Month: July 2018

Flim flam

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ohemgee, Rowan is going absolutely crazy with this heat wave. I don’t think he cares about the temperature, but being cooped up inside the house is driving him nuts. We took him in the pool at the YMCA with a floatie-wings-thingy the other day. He totally loved it and as soon as we were in he started turning to other kids and saying “Rowan!” to them. Introducing himself. It’s nuts how much he’s growing.

Also, picking out a birthday present for a four year (not Rowan, a friend’s kid) old is hard. Most kid’s stuff is total garbage. The stuff that isn’t is like $100, which is a lot to spend on something for someone who may or may not like it, and will almost certainly not care about it in 2 years.

In other news, the Pathfinder 2e playtest is due out in a little less than a month. I’ve got a copy on the way (hopefully? We’ll see if the brand new local game shop managed to process my pre-order). I’ve been playing some iteration of D&D for approaching three decades, so I’m kind of stoked to see what Paizo has come up with. I think the work they did reworking and extending 3rd edition has been excellent. If they can take the flexibility they’ve baked into the system and make it easier to pick up for new players, I think it’ll do well. The teasers they’ve released have varied from “yup, totally makes sense” to “ehhhhh yeah I dunno”. But nothing so far makes me think I’d put it down, despite what some forum-dwellers are saying. It’s like they’ve never heard of house rules?

so, what’s new?

Bill1 Comment

We live on a quiet street, in an old neighborhood, where I walk to an amazing coffee shop once a week or so. There’s a tiny little play kitchen tucked under the stairs inside this place, where I can sit and sip a fantastic cappuccino while watching my son start to make sense of the world.

That world is a more confusing place than it was seven years ago. I’ve always been a skeptic and a cynic, but somehow also an optimist. Emotionally, it’s a tough place to be these days. I’m not always sure how I’d explain things to him, if I had to. And yet, there’s no ‘if’, because I’ll spend the next 20+ years doing exactly that? I mean, the words that will come are sometimes obvious, but then the inevitable “But if that’s the case then why are they/it/we like that?”. I feel like I came into my skepticism organically. The idea of instilling a distrust of authority via the medium of parental wisdom seems… comical at best.

Forgive me; digressions in this space are as old as the space itself.

So how do you recap seven years?

Clare and I married. I finally got my bachelor’s degree and became a software engineer at a large tech company, and then moved on to a startup of all things, which was then acquired by the previously mentioned tech company. We bought a house in Esco, made numerous gardens, had a child, and said hard good byes to both of our cats. And that’s just a few things, just in my own life. I’ve lost track of the loaves of bread I’ve brought into the world.

Any one of those could have spanned multiple entries, but life has a mind of its own. I have it on good authority that writing is hard, but I was under no illusions otherwise. But I think it’s time to do the hard thing again.