A Running Tally of Metaphysical Phenomena

My idea with putting this webpage together the way I did was to let the blog be a kind of, well, running tally of metaphysical phenomena—in other words, the stuff I’ve been up to (with the implication that very little of what we do can truly be considered mundane)—and leave for the Writing section the things that are, oh my goodness, I almost said “timeless.” OK, definitely not timeless, but not journalistic in nature, anyway. This is way too much introduction. The point is, I’ve had a text file saved in Notepad for ages now and have added a line or two when I have a few minutes, and I finally put a couple of things, both of which should really be considered drafts or works in progress, in the Writing section, so it’s not just one item. I have another one coming before too long (it’s about food, because I’m a guy, but it’s only sort of about food), but you can go read what’s there in the mean time if you’re so inclined. You don’t have to like it.

Thanks!

Kent

Hey everybody! There is a new category of humor! It’s when you see something that is not metaphysically oriented in any way and misread it as something that is.

I work in the IT world, where encountering an operational alert with a name like “63015 – EXTERNAL EXCEPTION” is kind of run of the mill. But when you look at it and see “63015 – ETERNAL EXCEPTION” before you read it again more closely, it’s kind of funny.

A story for you. Pull up a chair. Cocoa, anyone? Alright then.

Once upon a time, when your friend Kent had been just dating The Kirsten for a short time, when it was still vital to do only impressive things so that she wouldn’t walk out the front door and go date someone else, a mistake was made. I invaded Europe.

Yes.

It was her first time playing Risk, which is why she didn’t realize that Europe is pretty much impossible to hold onto. (Like the old saying goes: “Can any man grasp the wind? Neither, [therefore*], can he hold Europe early in the game.”) Unfortunately for, well, both of us, she also assumed, innocently, that relationships outside the game amount to implicit truces within the game. If you’re laughing, it’s because you haven’t played a competitive game with the woman who, miraculously enough, is now my wife.

It was nearly three years—until three nights ago, actually—before she played Risk again.

I brought my Risk game to work the month after I started working here, and we’ve played several times since. I tell you all of this because it’s important to understand that I have to get my gaming in somehow, and my coworkers are helping me out. While we’ve been busy playing our games of Risk here, Kirsten has shifted all of her game-related vitriol to Power Grid. That’s an awesome, awesome game, so what was I to do? That’s right, it’s on the spare desk to my left, and we’re two turns in. I may be playing the weeks-long version of a game again, but it beats the heck out of leaving it at home and never playing it at all, right? Yes it does.

Also, after hearing about how great it was, and how it has all the positive attributes of Chuck Norris plus great taste that doesn’t fill you up, I finally picked up a copy of Puerto Rico!

It’s complex and has a million pieces that we got to punch out of the cardboard they came in. The basic idea is to build up a stable and productive economy in mid-1500s Puerto Rico with the aid of goods (indigo, sugar, coffee, corn, and tobacco), buildings of various functions, and colonists who are happy to do the work for you because they’re actually 3/16″ slices of wooden dowel and don’t know any better. It looks atrociously complicated at first, but it’s actually pretty simple to play. All of the various buildings and particular functions are sort of like building blocks. You don’t dip into a tub of Legos and pull out, for example, the 350 specific pieces you’re going to use to build your camel food shop, right? You take a couple of pieces at a time and keep your eye on others, you put them together how they fit best, and eventually, you’re selling camel food. Puerto Rico strikes me as sort of the same way. Eventually, you play it several times and get some experience with what the different buildings and things do, but you can jump in and play and enjoy yourself without memorizing all of that. You build a little production of goods and shipping and plantations and things, and whatever pieces you discover will help you along the way, you use. It seems like as much of a tool kit as a game, and I like that. We’ve just kind of dipped our toes in so far (have to have at least three people, and the Barley doesn’t count), but it looks as promising as everything I’ve heard. Anyone want to come over and play?

What have you been playing these days, friends? I’d love to hear about it.

I don’t wanna tell you how to spend your holiday money, but I would be doing any reader a disservice by not heartily recommending the record I Am Undone by my good friends in My Epic. It came out today, and you can find it on iTunes, if you don’t care about jewel cases and liner notes, or FYE, Borders, Best Buy, etc., if you’re like me and you do. I had the privilege of working with the guys during the writing and recording process, so I don’t have very good disinterested third party perspective here, but I think it’s just reporting the data when I tell you that you don’t own any records as good as this one. It is a powerful, complex, beautiful, and honest work of art. I can vouch for the guys in the band, too: they’re some of the kindest and most genuine men you could ever hope to meet, and even though they deserve all the success in the world, I know they would never take it if it came at the expense of their integrity.

Go listen when you have a minute.

You remember why it’s called the barley, right? Just checking. Here are the pictures from today’s ultrasound.

The legs were hiding, but they’re nice and long!

Sweet little head. She might have my nose.

The barley is watching you! Like the guy in The Tell-Tale Heart. [shudder]

You remember why it’s called the barley, right? Just checking. Here are the pictures from today’s ultrasound.

The legs were hiding, but they’re nice and long!

Sweet little head. She might have my nose.

The barley is watching you! Like the guy in The Tell-Tale Heart. [shudder]

OK, I know that the few of you who read this regularly probably don’t do so daily—that would be too regular, but seriously, those subscribe links up on the top right are there for a reason—but just in case, I thought I’d let you know a little bit too late (sorry, I just didn’t get around to it) that we’re headed to the doctor in 20 minutes to find out whether we’re having a boy or a girl! I won’t put the news on here until we’ve told our family and whatnot, so I thought I’d open the floor for your predictions.

Our genetic predispositions, to assist:
My side: My mom is one of four children, three of whom are girls. My uncle has two daughters, one aunt has a daughter and two sons. My dad is one of four boys. He has three sons, and my uncles have begotten a total of three daughters and two sons. My brothers have a total of three girls and three boys.

Kirsten’s side: Her mom is one of several children pretty evenly mixed. Kirsten’s cousins on her mom’s side are mostly boys. Kirsten’s dad is one of three children, two boys and a girl. Her cousins on her dad’s side are four girls and a boy. Kirsten’s brother has one boy and another boy on the way, and her sister has two boys.

There you have it. All the information you need. Predict! Be reasonable, though: if you say “Twins!” you haven’t answered the question. If you say anything along the lines of “Pat!” then you’re being dumb, and I totally won’t write in your name on my ballot in the upcoming presidential elections. So what do you all think?

UPDATE: Undetermined. Seriously! The ultrasound tech asked if we wanted to know, and we told her we did. She commented part way through about “not seeing boy parts yet,” but I was watching the screen, and she was definitely not looking in the right place. (I mean, my boy parts aren’t on my head. I’m just sayin’…) I’m not trained on this stuff at all, so I’m sure I probably just missed the part where she checked to see what she could. By the time we left the room, though, we’d asked point blank three times, and she never did say definitively. We did hear her say “it’s looking like a girl so far…” so we’re going with probably a girl but possibly not. We did find out that everything looks OK, though. There are a couple of little things to keep an eye on, but we were reassured multiple times that there’s nothing going on that’s too uncommon, and nothing to be concerned about. All the measurements are right, the heart rate is where it should be, etc., and we just keep on being patient. The baby is 19 weeks old so far, so we’re just about halfway there. We’re going in 5 weeks to check again for what we were hoping they’d find today, and we should have more definitive news then. We got three good pictures today, though (awesome!), so I’ll make sure to post them as soon as I can so you can have a look.

Also, I realized after I wrote the first part that Kirsten’s genetic background isn’t really going to come into play. But you can keep the information. No charge.

Stay tuned…