Day in the Life of an Idiot

 I am coming to you fully caffinated.  Today is payday for my family. So, after dropping Shawn off at work, I took myself downtown to my favorite coffee shop just off West 7th. No one makes coffee like Claddagh. I will cry big tears if they ever go out of business.

Last night I worked and then had to rush home to eat, change my clothes, and show up for my writers' group. I can't say that I contributed much. I'm not feeling much like a writer these days and, on top of that, I am generally wasted on Thursday nights because that's my "late" night at work. I know a lot of you out there work way longer hours than I do, so I can't really complain, but I don't do well not eating diner until 7:30 pm. I may have scared my colleagues with my blank, middle-distance stare. It was rough. But, at least I managed to show up, which is better than a lot of times.

Other than that, I'm looking forward to Saturday, even though this is a weekend that I work. On Saturday, we are continuing the denouement of the orcish political campaign that I'm GMing. Last session, the villains were rounded up and sent off to face public trial of their peers (the orcs are experimenting with representational government, though it is currently very early Roman era wherein 'political assassination' is still a viable political move.) Even though there was a new election for senate leader, there was some discussion of whether or not the party should attempt a resurrection of "Ceaser," aka the former warlord who had built the empire. I'll be interesting to see what folks decide to do. I'm as prepared as a person can be with a highly creative, invested group of players.  But, I'm looking forward to Saturday precisely because of that. Who knows where this group will take the story next!  All I know, is that I'm here for it.

I'm hoping that my computer stays working enough that I can catch up on some other projects I've had to let sit, like the new blogs I'm trying to write on my ancient Tate Hallaway site. I was doing really well there for a while and then my computer started glitching out and now it's been several days since I've written anything. Plus, I restarted an old fanfic series and I also want to continue on that. 

But as I am fond of saying, "you can only do what you can do."

How's everyone else? Plans for the weekend?

I was absent from here all of yesterday and, whoo doggie, did I have a busy day!

More on that in a second. First, administrative business: this last week, the thing I read that was probably the most interesting was FTL, Y'all: Tales From the Age of the $200 Warp Drive a graphic novel anthology from Iron Circus Comics (2018). A friend of mine recommended it and Comix Plus had it available, so I read it all in one sitting. It's a fascinating concept: what if, basically TODAY we had access to faster than light travel which was cheap, but not necessarily reliable. Like any comic anthology there were standout stories and some that made me go, "meh" or "is that it?"  But, if you are into science fiction generally and are okay with the graphic format, I would also recommend it. It's very queer and there's clearly a number of Minnesota authors involved, including former Gaylaxicon Special Guest Blue Delliquanti (https://www.bluedelliquanti.com/).

My day yesterday started at 5:15 am when I woke up in a panic wondering if I'd left a sprinkler going in the backyard. Reader, she had.

I dragged myself out of bed and padded barefoot into the backyard in complete darkness only to realize that, yes, in fact, the water had been going in that one spot since 2:00 pm the previous day. My water bill is going to be ginormous, y'all. But one tiny section of the yard is THRIVING!  In fact, I would like to imagine that all of the neighborhood night animals paraded through my yard to get a bath, dig for worms, and or enjoy a cool drink. Because otherwise I'm just dumb and wasteful.

I had been hoping when I trundled around in the dark that perhaps it was only 1 am and I could go back to bed knowing that it'd only been HALF of the night that I'd left the water on. Alas. When I realized it was 5:30 am at that point I decided to just stay awake. Tuesday is typically a busy day for me because it is TWOs day, which means I work at 2:00 pm. Plus, on Tuesdays, there's a fantastic farmer's market in Roseville that I like to try to hit, especially now when the corn and the apples are starting to be available. So, after the usual morning events around our house (which always includes a joint effort between Shawn and me to be "Queen Bee" on the New York Times Spelling Bee puzzle,) I took Shawn to work and drove out to Roseville. At this time of year the farmer's market is always an embarassment of riches. I keep myself on a budget by only taking out x amount from the bank in cash and when I run out, I have to stop (even though more and more vendors will take credit). I came home with more ground cherries again, though, which I know is a bit of a splurge because I am the only one in my family who really loves those. I also picked up a small bunch of "First Kiss" apples from a local vendor which are, for me, at least, the perfect combination of sweet, tart, and crunchy.  Shawn tried them this morning and also really liked them, which is good since she likes to have an apple with her lunch every day at work and these are perfect packing size for a lunchbox, as it were. 

I did a lot of housecleaning, etc., before work because Mason flew home yesterday from his visit to Oklahoma City. He brought back some funky crystals that he and Jas dug up in the salt flats. 


The picture Mason sent us of this extremely alien-to-me looking landscape, flat like a lake only... salt.

Mason's plane came in while I was off at work, however, so I missed a lot of the homecoming stories. He's promised to tell me all the exciting bits today before he heads off to campus to pick up his books for his first semester as a law student at the University of Minnesota. 

Work, as you know, was what? Yes, it was FINE. I only saw one lone egret on my way to work so I took that as an omen that yesterday would be a relatively easy, chill day at Northtown Library. It seems as though I read the signs correctly, as it was.  Not a lot to report, although anecdotally, it seems to me that the shelves are filling out more as the summer reading program winds down. Anoka has a summer reading program that includes prizes for adults as well as kids, so they have a lot of participation across the board. So, maybe some of the weird empty shelf look will disappear now that more books have been returned. I'll keep you posted, as I'm sure you're on tenterhooks. 

As I was at work, I followed along as the texts came as Mason boarded the plane for home, landed, and made it back to the house safely.  

He had asked me to pick up an easy-to-throw-in-the-oven meal for dinner from the grocery store so add that to the list of things I did before 1:30 pm. Also, I realized on Monday that I had a Thirsty Sword Lesbians game to run last night so I spent some time prepping that, as well. Not that I needed to? As usual this particular group just never does anything remotely like I expect them to.

So, after work, I drove home for a half-hour, ate some lovely food prepared by my son, hugged him 'hello' and then... went to run a game. lcohen , please feel free to jump into the comments and tell me what you thought of last night? I never know what to think when the GM thinks the game was AWESOME. Like, if I'm having that much fun, does that mean the players are having an 'oh shit, what have we done?' night? (In this case, maybe.)

So, we're playing a cyberpunk game which I have complained a little bit about here before. The game mechanics are NOT specifically cyberpunk; I chose that setting. Thirsty Sword Lesbians actually asks you to build a world WITH your players in your Zero Session. Which makes sense because the game is supposed to be very heavily role-play and light on mechanics, so you need players who are invested in the story. But, at the time, I had assembled largely inexperienced players some of whom had never played any RPG before in their lives. I decided (possibly foolishly) to just drop their characters into a world I'd already created for a one-shot that I ran at ConFABulous. So, unfortunately, they don't have any kind of automatic buy-in. They're in a world they that didn't choose. I have long wonder if I made a mistake because, as I've talked about here before (I think, but certainly with anyone who is even vaguely interested) part of the problem with a setting like cyberpunk is that players don't always know what's available to them. This works better in a one-shot with pre-generated characters because I have gone to great pains in my one-shot preparation to be sure to give each player extras on their character sheets so they have a sense of what is at their disposal and who they can call for help. But, my usual analog is this: in a ubiquitious fantasy setting like your average D&D game everyone around the table knows that if they want to get somewhere fast, they just have to ask if there is a stable in town so that they can buy (or steal) horses, right? The problem with a setting like cyberpunk is that even though I have described all sorts of transportation options like rickshaws, water taxi, hover cars, motorbikes, trains, etc., players will sometimes be stymied because it's not as universally understood what's available... or at least it's harder for more inexperienced players. I often have TREMENDOUS success running this at ConFABulous because it's a gaming con!  Players there are super-into a unique setting and have proven to be deeply inventive when given half a chance and a basic sense of the world. 

But I don't blame my players for this at all. A poor carpenter blames her tools, as it were.

So I started out yesterday's session, becauase we are at the Final Boss stage of a story, preparing my players for what was available to them in the room, how they could utilize some of the game mechanics to do what they wanted, etc.  Then, one player, a very clever one (lcohen ) latched onto an off-hand comment from one of the NPCs and rolled with it. The lesbians (as I call this troupe or party) are basically doing a corporate headquarters dungeon crawl and a random NPC, seeing what was going on, cried out, "Is this a hostile takeover?" And Lisa perked up and was like... "Can we do that?" 

And everything either evolved or devolved from there, depending on your point of view.

I thought it was BRILLIANT (and unexpected, which is my favorite thing that players do!) It was also not without consequences. One of the other players' characters had to use a move called CALL ON A TOXIC POWER to get the help they needed and now... is suddenly faced with the possibility that the people she called family might be more toxic than she realized? For me, this is great story, good conflict, juicey but there were several times in the game where it seemed like maybe I'd lost some of the players to other distractions. There were a couple, "Sorry, what was that?" from folks which usually means they're on their other screens or disassoicating or whatever, like, maybe this plot turn was too high level and not granular enough for them? I don't know. 

Also because a number of the players are still relatively new to role-playing, there were moments of dead silence when I'd expect a more experienced group to be in full role-play mode, you know? 

So who knows. 

I thought it was great, but maybe the players were like ???

Anyway, the crazy thing was that after that (so post 9pm) I needed to hop in the car to take care of yet-another friend's cat!  So, even though my day started before dawn, I did not get home from all of that until 10:30 pm. 

It's kind of a miracle that I'm upright today.

 My computer is mostly behaving today, so let's see how this goes!

How was work last night, Lyda?

You know, it was.... FINE. I was not feeling especially brilliant, so I can't say that I kicked butt and alphabetized like a fiend. But, I hit my official quota. Did I tell you that I have a quota I am expected to make? YEAH. It's like I work in a book factory. A shelver who works four hours is expected by Anoka County to put away 10 tiers (on a cart that holds two tiers) of books. Now, when I worked at Ramsey County there was no such expectation, but my duties were way, way more numerous there than here. It was understood when I worked at Ramsey County Libraries that a four hour shift would be divided by: one hour at the help desk, one hour on the machine (AMH), one hour doing holds/phones, and one hour shelving. There was always plenty of work, so you got what you got done in each hour. But, here, I only do shelving and so I apparently am expected to actually do that and not noodle around, I guess, reading book cover flaps or picking my nose.

I am here to tell you that you, a non-dyslexic person, could easly make this quota and still have time left over for some nose picking and cover flap reading. Even with my careful shelving and double-checking, still manage a bit of cover flap reading because, god damn it, that's the whole JOY of working in a library and I will be damned if I don't get a chance to browse, ffs!

Yesterday, even though I felt like the alphabet was the most difficult thing humanity had ever invented, I still managed to make my quota, albeit just barely. 

Otherwise, it seemed to have rained in Blaine (where my library is) and skipped Saint Paul. Perhaps Blaine is just enough to the west of us that the drizzle pooped out before it got to us. This has, unfortunately, necessitated watering the backyard. My front yard is currently chaos incarnate so I'm not really sensing that the neighbors want MORE out of control growth, so I've been sort of letting that be whatever it is. But, I don't want my backyard gardens to full croak. 

I spent the first ten minutes of work being kind of mad and jealous about the fact that they got rain and we didn't.

I have to work this weekend, which.... is FINE. I get home from work both Saturday and Sunday at far more reasonable times, so it's not nearly as much of a hassle to feel up for making myself (and my family) dinner. I picked up a couple of books on Tuesday night from the library that I'm curious about. The Kamogawa Food Detectives and its sequel The Restaurant of Lost Recipes by Kashiwai Hisashi. Then for science fiction I discovered that Northtown (my specific Anoka Library) had Boys, Beasts & Men, which is a short story collection of Sam J. Miller, whose short story "We Are the Cloud" I really, really loved when I first read it.  Sam J. Miller is queer (I think he identifies as a gay man) and so that will be an added bonus for me. 

Yeah, other than that? I've got nothing outside of work planned for this weekend. NEXT weekend will be (possibly) the exciting conclusion of a mini-arc inside of our long-running D&D game that I run which I've nicknamed "Drunk Girls," because we started this whole thing by running the one-shot "Solidarity: Drunk Girls in the Bathroom." 

The only other thing I have to do today is stop by the post office and drop off another set of postcards. For those of you just tuning in, I've been doing a postcard project that started during the pandemic as a way to stay in touch with people that I couldn't see regularly. The so-called "middle circle" of folks. It started with a bunch of real-world travel postcards that I'd amassed, like one does, over the years. When I ran out of those, I discovered a cheap source from DeviantArt and so it then morphed into fantasy travel and suddenly I started to refer to a mysterious figure known only as The Tour Guide(tm). I found the trademark to be weirdly ominous so I kept it? And then suddenly The Tour Company (also ominiously trademarked) was born. From time to time--honestly, when I was feeling lazy and didn't feel up to handwriting 25+ postcards--I would print out fake advertisement from The Tour Company offering summer get-away packages to various places in time (for whatever reason Mrs. Smith's afternoon tea time is always sold out) or suggesting that the recipient had lost (luggage, a pet, a rival, their sanity) [<--I'd circle one.]  It's very silly and my son always calls it my "enrichment," as though I am a captive octopus in danger of jailbreak/mischief out of boredom. (Which? Acurate.)

If this interests you, let me know. There's always room on my list for one more. I have gotten much less regular than I used to be. During the pandemic, I was doing a postcard a week. These days it's closer to one or two a month. You can drop me a DM here or email me (I am at my name as you know it, no middle initial or anything like that, no periods, gmail.) There absolutely nothing required of you in return. I ship internationally. I have at least three Canadians on my regular group (there may be stealth ones? I have three Canadian addresses, at any rate. But I use forever international stamps so you can literally be from anywhere in the world. It costs me the same.) They are fully dumb? I am not pretending to be some kind of clever storyteller. However, they are (I presume) a nice little thing that comes in the mail that isn't a bill. 

But, I also don't NEED more folks to send to, so no pressure, regardless. (So, likewise, if you are on this list and no longer wish to be, just let me know! I will take you out of rotation and there are no hard feelings whatsoever.) 

The only OTHER thing that I'm up to today is my regular patrol at our local mosque. The imam still wants us there, so we just keep showing up. We check in regularly with him, so I presume he will let us know if the community finds us annoying or decides they feel safer without us or whatever. I do love this and will miss it. There's a regular group of us who show-up, several of whom are folks who are also in fandom. So, that's nice. 

Yeah, how about you?

It's been humid lately, and my computer does not play well when there's moisture in air. So, this is my second attempt at this. Wish me luck.

Yesterday was a crazy day. I was up at 5:15 am to take Mason to the airport. He is visiting his sweetheart in Oklahoma City. In the summer, you gasp!? Why yes. That was their plan this year. Jas was here in the depth of Minnesota winter; Mason is in Oklahoma in the dead of summer. It's that old adage, "If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best." They've decided to play that out for whatever reason. I mean, to be fair to Jas, summer in Minnesota isn't a picnic either!

But, so that went well. He got off with no hitches and even got a small coffee so that he can meet the parents, as it were, well fortifided. I zoomed home, picked up Shawn, and we voted in the Minnesota primary. We were there ultra early and I was the fourth to vote in my precinct and Shawn was the fifth. I don't know what that means for voter turnout, since we're normally there closer to 8 am. 

Then I drove Shawn to work, stopped off at the grocery store for a couple of quick items for dinner, and then headed directly out to the Farmer's Market in Roseville. I didn't buy corn. I probably should have, since now is the time for local sweet corn. I did by a bunch of basil, parsley, green onions, patty pan squash, zucchini, and some new/fresh potatoes. That's always a lot of fun? But, I bought a lot fewer veggies than I normally would because Mason and I are the big vegetable eaters. But, I did make myself a fresh patty pan squash, black bean, and green onion fry-up for lunch. Then I started on dinner, which might seem weird for 10:00 am, but with Mason gone and me working, I needed to have something ready that Shawn could heat-up for the both of us. Shawn can cook? But, to be fair to her, after forty-one years of me doing 80% of the cooking, she's gotten out of the habit. You've seen our teas. Shawn does bake a lot of the fancy treats. But, over the years, I really have been the one to specialize in meals (lunch and dinner. So, when I say 80% I mean of meals.)

At any rate, I made us a nice shwarma to go with the pita I'd bought. 

Then, I got ready for work. One of Mason's friends is also out of town and he took care of her cat while he was in town, but now that he's out, the responsibility fell to me. I almosted failed it. I had intended to get over to her apartment before work at 2:00, but I dunno. I just sort of forgot that I have a half hour commute and ran out of time. Especially since, I also had some of Mason's library books to return to the Roseville library and so I made a stop to a totally different library on my way to work at my library. 

Work was FINE.

I think I told you all about how I count egrets?  There's this one marshy spot that I pass that regularly has visible egrets, often perched in trees which is always startling to see, so I tend to notice it. I've determined that there is some magical quality to however many egrets I spot. I started out thinking that the higher the number, the better my luck. But, that doesn't seem to entirely work out. It seems as though if I spot more than three egrets my day is sort of chaotic.

Guess how many egrets I spotted yesterday?

In that pond, I clocked FIVE. What is even crazier is that I pass another little pond earlier in the trip and had noticed ANOTHER egret there as well as a great blue heron. So, I guess it should come as no surprise that in the middle of my shift I got a text from my friend Bill who asked, "How long does the Zoom tonight go?" To which I responded, "What Zoom???" and then, it hit me. I couldn't go directly to take care of the cat after work because I needed to be at the North Country Gaylaxican's book club as a guest at 7 pm that night. I was never more grateful in my life 1) for friends who remember this stuff for me, and 2) the fact that I have a wife who needs me to make dinner ahead!!

Work was actually weird. I don't know why, but Tuesdays are the day when two other shelvers also work. So, it finally happened. I came in to no books on carts to shelve AND the wanding cart out and already in use. So, I did my first stint as a shelf reader. My boss (who is retiring, so who knows if this will be the policy going forward) told me that I could just pick a favorite section and do it so long as it wasn't, you know, done yesterday by one of the other shelvers. So, I looked through the official book and saw that no one had done anything with the adult graphic novels since November of last year. That was sort of fun. There was, of course, a lot out of order, if only because most shelvers don't know where to find the author's name if it's not printed on the front cover. So there was a Kate Wilson before G. Willow Wilson and small things like that. It also gave me the opportunity to put volumes in numerical order, which again, people don't know how to do when the numbers aren't obvious, etc. By the time I finished that, several carts had appeared. But, oh my god, knowing that I needed to show up for an event that I'd forgotten made the hours CRAWL.

Finally, it was over and I zoomed home and, strangely, had a pleasant catch-up on the porch with Shawn. She'd very nicely laid the table and thus we were able to eat together. Her work has been very stressful so we didn't talk about that much, but we caught up on various observations of our lives and it was actually, possibly my favorite part of the day.

The book club might have been better if the link wasn't broken. A lot of people had trouble getting in and so the whole event started with a lot of technical malarky and who knows how many people gave up? So, it felt decently attended to me, for what I expect these days. Gone are the days when I'd fill a bookstore, you know? So, a half dozen people seemed like a nice crowd, especially since my friend Andrew made a point of dropping in from New York City. 

It is always a little awkward to be an author at these things, however. Always, people feel the need to tell you when they didn't finish your book or how they had a hard time getting into it or whatever. I never quite know what to say to this. I personally don't care all that much if you hated my book. I hate books, too? It's not like I can't relate to bouncing out of something. I'm not sure I'd tell the author to their face that I just wasn't into them, but you do you. But, it does leave me with not a lot to say in response other than, "I'm sorry to hear that," or "Okay." Neither of which are good conversation starters. 

To be fair, eventually a couple of people came on who were extremely enthusiastic about the book, which is also awkward, but in a much more fun way. And, of course, we were talking about my most recent book Welcome to Boy. Net and I have been deeply struggling with a sequel which is several years overdue now. I'm turning into George R. R. Martin in my old age, only without the rabid fanbase. 

So, that lasted until 8:30 pm and at that point, I decided that I HAD to try to see the kitty because I couldn't remember what time of day Mason was last over there and I didn't want her to go 24 hours without food or water. So, I hopped back in the car, realized that with all the running around I'd done, I was out of gas. So, I stopped to get gas, got to the apartment only to realize that I'D FORGOTTEN THE KEYS AT HOME. So, here it is now almost 9:15 pm and I still haven't taken care of this darned cat. 

Because I finally got in so late, I decided that I should be an extra nice pet sitter and I changed the kitty litter too. The cat was deeply suspicious of me, but, honestly, I would be too. 

I finally then collapsed into bed.

Oh my god.

Did I read anything last week? Speaking of bouncing out, I bounced out very early on from Daryl Gregory's When We Were Real because it felt a little too clever? To self-satisfied? I dunno, I didn't like the whole Everyman vibe of The Rabbi, The Novice, etc., with the naming conventions. I probably should have given it at least 50 pages, but life is short. Instead, I spent the weekend up at the cabin listening to short stories on the Lightspeed podcast. A couple of things that I enjoyed were:

• “The Test of Time” by Kristine Katherine Rusch https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-test-of-time/
• “The Last Season of Your Life” by Christopher Barzak https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-last-season-of-your-life/

"The Test of Time" is kind of a fun twist on magical schools and the perrenial question "what if you could go back in time to kill Hitler?" I'm a fan of Kristine Katherine Rusch's . Back in the day, I read some of her Retrieval Artist novels. She writes a very straight-forward, traditional short story that's as easy to fall into as any novel. I found the story delightful as a concept and clever in its execution (AS IT WERE.)

"The Last Season of Your Life" is maybe more depressing? It's about death and the afterlife, but in a gentle sort of way. There's some metaphorical stuff happening in this one, but it can also be read literally, which is a literary device I enjoy and that I feel like fantasy and SF are best suited to really pull off. A lot of mainstream fiction thinks it's doing this, but usually the authors aren't as good at thinking through the actual literal consequences of thier metaphorical world-building, you know what I mean? Like, the mainstream fiction writers will nail the metaphor, but whiff the world if the metaphor were real. This story fully works on both levels for me. 

So that's me! I'm happy to report that today started out much more relaxed, albeit for unfortunate reasons. Shawn woke up with a migraine so we started the day kind of slowly. I did have to do a bit more shopping as we were out of fresh bread, but that meant that we could stop and get a fun breakfast sandwich on the way to work to suppliment Shawn's lunch box. I also ran into a woman who liked my shirt (which today is a rainbow 1d20 with the word SLAY underneath it) and so I told her about ConFABulous (https://confabulous.org/)  Hopefully, she will actually come. (I also need to remember to sign-up, but I need to wait for payday.)

How's you? A few egrets less crazy I hope!

 I've been listening the Lightspeed Podcast lately, so the only reading I've been doing is listening to short stories. Of the ones I've listened to this last week, I'll only mention a couple. 

"Waru, Waru" by Ruth Joffre (Lightspeed, July 2026), https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/waru-waru/. 
"Ghost in the Tank" by  M. R. Robinson (Lightspeed, June 2026) https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/ghost-in-the-tank/

Interestingly, they're both about memories in a way. "Waru, Waru" takes a slightly more fantasical approach. I mean, I guess, it is just straight-up fantasy in that the mechanism that allows the generational memory transfer from grandmother to granddaughter is food magic and not technology. But, the setting is contemporary and it could just as easily have been science ficiton without changing the vibe or the theme. That is, I suppose, if you discount the magic of ethnic food, which I really shouldn't! I'm only going around and around about this because I personally tend to be less interested in fantasy than SF and if that's also you, you shouldn't hesitate to listen to or read this one. Anyway, it's a story about shared generational memory and history.

Both stories feature lesbians, too, though "Ghost in the Tank" really hit me in the dyke-feels. Like, there was something about this story that knocked me all the way back to how I felt as a young queer in the 1990s. Also? Trigger warning, this one has a very unhealthy relationship that revolves around physical violence. This one is fully cyberpunk and is very much a projection of the future of Twitch streamers--like, it really digs into the sorts of things we would monetize and drop tips onto, if we had the options. So, yeah, it's dark. It did linger with me, however. It might not be for everyone, however.

So that's what I've been reading. You?

 My wife has found us a lesbian couple to be friends with.

She met one of them through her volunteering with the Friends of the Library. (Shawn, being the high-power executive type, is on the Board.) They're both very nice. Our burgeoning friendship survived an inital completely-out-of-our-comfort-zone hang out at a brew pub/bar and so we made plans to "do brunch" on Saturday. This was a great idea, except I forgot how calendars work. I'd also scheduled my D&D game for the same morning. Blithely, I thought, "Oh, this might be tight, but surely if we start at 8:00 am or even 8:15 am, we'll have plenty of time to eat and hang out and get home by 10:00 am." 

Reader, she was right. Except, unbeknownst to her, she would be foiled by a lackadasical waitress.

This waitress had it out for us and I'm not sure why. We could watch her moving around the cafe, literally chatting with other patrons about their dogs or their tattoos, and ignoring us. Our food arrived overcooked. I would blame the chef, except that my eggs benedict was ONLY overcooked on one side, which gave the distinct impression of having baked under a heat lamp. Even after I very, VERY explicitly said, "I need to be somewhere could we please have the check," we watched her stand with her back to us and carry on a completely unnecessary conversaton with the people at the table right beside us. 

It was kind of unreal and felt very personal. 

It could be homophobia, I suppose. I feel very weird presuming that in 2026 in Saint Paul, MN, but Trump supporters are stealth eveywhere. And, the truth is that Nichol and I are noticiably butch and none of us kept our voices down when we talked about favorite lesbian bars (now long gone) of yore. And... this did not occur to me until much later, but it could also have been racism. Both Nichol and her wife Ho are Asian. 

Whatever the reason, thanks to that waitress, I was fifteen minutes late (or more!) to my D&D group WHICH I GM. Luckily, I had been worried that the timing wouldn't work out so I had sent out an email letting people know that I didn't EXPECT to be late, but I would be coming to them from elsewhere and traffic (or a racist/homophobic/both waitress, who knew?) might delay me. I was also able to keep them abreast when I had asked for the check and as I was leaving. But, of course, Zoom foiled me by also not letting anyone in (I would have sworn I set it up differently, but whatever.) THANK GOODNESS I have very patient players because the game went AMAZINGLY (at least from my point of view.) 

We are coming to the end of a very complex political arc and the action is mounting, we ended the session on a cliffhanger AS GOD INTENDED. 

I then gobbled down a sandwich, changed for work, jumped in the car, drove half and hour out to Blaine and worked for four hours shelving books. The only thing I will say about that is that the summer reading program is in full-swing and I don't think I'll be complaining about having nothing to shelve for the rest of this month! 

Then, I drove home and had about a half hour before a game that I'm a player in, Star Trek, started. I had fun? But the episode (as we are encouraged to call the sessions), was largely a ship to ship battle and I do NOT fully understand the rules of such so I mostly used my time during that game to write up notes from my previous game. 

As longtime readers here know, I ocassionally write fanfic of my roleplaying game. I used to post it here, but stopped when it ocurred to me that I could put it up on AO3 and get a lot less hassle about whether or not it was snipped or under the cut or whatever. No one much reads it there, but no one was much reading it here, either. It's the vanity project to end all vanity projects and I know that.

I have been working on a new installment of my Star Trek RPG fanfic, but I ended up pausing it. I've been struggling with the issue of writing outside of game a little? Initially, obviously, my main audience for these works was my fellow players. To that end, I mostly used the fics to expand scenes we skimmed over or to inject humor or whatever fun, light thing that crossed my mind it might be fun to explore. I invented this NPC because I really find the idea of a Vulcan ship's counselor (Sular) to be inherently funny/chewy (as in having some built in conflict/dynamic). 

I ended up writing a larger piece of Sular fic several months ago where my Muse just sort of wandered off and did some crazy Vulcan worldbuiling and some character... plotty stuff. This happens to me a lot when I write fanfic. It almost never happens when I'm writing professional/contracted fiction. I actually never truly understood what writers were complaining about when they talked about their Muse before I started writing really unconsciously (or subconsciously, probably more accurately,) in my fanfic. My Bleach fanfic's Muse is somewhat infamous for making things up that I will later be like, "Oh, holy crap, I foreshadowed this!" or which slot into canon in ways that feel downright eerie. So, when the Muse hits me with fic, I have learned to let it just go wherever it wants. 

This was kind of a mistake in this case. Not an insurmountable one? But one that sort of stymied me for a while. 

Because the plot that my Muse wanted me to do was to murder Sular's (the NPC's) father. 

LUCKILY, I only implied that this happened in the first world-build-y fic. I wrote a follow-up fic mostly about something else (another NPC on NPC counseling session) that I framed with a touch more of this plot. But, I knew that this felt over-the-line-y, and so I had two versions of that story. One where I went there with the murder and one where I didn't. 

I never ended up sharing either version with my crew.  In part because I wasn't even sure that I liked the implication hanging there, even in the less explicit one, and also... if I wanted to follow it up, it would violate game canon, if you will. 

But something happened in this last session where Sular gets invited to do a science and I thought, "Oh, I really want to write this," but... suddenly I was left with the problem of how do I slot this story in. Do I acknowledge the darker/murder plot of my canon non-compliant story or do I write a version where I continue to leave that plot implied but never certain? 

I ended up confessing the whole thing to my fellow players. I wanted them to know that I did not intend to violate their agency in creating this story with me, but my Muse had just taken off without really considering the consequences. I absolutely, 100%, did not want to direct the action of the story due to... something I wasn't even entirely sure I wanted to do in the fic, let alone in the game! 

So I have decided to stay as game canon-compliant as I can. As much as some unconscious/subconscious part of me wants to play around with how f*cking awful Kal-if-fee (the contested battle from "Amok Time" for a possession of a Vulcan woman) would be if you didn't have a Leonard McCoy with you, I don't think it's fair to take my fellow players along for that journey. Especially since the general tone of our game is Not That Dark. 

I've changed my "official" AO3 version back to the implied, less dark version. And I'm going to write forward with that whole thing just staying floating around in the background. If I want to write fic about a Kal-if-fee gone badly, I'll just do it with a different Vulcan. 

 
My Willow, keeping the neighborhood safe from birds at the birdfeeder.

Today is a 2s-day so I work at 2 pm. This is the only way I am able to remeber my schedule, I swear to god. Tuesday is, at least, my "early" day. I'm home by what is a reasonable-ish 6 pm. I know that my shifts don't really count to a lot of people as "evening" shifts, but I really feel like they are impinging on my evening!  Do these people not know that I am typically in bed by 7 pm??

I had been planning to stop by the Roseville Farmer's Market today. I had a bunch of other errands to do, including grocery shopping for whatever it is Mason is making for dinner tonight. But, despite the fact that I am a huge fan, I ended up only eating two out of the dozen or so patty-pan squashes that I brought home last week. I had to throw the rest, rotting, into the compost. So, I decided to skip it. I'm sure I've made a terrible mistake. Pretty much now until Novemeber is peak time at the Farmer's Market. I probably missed something amazing. Feel free to let me know what you got this week, if you went to a farmer's market near you.

Mason was up and out of the house early this morning. He had a coffee get-together with a literal friend of a friend from Wesleyan who just happens to also be starting law school this year at the U of MN. Knowing that I had to work today, he took himself out to meet them via public transportation, which was nice. He's actually already on his way home, but he didn't want me to have to be panicked. I do, in fact, tend to get nervous if the car isn't back the closer it gets to when I have to leave. My commute out to Blaine is a half-hour. So, I really need to leave the house at about 20 minutes past 1 pm, if I want to arrive a little early--which I do. It's nice to have time to settle in before you have to get started.

I'm going to return Dragon Delves to the library today, I think. This book was a D&D one-shot idea/sourcebook anthology. I actually ended up using a modified version of "Baker's Doesn't" from it for my D&D group. The original is much more of a Hansel & Gretel retelling, but I was charmed by the idea of a bandit having stolen a golden dragon's egg, given up his life of crime to become a baker, and thus hatching the wyrmling by the warmth of pizza oven, basically.  The dragon being only just a teen by the time the story starts, misunderstand a confectioner to be a "threat' to her family and sets fire to the rival shop. This was supposed to lead the heroes into discovering that the confectioneer was actually an evil version of Gretel, who instead of helping her brother, sacrificed him to the candy house hag in order to have magic that would allow her to make the most sought after candy in the world. The offical version then had a whole candy-house dragon crawl cluminating in a fight with the candy/green hag. I have had my players meet with a lot of hags and we only play for two hours, so I ditched that plotline in favor of the idea that maybe this former bandit is actually kind of bad at being secretive about his former life and so the new theives' guild in town not only knows that he has a gold dragon "daughter" but that she probably knows her way home to a DRAGON'S HOARD. Or if she doesn't she might be the bargining chip to get the former bandit to lead them there. Anyway, I make it all very obvious that the fire is partly magical because the bandits started it while attempting to capture Briochebane (a name I loved from the anthology, and so kept it,) who was maybe about to do some mischief to her dad's rivial--although in my universe they were in more direct competition due to an annual Bake-Off.  I gave the players a fire to fight (and some smoke beasties left behind by an evil druid-turned-rogue) right at the start, a small mystery of where Briochebane had run off to, and a dragonlet to save. We actually managed to wrap it up in two hours? (Which is insane, but I've been getting much better at making REAL one-shots that are both satifying and simple and can be solved in 2-3 hours.) 

Anyway, I should probably figure out what I'm going to wear to work today. The dress code is... kind of confusing? Some people seem to dress in t-shirts and jeans, while others go more business casual. I've been erring on the side of somewhere in between. I bought myself a whole bunch of somewhat fancy short sleeve shirts, which I pair with a mono-color (usually black) t-shirt of some kind and jeans. I have about five of these shirts? I'm pretty sure people have figured out that I don't have a huge wardrobe, but I don't care. There's at least one other person who works at Northtown that I'm fairly certain wears the exact same outfit every time. Some people have a "uniform." And, in this case "some people" is me!

 
Blurry picture of a bee, but with a decent impression of the bright orange stripes on its back.

I was really hopeful that we might have had one of the indangered rusty-patched bumblebees (Bombus affinis) on our joe pie weed this morning. My stupid new phone's camera is not great at taking pictures (not nearly as good as my previous camera.)  So, as you can see it's difficult to tell.  Having ben to several informational pages about the rusty-patched bumblebee it rather looks as though there's too much orange on this bumblebee. However, if I do an image Google search the only answer I get back is rusty-patched bumblebee. 

I will dare to hope. 

After all, the rusty-patched bumblebees have been spotted only two blocks north of my house at the Capitol Watershed Building's native garden. I think they've also been reported less than a mile from here at what St. Paul calls it's Bee-Line. Because I am like this I have sent an email to the US Wildlife folks? Apparently, you are supposed to track sightings. Perhaps they will tell me that I am full of crap and that this is the (common?) red-belted bumblebee and that I have wasted their time, but it would be super cool if I actually spotted one!

Here is another super-blurry shot (damn my new camera!!)


Gret shot of the joe-pie weed. Terrible picture of the bumblebee.

 This week is my son Mason's birthday week and so, as part of that, I've been stopping at our favorite coffee shop every morning to pick him up his favorite coffee drink (a meil, a honeyed latte.) Claddagh, the coffee shop, often has a little notebook on the counter near where people wait to pick up their finished drinks. Today's question FASCINATED me and so I will share it with you all.

What inedible thing would you want to eat?

Sample answer: grout beause it looks like marshmellow fluff. I thought about this for a long time, actually. Eventually I settled on stryofoam because it looks like it ought to have the flavor and texture of those rice cakes everyone used to eat in the 1990s. (Remember those? I secretly liked them.) I asked Shawn this and she also pondered it for a long time and decided on foaming handsoap because it looks like forbidden milk froth. While she was considering her answer, I also posited packing peanuts might be another one since they already look like that orange circus candy, only white. She suggested that maybe packing peanuts would have the taste and mouthfeel of some kind of white cheddar version of Cheetos.

So what about you? Anything to add to this weird little question? 

 I decided I'd better write this morning in order to break-up the potential time loop in which this blog just becomes an endless cycle of me explaining RFID cards and how wanding works.

To this end, I shall recount some of my day yesterday. 

My car's maintenance required light has been on for over a month. I know what this light means. It means that my car thinks (and it was correct about this) that it needed an oil change. I'd been meaning to call to make an appointment since forever, but finally got around to it last week. So, of COURSE, yesterday, one of the hottest days we've had here in Minnesota, was the appointment. I say OF COURSE because the way I do my oil changes is that I drop the car off early in the morning and then make my way home from Roseville (an inner inner suburb) via express bus and light rail. If I time things right, the trip takes a half hour or so. Of course, yesterday, when it was 85 F / 29 C at 8:30 am and humid, I missed every connection. This meant I stood at the bus/train stop for the maximum amount of time. Both the express bus and the light rail both run consinstantly every 15 minutes, but 15 minutes felt like forever in the heat. I also have to walk a bit between Troy's (my auto guy) and the first bus stop and then about a block and a half from the train stop to my house. I did think I might explode from heat. It was brutal, y'all.

On the other hand, they got my car done very quickly. So, even though I had to do the whole trip in reverse right away again, at least it was actually during the coolest part of the day. 

Because Mason wanted the car to go do his work at his uncle Keven's, I then drove around and did a few errands--a stop to get Shawn's prescription and getting the car washed. At the car wash, I had a moment of panic when it seemed like my car was gone from the queue. They had just moved it to a nearby parking lot, but I full-on was like, "Someone stole my car!" before they pointed it out to me. (I jumped too far to that conclusion, but, at this car wash, you leave your keys in the car so it's not quite as far-fetched as it might seem that some stranger could just claim to be me and drive off with my car.)

Anyway, the rest of day proceeded apace. I honestly spent much of the day hiding out in the set of rooms that our window a/c can cool. Not great? But, it was better than roasting. Today, of course, it's cooler but largely because the Twin Cities is blanketed in the smoke from the fires that are raging to the north of us. You can taste the ash in the air. I guess they're saying that the extreme heat is super-charging these fires so the air-quality is really BAD. I have asthma, so I have to be very careful today.

I hope my local peeps are also staying safe from... the air.