I haven't been to New York City for a long time, but last night I dreamed I was standing outside the fabled public library building, trying to figure out how to get from there to some other notable landmark.

My phone worked, but the responses were all deliberately obscure and jokey. I tried several times to work it out, but the answers became more and more enigmatic, after which the dream faded out. I wish I could remember what the other location was.

We were in third place before the final question, but won thanks to our team members with midwestern roots!

The official sports of Canada are ice hockey and what summer sport?

The oldest MLB rookie was what Negro Leagues star who signed with the Cleveland Indians on his 42nd birthday?

What U.S. president campaigned with the slogans "Vote Yourself a Farm" and "Don't Change Horses in Midstream"?

What mother of one of Henry VIII's wives was the first real woman to be depicted on a U.S. coin?

Lake St. Clair, with an average depth of 11 feet, connects which two Great Lakes?

My favorite local haunt. Good food, crazy cheap, and the staff all know me and treat me well. 

I also managed to do something out of the ordinary and exploritory today. A local museum ( The Sloan Museum and Longway Planetarium ) has an exhibit on dragons. I figured that it would be oriented towards kids, but thought "What the hell." I never go explore the regions I'm in these days. Not really. And I've been meaning to fix that. And I've been here so long (relatively speaking) that it seems criminal for the guy who owns dragonbones.net to NOT have gone to the exhibit on dragons.

I was right - it was really directed at kids. Still, something to do and certainly interesting.

Eagle eyed nerds might notice what I did - Todd Lockwood anatomy for the dragon! (Though, I have NO idea what's happening with that wing...)

I found myself paying more attention to how they set things up, what kind of displays / games / stations they had with the idea that I might use them to help LMT Historical Society in the future.

Photo of a 1910 Buick Bug - one of only two made for racing in 1910 and 1911. I really liked the... bug? design on the hood. I thought it was a devil.

Point is that there was some other interesting stuff to check out. Including information on the First People of the area (the Anishinabek) and all the troubles that Flint had with their water a few years back, and how the city went from a logging town to a carriage building industry to the automotive industry.

Yay for exploring - yay for using my brain meats!

Oh, and I did this guy, and I'm working on another to get caught up on my patreon (which is a MONTH behind!)

I posted last week about my longtime client losing his wife, and so he has. I will have to go to the funeral and now I have a new challenge, because I read her death notice and discovered they have a son called Gandalf.

They have two daughters with unremarkable names, nothing literary or fanciful... and they have a son called Gandalf. 

Nobody warned me about this – well, maybe nobody else knew either. I didn't know his wife's name till she died. I never met her.

In case I have to be introduced to Gandalf I suppose it's best I've been warned. My mother had a tendency to laugh inappropriately at funerals and I don't want to follow in her footsteps.

Samuel Macey alias Banstone was born in Fonthill Gifford, Wiltshire, in 1790 and married Charlotte Whitaker in 1809. His alias was not due to shady dealings, because his family had been using Banstone as an alternate name for generations.

Samuel was an agricultural worker. In 1830, he got caught up in the Swing Riots, which were an attempt to destroy new forms of agricultural machinery that were putting people out of work. He was convicted and sentenced to transportation, and arrived in Tasmania in May 1831, leaving behind Charlotte and their nine children.

Samuel received a pardon in 1836, but I find no documentary trail until the 1871 UK census, which shows him back in Fonthill Gifford, aged 82, living with his brother John, aged 78. Despite their age, they were both described as labourers.  Samuel's daughter Charlotte and his son Henry were still living in the village too, but his wife had died in 1851.

It was apparently unusual for transportees to go home, but Samuel managed it.

I feel there’s room for a graphic novel in here somewhere, but haven’t quite got it sussed out yet.

Samuel Macey was my great-great-grandfather’s brother. 

Next, Louisa Ryan, the first white woman in the Cariboo.

Heya all! I'm accepting votes on what creature I illustrate for the letter R in my Fantasy Alphabet Series.

Options are:

• Rakshasa
• Remorhazes
• Revenant
• Roper
• Rust Monster

And votes on Patreon count double!

I've never figured out why, but I'm hard on keyboards. The present one is on its last legs, the letters worn off and the caps cratered. Luckily I ordered a new one a few weeks ago, and will shortly replace it with a fresh one.

I live in one of those 1920s Montreal apartments with a built-in corner cabinet – these are pervasive, with glassed doors on the top, a drawer in the middle, and a closed cupboard on the bottom. (Anyone who lives here will have seen dozens of these - they were put into every damn apartment of this vintage.)

I've been girding myself to shift out all the dead junk that has arrived in the bottom cupboard. Most of it is either old computer hardware or peripherals, or cables that are no longer useful. And conveniently, someone left two perfectly good large Rubbermaid trash bins under our staircase, ages ago. Nobody ever uses them. So I've commandeered one and am filling it with electro junk. I may need to commandeer both eventually.

Now the thing is: do I spend good money on a taxi to the Eco Centre like a good citizen, and waste an afternoon dealing with sorting this junk into bins while being shouted at by bad-tempered city employees, or do I give in to my weaker impulses and put it out with the regular garbage pickup on Friday?

There are, by the way, now 11 badly eroded keyboards in the bin. I'm about to add a 12th.

And as a footnote, not to worry. Döstädning is Swedish death cleaning, but there's nothing wrong with me. It's more a question of taking the attitude of “would anyone want this stuff if I were dead?” and then chucking out all the stuff you know they wouldn’t.

Our go-to restaurant for trivia unexpectedly canceled their contract in the middle of the season.  Too few customers?  I'm guessing attendance falls further on that night.  So we went elsewhere and triumphed over a much larger crowd!

What city has the oldest subway system in the USA?

What scale is used to measure the spiciness of peppers?

Who fought Muhammad Ali at the Thrilla In Manila?

What country has the most combined men's and women's World Cup championships?

London Bridge was disassembled and moved to Lake Havasu​​​​​​​ in what US state?

I haven't had my hair cut since Covid. 

It's a big mass of not-quite-straight but not-really-curly coarse reddish mop. I admit, it's inappropriate for a woman my age to have her hair long below her shoulderblades, but there it is. Around the house, and often when I'm outside, I twist it up into what would be a man bun, if I happened to be a man. 

I've always brushed it out every day, but somehow, over the last month or so, it has developed a massive mat in the back which I cannot deal with. I've known I'm going to have to get help with it, and I was given the name and number of a woman who makes house calls to do hair. I can't abide salons.

So I call her up, and she's coping with her father’s death, which is ongoing. She didn't actually sound devastated – he's 97, he's got to go sometime, she said. The doctor said he would die this morning, but he's hanging on!

I told her it wasn't an emergency. What else could I say?

Where did the blazing ball of radioactive fire go

Why is my third floor habitable

What do you mean we don't need to water the garden

What is this damp substance on the ground

I am confused