February 2019 – Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

Trying something new at Capricon: hosting a party

Last weekend, I attended my 19th Capricon. Yes, really… 19 consecutive years at the same convention. Wow! Capricon was the first convention that I discovered the room parties at. (I had attended DragonCon before that, but didn’t encounter the parties until after my first Capricon.) I’ve assisted at parties with various groups over the years, but just with on-site stuff… checking IDs, supplying some fresh baked cookies, that sort of thing.

At last year’s Capricon, as I was wandering the parties with friends, I wandered straight into their party idea – building a box fort in one of the party rooms. Letting people decorate the boxes after we built it. And, of course, having drinks. Really, the core concept was the boxes, and those are easy to collect over the course of a year. One of our organizers studied theater set design, so he’s quite capable of building a set… pretty quickly, as it turns out.

A box fort flyer, a decorated box with "Just Another Box in the Wall", the Party Staff Choice award, and part of the wall — A Box Fort flyer, a decorated box, the Party Staff Choice award, and part of the wall

We had on and off discussions throughout the year, mostly about what drinks to serve, then eventually what entertainment to include for a castle-themed box fort. We considered what style cups and wristbands we wanted for the party, and what snacks to serve. And how much of everything to buy.

That’s the hard question, really… you have an idea of how many people will come to the convention based on previous years (just over 1,200 this year), then guess at how many will come to the parties, how many cups each person will use, and what drinks they may prefer of the ones you’re serving. We ran the party for two nights. Few people, myself included, keep their party wristbands on from night to night, so you have to account for double use on the wristbands. Some people want a new cup for each drink, some will reuse their cups.

To say we had a blast, well, that’s an understatement. We’re looking forward to doing it again at next year’s convention, the Tropics of Capricon.

Try or learn something new.

At the beginning of the year, I mentioned that I set goals for the year and for the week. One of my weekly goals, with no correlation to an annual goal, is to try or learn something new. That’s it, no restrictions on what. It can be a new food, a new restaurant, random trivia that is somehow useful, or a new game… anything that I look at and go “oh, I didn’t know that” or “I tried something.”

When I visited California in December, most of the restaurants I went to were new to me, so rather than counting those, I looked for new (to me) foods on their menus. As a result, I tried a seared ahi salad one night, and Wild Alaskan sand dabs another. Locally, I’ve tried a couple new restaurants – including my recent visit to Balmoral – and explored a couple places in Valparaiso, Indiana last week.

Learning applies to work as well. Working in IT is a constant opportunity to learn, both about the software that I work with, the business processes our assorted clients use it for, and other software that can tie into it. I’ve spent the last week or so learning software that I’ve owned for several years (as part of a package), but never had a reason to use. The added bonus in this case was succeeding at what I was attempting to do, which involved repeatedly searching online for tips on the software as I struggled to customize one bit or another.

And that’s the reward for trying something new… accomplishing my work goal was satisfying, just as learning a new game can be. Trying a new food… well, that depends on whether I like it or not. So far, so good.

Swords and Fire trilogy by Melissa Caruso

About a year and a half ago, I received The Tethered Mage as a review book. I was thrilled when I read it, and was even more thrilled when I received the sequel, The Defiant Heir, a few months later. The trilogy reaches its exciting conclusion in The Unbound Empire, coming out this April. I won’t share the individual reviews here – suffice to say that I like all three books and highly recommend them. Instead, I want to look at why I like these books as much as I do.

Let’s start with the world… you are either born a mage, or you’re not. Certain kinds of magic are favored over others, at least within the Raverran Empire. Raverran mages, called Falcons, are each bound to a Falconer with a jess, a magical bracelet that allows the Falconer to suppress the Falcon’s magic. This isn’t a big deal if your Falcon creates artifices – magical devices, like the jesses, that can be used by other people – but when your Falcon wields balefire, or can call and control storms at a whim, then their magic is sealed unless at training or desperately needed.

Neighboring Vaskandar has a different approach to magic, favoring vivomancers, who control different aspects of life magic. The Vaskandran mages, called Witch Lords, are intricately tied to the lands they govern, to the point where they can drain the life from their subjects to heal their own wounds. More subjects means more power for the Witch Lords, which is why Prince Ruven, a Vaskandran skinwitch, is looking to invade Raverra.

The protagonist, Lady Amalia Cornaro is heir to one of the ruling families of the Raverran Empire. Over the course of the trilogy, she evolves from a young scholar who defies her mother to sneak into the poorest district of Raverra in search of a book, to proposing a new law freeing the Falcons – the magicians of the Empire – from the archaic laws that bind them, and accompanying her Falcon, Zaira, into battle. Amalia is tasked repeatedly with saving the Empire, and put in the unfortunate position that leaders face of having to decide who is expendable to achieve that goal.

The twists and turns in this trilogy will keep you guessing as to who will survive, and they’re so well-written that you won’t want to put them down. When you finish, you’ll want to pick them back up to re-read the bits and pieces that connected the clues for Amalia, then back to each of those clues to see if you missed any others.

Balmoral – a Scottish delight in Chicagoland

For a recent celebration, we made our way on a snowy night to Balmoral, a Scottish restaurant in the far west suburbs of Chicago. Before learning about this delightful restaurant, I had bemoaned only being able to dine on haggis at the annual Scottish festival in Itasca, particularly since I don’t make it to the festival every year.

The ambience of the restaurant was lovely, we were seated in a neat little nook about midway through the restaurant. We were barely seated when a basket of breads was delivered, and spent a couple minutes deciding which kind to try first. Every so often, I noticed the drifting sound of bagpipes. The owner was wandering throughout the restaurant, talking to people, and every employee seemed genuinely happy to be there.

Haggis Drambuie served with three kinds of crispy toast — Haggis Drambuie at Balmoral restaurant in Campton Hills, IL

Balmoral’s menu includes two haggis dishes, one as a starter and one as an entree. I’m not particularly fond of turnips (aka “neeps”), which is a key ingredient in the entree combination of “Haggis, Neeps and Tatties,” so I ordered the Haggis Drambuie. It was a tasteful treat to start us off, with three different kinds of crispy toast perfectly proportioned for the amount of haggis and sauce that was served.

In the interest of trying less commonly available dishes, we ordered the Great Granny’s Rabbit Pie and the Perthshire’s Pleasant Peasants Pheasant. Both were delicious. In the interest of exploring the dessert menu, half of the rabbit pie came home with me.

Saving space for the desserts was well worth it. Unfortunately, the trio of mini-desserts we ordered looked so lovely, I forgot to take a photo. Well, that and we were distracted by the bagpipe rendition of “Happy Birthday”. We will definitely make it back to this fabulous restaurant.