Old man’s war

One new thing I did fail to mention… I finally got around to reading Old Man’s War by John Scalzi this weekend.  My love read it as well (though much quicker!).  It was excellent.  One of the reviewer comments on the outside suggested that John Scalzi was a modern Heinlein, and I tend to agree.  Sharp wit, occasional philosophy, and strong characters.  He did actually have me laughing out loud at one point (when the main character named his BrainPal), which rarely happens to me when reading.  I plan on reading the rest of his books now as well.

I’ve been a reader of John Scalzi’s blog since I got the book from my mom… now I feel like a more authentic subscriber.

Munchkin!

Yesterday we got a new board game called Munckin and played it with the boys.  We started about 9 pm and didn’t actually finish the game (one game!) until about 1 AM!  We really are late night gamers now!  ;-D

Go down in the dungeon. Kill everything you meet. Backstab your friends and steal their stuff. Grab the treasure and run.

Here are the rules.  Basically, it’s a card game, with each card playing off of each other.  And it’s FUN!

3 to 6 players… I would say the more the merrier.  There are also several expansion packs (which we have a strong urge to buy ALL of) which will make the game more interesting… imagine combining the main decks (basic adventuring) with a super-spy theme or a Cthulu theme!

This morning when I woke up, the boys were quietly playing it on the living room floor. 

Meanwhile, here are some links I’ve collected recently…

• A floorplan of Sherlock Holmes’ house
• A picture of Nagasaki, before and after the bomb
• Table with built-in double-secret box
• 10 Classic Books That Have Been Banned

Some interesting words…

• cingulomania - n. a desire to hold another in one’s arms
• basorexia - n. a craving to kiss

The Wonder Blog, and some links

Not much to report for today.  The boys had a field trip to a Honey Bee Farm, in which they learned about honey bees and brought home some honey and honey candy.  Boy #2 was inspired by this enough to begin a blog, called The Wonder Blog.

Tomorrow the boys have another field trip to a recycling center.  They have some crushed cans they have collected up to submit for cash.

Also, Grandma and Grandpa M. brought home some plain looking rocks from their trip to New Mexico, and the boys discovered that the rocks were actually geodes when they cracked them open with hammers.

Some links of interest…

• 25 Things That Are Not What They Seem
• Space Bubble Real Estate
• Books as home decor items
• Seasonal Ingredient Map

Wednesday morning

Not much to report since last post. Had a quiet dinner at an Irish pub last night - a delicious meat pie. I ordered iced tea and it came sweetened (@#%$!), and it also had the rim salted a bit like a dacquiri, which was interesting. Slowly made it in to the office, had a lunch meeting with some co-workers, and here I am now waiting for the real work to begin this evening.

A few links of interest:

• 10 Books that Screwed Up The World
• 100 essential jazz albums
• a book on sex for adolescents from 1948
• NNDB mapper lets conspiracy theorists connect the dots between powerful people
• 100 Must-Read Books for Manly Men

August 19th, 1994

I’m fairly excited about this, not because it is a masterpiece but because I was actually inspired to write something.  It’s not the best thing ever… it’s got some issues, but it’s a first draft with no editing.

John Scalzi, author of Old Man’s War, among others, has a contest on his blog, in which he challenges his readers to :

Explain the events of the night of August 19, 1994.

Huh? You say. What did happen on the night of August 19, 1994? Well, that’s my point: There’s a lot of confusion on what really happened. That’s why we need you to explain it. Perhaps you were there. Perhaps you know someone who was there. Perhaps you heard something about that evening on the Internet or other source. However you know the details, share them with us. Aside from reporting the “facts,” do not be afraid to insert your own speculation or commentary concerning the events: your personal interpretation is valuable — nay, necessary.

Do not be deterred by others who may offer up entirely different facts, speculation or commentary. As I said, there’s a lot of confusion about what really happened. Just give it your best shot, and post your explanation/speculation in the comment thread here. Heck, you can even post more than one explanation — even if that second explanation completely contradicts your other explanation. Just get your posting in before 11:59:59 pm on Thursday, May 15 (Eastern Time). On Friday, May 16, I’ll announce the winner. And then we’ll all know what truly happened on that fateful night.

So: The evening of August 19, 1994. What can you tell me about it?

Here’s what I submitted:

This document was obtained on August 19th, 2008, as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request on documents regarding the “Pandora Project.” Jay Tulley committed suicide on August 19th, 2008.

Inevitably, there was a cover-up. The government infused the media with enough tall tales to confuse the events of August 19th for generations. Some implicated extraterrestrials; others blame terrorists. A lonely, ridiculed few suggested that the Argonne research involved time travel, but they were only partly right. No one else survived who knows the truth – only me.

The power grid had failed at 8:00 pm sharp – everybody knows that. What they don’t know is that is was part of an elaborate attempt to sabotage the experiments, rather than a result of them. Certain right-wing organizations had learned of the event, decided it was an act against God, and vowed to stop it.

I’m no physicist. I’m just the guy that cleans up. I can’t tell you exactly what Dr. Bailey was working on, but it had something to do with chaos and quantum… Damn it! I can’t remember the specifics. What I do know is that while you, and everyone else in the world, experienced the time loop for a day, those of us who were closer to ground zero were doomed to a worse fate.

The world was shocked after having woken up on what they thought was the 20th, only to find that it was still the 19th, and nothing they had done the first time around had happened. They were even more shocked that it had happened to everyone they knew – which meant no one could really change anything because everyone knew each other’s motives, and besides, they only had the one day. Some didn’t know they only had the one day, and they spent it recklessly as if they were Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

Dr. Lucas Bailey, Dr. Jamie Litsa, John Koht, Anna (beautiful Anna whose name I never learned), and I were directly within the blast zone, along with two of the assholes who shut down the power grid, causing the problem in the first place. Everyday, every August 19th, we fought against them to keep them from shutting down the grid, and every day they fought back just as hard, maybe harder, zealously with God on their side. Everyday we searched for more clues on discover exactly how they shut down the grid (there’s not a master switch somewhere or anything like that). Everyday we forgot most of what we learned the day before.

In the end, the PhD’s had gone crazy – everyone had gone crazy but the doctors especially – and killed themselves. Dr. Bailey went the old-fashioned way but he couldn’t find a rope so he hung himself with a fifty-foot Ethernet cable. Dr. Litsa stabbed himself in the throat and bled to death, but not before slicing John’s throat.

Anna, sweet Anna, would have lived if she’d only gone along with my plan.

I lost count of how many days had looped. In the end, victory was in the hands of the lowly janitor, Jay Tulley, who might not know a thing about physics but knows how to put the pieces together. The doctors had taken care of most of the power grid problems, so after I took out those traitor right-wing bastards, the time loop stopped. Today, the time loop stopped, with everyone dead and Anna’s blood on my hands. No more days, no more chances to fix everything. The guilt is real now, and there’s only one way to stop it.

Any comments?

Monday, continued

Having lunch now from a place called Jugo Juice.  I got a “Banana Buzz” smoothie (iced coffee + bananas + yogurt) and a Mediterranean veggie wrap.  Yum!   Probably back to the hotel shortly.

Some links of interest…

• I’d like to build a Secret Rooms in my house somewhere
• How to Create Invisible Shelves
• The Traveler’s Guide to Nuclear Weapons
• Get a signed copy of John Scalzi’s next book

A quote from Nietzche:

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”

Sunday afternoon

Let’s catch up.  Friday night my love was working.  I got the boys back, who had a good time at their uncle’s farm.  There was a lot of rain so not much fishing going on, but they did get a chance to go mushroom (morel) hunting and trampoline jumping (not at the same time).  They were happy to be home, and I read them the first chapter of A Spell for Chameleon, the first book in the Xanth series by Piers Anthony.  I read all of his books when I was between their age now (perhaps earlier?) and into my teens.

Once, Boy #2 and I were cuddling on the couch and he asked me to read him a story.  I did a short paraphrase of A Spell for Chameleon and he quite enjoyed it, so I decided to get it for them to read together. At first, they found it a bit boring, perhaps just because of their recent long trip, perhaps because of it’s sophisticated vocabulary, but eventually, they enjoyed it and seemed immersed in it.

On Saturday, Boy #1 went to his friend’s house for the day, as he often does, while we hung out at home in the morning.  In the afternoon, my brother came over to watch the kids, but he showed up early so we got to hang out for a bit.  My love and I then headed up to Chicago to go to the Jonathan Coulton show.  We got there in record time, with plenty of time to kill, so we stopped for a made-to-order salad (yay, garbanzo beans!) and some window shopping.

We’ve seen JoCo once before, last year, but this show was even better.  Paul and Storm opened for him again and were hilarious as usual.  JoCo rocked the house and we had a great time.  His version of Code Monkey was acoustic and slow, causing it to seem more melancholy than normal.

If you haven’t listened to JoCo, I suggest you go to his website and listen to his songs, many of which are free downloads.  You might not get his humor, but that just means you are not a 1337 interwebs geek like me. 

Oh, yeah, and one more thing about that.  You may or may not be familiar with the recent internet meme known as “Rick-rolling.”  Check the wikipedia entry to understand exactly what that means.  Anyway, in the show, JoCo pulled out his sythensizer to play Mr. Fancy Pants for us, and pushed a button that started playing Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up.  He rick-rolled us!!   It was awesome, not only because we got it, but because the entire audience of fellow internet geeks got it, and even more awesome because JoCo got it.  Yay internet.

Lastly, today we went to Dave & Buster’s to celebrate my cousin’s graduation from college.  Boy #2 won over 2000 tickets and was overjoyed.  Now we’re just hanging out and vaguely working on household stuff.  I might even mow the lawn today (gasp!).

Friday

Not much to report from yesterday. We ran some errands, ate out at El Burrito Loco. Dad read to the boys from a Conan the barbarian book, which was surprisingly well written. Then it was off to sleep.

Apparently we had an earthquake this morning at 4 am, but we didn’t notice. Although the boys did get up awfully early today. Who knew there were earthquakes in these parts?

On a different note, I began listening to one of those vocabulary learning audiobooks in the car called Verbal Advantage yesterday. I have a very short commute (poor me! not enough time for audio books!) so I haven’t heard a lot of it yet. The first 1/2 hour or more is just telling you how great it is to have a large vocabulary. Anyway, I will mention if I run across any interesting words.

The only one they reviewed so far that I wasn’t sure on the meaning was ostensible.

os·ten·si·ble

ɒˈstɛn sə bəl - adjective

1.	outwardly appearing as such; professed; pretended: an ostensible cheerfulness concealing sadness.

2.	apparent, evident, or conspicuous: the ostensible truth of their theories.

---

1762, from Fr. ostensible, from L. ostensus, pp. of ostendere “to show,” from ob “in front of” + tendere “to stretch”

Meanwhile, I ran across this post: For the Love of Words: Seven Wonderful Websites Where Words Matter, which has some interesting sites listed that are worth taking a look at later.

Tuesday

The boys and I spent the afternoon making atoms and molecules out of candy and toothpicks.  Dad came home for a simple dinner of tuna sandwiches.  When the boys were done making atoms, they made their own candy/toothpick creations - mostly building structures and robots, and tiny little men being attacked by said robots.  While they were playing, we watched a ton of BrainPop videos, on matter mostly, but also on the Black Death, WWII, and binary numbers.

For our nighttime reading, we read the beginning of Rules.  The boys had a little skirmish on the couch, so we ended the reading prematurely and Boy #1 took Rules with him into his room to read while Boy #2 read Calvin and Hobbes.

cooking, jello, and reading

Last night’s spectacular supper ended up to be red beans and rice with sauteed sage chicken.  Turned out to be not too bad - no complaints from the youngens.

Our future chef, Boy #2, cooked with his first recipe from the Cookie book we picked up on Sunday.  It was a tea cookie recipe, which I will post later.  They turned out great, and he is very proud.

Meanwhile, Boy #1 made lime jello in a Lego mold.

In the evening, we read The Westing Game together, and then after bedtime, the husband and I worked on his taxes.