atop elephants atop a'tuin the space turtle, and it ends with some of the characters flying off the edge of the world.

WotD

Ruction: A disturbance, quarrel, or row

Also, the origin of ruction is uncertain, though it possibly derives from insurrection

Insurrection was also a Star Trek movie with the next generation cast.

Ruction bethinks me of rupture

So I say ruction, and it sounds like something is breaking.

I wonder if ruckus derives from ruction, because if I was going to pick a word that you could define as a disturbance, quarrel, or row, it would probably be a ruckus.

I think yesterday's WotD post was far more interesting than this one.

Word of the Day, and other stuff.

Saw an ad for dictionary.com's word of the day. With some hefty doubts about my ability to be so consistent, here starts the first word of the day post series, wherein I will examine, use, or at least type the word of the day.

Piquant: agreeably stimulating, interesting, or attractive

I think I have it. Just bear with me through this unrelated backstory:

We finished reading Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone two nights ago, and Audrey worked out the netflix so that the movie would arrive the next day, yesterday. This whole experience has been very fun. I get to read it aloud, play with accents, and enjoy delivering a really good story to the kids -- I especially like the reactions on the face parts of my kids.

Over the course of reading it, a low- to mid-grade Potter fever has sprung up in our house. The kids went through their clothes in preparation for school, and it turned into a Sorting, with Houses of clothes based on whether they were too big, too small, and in good condition or not.

Our system of rewarding the kids with 'pebbles', marbles in a jar which earn special rewards when the jar fills, was revamped to represent House Points to Cainfyndor, Rae-Raevenclaw, and EthanPuff. As distributors, Audrey and I are Professors Momgonagal and Dadbledore.

The whole thing makes me smile.

Okay, end of backstory - the piquant thing to me here is the texture of Audrey's back, which I was running my hands over last night while we were all watching Harry Potter and she was lying with her head on a pillow in my lap.

Also unrelated: Yesterday was phenomenal. Great, almost autumnal weather, barbequed chicken for dinner, with the oh-so-bad-for-me-salty-fatty crackling skin it gets when fresh off the grill after being brushed with olive oil/salt/pepper. And Harry Potter. And Audrey's piquant back. And 2 episodes of Dexter on netflix instant.

What soup are YOU in?

Sitting in front of me is the magic item compendium, a sporty red Hot Wheels car, and a glowing cruzer thumb drive.

oh thumb drive, please shine your warm and forgiving orange-ish light on the D&D adventures that I save on your voluminous 4 gigabytes.

to my right is a white mouse

to my future are many cats, who will probably never get a chance to chase a mouse.

um, and I'm wearing red today.

I was sent an article written about St. Genesius, patron saint of actors, who is a saint because while performing a play where his character converted to christianity, he was so convincing that he matched reality to performance, and was more or less immediately put to death for doing so.

The article mentioned without quite focusing entirely on the idea that acting things can change the actor, and can become realities in various ways.

Now, I have so far NOT stabbed the eyes out of horses or travelled to the underworld to retrieve my dead wife, but I do like the idea that pretending can become real. And not in any way related to my magical fantasy world enjoyment hobby - I consider this a nice seasoning atop reality, but not a soup I actually want to boil in. More in the way that maybe if I pretend to be better than I am in a given way for long enough, i get practice at such betterment, and may eventually actually be better.

Westward ho!

On the road again!

I"m typing from Omaha, and tomorrow we complete the drive to Denver for Elliot's wedding! Audrey and I were reminded tonight that we are supposed to have a George Burns and Gracie Allen routine prepared as extra entertainment at the reception. So I found the one about wedding anniversaries that we're supposed to do, and transcribed it, because I didn't find a script online... of course, i didn't look hard, either...

anyway, we'll have something to do in the car tomorrow!

Meanwhile, I am happy as a clam with my D&D group. The whole gang is posting quite the discussion involving their actions and character thought processes that went on at the last session, when they had the opportunity to avenge themselves on their old employer and nemesis, Avery Skint. It was very fun to watch it unfold during the game, and even more fun now, watching the post-game discussion. Geeky warm fuzzies!

Tie rod ends, eh?

In the two weeks between driving to Florida and driving to Denver, it seemed like a good idea to get the van to the repair shop. It needed an oil change and we figured with the ridiculous amount of long driving we were doing, things should just generally get checked out. Plus Audrey was sure there was something shaky with the steering or wheels in general that I was having a hard time noticing.

I think its pretty obvious what happens here - the repair guys find the problem, and it is some very expensive part, and not fixing it will be incredibly dangerous. Specifically, the tie rod ends are heavily worn and the rack and pinion is slowly leaking power steering fluid. The shakiness, though, was probably because of the cupping on the rear tires. Also, the brakes need to be replaced. The total cost to do these repairs makes us look at the option of trading the van for a newer van with a lot less mileage (ours has been driven almost to 100k now). However, if we do the repair we might have a chance to actually pay the van off in the future.

What strikes me as the sure mark of the complete derangement of our economy is that we could buy a new van and add much more to our total debt load, but not effect our monthly budget much because we would just switch to paying off the new car loan instead of the old one, which we could engineer to be at about the same monthly payment. Or we can put ourselves much less in debt and charge the repair bill, but thrash our monthly budget for a while as we try to pay it off. It is significantly more difficult to go into less debt!

However, the dangling carrot of possibly not having a car payment down the road was enough for me, and we are going ahead with the repair. It also helps that the mechanics all agreed that the van we drive has a solid engine that is known to last to 150k or 175k miles with some reliability, so long as one gives it pep talks, oil, and keeps up the brakes and other bits.

Aside from all of the above, I am friends with my van. it has strange personality quirks, it hugs my kids on long trips, has some fun fiddly bits, and has taken us many places in air conditioned, or heated, safety. Trading it in feels like throwing it to the wolves somehow, or being ungrateful for its years of dedicated service, and right now I don't think I could afford to spring for a gold watch, anyway.

Strange morning 3

Over an amazing breakfast, I learned that the genie, following ancient, sorcerous, genie laws, he was allowed one un-wished display of power to each new master, prior to any of the three wishes were used.

Its pretty uncreative, I know, but the first thing i began interrogating him about was money -- my first thought of a wish being to wish away all my various debts and loans and whatnot. He explained that due to all the laws being written in a much more simplistic economical system than modern Western capitalism, one wish would equal one such transaction -- so the way to do it was to just wish for the money to pay everything in one chunk, and then make all the separate mortgage/car/loan payoffs myself. He said he'd even worked out how to directly deposit any amount magically into a bank account. I asked whether he knew if money that magically appeared in my bank account was taxable? He shook his cloud-head sadly and said that even genies don't mess with the IRS.

I also asked if he could grant a wish to create for me exactly the perfect glaucoma gene therapy vector that i'm chasing after at work. He said that yea, he probably could, but usually people cut out the middle man and just wish for things to be cured. Seemed really obvious after he said it.

I decided on my first wish, though, after watching him entertain the kids during breakfast. I wished for him to make himself available to babysit every Friday night until Ethan turned 16 (just to be on the safe side). That way Audrey and I could go on dates and get away at least once a week, knowing that a potent mythological being was bound by the strictures of ancient sorcerous law to protect and care for the kids. Didn't get a chance to talk it over with Audrey first, though, so I hope she thinks its a good idea, too.

There - now you're all caught up. Told you it was a strange morning!

Strange morning 2

There was a brief uncomfortable silence, but then Cain and Rae came hurtling up the stairs making elephant noises to break the ice.

Upon seeing the genie, Cain screamed. Raechel slowly backed down the hall, and mouthed, barely audibly, "Daddy, what is that?"

A detached and observant part of me noticed with amazement that the expulsion of breath from Cain's scream, only a foot or two from the genie's head where it still sat on the couch, had a very strange distortion effect on the orange cloud-being. It was like blowing on the thick billowing smoke coming off a glass of hot water with dry ice in it, but the smoke keeps re-forming into an orange head with horns.

Another part of me tried to assess the situation, and pretty well failed.

"When I am here on Earth, people call me Kells of the Ifriit" The cloud mustered, apparently unshaken by the kids' reactions.

I finally managed "Okay. Hi Kells. This is my son Cain, daughter Rae, and that's Ethan heading toward his high chair. I'm Tommy. I'm going to make the kids some breakfast. Do you want anything? Actually, we're out of milk, so I think i just have dry cereal and maybe some orange juice.." by this time, I'd gotten up, trying to match movement to words, and the refrigerator was still unstocked, due to the lack of any recent grocery excursions. "actually, no orange juice, but there is lemonade"

Ethan was demanding help strapping himself in, and trying to simultaneously get a head start on demanding some juice and food.

Kells stood up, took two steps toward the table and kitchen, then blinked emphatically. Cain was peering around the banister at the stairs, content to this point to watch the proceedings, and Rae was carefully advancing from the hallway. Both of them reacted about the same way I did after Kells blinked - our jaws dropped, our eyes got big, and then we tried to close our mouths before drooling all over, because the table was suddenly packed with the most ridiculously elaborate breakfast I'd ever seen. Our table was creaking under trays of ham, bacon sausage, plates stacked with waffles, pancakes, crepes, bagels and muffins, and a dozen carafes of many-hued juices. On our kitchen penninsula, a long tray was loaded with eggs - boiled, poached, fried, scrambled and everything in between. The scent of absolutely perfect coffee wafted toward me, dragging my attention to the kitchen, where the ...

okay - so its time for lunch, speaking of food. to be continued again i guess. you get the idea about the breakfast thing. it was cool. I'm not going to have much room for lunch, honestly.

Strange morning

nothing much was out of the ordinary right away - i sleepily got Ethan out of bed, plunked him in front of a Blue's Clues episode On Demand, which he seems to favor as a wake-up show, and dozed off on the couch next to him as he watched.

Then, however, the show was over and I woke up and there was a very dense orange cloud sitting on the couch with us, shaped very impressively like a muscular human, but with small horns. Not quite sure what to do with this bit of sensory information, I took in some more. The orange cloud was watching Ethan, who was waving his hand back and forth through the orange cloud-abdomen with a delighted grin on his face.

"This child is delightful!" The orange cloud said, and its mouth moved in exactly the right ways to form the words, but the sound just sort of echoed through the room like it was from a PA system, not really emanating from the mouth region, specifically. "I hope I haven't disturbed you. I know I must look odd, but my last master was a 5-year old who loved the color orange, and I haven't worked out a loophole to change back yet."

It was the word 'master' that slipped things into place for me. Obviously there was a genie sitting on my couch. For some reason realizing this made me feel like I'd learned too much about the genie, violated its privacy somehow, as though I'd been googling someone and noticed they were looking over my shoulder. I purposefully looked elsewhere, and my eyes fell on a plush stuffed elephant on the floor near the piano. It looked very soft, fuzzy, and orange, and suddenly I just really wanted to give it a squeezy hug. Before I really was aware I'd decided to take such action, I was sitting on the floor hugging the bright orange elephant, and both the Genie and Ethan were watching me closely. Ethan made a raspberry trumpeting sound. "that's right, baby! Elephants go pbpbpbpbpbpbpbththpbpth!" I said, trying to be a good father.

A look passed over the genie's orange cloud-face, expressing that emotion one feels when you've arrived at your desk to work, but you're waiting for Windows to boot.

((more later... i need to get my maxiprep out of the centrifuge))

Why aren't there two l's in 'traveling'?

There is a lot to update. I've been waiting for a chance since a week before last Thursday (July 1st), when I had my battery adventure. Thursday went like this: take lots of eye pressure readings on the cats at work, fail to realize that phone is turned off all day, receive call at end of day that my grandfather has passed. Try to imagine how this will affect travel plans for the 4th of July or afterwards - Audrey tries to leave to go to a rehearsal, but can't because the car battery is completely and inexplicably dead. Tommy finds a bus route that goes to Walmart and Sams, and buys a new car battery, then Tommy remembers how heavy car batteries are and wishes the bus stopped a little closer to my house. Battle with corrosion on the battery attacher thingies and finally get a closed circuit with power!

Meanwhile, it sounds like the funeral will be either the 9th or 10th of July. As it stands, we are to travel to Missouri to be with Audrey's family on the 2nd (tomorrow from battery day) and stay through the 4th to blow things up, then return the 5th. Should we return as planned, then fly to Florida for the funeral? Should I fly alone because airfare is too expensive? OR, should we extend our Missouri road trip to include Florida? It took until sometime on the 4th, and some price shopping of airlines on a borrowed laptop outside a pub with free wifi, but we ended up deciding to drive. Luckily, we'd thought ahead and packed dress clothes for a funeral at the last minute back on the 1st, just in case we ended up deciding that.

Ed and Audrey (Ed is also married to an Audrey) took Puck while we were in Florida, and lent us a pack and play. We stayed, instead of a hotel, with a friend of my parents, Miss Duffy. She was awesome, and her house was awesome, and the whole trip went about as well as a trip to a funeral could possibly go. I heard a lot of perspectives of my grandfather that I'd never had. I had little spots of memories of him as I grew up, because we never actually lived near him. Once I managed to live in the same town, he was already declining and wasn't really himself, and didn't remember who I was all that often. In any case, I learned more about him, things that fell into place around the memories I did have.

Audrey and I (and Audrey and Ed, and Mike and Miranda and Frank) went to the preview night of The Producers, which we knew many many people involved in, and it was immensely funny, an appreciated jolt of endorphines.

As an extended family, we went blueberry picking. Last summer we went cherry picking in Michigan, so this seemed to fit pretty well. We even met the guy who used to cut Audrey's hair, who closed his salon to help out his parents at their blueberry farm. Also neat: they have a big pond of Tilapia that poop fertilizer into the water, which is then used for irrigating the blueberries - a trick I thought was eco-brilliant.

Then we drove back, a two-day affair, and here I am back at my computer again, with enormous backlogs of e-mail at work and at home. Overall, I am incredibly impressed with my 1, 6, and 7 year olds for taking all this traveling in stride and only very occasionally being difficult to share a car with.

minipreps are spinning spinning spinning

and the ship of fools is boarding, preparing to get underway!

my brother and I and a few gaming friends are trying out a (already slightly modified) game of Dawn of Worlds, which is all about building a fantasy world/setting. Each person plays a deity and there are three stages (ages) of creation, the first focusing on geography, the second on building and defining races and cultures, and the third on the interactions of the races.

So I need to settle on a character concept. my first idea was to be a god of woodlands, and put all my power behind a couple special woodland races, create a sanctuary for them in a corner of the world.

following an old druid character idea, this led me to maybe a similar woodland type god but also with emphasis on love and mating - its an important part of nature, after all ... and then I could create hybrid races like centaurs and pegasi and things by making different species get together ... and that led me further to the notion of a mischevious puck-like deity, that is fey-like and of the woodlands, but focuses on making people fall in love as a way to sow mischief and chaos..

zombie blog

I found this post in my old blog. If you consider my old blog to be dead, and re-posting as a form of reanimation, then this is a zombie blog post. It stuck out to me, rather prominently, as a reminder that at one time i wrote imaginative things. i might be a little jealous of myself right now, cause there were lots of nice little bits like this...


earlier, my shoe got caught on the corner of a black hole and i fell down, and one arm fell into the whirling, spinning, cosmic void, and it felt really weird.


kind of like if you were daisy on opium, getting tickled by a pinstriped panda bear. but just one arm. I know a panda isn't really a bear, and that was the really odd part about how it felt.


And i was lying there, thinking: I wonder if audrey would want to try this, cause its pretty crazy, but is it too crazy?


Then I realized that it couldn't be a black hole, because if it really was a black hole, capable of sucking even light itself into its gravitational field, it totally would have pulled in more of me than just one arm.


So I mentally played connect-the-dots on the ceiling tiles, using a pale teal highlighter that smelled like fresh mint.


On a scale from one to Jerusalem, I probably was playing connect-the-dots for about three bloodworms, because Bloodworms were on that show, Dirty Jobs on the discovery channel, and it was pretty amusing.


When I finally pulled my arm out, there was this suction sound that was like when you suck a sobe tea bottle onto your lips, but with undertones of jell-O and a sort of shower-stall resonance. You could feel the daisy slowing defoliating, but i couldn't quite control my muscles well enough to wave good-bye to the panda.


As for the black hole thing, i know its a bit irresponsible, but i think i'm just going to let the janitorial staff worry about cleaning it up.

the old hit 'em while they're down move

I think almost everyone that knows me would agree that i usually manage to have a positive attitude about things, but some days its harder than others. I've been trying to brace myself for some bad news from my father, waiting to hear that his father let go and passed on. I wasn't at all ready to hear that dad now needs to find a new job. Dad has worked for the catholic church his whole career, at a lot of parishes and diocese(s) (what is the plural of diocese?), and when the economy sucks, people don't donate as much money in general, which means that churches can get hit. Well, his parish in Gainesville was always struggling to make budget anyway, and add to that the local diocese feels the pinch, and makes the supremely intelligent move of calling in loans they've made to their churches, you know, the old hit 'em while they're down move. Well, the parish had to make pay cuts as well as layoffs, and dad was 'lucky' and just got the pay cut. I don't know if it crossed anyone's mind that cutting someone's pay by more than a quarter is a lot like telling them loudly to clear up their desk.

i guess its obvious that i'm upset. Dad is supposed to be making final steps in recovery from his back surgery at this point, and that's sufficiently complicated without the added stress of trying to care for his failing father. This picture does not, to my mind, call for any further complication. Its a selfish way to see it, i guess.

where is the positive? well, my father has a really strong resume for a wide variety of work - that's good.

I was pretty excited about the USA world cup game tomorrow, and going to rochesterfest for a turkey leg or fried nonsense on a stick. My mood now is ugly, instead. I think i'll go watch a movie with lots of things blowing up. Second thought, maybe i don't need that... maybe a comedy.

Fathers Day!

Today was fathers day, so I was wearing my father hat a lot. Rae made pictures and a card for me, then hid them and made me search for them. Lucky for me she gives very helpful clues, like "Daddy, maybe you should look here in the play kitchen", or "There is one hidden on this shelf. No, wait, I mean this shelf." Cain and I played soccer at the park - he is going to a sports camp this summer, and will be spending a couple days playing soccer and baseball (he got to choose two sports). Anyway, between watching the Brazil-Ivory Coast match (shame on them for fighting) and kicking around the ball with Cain, I guess I also dusted off my soccer-player hat for a while today.

We watched Alice in Wonderland after dinner as a family, minus Ethan who mostly ran around, jumped off of things into my arms, and teased his kiki (security blanket) by sneaking cuddles with other blankets.

On the more difficult side of Fathers Day, I talked to my dad, who is facing the imminent death of his father. In talking on the phone with dad, as he has worked through his back surgery and watched his father sink further and further away, my task has generally been to distract him with humorous brainstorming, poke fun at each other, and generally be silly and happy. Today he spoke of his father fighting everything, stubbornly refusing to shake loose his personal mortal coil. Poppa hasn't made any effort to conduct his final years highlighting gracefulness, and I don't think he is looking for a graceful exit. In my head I keep composing sentences that belong in a memorium post, but that isn't what I'm looking for here - i just want, I guess, to explain to myself why my dad's voice was so full of grief and pain.

So anyway, there was good and bad, and there was also fun and inconsequential (put on geek hat): Audrey got me the lego evolution t-shirt i've been raving to her about, and I got my hands on the rules for an rpg that completely new to me, Coyote Trail - a wild west/frontier system. The rules at first glance promise to be as easy and flexible as claimed in the reviews i read. I picked this one, besides being interested in learning a new system, because I think it will be a fun setting for 1:1 gaming with Audrey. She has an idea of making a Madame character who owns a frontier-town brothel.

So, there was an attempt at self-exploration under the polyhatism convention.