The weather was perfect for traveling and I admit that using our friends' van was a blessing in that their EZ Pass made the trip easy as it ever was.  Traffic was relatively light and it was a quick trip.  Bright Eyes was (mostly) well-behaved until the end, when he was just done with being in his car seat and wanted everyone to know this.  His ( Read more... )

Thanksgiving is an interesting holiday in the United States in that it is a wholly-secular holiday that neatly fits into any religious, historical, or even philosophical inclination that a person might have.  It is also the only holiday that is two days long, being the last Thursday and Friday of the month of November.  None of the other holidays ( Read more... )

Well, Christmas is officially cancelled ( Read more... )

The Walking Dead comic book was introduced to me by my brother, when I went to NYC for training.  He had the first two trade paperbacks and let me read them.  I can probably trace my interest in the whole zombie apocalypse scenario idea to those books as I agreed with the writer whose prologue in the first book was something like this, "To me the ( Read more... )

Unusually, we actually only had one thing planned for the day, a birthday party for our friends St. and Sh.'s boy and that was later in the evening.  We used the opportunity to clean up outside in preparation for the winter snows.  Not just raking of cleaning out flower beds, though they needed it, but putting away all of the outdoor furniture and ( Read more... )

The Hundred Day Challenge as I have interpreted it -- one hundred blog posts in a hundred days -- is now at the halfway mark.  (Note:  Some of you who are reading anonymously may have seen gaps in the days, that is due to friends-locking of those posts for the typical reasons, I hope that you will understand.)

As I noted at the beginning of the ( Read more... )

Though I have moved up to run the whole of the Cub Scout operations at the pack level as the Cubmaster, I still enjoy interacting more directly with the Cub Scouts, which is more limited given my role.  In some ways the Cubmaster is most concerned with the monthly pack meeting and events, but the scouts are den members, too and moving away from den ( Read more... )

I wanted to express my sincere thanks to sorcycat, tlatoani, nicegeek, and the rest of the U-con crew for presenting a fabulous gaming convention in spite of challenges that might have ended an almost three decade-old tradition.  The move to the new venue was probably not desirable, but I think that it worked well.  Despite the unfamiliar surroundings, I think that the ( Read more... )

U-Con 2011 is a different experience for me, this year.

Yes, it is in a different venue, but also my other activities like work and scouting, meant that I could not attend for long.  I did cancel the event that I was running (sorry about that whomever you are) and had considered not attending on Saturday at all, but was talked out of it by sorcycat when she ( Read more... )

...go I ( Read more... )