My Musings

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Well, Halloween 2009 was a big weekend at Flametoad Manor. Starting with our family tradition of Saturday morning BBQ breakfast tacos, we quickly moved on to errands, home for a play date with one of Tadpole 1’s friends, and a low-key afternoon punctuated with pumpking carving and of course trick-or-treating. We had more than 100 kids come to our door, based on the amount of candy I handed out. This year I wanted to hand out something a little more unique, so I ordered a bunch of grape-flavored wax mustaches and gummie candy shaped like roadkill, sure to appeal to any 7 year-old’s funny bone. Mrs. Flametoad and I finished the night by watching Dusk Till Dawn, although I’ll admit we skipped to the part where the group showed up at the “biker bar”.

The next morning, I loaded up the kids and we drove to the Houston Zoo. Mrs. Flametoad regretfully skipped on this trip because the walk up and down the street did bad things for her broken toe. Walking all over a zoo just wasn’t in the cards. Despite the lack of Mommy, the tadpoles and I managed to have a great time. If you can’t see the photos below, you’re probably reading this on some third party site like Facebook. Just jump over to Flametoad.

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Back in late May, Mrs. Flametoad and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary by taking our first vacation sans-kids. After a lot of deliberation, we settled on Cancun. Our main criteria was that we wanted a vacation in which we didn’t have to “do” anything. It wasn’t a sightseeing trip or an adventure trip. It was a “spend 3 days doing as little as possible” trip. Mrs. Flametoad found an all-inclusive, adults-only resort with pretty good reviews, and we booked the trip.

Flickr Photostream.

Then in the coming weeks and months we started hearing the reports of gang violence down in Mexico. It was an all-out war between the drug cartels and the military. Thousands of troops were activated in border towns to quell the violence. We agonized over whether or not to go, but the violence seemed to mostly be higher north, closer to the border, so we decided to stay the course. Then, of course, H1N1 rears its head. The kids from New York who got the flu caught it while on a trip to Cancun! What to do?

Fortunately, Mrs. Flametoad had enough perspective on the health industry to understand that the scare was largely that– a scare. We again made the decision to stay the course—a decision made slightly easier by our trip insurance that would reimburse most of our expenses up to the time we got on the plane. Here’s where I’ll brag about American Express Travel. I’m glad that we booked our travel through them. Every step of the way was smoothed over for us. Weeks before we left, they mailed us a travel wallet with all our vouchers, hotel information, printed itinerary, and more. We stepped out of the Cancun airport and an American Express had shuttles waiting to take us to our hotel.

The Cancun area was directly hit by a hurricane back in 2005 and you can still see signs of the destruction today. Although the main highway running down the coast was in great shape, large piles of broken cement and debris are still piled on either side. Although I’ve been saying we went to Cancun, our resort was actually closer to Playa del Carmen. After a 30 minute ride in the van, we arrived in paradise.

The moment we stepped out of the van, we were greeted with champaign and cold towels. The entire stay, we were treated like royalty. The Imperial Valentine Maya itself was beautiful. I can’t describe it better than that. The architecture was grand, the grounds were well maintained, and the beach was beautiful. Our room, which was located near the beach, was fantastic. We had several different locations to choose from with regard to dining, and we thoroughly enjoyed every meal.

True to our plan, we never went sightseeing. We split our days between the amazing pool and the amazing beach. The most adventurous we ever got was going snorkeling on the beach one morning.

Basically, it was an incredible vacation. We benefited greatly from the swine flu. We were told that tourist occupancy over the entire region was at 20% while we were there. It’s normally at 80% at that time of year. We practically had the resort to ourselves. We never had to wait on a meal, nor did we ever have a bad spot at the pool. It was definitely one of those experiences that we could never repeat. As much as we loved the resort and loved the entire vacation, if we ever went back we’d only be up for disappointment. We’d never have the place to ourselves like we did that trip. The lowest occupancy they usually see during off season is 40%.

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

This past weekend Flametoad Manor continued what has become an annual tradition–the gamer’s Christmas party. We had 15 adults and 11 kids gathered in a fun evening and eating, socializing, eating, playing Guitar Hero, eating, and eating. I don’t get to see the crew regularly since taking my gaming sabbatical, so it’s always great getting to visit with everyone. I wish I’d taken pictures, but I was too busy having fun to remember until the night was over. It was a wonderful evening of Christmas fellowship.

Sunday I picked up the third book in the Dresden Files series, Grave Peril. I’ve read maybe six chapters, but now I’ve managed to misplace it. Tonight after my monthly church vestry meeting I’ll have to go on a book hunt. Ed gave me Stephan King’s On Writing, and I ordered a used copy of Orson Scott Card’s Characters & Viewpoint, but I feel like I need to recharge my creative batteries with some fiction before diving into instructional nonfiction.

Went to the doctor yesterday afternoon. I may write about that later in the week. I also want to write a post about how much I hate the the new trend of college kids putting spacers in their ears. Bleauch!

For the two or three of you who use Wordpress, you may be interested to know that the awesome Admin Drop Down Menu plugin has already been updated to work with the newly released Wordpress 2.7.

The first round of Christmas cards went out yesterday. We ordered extra cards, so if you’re not on our list yet but would like to be, shoot me an e-mail with your address.

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

I haven’t been very good about keeping informed on what I’ve been up to, so hopefully the title of this post clears that up.

Seriously, I’ve got a backlog of news. Some is personal, some is just newsworthy stuff from the ‘net, and others I can’t quite talk about yet.

I had an enjoyable Thanksgiving with my family. My in-laws drove 3 hours to spend the holiday with us, and I know the kids enjoyed seeing them almost as much as they enjoyed seeing the kids. The weather has been pretty screwy around here, with the temperatures fluxuating from cold to hot and back within a few days. On Thanksgiving I switched off our furnace and turned on the A/C. A few hours later we found a puddle of water in the laundry room and a mystery was finally solved. Since dropping more than $4K on a replacement HVAC unit a month ago, we’ve had this strange fluxating weather I just described. We’ve also had mysterious puddles of water appear in the laundry room. We assumed they either came from putting too many clothes in the washing machine or from a leaky hose. Since the problem was intermittant, we hadn’t been able to pin down the exact source… until Thanksgiving.

Armed with a flashlight and some strong suspicions, I climbed into the attic and discovered that the crew had not tied the condensation pipe to the drain. Water from condensation was dripping out of the pipe and onto the attic insulation instead of into the elbow joint that led to the drain. The water was dripping between two walls down to the laundry room floor and coming out near the washer and dryer! After crawling over ductwork and insulation, I reached the elbow joint and connected the pipe to the drain.

Unfortunately, I had to rip out some drywall in the laundry room and run a dehumidifyer for a day and a half. It’s kinda a big mess. Yes, I’ve called the HVAC folks but I haven’t heard back from them. I’ll be following up with them today.

In other news, I’ve been working on a short story for a special project. It was slow going, but over the Thanksgiving break I was able to make headway and now I’m to the climax. I should be able to finish it by mid-week, do one round of edits, then let it sit for a week. I wrote it in first person and I’m toying with the idea of rewriting it in 3rd person. It’s less than five thousand words, so I don’t think it would take very long. We’ll see if I have time.

Finally, today is the first day of our second annual Midnight Charity Project. For the month of December, 12 to Midnight will be offering fans several ways to contribute to the Autism Research Institute. If you’re a gamer, take a few minutes to follow the link and find out how you can help the cause.

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Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

As I said yesterday, I got home from my business trip last Wednesday night and spent the evening home with my family. Some of that evening was spent cleaning the house in preparation of the chaos to come. The next day I went to work as normal, picked up Tadpole 2 and brought her home, grabbed dinner, then headed back out the door to Austin. During the 1.5 hour drive I worked out the plotting for a short story I’ll be writing in the near future, and at about 8:45 I picked up cerebral misfire and his family from the airport. At around 11 pm we made it back home and all crawled into bed.

Believe it or not, having my oldest, best friend from come in from out of town was just the sideshow. My other best friend was getting married! Friday morning I had to go into work during the morning, but I split shortly before lunch and met up with the soon-to-be bride and groom and a good part of the wedding party for a yummy burger. We ran errands that afternoon, went out to the site of the ceremony for the wedding rehearsal, then back to the bride and groom’s house for wedding rehearsal dinner. It was heart-warming to see how well Tadpole 2 and Cerebral Misfire’s toddler played together, but it also makes me all the more sad that they have moved so far away. Regardless, we had a great time at the dinner, during which we groomsmen presented him with our traditional present–a pistol.

You have to understand that there’s a 14 year spread between when the first of us got married and when Jason, the last, was married. During that time we formed a few traditions. One is the pistol as a wedding present. The other is a bowling ball. Well, a ball and chain, really. You see, almost 10 years ago they thought it would be a great prank to make the groom (in that instance, me) wear a ball and chain during the bachelor party. The Ball is a 16 lb. bowling ball with a concrete anchor sunk several inches into it. A chain attaches to the anchor on one end and a dog collar on the other end. For added effect, the bride’s name is painted on the ball.

So after the rehearsal dinner we presented him with the ball and carried him off for a little public humiliation! We ended up at a bar playing pool, which was great fun!

handicap

After staying up entirely too late, we crawled into bed and prepared for the big day. All too early, Saturday morning rolled over us. The day was split between running errands, napping, and later in the afternoon setup for the wedding. The bride and groom had gambled that the weather would still be warm enough for an outdoor wedding but Mother Nature chose not to cooperate. A biting Northern blew threw Friday night, and the wind sliced through our clothes as we set up tables and chairs.

Despite one or two hiccups (like the rings still being locked in the truck moments before the ceremony was supposed to start) the wedding was beautiful. I was very honored to be the Best Man. The wind died down after the sun set, and leaving the reception chilly but tolerable. It was a fun reception, and after we packed the kids off to home with our babysitter, Mrs. Flametoad and I even got in a few turns around the dance floor.

All in all it was a wonderful wedding, and I can’t begin to say how happy I am for Jason and Jennifer. I’m also exhausted and incredibly glad it’s over.

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Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

In this election day, vote for The King.

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In less than a week I’ve managed to pretty seriously piss off three people. That’s a normal day’s work for some people, but usually because they’re trying. I’m not like that, so for me this has got to be some kind of record.  It isn’t as if I’m trying to piss people off or purposefully blowing off someone’s’ feelings. Mrs. Flametoad gently pointed out that the first one or two you can shrug off as being mostly about them. But by the time you get to number three, you pretty much gotta admit that you’re doing something wrong. And that’s just the ones who were honest enough to tell me they were unhappy. I kinda wonder how many are under the iceberg’s tip.

I’m ready for this week to be over.

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Yesterday I could hold my little tadpole in one hand. Today he starts Kindergarten.

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Imagine my surprise when I picked him up from daycare. It was “clown day”.

Click for a larger version.

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While I was Indianapolis last month, I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to meet up with the guys from Mythyc. Never heard of them? If you’re in the RPG world, you will. These guys are poised to launch a really neat gamer destination. They are amassing a series of video interviews with folks for the RPG industry, photos, gamer tips, and lots of other neat content. They’ll be launching their site in the next few months. I’ve known Mike on the interweb for a few years now, so I was only too glad to meet him in person and allow them to use me as their guinea pig for their first video interview.

When they dropped by my hotel room that evening, I was still dressed for the conference. They joked that by comparison they were dressed like my lackeys. One joke led to another, goofiness ensued, and the cameras came out. I think it was all an elaborate setup. This was our spontaneous take on an alcohol print ad. Except for the lack of impossibly hot female models. Somehow we forgot those.

Anyway, thanks for a fun evening, Mythyc guys! I was a pleasure meeting you in person, and your choice of haunted Irish pubs is impeccable.

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Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Let me tell you about the accident. It happened during my blogging hiatus. It was a Sunday night, right around 8 pm. We’d had a long, full weekend and I was looking forward to getting the kids to bed and having an hour or two to myself before bedtime. The weather was pleasant, and we’d actually opened the windows to take advantage of the fresh air. (This doesn’t happen too often in Texas weather.) Mrs. Flametoad had just called Tadpole 1 to the bath, and I was supposed to be bringing Tadpole 2.

Before going to the kids’ bathroom, I went from room to room closing windows. Tadpole 2 followed faithfully behind. The master bath window posed the usual challenge. For some reason that I still fail to comprehend, there is a shelf in the middle of the window. To open or close the window, you have to push the window up or down behind the shelf. On this shelf was a 5×7 framed photo. Yes, was.

As I pulled down on the window, I managed to knock over the photo frame, which in turn hit me on the bridge of my nose. The strike to my face was just enough force to pop the protective glass from the frame and send it spinning down… right to Tadpole 2’s head.

In my surprise and all the subsequent excitement, I don’t know if the glass broke on her head or after. I did get one quick glance at her scalp and saw a white line extending for maybe an inch and a half. The white line was quickly replaced with red and surprise gave way to screams. In the instant I had to assess the situation, I already knew that I would be taking her to the ER for stitches. I snatched her up and ran to the hall bathroom where Mrs. Flametoad was bathing Tadpole 1. If you have any familiarity with scalp wounds, you know they bleed like crazy. By the time I reached Mrs. Flametoad–maybe 10 seconds after impact–blood was pouring down Tadpole 2’s face.

We traded kids, and Mrs. Flametoad worked on a wet towel with which to apply direct pressure, while I got Tadpole 1 out of the bathtub and into pajamas in record time. I rushed him next door to the neighbors while Mrs. Flametoad loaded our injured 2 year old in the truck. I met them in the driveway and off we went!

I’ll save you the rest of the minutia. We’re extremely grateful to Jennifer for getting Tadpole 1 from the neighbors, back home, and into bed. Tadpole 2 came home with two staples and 2 stitches. It wasn’t a huge cut, but definitely something needing patching up. Being in the scalp, we couldn’t exactly put a bandage on it. The photo was taken from my camera phone while we were in the waiting room of the ER. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to have documentation in case there was a dispute with the hospital. This was after we’d tried to clean her up.

Yes, the entire experience was heartbreaking.

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending. The staples and stitches are out and Tadpole 2 has a clean bill of health. Other than a spot where they snipped out the bloody, crusted swatch of hair to get to the wound, it’s like it never happened.

We have taken that shelf down.

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Last weekend Mrs. Flametoad and I drove to Houston to attend the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Now, for those of you who aren’t Texans, you most likely won’t appreciate what this event is like. Let me try to paint you a picture.

Houston is like the 4th largest city in the US. The Houston Livestock show is held at the city’s largest convention and event center, which was built next to the Astrodome when it was decided that that building was just to small and old. The livestock show is held indoors and takes up the entirety of the convention hall. In addition to show animals, it is filled with a petting zoo, commercial vendors, and educational displays for school children. Several enormous tents adjacent to the convention hall hold a few dozen food vendors. A stone’s throw from the tents is a massive carnival. The rodeo itself is held in Reliant Stadium. It is rated with a seating capacity of 71,500, although I would guess that number includes concert floor seating.

What I’m trying to say is that this is a huge event. You have to see it to believe it.

On the afternoon we went, we weren’t going to look at livestock or watch cowboys rope calves. My wife is a die-hard, pantie-throwing (okay, maybe not quite that fanatical) Brad Paisley fan, and he was in concert that evening after the rodeo. My wife bought her tickets two months ago, and we learned when we got there that his show was sold out. That means 70,000+ people were filling the stadium to see this show. My wife had bought tickets on row F. That’s "F" as in A = row 1, B = row 2,…F = row 6. It was a fun show, and we both had a great time. The parking was a bit interesting, as we’d taken the park & ride shuttle from several miles away. Coming in wasn’t a problem, but 70,000 people leaving the show meant that we had a 1.5 hour wait in line to catch a shuttle back to our car. All in all I’d still choose that over the inevitable road rage I’d experience trying to 1) find a place to park, 2) find my car when it was time to leave, 3) actually exit the parking lot.

I need to extend a huge thanks to Jason and Jennifer, who really saved the day when they agreed to watch the tadpoles when my mom turned ill and couldn’t come down. The tadpoles themselves were sick, so it was very generous of them to let us escape for an entire afternoon (and late evening). I also just want to brag on how beautiful my wife is. She’s as beautiful on the inside as she is hot on the outside. The shot in this post was taken from my iPhone at the stockshow, and you can click on the thumbnail for a larger version. Clearly I married above my station.

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I finally got around to downloading several photos that have been on my phone, so don’t be surprised to see several picture posts over the next few days. This shot was taken on February 23 at my parents’ ranch, where I grew up. It was a beautiful day. Earlier, myself, Mrs. Flametoad, and Tadpole 1 spent several hours leisurely fishing. I caught a pretty big bass, but had no interest in cleaning it so I threw it back. I was fishing for relaxation, not for food. Anyway, my mom had bought a couple kites for the kids, and you can see that Tadpole 1 got the hang of it pretty easily. I remember it was a windy day. In fact, a bit too windy for the kite. The wind was pushing it so hard that the plastic braces would bend, which decreased the surface area, which caused the kite to lose altitude. When the gusts would die down a bit, then the kite would flex back out and gain altitude. Pretty much the opposite of how you expect kites and wind to work. Click on the thumbnail for the full size version.

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Sorry posts have been hit-or-miss this week. It’s Spring Break, which means that the tadpoles are home and thus so am I. Thursday morning Tadpole 1 woke up with a wet, nasty cough, and in the afternoon Tadpole 2 developed a fever. When we checked her at around 8 pm she was 102 degrees.

I’ve also been busy with Steamworks. If you’re one of the folks who visit the site instead of (or in addition to) reading the RSS feed, you might notice there’s a new skyscraper ad in rotation.  Brendan did a kick-ass job on the new Steamworks banners, and we’ve run about 150K impressions on ENWorld. We’re slowly waking up to the possibilities afforded us by having our own store, such as being able to offer pre-order specials. The more I work with this title (and I’ve been working on it for longer than I care to admit), the more I like it. Chapter 5, which consists of something in excess of 50 pages of cool devices, is worth the price of the whole book alone. Unfortunately, it has been something of a challenge getting art for a book of this size. Even at only one illustration for ever 10 pages, that’s 16 pieces of art. I’ve issued assignments to six different people and gotten art in from four of them. I’ve got 9 interior illustrations completed. It’ll be the biggest book we’ve released to date, and the logistics have been pretty challenging. Fortunately, I’ve had enough practice that the process is familiar, even if the scope is expanded. Having InDesign CS3 has been a big help in terms of layout, though I’m still struggling with how to automatically apply character-level formatting to hyperlinks. I really don’t want to have to manually hit each link.

Thursday night (before I knew that Tadpole 2 started running a fever) I took my new laptop out for a spin. I set up camp in a coffee shop and wrote for two hours while Mrs. Flametoad watched the tadpoles. Until last night I didn’t realize just how long it had been since I’d written, but according to the file date it had been more than two months. I can’t tell you how good it felt to be back in the saddle. There was no struggle to get started; no blank screen syndrome. I just dove in and wrote. What was I writing? “The big one”. ETU. Ed has been working on it for the last few months and I’ve been itching to get back to it. Unfortunately I do my best work away from the distractions of home life, which is why it was imperative for me to get a new laptop. ETU is coming along well. Several chapters are at 80% or more. I have some revisions to do on the character creation chapter, then I’ll be devoting my time to the plot points. For now my ETU work is a one night a week treat. Once Steamworks is released I’ll be devoting myself to ETU full time. Well, as full as I can with a day job and a family who actually likes me enough to want my time and attention.

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Tadpole 2 underwent outpatient surgery last Friday to have tubes inserted in her ears. She’s had more than 7 ear infections in the last year, and the most recent one was ongoing for more than a month and hadn’t responded to three different rounds of antibiotic.

Within a few hours Friday morning, she’d shrugged off the surgery and was back to her old self.  By Sunday, she was back to her old self– the sweet little princess whom I’d almost forgotten existed. We’ve been dealing with the emotional, hair-trigger, bad-tempered toddler for so long that now that she’s back to normal it almost feels as if they swapped out her personality while she was in surgery.

Sometimes when things get bad and stay bad, we forget what it’s like when things are right. It’s easy to keep plodding along, taking what’s thrown at us and stubbornly persevering. It may even feel like a virtue –that you’re able to endure hardships like a modern-day Lot. It’s baloney. God doesn’t want us to be miserable. Rather than continuing to endure the the pain, treat the root of the problem. Maybe you’ll experience the kind of transformation we did last weekend.

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Back in December I made some updates to the Flametoad site that I thought I would bring to your attention. In the past, I had a standard, short blurb about how LiveJournal users could read my posts in LJ using the syndicated content there. In fact, many of you are reading (or skipping past) this post in LJ right now. Well, that note has been greatly expanded and now includes links to many other social networking sites. If you’re on LJ, Facebook, Myspace, LibraryThing, Flickr, Del.icio.us, or any number of other social networking sites, feel free to follow the links to my profiles and add me as a friend. Most likely, I’ll reciprocate. Hey, what’s the web about if not connecting with one another?

Well, okay; that and porn.

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One of the bloggers I read had a good idea that I’d like to try here. Thanks to Feedburner, I have a general idea of how many people are subscribed to my RSS feed. Thanks to Google Analytics, I have an idea of how many people visit. I know exactly how many people have this same feed on their friends list at LiveJournal. However, many of you I only know by name or possibly reputation.

With the year winding down and a new one on the horizon, what better time to de-lurk and introduce yourself? Why stay at arm’s length? Let’s get to know one another a little better. Maybe 2008 will be the year our friendship grows. At the very least, we’ll know enough about one another that should we ever meet in person we’ll have something to talk about. Tell me (as much as you’re comfortable sharing):

1. your name
2. website(s) and/or profiles on Facebook and LJ
3. how you know me or how you found Flametoad
4. what we have in common (or why do you bother to read my ramblings)
5. about yourself - are you married? have kids? how old and what are their names? what state/country do you live in? hobbies? what do you do professionally? what gets you so excited that you just can’t stop talking about it? What decade were you born in?
6. what do you wish I’d write about more often? What do you wish I’d shut up about?

De-lurk and let’s get to know one another.

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Mrs. Flametoad and I held our semi-annual Christmas party this past Saturday. Most of those in attendance were people we knew through gaming. We counted 11 kids and 14 adults. One of our guests brought Guitar Hero, which made a great party game. If you’re reading this on Flametoad, you’ll see an embedded slideshow. Otherwise, you’ll have to visit the Flickr slideshow.

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Two other members of 12 to Midnight were in attendance. Can you spot them?

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My annual camping trip, "Swampfest", is this weekend. Unfortunately I never had the time to build a full scale model trebuchet like I’d wanted, so this year we’ll be experimenting with the baby prototype. I have 100 lbs of ballast and 2.5 lb ammunition. My camera is fully charged. Be sure to check back next week–there will be MANY pictures!

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

…caring for sick kids, or being sick.

I’m sooooo glad to be back to work.