I haven't gone anywhere in forever but it's been an eventful few days. I mean, sort of. It's about to be, that's for sure.

First, online stuff. I signed up for a MOOC today out of my Alma Mater, the good old University of Alberta. It's called Indigenous Canada. Maybe you've seen Dan Levy tweet about it. It's really good so far. Some years ago I took what we wound up affectionately calling the #superMOOC which was about gender and sexuality in comic books, and that was really valuable and interesting. Indigenous representation, respect and reconciliation is something I'm very interested in and have been for a while, so this seems like kind of the bare minimum of something I should do before I go much further in writing Indigenous characters while not appropriating or being otherwise inappropriate.

Another very cool thing that came along at just the right time for me was a quote I got from one of the most recent episodes of Brené Brown's podcast, Unlocking Us- the one with wrier Gabby Rivera. I could just write the quote out but I think you should listen for yourself. It will jump out at you if you are a writer. And if you aren't or don't have the time or whatever multitude  of other reasons, leave a comment and I will tell you in the comments. It gave me life today.

What else. I got a professional logo made for The Ursus Verses, which is something I was waiting on before going ahead with the print edition. The logo I made in Word was alright just to get something out there but for a print version I knew I needed something professional. I'm quite pleased with it and stay tuned I am sure I will show it to you soon. Also leave a comment if you want to preorder the print version of volume 1 of The Ursus Verses, available already in ebook format on Amazon and Kobo. 

And I've said it on social media all over the place so this probably isn't news but I just realized I never said anything on the blog- on Friday we are getting a bear cub! Well, a puppy that looks just like a bear cub. Her name is Ahsoka and here is a picture because omg she is the cutest thing ever. I love her! Can't wait until Friday.

"If your story is about what your story is about, you're in trouble."

 -Robert McKee, paraphrased

I'm writing a story that's pure fun. Getting back to the joy of writing, for me. It's essentially a kaiju story, but hopefully one that's never been done before. It's also a love letter to heavy metal and is all about kick-ass women kicking ass. Among other things.  But at its heart, it is about fighting a monster. 

And that's really it. I realized the main characters don't really grow or change, or have any conflict amongst themselves.... they just start out kicking ass and end up kicking asser. 

The only real challenge for me as a writer has been figuring out how to manifest a giant robot using nothing but the awesome power of heavy metal! I tried googling that but it wasn't as informative as I would have liked. 

So as I write I'm also editing and adding stuff in, that's what we do, right? Write! Right! I think if I add just a touch of a character flaw that can be worked through, and maybe a minor interpersonal conflict, it will be a stronger story. I hope so! I freely admit that characterization has never been my strongest suit as a writer, though of course I'm working on it and hopefully getting better all the time.

The books in the photo have been helpful to me, though it's actually been quite a while since I read them, and I could benefit from a reread of a few of them. Bossk was flabbergasted about the Seven Basic Plots one- as far as he's concerned the only plot that matters is Bossk Gets Bounty.

Are you working on a story? Have any writing weaknesses you're working on?

 4 1/2 Writing Lessons Learned from the Boardgame Design Realm

On Instagram I finally changed my bio away from coal-mining stuff. It now says "Boardgamer. Also a writer." Little bit of modesty maybe in putting writing second, but boardgames is a huge love of mine. I spend as much time as I can get away with playing games, and when I can't I'm still consuming bg-related media, especially podcasts. I dipped a toe in the boardgame designer space though only as, at best, a tertiary hobby. Writing is the thing I am best at so I am choosing to focus on that. But, here are some lessons I've gleaned from over there that I think translates pretty well to the writing life, since both are, after all, about creativity.

1. Rapid Iteration: the doctrine in bg-design is to prototype rapidly. Have an idea? Cobble something together out of lint and whatever other odds and ends you have laying around and get something to the table, just to see if the idea is any fun and worth pursuing. Doesn't have to be pretty- in fact, making it pretty is a waste of time at this point in the process. I have a story in 40 Below Volume 2 that I wrote in one sitting and that didn't require any revision. I know, right? Why can't it always be so easy? I want it to be, but waiting for that to happen is actually hindrance, and I've started just writing a fast first draft by hand in a notebook, not worrying about making it polished at all. This tells you right away if you have a story worth working on. And it counts as writing, I think. Maybe even the most important kind of writing. 

2. Playtesting. There's this one podcast I listen to, the Board Game Design Lab, where if you made a drinking game out of every time they say "playtesting"you would die of alcohol poisoning in like five minutes. Playtesting means getting as many people as possible to play your (now much more polished) prototype so they can give you feedback, including feedback such as 'This game really sucks!'. Once you have a working draft get as many beta-readers and proofreaders as possible before sending it away. This is kind of tricky though, since reading someone's unfinal work isn't a huge priority for a lot of people. In playtesting it's the same problem so the advice is be a generous playtester so that you aren't always saying "hey try my game I gotta go bye!" Offer to read other writers' work. But offer good feedback too, which is a whole skill all on its own, for sure.

3. Play a Lot of Games: this is the best homework ever. Heck yeah I'll play a lot of games to learn about how to make them! The parallel is obvious- read widely. Read lots. Just read. It will make you a better writer. When I was a kid and read The Lord of the Rings for the first time, I immediately wrote my first stab at a fantasy story- it was about these creatures (that looked just like the mystics from The Dark Crystal which I also loved) who had.... ten rings.... and they had to . . . you know. . . probably destroy the rings so the dark lord . . . of course it was crap. Read read read and not just the same type of thing you love already, branch out and read stuff you wouldn't otherwise be interested in. It all goes into your mental cauldron and the soup that comes out is yum and unique to you.

4. Steal, copy, pillage and plunder. In boardgames, there are only so many gameplay mechanics, and though innovation does happen, it is completely acceptable to design a worker placement game about vikings even though there are already a ton of worker placement games about vikings. Maybe replace Vikings with zombies. But you take from here and you take from there and remix it and now it's new. This is ok in the bg industry. 

BUT

4 1/2 Make sure the best part of your game isn't something you stole from another game: Don't just reskin a game and sell it. Plagiarism is bad. As in my example with the ten-ring mystic creatures, simple regurgitation isn't cool. Add something new, something unique to bring to your story. You have a unique voice, and I want to hear it! This advice I can attribute directly to JB Howell, whose game Reavers of Midgard (a worker placement game about vikings!) is pictured below.

 Just went live on Kobo as well. 

 My plan, when I was laid off, was to write more, and submit more. I've had some success getting published, so I thought I would try to build up a solid writerly resume that way, piece by piece. And indeed I do still submit stuff, but back in September I learned about chapbooks and realized they were kind of the perfect medium for what I do. I'm not a novelist, after all. Maybe one day but not now. But I have a nice big catalogue of work that stretches back the entire life of this blog, 18 years, and then some. Which is a long-winded way of introducing my first chapbook, available right now on Amazon!  With plans to diversify into the other ebook markets and also do a print run. And I know I can do at least three more of these just with material that already exists, and hopefully even six volumes eventually. The writerly resume I want! Much of the writing was first published here, though not all of it. Anyways check it out!

This Halloween

I love my local library, Edmonton Public. Since the pandemic started I haven't been to a branch in person but thanks to Twitter and their email newsletter I've been able to keep up a little with what they're doing. Can't wait to visit the newly reopened and renovated Stanley A. Milner main branch when I get a chance. I signed up for this Zoom meeting that was all about Twine, which I didn't know anything about but I've found signing up for these sorts of things is almost always valuable. Twine is pretty cool, at its simplest it is a way to make choose your own adventure stories fairly easily. Not understanding this, I got to work making a branching poem on multiple sheets of paper before I even investigated how to use Twine. Turns out if I had just gone to Twinery in the first place I could have saved a few trees. Now my next trick is to figure out how to embed it here, and maybe I figured it out. Hopefully. Well, you won't see this if I manage it, but as I type this I am on my third attempt! I'm sure it will work this time: 

 Did it work?

 NO! *%$*&#@$^&(*&**%##^^&*&*(^$; (cartoon swearing because I never swear in real life) 

Ok fine, here is a link to the google page I made but I wanted to embed it right here in this post.

 The poem itself is not a masterpiece at all- it's terrible and I don't mind admitting it. I just wanted to have something to bring to the workshop, and to gain hands-on experience. But it will work as my Halloween story for this year!

I tried embedding it using the html iframe function. If you know how to do this please let me know. It seemed simple enough but yet. 

 Another significant milestone for me- and I almost didn't notice. I was telling a story to my family about staying in a men's shelter back on  my cross-Canada hitch-hiking trip, and Pallas asked me how old I was when I did it. 

"I was 23," I said. "And that was 23 years ago."

Kind of blew my mind. I realize it's not anything most people would care about but on this one little tiny corner of the internet I get to decide what gets talked about! Definitely one of the adventures in my life that has shaped who I am.

The story I told the kids was about staying in a men's shelter in I think Ajax, Ontario. Somewhere close to Toronto anyway. I was just there one night after a day of thumbing so I needed to find a place to stay and someone mentioned a "men's hostel" nearby. Sounded good to me so off I went. Turns out yeah it was a homeless shelter. They had room though so I registered to stay there for the night. I was fully prepared to pay for my berth but in fact I was informed otherwise.

"In the morning come here and we will give you your three dollars for staying here."

"Um, no, I don't need three dollars."

"We have to give it to you."

"No thanks, I don't need it. But that's very nice of you."

"Sir, it's the law. You have to take it."

That  made the girls laugh, and when I was a kid of 23 I thought it was pretty hilarious myself. With an additional 23 years of experience and wisdom I see now how this funny law of requiring each guest at a homeless shelter to receive $3 from the government would need to have a system of checks and balances and budgetary whathaveyou to protect unscrupulous people from taking advantage of it. And I'm not talking about the guests. 

Anyways I just gave my toonie and a loonie to one of the guys there that I met and befriended. I think he was able to use it along with his own allowance to buy a pack of smokes. Once it was mine I was free to do with it what I wanted, and once it was his, ditto!

 Happy bloggiversary to me! Hard to believe this little blog is now old enough to drink, at least here in Alberta. I haven't been advertising the fact that I'm more or less active again, because the world has changed a lot in the past 18 years. There's not really a blogosphere anymore. Not in the same way. Social media kind of killed that off. The several year gap in this very blog is a symptom of that for sure.

Regardless, 18 years is pretty impressive. Makes you miss 2002, especially in this cursed year of 2020. This is a good time to announce, to not really anyone in particular, that I've been working on a series of chapbooks which encompass a lot of the creative writing I used to do as well some of the stuff I've since done elsewhere. First volume is coming along nicely. I'll just publish them myself and get them out there. Be a good writing resume and something I can point to and say, I made that. Took 18 years goddammit but I did it.

Cheers!

 I discovered that helicarriers were real! More or less. First a quick history in pictures as to what a helicarrier really looks like- the MCU version was super cool but the comic version was more heli less carrier. Here it is in its first appearance as depicted by the King, Jack Kirby:

And how it looked when I was more familiar with it in the late 70s/early 80s:

Jack Kirby and Stan Lee were both WWII vets and would have been familiar with the pre-war rigid airships. I was reading a National Geographic today that had an article about the USS Macon, an American Navy airship. A lead zeppelin, sort of. The damnedest thing was, it carried a complement of five biplanes, little Spitfighters that were stored inside but were deployed by a hook. They had to latch onto the hook to "land" as well! Somehow I was unaware of this fact my whole life. Pretty neat. It only lasted two years and then it crashed into the ocean where it lays still. They've located the remains as well as a few of the Spitfires. Too deep and damaged to salvage, as far as I know. The article was from 1992 so maybe since then they've brought it up but I really doubt it. Click here to go to the wikipedia article, it's pretty cool. I always thought the helicarrier was one of the more outlandish flights of fancy Stan Lee and Jack Kirby took but maybe they really took a flight on an airship, or saw one.

Pilars of the Earth

A friend of mine lent me the game Pillars of the Earth. I've never read the book, but Michelle has, and I was always interested in the board game based on it. Even the fact that they made a game based on this thick tome of historical fiction about (presumably) building a cathedral is pretty fascinating don't you think?

I played it once solo to learn the rules, then played it once with Pallas and once today with Michelle. Both of them liked it, and I really like it too. It's got a beautiful board with some beautiful components, and it's a worker placement game with some different takes on the whole worker mechanic, so it's pretty much exactly what I look for in a game.

It's pretty simple really. Six rounds, broken into two main phases. First phase you draft some cards- either you send a certain number of workers (you have a bunch) to one of three resource areas in exchange for a certain number of resource cubes, or you pay some gold to buy another craftsperson which you take into your hand. Maximum hand number of these crafters is five. They are what convert your resources into victory points later on.

The second phase is where it gets interesting- each player has a number of master workers in a bag, and each worker is drawn blind from the bag one by one. The first worker drawn has the option to either pay 7 gold (a lot) to place their worker on the board, or pass. Either way the next worker drawn from the bag, even if it's the same colour as the previously drawn one, has the same opportunity, only this time it only costs 6 gold. This goes all the way down and if everyone passes, then all workers still left can be placed for free in the order they were first drawn. This is quite unique to my experience and a lot of fun as it makes for some hard and interesting decisions.

The board has a bunch of places that offer differing benefits, as in all worker placements. The trick is to pick the one that gets you the most points, and of course your opponents are blocking you and forcing you to think fast to change tactics. After each round another piece of the cathedral is placed, and at the end of the game you have a cool little wooden cathedral in the middle of the board.

This game isn't super new, and I described it to Pallas as "it's like they heard about worker placement games and only had a vague idea of what those are and designed a cool game based on their conceptions." Which I totally dig. It does stuff I haven't seen in other wp games. It's fun! But if I'm honest I was a little disappointed that the big wooden cathedral, the biggest hook in the game, is really just a glorified round tracker. After each round you add a piece. That's it. And the thing is, there are three other round trackers built into the game already- the craftsperson cards, the favour cards and the event cards all double as ways to keep track of the rounds.

This has the unfortunate effect of turning the big wooden pieces into a gimmick. I really hate to say that, because this is a really fun game! I thought players would maybe work together to gather the necessary resources to build each piece, with maybe points for the player who contributes the most or penalties to those who don't, as in the constructed markets in Euphoria (the game I discussed in the previous post). I almost thought about designing my own variant where this is what you do, but that is a little ambitious and beyond my skills, so I didn't. I wonder if anyone has?

The other day on Twitter someone started a good discussion by calling out some prominent board game YouTubers who had taken it upon themselves to "fix" Elizabeth Hargrave's new game Mariposas. Which I have and have played twice now. I really like it. You play a bunch of Monarch butterflies who have to migrate from Michoacan up to Canada and back, picking up resources and card sets along the way. It's really hard- collecting sets to get points is not always possible while also meeting the other goals and requirements of the game. So RandomDude decided to make a rule where something something something. I dunno. He made it easier anyways.

So, on the one hand, if you buy a game, you have every right to house rule and do whatever you want with it. You bought it. Bonk each other on the head with the board and smash each other in the face with the box for all I care. 

On the other hand, doing this with your platform of thousands and implying you know better than the designer is a little ... I can see where this raises eyebrows. Especially when Elizabeth Hargrave, award-winning designer of the massively huge game Wingspan, has had to face all kinds of misogynistic passive aggressiveness and aggressive aggressiveness just for being a woman in the board game design world. 

And again, if RandomDude was just saying "this is too hard so I made it easier for me lol lol I'm terrible at games" I would be the first one to give a thumbsup emoji. You do you! Have fun! But this RandomDude (who is not just some random dude at all but one of the biggest BG personalities) has a history of blundering into these sorts of gendered "controversies" (for want of a better term, these are hardly scandals on the scale of separating children from their parents in ICE concentration camps) and claiming innocent ignorance.  "Oh I didn't realize I was being a dick! Teach me better I want to learn!!" I'm less inclined lately to pardon ignorance when your google bar is just right over there. 

But I do wish we were actively building the cathedral in Pillars of the Earth.

Euphoria is one of my favourite games, and certainly one of my most photogenic. It's a bit of a tough one to teach, though. I kind of had a good spiel (this is a funny pun for boardgamers) down for it but I also haven't had much opportunity to practice it on anyone since this whole rigamarole so. Pallas and Michelle both enjoy it though. Last night I played it solo which is something I don't mind doing occasionally.  

Stonemaier games almost always come with a solo variant using something they call Automatically Factory, which I have tried for Euphoria but honestly, with worker placement games I am almost always just as happy to just play two different colours and see what happens. I guess that takes away from the competitiveness of it, which is kind of the point of playing games, but I honestly just like the feeling of helping to build up this utopia.

Euphoria's tagline is "Build a Better Utopia" but one of the things I love about the game is that's sort of disingenuous, as you come to realize when you look at all the fluff text that really you're kind of a force for not good in this world. It's a dystopia and you are trying to be in charge of it, sort of. It's subtle and perhaps a touch unclear which is partly why it is difficult to teach. Ultimately you're just trying to be the first to place your ten stars, which is just game speak for accomplish any ten things that score. 

Broadly speaking there's four different factions on the board, three ground based and one up in the clouds. Each offers certain resources and commodities which you collect and trade in whatever ways you see fit to help you get closer to victory. Maybe you want to collect some gold bars (the gold bar resources you get are beautiful heavy bricks) to help build a market. That gets you a star, and if someone else didn't help, they don't get a star, and also they have now a penalty that applies to them until they can find a way to place a star.

And you do all this not with worker meeples as in many other games (that happy fellow above is a miner meeple not controlled by any single player) but with dice. Dice are your workers, and their different values determine what they can do for you. And if the total value of your dice is too high, that means your workers are too smart and one of them runs away. Lol. I'm not trying to teach you the game, just give you some flavour for it. Anyways it's all interconnected and strategic. And so fun! Michelle beats me every time. One reason why I like playing against myself, but even there last night I lost against myself. But I also won I guess.

 It's Read In Week which in normal years means people from the community come to schools and read to the kids. This being 2020 we do it all by google meets and such. But I did get to zoom into Naia's grade 4 class today. Same thing, in normal years usually we'd've already gnet to Meet The Teachers night and the girls would have excitedly shown us their classrooms and all the projects they're working on. So yeah, even by zoom (google meet sorry) it was cool to see her class and even her teacher. Everyone wearing masks. I read the story from a couple weeks ago, Curse of the Dad Joke, at Naia's request, as well as a poem originally posted here back in .... 2003? Long time ago. The F.A.F.A.F. (I was going to try to link to it but apparently the permalink are not really working anymore. It's ok, I'm working on something more better.)

Tomorrow I'm zooming into Pallas' class and I will read my short story Dams which was printed in a local anthology but has never been online. I originally wrote that quite some time ago, too. Been going over a lot of my old writing, seeing which of it holds up. Salvaging some of it, anyway.

Ever heard of Twine? It sounds vaguely familiar from listening to CBC's Spark. Got my EPL newsletter today and they have some sort of zoom thing involving writing something on Twine, so I signed up. Might as well, right? I have the time. I think it's just writing stories with hypertext. A few years ago for Mother's Day I wrote Michelle a whole Choose Your Own Adventure story - I even downloaded a template with the red border and got the girls to draw the cover. It was fun- aliens come and kidnap Pallas and Naia and Michelle has to use her ingenuity and kickassness to get them back. That was just a one-off but it was fun to write the various pathways.

 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!