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..