Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

Following the crowd

Choose One, a game from Looney Labs — “Follow the crowd” or “Buck the trend”… not much of a choice when you’re a geek.

Last weekend, at DorkStock, which is a mini-gaming convention inside Gamehole Con, I played a Looney Labs game called Choose One. In Choose One, the current player picks a card and one of the two answers, and the other players try to guess which answer you picked. Depending on the players, some are more straightforward than others such as pancakes vs. waffles or baseball vs. football. Others were harder, like cauliflower vs. broccoli. (I like both.) And some we didn’t even want to play because they were deemed too obvious. Follow the crowd vs. Buck the trend was one of those; everybody at the table would pick buck the trend.

It occurred to me since then that occasionally, following the crowd can turn out well. At least, if it’s the right crowd. Once upon a time at DragonCon, I crowded around a booth in the dealer’s hall with my friends. I don’t recall who decided to stop there, but we were wandering as a group, so we all stopped and looked at a comic book that was being sold. I don’t recall really noting what it was about at the time, it was a #1, and the author/artist was signing them. I think we had just tried the board game there, a cute little game called Bosworth, which adds an element of luck to chess. Since I’m terrible at chess, I liked adding luck to it. And the characters in the game were from the comic. It wasn’t until I got home and read the first issue of Dork Tower that I was hooked.

I had an advantage my friends didn’t… the genius behind Dork Tower lives a state away from me, so I’m more likely to bump into him at conventions in the area. Like at a Wizard World ComicCon the following year. And I joined some online groups related to the comic and started chatting with other fans. Then I found out he drew other games and started buying those.

Eventually, this lead to some of us suggesting hosting a convention related to his work and that of the other artists that published under Dork Storm Press, such as Aaron Williams, creator of Nodwick. We realized that would be a significant amount of work, and determined that it would be better to hold a mini-convention within a convention that John Kovalic was already attending. This worked so well, we held it repeatedly at one convention for several years, along with two DorkStock UKs and a DorkStock West. (I didn’t get to go to those.)

Real life interfered for a couple years, but now DorkStock is back, two years in a row, at a new convention in Madison, Wisconsin. Several people are already planning their Igor Bar contributions for next year. And my involvement is all because I followed the crowd that year at DragonCon.

The Little Things

It doesn’t happen often, but I ran out of spoons today. After arriving home, I realized that my energy levels were too low and my aches from the accident were too many to go back out, and I rescheduled my dentist appointment. It’s not a huge deal, they were accommodating about it, it’s just not something I would usually do.

I’ve spent a lot of the last week and a half, since the accident, thinking about little things, some good, some bad… the fact that my blog just deleted the whole list is on the bad side.

I have amazing friends, family, and co-workers who have been entirely supportive throughout this accident mess.
My work laptop, which was in my trunk, survived the accident, even though my trunk did not.
Lego C3-PO, on my keychain, lost a leg. This is amazingly appropriate. (Lego Darth Maul survived intact.)
My new car is unquestionably the perfect color for me…
and is sadly lacking in bumper stickers. I hope to remedy this soon.
Every time I look at the accident photos, I’m amazed that I walked away.
At the same time, I’m bummed that I missed my first opportunity at a black belt test. I did watch it, and I would have tested with an incredible group of candidates.
As I was loading the washing machine this evening, I looked out the window and noticed that my maple tree is now convinced that it’s fall.

I miss karate. Switching from up to 5 times a week to 0 is hard. I want my elbow and shoulder to heal quickly, so I can get back on the mat.
I’m impressed with how efficiently my insurance company has handled their side of things.
Did I mention my amazing friends? Yes? Well, they’re worth mentioning again.

A sudden change of plans

I was supposed to test for my first degree black belt tonight. Was. Unfortunately, a driver who was supposed to be paying attention to the road, and presumably wasn’t, rear-ended me on Tuesday, leaving me in a rental car and with a mild concussion. Per doctor’s orders, I’ve missed a couple days of work and have to avoid extreme physical activities and contact sports for at least a week. A black belt test certainly qualifies as both.

But enough whining, there will be another opportunity in the spring to test for my black belt. I was lucky to walk away from the accident. And my Camry, Roheryn, has been all about luck, from the moment I won him at a Cubs game in 2012.

My Camry, Roheryn, on his first and last days with me. — Roheryn, on his first and last days.

I entered a sweepstakes through the local Toyota dealership, winning a pair of tickets to a Cubs game and a spot as a finalist to win a Toyota Camry. On the day of the game, one of the finalists didn’t show up, bring my changes of winning to 1 in 5. We were each given a baseball with a number on it, and most of us had the player who was drawing the winning ball sign that one. Then he reached into a bag and picked one of the five balls in there; the number matched mine and happened to be his jersey number.

We took this car on our big road trip in 2013, visiting national monuments and parks on an eleven day drive. I drove this car to each of the out-of-state regional karate tournaments we’ve gone to, and loaded unseemly amounts of cargo from trips to Menard’s and other stores into the trunk and back seat.

Apparently the good luck was mine. Everything that’s supposed to happen in a car accident to protect the people inside did – the back window shattered appropriately, two airbags went off (did you know there’s a foot airbag?), and the back and front crumpled up rather than letting the other vehicles injure me.

I hope my next car is lucky too. Preferably without an accident.

Thoughts on Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

I read a biography! That or it was woefully mishelved at Goodwill. I’m inclined to believe the latter, I don’t think Abraham Lincoln was actually a vampire hunter.

It’s a fascinating concept, taking an extraordinary man and adding a supernatural twist to his life. The author, Seth Grahame-Smith, clearly researched Lincoln’s life extensively in order to add a vampire element to every tragedy in Lincoln’s life, beginning with his mother’s death when he was nine.

The vampire mythos has also evolved: young vampires experience severe damage in direct sunlight, but older vampires can endure some time outside with appropriate equipment (clothing, parasols, etc.). They do not, I note, sparkle. They also play an integral in the Civil War, with opportunistic vampires viewing slavery as an easy food source. Lincoln’s view of slavery is directly tied to his hatred of vampires, and the Emancipation Proclamation was a strategic move meant to cripple the vamipres’ easy food source.

Despite a minor in history, I don’t read many biographies. I am tempted to pick up an authentic biography of Abraham Lincoln to see how much reality fed into this book. Meanwhile, I will look into the author’s other books… Pride and Prejudice and Zombies sounds interesting.

Visiting the Blue Box Café

I don’t recall when I first heard about the Blue Box Café (BBC, because that’s a great acronym in context); it seems like it opened ages ago, I kept wanting to go. With a late Saturday afternoon free, we ended up there for an early dinner recently. For anyone not familiar with the source material, “Blue Box” refers to Doctor Who’s TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space), a machine capable of traveling through time and space that is permanently disguised as a British police box.

Me, a TARDIS door, and some Doctor Who clothing.

There’s nothing particularly fancy on the menu, though some of the items bear Whovian names; what we tried was delightful. The attention-getters are the decor and merchandise, all Doctor Who-related. In addition to the usual collectables (K-9 bobblehead!) for sale, there was a book about the show by a Midwest author, and several pieces on the walls were fan creations. And who can resist taking a photo by the Blue Box mock-up? As we left, employees were setting up for an evening of live music – be sure to check their event schedule before you go!

I normally chat with my companions at meals, but we were both distracted by an episode of Doctor Who that was playing on the televisions. We eventually pulled ourselves away mid-episode (we have seen it before), stopping outside to admire the Blue Box bench before heading home.

Thoughts on Phantom Limbs

Sometimes you discover a book and wonder why you didn’t read it sooner. In the case of Phantom Limbs, I know why, yet I wish I had read it a year ago so I could justify re-reading already.

Last year, a couple weeks before I was scheduled to close on my house, we went to BookCon. As you may guess from the name, they were books involved – in large quantities, and mostly free. With an impending move, almost all of them were promptly packed, where they stayed until I bought (& assembled) bookcases in the fall. At that point, Phantom Limbs was sorted onto the shelf with other G authors, where it stayed until this summer when I went looking for a book I could put down. (Cause I couldn’t write a black belt essay in the bath.)

Oops!

As it turns out, it wasn’t that type of book. It’s more of a stay up late, read snippets at every opportunity type.

After the sudden death of his younger brother, followed by his best friend moving out of state, Otis turned to swimming as a distraction from his grief. He is driven to compete by Dara, an amputee whose own tragedy prevents her from competing at her former level. In the midst of training (Dara is convinced he can make it to the Olympics if he just pushes harder), Meg comes back, and the two of them work to rekindle their friendship while addressing their unresolved issues from Mason’s death.

What makes this book memorable is the level of depth Paula Garner puts into each character. Each of them has issues that are being dealt with – or deliberately ignored – that the others can help them with. They make mistakes, just like any teenager, that seem like the right choice at the time. And there are limits to what they can fix. Most importantly, the main characters evolve throughout the story.

This year’s big harvest: tomatoes

This year’s favorite harvest recipe: tomato soup.

Each year, it seems to be a different crop that goes wild and leaves me scrambling to use it or freeze it. Last year’s tromboncino squash forced the discovery of new recipes (orange zucchini bread is fabulous), the purchase of a food processor, and is still taking space in various forms in the freezer.

A few good tomatoes — Ripe Glacier and Ananas Noire tomatoes.

This year’s bumper crop is Ananas Noire tomatoes. Cassandra will happily eat them raw, but they’re fairly large, so even she can’t keep up. I’ve been taking extras to work a couple times a week. The stellar find for dealing with the excess harvest is this tomato soup recipe.

I typically make a recipe at least once before tweaking it to my taste, but I don’t usually have plain tomato juice in the house, so I substituted V-8 juice (which is mainly tomato, with other vegetables added) the first time. I’ve worked up from there, adding onions (caramelized one time), green peppers, celery, and what pushed it over the edge to I could eat this every day, leftover beef. Some days I even remember to pick some basil for the recipe.

Tomato soup ingredients in the crockpot, then swirling in the heavy cream, and lastly, in the bowl.

I drop it all in the crockpot first thing in the morning, then run the immersion blender through it when I get home from work. After it’s mostly blended, I add the heavy cream and blend again before dropping the butter in. (Let’s be honest, that’s mostly because I like to watch the swirly pattern as the cream mixes in.) I leave the butter to melt for a few minutes, then stir and serve.

I’m not particular about which kind of beef I include, it just depends on what leftovers I have in the fridge. After a day in the crockpot, it’s all going to dissolve nicely. The first attempt was thin sliced fajita beef; I’ve also tried steak and short ribs (cooking on the grill, of course). They all work nicely.

In theory, we eat a little of it and freeze the rest for delicious soups in the winter. Last weekend’s soup – a full crockpot – never made it to the freezer.

Million Dollar Quartet at the Paramount

We’ve had season tickets to the Paramount Theater in Aurora for a few years now (since the year they had Cats and Les Miserables on the schedule), so I think it’s fairly significant that Cassandra declared Million Dollar Quartet as her favorite so far. It even beat Aladdin, which we saw in Chicago last December.

The Million Dollar Quartet was made up of Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley, and is set entirely in and around the Sun Records recording studio in Memphis, Tennessee, on the one day that the four performers happened to be there. Jerry Lee Lewis was the new face in the studio, the hotshot kid who was (in the musical, at least) impressed by the indoor toilet at his hotel and the famous musicians he was meeting. At the same time, he was eager to declare that his would be the next gold record on the wall. Elvis Presley was searching for happiness at a studio that didn’t understand him, and the other two were hoping for their next big hits.

Imagine, if you can, the amount of talent that was gathered at Sun Studio on December 4, 1956. Then imagine what kind of talent you need to reproduce that sixty years later, including capturing the era in the set design.

The Paramount nailed it.

This show is definitely worth seeing. It’s probably worth seeing again, though I suspect my opportunities to do that – at least during this run – will conflict with my karate schedule.

Time for the Brookfield ZooRunRun!

Or as I prefer to call it, the ZooWalkWalk. That’s what I usually do at Brookfield Zoo’s annual 5k, though this year included a little sprinting as well. Several years ago, we happened to arrive at the zoo as their ZooRunRun was finishing, which is how it came to my attention. By the time it rolled around again, we were already learning karate and hustling up the Hancock once a year; walking a few miles on a fall morning seemed like a nice addition. Consistently scheduled for early September, the zoo has a knack for perfect weather for the event.

The runners start first, split into groups by their expected mile time (self-assessed), followed by the walkers. Everybody is timed automatically based on the bibs, and you can scan the QR code on your bib to retrieve your time. Alternately, you can queue up for the lone laptop (there used to be more) and enter your bib number. In addition to the traditional water and banana handouts, there were two different samples this year to help with recovery – BarkThins and Kind bars.

As a walker, I slowed down occasionally to watch animals that usually rest in the heat of day – both the warthogs and wallabies were unusually active this time. After the race, the wallabies had already settled into their normal lounging by the time we walked by again. In fact, one of the biggest benefits I see to the ZooRunRun – other than supporting their conservation efforts – is the opportunity to wander the zoo before it officially opens. The faster you move during your walk or run, the more time you have at the zoo with reduced crowds.

Hardware is a strange name for a restaurant

That was my first thought when a friend asked if I had tried the place I’d been driving past at least once a week for the last year. “It’s a farm-to-table restaurant.” Wait, what? Really? I just thought it was a brewpub, which I don’t go out of my way for since I don’t drink beer. (Yes, I realize brewpubs have other good features.) So I Googled the restaurant and spent a while ogling their menu.

Last week, I had a chance to go with a friend. We opted for a high-top table, right next to their greenhouse. (They grow their own salad greens in the greenhouse, along with hops for their beers, and fruits and nuts in their micro orchard.) Then the waiter introduced himself and said these magic words: “We have 411 whiskies.” I could go every day for a year, have a different whiskey each time, and not make it through the entire list! I won’t go that often, of course, but I did set up a spreadsheet to track which whiskies I’ve tried there. The Templeton Rye from their Happy Hour menu narrowly beat some of their whiskey flight options for the evening.

Greenhouse, whiskey, wood grilled bread, meat & cheese plate at Hardware — The Greenhouse, Templeton Rye, Wood Grilled Bread, and a selection of meats and cheeses at Hardware in North Aurora

Their food was equally impressive, particularly knowing the greens are grown in sight of our table, and some of the meats are cured or prepared there. After our Wood Grilled Bread with hummus, olives, cucumber, feta cheese, and arugula, the waiter brought fresh baked rolls and honey butter to the table. I had almost finished my roll when dinner arrived – homemade ravioli for my companion, and a mixed platter of meat and cheese for me. The roll came in handy between bites of habanero tequila cheese, and my favorite of the meats was the duck bacon.

I did bring half of my platter home, so we didn’t look at the dessert menu while there. I did, however, look it up afterwards, and suspect that I’ll be ordering just an appetizer and dessert next time. And a whiskey, of course. Only 410 left to try.