The other day, I discovered that the only physical chess set in my house was one that doesn’t belong to me. (Not counting the Star Trek 3D chess set, which is useless for playing ordinary chess.) So I ordered a chess set online. More accurately, I ordered four of them: one with metal pieces and […]
I’ve now looked at 7 articles about the new sanctions on Russian people and organizations. The closest any of them came to saying what the sanctions are is a couple of brief indications that the individuals’ financial assets (one article said in the US, another said in US dollars) are being frozen, and that they […]
I’ll be turning fifty in a couple weeks, and I haven’t yet decided whether to have a party. As I noted to Karen this morning: On the one hand, parties are great! On the other hand, parties are terrible! I like the idea of parties. Gathering together people I like, and hanging out with them! […]
I’m sad to learn that Mary Rosenblum has died. I think she was recently best-known as a mystery writer, under the name Mary Freeman, but I was most familiar with her Drylands series, about a future Pacific Northwest with very little water. I particularly liked the first story in that series, “Water Bringer.” The whole […]
Dreamed I was watching A Wrinkle in Time in a tiny “theatre” that was a lounge at an airport (with no seats; we were sitting on the floor). For unspecified security reasons, they couldn’t show a film using a projector, so we were watching it on a grainy videotape. There were maybe 20 people in […]
My day went okay on the anniversary of my father’s death (Wednesday), but I seem to have been getting more tense and irritable since then rather than less. This morning, I finished up an overdue work thing (which was good; I had been pretty tense about not getting that done), then finished packing stuff up […]
FOGcon attendees: Saturday morning in the game room, from 10:30 to 11:45, I’ll be hosting a “gadget and device petting zoo.” I’ll bring a bunch of cool and fun toys and devices to let people try out, but it doesn’t have to be just my stuff; if you have things you think other people would […]
I’ve been thinking about forgiveness recently. I don’t have any clear or firm conclusions; this post is just some assorted thoughts. Wikipedia says: Forgiveness is the intentional and voluntary process by which a victim undergoes a change in feelings and attitude regarding an offense, lets go of negative emotions such as vengefulness, with an increased […]
Last night, in a successful effort to procrastinate on some overdue work tasks, I looked up how much a nearby house recently sold for, which indirectly led me to update the list of assets in my will. (My will, such as it is, is currently just a text file in the Documents folder of my […]
Today is the thirteenth anniversary of the day my father was killed. A lot of years, I get tense and irritable in the couple of weeks leading up to the anniversary. This year, I’ve been pretty much fine. A little sad, and a little scattered (have had a hard time focusing and a hard time […]
Last night, I was on my way to bed at a somewhat-reasonable-for-me hour when I noticed that the Google Photos app had generated a “best of 2017” album and was offering to turn it into a printed photo book for me. Intrigued, I took a look and found that it had also generated several other […]
Didn’t sleep much or well on Friday night, I think mostly because I stayed up way too late reading and playing iOS games. Hung out with Karen and Pär and Jeremiah during the day on Saturday, mostly playing Terraforming Mars, which has become one of my favorite boardgames. Then came home to help Kam move […]