Trivial musings.

I think we can all agree that 2016 has been a pretty crappy year.  We’re only halfway through it and I can’t remember the last time I heard good news.  It’s been all mass shootings, political turmoil, hateful rhetoric bringing out the very worst in people, criminals getting away with minimal sentencing, police brutality, and the list keeps going.  My brain starts to shrivel like a dehydrated flower the more I dwell on the negativity this year has produced.  So I’m going to give my brain a break and briefly dwell on some nice things, as well as some trivially aggravating things to blow off some steam:

– I swear to god if I have to deal with another team of 4+ Torbjorns in Overwatch I’m going to put my fist through the goddamn television.  It’s becoming so common that it’s ruining my enjoyment of this otherwise excellent game.  Most of the people I’ve played with have stopped playing (on console) altogether because of this aggravating, fun-sucking nonsense.

– Gojira’s new album, Magma, is so freaking good.  It’s taken me a few days to fully digest it and I’ve come to love nearly every song.  From the haunting “The Shooting Star” to the brutal “Stranded” and the eerie “Magma,” Gojira’s latest offering has proven to be worth the wait.  I’ve loved this band for a long time and they’re showing no signs of slowing down.  I only hope they don’t make me wait another four years for new material, but I’ll wait that long if I must.

– My son is eighteen months old(!) and I feel like I’ve come a long way as a father.  We had a rocky start back when my wife was working nights, but schedules have changed and we’ve gotten into a nice groove… or so I thought.  My son’s behavior and development are thankfully wonderful, but it’s time to start introducing some changes to our smooth routine.  The biggest problems I’ve encountered are getting him to drink from something besides a bottle and feeding him different foods.  The latter issue is a problem every parent in history has faced, and now it appears to be my turn.  He can’t eat baby food forever, so I try to introduce whole, natural foods for him to eat.  My success rate has been low.  Bananas, raisins, avocados, and dates are eaten without a problem.  Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, apple, zucchini, string beans, chickpeas, olives have all been literally thrown aside.  The bottle is another issue altogether.  Sippy cups are met with screaming protests, and cups with child-safe straws are also thrown aside.  Surfing parenting sites has been unhelpful to the point of discouraging when I see “you should have weaned your child off the bottle months ago.”  So yeah, just when I think I have this fatherhood thing down, it’s time to mess things up again.

– My wife has the patience of a saint and I cannot believe she still wants me as her husband after all this time.

– Garth and I are increasingly excited about attending the first-ever ESCAPE VELOCITY next weekend, and CONNECTICON the following weekend.  We’re blazing a trail to a new horizon and then returning home to familiar territory.  Both weekends should be lots of fun and we hope you’ll join us.

– A tabletop, pen-and-paper Pathfinder game with my friends is slowly gaining momentum.  Unearthing my roleplaying game books and flipping through the pages to pick a race, a class, skills, feats, and all the variations is making me feel young again.