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...And Little E Makes 3

The two seventh birthdays of Little E

An Ewok in a party hatLittle E turned 7 on the 19th – wow! Despite numerous suggestions that he was going to get a baby brother for his birthday, I wanted him to have one last big birthday bash all to himself. And so did he – after attending two birthday parties in the same weekend, two weeks prior to his birthday, he suddenly announced that he wanted to have a birthday party too, one that all his friends could attend. Maybe at the park. Maybe the park with the ducks. Which, with two weeks to go, is quite the bold declaration. Attempts to look into reserving the park with the ducks yielded little information, and in any case the forecast for his birthday was looking like an outdoor party might be a bust. I started looking around for possible venues, but it was too close to the actual date; a second birthday party would have to be held a week after the 19th. … Read more

Categories
Should We Talk About The Weather?

We’ve voided the warranty on the planet

Holy crap, guys.

It’s after 9pm.

The sun has gone down.

It’s dark outside.

It’s also nearly 90 degrees outside with a heat index of nearly 100 degrees outside. Right now.

If we don’t stop royally screwing this one up, they’re going to stop giving us planets.

Oh, wait. The planets will still be there. We, however, won’t be.

(If you’re wondering why you’re staring at something from the Weather Channel from the 1990s, fear not – that’s actually from tonight, and you’re probably new here. Go read this.)… Read more

Categories
Conventional Thinking

Do you even know how to vend?

This year, in the Facebook groups for two local conventions that I support and attend, there were little blow-ups at the last minute that got under my skin a bit. In one case, an attendee was protesting the long-standing rule that he couldn’t sell his own games person-to-person on the show floor. (That’s a no brainer. If anyone can do that, why pay for vendor tables?) In another case, a poster was berating Sunday foot traffic at the convention in the past and made the observation: “Glad I wasn’t a vendor. I would have been pissed. Because if you didn’t make your money on Saturday, you damn sure wasn’t going to make it on Sunday.”

Whoa there! 😆 Just stop before you embarrass yourself any further. Seriously. Because if you are a vendor, you’re the author of your own destiny at these shindigs. What follows is a slightly disjointed series of notes that I’ve jotted down over three years or so. … Read more

Categories
And Beyond The Infinite

The outskirts

Pluto and CharonI’ve initiated a new category here at Scribblings to encompass my rants, musings and occasional artistic dabblings on the subject of real space exploration. If there’s a surprise here, it’s that I haven’t had a category for such things in the past.

One of the things that inspired this change is this exceedingly brief movie from the outskirts of the solar system. … Read more