Aprilstan
Before I cover April, some thoughts:
1. Encourage planning on a long-term scale.
2. Recall lessons learned from history into decision making.
3. Understand how compounding/exponential math applies to real-world issues.
4. Accept that simple solutions do not always solve complex problems.
5. Research and double-check your facts.
6. Context is crucial.
7. "Critical thinking" is not a bad word.
The last time I posted, camping season had just begun. The last weekend in March started with Markland's Death and Taxes War down at a private slice of Blackbird State Forest in Delaware. The war itself was lightly camped, but there were enough fighters to enjoy ourselves and stretch the legs a bit on Saturday. My aim as an archer was a bit rusty after going the greater part of the year without a fighting event. Fortunately, Deb and I were the only archers out that weekend, so we had plenty of time to practice on the less mobile heavy fighters. I was told that I giggled a lot when shooting. Camping was particularly nice due to the dry (albeit cold) weather, new queen sized air mattress, and lots of sausage. Seriously, we had a different type of sausage for each meal that weekend.
Pirate Camp returns.
As if it were some kind of prank, my workplace upgraded me to Windows 7 on April 1st. Turns out my old laptop was too antiquated to accept the upgrade, so I was treated to a new one when I came in on Monday. The transition wasn't too bad, despite having to get acquainted with Office 2010 after using 2003 for years.
The best gaming of the year was to be had over the past month. I really, really enjoyed the new Tomb Raider reboot, only to have it be followed up with Bioshock Infinite, a game I had to play through twice just so I could find all the pieces of the story. Deb and I are seriously considering cosplaying the Lutece twins. On top of the excellent video gaming, the bounty from PAX East has been particularly fruitful. I really appreciate the new breed of cooperative games where it's players working together against the game itself. Zombicide has become a favorite at gaming night, despite our 1:1 win to loss ratio. Most of our wins have been with only 2 remaining survivors of the original 6. Pandemic has been particularly brutal, yet challenging - the group has managed to win just once - and Cards Against Humanity kept up us late one Saturday evening.
Even the cats like Zombicide.
I joined the Kickstarter revolution last month, supporting the comeback of the Retronauts gaming podcast and putting money down on a new handheld emulator system known as the GCW-Zero.
The weekend following camping was a free one at home, so Deb and I went to see The Evil Dead remake at the Movie Tavern on Friday night. It was good squishy, splashy horror minus the camp of the original. It made me want to chainsaw things. The next day, the two of us drove down to the convention center at Oaks to a travel expo to start researching a vacation. Figured it's been well over a year since we went someplace nice, so we're planning on going to the Rivera Maya in Mexico come the end of Haunting Season this year. A little all-inclusive R&R coupled with some outdoor adventures will fit the bill nicely. That afternoon, I was back at the airsoft arena for a little face shooting with Dan.
So, planning for vacation instead of buying a house, you say? Well, I have been saving for the past year (after paying off a wedding and the RV) and my personal savings have been climbing steadily since then. However, I'd like to get at least 10% down on whatever I buy and also ensure that we have enough to furnish the place while avoiding being house poor until my savings recover. Plus, that gives Deb more time to work on her finances, as well. So Spring 2014 is looking like that target. I'm letting wisdom trump ambition this time around. I must be getting old.
So, another week passed and then it was off to camping event #2 for April - West Windsor, scheduled a month earlier than usual. It was a muddy start to the weekend, as some recent rain and work on the fairgrounds left half of the berm (The Pirate Mile) plowed and the campground a swamp. At least it was cooler, which made for great fighting on Saturday. There were lots of archers this time around, and the two of us were a bit more conditioned for the battlefield than we were two weeks prior. Saturday night we played some Zombicide back at campe, and were treated to a fire show that was set up by the event organizer. Mostly due to the fact we had a campfire, Pirate Camp became a party that night, replete with drunken singing and poi swinging. I drank mead and helped ensure the singing was bad.
I may be 12 years older than when I started, but I'm still swift.
Lots of archers
Work started getting interesting in the back half of the month. Bill went on vacation, and I sat down to start drafting the manual on anticounterfeiting. I spent 7 hours just typing one day. We had some HPLC requests come in recently, so after a two year hiatus I was back in the 3rd floor lab with pipettes and flasks once more. Fortunately, the assay was a success and everything came back to me fairly quickly. Of course, as I told Ed - Yeah, it's like riding a bicycle. A seatless one. Just becasue it's easy to pick back up doesn't make it suck any less!. But my work's in good shape this month. It's been very productive.
The weekend of the 20th was another free one at home, so Deb and I went down to Philly on Saturday to enjoy the Philadelphia Science Festival's carnival. We took the train down to Suburban Station, and hopped from booth to booth on the parkway, checking out the demonstrations and student projects. After we had our fill, we walked all the way down to 8th and Walnut to enjoy a Mexican meal at El Azteca before taking the train home. That night, Ann had a party at her place, and we played Cards Against Humanity until well past 3 in the morning.
My MAN!
That night, the Pennhurst 2013 trailer went up. I'm in it for a second, as well as some other familar faces:
The next day, Cliffy and I were back at the Grid Code, filling faces with BBs. I took a nasty one to the neck, which ended up looking like a hickie. Cliff shot me point blank in the hand at one point - I still have the dot on my knuckle. Late in the day, attendance kind of dropped off, so we were down to 2 vs. 2 with pistols. That was so. much. fun.
The afforemementioned week of HPLC passed, with one notable difference from the routine - Deb is on a 3 week furlough from her workplace. She's been taking full advantage of the time off by working in her studio and kicking out all sorts of ceramic goodies, including her first production batch of zombie gnomes.
Our landscaping is...creepy.
This past weekend there was a Star Trek convention down in Cherry Hill. I'm not a Star Trek fan myself (I'm more the Battlestar Galactica type), but a bunch of our friends are. So we went down as a group. Deb's been watching the series nonstop while she works in the studio, and is quite a Worf fangirl - enough that she posed for a pic with Michael Dorn at the convention.
She's half Klingon.
The next day it was so nice out that we decided to get an early start to the Summer by going to Knoebel's for opening weekend. We spent Sunday afternoon riding and snacking our way through the park.
Bumper Cars is a blood sport to us.
And that was April. Today's the last day, and another Tuesday gaming night. Got my truck detailed this morning. It's now shiny and smells nice. May's fairly light schedule-wise, with Crown War coming up this weekend and a lot of uncharted weekends ahead. It's very likely that my kayaks will be out on the water soon, and tubes will follow after that. Now where are my shorts?
1. Encourage planning on a long-term scale.
2. Recall lessons learned from history into decision making.
3. Understand how compounding/exponential math applies to real-world issues.
4. Accept that simple solutions do not always solve complex problems.
5. Research and double-check your facts.
6. Context is crucial.
7. "Critical thinking" is not a bad word.
The last time I posted, camping season had just begun. The last weekend in March started with Markland's Death and Taxes War down at a private slice of Blackbird State Forest in Delaware. The war itself was lightly camped, but there were enough fighters to enjoy ourselves and stretch the legs a bit on Saturday. My aim as an archer was a bit rusty after going the greater part of the year without a fighting event. Fortunately, Deb and I were the only archers out that weekend, so we had plenty of time to practice on the less mobile heavy fighters. I was told that I giggled a lot when shooting. Camping was particularly nice due to the dry (albeit cold) weather, new queen sized air mattress, and lots of sausage. Seriously, we had a different type of sausage for each meal that weekend.
Pirate Camp returns.
As if it were some kind of prank, my workplace upgraded me to Windows 7 on April 1st. Turns out my old laptop was too antiquated to accept the upgrade, so I was treated to a new one when I came in on Monday. The transition wasn't too bad, despite having to get acquainted with Office 2010 after using 2003 for years.
The best gaming of the year was to be had over the past month. I really, really enjoyed the new Tomb Raider reboot, only to have it be followed up with Bioshock Infinite, a game I had to play through twice just so I could find all the pieces of the story. Deb and I are seriously considering cosplaying the Lutece twins. On top of the excellent video gaming, the bounty from PAX East has been particularly fruitful. I really appreciate the new breed of cooperative games where it's players working together against the game itself. Zombicide has become a favorite at gaming night, despite our 1:1 win to loss ratio. Most of our wins have been with only 2 remaining survivors of the original 6. Pandemic has been particularly brutal, yet challenging - the group has managed to win just once - and Cards Against Humanity kept up us late one Saturday evening.
Even the cats like Zombicide.
I joined the Kickstarter revolution last month, supporting the comeback of the Retronauts gaming podcast and putting money down on a new handheld emulator system known as the GCW-Zero.
The weekend following camping was a free one at home, so Deb and I went to see The Evil Dead remake at the Movie Tavern on Friday night. It was good squishy, splashy horror minus the camp of the original. It made me want to chainsaw things. The next day, the two of us drove down to the convention center at Oaks to a travel expo to start researching a vacation. Figured it's been well over a year since we went someplace nice, so we're planning on going to the Rivera Maya in Mexico come the end of Haunting Season this year. A little all-inclusive R&R coupled with some outdoor adventures will fit the bill nicely. That afternoon, I was back at the airsoft arena for a little face shooting with Dan.
So, planning for vacation instead of buying a house, you say? Well, I have been saving for the past year (after paying off a wedding and the RV) and my personal savings have been climbing steadily since then. However, I'd like to get at least 10% down on whatever I buy and also ensure that we have enough to furnish the place while avoiding being house poor until my savings recover. Plus, that gives Deb more time to work on her finances, as well. So Spring 2014 is looking like that target. I'm letting wisdom trump ambition this time around. I must be getting old.
So, another week passed and then it was off to camping event #2 for April - West Windsor, scheduled a month earlier than usual. It was a muddy start to the weekend, as some recent rain and work on the fairgrounds left half of the berm (The Pirate Mile) plowed and the campground a swamp. At least it was cooler, which made for great fighting on Saturday. There were lots of archers this time around, and the two of us were a bit more conditioned for the battlefield than we were two weeks prior. Saturday night we played some Zombicide back at campe, and were treated to a fire show that was set up by the event organizer. Mostly due to the fact we had a campfire, Pirate Camp became a party that night, replete with drunken singing and poi swinging. I drank mead and helped ensure the singing was bad.
I may be 12 years older than when I started, but I'm still swift.
Lots of archers
Work started getting interesting in the back half of the month. Bill went on vacation, and I sat down to start drafting the manual on anticounterfeiting. I spent 7 hours just typing one day. We had some HPLC requests come in recently, so after a two year hiatus I was back in the 3rd floor lab with pipettes and flasks once more. Fortunately, the assay was a success and everything came back to me fairly quickly. Of course, as I told Ed - Yeah, it's like riding a bicycle. A seatless one. Just becasue it's easy to pick back up doesn't make it suck any less!. But my work's in good shape this month. It's been very productive.
The weekend of the 20th was another free one at home, so Deb and I went down to Philly on Saturday to enjoy the Philadelphia Science Festival's carnival. We took the train down to Suburban Station, and hopped from booth to booth on the parkway, checking out the demonstrations and student projects. After we had our fill, we walked all the way down to 8th and Walnut to enjoy a Mexican meal at El Azteca before taking the train home. That night, Ann had a party at her place, and we played Cards Against Humanity until well past 3 in the morning.
My MAN!
That night, the Pennhurst 2013 trailer went up. I'm in it for a second, as well as some other familar faces:
Click to viewThe next day, Cliffy and I were back at the Grid Code, filling faces with BBs. I took a nasty one to the neck, which ended up looking like a hickie. Cliff shot me point blank in the hand at one point - I still have the dot on my knuckle. Late in the day, attendance kind of dropped off, so we were down to 2 vs. 2 with pistols. That was so. much. fun.
The afforemementioned week of HPLC passed, with one notable difference from the routine - Deb is on a 3 week furlough from her workplace. She's been taking full advantage of the time off by working in her studio and kicking out all sorts of ceramic goodies, including her first production batch of zombie gnomes.
Our landscaping is...creepy.
This past weekend there was a Star Trek convention down in Cherry Hill. I'm not a Star Trek fan myself (I'm more the Battlestar Galactica type), but a bunch of our friends are. So we went down as a group. Deb's been watching the series nonstop while she works in the studio, and is quite a Worf fangirl - enough that she posed for a pic with Michael Dorn at the convention.
She's half Klingon.
The next day it was so nice out that we decided to get an early start to the Summer by going to Knoebel's for opening weekend. We spent Sunday afternoon riding and snacking our way through the park.
Bumper Cars is a blood sport to us.
And that was April. Today's the last day, and another Tuesday gaming night. Got my truck detailed this morning. It's now shiny and smells nice. May's fairly light schedule-wise, with Crown War coming up this weekend and a lot of uncharted weekends ahead. It's very likely that my kayaks will be out on the water soon, and tubes will follow after that. Now where are my shorts?