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Washing dishes

Washing dishes is a chore many of us bemoan, while also taking for granted our access to a dishwasher. That’s all fine and dandy until your dishwasher decides to extend its services to cleaning the floor by leaking out the bottom. It is, of course, possible to wash all dishes by hand, but then I’d just have wasted space under the counter where the dishwasher is supposed to be. And to be honest, there are days when that extra energy needs to be expended elsewhere. (We never leave dishes sitting, as the cats would insist on helping us with the cleaning process.)

The open dishwasher with the top two racks (there's a silverware rack!) partially pulled out, with Arwen, a white and black cat, looking in.

The most important thing about replacing an appliance is making sure you match – or at least, don’t exceed – the dimensions where it needs to go. It took me a little while of looking through the dishwasher listings to realize that a listing for 24 inches wide is apparently referencing the door width; the inset part (which is what I measured first) is of necessity slightly smaller than that. That realization made shopping so much easier, I was trying to figure out why ours was a non-standard size.

You may recall that last year, we had to replace the refrigerator (for similar reasons: that freezer leaked onto the floor). When selecting a new dishwasher, I decided it would make sense to match the brand and color, as they’re placed opposite to each other in the kitchen. Like with the fridge, I opted to put my Costco membership to good use, knowing they offer high quality products with reliable delivery and haul-away of the old appliances. And without the supply chain issues that frustrated the country last year, the delivery was about a week after I placed the order.

And now you’re on a jury.

As the prosecution reminded – and verified – with each potential juror during the panel process, this isn’t like the media portrays a trial. To be fair, the jury part may be – that’s not usually the focus – but the trial I sat through as a juror was devoid of the theatrics you expect to see on screen.

As each group of four was empaneled, they were sent to the jury deliberation room, and given a notebook and pen for use during the trial. (All notes are disposed of afterwards.) I was near the end of the selection process, so only sat for a short while in the deliberation room while the two alternates were selected. Except for during deliberation, the time in the deliberation room was mostly sit and wait, wondering when we’d be summoned back to the courtroom.

The trial process started as soon as the entire jury was selected, with the bailiff instructing us on the process: we lined up in a particular order based on when in the process we were selected, written on the white board for the first couple days; the bailiff asked everyone to stand while the jury entered; the back row of the jury box entered first and everyone remained standing until the bailiff announced that everyone could sit down. (Amusingly, he consistently made that announcement when the front row alternate had just set foot in the jury box; she usually wasn’t in front of her chair yet.)

Before the trial started and at the end of each day, the judge told the jury not to seek out any information relating to this trial online or in the news. Each morning, he verified that none of us had deliberately or accidentally been exposed to related information. This is an important point in each trial, as the jury’s decision is based only on the evidence presented by the prosecution and defense.

The prosecution and then the defense presented their opening statements to the jury, then rolled right into calling the prosecution’s witnesses. It’s important to note that the opening and closing statements do not constitute evidence; these are the prosecution and defense attorneys’ summaries and opinions. I think this is one of the key spots that media highlights in on screen trials, for the impassioned presentation, even though it’s less important that the witness testimony.

At the end of each day, the judge stopped the questioning and released everyone with a specific time to return the next morning. In the deliberation room, the bailiff then clarified that we should arrive 30 minutes prior to that, gathering in the jury room so we could come upstairs, set our personal belongings in the deliberation room, and reclaim our notepads (they never leave the building). We were escorted outside by an officer to avoid any accidental interactions with the defendant, witnesses, or the attorneys.

When we arrived on the second day, we were given a sheet to submit our lunch order; lunches would be served in the jury (as opposed to the deliberation) room each day unless we were deliberating at lunch time. For our trial, the prosecution witnesses were called on the second day, with the defense attorney cross-examining each one as needed, and the prosecution asking follow-up questions. The defense witnesses were called on the morning of the third day, reversing the process with the prosecution cross-examining. That afternoon, rebuttal witnesses were called and questioned, again with the prosecution calling their witnesses first.

On the fourth and final days, the jury walked into a full courtroom – all of the witnesses were now allowed in the audience – and heard the closing statements. We first listened to one of the prosecuting attorneys, who walked through the jury instructions, spelling out each charge and emphasizing which part of the testimony supported that charge. The defense attorney presented his closing statement, followed by a rebuttal closing statement from the other prosecuting attorney. After additional instructions from the judge (among other things, reminding us that opening and closing statements were opinion rather than evidence) and the swearing in of our bailiff, we adjourned to the deliberation room and began discussing the details – the first time we were allowed to talk about it to anyone, even among the jury – while waiting for our lunch. Our first order of business was to turn in all of our devices – our phones were allowed in the deliberation room during breaks, but not during the actual deliberation process. Then we needed to select a foreperson, who got to sort through the jury instructions and organize our deliberation process.

One interesting aspect of the jury process is that the jury is presented with two sheets of paper for each charge: one that specifies “guilty” and one “not guilty”. It’s fancier than that, of course, something like “We the jury find the defendant guilty/not guilty of [insert charge here]”, with a specific line for the foreperson to sign and lines for the other eleven jurors’ signatures.

We did not rush our process. Using the whiteboard and some paper taped to the wall (it was a small whiteboard), we summarized overall impressions of each witness and their reliability before we ever discussed the charges. We started with anonymous voting on sets of charges (there were appropriate groupings that made sense) – a guilty/not guilty vote written on a piece of paper, then read out all together to see if there were any differing opinions. We discussed the differing opinions at length, clarifying questions from our notes, then ended up tabling the issue and coming back to that particular set of charges near the end. After the first discussion, we found we were all willing to voice our opinions in that particular group and dispensed with the slower anonymous method. Each juror signed each appropriate verdict sheet for every charges as we reached a consensus on them.

Eventually we reached a consensus on all of the charges and summoned the bailiff by turning the button near the door. The bailiff then notified the judge, who summoned everyone back to the courtroom before admitting the jury. The foreperson carried the envelope with the signed and unsigned sheets with the charges. When requested by the judge, the foreperson handed that envelope to the bailiff, who passed it to the judge. The judge reviewed the sheets, did some rearranging, then handed them to the clerk to read each signed verdict sheet out loud. After all of the sheets were read, at the defense attorney’s request, the jury was polled – calling out each juror number – to confirm that we each agreed with the reported verdict.

And then we were done. The bailiff escorted the jury back to the deliberation room, we piled any pages that had been used in the notepads for their destruction, and waited while our electronic devices were retrieved. We were again escorted outside by an officer, released from further jury duty obligations for at least a year.

An overview on selecting a jury

I have mentioned jury duty before in passing as our other civic responsibility beyond voting and paying taxes. Oddly, until last week, I had never had the opportunity to participate in the process. I received a jury summons in college that required me to call in twice a day to see if I needed to show up, and then released at the end of the week without putting in an appearance. Near the beginning of 2020, I received a letter from the county asking to verify my eligibility… and then the rest of 2020 happened.

Earlier this year, I received an eligibility verification letter again and completed the survey for the county. I then received a summons for the first week of August, filled in a survey about myself (including experience with lawyers and law enforcement) but was dismissed on the preceding Friday. A couple weeks later, I received another eligibility notice, which included a question as to the best month for my schedule. I listed November, since my travel/convention schedule is usually light this time of year. Not surprisingly, I received a summons to appear in November, and on the preceding Friday (and Saturday and Sunday), an email hit my inbox saying I needed to appear at the courthouse. (Interestingly, it was a different courthouse than my previous summons.)

Bright and early last Monday morning, I gathered my packed lunch and reading material and headed in. I went through what most travelers would consider light security – I was allowed to take my water bottle in and keep my shoes on. A bailiff directed me to the jury room, where I stood in line to have my name highlighted on a list and my juror number pointed out to me, then in the next line to scan the barcode on my actual summons and provide me with a debit card for the ten dollars a day plus mileage that my county pays. I stood in a third line for general instructions, which was primarily where the bathrooms, coffee, and donuts were located, and found a comfortable seat. Once everyone was checked in – about an hour after the time we were scheduled to arrive – a series of instructional videos ran explaining the overall process. One of the bailiffs mentioned that they were supposed to seat four juries that day – those can be either 6- or 12-person juries – so they did expect to call a good chunk of the people in the room.

I was in the second group called. Like the summons, this is randomized – the bailiff read off a sorted list of thirty-five juror numbers (the high end of the numbers was close to 200) and we assembled near the assigned bailiff who led us to the appropriate courtroom. We were reminded to turn off any electronics before entering the courtroom, and filed in to sit in the first four rows of the audience benches, which look like and are as comfortable as old-style church pews.

The judge walked through some instructions and introductory questions for the potential jurors – making sure everyone was over eighteen and could understand English – and explained the expected duration of the trial before reading the charges, the list of witnesses, the defendant’s, and the attorneys’ names. He (in this case) then asked people to raise their hand if they had an affirmative answer to any of the necessary questions, which were effectively:
1) Do you have a reason to be biased for or against the defendant for these particular charges?
2) Do you have any personal or work obligations that would prevent you from serving on this jury (for the next four days)?
3) Do you know the defendant, any of the witnesses, or any of the attorneys?

All of the people who answered affirmatively then had to give brief explanations for their answers; after a brief break, they were all dismissed from the jury pool for this trial. After that, a randomized group of four potential jurors were summoned to the jury box and asked questions by both the prosecution and defense attorneys about their survey answers and whether they knew anyone who had experienced or been accused of the particular charges this trial was about.

While dismissals at this point were unexplained, the defense appeared to dismiss anyone who had personal experience or close friends/relatives who had experience with the charges (which is logical); the prosecution dismissed one person who had a friend accused on similar charges. There were also some dismissals that seemed related to regular exposure to certain groups of people, particularly lawyers and law enforcement. When someone was dismissed, another random number was called and added to the panel until a group of four was accepted by both the prosecution and defense. At that point, they were ushered by the bailiff to the jury deliberation room and another group of four were called up to the jury box. This process continued until a dozen jurors and two alternates were selected.

I won’t discuss the particulars of the case – that’s better suited for the courtroom and the jury deliberation room – but I will discuss the trial process from a juror’s perspective next week.

Taking the week off, have some Zuko photos.

I’ve spent most of the week at jury duty, so I’m sharing some photos of Zuko instead of writing anything meaningful this week. At some point in the near future, I expect I’ll share some thoughts on the jury duty process (though probably not the trial itself), as I’ve found it fascinating.

Zuko standing on the well water tank right after checking the drying catnip.

Zuko sitting on the closed fridge door, blocking its use.

A handful of book recommendations

I’ve been participating in Goodreads’s reading challenge for a few years now. My goal isn’t overly ambitious (for me), I’m aiming to average one book a week. I’m ahead for the year, since I’m at 48 of 52 books at the moment, and that may be 49 by tomorrow.

I had a gap last month between review books and picked through some books that had already been added to my Kindle at some nebulous point in the past, so this short list of recent recommendations may include both older books and the occasional something that’s not science fiction or fantasy. My criteria for this list is books I’ve read since August that I gave a 5-star rating on Goodreads to.

American War by Omar El Akkad
This one’s historical fiction about a second American Civil War. What makes it creepy – and effective – is that it shows how the protagonist is radicalized through deliberate decisions made by her mentor.

Consort of Fire by Kit Rocha
An ancient dragon god marries the mortal ruler’s heir every century, and finally meets his match. But she’s adopted and considered so disposable that the ruler had her cursed unless she and her handmaid assassinate the Dragon. This steamy fantasy story does an amazing job at world- and character-building.

Daughters of the Night Sky by Aimie K. Runyan
Historical fiction about the Soviet “Night Witches” who terrorized Germany during World War II. I probably picked it up because of Cheshire Moon’s song, Nachthexen. (https://cheshiremoon.bandcamp.com/track/nachthexen-2)

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
This is the first of McGuire’s Wayward Children series, and having read it, I wonder how I had somehow bypassed her work until this point, especially knowing so many of my friends are fans. I will definitely be partaking of more of her delightful writing.

Goodnight, Sweet Princess by Jason Janes
This novella was published by a friend in 2015. The compressed murder mystery takes place at a Renaissance Faire which Chicago area fans will almost certainly equate with Bristol.

The Memories Between Us by Karen Peck
Another book written by a friend, this is a time travel and parallel universes romance as the protagonist desperately searches for a way to re-encounter his deceased wife.

The Shadow Baron by Davinia Evans
I was delighted with the first book in The Burnished City series, Notorious Sorcerer, when I read it last year, and was equally excited about the sequel.

The Star-Crossed Pelican by Laura Ruth Loomis
This hilarious book takes science fiction lightly with an oversized heap of drama including a “peace-keeping” weapon that forces people to relive their most embarrassing moments.

Remembering Marinda

Our friend Marinda recently lost her battle with cancer and I want to reflect on some of the memories we had together over the years. Our friendship spanned half her lifetime (though not quite half of mine). We met at Capricon, her first time attending a Chicagoland convention and my second year at that particular one. (She went on to chair that Capricon a few years ago.) We hit it off immediately, bonding over gaming, our niblings (we each only had one niece or nephew at the time), and our black cats.

When we met, she did demos or organized tournaments for one gaming company; we both soon joined the demo team for Steve Jackson Games, teaching many people the joys of Munchkin, Chez Geek, and other games. We were fixtures of the daytime gaming room at many local conventions, leaving our evening hours open to attend the parties. When I decided to hold my bachelorette party at a Capricon, she coordinated with the convention to book a room, and she helped me organize my first baby shower (the friends rather than family one) at a DucKon. She was the obvious choice to be my daughter’s godmother, and the only person other than my ex-husband and myself who was told the probable gender of the child before her birth.

Over the years, Marinda volunteered or worked for several well-known companies in the gaming industry, including her stint with True Dungeon that resulted in a middle-of-the-night text message to me saying “I killed Wil Wheaton!” (He mentioned it here.) The funny thing is she wasn’t a Trekkie and barely knew who he was at that point, but knew that I was a fan. She recruited me as her gaming co-chair for the now defunct To Be Continued convention, where we added “gaming with the guests” our second year, selecting games appropriate for the roles the media guests were known for. I talked her into co-chairing Dorkstock the year my daughter was born, knowing I’d need the extra pair of hands with an infant in tow.

We were founding members of The Lady Gamer, a fan-run webzine, and attended the GAMA Trade Show with press badges together in 2004. (All of the content we produced from 2004-2007 is still available.) That year, we also organized a scavenger hunt of GenCon’s dealer’s hall (under the Fantasy Aspirations banner) with prizes from an assortment of vendors; Marinda was the primary contact for the vendors, helping them develop appropriate clues for the hunt.

I’ve only made it to GenCon a couple times since my daughter was born, each while Marinda was volunteering or working for Mayfair Games. She recruited my daughter to pull winning raffle tickets; every player got one for every demo they played at the company’s booth, giving them the opportunity to win… games! She took her goddaughter to Little Wars one year, a convention I’ve never managed to get to.

We saw Marinda outside conventions too, of course. There was a year when I was working part-time from home and she was renting an apartment a couple miles from our house when we’d randomly schedule lunches. She had a key to our house, and I knew if someone randomly let themselves in during my work day, it was her. When I bought this house, she extended her visit by a couple days and supervised an electrician doing some rewiring while I was at work. She’d pretty much help anyone who needed it, even when it was physical labor that her illnesses, including cancer these last couple years, should have prevented her from doing.

She is everywhere around us. I went to Walgreens the other day and realized we had stopped at that McDonald’s across the street once, after exploring an area park for Pokemon Go (me) and Ingress (her). On my drive home, I passed a forest preserve that we had ventured into for similar reasons (where a guy passing on a bike asked if my daughter and I were twins), and the restaurant, Harner’s Bakery, where we took her to lunch when she visited in June before dropping her off at the nearby Metra station.

There are cat toys she brought over scattered about – one in particular that was rejected by her cat, Kelethin, and excitedly received by all four cats here. There are toys and board games she gifted us, yarn choices that she weighed in on for my never-ending crochet projects, and postcards from her travels reminding us that friendship is not limited by geography.

She’s in my kitchen every time I make an omelet, which she loved, joining the memories of my father who taught me how to make them. The brands of pizza sauce and mustard, carefully selected to avoid her pepper allergy (hint: paprika is made from peppers, and frequently disguised as “spices” on food labels) remind me of her. She recommended our rice cooker, with a locking lid, for slow cooking after Arwen discovered she could open our Crockpot. There’s a slight smile when I put the cast iron pan into the microwave – to keep it safe from cats while cooking in the oven – remembering Marinda’s freaked out expression the first time she saw me do that.

Marinda is gone now, her internment is this weekend. Our memories of her live on.

Dorkstock 2023

Though the website never got updated this year (the logo wasn’t ready until a couple weeks before the convention), we had a fabulous time at Dorkstock, hosted again at the delightful Gamehole Con. We had a good assortment of scheduled games, some pick-up games, and the perennial Dorkstock coloring table which included this year’s logo in black and white. Here’s a copy if you missed out on coloring it at the convention:

This year’s Dorkstock included our Munchkin Block Party once per day – multiple Munchkin flavors running at up to three tables (depending on registration numbers), with an overarching half-hour rule that affects all tables (and change every half hour), and the new addition of stretch goals and rewards for achieving them. For example, one stretch goal was to defeat a monster while cursed; one half-hour rule was a +2 bonus in combat if you were wearing long sleeves. (It was pretty chilly in the Dorkstock room at that point, everyone had long sleeves on!)

Munchkin Grimm Tidings at Dorkstock, using the Crazy Cooks board for level tracking and cartoon figures borrowed from my Cartoon Frag Gold set.

For player convenience, we use a board from one of the Deluxe sets even if that Munchkin flavor doesn’t have one, which is how I ended up running Munchkin Grimm Tidings with a Crazy Cooks board. And just for fun, I asked the players if they wanted to use the cartoon figures I bring for Frag. It turned out to be a great game, with a lot of player interactions – well, Munchkinly ones, like messing with other people’s combat and asking for help against difficult monsters. Amusingly, the winner was the only player at level 8 when they kicked open the door and found a monster they could handily defeat. Another player slapped an extra monster onto the combat – one that could join that particular monster without a wandering monster card – and a third player forced the level 8 player to accept her help in the combat with a card, not realizing that defeating two monsters would give him the two levels he needed to win.

Pavlov's Dogs at Dorkstock, always a challenging and silly game.

We also welcomed 9th Level Games to Dorkstock this year, celebrating their new version of Kobolds At My Baby! with a frequently crowded table of players shouting “All hail King Torg!” We also had Pavlov’s Dogs and Schrödinger’s Cats on our schedule, followed by an impromptu Knuckle Sammich (also including random “All hail King Torg!” shouts). Immediately following the convention, they launched a Kickstarter for Scurvy Buggers, described as “a found family RPG.” It’s fully funded and they’ve already hit their first stretch goal, so now’s a great time to pick up an easy-to-learn pirate RPG. I look forward to playing it at next year’s Dorkstock.

The alternate owlbear at Gamhole Con - the official owlbears, leftover from a previous Gamehole Con and discovered in a warehouse, sold out; another vendor had a different style of owlbear.

Our life-sized games: Warhamster Rally, Escape from Dork Tower, and Kill Doctor Lucky, were located just inside the dealer’s hall, and I’m happy to report that Doctor Lucky was in fact killed in all four runs. (It was really close on one of them, there were less than five minutes left when Doctor Lucky finally died.) Alas, I did not get any photos of the life-size games this year. I did, however, take a photo of this cute owlbear at the Imagining Games booth. (Yes, one came home with me. And yes, I’ve hugged an owlbear today.)

Palais des congrès de Montréal

If you don’t speak French (I don’t), today’s title refers to Montreal’s Convention Center. Having visited there recently for a work trip, I checked into my hotel room and looked out the window to see a brilliant array of colorful windows. I wondered what the building was – maybe a museum? – until I opened Pokemon Go and realized that’s where our convention was being held. I didn’t capture the evening photo, when the colored windows projected their colors onto the office building across the park, making it appear that the offices had colored lights.

In addition to the colored windows, there was a clear effort to include some unusual seating in the public areas. The exhibit hall and session rooms themselves were fairly standard for a convention center (and they need more bathrooms), but someone made a clear effort to include cozy seating. In addition to what’s pictured below, I noted one table with six swing chairs attached to it, and several other colors of the blue table set-up.

Some choice seating in the convention center: a pair of translucent blue chairs with a matching roof facing each other with a small table between them; a pair of hammocks and some swings; a faux fireplace with log-shaped bean bags.

Have you seen a more memorable convention center?

Cat photos!

I have several things I wanted to write about this week, but alas, this cold I picked up in Montreal is knocking my socks off (well, if I usually wore socks around the house). So you get cat photos! The first is a rare occurrence: all four cats resting on the sofa. It’s rare because Diane usually growls anytime she notices Arwen trying to settle near her, even when Arwen’s actually trying to curl up nearby with June.

A rare sighting, four cats sitting peacefully on the sofa.

I have multiple hunt & feed style feeders for the cats. Diane, being a more dignified (and slower) eater, will not compete with the other cats for food, so she gets her bit of dry food separately while the others get to work for it. In this case, they’re hunting in a light bulb-shaped toy that wobbles.

Three cats hunting for food in a wobbly light bulb-shaped toy.

Taking a piece of home when I travel

I was traveling for work this week and have learned over the years that it’s useful to bring an element of home when staying in a hotel room, especially if it’s for more than one night. And while the hotel does allow pets, I doubted my cats would be enamored of flying or being stuck in a hotel room while I’m at a conference all day. I opted for other comforts instead.

Comforts from home: a small light brown teddy bear wearing a red bow; a miniature Wiccan altar with symbols for earth, air, fire, water, man, woman, and cat that fits in an Altoids tin; a lotion bar and its tin.

For my hotel room, I packed a small teddy bear (named Kane) and a travel Wiccan altar. The miniature altar fits in an empty Altoids tin, and includes symbols for earth, air, fire, water, as well as man and woman, with the bonus of a cat. While the layout of the elements is directional, the cat goes wherever it wants. Both of those items are in my checked luggage, while a lotion bar and its tin – screw top, so it’s won’t randomly flip open in my bag – travel in my backpack. Airplanes, convention centers, and hotels all tend to be fairly dry.

In addition to these pictured items, I also have a travel nightlight and mini-humidifier for hotel rooms. I loathe stumbling to an unfamiliar bathroom in the middle of the night and having to turn on a garishly bright overhead light simply because I’m unfamiliar with the layout. The humidifier stayed home this time since the weather was warm; I find it more necessary when the heat is running.

And that’s how I almost make up for having to sleep without my cats.