Blackmoor Vituperative

(I originally wrote this on Roger Carden’s Facebook page, but it got realy long, so I am posting it here, instead.)

I’ve mentioned this once or twice before. I’ll mention it again, because I think it’s something people don’t usually think about. I could be wrong, but it’s my dime, so here it goes.

There is some overlap between those who agree with me on “issues” and people whose company I enjoy, but it’s by no means 1:1 correlation. It is not necessary to despise those with whom we disagree, but by the same token, it’s by no means certain (for me, anyway) that I’ll like someone who happens to agree with me.

Personally, I’m either agnostic, atheist, or pagan, depending on how whimsical I’m feeling and how dark it is when I take out the trash (it’s a long way, through lightless woods — it’s the scariest thing I do in my day-to-day life). There are people I consider friends (real friends, not just a-name-I-see-online friends) who are Jewish, Buddhist, Quaker, Mormon, and yes, Christian. There are people I consider friends who are agnostic or atheist, as well. And of course there are people whose metaphysical framework is completely unknown to me.

There are also people wearing all of those labels whose company I avoid.

While I personally see no correlation between people who profess to follow [insert metaphysical framework here] and people who are pleasant, honorable, and interesting, I don’t see an inverse correlation either. There might be religions that serve as accurate predictors of the behaviour of people that follow them, but if so, I’ve not seen it.

I don’t believe that people’s behaviour is based on their religion. I believe that people choose their religion based on their character. A pleasant and honorable person raised Shinto will find Shinto explanations for their actions. A hateful and close-minded person raised Shinto will, too. If you’re kind, or unkind; honorable, or dishonorable; compassionate, or hateful; reasonable, or unreasonable — I really don’t care why. Not much, anyway.

I admire kind, honorable, compassionate, reasonable people, and I try to be more like them. This was not always the case. I hope that this indicates some marginal improvement in my own character.

I am here with my cat Vixen watching the snow fall, and feeling very grateful for how my life has turned out. I am not the smartest, wisest, or most hard working person I know. And yet, here I am.

I think I have generally made good decisions, but I have also made a number of mistakes. That my mistakes have not ruined my life is … I am tempted to say miraculous, but of course that’s nonsense. Good things happen to people who are better and worse than I am, and bad things happen to people who are better and worse than I am. There’s no secret plan. No hidden hands are pulling strings. Life is just chaos. We can ameliorate it a bit, but we can’t eliminate it. We can choose whether to build a house on sand, but the snow falls on the just and the unjust alike.

I’m not sure I would even want my life to have been perfect. Some of my most entertaining memories are from times when things went wrong. I once spent 24 hours in snowstorm, trapped in a crappy little Chevy S10 pickup truck that was nearly out of gas. I started the engine for a few minutes once every couple of hours, just to keep from freezing. All I had to eat was a frozen pizza I found behind the seat. I had nothing to drink at all.

It’s not 60 days in a Chilean mine, but it’s about as life-threatening as my memories get.

I have been really phenomenally lucky, all thing considered.

I wonder about my family and my friends, sometimes. They are good people, by and large. They have made decisions, some better than mine, some worse than mine. Chance and chaos have taken their toll. I look at their lives, and I would not trade with any of them. Do they feel the same way about mine? I really hope so. I hope that despite the things that have gone wrong, that they appreciate what they have, and would keep it even if offered the chance to trade.

The snow is a couple of inches deep now. I wasn’t expecting this. It was 60 degrees yesterday (15.5 degrees Celsius).

I really hated this house when we bought it. I hated it for not being what I wanted. I wanted two basins in the master bath. I wanted a vaulted ceiling in the living room. I wanted hardwood floors. And so on. I am more materialistic than I would like. I think it’s because I grew up poor (although even then, I never truly wanted for anything — I had a safe home, and food, and clothes, and toys, and parents who loved me).

Suffering is caused by desire, or so the Buddhists say. There’s some truth in that, obviously.

I have been noticing more about the house than what it isn’t, the past few days. Being grateful for what is, rather than resenting what isn’t. I would like to do more of that.

I just noticed that the yellow flower that bloomed yesterday, the first flower I have seen here, is covered by snow. I am going to go put a plastic cup over it. Maybe it will survive.

For the first time in a very long time, I got a good night’s sleep and woke up refreshed on New Year’s Day. I woke up late, but not hung over. The party at Mike & Rob’s was fun. I enjoyed the hospitality and the company. However, if I was a bore or a boor, I have only myself to blame, as I only had two glasses of wine all night.

I am not done writing Bulletproof Blues, which is disappointing. I’d hoped to have the text done by now, and be working on the layout. I am not in panic mode yet. As long as it’s done and up for sale on DriveThruRPG by Mysticon in February, I’ll be happy.

I am a little worried about when I’ll be able to play after we move, though. I game rarely enough as it is. Once we relocate to Charlottesville, I’ll be at least an hour away from any gamers I know — or, indeed, from anyone I know, other than my sweetheart. Kind of a bummer, that.

On the bright side, I have recovered from the horrific food poisoning I got at Carytown Sushi on Wednesday. I am actually hungry for the first time in four days.

I recently got the hatch of my car fixed at Pouncey Tract Collision. They did a great job. I just wanted to start off with that, because I keep forgetting to blog about it.

This has been a great weekend. We went to a friend’s Christmas party on Saturday, and then went out to dinner at Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar. Great food, but ludicrously overpriced. About double what we would normally pay. But it was a celebration, so what the heck. The food and service really were great.

Today we made lasagna and gingerbread cookies, and invited some good friends over to watch Christmas specials and movies. We watched Santa Claus (the crazy Mexican movie where Santa fights Satan), Elf, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas, and How The Grinch Stole Christmas. That was great. I firmly believe that Christmas is for everyone, regardless of religion or lack thereof, and I love sharing it. As usual, we made too much food. We’ll be eating lasagna for the next week. Lucky for us, we really like lasagna.

Tomorrow we go to fill out the loan paperwork for our house. Yay!

It’s been a crazy December. The craziness actually started in October, with my wife being in car #2 in a five-car accident on the freeway. She is almost healed up from that, and she has a shiny new Honda, so all’s well that ends well, but still, it was a crazy time for a while there.

I am spending a lot of time working. I haven’t counted the hours, but I would estimate somewhere around 60 to 70 per week. I don’t mind that: it’s close to the end of the project, and everyone’s antsy — and I love my job. But it means that I have not had as much time to indulge my hobbies as I would like.

One of those hobbies is my car, a 2003 Hyundai Tiburon. I have been meaning to do some cosmetic work to it for, well, months, but for a lot of those months, every weekend it was either raining or over 100 degrees outside. Bleh. Lucky me, my car was hit in a restaurant parking lot. That time of the year, I guess. The lady who hit me was honorable and asked around for the owner of the car. The insurance settlement was enough to repair the damage she did, and also took care of the cosmetic stuff I had been planning to work on.

Another hobby is a superhero roleplaying game I am working on. I would really, really like to have it completed by the end of the month, and on DriveThruRPG by mid-January. But we’ll see.

I am not the only one with problems. A dear friend of mine —

Let’s sidebar, for a moment. English is a great language, rich with the diversity of the many cultures we have absorbed or conquered, but I feel it has a few serious deficiencies. One of these is our word “friend”. I think we need at least three words for what is currently referred to as “friend”. We have “acquaintance”, of course — someone whom we have met, and perhaps encounter socially from time to time, but whom we do not actually know and with whom we do not intentionally socialize. Then we have:

The social friend: You drink with him at parties, and maybe have lunch with him once in a while just to have some company. He’s amusing, most of the time, and you don’t mind talking to him, as long as the conversation stays light. You might know his political or philosophical beliefs, but if so, it’s because he volunteers that information to anyone within earshot, not because you actually want to know, and not because he has any interest in what you think. You’ve never met his family, nor he yours, and if something serious happened in your life, you’d probably think of telling him the time you ran into him, but you would never make a call specifically to tell him your personal problems, nor would he think to make such a call to you.

The good friend: You have lunch because you enjoy each other’s company. You help each other move, if you don’t have plans. You talk about your kids, or your spouses, and you actually listen to the other person. On the other hand, you probably don’t talk about the intimate details of your marriage problems, or how broken up you really were when your cat died. You might not ever be truly close, but you respect each other and you like each other.

The dear friend: You have known each other through good times and bad. You have disagreed, sometimes quite seriously, but your friendship has persisted long after those disagreements have been forgotten. If you go out of town, he’s the first one you ask to watch your cat, and if he asks, you agree immediately. If he calls you and needs a ride because his car broke down in Pennsylvania, you ask him for directions. If he is in trouble, you respond. It’s just that simple.

So, as I was saying, a dear friend of mine had some personal issues a week or so ago, and for a while I was worried about him. I still am, actually, but not as much as I was a week ago. But it was really surreal for a while.

On the other hand, it hasn’t been all bad. After literally years of searching, we have finally found a house that is closer to where my wife works (she commutes an hour each way right now) and which she likes. This was no small feat. It’s also nearly $100,000 less than some other houses we were looking at just a few weeks ago, which pleases my wife more than pretty much anything else ever will. As it happens, the interest rates just bottomed out, so we are getting a good deal all around. Barring unforeseen catastrophe, we should be moved into our new (to us) house by the end of February, which is outstanding.

So… crazy, crazy month. That’s what I am saying.

I turned 45 this week. I had a great week. We got a new kitten, Vixen. A friend and his son came over and we grilled hot dogs and watched a Batman movie (Mystery Of The Batwoman). We had dinner with a different friend at Famous Dave’s (a rib place). Life is good.

I am going to post a photo of a coffee mug every day in August and talk a little bit about where we got it and why I like it.

This mug has never held coffee, tea, or any other beverage. Back in the early 2000s, I did a lot of remodeling of our house in Portsmouth. When I remodeled the hall bathroom, I decorated it in a Victorian sun and moon theme: lots of dark blue, with bronze suns and moons here and there. I bought this Anchor Hocking mug to use as a toothbrush holder. Susan and I both used conventional, move-it-with-your-hand toothbrushes back then.

Nowadays, this mug sits in our guest bathroom, filled with new (sealed) toothbrushes for guests, as well as floss, a razor, and a tube of toothpaste. We have guests stay the night from time to time, such as when we have parties and friends come in from out of town, and we try to make sure they have all they need in case they forgot to bring something. It’s kind of funny: when a guest does need a toothbrush, and opens one up, they almost always leave it behind. Why? We aren’t going to re-use it.

We don’t use manual toothbrushes ourselves, anymore, so we stay well-supplied with the free toothbrushes the dentist gives us every time we visit. In fact, we have way too many. Susan recently boxed up 20 of them and sent them off to some soldiers for a program where she works called “America’s Adopt a Soldier”. She got a letter back thanking her. According to her letter, in some of the countries and cultures into which our military is sent, people do not brush their teeth, and it’s impossible to just buy a new toothbrush — receiving a new toothbrush after 7 months is awesome.

I am going to post a photo of a coffee mug every day in August and talk a little bit about where we got it and why I like it.

Spent an hour or so with Erik, one of my oldest friends, this afternoon. That’s the best thing that’s happened to me in a few weeks.

Sometimes the simple things are best. That’s what I like about this plain glass beer mug. It’s solid, sturdy, comfortable… it’s just a good, practical mug. Like the Pepsi mug, it was a gift from my mother.

Observation: The people I get along with best choose to assume good faith — that I am saying what I mean, and that there’s no sinister subtext. The people I don’t get along with choose to interpret what I say in the worst possible way — that anything I say is in some way a veiled insult.

I’m not saying that I have no input in this equation: clearly, I do. I have worked, and shall continue to work, to improve my contribution to that equation. But I think it’s important for me to realize that there are parts of the equation that are beyond my control, and that they always will be.

It’s also important to remind myself to assume good faith in others.

I am going to post a photo of a coffee mug every day in August, and talk a little bit about where we got it and why I like it.

A good day at work is a great day. Just wanted to say that. 🙂

In December 2009, we went to Philadelphia to see Cinematic Titanic Live at the Keswick Theatre on New Year’s Eve. It was an awesome show, although six-plus hours in antique theatre seats was a test of my endurance.

On the way up to Philadelphia, we stopped outside D.C. to have lunch with my sister Kat and her family. That was awesome. After that, we got to see some interesting architecture in Baltimore, because I had my GPS set to avoid tolls, and it took us through some really interesting neighborhoods that I would have been afraid to stop in. We eventually figured out what was going on, and got back on the freeway.

While in Philadelphia, we hung out with some friends (both named Chris) who live in that part of the country, who graciously showed us around some of the finer dining establishments. Chris introduced me to Smithwick’s, which is now one of my favorite beers.

We also spent a day in the bitter, freezing cold, touring the historic sights of Philadelphia. We visited the Liberty Bell (which had a large sign informing visitors of all the things they were not at liberty to do), and a bunch of old historic buildings, most of which I don’t remember all that clearly (they kind of blurred together after a while). I do recall the Benjamin Franklin Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art, and the Rocky statue. I particularly liked the museums.

We got this U.S. Constitution mug from the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art. Much like the actual U.S. Constitution, we don’t actually use it.