<< part of my continuing series recording memories to assure myself I've actually been to the places I think I've been to>>

Today, being undermotivated to write about my current life, and my head spinning with the realization that yes, indeed, I did book a 2 week trip to Porto and now need to figure out lodging & accommodations, I’m going to fall back on writing about a State. 

I’m gonna write about Connecticut

Almost all my Connecticut memories involve one formative trip to New Haven to vist Yale in the late ‘80s. These memories are poignant to me for some reason, clearer than trips I took even last year. I was a student at University of Delaware (Udel). I had a friend Nancy from summer camp who was going to Yale, so one long weekend I took the train up to visit her. Summer camp = CTY,  which was accelerated summer classes at a college campus. Smart kids could test out of a highschool course after attending CTY’s 3 week residency program. It was the first place I found my “pack” - other clever kids who didn’t 100% fit in back home. We kept in touch.

Anyway, I visited my CTY roommate Nancy and together we had a great long weekend. I look at my 20 year old self and cringe. I was a smart girl, but oh so boy crazy. But also zany and prickly and not interested in settling down. On the weekend up at Yale I found a guy (Ed, from wealth in upstate New Jersey) who I dated off and on for a year maybe. It went nowhere. I wonder what became of him. I wonder if I’d even recognize him now, or he me. I do look back and wonder, why was I so boy crazy and interested in dating around when I 100% did not want a future with anyone? I’m thinking it was probably the entertainment value, and that it made me feel more alive, and some insecurities that needed attention to ease. Still I cringe to think of my gauche self now, and wish I’d played some things differently.

I recall at Yale being introduced to the concept of veganism. We went to some party and the people drank vegan beer (isn’t it all?) (ok, I googled it. Beers are sometimes filtered with animal derived products. So those aren’t vegan), and there was talk about starting a brownie centric vegan bakery. Mind you, this was like 1989 and vegetarian eating - let alone vegan - was far from mainstream. Vegetarian food was often meat centric dishes without the meat, and sometimes tofu substituted in, and generally not very good. It was not the tasty inventive plant based dishes we have today. The Yale crowd was cutting edge in this regard. And I, a small town girl from a state school, wasn't sure if I was impressed or if I wanted to scoff. It did open my eyes to political relativity (<<< that’s probably not the right term but I don’t know a better one).  At UDel I was slightly on the liberal side of the population, and Yale I would be considered solidly conservative. 

There is a gate to an historic graveyard just outside campus engraved with “The Dead Shall Be Raised”. I have always found that ominous. I was impressed by the old stately architecture in general. I was in a phase of being fascinated by stairwells, but stumped on how to photograph them properly. Looking back, what I was experiencing was a fascination with Liminal Spaces. It wasn’t till recently that I understood there was a term for this - I learned it from my pre-teen. A liminal space means somewhere on the precipice of something new but not quite there yet. Often eerie, forlorn, surreal. I took a number of photos of the stairs, none of which came out. In those pre-digital camera days, I wasted much time and film trying to get a liminal shot. Never succeeded.

Visiting, I figured out that the students at Yale weren’t any smarter than the students at UDel, particularly in the area I was studying of Mechanical Engineering. But still they were offered more opportunities. I started to understand the value the network at a “brand name” school offered. Subconsciously, I set my sights on “brand name” for grad school, knowing that I could compete successfully with the Ivy crowd. I ended up going to Carnegie-Mellon, which didn’t exactly live up to my network expectations. Maybe it has one, but I never figured out how to engage it. 

Decades later, I wandered around New Haven when I was there for a work trip. I was hoping to find the mystique I felt from my college trips. It was not to be found. 

Most recently, in November 2020, I drove to Connecticut to buy a Ford Transit van which is now my camper van. I did not even try to look for the college mystique that time.

So yes, Connecticut. Been there.

Next on my docket to write about is Florida. But instead, gentle reader, I will talk about a glorious weekend of doing nothing. Nothing except watching season 2 of Bridgerton on Netflix and declaring to my offspring that I will be dressing like those society ladies. She asked: when will I dress so? I answered: For the rest of my life. It helps that the leads have skin approaching my complextion.  Visuals here. Representation, yo!

So today I’m up predawn and in my sweats because I have to do the school dropoff then head to the gym. One must workout if one is to fit into a regency silhouette.

<<interlude>>

The other thing I did this weekend is make a box on my trusty laser cutter. We’re doing a belated holiday gift exchange at work, where we are all exchanging mugs. I know very little about my coworker so I got her a mushroom mug because *I* think it cute. I did ask around and learned she likes Alpacas. So I AI’d (midjourney) a bunch of Alpacas for engraving, and made a box for the mug.

It feels nice to stretch the maker muscles now and again. I’ve slowed way down and am undermotivated these past few months. Which is okay, I know. But I also know I feel better when I have a project to make.

Florida notes will likely also not be done tomorrow. After kiddo dropoff,  I drive 2 hours for a typewriter pickup. My typewriter obsession is cooling, partially because they’ve become a demand on me instead of just a joy. The sit and judge me, saying “When are you going to get on with fixing us, Tinkeress?” I’m working on working on it, you marvelous machines! So it’s cooling, but not so much that I won’t drive 4 hours roundtrip to pick up a new and delightful one!

<< part of my continuing series recording memories to assure myself I've actually been to the places I think I've been to>>

This one is silly. Of course I've been to Delaware. I was born here, and I live here now. I did move away from age 21 to 41, but at 40 I had a kid and moving back "home" made sense. (Decent schools, low cost of living, family nearby) My parents had recently passed, and I inherited their house. It's a basic late 60s suburban track house but a house non-the-less, so I bought my brother out and have been living here rent/mortage free since 2011.

I could fill a book on Delaware - growing up in this lazy smalltown, going to the University of Delaware, that summer at the beach, coming back for visits and eventually settled back here, raising a kid here. I've been to all our 19 state parks. My favorite is White Clay Creek. My favorite beach is Indian River (err, more properly called Delaware Seashore State Park). We have a lovely blues jam night most every Thursday at a local bar. I work very part time these days at our local art museum, which is quite impressive if I do say so myself: Biggs Museum of American Art. 

Ugh, this entry is going nowhere. Too much to tell, and no story to knit it together. Here, a sunrise view from my bedroom window onto my neglected garden.

Also, my favorite Delaware bridge with dramatic morning sky, seen from my campervan after overnighting at Indian River

Yup. Delaware. Check!

<< part of my continuing series recording memories to assure myself I've actually been to the places I think I've been to>>

So Colorado has Denver. I had a boss in Denver, meaning we would have team meetings there. And since we were traveling consultant types, this meant we went to a bunch of bars and excellent restaurants. I recall a nice one in the renovated train station called something like "THE BAR". I really don't like it when places name themselves like this, but I took advantage anyway and posted "Greetings from THE BAR" to my socials. 

Also in Colorado is this swank resort hotel called the Broadmoor. I was at a conference there, back when I was still a strategic marketer for Autodesk. I recall the Brits on our team thinking this was hilarious since the Broadmoor is a famous high security psychiatric hospital in England. I also remember it was a few weeks after I split with my second husband. I recall a dude there from URS buying me drinks. But I was never much one for flings, so that went nowhere. Still it was nice to feel appreciated. 

In April 2021 my brother and I drove from the East Coast to Utah in my van, stopping in Colorado on the way. We spent a night at the Colorado National Monument park which is spectacular. It was freezing that night, and I saw a shooting star, one of those long trail ones so it was memorable. I'd 100% go back for a longer stay someday, but at the time we had an appointment for some hiking in Utah, so we just breezed through.

So yes, I've been to Colorado.

Blue dark skies by four o'clock. New Year's Day Resolutions felt shiny and possible, a crisp list, at nine in the morning. By four the edges of the day soften, things blur into blues and blacks. Sometimes rain softly moves on the leaves outside. Winter ought to be a sheltering time, a cozy space, like a Shirley Barber illustration. We ought to be small animals living in small trees, with patchwork quilts, cheerful hearths and clever teapots.

I am in the attic office, which is cozy and quite like a Shirley Barber illustration in its own way. I can touch the ceiling in places, and built in bookshelves line the walls. There is a silence up here, though the strains of  piano practice still reaches when one of the dedicated students plays. Overhead planes pass. Due to the height of the house, I am in the naked tree tops. 

I have penned out my New Year's Resolutions. I think it is important, for me at least, to mark out the proverbial garden of the coming year. The natural world moves in seasons and eons, not time, and if one follows the seasons, they each have suitable work that fits best within them. Winter is not the time for large genesis. Spring is the unsettling time, when winds and weather change and one feels there is so much to do along side it. Right now, though, planning is suitable to the energy and space, this small circle of lamplight, the happy stack of books, the new elephant shaped paper clips.  This year I indulged myself and bought a Hobonichi Cousin Planner. I was uncertain if the cost would be worthy of the book. While it is still more than I would sensibly spend, even on an indulgence, I am already finding it a fantastic tool. I use Google Calendar quite intensely, as many do, but no one can forget a habit as swiftly as I can, so writing down the daily schedule by hand commits it to some kind of memory. With graduate school, the film commission, and what will be a year of several if not many projects, I felt the need to capture the ideas that were swirling around and to ink them down.

This year I will film something that is mine, this year I will make my body stronger again. The background music of any fitness or health I discuss is that I suffer from an autoimmune disease and like many, my health is a puzzle. It is fortunate I like puzzles, just as it is fortunate that overall, despite this, I have enjoyed the privilege of magnficent health.

One Post Wonder is one of my favourite spots in the entire world wide web. I feel fortunate to be here, and, responsible for my own happiness as I am, am determined to write here quite a lot this year.

From the dark quietness of the pine trees,

DaylightK.

It's the new year, and it's time for new things.

After working on this concept for over a year, Brad and I have started the production season for IonQuest Games' Location Lexicon.

Anyone who has ever been a Dungeon Master has had the experience of trying to get something ready for their players in the Nth hour. Scrambling to getting something ready for them to play for the next game session and the (perhaps inevitable) writer's block that will go with such efforts.

It's stressful, it's frustrating, and it sours a lot of folks on the idea of being a DM in general.

That's okay, though. We got you.

The Location Lexicon is a series that we will be running for quite a while. We'll release one Location every week on the IonQuest Games Patreon page. One location every month will be free and public.

The Locations will have everything you need to cover a game session on a single page pdf. Each will have a challenge for the characters and everything the DM needs to run the session.

Simple, effective, and waiting to make the effort painless.

Oh, and my art to help bring each Location to life.

The teaser above just hints at everything in the full page pdf.

Right now we're only charging $3/month. We want to make it effortless for those who want to support us from the getgo. We will be upping those prices in the very near future (maybe even February 1st), but those who get in at the beginning will get to keep the lower rate. Kinda sending the love back and forth as it were.

Anyway. If you're into ttrpgs, and / or want to support Brad and myself doing this sort of thing, check out the Patreon page. Sign up for free even if you don't have the resources to pay - you'll still get one free location every month!

Any questions? Ask away!

Continuing his clockwise tour of the inner galaxy, Willy Minmax goes to Fremantle, where he confronts an insupportable situation.  Satellites meant to train the cloudlike Woylie towards positively influencing the climate have failed.  They now accidentally torment the Woylie into worsening the weather, causing disastrous storms and floods.  The Noongar society that built the satellites is now unable to repair or maintain them, so Willy decides that the only help he can offer is to destroy the malfunctioning devices.  Without waiting around for thanks or blame, he does this and quickly departs.  Perhaps when Fremantle's atmosphere returns to normal, he too can return and re-establish trade with this world.

In the meantime, Akasora considers his strange fate among the distant stars:

Silent stars above,
Lonely verses in the void,
Robot dreams in code.

I'm trying to read The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride. 
"In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

    As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us."

I say "trying" because there is So Much Going On in this book. The chapter I'm trying to read now describes a klezmer concert that takes place during a snowstorm. The narrative goes in a new direction every couple of pages, and each direction is its own intricately detailed story. 

Akasora makes a considerable leap through the stars and winds up at the strange world of Bole, a scan revealing...

BOLE is so radioactive that every object native to the planet visibly glows. The beautiful glow of Bole was seen as a sign of divine providence to its first settlers, a theocratic society known as the Hakuraku, who see themselves as wise judges of merit. Native to the planet are the Tianma, a species of winged equines that greatly esteemed by the Hakuraku as heavenly emissaries. Lest they be overwhelmed by the "holy radiation" of their home, each Bolean must wear an expensive piece of jewelry called a "wudi". The wudi's circuitry, itself powered by radioactivity, manages to repel Bole's natural radiation in such a way that the wearer is instead surrounded by darkness. It is only removed for special ceremonies when the pure light of Bole is fully embraced.

Akasora sees only one way to capture its ki:

Radiant divine,
Wing'ed equines grace the skies,
Wudi shields the glow.

Unable to reach the Støver sector, Willy Minmax instead opts for a short trip to the capital of the Lullingstone sector.  There he arranges to record views of its natural wonders and breathtaking constructions.  The planet's cascades, caverns, and castles will surely fetch a reasonable price in less beautiful corners of the galaxy.  The elite Lullingstoners also pay to have their own images recorded, but Willy is less optimistic that others will want to admire their ostentatious coiffures.  Who knows, though?  Maybe the images will find favor as a source of comedy.

Akasora stays in the same sector and scans the nearby world of ...

VELEŠIĆI (56) is a planet rich with life that once also had a large human population, but pollution damaged most of the arable land. The centuries of emigration that followed have resulted in more people of Velešići heritage living off-world than on Velešići itself. A few ancient families remain, within well-defended enclaves. For although the ecology of the planet was disrupted, many creatures survived and adapted to the polluted land. Of particular interest are the vukpas, which are very dangerous carnivorous pack animals. In addition to their teeth and claws, vukpas bear one more unusual weapon: a virus. Anyone within shouting distance of a pack of vukpas is at risk of infection, and the primary symptom of uncontrollable laughter serves to both attract vukpas and incapacitate their prey. Hunting parties on Velešići must be extremely cautious, because he who laughs does not last.

Disquieted by what he learns, he chants aloud:

Laughter's viral dance,
Vukpas' carnivorous jest,
Survival's cruel test.

In the Stîngă system, Willy Minmax is disappointed to learn that he will not be permitted to sell the artificial intelligences any technology, no matter how innocuous.  He is permitted a brief and extremely well-supervised visit with them, however.  His question about recent visitors reveals the existence of one in particular:  "AFFIRMATIVE.  WE NOTICED HIS NATURE IMMEDIATELY, BUT HE SOON DEPARTED TOWARDS THE STØVER SECTOR."  His nature?  What could that mean?  Willy's minders choose that moment to cut short the interview, and he is forced to depart with his curiosity unsatisfied.  The inspectors will no doubt have much to discuss, and he is happy that they at least let him leave the system without further delay.