I know, I know: Things have been awfully quiet around here. This is my first entry of 2017, and it’s not like I haven’t been doing anything.
For those keeping score at home, later this year I’ll hit the 20-year mark of journalling, or blogging, or whatever you want to call it. That’s a long time to be doing this, and we can’t all be John Scalzi, writing multiple entries per day. I know I’ve even written entries before about not writing entries – I’m not sure if that’s self-referential or the absence of referential. But it has gotten harder to keep writing regularly as the years have past.
Well, that’s not entirely true: In fact a lot of my writing, the day-to-day “here’s what I’ve been up to” stuff, has just moved over to Twitter and Facebook. Both of them offer more immediate feedback, and of course lower overhead in writing very short pieces. There’s also the “mental overhead” of feeling like I should have a topic worthy of spending a whole post about it. I also often have some amount of worry about whether I’m doing the topic justice, like I need to cover it from every angle and build a bullet-proof case, rather than just exploring the subject to the extent I’m able (and interested in) at the moment.
And so, I don’t write.
So, I want to write more. And we’ll see if I do – no promises, though.
So what has been going on this year with me?
The biggest news was that we had Debbi’s niece R and nephew J visit us for a week in February, which was a lot of fun for all of us (aside from Debbi and I each having a bout of food poisoning, from two different restaurants). We went to Alcatraz, the Winchester Mystery House, and Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz, and had a couple of great afternoons visiting with our friends and their kids. We even managed to get a couple of teenagers tired enough to go to bed by 9 pm most nights. Debbi thinks they had more fun on their visit than they’d expected to, and apparently they’re hoping to come back next year.
In January I went to Grand Prix San Jose, a big Magic tournament held just down the highway from me. I played in a Mini Masters event the first day, which was perhaps the high point of the event for me, as I ran the table with a remarkably good deck for only 3 packs. I played a “last chance” event to get some byes in the main event and washed out in the first round. And then in the main event itself, I went 1-3-1 before dropping, with a pretty mediocre deck. (A 6-3 record or better was needed to advance to day 2.) I think I played okay, but didn’t have the results. It did remind me how frustrating sealed deck can be due to its variance. I also played a few side drafts, one of which went well, the other two of which didn’t. It was a fun time – but exhausting! I can’t imagine playing the 24 hours out of 36 it would take to win the main event, even if I were remotely good enough to do so.
Anyway, I’ve done a few other drafts at a nearby store, with better results, even going 3-0 in my most recent Aether Revolt draft with a fast and fun red-green deck. I’m going back for another draft tomorrow night.
We’ve also had a nice home development in that our 13-year-old kitty Roulette has been getting very snuggly, and has finally discovered the joys of sitting on laps, which has been fun for everyone. We think Roulette spent a long time feeling depressed and traumatized since she lost all of her brothers between 2010 and 2013, and we got the kittens in 2012, with Jackson being a bully towards her. But I think she’s figured out how to stand up to Jackson, and has worked through her sadness and realized that she would like to get more love and attention from her humans. She’s become more active and has even been running around the house with Sadie from time to time.
There’s been plenty more going on, but that’s enough catch-up for now. I’ll try to write again soon.