![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
In Which the Year Begins
Jan. 13th, 2019 06:43 pmAnd so begins what should be our final year in the Bay Area.
We are diving straight in, doing our best to spend the whole year getting ready for our move to Hawaii. We're going to do our best to make sure we get something major done every month (this month: get our gardener and handyman who'll help prepare our house for sale going, which we still need to do) and we're going to do our best to empty the house of stuff that we don't need over the course of the year (this month: we've started with some games and clothes and oddments stuck in various drawers).
Good News: We were happy to lead the year off with some good news: the latest attempt by the insurance companies and/or hospitals to screw us out of money got dealt with when HealthNet agreed to pay for K's anesthesiologist from her surgery last year. I really don't exaggerate when I say that over the last two decades we've gotten tens of thousands of dollars of bills that the insurance company was supposed to pay and we had to fight about.
Secret Gaming: Gaming has begun at Secret, the Wednesday-night Endgame replacement. It's very close to Endgame, but about half-a-mile toward Jack London Square. The neighborhoods start to get a little seedier as you move further away from the Oakland Convention Center, and this place is almost directly under the Nimitz Freeway (which is LOUD), but it turns out to be a very nice venue. Just a quiet room in a converted Victorian that reminds me of a fraternal hall or something. It's got a stage for small shows and three tables across the other wall for our gaming. We had 10 people or so and two tables the first Wednesday, then 13 people or so and three tables this last Wednesday. It's been a good group of the nicer and/or more serious gamers from Endgame, and after the uptrend of people in the second week, I've got my fingers crossed that it'll manage to stick around.
Sunday Gaming: I got lots of games for Christmas, including Charterstone, a Legacy resource-management and village-building game. I'd been super-intrigued by it because of the idea of building up a village over 12 games, but all my local gaming friends had expressed a lack of interest, in part because of its relatively simple mechanics. Well, Kimberly to the rescue. She agreed to try it out with me, and we've now managed two games of the twelve (though they really have the second game set up as a continuation of the first, so the first, learning game was slow and the second was fast). I do agree the mechanics are simple, but I'm enjoying it, and am particularly intrigued by how our village will develop over the course of the next ten games, as we unlock new things and build them. As I was writing for this, I got lost for a moment in what I'd like to do next game ("get my gold up to four; unlock the constructed tile I held onto; and see what it allows me to build") and that's an example of why Legacy games work.
Bad Shoes: My biggest problem of the year so far: shoes. Yeah. For my great hiking shoes from two Christmases ago, I wore through the inside of the back of the heel, exposing the plastic stiffener there. Or as I call it: the plastic pain device, because it cut up my heel last time I tried to hike. But, because I largely used them for hiking on dirt paths, the soles were still good. So I took them to a shoe repair store and they said they could fix it by covering over the inside back with leather. Great, I thought: half the price of new shoes and more ecologically sound. Do it, I said. I got shoes back with an entirely stiff collar and when I took them out for a walk of less than a mile, they literally wore holes in my ankles. MUCH worse than they were before. So I took them back, and they've theoretically softened the collar, but I couldn't really measure if they wore right now because I still have painful holes in my ankles. Maybe in a few days. Meanwhile, I discovered that I'd worn most of the soles of my normal walking shoes smooth. They're just from September or so, but they were apparently a bad purchase without solid enough soles. They're probably still OK for a month or two, but not in the rain or in the hills. And it's been raining. So last week I was feeling like I had no good shoes to wear out of the house. Well, hopefully the hiking shoe problem is solved (if not, it's back to the shoe repair one more time for more softening), and today I made it out to Target and got some new walking shoes that will hopefully fix the other problem.
Writing: I have been lagging in my writing since the new year, alas. I've just been feeling lazy/needing more downtime. But maybe I finally turned it around last week by starting in on some Mechanics & Meeples articles. I first-drafted the first, and I'm now working on a second and have notes for a third, which all told will take me to the end of February. And then I'd really like to get back to Designers & Dragons so I at least have the majority of the new books in a very raw form by the time we move.
Working: And of course it's been back to work for two weeks now. It's been the usual work I've had for the last several years, which is trying to balance way too many priorities, but I'm acutely aware this should be the last year that's the case because I'll be cutting down on my work and simplifying after we've (hopefully) sold the house next year.
The Last Days: Generally, I'm aware that these are my last days in California. We could move as early as January 1st next year. That's when our house should be available, and it's entirely possible that it'll be a day when we can get cheap tickets. (Though there are two parts to our move date: when tickets are cheap after the holidays, and when the Kauai Humane Society is willing to meet us at the airport to inspect our cats' paperwork.) But if not January 1, then surely within the week thereafter. So this day next year, we should be living in an empty-ish house in Kauai, waiting for our books and games and extra clothes and looking to fill it with new furniture. So I now know that I've been to Secret two times, and there now only 50 more this year, and that's likely it for me. And that I won't be seeing the first two weeks of winter in California again, and that when I'm annoyed by the students returning from winter break in a week or so, it'll be the last time. Because it's the beginning of our California end.
We are diving straight in, doing our best to spend the whole year getting ready for our move to Hawaii. We're going to do our best to make sure we get something major done every month (this month: get our gardener and handyman who'll help prepare our house for sale going, which we still need to do) and we're going to do our best to empty the house of stuff that we don't need over the course of the year (this month: we've started with some games and clothes and oddments stuck in various drawers).
Good News: We were happy to lead the year off with some good news: the latest attempt by the insurance companies and/or hospitals to screw us out of money got dealt with when HealthNet agreed to pay for K's anesthesiologist from her surgery last year. I really don't exaggerate when I say that over the last two decades we've gotten tens of thousands of dollars of bills that the insurance company was supposed to pay and we had to fight about.
Secret Gaming: Gaming has begun at Secret, the Wednesday-night Endgame replacement. It's very close to Endgame, but about half-a-mile toward Jack London Square. The neighborhoods start to get a little seedier as you move further away from the Oakland Convention Center, and this place is almost directly under the Nimitz Freeway (which is LOUD), but it turns out to be a very nice venue. Just a quiet room in a converted Victorian that reminds me of a fraternal hall or something. It's got a stage for small shows and three tables across the other wall for our gaming. We had 10 people or so and two tables the first Wednesday, then 13 people or so and three tables this last Wednesday. It's been a good group of the nicer and/or more serious gamers from Endgame, and after the uptrend of people in the second week, I've got my fingers crossed that it'll manage to stick around.
Sunday Gaming: I got lots of games for Christmas, including Charterstone, a Legacy resource-management and village-building game. I'd been super-intrigued by it because of the idea of building up a village over 12 games, but all my local gaming friends had expressed a lack of interest, in part because of its relatively simple mechanics. Well, Kimberly to the rescue. She agreed to try it out with me, and we've now managed two games of the twelve (though they really have the second game set up as a continuation of the first, so the first, learning game was slow and the second was fast). I do agree the mechanics are simple, but I'm enjoying it, and am particularly intrigued by how our village will develop over the course of the next ten games, as we unlock new things and build them. As I was writing for this, I got lost for a moment in what I'd like to do next game ("get my gold up to four; unlock the constructed tile I held onto; and see what it allows me to build") and that's an example of why Legacy games work.
Bad Shoes: My biggest problem of the year so far: shoes. Yeah. For my great hiking shoes from two Christmases ago, I wore through the inside of the back of the heel, exposing the plastic stiffener there. Or as I call it: the plastic pain device, because it cut up my heel last time I tried to hike. But, because I largely used them for hiking on dirt paths, the soles were still good. So I took them to a shoe repair store and they said they could fix it by covering over the inside back with leather. Great, I thought: half the price of new shoes and more ecologically sound. Do it, I said. I got shoes back with an entirely stiff collar and when I took them out for a walk of less than a mile, they literally wore holes in my ankles. MUCH worse than they were before. So I took them back, and they've theoretically softened the collar, but I couldn't really measure if they wore right now because I still have painful holes in my ankles. Maybe in a few days. Meanwhile, I discovered that I'd worn most of the soles of my normal walking shoes smooth. They're just from September or so, but they were apparently a bad purchase without solid enough soles. They're probably still OK for a month or two, but not in the rain or in the hills. And it's been raining. So last week I was feeling like I had no good shoes to wear out of the house. Well, hopefully the hiking shoe problem is solved (if not, it's back to the shoe repair one more time for more softening), and today I made it out to Target and got some new walking shoes that will hopefully fix the other problem.
Writing: I have been lagging in my writing since the new year, alas. I've just been feeling lazy/needing more downtime. But maybe I finally turned it around last week by starting in on some Mechanics & Meeples articles. I first-drafted the first, and I'm now working on a second and have notes for a third, which all told will take me to the end of February. And then I'd really like to get back to Designers & Dragons so I at least have the majority of the new books in a very raw form by the time we move.
Working: And of course it's been back to work for two weeks now. It's been the usual work I've had for the last several years, which is trying to balance way too many priorities, but I'm acutely aware this should be the last year that's the case because I'll be cutting down on my work and simplifying after we've (hopefully) sold the house next year.
The Last Days: Generally, I'm aware that these are my last days in California. We could move as early as January 1st next year. That's when our house should be available, and it's entirely possible that it'll be a day when we can get cheap tickets. (Though there are two parts to our move date: when tickets are cheap after the holidays, and when the Kauai Humane Society is willing to meet us at the airport to inspect our cats' paperwork.) But if not January 1, then surely within the week thereafter. So this day next year, we should be living in an empty-ish house in Kauai, waiting for our books and games and extra clothes and looking to fill it with new furniture. So I now know that I've been to Secret two times, and there now only 50 more this year, and that's likely it for me. And that I won't be seeing the first two weeks of winter in California again, and that when I'm annoyed by the students returning from winter break in a week or so, it'll be the last time. Because it's the beginning of our California end.