Springin

Spring's coming early to the desert. Nothing like a nice windy February day for massacring rose bushes and listening to Turnpike Troubadours.

Super Stars Warses

SuperbOwl weekend has, in the past 5 years or so, become a different sort of tradition for us. We generally travel to Carlsbad on Saturday to celebrate Julie and Ross's birthdays, then travel back home for Super Star Wars Sunday, wherein we eat junk food and watch a Star War. This weekend was no exception. Celebrated and played games (Dungeon Mayhem, Chess, and Swords & Strongholds) with Ross and Jalie on Saturday; ate nachos and watched The Last Jedi on Sunday. Pretty great weekend, sinus trubs notwithstanding. Oh, and Ross is turning 18, which is kind of crazy. He was born right when Carrie and I got together. He's heading to NMSU in the fall. Will be good to have him close and get to do some gaming with him on more regular basis.

Gritty Fatigue

I've been working through the First Law trilogy for a while now and I'm finally on the last book, The Last Argument of Kings. I find myself tiring of gritty fantasy. I took a break and shifted to comics to read some of Tom King's Batman and Gotham Central. Not really a break from the gritty, but still good stuff. Gotham Central has me wanting to rewatch The Wire again. I also picked up Lumberjanes and I (and the twins both) loved it (see below Owen making a goofy forced smile, caught reading through it the second time). It was a taste of the break I was looking for. I've been meaning to reread The Black Company and The Scar but I think I need to find something a bit less grim as a palette cleanser. Maybe A Closed and Common Orbit. I was reminded recently how much I liked The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and one of the things I enjoyed about it was its overall optimism.

The Forests of Leng

I'm only 1 episode in on True Detective Season 3 but it's got my attention. Mostly because I want to know more about this book.

Friday Night!

Sussing out Mothership whilst piled with movie-watching kids.

Dad'ing in Silence

Last night my son and I laid around in bed for an hour or so quietly reading comics (him: Calvin & Hobbes; me: Batman) and it was one of my best moments of being a parent.

Rare southern NM snow.

Took the girls for a walk to my mom's house.

Gandalf

Put on the extended Fellowship of the Rings today, and while I was moving around doing laundry and stuff during a lot of it I made sure to stop and watch the "what to do with the time that is given to us" Gandalf speech. Love it.

Eye-roll

Me: You think there's a dungeon back here?
Paige: Whatever, dad.

Happy Pre-Xmans Eve!

Happy Pre-Xmans Eve!

Vacation 😌

Van-aerobics

Carrie asked Paige to help her carry in the groceries, came back to find this. She also spends most of her time while watching tv doing similar feats and frankly it's starting to make me feel bad about my lack of physical activity.

Ready Player...sigh

Last night I watched the end of Ready Player One. I'd put in two sessions of about an hour apiece already so I figured I might as well finish it. It was super uninspiring and trite with a bunch of nerd pop culture pasted all over everything. I enjoyed the book for the latter, but it had some of the former in it too so the movie result is maybe not too surprising. Spotting the bits of nerdery in the background was more enjoyable than watching the action, for sure.

After it was done I fired up No Country for Old Men because I wanted to watch something good and I hadn't seen it since it was in the theaters over 10 years ago. The nihilistic elements make me squirm more these days but the movie is still fantastic. Also, drinking Coors Banquet in chub bottles while I watched it felt like some kind of synergy was going on.

Come on down!

Mothership uses The Price Is Right rules for opposed checks. That's rad!

Cool Clear Water

Buster Scruggs put an itch on me that this album scratched. I listened to it on a loop while I built an add-on to the chicken coop yesterday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX-9RpAcSbE

WoShoStoReMo 2018 Day 30

The Pit of the Serpent by Robert E. Howard

They claimed that the old man had a knuckle-duster on his right, which is ridiculous and a dirty lie. He had it on his left.

WoShoStoReMo 2018 Day 29

The Return of the Sorcerer by Clark Ashton Smith

Among the weird appurtenances of the room, in that atmosphere of unmanifested evil, of untold horror, the rational part of my mind began to succumb slowly to a recrudescence of dark ancestral fears.

RPGs and me

10 role-playing games, a rough timeline:

D&D: Moldvay and Advanced
Marvel Super Heroes
RIFTS
Vampire: The Masquerade
GURPS
D&D 3e
Burning Wheel
Dogs in the Vineyard
3:16
Apocalypse World

10's not nearly enough.

WoShoStoReMo 2018 Day 28

Smoother by Terry Bisson

And no matter what we do, it keeps going at the same speed, winding its way around the world, smoothing out whatever is in front of it, leaving behind a mile-wide smooth strip of nothing, like a yellow brick road.

Tetri-ffected

I don't play video games much anymore, and I likely won't get into VR (let alone get a Playstation), but this Tetris Effect trailer (much like Beat Saber before it) has me fondly daydreaming about an alternate reality in which I am immersed in alternate tetrical realities on a regular basis.

https://youtu.be/PFVL6t8IHE8