Around 5:45 PM last night we got a call from my youngest who lives in Louisville. She was stuck on the interstate close to the airport and smoke was everywhere, and she called us to see if we knew what was going on.
While she talked to my wife, the Louisville native, I quickly got onto one of the Louisville news sites and found this:
From WAVE 3 News. The original news link is gone.
At first it was unclear whether it was a passenger jet or a cargo jet, as one of UPS' primary hubs is based in Louisville, but it shortly confirmed that it was a UPS cargo jet bound for Honolulu that crashed on takeoff.
From CBS News.
From NBC's Today Show.
For those who don't know exactly where Muhammad Ali Airport is located, it's immediately south and west of the Kentucky State Fairgrounds, Churchill Downs, and the University of Louisville (which is located in what is known as "Old Louisville"). South of the airport is an industrial area, which included an auto parts place and a petroleum recycling facility, both of which took a direct hit from the crash.
The city was under a shelter-in-place order, that has gradually shrunk overnight to encompass the immediate crash area. As of this morning, the airport has reopened. No
It's the sort of nightmare you really just push into the dark recesses of your mind and try not to think about, especially when you realize that once the crew had committed to takeoff there was absolutely nothing they could have done once they discovered the plane was on fire. There's simply not enough runway to stop a fully loaded jet going 200+ miles per hour.
As for my youngest, she made it back home safely and sheltered in place as requested. She's back at work today as the shelter-in-place is now down to a 1/2 mile radius around the crash.
My wife and I met our son and his partner for lunch today at our local bookstore, and afterward we wandered the stacks. I espied a few boardgames that the store had for sale, and I immediately felt a bit wistful. It reminded me that the first boardgame store I visited here, Boardwalk Hobby Shop, had closed during the pandemic. The owners had decided to retire, and like I said in a previous post, I couldn't begrudge them that.
The day before I was out as an advanced scouting party for getting my youngest a new laptop, as her current one is far too old and slow to handle Windows 11, and I needed to reacquaint myself with how the various brands and models handled.* Naturally, I went to Microcenter, and afterward I stopped by my nearby Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS), YottaQuest.
I wasn't there to buy anything --because laptop, you know-- but it was good to simply roam the store and watch the steady flow of customers into the place. Those included a couple easily old enough to be my parents, and they weren't there just because their grandkids wanted to visit,** but to actually buy something themselves.
I took this pic last Fall, when there were leaves everywhere. Even on a nose or two.
Time marches on, but I hope that some things continue. Such as good bookstores and game stores.
*Having spent the last 12+ years buying laptops for the kids, I've seen a lot of trends. Such as the decline of HP in terms of quality --holy hell are those laptops flimsy-- and the rise of Acer as a viable brand. I remember when Acer's Aspire line used to be nicknamed "Expire" because of how poorly powered and built they were, but HP has certainly passed them on the way to the bottom in terms of consumer grade stuff. I still refuse to touch Dell because of my own personal experience with the brand courtesy of a work laptop that refused to have it's fan spin unless it sat perfectly flat. Tilt it just a hair and the fan would simply stop working. And I won't get into the overheating problems with that laptop, either.
**That was my experience as a kid when I'd drag my grandparents to a video game arcade or a bookstore.
Last night I spent some time doing something I've not done since November: actually playing in-game with friends.
Oh, I've been online at the same time they are, and even been in a group together, but either they were doing their own thing, doing boosting/getting boosts, or doing group content of some sort. Since they mostly were rushing on ahead in the Anniversary servers, there really wasn't much in common for us to work on at the same time. Even when they had gotten toons to L60 and were working on alts*, I'd kept a distance because they were frequently doing boosting of some sort.
However, last night was a respite from that because my Questing Buddy was playing with one of her kids**, and I noted that her kid had died.
"Need a healer?" I asked.
"Not a bad idea," my Questing Buddy replied, so I switched to a Priest who was close to Darnassus and went up to Teldrassil to help out.
I spent the next hour or more following them around, healing and shielding them, while they quested inside the Ban'ethil Barrow Den and against the Furbolg encampments nearby. Once in a while I would pull threat due to the heals, so I had to use wands and the occasional attack spell, but I was perfectly fine providing a minimal amount of support to keep them upright. I had no skin in the game, since I wasn't trying to keep up with quests or catch up with leveling. It was simply something that I could do without disrupting their enjoyment of the game --or making it all about me-- so I could enjoy the ride for a while.
*At least one has an alt closing in on L60 as well. Go figure.
**The kids play on a free account, which works well since they only tend to play in the starter and adjacent leveling zones.
This week, we moved my oldest and her partner up to Milwaukee.
Her partner had gotten a job up in Milwaukee, and so they both moved north of Chicago farther up along Lake Michigan.
My job was driving the U-Haul from Cincinnati --where we added some of my oldest's stuff-- up to Dayton, where we loaded her partner's boxes and whatnot.
This was early on in the loading process.
I was met up in Dayton* by my youngest, who was lugging up from Louisville an old kitchen table her boyfriend was unloading, and we put that in the truck as well. Then we went back home to Cincinnati, leaving the truck up north, to get some rest before the epic trip.
Early in the morning on Wednesday we drove up to Dayton, and I settled into my seat for the next several hours.
It's a Ford E-Series engine (something you'd find on a Ford Econoline). It's not well known for being a quiet engine, and the sign saying "the floor will get warm" didn't endear me to the cabin.
Having driven a U-Haul across town back home when I moved my son into his and his partner's apartment, I knew what awaited me: noise.
Sure, THAT U-Haul was a Dodge and this was a Ford, but it still was going to be a noisy ride. I did have one saving grace: I put on my earbuds and plugged into my smartphone, so if people tried to get a hold of me I could talk without fumbling for the phone. The earbuds cut out most of the noise, and I could listen to music and podcasts along the way.
Gentle, my ass.
We took off, and my oldest and her partner, her partner's sister, and the guinea pigs quickly pushed ahead. My wife and youngest were in our Honda CR-V and followed suit, and I lumbered along behind in the U-Haul. At least the U-Haul had air conditioning and automatic transmission, because it was not the most pleasant thing to drive. There was also no cruise control, so between the rough steering and constant need to put my foot on the accelerator, I had no opportunity to get distracted.
Okay, I wasn't driving a big rig, nor did I have
a CB radio, but it certainly felt like what I was
doing as I followed the semis heading west.
The trip west to Indianapolis, and then north to Chicago, reacquainted me with the Indianapolis highways in a way that the trip up I-74 to Gen Con never did.
THIS!!
As soon as we crossed the border from Ohio to Indiana on I-70, the roads almost literally went to shit.
I bounced along like I was driving a trampoline, and I was eternally grateful that I moved the container of cleaning materials from the top of a mountain of boxes to the floor, right next to the truck's sliding door. And what had to have been a cruel joke, all of these signs along I-70 kept proclaiming that Indiana was building "Next Gen Roads".
"How about making your roads CURRENT GEN instead of these pieces of shit!!!" I shouted more than once.
Nevertheless, I pressed on while listening to an episode about Elizabethan Spycraft from Professor Suzannah Lipscomb's Not Just The Tudors podcast. Yes, I am SUCH a nerd.
Somewhere before I reached Indianapolis itself, I discovered another truth about U-Haul trucks: they are thirsty bois.
Putting it on the truck doesn't make it true.
I filled up the gas tank before I reached Indy, and again before I reached I-94 up at the northern edge of Indiana. Holy crap was that tank gigantic, and even more than that was the hole in my wallet after each pit stop.
After that last pit stop --with a short break for lunch sandwiched in between at the exit for West Lafayette, the home of Purdue University-- I spent a miserable time driving through mid-afternoon traffic in Chicago.
There wasn't a point where I was at a standstill, but I crept along just slowly enough so that I couldn't take any pictures of the sights, such as the downtown skyline or a view of Lake Michigan. Or this building:
I was not expecting to see this in Chicago. From LinkedIn.
I knew Steelseries is a Danish company, so when the Steelseries building in Chicago appeared in front of me, I was surprised. Again, I had to fight the truck the entire way through Chicago, so there was no moment where I could take a pic of the building itself.
My drive through Chicago was made more painful by the reality that I didn't want to deal with the toll roads. If I were driving my own car I'd have no issues paying the tolls, but I was driving a rental and I wasn't dealing with anything that might cause me to have to pay U-Haul some extra money. So... I ended up getting off of I-94 out of Chicago and onto US Route 41 until we reached the Wisconsin border. Once there, no tolls awaited us so we got back onto I-94 and away we went.
***
Even though Wisconsin and Ohio are both part of the Midwest, you knew you were in Wisconsin when the first billboard I saw was for a place called "On The Border", a "Gentlemen's Club" in Franklin, Wisconsin.
"Wow," I said to myself. "You don't see that in Ohio."
Not that those clubs don't exist in Ohio, but that they had actual billboards for them on the highways. At worst you'd see the occasional billboard that says --and I kid you not-- "Love Stuff up ahead". I always imagined 'Love Stuff' being said with Isaac Hayes' low voice, which is something I simply can't imitate.
There's another thing that let me know that I was in Wisconsin:
Yes, they take their cheese seriously in Wisconsin. Again, too busy to drive to take a pic. From Wikipedia.
The Mars Cheese Castle is very much a thing --we visited it once when we were up for a friend's wedding back in 2004-- and given that my oldest loves cheese, she'll likely become a regular customer.
Milwaukee itself wasn't what I expected. Throw out any images in your head that were driven by old episodes of Laverne and Shirley --or even the knowledge that breweries such as Miller, Pabst, and Schlitz call Milwaukee home-- because they don't really fit the reality. The downtown skyline doesn't look as impressive as Chicago, Cincinnati, or Cleveland, but the layout is much nicer and cleaner, and there are tons of old buildings still around. The weather was in the upper 70s with a nice breeze blowing off of Lake Michigan, and people were out and about in both downtown and along the lake shore. Parks covered the shore, as well as marinas and a beach and the Milwaukee Art Museum, and joggers and families were enjoying the early evening.**
I took this photo of the Milwaukee Art Museum after we dropped off the U-Haul. Yes, your eyes don't deceive you, it looks like a yacht.
The apartment itself was in the upstairs of a renovated building that dated from 1913, less than a mile from Lake Michigan. The first floor contains shops while the upstairs floors all had been renovated into modern apartments. My oldest completely lucked out in how nice the entire neighborhood looked. Sure, there's the obligatory Starbucks, but there was also a small bookstore, several nice restaurants, some quirky shops, and even a small repertoire movie theater. Oh, and a hospital is about 1/2 mile away, so there's that as well.
Now, all I had to do was park the damn truck.
It took a while to find a spot, and I became very acquainted with the narrow roads and the beautifully maintained century old houses ringing the neighborhood, but I finally "created" one by parking in a "private parking only -- violators will be towed" spot behind the apartment and emptied the truck. Then a short trip back through downtown Milwaukee --which included the beautiful Historic Third Ward-- and to the U-Haul spot to drop the heap off, and that was that.
***
The guinea pigs did survive the trip, although the weren't so sure about the new place until the very end of our stay. By then, they were happily munching on treats and begging for more.
As for us, we grabbed some dinner at the end of the block at a local bar, and set out for home.
We originally intended to get through Chicago and then grab a hotel for the night, but after making it that far, we decided to rotate drivers and just push on to home. I won't bore you with the details, as it involved a lot of dozing along the way when I wasn't driving, but we made it back home at around 8 AM EST. My youngest and my wife grabbed showers and then slept, but I simply konked out. Several hours later, my youngest went back to Louisville, where she was working that evening assisting with the front ensemble for one of the local high schools' marching band, and we began our career as (semi) empty nesters. I say "semi" because our youngest is still in college and may yet come back home after graduation, but we'll see.
***
So now you know what I was up to this past week.
Since I was determined to basically keep a low profile, I wrote up a bunch of posts beforehand and scheduled them to post over the course of the week.
Now, when we go back to Milwaukee to visit, I ought to see about getting a six-pack of Schlitz just to say that I tried it. And for those who remember how Schlitz' owners pretty much destroyed the brand by trying to go cheap with the brewing process, the original recipe is back and is being made in small batches.
*Technically speaking it was Huber Heights, a suburb just north of Dayton, but nobody outside of SW Ohio knows much of anything about Huber, so let's just say it's Dayton and leave it at that.
**Not to put a damper on this, but I'm sure that by winter this weather will be rather brutal.
EtA: I corrected some grammar and the missing link to Laverne and Shirley's theme song, which includes highlights from the show. In case you didn't notice, Laverne and Shirley worked at mythical "Shotz Brewery", a riff on Schlitz Brewery.
If there's one thing about Gen Con, you're never sure what will attract your attention. To borrow an overused term, you think you do, but you don't.*
And 2024 certainly delivered on that premise.
My wife hadn't attended since 2015, so she was excited to go. We picked up my son and his partner at 7:30 and pointed our car west on I-74. Destination: Indianapolis.
We parked just outside of Lucas Oil Stadium and headed north a block or two to the Indianapolis Convention Center.
Yes, the Colts play here. Does it show?
Along the way, there was evidence that there was going to be a crowd inside.
Uh oh.
Yes, Gen Con was sold out all four days beforehand. According to the post-con press release, there were over 71,000 attendees throughout the entire con, and yeah, once you got inside the Convention Center you could tell.
I apologize for the blurry photo, but I was in a hurry as I was being jostled along. But hey, dice are dice and Chessex was everywhere.
(The rest of the report is after the jump break due to the sheer number of photos.)
I was eating dinner out with my oldest last night, and talk turned to MMOs. We'd discussed LOTRO for a bit --she mentioned that our house was out of storage-- and about several of the changes made to legendary weapons. Because of the changes, you didn't have to swap out your weapon every so often; you could keep that same weapon as long as you wanted.
"I still have my original weapon," I mused. "I doubt I'll ever get rid of it."
We covered some of the other changes made to the game over the years, as she'd continued to play LOTRO actively long after it became a niche event for me, then we discussed another MMO we'd played a lot in the past.
"I miss SWTOR," I said, "but that bug keeps me from playing it."
"The companion bug?" she asked.
"Yeah, that one."
"I have that bug too, and it drives me crazy."
"It's the only game I see where a companion just simply does not keep up with me over time. I typically last as far as Alderaan until I can't stand it any more."
"That's a shame," she replied, "because I loved the story in Alderaan."
"I used to think it was a problem with the Radeon graphics cards," I added, "but when we bought my current PC it runs on an NVidia card that's far more advanced than anything we had in 2012 and it still does it."
"I wondered if it had something to do with server congestion."
"There was more server traffic back then, so I have no idea what the problem is. I have seen it on two separate installations of the game, and now three if you're seeing it too. It's not like Bioware hasn't made games with companions before or after, so I don't know what the issue is with this one single game of theirs."
After a brief pause, my oldest added that if there were Classic SWTOR servers ever created, she knows several people who would jump at the chance to play those again.
"Like your brother?"
"Yeah, he disliked how easy the game became."
"I miss the difficulty," I said, taking another bite of my salad. "The Consular end boss in particular was originally really tough until they nerfed it. And even after it was nerfed it was a hard fight."
"Remember the final zone in the Tatooine story?" she asked. "You kept going through this long maze until you got to the end, and now it's 'you take an elevator and you're there.'"
"Yeah. Or remember accidentally touching something out in the field and discovering that was a World Boss spawn point? Or when you'd be assembling a group to take on a World Boss and someone from the other faction would run up and cause the WB to spawn, grabbing it for the other faction?"
"I remember that. Or those Heroic 4 zones out in the field. They're all 2+ Heroics now."
"I haven't set foot in a Flashpoint since they changed the design so that you didn't need a healer or a tank," I confessed, "and you have those self-administered healing points scattered around the instances. But boy did I love the original Flashpoints they had."
"Yeah."
You know you're getting old when your daughter starts reminiscing about how things were back in the day, I suppose.
So. There was this event yesterday that might have been on the news...
Okay, it wasn't exactly like this, but you get the idea. From the RuneQuest Starter Set Book 2: Glorantha. Artwork is by Hazem Ameen, found here on Artstation.
Given that Cincinnati is right on the edge of totality --if I drove about 15 minutes to the west I'd be in totality-- I decided to take the day off and enjoy the view.
I'd planned this well enough in advance that I'd bought a couple of packs of eclipse glasses and had distributed them to family and friends. We still had enough left over for my wife and myself, and I figured I'd use a third pair to try to get a photo via my smartphone.
Wherever we ended up going to watch the eclipse, that is.
I wasn't exactly worried about where we'd end up, but my wife wanted things to go well, and so we ended up driving 50 miles north to Dayton. We left at 11:15 AM, with Totality set to reach the Dayton area at 3:09 PM.
Traffic was expected to be heavy with people heading west on I-74 into Indiana and north on I-75 toward Dayton, and for midday I-75 certainly felt like Rush Hour traffic on the trek north.
Things began to clear out once we reached the Dayton city limits, and we got off the highway right by the University of Dayton*, thinking that maybe the UD Arena's parking lot might be available for eclipse watching.
It wasn't.
So, we drove into downtown Dayton and had lunch at a favorite haunt of ours from when we attended 33+ years ago, The Spaghetti Warehouse. For those interested in whether I could find something that fit my diet requirements, yes I could. (I had a salad.)
A little after 1:00 PM, we set out to try to find a place to watch the eclipse.
We knew some spots, such as the National Museum of the US Air Force, were not a good idea. That place was expected to be a nuthouse. We also knew that the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum, about 45 minutes north of Dayton in Neil's birthplace of Wapakoneta, was supposed to be swamped. Other places on our radar, such as local parks and even Woodlawn Cemetery (immediately next to UD, where the Wright Brothers are buried) were holding watch parties and you had to pay some decent amount of money just to attend. There's a Native American archaeological site nearby, SunWatch Village, but their watch party required payment of $500**.
Again, not happening.
We quickly realized that most of the city and surrounding area had cancelled classes and businesses, so a lot of people were simply home for the day. So... we decided to check out the area around the Dayton Art Institute (the Dayton art museum) to see if there was a crowd there.
No, not our car. It's not visible.
There wasn't.
We parked on the street and walked over to the Masonic Hall next to the DAI, found a cherry tree to sit under, and pulled out some books to relax with while the eclipse began.
As the eclipse came closer, the telltale crescent shape began appearing on the shade through the tree...
The eclipse glasses I'd bought did the trick, so we could take a look as the Moon slowly ate the Sun. The only bad part was that the filter on the glasses did their job too well, and I couldn't get a photo from my smartphone because the phone couldn't resolve to a sharp image. I decided I wasn't going to bother and left the phone alone.
Daylight slowly dissipated until the moment of totality, then everything dipped immediately into twilight:
You'd think this was after 8:00 PM here on the edge of downtown Dayton. Yes, this was during Totality.
The eclipse glasses even protected against the Sun's corona, so I had to take them off to steal a glance of the eclipse itself. Just a second or two, but it was quite a sight. I could even see Venus nearby, but since I wasn't in a dark sky area I couldn't see any other stars.
I can see why earlier civilizations thought a total solar eclipse was a sign from the gods --or a portent of disaster, your choice-- because it's one of those things that your brain has trouble processing while it's happening. When you've seen the sun in one state all your life and then this occurs it gives you pause, even though you knew intellectually that this was expected.
Can confirm it looks like this. From a Facebook post by the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library.
Although it felt that time stood still, it was over all too fast. Just like someone flicked switch, the daylight returned.
The sky was still a brilliant and rich blue.
Most everybody else who came to watch the eclipse left soon thereafter, but we hung around for an hour to let the traffic on the highway clear out a bit.
Then what did we do?
We went to a bookstore, of course.
I sent this pic to my Questing Buddy, who has read both of these books, as I was amused by the small print on the poster.
*Yes, our alma mater. Class of 1991, thankyouverymuch.
Last Saturday, my son, his SO, and I made a trip about 45 miles north of us along I-71 to attend the Ohio Renaissance Festival for the day.
I picked them up at their apartment around 10:30 and we headed in a northeastern direction. The weather had cooled off so that the high temps were in the low 60s (16-17 Celsius) with partly cloudy skies. After a month's worth of temperatures in the mid-80s to low-90s (30-32 Celsius) it sounded fantastic.
Apparently it did to everybody else, too:
When we got off the highway we were stuck in traffic for 2 miles until we reached the entrance. Along the way we were watching the capacity information on the Ren Fest's website, and by the time the photo above was taken they were expecting 90% capacity at the park grounds. I grew increasingly nervous as the line dragged on, because I realized they might reach capacity and we'd be out of luck, but we eventually parked and got in line to get into the park itself.**
I ran on ahead and got in line for tickets, as this line turned out to be the line for season pass holders, and then we got into the park itself.
On warmer days, there are Faire people on the ramparts heckling the crowd as they enter, but I guess they had the afternoon off.
The mythical Elizabethan town, Willy-Nilly On-The-Wash, is the home of the Faire. Queen Elizabeth herself is in attendance, along with her court, and she attends the jousts that are held in the center of the Faire.
The leaves partially obscure the Queen and her Court.
If you've ever been to a so-called Renaissance Festival --I say 'so-called' because these festivals aren't exactly what I'd call authentic but more in the spirit of an Elizabethan faire-- you know that there's jousting, shows, music, vendors, and food. And plenty of people dressed up in what SCA-dians call "garb" to more fully immerse themselves in the experience.
Not sure how I managed it, but these slice-of-life photos of the crowd somehow managed to have at least one person turning and looking right as I snapped the pic.
See what I mean?
But there were crowds. Holy crap, were there crowds.
I might have to invest in a selfie stick so I can get a higher angle of the scope of the crowd.
Before you ask, no, I did not make it to the Mud Show this time around. That's fine, because I caught a couple of other shows, including a fire show:
If you have trouble seeing it, trust me... The fire is real.
There were also artisans there, such as this person working with glass sculpture:
This is not the same as the glass blower, who was in another part of the Faire.
Still, it felt kind of weird being here after having been away for six years. Admittedly one of those years the Renaissance Festival was closed due to the Pandemic (2020), and I wasn't interested in attending in 2021 due to the potential aftereffects of said Pandemic, but the other years? Well, with kids going away to college and my wife simply not being interested in going any more***, I couldn't really justify driving up and wandering around by myself for an afternoon. I mean, I could do it, but it wouldn't be the same as attending with friends or family.
The Faire has been around for about 33 years, and over that time the trees have all grown and matured, buildings have been added, and activities have sprung up. Those trees ringing the jousting area above? They weren't there six years ago. Actually, the area behind where we were standing was an open field for about half a football field's length until you ran into the food vendors and bathrooms, but now... Well, it's all filled up to the point where it felt like you really were in a small town.
Feels like something right out of M.A.S.H., which really dates me.
"About a third of these buildings weren't even here six years ago," I mentioned to my son.
"Yeah, it's really grown up a lot," he replied.
Still, some of the places have been around forever, and it felt like seeing an old friend when I came across them.
Such as this vendor. They specialize in wooden swords and shields.
There were other vendors that did not want photos taken of their work, which was a shame, but I respected their requests. Among them were the weapons vendors, metalworks and leatherworks, clothiers, and jewelry vendors.
But you still couldn't escape the crowds. Holy crap were the crowds impressive.
No, Bourbon Chicken isn't period, but that's fine. If this were period, we might all be eating trenchers, I suppose, which would not be that healthy for someone with my health issues.
For someone who isn't a big fan of crowds, I just kind of hung in there, but it was the parking and direction where the crowds' impact was felt the most.
When we got off the highway, it took us 40-45 minutes to crawl along 2 miles to finally park. And on the way out, it took us 45 minutes just to leave the parking area. I do know that several people wearing "Parking" shirts/vests were unceremoniously relieved of duty by one of their superiors when it became obvious that they had no idea how to organize traffic flowing out of the park. Their situation wasn't helped by the rent-a-cops who were giving priority to cars already on the road rather than letting people leave the parking area.
I do know that there's been a bit of contention between the community that the Festival grounds are on and the Fest's management; the Fest wants to expand amenities, such as running water, electricity, cell phone service, etc. and the community is less concerned about that and more concerned about taking in their cut of taxes from all of the Faire goers. So... There's issues there, but that's also the price of success. The place is a destination location of 200,000 visitors annually, although I think this year they're probably going to smash that record.
Still, one last item that you might find amusing, this car that I saw while walking back to our car:
I was amused.
*If you've ever seen The Swordsmen's comedy act, they use that as a greeting.
**On Sunday, they reached capacity and had to turn people away from the entrance. Kind of wild if you ask me.
***She used to like going, but that all changed when the kids were little. She began to complain about the shows all being the same, everything costs too much, etc. etc. Considering she says that about practically everything --including Gen Con, in case you were wondering-- I pretty much have given up on trying to get her to go with me. In some ways, despite her not having grown up in Cincinnati, she has become the archetypal West Sider, with the only difference being that unlike the older hardcore West Siders she doesn't have any money stashed away in a coffee can in the backyard. I mean, there are some lines that should never be crossed.
By the time this post drops, I'll be at one of the local hospitals.
Oh, not for me --I'm fine at the moment, thanks for asking-- but for the oldest mini-Red. She's getting her tonsils out today.
I'm not saying that aliens make 'em big, but.... aliens. From makeameme.org.
Yes, she's almost 25.
And yes, from all I've heard, getting your tonsils out as an adult absolutely sucks. The poor kid already had her wisdom teeth out earlier a couple of months ago, so this makes a nice bookend to her Summer. /sarcasm
I'm the driver and head clown of this circus*, so I'll be making sure she gets there on time and can make sure she doesn't throw up all over the car on the way back. And then, once I get her back home, I have to get back to work because I have some paperwork due today that won't wait. (I'm not kidding, either.)
*My wife occasionally lets me be in charge; to give me a feeling of empowerment, I suppose.
NOTE: This post has absolutely nothing to do with gaming. Sorry about that.
The other day I came across a book of school and sport photos that my mom had given me over the winter, and since I'd not seen any of these photos in what has been well over a decade or two, I sat down and perused them.
That was probably not the smartest decision I've ever made. Why, you may ask?
I wasn't prepared for the emotions that they stirred within me.
It's not as if I've never seen pictures of myself as a kid before. On the contrary, my mom has plenty of them around and every so often she likes to pull them out to show "younger me" off to the mini-Reds. When they were younger, that was cute, but now that they're grown, it's kind of awkward.
But still, those photos are of us on vacation, at home, things like that.
These were the formal class photos and sports team photos that I had as part of the baseball and basketball teams I played on. All my elementary school photos were there, up through middle school. No high school pics here at all.
The guilty party.
When I sat down to peruse the photos, I was struck by the changes from black and white to color photos. My Kindergarten and First Grade photos were in color, but when I changed schools to my Catholic grade school for Second Grade up through Eighth Grade, we reverted to black and white. It was only in Fourth Grade that the class photo returned to color, as if the school couldn't afford color until then.*
The second thing were the outfits.
Oh Lord, the outfits.
My elementary school years stretched from the Fall of 1974 to Spring of 1983, and that wide swath of the 70s was reflected in the loud outfits of the day, such as corduroy jackets and pants.
Yikes. And they come in "Husky Sizes" too! From the 1975 Sears Fall/Winter Catalogue, page 418. From christmas.musetechnical.com.
My first two years of school were at the local public school, because the Catholic school only went from 2nd through 8th Grade, but despite the latter's uniform requirements our formal photos looked a lot like those found in the public school. So... the same loud clothing.
Despite the loud clothing, I had a hard time wrapping my head around these photos. My own kids are all adults now, so this feels like multiple lifetimes ago. Still, as I perused them, I remembered aspects of my life that I'd buried under decades of daily work.
Such as how I looked when I got glasses in Sixth Grade. My glasses came after our school photos, so I was glasses-free for my class photo, but in Seventh Grade... Between the bad plastic frames and the awkward horizontally striped shirt, I don't know how that photo could look worse. I also began having dandruff issues (thanks for the genetics, Dad), so if you want to talk middle-school awkward, that Seventh Grade photo was it.
In Eighth Grade, I got a new prescription which included new glasses with metal frames, and they looked a lot better. I may have looked more confident in the school photo, but I certainly was that awkward kid with the hormones who couldn't dance to save their life. (That was on display at the Eighth Grade Graduation Dance, although the most memorable part of that dance was the one kid who thought it would be funny to walk around with his pants down. The chaperones escorted him out.)
***
My classmates generated a large share of the memories of my youth, both good and bad.
Like the kid who became good friends with me in Kindergarten, to the point where we exchanged telephone numbers to try to get together during the Summer. But when I called him up, the woman on the other end of the line said "nobody of with that name lives here". And that Fall, he wasn't at school. It was as if he'd up and vanished.
There was the girl in Third Grade who loved to read as much as I did, and we had a semester's long competition as to who could read the most books. I kept pace with her for a while, but she ended up beating the pants off me in both quantity and quality of books**. I found her interesting and funny and vexing all at once, but at the end of the school year she told me that her family was moving, and I never saw her again after that Spring.
Oh man, I'd almost forgotten about the kid in Third Grade who never did his homework. And I do mean never. He'd get in trouble for that, but then one day when he came to Math class he told the teacher he'd done his homework, she was happy... until we were supposed to open our math workbooks to show we did our homework. Oh, those blank pages he presented did not go over well. "DON'T YOU LIE TO ME!!!" the teacher yelled and grabbed the kid by the arm, yanking him out into the hallway. There was an impromptu meeting among all of the other Third Grade teachers and the Principal, with the kid in tow, which dragged on for over 20 minutes. (I know, because I was watching the clock in total silence, along with the rest of my class.) I don't know the end result of all this, but the kid was never in class again.
In Fourth Grade, I absolutely loved my homeroom teacher; she was patient yet demanding, encouraging and calm, and she pushed my academic interests far more than the nuns ever did. But more than anything else she was tall. She was easily the tallest woman I'd ever known at that point --I want to say she was at least 5' 10"-- and I found out later that she was the daughter of a local doctor who played basketball back in the day. In what I now identify as a trend, she left the school at the end of the school year because she could make more money being a secretary for her dad's office than she could as a teacher.***
I discovered girls in the Fifth Grade, but looking at these photos now I'm having a hard time viewing the girls and trying to remember what I found attractive in them. I mean, they look so young, and my vantage point is a mid-50s man who looks at women in their early 20s and think that they look far too youthful for my taste.
There was the "love triangle" in the Sixth Grade between one boy and two girls that everybody seemed to think was absolutely cute, including the two girls involved, but the boy seemed very embarrassed by the whole thing. I was simply baffled, because I thought that if I were caught that way between two girls, it would make my head hurt.
A boy who was only there for Sixth Grade --his family moved to West Germany after the school year, so it's likely his was a military family-- taught everybody the "Diarrhea" song. He was constantly in trouble, and it was widely rumored he was in and out of juvenile detention.
In Eighth Grade, I had to deal with constant bullying from a girl who would get into my face and yell "WE HATE YOU!!" I've been bullied before and since, but that was probably the worst. I hated her with a passion, but the teachers did nothing and I decided I wasn't going to respond to her directly. But oh, I dreamed about hauling off and slugging her for that.
***
All that was well and good, until I reflected on what happened to some of the kids when they grew up.
There was one girl I crushed on --not my original crush, but one that people knew about in grade school-- who was very smart and attractive, but she got pregnant and she ended up marrying her boyfriend and dropping out of college. I think she may have eventually gotten her college degree, but I have no idea if she remained married.
A similar fate befell the kid who dropped his pants at the Eighth Grade Dance; he finished within a hair of being Salutatorian at high school and had a sports scholarship to a Division I university lined up, but his girlfriend got pregnant and... that was that.
The girl who bullied me in Eighth Grade? She developed an eating disorder in high school. I have no idea what became of her after that.
One classmate spent time in prison for embezzling funds, but I believe he's out now.
In a "no surprise" event, one of my classmates died when a drug deal went bad. He was a constant thorn in my side, and despite his small stature he was a bully. When I was in high school he was caught by the police slashing tires in the parking lot of our elementary school, which I was no real surprise.
Another classmate committed suicide by jumping off of the tallest building in town. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around that one, 30 years after I first heard it. He was the class clown type, and from what I've read about comics and depression I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it still hurt.
Not all was doom and gloom, however. A few people married their high school sweethearts and remain married today (or at least as far as a couple of years ago). Others survived the bullying gauntlet and became successful in life. And still others are, well, doing their thing, I guess. If they're like me, they don't respond to correspondence about school reunions or things like that, because they prefer to forget their experiences in grade/middle school.
***
Admittedly, this reflection wasn't what I expected it would be, as when I began perusing the photos I didn't expect to be reminded of all of these events. I could have just shoved it aside and buried it deep in my psyche, but I felt it was important to let this stuff come out. There's a lot more stories I could tell from my grade school years, but I'm not exactly sure how to tell them.
My grade school was, well, kind of fucked up in its focus. I don't know if it's the case in other parts of the country, but here in Ohio the Catholic grade schools emphasize athletics to an inordinate degree. As in "far beyond the healthy levels" of emphasis. For example, my school's priorities were in full display on our annual "yearbook" that we were given out for free at the end of the year. My kids' yearbooks growing up included a lot of photos of the various classes and the kids doing all sorts of activities; my own only included the formal pictures of the sports teams that the school sponsored, as if sports were all that mattered at the school. (In some ways, it kind of did.)
However, there were at least a few pages for autographs and other comments, so there was that at least. And like a lot of kids, I got some signatures from people I knew.
This was in my Seventh Grade yearbook. Names have been removed for privacy's sake. And before you ask, no, we never dated.
Again, this is from Seventh Grade. The guy who wrote this is, well, respectable these days. I think that blows my mind more than anything else.
In perusing the autographs, I don't think I had an "bad" autographs, but that kind of went without saying. After all, you're not likely to ask someone you didn't like to sign your yearbook. Still, I can tell the years I felt more isolated than others by the (lack of) autographs in my yearbook.
But I do wonder about how much the petty drama drove so much shit at school. Probably 95% of it, if I'm being honest with myself.
***
Okay, I have to put all of this aside for now. I'm glad I got to put some of this down on pixels, because it feels rather cathartic to bring all of this out every so often. Maybe it's just me that I'm surprised that as many kids in my class of 90-100 eventually turned out to be as well adjusted adults as there were, but then again maybe the churn of shit below the surface is quite normal for any school. Who knows?
#Blaugust2023
*That wasn't the case; it was more the fault of the Pastor being a cheapskate. That particular priest was a stereotypical cigar smoking, hard drinking asshole in his mid-50s who always found something to dislike in whatever you were doing. His fingerprints were all over what high schools were welcome to recruit at the school as well; he went to the high school I eventually attended, and because of that he refused to let the local Jesuit high school recruit students. The same thing went for the girls' high school: the girls' school right next to my high school was welcome, the other, more prestigious ones were not.
**She was reading middle school level books by the end of the school year, and just cruising through them.
***I saw her years later when I broke my collarbone in Eighth Grade; she certainly remembered me, which was both gratifying and embarrassing to a 13 year old kid that his Fourth Grade teacher remembered him. Of course, I now know that isn't so unusual, but back then I certainly thought it was.
I'm setting this up ahead of time because I'll likely be too exhausted to remember to post it later in the day.
Gen Con Indy started on August 3rd*, but we usually make a point of driving up to Indianapolis to visit on Sunday, which is "Family Fun Day". Back when the mini-Reds were a lot younger, it was a very cheap way of paying to see the con: one price for a family of four. Even paying for the extra mini-Red, it was far cheaper than individual tickets on a Saturday. Today, with the mini-Reds anything but mini, it's still cheaper for an individual Sunday ticket than any of the other days.
So my son, his SO, and I are presently en route up to Gen Con as this is posted.
Hey look, a Redbeard! No, it's not me, but it is 'a redbeard'. It's @diceandautism from TikTok.
I shall report back afterwards. Probably Tuesday.
#Blaugust2023
*Okay, the party really started on the 2nd, but the con officially opens on the 3rd.
When Souldat and I began this blog in 2009, the mini-Reds were 6, 8, and 11.
They are now 19, 22, and 24.
This past weekend my son graduated from college, and armed with his Bachelor's degree in History, will be attending graduate school in the fall to work on his Master's degree.
In his time away at college, he got into paining minis. (From John Kovalic's Dork Tower.)
And he plays FFXIV. When he asked if I was going to attend Gen Con this year, he mentioned that at least one of his guildies was planning on attending. (Heh.)
He put a version of this, from Final Fantasy XIV, on his cap.
I had the afternoon to myself*, so I did what I typically do on a Sunday when I have an itch to explore and the weather is lousy for hiking: I visited a bookstore.
After having finished The Chronicles of the Black Company, I was looking at replacing it in my "to be read" pile with another book, but I was more interested in chasing down a diabetic cookbook that I could use. I know how to break down existing recipes and eliminate sodium and carbs at least decently well these days, but it is also nice to occasionally find a cookbook where that groundwork has already been done for you, such as this one from America's Test Kitchen, the Consumer Reports of Cooking.**
The nice part about perusing a bookstore is that you never know what you're going to end up with when you walk in the door. Sure, you could stick to exactly what you're looking for --and when I've got things to do I will do just that-- but if I'm browsing all bets are off.
I know, I should check out Naomi's His Majesty's Dragon, but I'm not a big fan of alternate history. Although the premise, a mashup of the Napoleonic Wars and Dragons, does sound interesting.
At some point I found myself over at the magazine racks, perusing so-called "bookazines",
Like oh, say, THIS. Although to be fair, I'm pretty sure that Larry Elmore isn't gonna lose any sleep on my interest in painting.
which seem to be books in the form of single issue magazines, when I found myself kind of crowded out by a family who didn't seem to notice me there. I mean, I'm not a small guy, and I was there at least a few minutes before they were, but I suddenly found myself crowded out by them. Rather than bitch about it, I just decided to relocate for 5 minutes or so and then come on back to finish my browsing.
When I did I found that the family had indeed moved about 10-15 feet away, but they were in the middle of a knock down drag out argument. Well, as much of one that could be had in a bookstore.***
"THAT is not a book!"
"You want me to spend my hard earned dollars on THAT?"
"A book has paragraphs in it! Not THAT!"
"Are you really going to read THAT??!!"
Yes, those were the parents.
I couldn't see what the book in question was, but it wouldn't have shocked me if the kid --my guess she would have been early teens, but you never know-- had found the graphic novel/comics section and pulled out something from there.
Even then, I felt for her, because I lived that same argument 40 years ago. Many times.
***
The first time was back when I was in Second Grade, and my mom took my brother and I downtown and we stopped at a bookstore there. We were each allowed to get one book, and I chose a book on primary colors and my brother chose a book about cats. When my dad got home that evening, he saw the books and threw them away, saying they were "kiddie books" and "you're too old for books like these".
Yes, there was drama, in no small part from my trying to explain to my mom and brother --who was bawling his eyes out-- that dad had said "kiddie books" and not "kitty books".
Several years later, in the midst of some of the worst bullying I received in middle school, I buried myself in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. It was a way of coping, losing myself in the books and loving the narrative voice. Then one Sunday afternoon when I was sick and rereading The Fellowship of the Ring once again, my dad came in and told me that if I didn't stop reading those books and "read something else", he'd take them away.**** I believe the words "rot your brain" and "something for grownups" were in that tirade somewhere, but all I saw was red.
I fumed for several days, but eventually I moved on to Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara and I discovered David Eddings' The Belgariad, likely to my dad's chagrin.
This was the book cover I knew back in the day. From Goodreads.
***
But from my own experience I vowed I would not be that parent to my own kids.
When my oldest was in the middle of her "princess craze", when every book she ever read just absolutely had to have a princess in it or she wouldn't read it*****, I took her downtown and we perused the absolutely gigantic children's section of the downtown library.
The Secret Garden, found in the secret garden adjoining the Children's Section of the Cincinnati Downtown Library. From the Library's Flickr account.
We went through a lot of books, and I had absolutely no luck in getting her to try another book without a princess in it, until I stumbled upon this:
No, this is not the library's copy.
"Does it have a princess in it?" my oldest asked, curiously.
The fact she didn't reject it outright was a good sign, so I quickly flipped through the book and said "there's a noble lady in it, is that close enough?"
"Hmm... okay."
I rejoiced when her back was turned and we checked the book out (with a bunch of princess books, because you knew that was gonna happen). Later that night I read the book to her, and then she asked for it again the next night. And then for the next month she would get out her watercolors and scrap paper and "make a book" in the same style as Marguerite did.
And that was that.
***
So yeah, I saw the drama this afternoon and really did I feel for the kid. Yeah kid, I know what you're going through; just remember this afternoon --and what it felt like for you-- when you've got kids of your own.
*Work kept me fairly close to my home office, otherwise I'd have likely gone with my wife to see my youngest play in a concert this evening. As it was, she went on and is spending the night at her parents' house, using the concert as an excuse to check in on them as they're hitting 90.
**At least that's what I call them. Consumer Reports, please don't go knocking on my door for a cease and desist; it's a compliment of the highest order.
***I was once at the downtown library branch and someone, about 20 years my senior, came in looking for his kid who hadn't shown up when they were supposed to. He first demanded that the staff call for the kid over the intercom, and when the staff refused he then proceeded to start hollering her name at the top of his lungs: "TRACY!! GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE!!" They tried to shush him up, but you can imagine how that went over, so he was grabbed by library security and a policeman on duty, and forced over into a corner. I couldn't tell if they put him in handcuffs, but I took that as my cue to leave the building.
****He couldn't throw them out because the books belonged to my mom.
*****This was before her interest in Harry Potter, by the way.
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