One of the local game stores I like to wander around in, Gritty Goblin has an excellent selection of games, minis, and random accessories. The staff is always pleasant and helpful, despite seeming to consist solely of twenty year old young men, a demographic that has earned somewhat of a reputation for misogyny. Even at my age I still feel a little nervous in that context; so the friendliness is really reassuring.
Shopping local: the Novel Refuge
The Novel Refuge is a local used bookstore that sells books to benefit local refugees. You can donate your books (gently used) there, and you can shop the books they’ve already got (digital money only: credit card or tap-to-pay, no cash transactions). They also have a decent selection of donated board games.
‘Til we’re on the other side
Today I was listening to “The Breaking Light” by Vienna Teng, and remembering a friend’s pregnancy, and how we were all holding our breaths for her.
Listen to the sirens, listen to the heartbeat
Listen to the turning tide
Listen to the murmurs, carry them inside you
‘til we’re on the other side
And we listened to the heartbeat. And now we’re on the other side, and she has a rambunctious toddler, and we all breathe.
And I think this is a good time of year, and time of history, to remember that there will always be another side. We’ll get there and we’ll get there together.
Shopping local: Three Gear Games
I’ve been shopping and gaming at Three Gear Games and their predecessor store (The Family Game Store) since I moved to Maryland. The owners are friendly, and I love being able to host board game days in the store when I don’t have the spoons to do it in my house. Plus their stock is awesome; not just games, but stuffies and various accessories too.
Shopping local: the store formerly known as Mother Nature’s
There’s a chain store near me, Wild Birds Unlimited, that used to be a local mom-and-pop shop and still employs many of the same employees even after the original owners retired/sold the store. I like them a lot.
Shopping local: Queen Takes Book
I’ve been trying to buy my physical (paper) books from Queen Takes Book, even if they have to order them, rather than ordering them from Amazon. I’m not doing any kind of complete boycott (I lack both the executive function and the certainty that it would accomplish anything useful); but actively purchasing from a local store is something I love doing.
Community
Lots of thinking about community and small towns this weekend.
Community is a system of mutual obligations and unmeasured transactions. (I stole this line from a friend because it’s true.)
You help people, they help you, on down the line. It doesn’t even have to be a barter economy, just a gift economy.
But in every case: you have to show up. You can’t half-ass this.
A Butler’s Book
In the vein of trying to get my stuff all documented so I have predictable schedules and don’t accidentally forget to change some unknown filter and my house blows up, I’m trying to start really writing down all the details of my household.
At some point a little while ago, I heard about the concept of a “Butler’s Book,” and I really like it. Googling it today found me this blog post and associated Google Doc; I’ll be adapting that to meet my needs and then printing it out.
I also kinda want to start keeping a paper address book again, but with more information than just addresses. Like, birthday/favorite color/fandom/etc. I should look for a template for that, too.
This project goes hand in hand with my “I’m Dead, Now What?” binder.
Dalinar’s speech from Oathbringer
This post contains significant spoilers from the book Oathbringer.
Continue reading “Dalinar’s speech from Oathbringer”Social Time and Normative Time
Despite the fact that I have a lot of trouble being on time to things (probably due to a little bit of time blindness/optimism about how long it’ll take to do stuff), I have a very Normative sense of time: things happen at an established time, and we should attempt to meet that time/deadline to the best of our ability.
My friend told me a while back about another way of viewing time – Social Time. This is the way of thinking about time that’s often assigned a nationality (Moroccan time, Greek time, Island time, whatever), and it’s associated with just accepting that things happen when they happen and not stressing too much about running later than anticipated.
I find Social Time very anxiety inducing; this might be related to the Ask/Guess dichotomy, in that I like to have things clearly defined (even if I fail to meet them). Hard to say for sure.
I also have this Tweet bookmarked from a while ago; let’s see if embeds still work.
https://twitter.com/the_wilderless/status/1578258844605730816?s=20&t=BfpB_R4f5-Hz_SEOHkNY_w
Emilybook 