On the way into town, I swung by a local supermarket. I wanted some bananas for the weekend, and also there was a box of a dozen doughnuts waiting for me. I worked out a deal with one of the locals, Jeff Watson: in exchange for a Wisconsin Badgers ball cap, he would buy me…
Last year I was invited to be the Gaming Guest of Honor for 2018 at Great Falls Gaming Rendezvous in Great Falls, Montana. I accepted, and ever since had been planning my trip. I’d never been to Montana before (or the Dakotas for that matter) so there were things I surely needed to experience along…
I’ve worked at Pegasus Games for a really long time. So long, in fact, that years ago I was immortalized in the Dork Tower comic strip as Bill Blyden, Manager of Pegasaurus Games. But ‘time waits for no one’ as the saying goes, and as I grow older I find that I have less patience…
I was looking over the list of things I wanted to experience: films, books, TV series — all of it. It turns out that there’s more I want to see, read, and do than the time that exists to do it in! I can’t keep up with all the films I want to see. We…
We’d been talking for some time about adopting new cats. The house has been cat-free for the last 20 months or so, and it seemed empty. We debated adopting a dog instead: T. and I both grew up with dogs and love them, but dogs are a lot more work, and neither of us were…
I’ve been attending conventions for some time now, and while they can be a tremendous amount of fun, they can also be tiring, and a huge drain on finances. I’d like to share some tips for how to stay sane, rested, and financially solvent during convention season. First and foremost: follow the 6/2/1 minimum rule:…
We’ve been catless now for more than a year. It’s been tough for me to get over; I fell in love with our pair of Siamese cats, Chyna and Buster, and their passing left a gaping wound in my heart. Finally, we’re done with travel — where both of us will be gone — for…
I was at the Henry Vilas Zoo recently, and before that the Indianapolis Zoo during GenCon weekend. I enjoy visiting zoos because I love animals — even reptiles, bugs, and fish. They don’t have to be cuddly for me to find them fascinating — though if they aren’t cuddly mammals, odds are good that I…
I fell in the shower last week Monday. More precisely, I fell out of the shower last week. On the way to the floor, I bounced off the toilet bowl using my mid-back as a springboard. I am of an age where falls in the home are starting to seem pretty scary. In truth, I’ve…
Cockroaches are everyone’s favorite disgusting pest. I’ve had my share of run-ins with the little buggers, and had to do a fair bit of research on them for a writing project, so I know how deep this particular rabbit-hole can go. When I was working on my scenario, “Bugs in the System,” for Mutants &…