jcfiala

So, I've been reading to my daughter most nights, like I usually do. Some nights we just both stay up way too late - last (Saturday) night for example - but most nights I get Rose ready for bed and settle her down and read to her, possibly while she's drawing. I'm not entirely sure what she's up to, as she's got this loft bed her mother got for her, and she's recently decided to transition to sleeping under it instead of over it.

Since I don't have to wake her up in the morning anymore, I don't mind.

Anyway, a while back she wanted me to read to her in the dark, which normally could be a problem except I've got a lot of ebooks on my tablet that I can read. Having finished up the last one, I hunted around for a book to read and rediscovered the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency series by Jordan Stratford that I had hidden around in Dropbox. I happily loaded up the first book and started reading to my daughter, who likes them a lot.

The books are historical girl detective stories set in 1826, starring Ada Byron (aka Ada Lovelace), aged 11, and Mary Godwin (aka Mary Shelley), aged 14. Now, in real life these two women lived farther apart in age - Mary Shelley was 29 when Ada Byron was 11, but the author thought it would be fun to pair up the first programmer with the first science fiction author, and adjusted things. I'm not familiar enough with either person to know how realistic the rest of the portrayals are, but they characters are fun.

Interestingly, the books are on my dropbox because I backed the book on Kickstarter back in 2012, thinking that eventually I could share it with my daughter.  I only backed for the ebook version of the first book, which through the magic of stretch goals meant that I was eventually given the first three novels as ebooks for the low cost of $10.  It's a little amusing that as someone who backed the book at the lowest level, I've received all of my promised rewards, whereas folks who for more items seem to be complaining in the comments about missing items.  It's hard to say how many folks are missing out - there always seems to be some folks who are disgruntled about a kickstarter.

But, the books are a lot of fun.  Ada and Mary's relationship is rocky at first, but once they become more friendly, they decide to open up a clandestine detective agency together, and use Mary's late mother's name for it.  The mysteries are at the base fairly simple - as these are stories for middle school children - but are obscured by the social realities of the time and the usual self interest.  Ada is presented as someone who stays at home and is focused more on books, science, and math and has trouble remembering names and dealing with new situations, but Mary's friendliness and patience helps to slowly pull her out of her shell as the series goes on.

It's a fun series, and I suggest folks give it a try if they've got a child in their life who might enjoy some mysteries.

So, it's been 13 months since my wife died.

I'm apparently not the most demonstrative of people - losing my wife was a shock and felt really bad, but it hasn't really dragged on. I partially chalk this up to my wife having been sick for so long in the hospital - I had to get used to living (and taking care of my daughter) without my wife long before she was going to die. This also happily has sheltered my daughter a little - by losing her mother a slice at a time, as it were, the final loss was very sad but... she's bounced back pretty well as well. Given that Tammy got sick when Rose was, what, 4? And then died when she was almost 7, I'm guessing that a majority of Rose's memories involve having a sick/missing mother. Sigh.

So now, I'm mostly... lonely. Not entirely alone, since I've got my daughter with me so much of the time, but still - a young daughter is not the same as an adult. Not sure what to do, really - I wasn't all that great at dating back when I was young, and now there's streaks of white in my beard.

One thing I'm doing - partially to help this, and partially because I'm the only parent left - is that I joined Weight Watchers at the beginning of the year, and have been sticking with it. So far, I've lost more than fifty pounds. I'd lost some before WW, which surprised me as I thought I'd been overeating.

Last night, Rose's friend Eva-Jo had a birthday, so I drove out to their house on the east side of town - a house I'd never driven to on my own before. Happily, I was able to find it, although they had sneakily changed the color of the building on me. Had some chicken nuggets and some birthday cake, and then left Rose there for the night to come home and watch a silly anime about a vampire haunted by a human.

This morning I slept in like I usually do, as Rose is perfectly happy to let Daddy sleep in, and then ran out for some breakfast before returning home and meeting up with my friend Carol for some chores. We went through a bunch of stuff that had built up by the front door - bags, purses, gloves, coats, gloves, hats, and some gloves. Then we went through some paperwork, sending off a few things that needed to be sent off. Progress! But tiring.

Then Rose re-appeared from her sleepover, and we went over to her friend Ruby's birthday party, where there was mexican food and a gang of 7 and 8 year old hooligans ^H^H^H^H^H^H girls. Apparently, I could have dropped her off and gone off by myself for a few hours, but I didn't get to that part in the parenting manual next. So, after all that craziness we returned home and I grabbed a nap before finishing up the day watching Wall-E while drinking coffee.

Thursday marks the 2nd month since Tammy passed. So far, holding it together. Sortof.

Wow, there's a lot of paperwork you need to do when your spouse dies. Here's a heads up on things you might need.

1) At least one certified copy of your spouse's birth certificate. (Social security wants this.)
2) At least one certified copy of your marriage certificate. (Again, social security.)
3) List all the automated stuff your spouse has signed up for that's a monthly charge - World of Warcraft, HBO Now, etc.
4) Get a list of their passwords for things. At the very least you need to be able to get into their computer and phone.
5) Their Social Security Number
6) List of bank accounts, 401Ks and anything else holding value.
7) Similarly, list of credit cards and other debts.
8) A contact to HR at your spouse's employer.

So, 2018 finally.

Personally, 2017 was an improvement over 2016 in that my wife didn't collapse to the floor of the hospital, but otherwise it was rough. It started off with me being laid off on the first Friday after returning from my holiday, which wasn't auspicious. Happily, my wife's insurance for her cancer treatments wasn't based off of my job, and even more happily I managed to land a new job before two weeks went past. For once, the new job wasn't using Drupal, the CMS I've been working with for nearly 15 years now, but was a general PHP job with a marketing company named Monigle. The job's been interesting and not too difficult, and I'm looking forward to returning to it tomorrow. It was a little sad to step away from Drupal, but with various events happening in the Drupal community and with me no longer able to attend any Drupal-related events, it's kind of been nice to step away from it all.

Health-wise, we've been 2 for 3 throughout the year. My happy little daughter Rose has been healthy throughout the year, with only one day home from school for being sick this year. I've also been mostly healthy, although I had a nasty stomach bug (picked up from work) and a nasty case of hemorrhoids (which, I suspect technically I got from sitting too much at work). Nothing terrible there. Of course, my wife's battle with Leukemia has kept us busy during the year. Early in the spring she had a blood marrow transplant, which involves using chemo to try and kill off the patient's bone marrow, then injecting bone marrow stem cells from a donor, which then grow in the marrow to produce healthy blood. (In this case, since the donor is one of my wife's brothers, her blood is genetically male.) The procedure itself is a pain. Having to stay in the hospital for at least 20 days is a pain. And then once you get out, there's an additional 80 days of not being allowed to be alone along with constant checkups. Happily, my wife's family and my own stepped up, flying into town and spending a serious amount of time in hotels to help keep an eye on my wife so I could continue working.

And then, once it was done and everything looked good, suddenly her leukemia showed up again and Tammy had to go back into the hospital two times, once for a few months of chemo to get the Leukemia under control, and a second time for a second bone marrow transplant (from her other brother this time) which we're still recovering from. This time they really hit her hard with the chemo, and it was much rougher on my wife. This now makes two years in a row where she got to celebrate her birthday in the hospital, which we agreed we're really tired of. Hopefully, this will be the end of it.

On the positive side, a number of good things happened. My daughter's on the Honor Roll at school, which is nice. I'm enjoying my new job more than I was the old one. I've spent a lot more time with my family than I normally would. And although my wife's health has been a big source of stress this year, I can't point to anything else that's been a problem - money hasn't been a problem thanks to my wife's good insurance, for instance, the house hasn't fallen apart, the cars have been working fine... and so on. Indeed, we've managed to pay off all of our debts aside from the mortgage.

So, it's been a stressful year personally. With my wife needing a constant presence, I haven't really been able to game much this year, aside from one campaign (for Dungeon Crawl Classics) which has suffered from inconsistant attendance. I've also discovered that my wife being in the hospital causes me to go into a frenzy of game-buying, which means that we've got piles of games around the house which haven't been played yet. Hopefully she can stay out of the hospital to prevent this from happening again. I also haven't been able to do much miniature painting this year, although I continue to buy up minis and supplies from time to time. Hopefully in 2018 I can get more time for myself.

So, 2018. Hopefully a better year than the last two.

Well!

Had a bit meeting with my wife's doctor last week, and it turns out that things dramatically improved in two weeks. I had been wondering if I'd need to buy her a Christmas present this year, and now it looks like I will have to. :)

Bone marrow transplant in a shockingly brief 3 weeks - happily a donor (her *other* brother) is already there and seems healthy, although he flies into town next week for a quick physical at the hospital. We want to get her undergoing treatment as soon as possible, before the leukemia comes rushing back to kill her again.

Mind, she might die anyway. They're not kidding around this time - the really hard chemo and radiation treatments are on tap, and having a second one of these is chancy. But it's a fighting chance, so we're going forward with it.

Last night, I finally read the last few chapters of "The Wizard of Oz" to my daughter Rose. Honestly, the last chapter isn't much of one - it's two paragraphs of Dorothy finally seeing her family again. And the two chapters before that... well, it feels like poor Mr. Baum was running low on energy. It's fun having the wizard blow away without her, it's nice to see her and her friends joining up for another leg of their quest, but what really happens after that?

They meet the china town with the china people inside, which is cute.
They meet the forest beasts, and the Lion kills a horrible monster in it's sleep.
They reach the hammerheads, which they can't apparently go around, so they use the final wish of the Winged Monkeys to arrive in the South, where they then walk further to meet Glinda. (I'm really not sure why they didn't just fly all the way down to where Glinda lives.)
And then Glinda wishes them well, promises to use the Golden Cap to use the Monkeys to send the three companions to where they want to live, and then tells Dorothy to use her shoes to go home.

As fond as I am of the book, I've got to say, the Movie's ending has it's good points - you get the funny bit of the wizard leaving without Dorothy, but then a witch slides by and tells her to use the shoes.

Today, we started on The Marvelous Land of Oz, where we met Tip and watched him create a Pumpkinhead to scare his guardian with. It's amusing that his Guardian, Mombi, is very carefully not a witch, as the Good Witch of the North doesn't look kindly at other witches muscling in on her turf. (She is at best a Sorceress, or a Wizardess, but heaven's no, not a witch!)

Highly amusing. I wonder if we have a copy of the first movie around here?

I like crowdfunding. Especially Kickstarter.

I love the idea of it. It's hard to make something interesting and cool these days - it costs serious money to make something, even something that's not meant to be pernament, so why not come up with a way to let a lot of folks who are interested put in a little money to help make it happen? If you can't find 1000 fans to put in $10, then maybe you should try something else, and if you can find those thousand people - or two thousand, or five, then something really cool can happen.

I back creators on Patreon, and I've backed projects on Kickstarter since July of 2010, when I backed my first project - The One Page Dungeon Codex, Print Version. One page dungeons are interesting ideas - an entire adventure written up on one 8.5 x 11 page, map, encounters, background, a mix of art and presentation that ranges from the basic map and monsters to works of art depicting flying ships or characters in a mystery. (I've also backed occasional projects on IndieGoGo, but only a few.)

That was kickstarter #1, and I haven't slowed down since. Sure, there's been projects that haven't come through - sadly, these things happen - but I've apparently got enough of a feel for these things that I've not lost much on any project, and I think there's only 10 or so projects that I don't expect to deliver, out of more than 300 backed.

But enough on that - what I thought I'd do is list through some of the kickstarters I'm backing now and why. Maybe they'll be interesting to you!

Amsterdam Coffeeshops - a coffee table book by Andrew Looney - This isn't a book I'm backing, as I'm not really interested in Amsterdam coffeeshops, but Andrew Looney is also the game designer and head of Looney Labs, a game company that puts out some really interesting games, such as Pyramid Arcade, a set that was kickstarted last year. I put a dollar in to keep an eye on the project, which has happily funded. If you're interested in a qwirky book showing off the marijuana coffeeshops of Amsterdam, you could do worse than drop $40 on this, and since Andy Looney's already fulfilled one kickstarter, this one would be a safe one to back.

DCC Lankhmar - DCC is short of Dungeon Crawl Classics, a fantasty roleplaying game with an old-school feel. This project supplies rules and background for playing in Fritz Leiber's class world he used for his stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser... it's something I've been looking forward to. Goodman Games was a bit slow on the last kickstarter by them that I backed, for the core rules and a bunch of free adventures, but what they produced was magnificent, and I'm curious to see what they're going to do next with this kickstarter. I've enjoyed Fritz Leiber's stories, too.

Every once in a while I back something not because I expect to get something from it, but because I think it's something that would be good to have done. The Mana Boardgame Tavern is one of those - I used to live in Pittsburgh, and I think the idea of a boardgame tavern there would be great. Sadly it's not doing very well - they don't seem to be promoting it much, and I don't think my five dollars will be collected. But who knows?

The Solar Grid is a graphic novel about space, and I found out about it from Warren Ellis' newsfeed, which was enough of a recommendation for me to back it. You can read the first three chapters of it online, so take a look! Sadly, this one's underfunded now as well, but there's still 18 days to go to pick up more support. Ganzeer, the creator of the book, is moving to Denver later this year, and I've been slipping him news about various indie comics events happening here.

Gloomhaven is a boardgame kickstarter success story already - the first kickstarter for this game raised $360,104 to print the game, which went on to great reviews (currently #7 on Board Game Geek) and there weren't a lot of copies to go around - 200% markup at least. So this second campaign for the dungeon game has now raised more than two million dollars for a game that's already been produced once. This game combines dungeon crawling action with euro mechanics, using legacy mechanics to show how characters advance through the game. Personally, I'm really excited to see it.

Monkey Minion Press' first kickstarter was for a children's book about scientists who changed the world, which I backed to get for my daughter. She's a little young for it so far, but it's a great book, with interesting art and summaries of the life of 20 different scientsts. Now they're back for Beyond: An Art Book of Mechanical Space Exploration, and I'm happy to back them a second time. This book concentrates on the machines used to explore space (manned and un-manned) such as Curiosity, Voyager, Mercury, Sputnik, and more, along with desriptions of what they did.

I have a weakness for interesting Tarot decks, and Kickstarter has not been helpful with controlling that weakeness. Kayti Welsh is creating her fourth deck through kickstarter, and 78 Tarot Astral is the third one she's created that I've backed. The really interesting thing about her decks isn't that she does a whole deck - instead, she gathers 78 different artists and has each of them do a different tarot card that matches the theme. You'ld think this could come out with a mess of different pictures, but she's really got a good handle on this - I was really fond of her 78 Tarot Carnival deck.

Bill Mantlo's best known creation is probably Rocket Racoon, but another of his creations is Swords of the Swashbucklers, a Marvel graphic novel and 12 issue follow-up series that features teenager Domino Blackthorne Drake who gains a strange power and then she joins an interstallar pirate crew. This reprint not only brings an interesting story back, but it will also help support Bill Mantlo, who was the victim of a tragic hit and run that's left him needing constant care. So, you both get a cracking good story and help support someone who needs it.

And finally there's MST3K - it's not being kickstartered right now, but it's something I supported at the tail end of 2015. Not only has it released the 14 episodes I backed to me, but they've been picked up by Netflix, and (depending on your country) the new episodes are available to subscribers to watch. Go take a look - Joel's said that the more folks who watch it through Netflix, the more likely that Netflix will decide to buy another season.

That's everything I'm backing right now. Take a look - there's a lot of good things here, I think. Later on I'm planning on going into some of my successes and failures when backing kickstarters, as well as a rundown of some of the cool Tarot decks I've collected.

This is official notice that I'm winding down my livejournal account now. The new terms of service are alarming, for one, and for another I am no longer allowed to access livejournal from work due to the russian servers.

I am jcfiala across the internet, and similarly I'm jcfiala on dreamwidth. I hope I see you there!

This is a blog post copied from John's Website - please feel free to join him there and post comments. He has set up openid, so you can post there with your livejournal account using your openid, which is the same as your journal url minus the http://. You can find this entry at http://www.jcfiala.net/blog/2015/01/02/book-read-last-policeman-ben-h-winters.

I'm lucky enough to have started come across a recommendation of this book in another blog, and was up until about 12:30 last night finishing the damn thing, because I just had to stay on and see how it ended. So, I think it's pretty damn good. Plus, I'll warn you that this book won an Edgar award in 2013 for "Best Original Paperback", so apparently a bunch of other folks also liked it.

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