I may have mentioned my tendency towards gaming in past posts. OK, that’s an understatement, of course I have. And while I’m not currently involved in a Dungeons and Dragons (or D&D to those of us in the fandom) game, it was one of the role-playing games I started with in college, way back in 2nd Edition. (It’s on 5th Edition now.) Not surprisingly, that means I enjoyed the Dungeons & Shakespeare show that appeared on the Bristol schedule this year.
Some shows are carefully scripted – and followed. I can quote significant portions of The Swordsmen show, and Cirque du Sewer follows a basic pattern, with variances for the animals’ behavior. Dungeons & Shakespeare is a combination of improvisation and luck. The Stage Master selects volunteers from the audience who draw cards from various decks (characters, goals, encounters) to determine what will be included in that performance’s adventure. Additional volunteers are selected as needed to fill the cast, and ultimately the outcome depends on all of their decisions and, of course, the results of a 20-sided die.
If you have the opportunity to experience this show, at Bristol or location, I highly recommend it.
One of the privileges of a WorldCon membership – whether you’re attending the convention or just supporting the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) with a membership – is the ability to nominate and vote on the Hugo Awards. After the committee filtered through the nominees to determine the top six in each of fifteen categories, they assembled a Voter Packet that was made available to the membership. That Voter Packet includes a mix of excerpts, entire books, trailers for one movie and a couple movies in their entirety.
In terms of quantity of material to review, it was certainly overwhelming. I made a deliberate effort to read the material provided in the Novels, Short Stories, and Astounding New Writer categories, and was lucky enough to have seen half of the movies already. As I polished off what I was going to make it through in a specific category, I logged into my ballot and updated that section. Pictured below is the Novella category with no votes logged.
Each category starts will all items listed as Unranked; you select the numbers one through six for each item you’re voting on. You may also use the No Award option at the bottom, if you think none of the nominated works deserve the award. You don’t have to rank all six items, and you can place the No Award in between rankings if you think some items should earn an award and some shouldn’t.
Oddly, to me at least, there is betting on the Hugo Awards. I only found out about that because there was some fraudulent voting in this year’s process that the committee identified and removed from the counts. Regardless, the entire process of assembling the nominees, and Voter Packet, and tabulating the votes is tremendous effort by a team of volunteers. I applaud them and appreciate the new literature this process has exposed me to.
I have mentioned several times that we enjoy attending Bristol Renaissance Faire each year. But in last year’s post, I also mentioned some unpleasant waits… in particular, the hour it took us to get from the highway exit (after driving more than an hour to get to that point) to actually walking through the gates of Faire. That was compounded by arriving after the food lines started getting long – because of the traffic delay – with the perennial problem of finding somewhere to sit, knowing that finding a place with a table is unlikely. So we approached this year a little differently, specifically stopping to eat lunch most of the way there, which allowed us both adequate seating (with a table!) and a minimal delay from the highway into Bristol’s parking.
Since we had already eaten, it was easy to select snacks at less crowded times, and we even found seating at one point in what used to be the Kid’s Kingdom. As an added bonus, arriving later meant we had energy to stay until almost closing, catching different performances from some of our favorite acts, such as Cirque du Sewer’s Fire Show, which includes a cat jumping through a flaming hoop. In a stroke of luck, we had near perfect weather for opening day (as opposed to the next day, which had storms that shut down some shows for safety and eventually the Faire itself).
Assuming the prices don’t continue to rise astronomically – ticket prices increased last year, and the parking jumped from $10 to $15 this year – we’ll probably follow this approach in future years.
The search for free time is a recurring theme this year, between travel, local excursions, work, conventions… the list seems never-ending. But I have stories to write, fun things to crochet, images that need drawing and coloring! The trick that I’m learning is that no matter how enthusiastic I am about the project, I don’t actually need to do it all in one sitting. The images below are a good example of that.
I follow a couple artists on Instagram, mainly ones who focus on watercolors, which is a medium I have little experience with. This particular image came from Andrea Nelson’s account. While the basic concept is fairly similar to what she did, hers has a lot more dark space in the cloud, separating the sections more. That’s one of the fun things about working from an inspiration… I’m making my own version, not a copy. Even the drawing part was split across multiple sessions as I had time… those little circles in the cloud take a while to draw!
The next step was painting the image. I started with the background, then moved to colors for the raindrops. It’s been a busy couple weeks, I can’t remember if I actually did the raindrops in a different sitting than the background. I did, of course, have to let the background dry before trying to reach past it to the raindrops. And I had to let the raindrops dry before outlining them with a white gel pen. Like a recipe, I tried to stay true to the original art for the first iteration. The next iteration – still a work in progress – is a little bit more me, and I already have ideas for a third iteration.
That’s right, it’s raining meeple! I’m not as happy with the cloud on this one – I like the first cloud more, with more subdivisions and the patterns seeming more chaotic. I’ll keep that in mind for the next one.
That said, I definitely like having the meeple there. The drawing was all done in one sitting, and the background paint (not pictured) on its own when I had at most 15 minutes to spare. Next up is painting the meeple.
Our Alaska cruise involved a day at sea, three port days, and another two days at sea – including one passing through Glacier Bay National Park – before ending in Whittier, which is near Anchorage. Most of the movement between the ports was done at night, giving us a reasonable amount of daytime in each port for shore excursions if we wanted.
We wanted. In fact, we managed to schedule four excursions across the three ports, without having to feel like we were rushing from one thing to another. In each port, we had some time to explore the area (mostly shopping) near the ship, including finding lunch twice. The photos below are from our shore excursions, grouped by port: Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway.
Ultimate Saxman Experience: Cultural Showcase, Native Crafts & Culinary Tasting
An eagle ornament and paint near the beginning of the painting process.
Alaska Craft Soda from Forty-Ninth State Brewing – a root beer can stacked on a spruce tip soda can
A trio of eagles carved onto branches of a pole
Tlingit dancers displaying the back of their capes, identifying their family affiliations.
The decorated front of the building where we saw the Tlingit dancers.
View of the water from the Saxman Village.
A totem pole in progress.
D&D Mammoth Ivory Dice at the Saxman Village store. It’s a standard set of 7 dice, priced at $1000.
Best of Juneau: Whale Watching, Mendenhall Glacier & Orca Point Lodge Meal (yes, we saw whales, but they don’t show up well on the photos I took)
A mountain view near Mendenhall Glacier.
Mendenhall Glacier across the water.
Mendenhall Glacier across the water with some green between us and the glacier.
Mendenhall Glacier across the water with some people for scale.
Wandering the path near Mendenhall Glacier, alternating between talking and singing because continuous noise alerts bears of your presence.
St. Yakov, the boat we took on our whale watching excursion.
Orca Point Lodge, where we stopped for an early dinner during our whale watching excursion.
A land bridge outside the Orca Point Lodge. We were warned that the land bridge would be underwater by the time we finished dinner. (It was.)
Sea lions lounging on a buoy with raindrops on the windows.
A great view of mountains and water on our whale watching excursion.
Kitchen Science Alaska: Garden-to-Table Skagway and Musher’s Camp & Sled Dog Experience
Alaska Kitchen Science excursion, the science part which involved beakers of mystery liquid and testing for acidity.
Alaska Kitchen Science excursion, where we saw a Big Green Egg and another smoker.
Alaska Kitchen Science excursion, raised garden beds growing mostly salad greens, which don’t travel to remote areas well.
Alaska Kitchen Science excursion, feeding the sourdough.
Alaska Kitchen Science excursion, assembling our own Baked Alaska desserts.
Holland America’s Noordam in Skagway with a mountain in the background.
Mountain views behind the Noordam while docked in Skagway.
Amazing views near Skagway on our way up to the Musher’s Camp to meet sled dogs.
Amazing views near Skagway on our way up to the Musher’s Camp to meet sled dogs.
Me in front of an amazing view on our way up to the Musher’s Camp to meet sled dogs.
A passenger view of the vehicle – a Unimog – we rode at Musher’s Camp to go up the mountain to see the sled dogs.
An action shot of the sled dogs, just starting their run, from the front seat of the wheeled sled at Musher’s Camp near Skagway.
An action shot of the sled dogs from the front seat of the wheeled sled at Musher’s Camp near Skagway.
I’ll let the photos do most of the work this week. One key thing to keep in mind about the Vancouver airport is that our flight was delayed by three hours, so we landed shortly after midnight in that time zone – 2am in our home time – on little sleep. Despite that, the airport was distinctive enough that we stopped repeatedly to admire it and take photos. On top of that, when we stumbled into the Pinnacle Hotel Harbourfront at wee hours of the morning, they moved us to a port view room with a stunning view.
A pair of woven hangings featuring native designs hanging in the Vancouver airport.
A native wood carving hanging in the Vancouver airport.
Two wood carved people at the Vancouver airport.
The view of the Port of Vancouver from our hotel room, including a gas station in the middle of the water and a line of sea planes.
The view of nearby buildings from our hotel room, with many trees around and on the buildings.
A giant crab in a fountain outside the Museum of Vancouver, with our visiting plush: a light green bear with brown spots and a blue-footed booby.
An awesome tree that we passed after visiting the Museum of Vancouver.
A duck that approached us as we left the Museum of Vancouver.
A colorful Canada Post box that we saw near the Museum of Vancouver.
A sea plane landing in the water at the Port of Vancouver.
Yes, we took photos in the Museum of Vancouver, but I feel most of those would require extensive explanations as to the lovely exhibits we visited. The plush are named Menta and Henrique (I’ve been told that the H is sometimes silent).
At the end of May, we took a cruise past a small part of Alaska on Holland America. This was our third cruise together, and only our second since the cruise that helped launch this blog. This ship is significantly larger than our last cruise was, with 11 levels and the capacity for almost 2,000 passengers. I’ll have follow-up posts about the amazing excursions we selected and the sights we saw.
If you plan a cruise, there are certainly budgeting items you need to consider. We live nowhere near Alaska, which meant in addition to the cruise price (per passenger) and taxes, we needed to account for flights into one airport (Vancouver, BC) and out of another (Anchorage). (I met a retired couple who realized it was cheaper to stay on the ship for the return journey instead of taking a longer flight home from Anchorage to southern California.)
We opted out of the Have-It-All package, which includes most beverages, Wi-Fi, and “crew appreciation”. Crew Appreciation refers to built-in tips, itemized on a daily basis, which is a nice way to account for the variety of cultures – and different tipping practices – that guests may be coming from. On this cruise, that was $17 per day per passenger, which can add up quickly, so it’s worth doing the calculations to see if the upgraded ticket is offset just by that. The shore excursions can add up pretty quickly too. We added a hotel room for a couple nights before the cruise, partially to offset the risk of flight delays (which turned out to be an excellent plan) and for the opportunity to briefly explore Vancouver.
The photos below are all of, on, or from the ship, showing off our tiny inside cabin, some highlights that stand out (like elevator rugs with the day of the week that get changed daily), and a lovely sunrise photo on the one day when I was up and moving for the 4am sunrise.
A subsection of the Noordam in port, showing some of the floors, an elevator shaft, some lifeboats, and a gangplank for exiting the ship.
Artwork depicting the style of cruise ship.
Two twin beds in an inside cabin. There’s a curtain behind the beds hiding a wall. There’s a stuffed bear on the left bed and a stuffed blue footed booby on the right bed. Each nightstand has a water bottle.
An early morning view of the outside pool on the Noordam. There are no people visible on the deck due to the early hour the photo was taken. (Not that there were many people using that pool when it was open, it was a bit cold outside.)
Sunrise in Alaska from a cruise ship
A rug in the elevator that reads “Wednesday”. The rug was updated daily.
Decorated glass doors to an elevator with windows out to the deck, water is visible through the windows.
A view of most of the Noordam in port, with a smaller boat, Bravest, in front.
Coming straight off an Alaska cruise, you’d think that would be the most exciting thing on my mind. I promise, those photos are coming soon, we just haven’t sorted through them yet. When I had someone check the roof for hail damage, I was hoping they’d say the roof was fine and didn’t need any work. Obviously, that wasn’t the case. However, having a new roof put me in the position to do something I’ve been waiting for… adding solar panels.
When we picked this house a few years ago, it had exactly one tree – the silver maple near the back property line – and a small mulberry shrub. The mulberry is taller now (I’ll trim it down after mulberry season, for real this year), and we’ve planted an assortment of trees around the yard, all still fairly small. In other words, we have minimal sun blockage over the roof, making solar panels ideal. As with many home improvements, I opted to go through Costco when selecting a company. The sales rep was able to come out a couple days after we provided our contact information to the guy at our nearby Costco, and fully explained the process before I signed a ton of documents agreeing to the installation and the financing.
A week or so later (it’s all kind of fuzzy because I dealt with siding issues for so long), someone came out to photograph the space and check our circuit box to see what might be needed there. Sooner than I expected, I received an e-mail offering us an installation date… the week before our Alaska cruise. We deferred, as I had a ton of meetings at work that week, we had packing to do… and we weren’t quite done clearing the space in the garage they needed to do the work.
Overall, the installation went smoothly. There were clearly defined teams working on different pieces of the project – people installing the panels on the roof while another team did the electrical work inside and outside the garage, and another person on day two to install the backup battery. (The options were no battery, just a backup, or a fancy battery and pushing power back into the grid.) There was, of course, one hitch: the electrical team noticed some issues with previous wiring work done in the circuit box which were outside the scope of the equipment they came with. I’m working to get an electrician in to fix the box issues before the inspection, hoping (unlike my siding) for a pass on the first try. The inspecting organization (this varies by locality) will then notify my electric company that it’s approved so they can flip a switch and bill me for far less than they currently do.
You may recall earlier in the year when I posted about getting new siding and how great it looked. A couple weeks after the installation, I noticed a section of siding sticking out along the south side of the house. When calling it to the attention of our sales rep, I noticed a small section near the shed that appeared loose. It got worse from there… specifically the day a piece of siding flew off the wall.
The original siding gap that I spotted. It pushed back into place easily, then blew loose any time the wind picked up.
A loose spot of siding near a window – the piece meant to hold it in place was cut shorter than needed, and the siding was cut short, so they tried a patch job with a smaller piece and some caulk.
The small piece of siding that had been caulked on fell off, making the dried caulk visible.
A loose piece of siding just north of the bay window… this is the piece that ended up flying off later.
The same piece of siding as the previous photo a day or two later, now looser, clearing sagging and taking the piece below with it.
A loose piece of siding under the front window.
The top panel of siding is down by the air conditioner instead of attached to the wall.
A loose piece of top siding by the kitchen sink window.
The previously caulked piece theoretically fixed – the piece above it now the appropriate length – but loosens with the wind.
This bottom section by the gas meter looked a little loose… it was. (Spare pieces left from the first repair guy’s siding bundle are stored along the ground.)
A loose section of siding under the bay window.
After a second failed inspection and the third set of fixes (a team this time), I walked around pulling at different sections and found three bottom sections that were clearly loose. This is one of them.
A bottom piece of siding being pulled away from the wall easily by my hand. This is one of the sections I found after three repair crews and two inspections.
It took about 6 weeks from identifying the first issue to getting someone here to fix the problems I had identified, and he wasn’t given the appropriate supplies (additional siding pieces) to do the repairs, so he had to return the next day. (He, yes, singular person sent to repair what a team of people got wrong.) The day after his repairs, the county inspector failed the siding and fascia work for assorted loose pieces that would be a problem. A week later one of the pieces that was theoretically fixed removed itself from the back wall, and it took another week to get a guy out here to fix that and other identified issues, including the ones the inspector noted on his first pass. A couple days later, I noticed that small square near the window appeared loose again, but my sales rep didn’t respond to that text or the one the next week letting him know that the siding work had failed a second inspection.
Conveniently, just under a week later, the company’s office reached out to my insurance for a copy of the approved estimate, and the Claims Adjuster copied me on the reply. I took that opportunity to reply to my insurance and the construction company asking if this was related to the failed re-inspection. And while I received no reply to that message, I did receive a “please leave us a review” e-mail which appears to trigger any time their office receives an e-mail. (I’m fairly sure I’ve gotten one each time I responded to Customer Service.) This e-mail includes buttons to review them on Google, Facebook, or the Better Business Bureau if you’re happy, and a button to contact them directly if you’re not.
I actually had a response from them within the hour and a team (two people!) out here the next day. They fixed – from what I can tell, properly – the issues I had identified. And while it looked good, given the problems so far, I went around and started poking at areas I hadn’t yet and checking everything I could think of, which unfortunately turned up three more sections of siding that were loose at the bottom. My understanding (all new from this year) is that this style of siding is assembled bottom to top, so if the bottom isn’t on right, they have to strip the entire section and reset it.
In addition to how unresponsive the company became until I started interacting with their Customer Service team, there were definitely attempts to shift the blame away from the company. When discussing it with the sales rep this week – he stopped by for the final payment – I was told that because the house is old the studs weren’t where they expected them to be (stud finder, anyone?), and then that they hire the crews without knowing what work they’ve done previously (huh?!?).
As a result, I have both removed the company name from my previous post about my new roof, and removed the Yelp review they had solicited (before I knew about the problems). This is my equivalent of being nice, since they have repaired the problems at this point. That said, if you ask me privately, I will let you know what company not to hire.
Conveyor belt sushi is not a new concept – instead of placing a food order, every table is next to a covered conveyor belt the transverses the restaurant, carrying sushi from the chefs (usually somewhat visible) to hungry guests. One of the puzzles, however, was how much you’d be paying at the end of the meal. Typically (at the restaurants I’ve visited) the plates were color-coded, with different prices based on the plate color, and a reference sheet on the table.
Kura Sushi has taken a different approach, standardizing the plate price and varying the quantity on the plate. The next advantage – besides making it easier for guests to track their spending – is that each table has a receptacle (not pictured, sorry) to slide your empty plates into. In addition to keeping your table clear, it reduces the staff responsibilities at each table.
Of course, the robot delivery drinks helps too. When we first arrived, we were created at the door, and as we were seated, asked if we have visited a Kura Sushi before. If you haven’t, your waiter or waitress will bring a practice plate over, so you can practice popping up the cover and removing the plate. That process needs to be fairly quick, since the plate is trying to escape on the conveyor belt. At my second visit (just a week apart, at different locations and with different people), the entire chain had rolled into a Dragon Ball Z promotion, with a dispenser above every table automatically dispensing a prize when the table reached 15 plates in the receptacle.
That’s standard plates, mind you… there are some dishes (such as the fried scallops) that you can order that come on plates that clearly aren’t intended for the receptacle. There are also soups (miso, ramen, udon) that arrive in bowls… there’s no way they would fit. Those are added to your bill when you special order them.
If you do special order – from the touch screen above your table – the screen will announce your incoming order as it zips towards you on the upper level belt. Even if you special order something, the dishes that you see on the conveyor belt have the same price; all prices are noted on the screen.
