Monthly Review, May 2022

Monthly Review, April 2022

WHEW. May only has one more day than April, but it felt twice as long. I actually did a whole bunch more stuff than I thought I would, while still not getting a bunch of things I wanted to do done! Let’s see what that looks like…

Homestead

I’m still working on purging and straightening up the game room. After unloading about half my board game collection (around 600 games), I got to work on my RPG shelf. I’m trying to be all Kondo on it, but there are so many good, irreplaceable, or sentimental things there that I’ve only been able to cull about two boxes worth of books. The shelf is still pretty full (and needs reinforcing—seems like the Ikea Lack shelves aren’t meant to stand up to a full load of books for a decade and change) but I feel like everything still there is there for a reason, so I’m satisfied for now. Next up…. organizing.

I also cleaned out a couple piles of junk that were just dominating corners or the room, lots of which got trashed or put in the sell pile. Next up is the front office where I spend most of my working time—I’m pulling everything out and preparing to cull and reorganize here, but it’s going to be a big messy process. One fun thing that I did, though, was build a little sitting/standing/lap desk for myself with french cleats and a little slide-out tray for a keyboard or whatnot. (Inspired by Laura Kampf) Now I just need to pull books and art supplies and miscellaneous junk, and rebuild everything around that. I’m also experimenting with ways to block the devastating Texas summer sun without losing the whole “you’re in a room with windows” vibe, but that’s another project.

We got all of our pest control stuff taken care of: all entrances sealed, fixed, or reinforced, attic cleaned out and sanitized, and a course of traps to get any remaining little buddies to a better place. A few weeks later, though, Nic encountered a big old one-eyed rat in the bathroom (which I caught in a plastic bin and released safely elsewhere) and a little mouse on the kitchen counter, and one little guy got snapped in a trap that’d been left out in the pantry. So, I found one big place where they could get in that’d been overlooked — a huge gap in the wall behind the breaker box where the cables went in through the rock wall. I’d definitely seen buddies scuttling around in there, so I just got some spray foam and went to town on that. Hopefully, that’ll stem the tide a little bit, but we’ll see.

Chicken Report: The chickos are still good babies with fluffy butts. Didi went through a week or so of being mega-broody, but we blocked off the laying boxes for a few days, and she got over it. Pozzo also likes to pretend to be a little dragon on an egg pile every now and then, too, but she’s easy to dissuade after her treasure is gone. They’ve been getting a lot of good chicken recess and doing a great job of scratching up weeds and mulching the back hill. I’ve started doing a three-day rotation of fermented feed in jars for them, which they love, so I’m happy to spend a few extra minutes a day on that.

My current project—a small one, should finish up tonight, in fact—is building a little worm farm for the garden and the chicks. We’ll get that rolling and check back in a few months to see how it went!

Health

Allergies have been killing me this month. I don’t know if it’s spending more time outside, or stuff filtering in from the work on the house, or just Austin being Austin, but man, I’m on zyrtec, claritin, montelukast, the occasional benadryl, and an inhaler and nasal spray and eye drops, and I’m still knocked out by them more days than I care to be. I’ve tried shots and drops and all that stuff, and they either don’t work or make it worse. I’m not sure what the solution is, but I’m pretty sure it involves moving, eventually.

I’m still (mostly) doing the intermittent fasting experiment that I started last month. Except for a few days while I was out of town, I kept the only eating between noon and 8pm schedule pretty solid, and I think it’s doing me good. I don’t weigh myself often, but it looks like I lost about twenty five pounds in the last two months, and overall, I feel better than I have in a while in that area. I’m not really ever super hungry or feeling like I’m depriving myself of anything, so I think I can maintain this in a healthy way for a bit more—I’m gonna keep going for a few more months, and see where it takes me.

I did, however, come down with some wild stomach cramps after going off the schedule for a few days in the last week or so. It didn’t feel like gut stuff, more generalized abdominal muscle pain all over, but super intense for a few hours. There’s one little sore spot right in the middle of my belly that hurts when I press it, so I try not to press it too much. I’m not worried, but, something to keep an eye on.

I’ve been doing okay with the diabetes stuff, too. The drugs are doing their jobs, my sugar intake is… good for me, I guess, and my fasting sugar in the morning is usually between 85 and 110, so that seems good. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment set up for next week to check in on everything (and hopefully get some drugs for flying in a couple of weeks) but otherwise, all green here.

Kabuto Sumo!

Games

This was a good month for games! Well playing games, anyway. We’ll get to that in a minute.

RPGs:

• We’re well into our third “season” of our Stars in the Dark game, and the smuggling operation is going swimmingly. We’re good at what we do, have some regular gun running jobs for the rebel alliance, and everything is fine. I’m sure nothing will go wrong.
• The Between just keeps getting better and better every week. Everything is running on all cylinders, character steam is starting to really build up, we’ve got a full rack of Threats and then some, and it’s just a hot time all around. We’re still playing almost every Monday night at 7pm Central time, so come check it out! (And please come and follow the channel so I can make the numbers go up…)
• I ran the intro Dad Overboard mystery for a bunch of new Brindlewood Bay players (including a new buddy in Latvia!) and as usual, it was a total blast. I love running Brindlewood, and I’ll do it for anyone, any time, but especially for folks who are new to non-D&D role playing games, or double especially for folks entirely new to RPGs. Every game is different, and every one slaps.
• (I also made a “Brindlewood YAY!” t-shirt, but that’s just for dumb fun 😄)

• We finished up our three-session one-shot of Cy Borg, which wound up being pretty fun, despite a bit of a bumpy start. I think I’m spoiled by hippie story games, because our second session was basically just one combat, so the pacing feels weird to me, and not totally congruous with the totally fucking insane setting and art style, but we finished off really strong, leaning hard into the bizarre and Börg-y bits. (I sometimes wonder if I can really get a good feel for a game, since I’m *ahem* such a good GM that I’ll compensate for a meh system, but that feels like a good problem to have.)
• We started and finished a three/four session run of Cartel, only set in the new Magic: The Gathering world of New Capenna, which is a weird art deco grubby crime city with rhino men and little raccoon guys with guns and weird stork cops and dragon crime bosses. I don’t know if the system 100% meshed with the world, but we had a great time regardless—the game runs really tight and intense, and I can only imagine that amped up in a less aesthetically distanced setting.
• I tried to start a solo game of StarForged, which is an awesome game based on the equally great Ironsworn, but I was experimenting with streaming through Twitch Studio, which is trash. As a result, I got through some rules and character creation and worldbuilding stuff, but the audio was so bad and cutting out terribly that it was pretty useless. I’m gonna pick it up again soon, but I’m gonna have to do a full recap, and try out some new OBS streaming stuff to see if that works any better.
• Played a game of Defy the Gods, which was some good straight-up PbtA Conan-style swords and sorcery goodness. We ruined an evil demon queen’s day, returned a giant snake protector back to the city it watched over, and gave a grouchy sphinx a new lease on life as a hungry pirate. Good times, would play again.
• We’re down one (or more) person for the last week of the month on our The Between campaign, so that’s our one-shot anything goes night. This week, I was gonna run some Mausritter, but I want to give that a little bit more love, so instead I dropped Peter and Ben into the Infected Tomb for a quick game of Down We Go! It’s a super light make-em-up-on-the-fly old-school type dungeon-y game so I had them make up a couple characters each for the funnel, and sent ’em in. They befriended a Bile Golem and helped them escape the dungeon, got yelled at by a grouchy librarian gnome, politely did not interrupt a fungus-man religious ritual, and were overwhelmed with fear by a nasty demon who instantly stripped the flesh from the bones of poor Umrix with a tsunami of rats, causing the rest of them to erect a magic wall over the door of the demon’s throne and book it outta there with whatever paltry loot they picked up.
• We started playing the Expanse RPG, but—get this—IN PERSON, not online! I know! Our buddy Rob is running it, and Nic and I and Megan and Mike are playing, and I don’t know how it’s going to go, but we’ve got our characters all set up and our first job underway, and five more sessions to get into all the trouble in the solar system.

• (On a boo/yay note, I had a bunch of games scheduled that either didn’t make or had to move or I didn’t jump on fast enough, but I went for a two week stretch with every night and some afternoons booked with games, so I think I’m doing okay.)

Stuff I’m Working On:

Well. Here’s the thing. I poked at my zine supplements for Dragon’s Fire a bunch this month, but didn’t really get far with them. I have a bunch written, and a lot of structure, art, and layout set, but I’m not too happy with any of it, and I feel pretty blocked on it. I’ll wind up publishing what I have, but I think the experiment of “only focus on work for this one thing this month, like it or not” backfired on my stubborn ADHD brain. So… nothing to show for May. But this month I’m gonna go back to my (probably equally as bad) “work on whatever you feel like in the moment, free like a birrrrrd!” strategy, and see if I can’t at least knock out a few things that have been clogging me up.

Speaking of twitch, I did a little design stream at the beginning of the month, hoping to keep doing little hour-ish things while I talked through or worked through Dragon’s Fire stuff. Unfortunately, I ran into the same problems as in my StarForged stream, and the audio was useless. So… I’m still figuring out what I want from that, but I’ll come back to it before too long.

Other Games:

• Still playing RagnaRock every day for “exercise” on the Oculus.
• Put in a long night of playing Backpack Hero, because little mouse.

• Went to BGG.Con Spring 2022! I was a little leery about this, because we’ve had a few covid outbreaks leading up to it, but we spend the first two days holed up in our hotel room, and the next two days just playing games with four or five friends (Steven, Lisa, Mark, Allie, and Candice) who we knew were all vaxxed and boosted, we all wore masks all the time, and we basically had one little back room to ourselves. So, it felt pretty safe, and I got some good games in, like:
• 7 Wonders Architects
• Burgle Bros 2
• Alien Fate of the Nostromo
• Downforce
• Picture Perfect
• K3
• Full Throttle (Frisiert)
• Just One
• Kabuto Sumo
• Stockpile
• Star Wars Unlock
• The Expanse
• Hues and Cues

Media

Also a good month for CONSUMING:

• Moon Night (Marvel television series, good start, soft ending)
• Better Call Saul, Season 6 (amazing as usual, but HOLY FUCK that mid-season ending)
• A few episodes of the Halo tv show (fine, but I don’t think I’m into it)
• Finished seasons 3 and 4 of Star Trek Discovery (it’s great, and if you don’t like it, you’re wrong)
• Started watching Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (also really good, a little fan service-y, but I’m here for it, needs more bongos)
• Watched the Eternals movie (yawn / wat?)
• 10 Cloverfield Lane, finally (really good, not what I was expecting, at any point)
• The new season of Kids in the Hall (struggled through the whole thing—glad they’re back, but it was pretty weak, overall)
• Started watching the new Obi Wan Kenobi show (slow paced, but I’m in)
• Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (watched out of obligations, lots of pretty colors, lots of… things making things feel pointless, overall? not mad about it, but, like, that was a thing that happened) (Also had a great time making up titles for it, like Wizard Man Fights All The Universes)
• Went to see La Fenice perform Raising Harry Potter on the outdoor stage at the Butterfly Bar. It delivered what was promised. :D

Work

My cohort is about to finish up—final projects are this week, then they graduate and I immediately turn around and start a new cohort in Phase One. I’m kinda cheesed about that, because we were told that we were going to start having a three-week rotation out of teaching (and focusing on personal development, filling in for folks, etc) after each cohort, but we’ve lost some folks, so things are stretched thin, and we need all hands on deck, and yadda yadda, and none of that sounds like my problem. So, still doing the thing, no surprises.

We’re going to be changing over our backend program to Python and Flask from our current Ruby on Rails setup, and… man, that’s a terrible mistake. The decision was made… well, there’s lots of problems all up and down, but short version is that it’s happening, we get no say in the matter, and that’s that. I’ve been ramping back up on the python (I taught some game development classes in it like a decade and change ago, and I’ve poked at it here and there) and I gotta say, there’s some hot garbage in there. But, this is the job, so gotta do what we gotta do. I’m not going to lie to folks, but I’m gonna give them what they came for.

We’ve also been dabbling in some side projects—putting together a git repo and some documentation of extra resources for instructors, and so on—to occupy our copious free time when we’re not wrangling students and material. I’ve been teaching myself how to make Chrome extensions again, and getting some more organizing and writing done with a new Obsidian setup with zettelkasten and all that stuff, so, good times.

Other Stuff

I got myself some new (cheap) lights and a new (still cheap) webcam and I’m gonna get OBS up and running so I can maybe make my streams look a little better. We’ll see.

Being a goblin and holing up and not eating well and not exercising for a couple of days is nice and relaxing, but my body instantly rebelled against my slackitude, so, good to know.

We did get some sweet donuts at this Nightlight Bakery in Waco on the drive back from Dallas, though, so that’s a win!

Okay. So. I don’t know how much I can say about this, but… fuck it. Someone out there is determined to make my life difficult in certain gaming communities, and they’re apparently still on their bullshit. I’d registered for an online con (GoPlay NW, which I’d signed up for last year, as well), and got a message a week or two later that they got a report that I’d violated their Code of Conduct, and I was banned from the convention for the foreseeable future. This has got to be the fifth or sixth time this has happened, and I literally have no idea what the deal is. Nobody (not even the safety teams doing the banning) will tell me what I’ve said or done to cause this, even in the most general terms, so it’s impossible for me to, you know, stop doing that or work on doing better or anything. So I’m still completely in the dark, making myself crazy trying to imagine what I could have done to hurt or offend someone, and coming up with absolutely nothing. It sucks, and there’s nothing I can do about it, and every time something related to this comes up it sends me into a RSD tailspin for a week or two and … yeah, it’s fucking exhausting, and I’m at a complete loss about the whole thing. Maybe it’ll sort itself out or settle down eventually, but this has been going on for six years now, and I’m constantly on edge wondering when the next friend is going to drop out of my life or block me, or which group of gaming folks will decide that I’m terrible and vanish themselves from my life. But the only thing I can control is how I behave and react to this, so I’m just going to keep doing what I’ve been doing all along, which is to be cool about everything, work to be a safe and welcoming person to be around and to game with, and make my gaming spaces and communities as inclusive and non-shitty for everyone as possible. Short version: the situation sucks, but I’m gonna keep being good, and hopefully the truth will come out someday.

Plans

The big thing I’ve got planned for June is a week long trip up to Rochester to visit dad and Jane with Nic and Pai! It’s been a while since we’ve been up there, and it’ll be good to chill out and see everyone again. We’re thinking about taking a day trip up to Ottawa to see Peter and Lindsey while we’re up there, but that plan is still being made.

Other than that, I got an office to organize, some games to play and make, some more woodworking projects, and just, like, all the things, man.