Monthly Review, July 2022

Jeez, July seemed to just fly by. But it looks like I did a bunch of stuff, so let’s see…

Homestead

Well, it was officially the hottest July on record here in Austin, with an average high of 103.8ºF (almost 40ºC), hitting over 110ºF for a few days in the middle of the month. It was over 100 degrees for weeks on end, so aside from staying indoors as much as possible, I had to make sure the outdoors was livable for the chickens. I installed a mister system up there for them, which was turned on for the hottest part of most days, dumped a bunch of ice cubes in their water as often as I could, and occasionally just hosed them down while they were out for recess, despite their cries of terror. No fried chicken to date, so I’ll try to keep that up until … well. Um. Anyway.

In the heat, I managed to schedule and get the attic insulation re-installed, so we’ll see if that helps out with cooling bills and whatnot. Partially because of the critter problem, and partially because it hasn’t been replaced in like fifteen years, there was an inch or two of insulation up there, at best, so I got a recommendation and got it done. Cost… a bit more than I was hoping, but hopefully it’ll pay off.

The Neurodivergent Department finally approved a couple of projects that I’ve had orders in for a while, all plumbing related, so I figured I’d get on those before the timer ran out. I got a new faucet for the main bathroom a while back, so it was time to put that in! Unfortunately, the old faucet and handles must have been a) installed about 45 years ago, so they’re all corroded and stuck on, and b) most likely installed while the sink/counter slab was flipped over, before it was installed, because they were totally inaccessible to any normal human. So, after fussing with them for too long, I finally broke down and grabbed my angle grinder and just cut the hardware up until it came out. Took a while, and completely covered the bathroom in a magical shower of fine brass dust (yes, I was wearing a mask), and wore through two cutting wheels. But they came out, and I dropped the new ones in and hooked them up, easy. I had to make a trip to the orange store to grab a new p-trap before they were fully functional, but now there’s actually room under the faucet to put your hands, and I got the hot water working again, so, yay me.

Speaking of hot water, our hot water kettle/dispenser thingy broke, so I took the opportunity to get a cheap under-the-sink hot water dispenser to replace it. First order of business was to take out the soap dispenser we never used, which wasn’t too bad, and clean up… everything under there. It was nasty, because of mice and the ravages of time and whatnot. So, after I sterilized that, I plugged in the… wait, no outlet under there. Okay, no problem, I can fix that. (Raise your hand when you get a bad feeling about this.) The garbage disposal was already wired into the wall, so my plan was to cut that cord, wire a plug onto the disposal cord, install a new GFCI outlet down there, and plug both the disposal and the water heater into that. (I got a proper cord conversion kit for fifteen bucks instead of just cutting up a random cord and splicing it together, which was more of a pain than doing that, but probably better in the long run.)

So I cut into the wall with my cute little multitool (it’s great for drywall, less so for particleboard, which the cabinets are made of) without cutting into any wires, dug out some of the foam insulation back there, wired up the outlet (twice—I got it backwards the first time), shoved the outlet box back there best I could, caulked it up, voila, working outlet under the sink. (Many trips back and forth between the breaker box were involved.) So, all done! Plugged the water heater into the new outlet, flipped the switch for the power … that previously turned on the… disposal… which is also now plugged into the outlet. I plugged the always-on water heater into the same outlet that the disposal needs to be plugged into. Okay, fine, unplug that, we can fix this. But first, got the rest of the water heater setup mounted and the faucet installed, and turn it on… wait, it’s not connected to the water. Okay, another trip to Orange Store to get the right valves and fittings and whatnot to split a line off the cold water line into the copper tube there, and NOW it works. So, we have a near-boiling water spigot in the sink now, that we never have to fill up ourselves!

So. The disposal. I searched around, and discovered there were press-buttons you could get to work a disposal switch, so I grabbed one of those from the internet, and a couple of days later I was drilling a new 1.5" hole in the sink to mount that, which went relatively smoothly after I figured out how drills work. Anyway, after many hours of plumbing, electrical work, and cutting things apart and sticking things into the holes, I had the sink all wrapped up, and checked that off my todo list. Only…. like ten thousand things to go. Wheeee.

Health

Managing the diabetes (or pre-diabetes, who knows) pretty well—still falling down occasionally and jamming a bunch of sugar into my face at night and feeling terrible, but between being mindful of that, not minding eating basically the same chicken breast and vegetable thing every day, some mild intermittent fasting, and the blood drugs, things are looking okay. Bonus, I also dropped like 20–25 pounds over the last few months, which should help out with all that, so, gonna keep on it, I guess.

Even with masking everywhere and isolating as much as is reasonable, I still managed to pick up a nasty cold or something—not covid—probably while traveling last month. It knocked me out for almost a week, and I still had some wicked chest congestion for like three weeks after, so, not interested in doing that again. I managed to sneak a second covid booster shot in there near the end of the month, too, so hopefully that’s as bad as it gets for a while.

Games

Okay! On to the good stuff!

The Between is still cranking along every Monday night (now Tuesdays for a while, probably). I tried to get OBS working for streaming so I could use the sweet new layout and graphics and stuff I made for it, but I’m still having trouble with audio routing stuff (which is apparently a problem for OBS on macs, so, cool). I got a fancy new laptop so I can actually, like, use google sheets while I’ve got zoom running without it catching on fire, so I think I’m just gonna stick with that until I have the time to work it out. But we are still having a blast! Probably starting to ramp into the final act with our Mastermind Threat, but we’ve still got a couple of months left in the game, at least.

I’ve been playing my new Zabrak slicer in our Stars in the Dark game on Saturday, and she’s super fun. Rich girl turned labor organizer turned mid-tier criminal, she’s not a fighter at all but that doesn’t stop her from starting shit. We’re also getting into the upper tier stuff in this game, but it too has some legs for a while.

Other random games:

• Still playing our game of The Expanse on Sundays, when scheduled permit. More crime!
• Did a playthrough of Cold Summer, an upcoming solo game from Bully Pulpit, and yep, that is definitely exactly what I wanted that to be.
• Zombie World with folks from Magpie. Weird combination of light and a little clunky, but still a good time.
• A couple sessions of Alien World on the Gauntlet, an Aliens hack of Zombie World in playtest, same deal, good time.
• Streamed 3, 2, 1, Action! on the +1 Exp stream at EFCon. We did the Hot Ticket To Hawaii adventure for it (or “2 Hot 2 Ticket”, because it was a sequel), which was exactly what it sounds like.
• Not really a game, but I’m still cranking on the Roguelike Tarot Deck. I’m more than halfway done with the art now, so hopefully I’ll have something decent to show for it at the end of August. This is gonna be so good.
• Played the new snake guy dungeon in Demeo and the new Labyrinth course in Walkabout Golf for our Saturday morning VR hangouts. Both are amazing.
• Picked up Mini Metro again for a bit, and the newer Mini Motorways. Still super fun and addicting in the good way.

Media

• Watched the Cold Summer of Fifty-Three on youtube after playing Cold Summer, and, man, yeah.
• Read The Lurking Duck, which was ridiculous.
• Finished watching the first season of Ms. Marvel, which might be my favorite Marvel show so far.
• Same with Strange New Worlds—great wrap-up to the season, and possibly the best Trek show out of the last decade or so.
• Went to see Running Bear at Hyde Park Theater, always a good time there.
• Does youtube count? I dunno, I’d never watched any Ali G stuff before, and I watched a lot of it there, and hoo boy.
• Watched season 3 of The Boys on amazon, which continued to impress.
• Also watched season 3 of The Umbrella Academy, which also continues to be as good as the rest of it.
• Went to see Thor: Love and Thunder… I was a big fan of Ragnarok, but this one just kind of fell flat for me. It was fine.
• Saw Nope, which wasn’t as big a gut-punch as Peele’s first two movies, but after thinking about what we saw for a little bit, there’s still so much great stuff under the spectacle there. I’m gonna put it right in the middle.
• Finally saw Negativland! It was a weird multimedia concert thing they did at an old movie theater, but it was ten thousand percent what you’d expect.
• Read the first book of Alice in Borderland (borrowed from Pai). It’s fine, different than the Netflix show… I’ll probably poke through the rest of it, but it’s not high on the list.
• Watched a couple of episodes of The Rehearsal. It’s so fucking weird and I have no idea how serious it is, but I’m probably gonna watch the rest.
• Watching the back half of the last season of Better Call Saul and holy fuck.
• Started in on the first season of Farscape, after some folks talking it up at the SitD game. I’m sure I watched some of this before, but I remember very little, so I’m gonna say it’s my first “real” time. It’s very ’90s, but charming.

Work

Same as usual. Dropped one student from the Phase 2 code challenge, but everyone passed the Phase 3 challenge, and they’re all cranking away on their projects now. This is a really good batch of folks.

Other Stuff

Did a full Kondo run on my clothes, sorted and organized everything and got rid of a couple of garbage bags of tshirts, socks, pants, shoes, and whatnot. Feels good, man. We’re kind of on the cleaning/organizing flow, little bit late for spring, but I’ll take it.

Went to a housewarming party for my friend Heidi, which was nice, got to see a few folks after way too long.

Did nothing for the 4th of July, because *gestures at everything*.

Still doing well with my new obsitian/todoist setup, and still cranking along at Duolingo—I’m well into Klingon, and just starting Dutch (for reasons), which is a pleasant daily thing.

Like I said above, got a new 14" macbook, because my old one was on its last legs. It’s a bit of adjustment, and honestly a bit more than I wanted, but it was really necessary, and touchbars suck, so I got the only reasonable macbook without one. Really enjoying the sweet new keyboard.

The… other con stuff flared up again, and came to a thud of a conclusion, which is what is is. Lots of sadness and upset there, but nothing I’m gonna talk about in public. Ah, well.

Did a podcast with Jim Pinto, which was a fun little hangout and chat about game stuff.

Having a good time with Nic, went out a few times, they’re the ten thousand percent best. They’re off to Detroit and then Vancouver for a month to do conferences and workshops and stuff, and it’s been lonely here already. But still, very good.

Plans

Bought my tickets and room for BGG.Con in November, which I am super looking forward to. Probably just wind up hanging out with the same half dozen people and playing in a room somewhere because plague, but it’s always great.

Also planning to head up to Vancouver for a few days this month to visit Nic while they’re up there! I will eat ice cream.

Other than that, the big plan is just to finish up the Roguelike Tarot deck and get it prepped for printing. I may wind up doing a kickstarter for it, so keep an eye out for that! And after that… we’ll see.