Summer Seeding And Hopefully Sums Greater Than the Funds

Well May 27th was Peryton and my 10th anniversary, to celebrate she brought me 24 cans of cat food and a bag of litter, topping my special gift of single serving packages of Lorna Doons and Oreos which I swiped from work the day before. With that auspicious gift-giving, we mark the advent of the Summer season of travel, gaming, soccer, and partying in general. 2014 is going to be a low intensity, but high frequency sequence of events. Like flowers pollinating, not just us, feel the potential of the season ahead. Listing them would be boring. The season has started though, one can feel it.

Yesterday, JerryTel announced that Peryton Publishing GMs at GenCon this year will get tee-shirts for their help at GenCon, thanks to Peryton and Darkshade publishing outlets. He's lying. We knew nothing about it. That's kind of JerryTel's way of showing us, how much juice he has. Not just with the funding of the shirts, but with the insight at how to make the yearly big event more special special. It happened to be his birthday as well.

I am about to head to central Florida, the Tampa area, to attend Third Eye Games' home convention Salty Bay Con. I am looking forward to this convention. In its second year, I hope not only to see how young kids do things these days, I get to spend time with my family that has settled in the region. I am dreading the flight down, not a fear of flying thing, just a fear of seeing what the world of mass aviation looks like these days. That and strange viruses from the Middle East.

Today was our venture into the first annual Cleveland Concoction. The CLE "geek scene" is coming into its own, with the support of prominent regional conventioneers, creating a gathering for local fantasists to party and just appreciate being wonderful. It's a not a "tabletop gamers convention" yet though. Let me explain in a bit of detail. The reason I feel compelled to explain is that there is a difference between "medium" (sci-fi, speciic title fandoms, comic book, electronic games and say fantasy cinema gathers) conventions and "gamer" conventions, and its not a matter of size. While gaming can be incorporated into all of the gatherings mentioned, tabletop role-playing, heck tabletop gaming, is an after-thought. While we were there, the games in the Gaming Room had many entities awaiting potential players, while three tables filled up quickly with players who knew each other already. A couple staffers felt obligated to swing by and speak to the ignored event providers, of course being too busy to indulge in their burning desire to play, out outside of kids on a field trip from the conventions babysitting room anybody awake had other things to do elsewhere. Abstractly, if gaming isn't the focus at an event, showing up to show your game without a few of your friends already, it is going to the event is a nice day of making friends, or not, but no new interests.

Still, there is always next year.

The long and short of things, IT'S SUMMER!

The Lovecraftianness of Summer

I love the water. I've always loved being near it, and have spent some major portions of my life being in, on, or around it. But what does that mean? What do you see in this picture?

Okay maybe you see a rock. I see a see monster from Sigmund and Sea Monsters. But can you deny there is something fishy about this one?

Not only is a giant goldfish leaping away, a fish-headed something else is standing up to chase it.

You don't see it, do you? Instead you see this.

Sigh.

Paleo PopPlop

Reading this article today, which was nutritional gobbledygook, I am reminded how much I love prehistory. This excerpt will totally explain why,



"The best catch-all (the Paleo Diet)...
very little fruit, almost no grains, a lot of meat ...
as you pound away at your treadmill, imagining yourself the predator of
the steak you will later eat. Adherents (say) our
stone-age ancestors were much healthier than us, having no problems with
obesity, cancer ... .
Pedants point out that the posthumous diagnosis of cancer was pretty
patchy until the discovery of the disease in circa 1600BC ...; and, furthermore, that many ancestors were
cut off in their prime by other factors (dinosaurs!), and it is
impossible to tell how fat they would have become had they lived to (say 34)..."



Serendipitously, I have stated to re-read the Devil Dinosaur omnibus last night. Just kind of awesome in its fact-free caloric-filled goodness.

Cinco De Mayo

As we all know Cinco De Mayo is the Native America phrase meaning Walpurgisnacht (or was it May Day?), it is always a bit of fun to do something for. It's been a weekend of festivals around here. Free Comic Book Day is a big event in Cleveland, thanks to efforts of John and Carol of John and Carol's comic book store. And there was the Dazzle A District that was taking place downtown, which I think is tribute to the Berlin nightclub scene between the the wars. But we waited for today to step out.

Yes, yes, I know, the holiday is driven by alcohol distributors, unlike St Patrick's Day or New Year's Eve, but frankly I love the honesty. I don't even have to buy a card or toys or nothing so it can't be a real one. In any case, Peryton and I headed down to the Mexican Village in Parma, to celebrate a little with the only Spanish-speakers that we know that aren't from the Caribbean in Ohio. And true to form, the place was a little more crowded than usual though the night's festivities were no where near getting started.

Robin is the biggest source of light in this photo.

Our friends, The Carlos and Family, were jovial and spent a little time with us, though they were a bit in the grind of making money. To make up for it, the tequila shots were free. Pery even got over her recent extreme flare up of Marlene Dietrich Syndrome and smiled at living beings that weren't feline.

I wish more people took "food pics" like this.

Of course I got dressed up.

I was crazy before the whole crazy man in a hat fashion.