Three small lessons from three small losses

OH! Before we get to that: My plan for fixing the NBA All Star Game:

Fans vote on the top offensive stars AND the top defensive stars. No duplications.

Then one team is composed of the Offensive starters and the Defensive bench (the O’s) and the other [the X’s] is composed of the Defensive Starters and the Offensive bench.

The Defensive stars are obviously motivated to prove they belong. The Offensive stars will not want to give up anything to the defensive players.

Let’s do this! Or abandon the silly All-Star game. which I missed, for reasons.

We now start the blog-blog

Because the best stories are triads.

I lost a myth.

A few years ago, when I concocted a draft for a Go Action Fun Time episode set in the prehistoric Congo (a time and place I generated randomly, I believe) I stumbled upon the myth of Lokundu and Llankaka. Lokundu was an ancient shaman of some sort who desired the hand of young Llankaka, a girl who could work magic. He won her hand by performing miracles, but eventually, the tribe grew fearful or jealous (not sure – lost the story) and drove the couple out into the forest.

I got this from a website, which I dutifully recorded, except now that website no longer exists.  I have been unable to find it elsewhere. [http://www.abikoyeolufemi.com/2014/05/10/congo-folktale-myth-history-mongo-nkundo/ – which goes to a 404]

Africa, even central Africa, even the African Congo Basin does not have a unified folklore. There are a lot of tribes, and my notes said “Pygmy”.

Pygmy is a European term (from a Greek myth – which I found) for any number of tribes originating from the jungles around Congo River, or the dryer savannahs to the south.  That term is still in use, partly, I suspect, because no one can agree on a replacement., but it won’t get you to our magical couple. They may be Bantu – which is a completely different tribal group.

I can tell you that Lokundu, or its close cognate, is a language group, which very much mucks up the search results. Further, I am not certain I have the spelling correct. There may not be a correct spelling in English.

And that is partly why I often cram science fiction elements into GAFT episodes from the past rather than sticking with the folklore. I would want to get the folklore correct, and that is not always possible with time and resources at hand. The SF elements I can fabricate with impunity.

I really just wanted an excuse to make teen-age superheroes row their canoes through a river full of hippos. It kinda worked as written.

This is the last time I am going to post this illustration on this blog. I promise…

I lost a car payment.

I paid off my car, the 2015 Subaru Forester called Ruby Vroom But I did not disable the auto-pay to the credit union, and that went out today. Oops. I don’t believe that money is gone. I still have a token account with  that credit union. But I won’t know until banker’s hours tomorrow. I’ll update here.

I am very fortunate that this is a nuisance rather than a crisis.

Ruby Vroom in her natural habitat.

I lost a day.

I had a bunch of things I wanted to do Saturday, and they all fell apart for various reasons and I ended up idle and bored. This does not happen to me very often. I always have something to do; sometimes its tedious, but I am rarely idle.  So I decided to embrace it.

I farted around in an unrestrained ADHD-Autistic way for the entirety of Saturday, because there was no consequence other than I might not make word count.

Then a thing I thought had dissipated Saturday, came together on Sunday and fell upon my head. I have been pitching from behind ever since.

Three lessons:

1. promises made to yourself are inherently negotiable.
2. The key to success is not so much avoiding mistakes but recovering from them.
3. I lost whatever the third point was going to be.

An Armadillo writer has a book out:

https://www.amazon.com/Poltergeist-Dead-Winter-James-Strickland-ebook

I’m not your ordinary gumshoe.

My name’s Nina Cohen. Born: 1898, died: 1912. I’m a poltergeist in a human body. I work from home as a private investigator. I watch entirely too much TV, and I talk to my cat. Say hello, Djinn.

Meow

Word Count:

Since last Thursday:

I edited [500 words] and ran the Go Action Fun Time Episode “Blistering Death in the Congo” [1000 words].

I wrote and posted  a description of Los Lomitas Trail in Are We Lost Yet? [1000]

I finalized and formatted the revised (shorter) Go Action Fun Time Cast Directory for Drive Thru RPG. [1000 words].

Basically, I cut out the package deals. They are now in the Show Bible. Which is coming…

UPDATE: The old version is still up. I’m not sure what happened. So if you buy that version right now you get the package deals ahead of the Show Bible – but with fewer entries and more typos.

Still the same cover.

Thursday Night Armadillo Group [500].

This very blog post. [1000].

Wait a minute. That’s 5k on the nose.

How bout that. Whiskey.

What habits might develop in thirty days without supervision?

I read or heard from some authoritative source that I do not recall that if you do something consistently for 30 days you can either make or break a habit.  Thirty days seems suspiciously convenient, but I have tried this with a few personal habits recently, and it seems to be holding.

My wife is six days into what will be about 30 days out at sea. What kind of feral nerd habits might I develop without direct supervision? We shall see.

One  I’m working on now is draw everyday. I’ve yet to decide when or if I’m going to post my results.

Somehow, before she got on board, my wife managed to slip a lovely, heart-felt valentine in the mail that arrived today.

On my end, I drew a picture of a lizard and sent a photo of it by Facebook Messenger.

The first few months of the year is when I traditionally  re-think all my blogging strategies. This year my notion is more but shorter posts distributed evenly across my now sprawling blog empire. More about that in Word Count below.

This doesn’t mean I won’t write and post the longer posts when they occur to me. But I’m not going to dig for them – or beat myself up for not digging for them. Short is the new done.

Meanwhile, announcements:

Oliver! has a thing this Sunday:

Now I have it written down where to go.

We will be playing Go Action Fun Time at Jesse James Games and Comics next Friday [16 Feb] at 6pm.  We’ll find a chair for you if you want to play along.

WORD COUNT:

UnObtanium Bazaar has a new website (same URL). It’s a wordpress blog (the devil you know) because we are going to be more about creative content and less about internet commerce. The Bazaar is and always will be primarily a physical pop-up operation.  [1000k] [Counting the first blog post]

And I added a blog post this week [500 k]

I hiked the Holbert Trail and compiled media and notes for likely two posts in Are We Lost Yet? [1000k]

Then I wrote the post for the Bajada Trail which I hiked as part of the South Mountain Infrastructure Loop. [500k]

 Wrote a 2000k word chapter on the 2^nd 64 novel.

Revised an Episode of Go Action Fun Time for Friday night. [500k].

Just finished writer’s group. [500k] where we have the kind of writer’s who use the Hilbert Transformation as a plot device (don’t fret – there’s no actual math in the manuscript – so far.).

Plus this post – which weighs in at just over 500.

That’s 6500 words vs a 5000 word goal.

Whiskey.

Legacies and Links from wandering Armadillos

This post contains no useful information about the actual animals.

We’ve been busy and things have piled up, so I have some announcements, and then some links to dump – er bounce of a reflective surface. I was going to try to build a metaphor around that, but this turned into an Armadillo thing.

Anyway:

UnObtanium Bazaar will appear at the Two Rivers Renaissance Faire in Yuma next weekend.

We will open the full tent for our first big show of the year. Come by and be social, maybe drop some coin.

Happy to not be dead…

You might notice the new bareness of the website. we jumped ship from Wix, and I haven’t had time to rebuild it. No complaints regarding Wix except it was a lot more graphic goo-gahs than we needed and and a lot more money than we can justify.

I turned 57, and my cancer levels came back undetectable – meaning my final cause of death remains a mystery. My wife took this as good news and threw a party.

Those events, and the 14 boxes of Christmas I had to wrangle made for a busy month. Which is how I like it.

My good friend Mathew Howard has beaten me to a graphic novel about dinosaurs going into space.

My friend Joseph Schwartz has a new volume of his Thomas Berenford Chronicles: Wilder Fire. Straight-up fantasy action-adventure with a bit of noir at the edges.

I know these guys from the old Armadillo Writers group (which persists, but now only by Zoom). We were named for the now-defunct bar we once met at. The fate of that establishment is finally revealed by Reality TV Update.

No on left to sue us now…

A couple of things:

• We left the bar when they closed the back meeting room we used to turn it into an office. We made do a the Duck and Decanter across the street until COVID forced us into Zoom.
• We are still on Zoom. It’s just so much easier.
• The loss of the lease was the final blow. I think they might have made it otherwise.
• That lot is now empty.

LINKS FROM RECENT MEETINGS OF THAT GROUP:

[From Zoom’s chat function that I copied, pasted, checked out and now choose to reflect back to you]

Mentoring STEM students: https://prescientist.org/

The 8 ages of Comics : https://sitcomics.net/blogs/news/the-8-ages-of-comics

Vedic Mathematics: https://www.vedicmaths.org/

Two “GDR_Compliant” alternatives to Microsoft Office: https://www.softmaker.com/en/products/softmaker-office OR https://www.freeoffice.com/en/

Full disclosure: I don’t use either one of them. I pay for Microsoft because I long ago accepted that the world works in Word, and Excel is by far the better spreadsheet period. But those operating theories are expensive.

And finally, this exists:

The world’s smallest Ouija board.

I won’t make this week’s meeting of course. I’ll be setting up in Yuma.

WORD COUNT:

In the last seven days:

I added a post to Are We Lost Yet? – The Max Delta Trail on South Mountain. = 1000 words.

I wrote 1500 words on the newer 64 novel. [more about that setting].

I made the Thursday night Armadillos of Zoom meeting. = 500 words.

I had a meeting with management at a comic/game store about carrying Go Action Fun Time. = 500 words.

I ran an episode of GAFT – The Fox Who Hunted Back. = 1000 words.

I wrote this very blog. = 1000 words.

I did that all around prepping for the faire, and some other drama that is not of public interest but time consuming nonetheless. 5500 words.

Whiskey.

No – one more thing. Last week I easily made word count putting the video below together.

There will be more to come – hopefully all better than this one. But this one exists:

Let’s go!

Life saving restrictions reduce us by more than we hoped

Before we start, an Announcement:

Nerd Party!

Join us for our Infinite Improbability Party

14 October 2023 at Casa Blanca

Doors at 6pm. Food at 7pm.

107 E Thunderbird trail – Phoenix.

This will follow our Open House Trunk Show for UnObtanium Bazaar which will feature costumes and garb.

We have refreshments but you are encouraged to bring your own and share. Cheryl is organizing a friendship salad.

I am organizing Pan-Galactic Gargle-Blaster mix-off for those interested. If you don’t know what that is, or imagine that you might drive yourself home – you are not interested. Warning: there may be no survivors.

Fire outside – weather permitting.

[You do not have to be a nerd to be welcome. We are very tolerant…]

If you read this blog – you’re invited.

The Phoenix Suns did what they had to do, and likely closed their championship window by doing so. And  I did what I had to do about nine months ago, and I am measurably diminished for it.

About nine months ago, the Suns changed ownership and almost before the ink dried, new owner, Matt Ishbia, pulled the trigger on a standing trade offer that previous ownership had balked over: they traded two starters and almost all of their worthwhile draft picks for Kevin Durant.

Ten years ago, Kevin Durant was an MVP candidate, a fixture to go deep in the playoffs, and reliably the guy pretending to guard Lebron James in the All Star game.

The current Kevin Durant literally limped into the Suns locker room – he came with an ankle injury – which he re-injured during warm-up on his first game back. Warm ups.

Ten months ago, the Suns were a likely second round playoff casualty with no cap space, but the normal ration of draft picks. A month later, they became a likely second round casualty (as they turned out to be) disastrously over the cap and with no draft picks. And everybody blamed…

DeAndre Ayton.

Let’s get this straight: is DeAndre Ayton the best player he could possibly be? Almost certainly not. But even with his goofy, soft touch, occasionally pouty approach to the game, he was the second best pure center the Suns had ever put on the court.

(Alvan Adams – if you’re wondering.)

We traded that guy for a center who would not start on most contending teams.

Not the problem, but too expensive to not be the solution.

Jusuf Nurkic was the starting center for the lottery-bound Portland Trailblazers, but other than perhaps interior passing, his game is inferior in every way to Ayton’s – including his reputation for checking out of games. And he’s older. And he’s had a lot of injuries.

But he comes at half the cost, and that was the real reason. The Suns were into double-jeopardy with the salary cap. They can’t move Booker – who IS the franchise at this point, and they can’t move either of their shiny new expensive trades (Durant and all-star guard Bradley Beal) so that left Ayton, who everybody whined about anyway.

This same logic sent Chris Paul packing. But unlike CP3, Ayton has been consistently healthy – even late into the playoffs. And we essentially got Bradley Beal, who, redundant as he might be with Booker, is a legit all-star.

It is likely true that they will not miss Ayton UNTIL the fourth quarter of a close game when they absolutely have to have that rebound. Ayton could get those in a way we haven’t had since Amare’ Stoudamire. Nurkic is going to be the other guy in the poster.

Had to be done, I suppose. Deep Sigh.

But the championship window has closed.

About ten months ago, we decided we were going to treat my prostate cancer with radiation. (More about this in the previous post). The worst part of that, long term, has turned out to be the Lupan injections.

Prostate cancer visualized

Prostate cancer feeds off testosterone. So, the theory, in addition to radiation, is to starve the cancer of testosterone. That’s what Lupan does – it suppresses my ability to make testosterone.

As a practical matter, that ahs aged me twenty years in terms of muscle recovery. I also get hot flashes. The effect on my sex life is predictable. Deeper Sigh.

Unlike the Suns, I will be out from under this in about 18 months.

The Suns will still be crippled by the contracts of their shiny sportscars. And likely remain second round play-off casualties.

Happily, the metrics for my success are not as stark. I do not need a whole lot of testosterone to program architectural lighting systems. The most physically aggressive thing I am likely to do on a jobsite is move a ladder down a hallway because the electricians have abandoned me, but I think I can solve this without them. And I’m not supposed to do that stuff anyway. Because our insurance thinks we are consultants.

An it hasn’t hurt word-count at all.

Through September I challenged myself to make word count for 30 days, and then didn’t actually keep good track. But I feel like I made my quota.

Yes- this counts towards word count. Okinushi and Xinji discover that Hippos are mean.

BEHOLD:

I have combined the Go Action Fun Time Basic Rules and the GAFT Setting Bible into a single document the Go Action Fun Time Show Bible, and I am on pace to have it available in PDF at least by Christmas.

It stands at just under 70k words, and with editing counting 1/10 that means 7k words.

 I got two playtests of GAFT in [1k each].

Two chapters of the 2^nd 64 book, which is likely titled the Secret history of the Lesser Ragnarok, so 5k for those .

I blogged about TV heroes trying to fight the future in Curious Continuity. [1k]

I made writer’s Group four times at 5oo words each [2k]

I drew and formatted four illustrations for the Show Bible. At 1k each [4k]

I learned some about Blender modeling at 1k.

That’s 21k. (this blog counts towards next week.)

My goal is 5k word/week.

Whiskey.

Radiation does not make my poop glow and other conditional disappointments

Tomorrow will be the last of 45 scheduled radiation treatments for my prostrate cancer. Before we get to those lessons, I have an announcement:

You Might want to stand back:

I have finished the first draft of the Go Action Fun Time Setting Bible.

It is available as a PDF for anyone who wants to read it.

Go Action Fun Time is a table-top RPG I wrote.

I have taken all the package deals from the Cast Directory and moved them to the Bible, or I will at the end of editing. Right now they are just copied. When the Setting Bible goes online, there will be a revised Directory without the package deals.

I have listened to a lot of hyperventilation about AI, and you all need to calm down. The day to truly worry about his is coming (I have written about this elsewhere) but the write-bots and art-bots are not going to be your shiny new overlords.

They could, though suck away what little precious compensation is left from art and writing. Against that future I propose two regulations:

1] AI content and art must always be identified as AI created and

2] AI content cannot be copy-righted. It is automatically public domain.

These rules would not solve the AI threat to the persistent fantasy of making arts and letters a day-job, but the will greatly reduce the crisis.

Speaking of mitigating crisis:

This was staged.

There were not a lot of surprises with the radiation treatment.

At one point I told my doctor:

“I thought I needed to take another Imodium last night, but I fell asleep.”

And he replied, “That is the most stereotypical response to radiation I’ve ever heard.”

So I did experience the exhaustion and diarrhea that everyone predicted. I am infamously hyper-active and have an iron stomach so this took a week longer than average, but I definitely have them now.

I did not develop any mutant powers, nor does my poop glow.

The TV series Yellowstone is totally cowboy Game of Thrones punctuated by shameless horse porn. Like GOT the writing is so good you forget that these are unlikeable people killing each other over self-created problems.

Ron DeSantis is doomed. No one who wants Trump is going to vote for the wanna-be Trump when they can vote for the actual Trump. Aerosmith, even at their advanced age, is still a better act live than any of their tribute bands.

LINKS PEOPLE SEND ME:

https://instapundit.substack.com/p/is-this-the-real-life-or-just-a-fantasy

https://psyche.asu.edu/

https://psyche.asu.edu/get-involved/psyche-inspired/psyche-inspired-showcase-2023-virtual-goody-bag/

WORD COUNT:

I actually finished a chapter of the sequel to Empress M. = 1500 words

Thursday night writers group = 500

Editing the Setting Bible = 1000 original words but 2000 credit for editing.

This blog makes 5500.

Whiskey.

And geese are douchebags. Behold:

https://www.tumblr.com/indirispeaks/146787072801/the-great-flamingo-uprising

Notes while waiting for a call that might not happen

I’m up a little later than I want to be hoping my wife will “call” (via FB messenger). I can’t call her.

My dear wife jumped out of a van at Sky Harbor to rush to make her flight. She left her phone in that van. We could not get it back to her before she had to get on a plane, fly to New Jersey, check into a hotel without a credit card (which she keeps with her phone, and then, as far as I know, board a cruise ship for a pair of back-to-back cruises around the Caribbean.

There are computers onboard. If she can get to one, she can Facebook Messenger me – if I’m awake.

Meanwhile, her phone, which does not work reliably as a phone at seas anyway,  is dutifully charging in our living room.

So that’s why she hasn’t returned your call.

Now, she was a functional adult 25 years ago when we all got along without cell phones. But the infrastructure that made that practical has long since evaporated. Not just the disappearing pay phones (or land lines of any sort) but the increasing dependence upon websites and QR codes that used to be printed hand-outs.

I used to have an index card in my wallet covered with phone numbers, and a day planner in my fanny pack wherein I recorded all my appointments. I’ve replaced all that with a several hundred dollar plastic brick. And so have you.

Are we more efficient?

The pause before you answer that is telling.

The past, present and future past of the Suns

A few other thoughts that are not quite whole posts:

• My Beloved Suns would have been second round casualties with or without the Durant trade. But now they have no draft picks for like the next four years. That’s a lot to give up for a guy who isn’t much younger than Chris Paul.
• Both the regular news guys at KTAR and every sports talk show on the radio were flummoxed that Tempe voted down the Coyotes arena. What none of them seem to remember is that they were terrible tenants in Glendale, so much so that Glendale decided they’d rather have the place empty than put up with the Coyotes for one more season.
  • Yes – there is a perfectly fine hockey arena in the valley, already built. Tempe gazed upon it and decided – not in our landfill.
• Comparing the debt ceiling to … Wait. If I have to explain to you why that situation is stupid and wrong, I am going to be unable to take you seriously as an adult. So do us both a favor and pretend you understand.

Cheryl comes back June 9^th. We’ll probably have an economy that still staggers forward, or it will be collapsing due to a completely self-created crisis. Either way, she’ll have a lot of phone calls to return.

While we all wait:

My child has a website: https://fearlessfractalpadegimas.wordpress.com/

And two links people e-mailed me that I now share with you:

Your Brain Is Shaped Like Nobody Else’s

How to Add More Categories for Your Book in KDP

Now we know.

[She still hasn’t called…]

Refelections on accountability, radiation and defense with your feet.

We’ll get to all that, but first some announcements:

UnObtanium Bazaar will be at the Las Vegas Pirate fest this weekend!

We will be at London Bridge Ren Faire (in Lake Havasu City) next weekend.

I am watching the Suns with the sound off partly so I can write, but mostly because I am tired of the local commentators whining about the fouls. In basketball, the accountability is fairly straightforward for playing defense with your arms instead of your feet. You can make a case that the Suns have been unevenly targeted by officials, but that’s not why they are losing to the Lakers.

That is all tangential to what I want to write about.

There is a peculiar challenge when running an organization of human beings in balancing accountability with accurate feedback.

Long ago, when I was a theatrical rigger, a building TD recounted for me an event that happened on a previous show: a curtain had been fouled up in the neighboring lineset and was left that way for the next operator to find.

“If I ever find out who did that,” the TD told me, “He’s fired.”

Which guaranteed he’d never discover which of several possible operators was responsible.

The natural impulse to punish the stupid or the careless can actually be counter-productive if it drives the focus from preventing errors to hiding errors. What this impulse demonstrates is a lack of trust in the workers.

In my lengthy but unscientific experience, workplace errors are evenly divided among three causes: lack of training , lack of resources, lack of attention.  The first two are totally on management. It is the boss’s job to see that the worker knows what to do and has the means to do it. The third is 50/50 management worker, though that starts to tilt towards the worker the higher you go on the food-chain.

I could not, in my current job, credibly blame my lack of attention on my basically non-existent supervision. But it took me a long time to get there, including long stints as a supervisor.

I reflect upon this because I finally got around to watching the HBO miniseries Chernobyl.

Let us recall Hanlon’s Razor:

“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.”

Now consider Fred Clark’s corollary:

“Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.”

Chernobyl is three episodes of straight horror, one episode of post-apocalyptic horror and one episode of courtroom drama.

I leave it to others to summarize the events, or debate the show’s accuracy. You can find many other sites like these.

The show makes the case, among many other accomplishments, that the inability to take responsibility for disastrous decisions – at any level – destroyed the Soviet Union.

It will also full-on give you nightmares.

The Suns have now lost. The whining continues. I turn it off.

An update on useful radiation: I have a standing appointment in the late afternoon of every weekday from next week until the endo of fucking May for radiation treatments.

I am told the treatments do not last long: 20-30 minutes depending on how close I manage to park.

Many have it worse. But people ask so I answer.

Now we know.

A quick update between bombardments

We’ll get to a legit installment in a week. The short update is that we have a new trailer, my child has moved out of the old house, so I have to finish moving out of the old house, and my mother-in-law has moved in with us, as long prophesied.

But what I really and to announce is this:

This is a PDF you can buy from Drive-Thru RPG – or just contact me directly and I’ll e-mail it to you.

It is only available as a PDF.

Firstly, its 305 pages all told, packed with color illustrations and tables and other things that are a nightmare to format.

And you can print the Cast treatments as needed right from the PDF.

Meanwhile, I am quite worn out from the ehroics I shall describe next week perhaps.

Now we know.

I am never comfortable talking about my medical problems with actual doctors, much less strangers on the internet. However, after my stroke, I fund that account helpful both for dealing with FAQ’s, but also as a reference for my use for dated and actual medical terms. I have a new thing going on. I’ve added a sub-page to my About The Suthor page, where you can find the facts if you are somehow interested.

My Holiday Season of Endless Pizza

When Cheryl is out to sea, I find it helpful to embezzle some money from the grocery budget and buy a couple of large pizzas, which will provide one big meal that night, and several smaller, faster meals over the course of the ensuing week. I did just that a few weeks ago, as the High Commercial Holidays set in, not realizing that I was sealing my doom.

I am eating the last of that pizza as I write this.

That’s a lie. There’s still more.

My X-mas decor in 2021. All of it.

Tropical Scrooge and a Christmas Person.

But I did consume most of that first large pie while decorating for Christmas.

After my divorce, I thought myself free of having to decorate for the holidays. I let the 3-4 boxes of Christmas stuff float off with my ex. Cheryl, however, has 7-8 boxes of Christmas crap, but at least one box for every other holiday as well. She had started to decorate just before going out to sea. I then finished, partly because I am a good husband, and partly because this crap did no good on the floor.

About 30% of the indoor décor and all of the outside décor was by my hand. It seems what actually bothers me about the High Holidays is the artificial stress we put on ourselves, and the expense we justify in service of that stress. Then I spend several hours and over a hundred dollars on decorating. I’m not really sure I learned anything, honestly.

MaricopaCon had their kick-starter at Silver Key Lounge that Sunday. They brought in pizza. We have long known I can’t make money vending there, but I’ll be there running Go Action Fun Time. More immediately, the Silver Key hosts a game developers night every Wednesday, and I hope to be regular with Go Action Fun Time there as well.

Circling back to self-induced stress, I remain on pace to have the Cast Directory out  around the first of the year. I retain the right to blow my own deadline rather than rush the editing. More on this in WORD COUNT.

Cheryl’s daughter and her husband arrive from New York a day before Cheryl gets back in preparation for Divorce Christmas I. One of the things they left at our house as they downsized to a Manhattan Apartment was a pizza oven. Guess what we had for Divorce Christmas dinner.

Between shopping for specific ingredients, carefully crafting the dough and managing the wood-fires they spent all damn day making pizza. Oh yeah – it was really good. Better than the pizza we used to make by the Betty Crocker recipe in a couple hours. But its not 6 hours better.

You can judge for yourself, if you want. We still have some…

After five years at the company I finally attended a RC Lurie holiday party, mostly because I was compelled to come to the office for other reasons. They served pizza.

That was the last of it. My end of Divorce Christmas happens over the new years’ weekend. We made a field trip to Cottonwood to get out of the smog, where we did not get pizza, and spent Christmas Day eating quiche, drinking cocktails and watching both local teams lose games in over-time.

We hope your holidays went as well or better.

Cheers.

WORD COUNT:

I’ve been doing a little editing, but mostly art.

I have two competing cover designs. The Cast group shot and the Cast audition line:

You have to imagine this with all 36 cast members, and actual title blocks and so forth.

OR

You have to imagine this one with characters in color, and a stairwell at the far right side with 3-4 additional characters.

You can chime in with opinions and preferences if you want, but this close to deadline I’ve decided. It’s going to be the audition line.

So now we know.

I am never comfortable talking about my medical problems with actual doctors, much less strangers on the internet. However, after my stroke, I fund that account helpful both for dealing with FAQ’s, but also as a reference for my use for dated and actual medical terms. I have a new thing going on. I’ve added a sub-page to my About The Suthor page, where you can find the facts if you are somehow interested.

Some Brief Bits of Good News

Because it’s that season. And we want to balance the last post.

Finally barely profitable!

I haven’t got the check yet, but if I am reading the quarterly royalty statement that I get maybe once a year from Menasha Ridge Press, my book, 5 Star Hikes in Flagstaff and Sedona has earned out its advance!

I am due thirty something dollars.

We’ll see.

What else? We still seem to be a functioning representative democracy.

Britney Griner is no longer being held in Russia for no good reason. That’s good news regardless of politics. You can grouse about who is still in prison in Russia (or anywhere else) because those situations remain dumb and sad, but it is now one less person dumb and sad.

I am approaching done with the Go Action Fun Time Cast Directory. I have posted some preview material both on Fantastical History [Fairies and Goblins] and a preview of the Sample Cast at Curious Continuity – starting here.

There is evidence of a little bit of traction with this project.

We’ll see about that too.

Now we know.