I've really hit a good stride this week, I think, with my "work" days. I hit on a project idea for myself- maybe last Friday? which has really energized me. I won't say anything about it for now. It's fun for me though. I've tried different things with a workspace and coffee and all that to hit just the right paramters. If you know you know and you probably do. Today I even tried standing up to do some typing, and that was good though when Michelle's laptop (that I've been using, all my other tech is dead or close to it) battery ran down I sat back down. 

I didn't go for a run, which has also been huge for creativity, but I did go for a lunchtime walk over to the pond not far from my house. It's been a lovely September so being outside has been amazing. I watched the Canada geese and some loonish looking things which I don't think are loons. Hey why don't I post some pics since this has apparently been a bird blog lately lol. Actually Naia and I also went to the same park to throw a football around today after supper and we saw three bluejays too, which I tried to photograph but didn't really get any good shots. 

My point though, beyond the birds, is this has been a really good time for me, now two months into my layoff. I don't believe in fate or destiny at all but I am where I am "meant" to be. I don't like that word since it implies we have purpose and all that. Let me say, I'm where I'm optimized to be. Perfectly adapted for this situation we find ourselves in. Not to tempt fate (which lucky for me doesn't exist!) with the virus still out there but yeah. I am happy. How are you?

 I was walking Pallas over to  a nearby park and we saw that same bird I mentioned last week, got a slightly better picture of it but the crucial identifying feature isn't shown, though we clearly saw it. A red patch on her head! Easy enough to google that and the result was Hairy Woodpecker.  I know these are hardly exotic birds but they're a big deal for me in my nondescript Edmonton backyard!

Stonemaier Games announced the second Wingspan expansion today! Quite a striking box art, as with all the Wingspan art. I'm excited for this since it was my trip to New Zealand that really opened my eyes to how cool birds are. I'll never forget Been looking out the window of Wedge and saying, "There's a parrot out there."

I had no idea there were parrots in New Zealand. Where are parrots from? I'm not super sure. What even are parrots? Anyways the kea is the world's only alpine parrot and I can't wait to see its card in Wingspan. Hopefully it's special power is to open your backpack and steal all your food! Here's my photo of that kea from sixteen years ago (!):

Hmm. Well since the last time I was super active on this blog my Flickr account was essentially taken hostage- they wanted fifty bucks or all my photos but a thousand would be deleted forever. So I just deleted them myself- I save them to various places but I can't find my Kea anywhere. Oh well it wasn't a great photo or anything. But it was mine.

Curse of the Dad Joke

Naia was throwing bullets. And Pallas was catching kicks like a pro. It was a perfect October afternoon of football in the park. Dad called them in for a huddle and a high five.

 "Great job, girls," he said. "Hi5s all around! I think I need to go home and help Mom with supper though. Before I go, here's a joke for you."

 "No!" Pallas said. "No jokes!" 

"Why did Cinderella get kicked off the football team?"

 Pallas rolled her eyes, but Naia said, "Why?" 

"Because she kept running away from the ball!" 

 The girls groaned and Dad ran home.

 "Let's practice our spirals!" 

Naia headed downfield and Pallas wound up to throw a perfect pass, the ball zipping through the air as if shot from a cannon. But it didn't reach its target!

 Instead it collided midair with some strange flying thing, knocking the strange flying thing out of the air with a ferkluffenish thud. Pallas and Naia ran to the crash site from opposite ends of the field. It was a beautiful woman wearing orange robes and a hat. Pallas extended her hand to help her up. The woman dusted herself off, using the sweepy end of a broom to wipe her feet. 

 "Two things," Naia said. "First, sorry for knocking you out of the sky. And second, are you a witch? Or a fairy???" 

"Yes, I am a witch." The witch looked at the two sisters, seeming to notice them for the first time. 

"I thought witches were green," said Pallas. 

"Witches are whatever colour they want to be," said the witch. Who was green now.

 "Wow!!" 

"Most witches would put a devilish hex on you for knocking them down like that," said the witch. 

“We're very sorry! We were practicing football. You can play with us if you want," Pallas said. 

The witch was climbing onto her broom, with every intention of flying away, but she looked into the eyes of these two small, wicked children, and said, "Football is not really my jam, but you two remind me so much of myself when I was young, so, why not? I will play."

 Football with a witch turned out to be the funnest thing ever, if not really in keeping with any of the rules. Magic spells and flying brooms and perfect spirals opening wormholes in reality. Pallas and Naia were laughing so hard they collapsed in heaps on the ground. The witch had never had so much fun in all her centuries. 

"Thank you, little witchlings. That was amazing. But I need to go. And you know, I still owe you a hex." 

"You're still going to hex us?" Naia asked. 

The witch smiled. "No. Not ever. But I will still cast a hex for you, anything you want. As long as it's wicked and witchy."

 Pallas said, "Ok, we just need to huddle for a minute." She took Naia a short distance and they whispered and conferred as if planning the final play of the Grey Cup.

 "OK," said Pallas, after they returned. "Can you hex our Dad so he doesn't tell Dad jokes anymore?" 

The witch thought about this. "I won't compel your dad to do anything against his will. I am a force for chaos and mischief but I still strongly believe in consent. But I think I know just the thing." She held her hands just so, fingers making claws, and spoke an ancient and forgotten tongue. Witchish, probably. Then she blew both sisters a kiss and climbed on her broom and flew away. 

The girls looked at each other, shrugged, and went home for supper.

 "That was fun!" said Naia.

 The family gathered around the table, eating and talking about their days. Pallas kept sniffing, the crisp October air giving her a runny nose.

 "Hey Pallas," Dad said, "What do you do with a runny nose?" 

Pallas side-eyed Dad. "What?" 

"Catch it before it gets away!" Dad's laugh was abruptly cut off, however, when his nose jumped off his face and started running like a bat out of hell. He shrieked and fell out of his chair. His nose was running all over the board game shelf, knocking over Lego and dice and making a terrible mess. 

Dad slipped and tripped and stepped on Legos and D20s. His nose blew boogers at him! His own nose!

“I can't believe this is happening! I swear I will never tell another Dad joke as long as I live!" 

With that his nose calmly walked back and reattached itself to his face. Dad fainted. 

Naia said, "Enzgurgh smuild!" 

Pallas said, "What does that mean?" 

"It means 'hooray' in Witchish!”

 What's your favourite bird? When I was a kid it was the bald eagle, I liked it so much I even learned its latin name which I still remember, almost forty years later. Haliaeetus leucocephalus. And eagles are still pretty damn cool, but through no fault of their own they also reek of American symbolism. Hmm. I kind of like hummingbirds. I installed a hummingbird feeder earlier this year but I didn't see any- maybe I was too late in the season to attract them, maybe they don't really frequent the area. How does one market to hummingbirds anyway? Mostly I have sparrows. They didn't care for the sunflower seed-heavy feed I put out this year. Usually they gobble the birdseed I put out in less than 24 hours but there's still some of that stuff left. 

Gotten a few different species this year too, which I haven't seen before. Hopefully it's a sign that bird populations in general are more healthy than they've been. Don't be fooled, though. Shifting baseline syndrome is definitely a thing. We tend to think the conditions (ecological conditions like faunal populations) we grew up with are normal, but really they were already in really bad shape, so when we perceive an improvement we are more impressed than we should be, since the actual baseline from whenever you want to measure it, say a hundred years ago or a thousand, was way way higher. There used to be ten billion passenger pigeons a hundred years ago, but now there are zero. Or when I was a kid, bald eagles were relatively rare, having been hurt by DDT and other things, but now they are much more common than in the 80s. But still not at their optimum population.

Anyway, my point was to post some of the pictures of cool birds I've taken this year. I no longer have a DLSR and I usually have to take pics quick before they fly away so I'm not saying these are amazing photos. But it is kind of amazing to me the variety of birds we can get in my neck of the Woods since when I was kid the baseline was basically sparrow and ravens. 

Western Tanager:

House Thrush:

This one just showed up the other day and I don't know what it is. 

And then at work- where I used to work I mean which is still weird to say- we always had a bunch of these flying around. They rarely sat still long enough to get a good look at them but they definitely had a red colouring, but I'm pretty sure they are different than a house thrush:

So yeah. I like birds. Also at work I got to watch a juvenile bald eagle practice flying, with I assume one of its parents supervising. I took some video but the eagle is hard to see, I think I mainly just got the adult. Well, maybe I'll upload it somewhere one of these days. It's a bit of a rigmarole not having my own computer though so not right now. I was going to talk about Wingspan and Mariposas tonight too, but those could really go in their own posts.

Gotten quite a few rejections for short stories lately and that's fine and normal. Earlier today on Twitter I posted how even though I've tried so many things to get the writing juices flowing nothing seemed to work. I set up a nice writing table and I have my still-too-small collection of notebooks that I use instead of a computer:

There's a method but also I don't really have a computer so.

I've been trying to write a little every day but it's not really been too successful. I try to just warm up by journalling but not life journalling just literally like warming up writing muscles talking about the process and stuff. 

I listen to boardgame design podcasts and one doctrine that's really essential in that field is to iterate quickly instead of overthinking stuff alla time so I tried that. Definitely helpful but you have to be comfortable with suckiness. Hell, I even watched some YouTube videos on writing just to see if I could jumpstart creativity. Other things I try- reading my own writing to sort of remember what my style is. That's helpful too, actually.

Then I took a break and did some household maintenance type things. Still just urg! Finally I decided to go for a run sans AirPods so no music or podcasts. Just me and my thoughts and I ran a good 10 kms and also it totally worked so yay! Once winter comes I don't know how happy I will be to get out there in -30 but I will cross that bridge when it comes. 

 I didn't see that coming! I'm sure you've heard by now the news about the phosphine gas discovered in the clouds of Venus. I think most people, especially the scientists who published the findings, are pretty quick to point out all the reasons to be appropriately skeptical. Scientific progress is built on healthy skepticism but as a layperson I can definitely embrace some cautious optimism. Cynical pessimism I can do without. Anyways my money was always on Europa so Venusian cloud bugs is a huge bonus even if it turns out phosphine can be produced by some process we just haven't seen before, without any life-form being involved. From what I understand we don't even really understand how micro-organisms produce phosphine here, just that we know they do.

I was reading a book on Overdrive and you know how when it expires it just says "too bad for you asshole stop reading!" and it goes away? And then you have to put it on hold again and wait until some random day when all 12 of your holds are available somehow on the same day. Well the Venus news reminded me to check and yay the book was available for download again! I only had two more days to claim it so lucky for me the cloud dwellers of Venus saved the day. The book is called Alien Oceans by Kevin Hand. He doesn't seem to have a personal website or blog but if you google him all sorts of stuff comes up. The book is mostly about the search for and probability of life on the myriad of ocean worlds just in our own solar system- Europa, Enceladus, even Ceres has just recently been discovered to have an ocean! Still very intriguing stuff, even if Venus is about as far from an ocean world (now) as you can get. Anyways I bring it up because I liked a point he makes in it and it is relevant today: in our history we have discovered geology works beyond Earth; chemistry works beyond Earth. So like, does biology work beyond Earth?

THE GIANT FLOATING INTELLIGENT FLYING WHALES FARTING OUT PHOSPHINE GAS ON VENUS SAY YES!!!!!

 I've read more than 70 complete issues of National Geographic this year, mostly since the pandemic hit. A long time ago I realized that if you read an issue cover to cover, you would pick up the most amazing and useful info you otherwise never would have known that you would want to know. This is just a trick I do, not something I recommend to anyone else. You do you. But for me it's been invaluable. It would be faster and more efficient to just read the articles that sound interesting but then you miss out on all these interesting tidbits about potatoes, for example. Because if I didn't have that rule there's no way I'm reading 2000 words about potatoes. But they're really fascinating. Who knew!

Since 2004 or so- in fact when I went to New Zealand as chronicled in the early years of this blog- this has been my practice. Most years I was lucky to even read 12 issues this way, and thus it was a losing battle. And hey, I'm not saying my goal or desire is to read every issue of NatGeo ever. No. But maybe since I was born? September 1974 issue? But completing this task is beside the point. The point is only and always to learn all the things. I've also read a shit ton of comics on Marvel Unlimited this year but that's for whole other reasons. Really, though, all reading just makes me, and you if you care to, a better writer.

As if I already wasn't Nerd to the power of a hundred, here is a chart I made tracking the issues I have read cover to cover:

And here are a couple of cool links to some of the things I've discovered, which I had no idea existed beforehand:

A stone mosaic map of the Middle-East in Jordan.

The largest known geode, known as the Pulpi Geode, is big enough to stand in!

The kodkod, or guigna, is the smallest cat in the Americas, and are about half the size of a house cat. Leopordus guigna guigna is its latin designation but looks like maybe güiña is the more correct way to write it.

If you find the common link you will win a prize! Just kidding, the common link is I read about them in National Geographic. There will be no prizes ;)

 

It's my birthday! A lovely day. Thought I'd dust off this blog, which isn't quite as old as I am, but as blogs go, it's pretty ancient. Like a million in blog years. I think I would like to make better use of it from now on, since I have plenty of time to do so. Back in July my long career at the ole coal mine came to an end. The photos above show my firstish day- maybe it was taken my first day, maybe a few weeks in, I honestly don't recall- and my last day, standing next to the exact same truck! Camera technology changed a little bit in the intervening 27 years so I guess my iPhone has a .... slightly more fisheye effect? Or wider angle? I'm not too sure about the specifics. But I tried to capture the same angle, just didn't quite nail it.

So much has changed, even since I wrote the essay in the previous post- indeed it did come to pass, going into decline and all that. But the virus changed everything. It didn't really affect the mine closure much- that was going to happen regardless. But it sure made the "well, now what?" phase much scarier for a lot of my colleagues. Some of them got jobs, and some haven't yet. As for me, I am able to stay at home- for the first time in my married life I won't be gone from home half the time! Which is huge for us. The girls are in school, Michelle is working, and we have the flexibility to deal with any changes in that situation. Well, short of getting the virus at the same time. I have no idea what will happen then and I don't mind admitting that thought scares me. Anything else I think we can handle. 

So yeah, I have more time to pursue writing, so I will write here from time to time, though my focus now will be on getting published in other venues. I've had some small success with that over the years, even when constrained by the Harrison Bergeron effect of shift work. 

And I get to work out more- also something that I did fairly well while living with the constant near-jetlag effect of shift work. No more night shifts! That's so huge for me. I can string together a much more impressive run of workouts now. My Apple Watch is much happier with me, lol. I'll sign off with a selfie even!