Parentheticals

 Last week Sara discovered the KSL classifieds free page and decided to get some things from it. We now are the owners of a cat carrier and a foot stool. Also Last week we went to the OBT to see Dracula vs the Hunchback. The play was very fun, and had some of Mike's favorite Dracula scenes in all of the OBT's repertoire. One of the girls that was in the acting class that Rea, Sara and Timmy went to was acting in that show, so they were really excited to see her. Last Saturday was the ward chili cook off, which usually is at the same time as the ward trunk-or-treat, however they didn't do that this year. We made cornbread muffins, and Amy made lemon jello that was colored orange, and it won the best dessert award, so apparently catering to the tastes of the children worked very well. On Tuesday was Halloween. First we went to the trunk-or-treat, and when our car ran out of candy we left to go to the trick-or-treat. One of the cars was very popular with our kids - they dresse...

This week, Rea sprained her ankle Monday afternoon, which was a definite drawback when it came to trick-or-treating that night. We pulled every item with wheels into the house before we finally decided that sitting side-saddle on Sara's bike with her hurt foot tucked up was the most comfortable. She managed to make it close to most doors, but someone had to carry her bag the last few steps for her. It never occurred to us how hard trick-or-treating would be if you couldn't climb stairs. Something to think about. Halloween was fun anyway. Boo was a fairy, Gideon a blue dragon, Timmy a caveman, Sara a jellyfish, and Rea a naiad - the kids made their costumes themselves out of things from our dress-up bin. We met the Plastows at 6 at the park and did a couple of streets. We decided that 6-7:30 is about the perfect time to trick-or-treat. We also found out that our porch light turns off automatically, so that's why no one ever takes our candy. We'll have to fix that next ye...

Monday was a holiday! Mike had Memorial Day off work, and we had our first barbecue of the season, and the barbecue didn't even blow up or light on fire or anything! Mike made hamburger patties with blue cheese in them, which were great; we also had vegetable skewers with bell pepper, zucchini, and mushrooms in a soy sauce and pineapple juice marinade, which Alison (and everyone) loved, and watermelon, and hot dogs for the kids. Then we went to the play "Pirates of the Caribeener" at the Off Broadway Theater. The kids were ecstatic; they love the OBT plays. They enjoyed this one; Rea might have understood some of the jokes, but probably not because she's never seen Pirates of the Caribbean or Sponge Bob, which was the other reference they pulled in. But they all enjoyed the story and the singing and dancing anyway. Gideon didn't even scream, even though he was obviously very tired but unable to sleep in the noise. Best baby ever! On Tuesday, we went to Forest ...

This week we discovered the true meaning of infinite sickness (or endless hopeless bleak despair, either one really). Sara and Rea have been coughing for a long time. Fortunately they don't act too much more sick than is usual. Sara has been a bit fussy, though. We went to a play on Thursday. It was 'one man and two governors' (or something like that) The play was ok, but honestly the Off Broadway Theatre would have done a much better job at it because they are way better at keeping a straight face when faced with improvisation. They were stumped by a hummus sandwich. Saturday we got the first snow of the year, which was a bit surprising, but the girls wanted to play in it anyway. In response to the snows we have been having fires in our fireplace. It is great to have a fire. Timmy (and everyone else as well) loves watching the fire. He says "I love you! Hello!" to the fire (as well as a lot of things we do not understand.) He has been babbling a lot lat...

Alison and I are still not behind on our Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) novels. That means that between the two of us we have written more than 24,000 words already. So far there are a few decent parts of my novel and a whole bunch of horrible parts. I need to get back in to practice when it comes to writing. This week we tried to make our first blue cheese. The make went pretty much terribly. Somehow we forgot to turn on the timer multiple times and we also forgot to turn on the temperature alarm during this second heating of the milk It ended up that the curds were much much firmer than anticipated. We are hoping that the Penicillium Roqueforti (blue mold) will still colonize the cheese even though it is not perfect. We are also hoping that the mesophilic bacteria did not die when the curds reached 101 degrees. This Saturday as we worked on the cheese we also made another batch of granola. This batch came out pretty good. We made a double batch, so it will probably...

I had a new idea: write a collection of fairy tales/fables in which I break one convention of fairy tales in each story. I think that it will be called 'Twenty Broken Fables'. I might actually write it as a nano novel this next November. The first step, however, is to come up with 20 conventions to break. Speaking of conventions, I will be attending SaltCon again this year. I think that I will go without plans to present a game to the masses, however I will probably go with some prototype copies of my games to hand out in hopes of getting some blind playtesting. This last week Sara has been recovering from her last sickness. It seems like she is sick all the time now. The doctor said that she probably just caught a few different sicknesses in a row, and that she looked fine, so no course of action was recommended. We got her cranberry juice in case it was a urinary tract infection (and because I love cranberry juice). On Friday Mom and Dad watched the girls so that we cou...

This week: For Halloween we went to my parent's house and Andrea trick or treated at perhaps 15 houses. November 1st marked the first day of both NaNoWriMo and NaGaDeMo. I am participating in NaGaDeMo, and Alison is in NaNoWriMo. NaNo is fun, but I didn't want to take that much time away from developing Polynesia. The game that I decided to make is "Dancing Robots". So far I am not too far along. I have a basic rules doc, but not even all of the rules are defined, and most of the cards are not yet created. I read Harry Potter and the Natural 20 this weekend. It was pretty funny (though it is not a complete story yet). D&D folks - you will find it a fun read. I also have been reading a fair amount of HP Lovecraft recently, and decided this weekend to have a Halloween RPG one-shot campaign. We used the Inspectres   Unspeakable  micro supplement for rules, and 'The Dunwich Horror' as a starting point for the story. The gamepl...

I went through all of the cards in Polynesia and updated them to the new layout. It is apparently possible to make all of the cards have a larger image and smaller text areas without changing the rules on the cards or decreasing the font size. Here is a gallery of the cards. The guy who helped me to rework the cards decided that his work was done (probably more because of the fact that I didn't tell him why I was regenerating all of the cards (I was really worried that some card's text wouldn't fit in the small box, so I had to make sure of that before I could continue making other changes) than because he thought that the cards were actually up to snuff), so now I have to try to push on without him and see if I can finish making the cards look better. That last paragraph was a single sentence with a lot of parenthetical phrases in it... Pretty much true to my style. Alison and I have been talking about making a family motto. The impetus for this decison was ...

Both Swee and I finished our NaNos on time. Mine is in a very rough state, and posted here  (in case anyone is bored, or wants to see what it is like). If there was any confusion as to my state of health, I did not actually get trampled on black friday, I was just overhearing a conversation from a team member at work who saw a bunch of people getting trampled on black friday, and helped two of them to escape, and I was disgusted at the holiday. Since NaNo is over, I have started working on the card game again. I hope to be able to have a new version printed by friday. I have also started a name of UnNethack. There is a guy who decided that the next version of Nethack was taking too long, and decided to make his own. It is pretty fun so far. The only thing that has been different is that I made a desperate attempt to prevent myself from starving to death and drank from a fountain and got a wish. I wished for a ring of slow digestion and was told that I couldn't ...

This weekend was a long one. Baby Andrea was teething again (and this time it was worse than all the times before combined). She was very fussy. On the other hand, she learned to 'jump' (she goes up on her tippy toes, and raises her hands up in the air). It is amazing how that can be cute even after you have had only seven hours of sleep in two days. Alison and I went over to the Poulson's and celebrated thanksgiving there, by the way. I got some people to play my card game, and got closer to declaring it done. I might have to weaken friendly - it can make the decks disappear too fast. I regret to inform you all that I have been killed in a walmart black Friday sale stampede. No-one stopped to help me as I was trampled to death. The thing that is wrong about this, is that it actually happens. Black friday sales are one of the heathen rituals that we still take a part in as a mostly enlightened society. I really hate shopping, but bla...

We ate the other half of the maitake mushroom sauteed with butter and salt as a side dish. Is had an excellent flavor when sauteed - hearty and bold, with a slight fish taste. I would highly recommend these mushrooms to anyone who likes mushrooms. On Friday I did not write any for NaNo, so I am not 2,500 words behind (and I still have to write my words for today). I am afeared for thanksgiving. It might spell the death of me. We had another game of 42 Earths this weekend. They met their first brain suckers, anthropoids, shot down some small alien crafts, and got a small vehicle mounted plasma cannon. Things are going well. Everyone leveled up. I have not made too much progress on the motorized bike. Things have been busy, but I guess that I really don't need to finish it until spring anyway As I don't like to ride bike on days that have precipitation, or days where the ground is still wet or icy. We made tomato Nadna on Saturday out of the tomatoes...

It was too cold to go mushroom hunting. It rained and snowed here for those of you who were not paying attention. Instead we got our car emissions and safety inspections completed and went to an Asian grocery store. We bought a maitake mushroom at the grocery store, so we did come home with a mushroom on Saturday. Alison made a quiche and put half of the mushroom in the quiche. It had a nice flavor, and was a good texture. I am currently less than 2500 words behind in NaNo (I didn't write much last Friday because we went to a write in, and I watched Andrea, but I am catching back up). To be entirely anti-opaque, I am at 22633 words (and I plan on writing 2500 a day during week days and ending two days early). We tested the new combat system (for Polynesia), and it seems to be holding up to the scrutiny. Hopefully it will stand unmodified for a month, and I can declare the game to be stable. If that happens, it will likely be in January  Perh...

We got three oyster mushrooms off our mushroom log this last week. They were not scheduled to fruit until this next spring, so apparently we did a good job of growing them. We made a stir fry and added them to it. They had a mild flavor and good texture. I am thinking of going mushroom hunting this weekend - hopefully some wild mushrooms survived the snow. In terms of NaNo, I am following my own plan of working only on week days, and getting 2500 words a day (and I am on schedule). That means that I am "OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!" (by quite a bit). Baby andrea may have come down with a cold. She has had a runny nose, and been fussy. It is sad when she is sad. My card game is coming along nicely. I rewrote the combat again, but this time I am actually happy with it. It seems to slow down the game much less, and still is viable. I hope that this is the last major thing that I have to do. On average we get through a game in 20-30 minutes (and I am talking about a 4 player...

Baby Andrea has started to throw tantrums. They are not very successful, honestly, but perhaps she will get better at them. She lays on the ground, and then cries, but if you distract her by asking her "Are you going to throw a tantrum?" she looks at you in a confused manner, and then gets back up off the floor. She has suddenly discovered trucks and cars. She loves watching them, and whenever we go on a walk, she points to them and does the 'come here' gesture. She has a car gesture that she will also make (which looks like she is holding a steering wheel and turning it right and left). Probably Alison taught her that. I just started NaNo. I am doing OK so far (though I am a bit behind like always). I have 1000 words and I want 5000 by the end of the day. I will report my progress here. By the way, I wrote a little program called "Just keep writing, Swee!" which 'helps' you to write a NaNo novel. She asked me for certain features (apparently t...

Another big week is ending. I attended the Sort technology conference this week. It was fun. I got to learn about some cool new technologies. I have posted a new version of Polynesia in Picasa and Google Docs (for those of you who are interested. Whiro was updated, all the walls were made weaker, and the artwork was made more easy to see (specifically the defense values of the cards). We picked grapes twice for a few hours (but have not yet picked them all). This weekend perhaps we can do that. After we are done, we will make grape juice :) We didn't have a role playing game this weekend - it was delayed again. I am also starting to plan my NaNo novel. It will involve a pseudomancer, a mentally disturbed fairy, a bard that is useless (but everyone loves due to a curse), and multiple people trying to get multiple people cast out of power. hopefully it will be fun. Baby Andrea went to the doctors, and they said that she is not putting on as much weight as is usual. They said i...