Monthly Review, July 2023

7 min readAug 27, 2023

No cute intro, let’s get into it!

Homestead

The garden outside is doing great—three beds out front full of sweet potatoes, the grow bags full of ginger and peppers out back, and a couple of beds and containers of all sorts of stuff here and there—and our baby hydro setup inside is doing well, too. Had a decent little harvest this month, too—got a ton of hot peppers, and a constant stream of basil—so I made a bunch of pesto and a pint or so of hot sauce, and it’s all really good. I also got a bunch of seeds from the hot peppers and a bunch of seeds from some supermarket bell peppers and spouted all of those—I have no idea where I’m going to put all those plants, but that’s a problem for future Marc. I also picked up a new pitchfork and some tomato cages from Bernie, and immediately put those to good use out there.

Also, our corpse flower has sprouted! I had no expectations for the little guy, but it looks like it’s happy under the lights inside, so I’ll keep him wet and warm and see where it goes.

Animal wise, the bunny has been good and cute, the chickens are surviving the heat with the aid of some misters (although Gogo has been brooding a bunch), and the big tub of wriggletonis are thriving. Breeding and harvesting those black soldier fly larvae are almost zero effort, and they immediately destroy any food waste we throw in there and turn it into chicken food, so that’s been fantastic.

Health

I think I have a new doctor? It’s hard to tell with the weird new office—I just went in for the usual and had to fill out all new paperwork and someone someone else came in to check me out and she seemed great, so that’s good, I guess? Got signed up for an ultrasound for a little groin discomfort that turned out to be a minor hernia that’s absolutely no problem, so no treatment needed there. Also finally got a butt camera appointment, but it’s for October, so still hanging out there.

In general, been feeling a little crappy—allergies are super bad, and it’s been 104ºF or hotter pretty much every day for a month or so (and it’ll continue like this for at least another month), and I haven’t been sleeping well, so, gross. Still exercising daily, though I don’t know how long I can keep up a morning/evening walk—it still stays above 85º in the dark, and I’m not cut out for that, but that makes me feel better so I’m gonna keep it up as much as I can. Been getting bad itches or hives or something every time I go out now, though, so I might just hole up for the rest of the summer and play Beat Saber or something.

Games

In RPGs:

Published a little dumb game for the Bad TTRPGs — A Queer Block Party Jam, which I love.
Started playing Hit the Streets: Defend the Block with Rich and some other folks—street-level supers defending their neighborhood from corporate goons is always a good time.
Finished up our Hearts of Camelot game, which was very sweet.
Ran my in-progress adventure for the Bloodbeam Badlands game jam, Dove Oath Flats, for my Monday night group when we were missing some folks. Still needs a lot of work, but I know where to go with it now.
Speaking of, I kicked off a new Public Access mystery that I’m really excited about for our Monday night Test Pattern—The Dream, based on the movie The Stuff, only hornier. It’s so good.
Still playing Defy the Gods with the Faded Havens on Thursday nights. It continues to be out of control and amazing.
Did another mission and downtime for our Beam Saber Calazcon mega-game. It’s fun!
Played some Terminal (digital pirates, Matrix style) with the Plus One crew, which is always a good time.
And finally, ran a bit of The Empire Never Ended for Games on Demand at GenCon online, which did what it’s supposed to do. Next year: in person, for sure!

I tried out Slipways, which is a tight little 4x game that you can play in “an hour”. (more like two or three, if you’re a pokey little thinker like me) I really like it, but I feel like I’ve got it, so I don’t know how much longevity it’s going to have with me.

And in VR, the usual crew played some Demeo, some Walkabout Golf, and I jumped back into Beat Saber to get some movement in. All good, as usual.

Media

Finally watched the ampersand movie, Honor Among Thieves, which was actually pretty good—way better than I was expecting, for sure.
Read Junji Ito’s Fashion Model, which… yep, that was a Junji Ito story.
Watching Secret Invasion out of obligation more than anything. Super mid.
Strange New Worlds, on the other hand, continues to be the best Trek possible, and although it clearly has a baked-in ending point, I want it to go on forever.
Read/played through SJG’s “Choosing Cthulhu” choose your own adventure version of Dreams in the Witch House, which was fun, but still limited by the format. Some good writing in there, even if the nature of the thing made for some weird choices.
Started a re-listen of The Silt Verses in anticipation of the upcoming new season (and rpg!) and it is still just phenomenal.
I’m also jumping into the Magnus Archives, which I’ve somehow missed all this time, and it is also quite good.
(I also listened to some Radio Rental with Rainn Wilson, and it is… not as good.)
We saw the Barbie movie, like everyone else, and it was pretty good! I think I was primed to expect it to be a little more earth-shaking, but it was just a good movie, which is good.
And dipping into my backlog of horror movies, I finally sat down and watched Lake Mungo, which has been similarly hyped, and which I found incredibly tedious. I know that some folks think that it’s the Best Ever, and… well, I’m happy for them, I guess.

Work

Trudging through the python curriculum, which I am not a huge fan of (clearly), but this is what we’re doing now, so I’m doing it. I’m still having to do some touchup on the curriculum due to the efforts of the charming gentleman who cranked it out recently, but it’s getting reworked again, so … yeah, just treading water to make things less crappy for the students. I’ve started putting together some personal documentation and scheduling stuff for myself in Obsidian, although it seems like everything is going to change again, making it less useful, so, cool. Looking forward to some “on rotation” time after this cohort, but I don’t have any expectations on that after how the last year or two has gone.

Other Stuff

We got a roomba, which is a nice little luxury, even though it feels like a lot of effort to keep the little dude working.

We visited the Bracken Cave, largest bat colony in the world, which was awesome. So. Many. Bats.

Pai is off at Interlochen for the summer, and I miss them a lot—I talked to them a little bit recently (I thought they didn’t have access to phone, but they do!) and it sounds like they’re having a great time!

Nic and I went to the opening of the new Meow Wolf in Grapevine (near Dallas/FW) and it was super cool, as expected. Very crowded, which got old real fast, but we had a good time poking around all the weird stuff, and will probably head back up after the fervor has died down some.