Photos as Promised

Here are the photos from our recent trip to Maine. Please ignore the boy's pasty white father. And I especially like this shot of our little adventurer.

Back From Maine

The family and I returned from our week-long vacation to Maine yesterday. Pictures will be posted shortly, but I will spare a few moments for a brief summary of our trip. Finn had the poor timing to decide to come down with a nasty daycare disease just before we departed. Running a severe fever, I was uncertain if we would even be able to go. But the fever broke and his first airplane ride passed without incident. We arrived in Ogunquit on Saturday night and enjoyed several days of spectacular weather and quality time with Finn's grandparents, aunt, and cousins. The daycare disease left him with a highly visible rash ("Mommy, that boy has spots!"), but the boy was in high spirits as he enjoyed daily swims in the pool and his first tastes of Cheerios, string cheese, and even lobster. The second half of the week saw us traveling north to Bar Harbor. The weather took a turn for the worse, but we still managed to squeeze in a seal-watching cruise, a kayak trip around the bay, and a foggy hike in the Acadia forest.

Now that we are back, I'm going to try to get back into my routine. Alas, my Internet access has been severely curtailed. My corporate overlords have instituted a draconian electronic surveillance policy, so I can no longer make blog posts or even check my personal email from my work computer. All my personal use of the Internet will be confined to the time between Finn's and my own bed time (as well as weekends). I'm hoping I can at least manage semi-regular posts. I have a lot to talk about. I'm starting a new game ( D20 Dragonspire), I'm reading a fantastic new book (A Game of Thrones, by George R.R . Martin), and I'm considering another attempt at marathon training. And in August, I'm off to GenCon again.

Blogger On the Mend?

Looks like Blogger may be back to normal. Some of my old posts have finally been posted and the link to Circvs Maximvs is now visible in the list of links. Whew! I was worried that I was going to have to move to other blogging software. Until these recent problems, I have had nothing but good opinions of Blogger.

Alas, my posting for the next week or so is still going to be sparse due to a family vacation. But I hope to pick up where I left off when I return.

Blogger Problems

Blogger has been acting wonky all week. That is why I have (until now) been unable to post anything. It is doubly frustrating given that I suffered an unrelated web-server crash last week.

Circus Maximus

My Charlottesville gaming friends first clued me into ENWorld, the RPG site that is the place go if you are at all into D&D or D20 games. Alas, even though I've met some amazing ENWorlders at GenCon and Game Days, I've never been one to hang out on the boards much. I simply don't play D&D/D20 enough and I really don't have time to troll the message boards when I should be a) working, b) preparing for actual games, and c) having a life with my family.

Interestingly enough, I'm starting to get sucked into Circvs Maximvs. CM is an uncensored ENWorld spin-off that seems to have a slightly tighter community. Rather, I should say that it is a community that seems to include most of the ENWorlders that I actually know from previous interactions. They are good people and the CM message boards are lively and interesting. Because they allow discussions of politics and religion, I find myself wanting to jump into discussions about things that really seem important. I mean I like talking about gaming and all, but most threads in gaming boards have absolutely no relevance to my games. Controversial topics, on the other hand, really get me riled up. And for some reason I can't stop playing the song game.

I Am Not Worthy

Ok, I thought I was hot stuff when I duplicated the diet coke and mentos experiment for my nieces and nephews. Looks like I'm only a hopeless science geek poseur. Check out what these guys have done with 200 liters of diet coke and 500 mentos.

Important Science Update

In this post, I mentioned that a fun little experiment involving mentos and diet coke. Well, here's a photo of the resulting carnage:

Technical Difficulties

I haven't posted in a while due to a server meltdown. It's back up, but I've lost some data (including a bunch of new pictures from memorial day). Everything should be repaired this evening.