tracker7 | Entries tagged with family

Early escape on Friday was good. I did get in some time with a couple of my favorite clients before going home and reading a nice chunk of Moscow X.

Went to the No Kings rally on Saturday. 4500-5000 people there, passionate but peaceful. No signs of trouble all afternoon.

Nerd Louisville board meeting after that. Nothing exciting. I'm not running for re-election at the end of the year. I haven't engaged with the position very much, and, honestly, I'm happier running games than being in this leadership and organizational role.

Drove to Liberty to see Dad after the meeting. Early Father's Day dinner and good talk. Spent the night, played with the dog, did some other stuff. Good times.

This will be a short week. June 19 is a holiday for us, and I took a vacation day on the 20th for a nice four-day weekend. Got some things on the schedule, and some time blocked out to just allow myself to recharge.

A couple of decent, almost good, days this past week. Friday was garbage, but at least I ended it a little early and tried to take care of myself. The weekend hasn't been anything to get excited about - a lot of sleep and a little bit of game writing and prep.

Still haven't gotten around to buying a table for the printer. Yesterday would have been a good day for that, but, well, didn't happen.

It's Easter Sunday. Mom loved Easter. No matter how old I was, she always got me a chocolate bunny. I'd kill for one of those sweet little gestures today.

Valentine's Day ate the CP Red game, and that was okay. Saturday saw heavy rain and thunderstorms and that was good for lying in bed and reading. Sunday's board meeting was blessedly moved online, and weather in Florida did a number on the Daytona 500, so, hey, more reading!

Packed my duffel and took off Monday morning. Drove down to the Corvette Museum, a long-overdue visit. The very fast machines are the focus of the museum, of course, and there is plenty of space given over to the people who designed and engineered and promoted them. I found myself taken with the story of Zora and Elfi Arkus-Duntov - they were a heck of a couple, Elfi was the first Corvette Girl, and she would spell out Zora's name on her body with adhesive medical tape and go sunbathing so his name would be on her. It was a good visit.

Drove to Dad's after the museum. Spent the night with him, then lit out for Dayton early Tuesday morning. I hadn't been to the Air Force museum in several years, and while it was nice to see some of the new exhibits (a Titan 4 stack and a Su-27), I found myself kinda bored. Beautiful machines and stories, but I've seen most of them, you know? And the Presidential aircraft gallery just kept reminding me of that orange bastard, and ... ugh. Hotel was nice.

Wednesday morning, up and off to Point Pleasant for the Mothman Museum. US35 is a heck of a fast road, and would have been even faster without the winter storm I drove through. Fun visit to Point Pleasant, then headed back to Louisville. WV2 was an easy drive down to Huntington, and I-64 brought me home one more time.

Ran an errand with a friend this morning. Going to take care of some business this afternoon - taxes and car licenses and REAL ID documents. No plans for tomorrow, maybe back to BG for a train show on Saturday, then the first ALIEN session at Slur on Sunday evening. Back to work on Monday. Can't wait to see what nonsense went down while I've been gone.

That's a lie. I just don't care all that much.

I can't seem to get over being tired most of the time. I'm not sleeping as well as I'd like. I feel like I'm just staggering forward at work, succeeding in spite of myself. Last week was bad. I think part of it was the first five-day week in a while, what with holidays and weather. By Friday afternoon, I was moving mostly by the power of spite. I just wanted to have enough energy to get home.

An early bedtime helped. I went to Dad's to pick up a pressure cooker that I'd had shipped there. We had a good low-key afternoon together, a late lunch and some football. Got back to Louisville around midnight, stayed up for an hour or so, went to bed.

Sunday. The Ravens lost a heartbreaker to the Bills, who will play the Chiefs - again - for the AFC championship. I put my trusty printer to work on material for this weekend's convention during commercial breaks, tearing through a couple of ink cartridges and lots of paper - 4th- and 5th-level DCC spellcasters can easily have 15-page grimoires!

MLK Day was a holiday for us. It's still nice and a little bit novel having holidays off like civilized people. I took it as easy as I could, doing more convention prep. I had some vague plans of finding some volunteering to do, but the cold and my own weakness wiped those plans out. And I sure as hell wasn't going to watch that orange bastard's inauguration.

I'm looking forward to the con - seeing friends and playing some games and all that. Unfortunately, I'm expecting some drama with a bad actor. I tag my games as ages 13+, and this dude signs up himself and his kid. A couple of years ago, I let this slide in a Blade Runner game, and it was a mistake - the kid was disruptive and took away from the experience of other players, and I'm not going to let it happen again. I've already talked with the con organizers, and they told me I have final say on who gets seated at my table. So, in the parlance of our times, fuck dem kids.

Having Monday night to myself was a treat. I didn't sleep as much or as late as I wanted, to no real surprise. I got on the road before sunrise amid light traffic and had an easy drive to Liberty.

Dad and I went on a little last-minute grocery run, and did very little else on Christmas Eve. Plenty of cooking on Christmas morning, plenty of food and leftovers to graze on during the afternoon's NFL games. Kansas City beat Pittsburgh (yay) and the Ravens just demolished the Texans 31-2.

Drove back to Louisville, chatted with housemate, put stuff away, went to bed. Felt pretty darn good.

The new iPad feels a little bit faster than its predecessor. It lacks a home button, and in the case, the power button is just awkward enough that I grumble a tiny bit when I try to use its touch ID to unlock the device.

I accepted the nomination and election to the board of directors for a 501(c)3 organization today. I'm going to be working on the events committee, planning and organizing a convention towards the end of the year. I'm looking forward to seeing how this works out, and at the very least I have a new line on my CV.

Last night was the big LeNoue family holiday party. A good time as always, with so much food. I had just about talked myself out of going, but some form of better angels prevailed and I made the drive to Lexington. It was the usual Transy/HEX extended family with a couple of notable absences that weren't missed all that much. I stayed much later than I had planned to, getting home around 1:30AM, and it was so very much worth it.

Christmas is coming. We're closed on the 24th and 25th; I'm planning to light out for Liberty after work on Monday and spend all the time I can at Dad's. There are a couple of clients I'm going to call while I'm gone, just to check in and hopefully keep them from being completely alone on the holiday.

Busy week. In addition to the normal client visits and office work, our holiday party for the clients was on Thursday and that meant lots of extra work. I'm dangerously close to getting one of my folks intro transitional housing and if I can manage that I'll call the first half of the month a win.

Friday was good. Took a half-day as Clayton was in town and sat in on the evening's CP Red game. John C was unable to play, so that saved me from running out to Crescent Hill before and after the game.

Went to Liberty for a presentation at the library and to see Dad for a bit. My iPad suicided during some app updates and it couldn't be fixed, so I bought a new one this morning. Not cheap, but it's a hell of a good tool and I'm very accustomed to having one.

UofL football is going to the Sun Bowl, a New Year's Eve game. Win or lose, it'll be a good end to the season. Since it's on CBS instead of whatever cable network threw money at the NCAA, I'm going to take a half-day and watch the game from my couch before ...

Holy cow, I have plans for NYE! Almost a date, really. I don't quite know what to do with this. Casual plans, just hanging out and watching movies and quite possibly nodding off before midnight.

Thanskgiving weekend fell later in the month this year. I used a couple of personal hours to give myself a slightly early escape on Wednesday afternoon, handled some personal stuff, and headed to Liberty around sunset. Heavy traffic on 64, but nothing out of the ordinary for the rest of the drive.

Good meal on Thanksgiving Day, some okay football, and a water main break in the afternoon. Never a dull moment. Water was still out on Friday evening, so I decided to get a hotel room that night, and that was certainly a decision that I made.

Back to Liberty Saturday morning to wait for a package and play with Kaiser and listen to the UofL-UK game. The Cards won handily, 41-14, the package arrived, and I headed back to Louisville. Light snow around Bardstown, a pileup on 65 at the 264 interchange. It was good to get home and talk with housemate and watch Svengoolie.

So, Sunday morning. Ground's covered in snow. Clothes are being washed. Tomorrow Never Dies is playing. I have a stack of print and PDF books to read and Asimov's Prelude to Foundation on the Kindle app.

Short workweeks are always appreciated. I like them better when the day off is a Friday - when the week ends sooner rather than starting later - but I'm not going to complain. This one was busy, with the normal 150-mile drive on Thursday, so at least it didn't seem to drag on. So, here I am on a Sunday afternoon, watching the Colts-Texans game and doing laundry. Getting in some reading, too.

Today is the third anniversary of Mom's death. The pain is gone, and has been for a while, if I'm being honest. It's an emptiness now. An empty space. I miss her.

Friday was Dad's birthday, and I took him to lunch yesterday to celebrate. Heck of a good meal and Copper & Oak in Danville. We had a little other business to take care of, and that was handled easily enough. He's singing with his gospel group this afternoon, and that will hopefully keep him from dwelling on the date too much. They're singing about thirty miles south of Indy next weekend, and I may go up there and see about going early enough to go up to Patachou for one of their fantastic omelets.

I'm diving back into Eclipse Phase, prepping for a SYR game in a couple of weeks. I remember the broad strokes of the game, but so many details are coming back to me on the reread.

Some real glamour shots of Lucas Oil Stadium and Indianapolis in general during the game. I was just there five weeks ago, and I find myself missing it already. My GenCon family isn't what it used to be, but they do still mean something to me.

Some jerk decided to shoot up I-75 yesterday afternoon. Dude bought an AR of some stripe and 2000 rounds for it yesterday morning, then found a spot on an overpass and ... just started shooting. Still at large as of this afternoon.

Still hot.

A midweek holiday and a half-day training session on Friday made for a disrupted workweek. Much of two workdays was spent with the rather nice agency minivan moving furnishings for a client and transporting another client, so, hey, time out of the office and not putting miles on my car.

Housesitting and dogsitting this weekend while Dad is in Georgia with his singing group. Kaiser and I are staying inside where it's cool as much as we can.

It is June, therefore it is hot and since I am a delicate flower I do not like it at all. During the monthly meeting for my position, the head CM always asks what our favorite thing about the current month is, and I answered nothing. There is nothing about this month that I like.

I'm at Mom&Dad's this weekend, doing Father's Day stuff with Dad. He declared that it's too hot to go to the lake, and I am just fine with that. We picked up my car yesterday morning, and the body work is just about perfect. I need to get the front end aligned soon, probably before Charcon.

Charcon! Four weeks until I head into the depths of the Appalachians for a weekend of games. And maybe a detour to Point Pleasant for some of the Mothman Museum's root beer. Gonna see some of my favorite folks, too.

Asmodee confirmed last week that development on X-Wing and Armada was at an end. This wasn't much of a surprise. AMG's indifference to Armada was maybe less damaging than their clear lack of any good ideas about X-Wing. So, after a decade of dogfighting and fleet engagements, the lines have come to their end. There's already talk about community groups continuing work, and some is already being done. A couple of folks in my Tuesday night RPG group asked about playing, and since there are some second edition squadron builders still out there, I'm going to get my collection out of the closet and play the old game again.

Did I mention that it's really hot?

Friday wore me out, and driving to Liberty after work was taxing. Brought my bags into the house and planted myself in the recliner and I was asleep in a few minutes. Woke up when Dad got in, chatted with him, and went to bed. Didn't sleep as well as I wanted. Breakfast at the Bread of Life cafe, testing the Lacrosse, and visits to Mom's and Mamaw and Papaw's graves.

Some weather was threatening, so I headed back to Louisville early in the afternoon. This Buick likes to run just as much as the newer version I drove for a couple of months. It has a couple of issues to get taken care of next month, and I want to get the keyless entry and alarm sorted, but I'm pretty happy with it.

Weather went from threatening to dangerous yesterday around noon. Weather stations in lively Shively measured straight-line wind speed at 80MPH when the front came through that part of town. We got a lot of wind and rain and lightning over here, and the power went out around 12:30. I took the opportunity to nap a little while. Kaiju had power, so Slur Your Role was on. Drove over there, ran a short DCC game, went home. Saw lights on around the property and a couple of utility trucks, and power came back on in my unit a couple of minutes after l sat down. I caught some of an evening NASCAR race - and then the second stronger wave of storms starting coming in. We had the whole party for a while - severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings all throughout the area. At least two tornadoes hit the state, one about 45 miles SSW of me, the other further out in the western end of the state. Five deaths, and LG&E currently lists about 1800 outages and better than 50K customers without power right now.

Today has been quiet and very pretty and I have slept through much of it. If I wasn't asleep, I was watching The Crown on Netflix or Masters of the Air or Liaison on Apple+. Hadn't heard of the latter until it was mentioned on the Spybrary FB group, and an espionage series with Eva Green? Of course I'm watching this. Two episodes (out of six) in, and I'm hooked.

I do love a thunderstorm. One is rolling through right now, and it's occasionally producing thunderclaps that rattle the building. The system's spun up some severe weather down in Liberty, so I'm sure the Doberman is doing his best to force his enormous head under whatever cushion Dad's legs are presently on.

Met Dad in Lawrenceburg to swap vehicles again and talk about the Escape. Looks like the little guy is going to have to have a replacement transmission after all. I'm ... not surprised, and I'm considering a lawsuit against the idiot who tore the little SUV up. So, I'm going to pay a good mechanic for the work he's done and get documentation for the work. I'll store the Escape until I can find a suitable transmission. I've found a car that I like, and can afford and all that, so I'm going to buy it Saturday morning.

Oh, hey, Dad got some good news at his evaluation this week. The eye surgeon believes that cataract removal can be done on his right eye without any further damage to the retina. Dad's jumping at this chance, based on the success of the surgery on his left eye. That one's testing at 20/20, and Dad's ecstatic about how things have turned out. Surgery is scheduled for late June or early July, based on the results of two more evaluations. I'm so happy for him.

Dad's surgery went very well. He texted me yesterday, marveling at how nice it was to have clear vision back in his left eye. The right is getting another evaluation next month - it has some cataracts as well, but that eye's retina has some damage, and the docs are concerned that cataract surgery may further damage the retina.

The repainted mini came out well. The colors aren't quite what I had in mind, but they're good, and I have no desire to strip and paint it again. Next up is one for my Old School Essentials character - a skull-splitting herb-gathering barbarian.

Mucked around with my client schedule this afternoon to finally catch Civil War. It is, as the kids say, a banger of a movie. Kirsten Dunst is very good, and her supporting cast is, too. It's a damned intense movie, and uncomfortable in turns. Alex Garland hasn't yet let me down - on the directorial side, Ex Machina and Annihilation are gorgeous movies, and he's written some great stuff, too - 28 Days Later and Dredd, among others. And A24's made some good stuff, so this was just a good work all around.

Surprisingly, we got a red-band trailer for Maxxxine, another A24 release and the sequel to the pretty darn good X.

Found a little gem while looking for something to eat before the movie. Was going to get something from Raising Cane's, but their dining room was closed for repairs and I have a nearly pathological hate of drive-thrus, and something told me to try the grocery store in the little mall housing the theater. Found out that they have a very good deli, and very good prices there. So, since I'm trying to see more movies at Baxter Avenue, I think I'll patronize Valu Market as well.

I tried Army Painter's Speed Paint on a mini last week, and results were mixed at best. Colors didn't really show up like I wanted. I wound up stripping the figure last night, and I'm going to repaint it this afternoon while watching the IMSA race at Laguna Seca (swoon) this afternoon.

Roger Corman died yesterday. 98 years old, FOUR-HUNDRED NINETY-ONE production credits. I've rarely, if ever, seen a Corman film I'd call good, but I've never not been entertained by them. He launched many many careers, including James Cameron's, and that ain't nothing.

Dad has surgery to remove cataracts from one of his eyes on Tuesday. He can't drive home after the surgery, of course, so I'm taking care of things on that end. And it's going to make for a busy couple of days for me. Work tomorrow, date with Donna tomorrow evening, drive to Liberty after that. Get up at 4:00AM to get ready to leave Liberty for Lexington at 5AM so we can be at the VA at 7AM. And then I camp out wherever I can find somewhere comfortable during the procedure. Then I take him back to Liberty and myself back to Louisville. Maybe I'll get back in time to play Dragonbane, and maybe I'll just take myself to a movie instead.

Going back to the western end of the state in late June. We decided on Kentucky Dam State Park for the annual Hex gathering. I think I'm going to stay off-site again - costs and membership rewards influencing that decision - and just drive the couple of miles from the east side of Paducah the park. If I even go. My trip to Charleston is three weeks after.

Saturday night was the annual big-ass LeNoue holiday party. I went up to Lexington a couple of hours early to see Ben Parks for the first time since Lexicon. A good hour and change catching up and just hanging out with one of my brothers-by-choice.

He's living in the same apartment complex I lived in before moving to Louisville, and the place has since seen a big remodel. It's gated now - just theater, since the exit gate is always open - and the units are dolled up a little. Being there spun up some memories - I was pretty happy in the place, really. It ... goddamn it, it felt like home.

The time to head down to Southpoint came soon enough. The LeNoues are lovely people, and always welcoming to someone who is just a friend of their son-in-law. Lots of food, the friends from Transy and that circle.

It was an exciting night, weatherwise. Powerful storms down in Tennessee and western Kentucky. A couple of F2 tornadoes hit around Clarksville. The parents of a friend from UK saw some damage in their neighborhood, but nothing worse than power loss at their home. We got a lot of heavy rain, started hitting on my drive home. The neighborhood is about a mile south of Man-O-War, and at that time of night, getting from there to Danville is about half-an-hour. In the rain that night, it took me a little over 45 minutes. Never quite got to the point where I felt the need to get off the road, and I was glad to see things calm down about the time I got to Danville.

Sunday was nice. Slept late, got up later. NFL games, napping, reading. It was a quiet afternoon and evening, and I sure appreciated it after the socializing and heavy weather on Saturday. Got a call from SCC this afternoon to schedule a second interview - there's tomorrow afternoon locked down. Let's see what happens.

At some point, some twit put the idea of me being a teacher into my mom's head, and like some kind of memetic virus, it spread to Dad, and one of them would vomit this wholly groundless idea up whenever I expressed any interest in finding a different job.

Jesus fucking Christ, it got old, and they would not let it go. So help me, if I was given some kind of godlike power, I would travel through space and time to find the source of this nonsense and choke them into unconsciousness every day of their lives. Dad brought it up again last weekend and I managed to keep my temper in check. So, to hopefully shut this up forever, I accepted an invitation from the county's school system superintendent to meet and talk about it.

And guess what?

To paraphrase Rick Deckard, I was uninterested when I walked in there, and I'm twice as uninterested now. Dad hasn't asked, and I haven't offered, but I'm going to bring it up tomorrow and tell him straight up that I never want to hear the foolish notion again.

Even writing this has just made me ridiculously cranky. It's fucking absurd.

Let's just keep the hate flowing.

Evil Genius Games (loathe their name, their little logo, their license-chasing business model) licensed an upcoming Zack Snyder/Netflix property. EG's now sued Netflix over Netflix pulling the plug on the TTRPG, claiming ... stuff. I think this is a case where both sides are wrong, and EG's chief is making some utterly absurd claims about the game's popularity. The rather good Linda Codega has the story here.

A few days ago, I put out some recruiting calls for the Cyberpunk Red game. Got enough responses that I had to put some people on a reserve list! I settled on four new players, more than doubling the group size and hopefully getting enough of a pool that we won't be crippled by an absence or two.

The superintendent of the county school system reached out to me over the weekend. Dad knows him, and he's apparently in need of teachers. Not a profession I have any real interest in, but I'll at least listen to the pitch. Kentucky's general assembly is doing its best to cripple the state's public education system, being heavily Republican, and that's a counter-incentive.

Dad and Kaiser are on their way to Texas. A four-day trip, Dad said, and I'm ready for a little stretch of solitude. We have visitors coming next week, a cousin and his wife and their adopted son and an aunt. Haven't seen them since Mom's funeral, and I don't think I've ever met the kid.

Sad stomach. Maybe stress related, maybe something I ate. Store-brand Pepto-Bismol is helping.

Kaiser is a never-ending source of mostly entertainment, with occasional doses of confusion and frustration. He has the Doberman neuroses, and his attachment to Dad is like nothing I've ever seen in an animal.

JFC, Joe Buck's calling tonight's game. Do your thing, little mute button.

I'm going to take a break from Goodreads and Booksirens. The last couple of books I've gotten for review haven't been any fun and were not very good. They're better than anything I've written lately just by virtue of actually existing, but ... yeah. What I said. The collection of Lovecraft mythos detective stories I'm slogging through now is just flat out boring.

On the other hand, Alien: Inferno's Fall is moving along quite nicely, and the Xenomorphs haven't even shown up yet. I got to hear the author, Philippa Ballantine, read from some of her other work at Butcher Cabin Books a while back, and was taken with her writing.

Still reading The Dracula Dossier: Director's Handbook for Night's Black Agents, too. Like any of Ken Hite's work, it's rich and detailed and just goshdarn fun to read. There's a ton of material about Romania, and I wish that I could ask the guys from the MCC game about their potential visits to some of the places and the social and political details discussed in the book.

I hate writing resumes, apropos of nothing. I'm not good at selling myself, I don't know the codes and phrases that automated systems use to select whichever candidate gets through the filter.

Today's Dad's birthday. He's on his way back from somewhere in Missouri, which is somehow appropriate. 76 years old, still acing his physicals and able to wrangle 30 tons of truck and trailer and cargo like it's an extension of himself. Amazing.

Roadside Picnic

Bright Ideas, Dark Futures

Nine Pound Hammer

Think of What You've Done

Mood Ring

Addictive

Neon Signs

North Pole

Mountain Fever

Free Radicals

Violet

Her Love is Like a Cancer

What we Had

What About the Children

All Now

Reasons Leading to a Flameout

Feels Like Rain

Strong Enough

The Shadow of Her Smile

Tear Stained Eye

Grounds for Divorce

Cool About It

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June 2025

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