Notes from a Fiery Nest

I miss people, I miss activities. I'm glad I have my partners in person, at least... otherwise, sanity would be not-great. As it is, we're making the most of the extra time together.

I'm working from home, which is... ok, better than not working, but not my favorite way to be.

I considered going back to playing keyboards during The Isolation, but I realized that I would drop it once aikido and gaming meetups got going again, so it's hart to justify the expense. A friend mentioned the Roli controllers, which look like a lot of fun to me. Someday, maybe... hopefully not too soon if it's because I can no longer do aikido!

I have managed to shift a little bit of my gaming online: we've played a bit of 1830 via Board18, and my biweekly RPG has moved online reasonably effectively, just as we were starting a new arc. It's not the same, but it's something.

For walks, we've been avoiding parks during the worst of the isolation policing, and going mostly to outlying crown lands and the like. It's still a big country out there, with a lot of nowhere in particular.

Hopefully, y'all are staying healthy and somewhat sane!

We went down to Virginia to visit diaspora's parents this Christmas. The stay was relatively uneventful, it was good to see folks again and get a break from Ottawa winter, all about as you'd expect.

On the way back, though, we ran into a traffic jam along I-95 around Stafford VA. A couple of cop cars went by on the shoulders, so we figured there would be a delay because of an accident, par for the course, no biggie. A few more cop cars went by, which was a bit weird, but you know, maybe just an overreaction or something.

Then we drove past an accident where it looked like a simple rear-ending, pulled off on the left, with a couple of police cars, and things opened up for a bit, although I suspected that that was a secondary accident caused by an inattentive driver.

Sure enough, traffic jammed up again, and yet more police zoomed by, driving down the paved shoulders at speed with sirens going.

A helicopter hovered in the sky over the highway ahead, and stayed there.

Traffic came to a standstill. Police cars just kept coming. A couple of fire vehicles and one ambulance went by. Still more police, including an investigation unit truck.

We were completely stopped for about an hour and a half. Cars started turning back and driving back down the shoulders. Eventually, a state trooper came and told us to do the same, and then we were directed to cross over to the other side and redirected down a country highway (US-1, the Jefferson Davis Highway).

The country highway was crawling, unable to cope with the huge volume of traffic. We stopped for lunch and gas after another hour and a half, and heard that not just an accident, but a shooting was involved in whatever incident was delaying us.

After lunch, I asked a trooper directing traffic, and he said that the highway was reopened, so we escaped the rest of the detour crawling down US-1. If he hadn't said that, we might well have turned back, because the detour looked like hours more.

We went back to the Interstate, which itself took about twenty minutes, and once there, waited about fifteen minutes more for traffic to start flowing again. A little ways down the road, we drove by the investigations unit truck and a few police cars, and there was spill absorbent scattered across the highway.

We only found out the rest of the story the next morning, because by the time we got back to Ottawa, it was about 4 a.m., about four and a half hours after our expected arrival time.

Googling the news, it looks like a man shot his wife and then led the police on a chase onto I-95, in the course of which he tried to shoot at police. The minor accident we passed first seems to have been a result of one such attempt, where the officer ducked just in time: the bullet was retrieved from the driver's headrest. Eventually, the fugitive hit a guardrail and rolled his SUV, and shot himself. He was taken to hospital by helicopter, but died there.

The police handled the whole thing very well, as best I can tell. No police fired weapons, despite the fact that this person was shooting at them. Only the man's wife and he were killed or seriously injured, and they even tried everything they could to save him. Police don't always live up to their mission--none of us do--but their handling of this incident was a pretty good example of how they can maintain lawfulness even under extreme circumstances.

It's great to be here tonight, folks! Or at least, that's what two-thirds of LJ's userbase seems to think right now!

This should still crosspost there; I'll keep my LJ alive for a while, but I've ended my automatic paid account renewal.

In other news, I had hoped to get to Quebec City for a martial arts seminar (aikido and iaido), but got hit last week by the flu that's going around town. I spent the weekend in town with family instead.

diaspora and I got out to the Cobbs's Creek and Bearbrook Creek spring floods yesterday, where we saw more water than we usually would, and consequentially fewer geese. We did still see a decent number of Canada and Snow Geese, and quite a few Pintail Ducks. We also saw more muskrats than I've seen in one place before, including some young ones--very cute.

The water was high because of recent intense rains, which flooded not only the creeks, but our basement, via the window. Fortunately, the main casualties were empty boxes, which went out with recycling this morning. We'll have to get the back yard regraded, as the root cause of the flooding is subsidence of the ground around the foundation. We'll probably recaulk the window too, and get some insulation replaced to head off any mold issues.

Yes, I'm trying to be a bit more vocal on here... maybe we can get some energy back into a decent social platform!

We have a European Goldfinch visiting our balcony birdfeeders. The default assumption is that he's an escape from domestic captivity, because its natural range isn't exactly close to here, but it's acting wild, hanging out with a mixed flock of Common (American) Goldfinches, Redpolls, and House Finches, and it arrived with an Arctic air mass. We're hoping that experts can establish its subspecies from pictures, because if it's from a Northern one (rather than, say, the subspecies particular to Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia), it might be judged a genuine wild bird way out of its range.

If so, the trickle of interest we've had for visiting our viewing area may get rather more substantial!

It's been a pretty stereotypically surburbanite day... lunch and shopping at the Carp Farmers' Market, more shopping at Pesto's Deli, Jojo Coco, and a hardware store, a bit of gaming, weeding the back lawn (there were some pretty impressive bull thistles growing there, up to well past 4 feet) and dinner cooked on the BBQ. Well, the organic pork chops were cooked on the BBQ, the organic greens went into a salad with an Italian dressing made with fancy olive oil and balsamic vinegar from the deli, and we warmed up the organic dark sourdough bread in the oven.

We so yuppie.

I'm off to Costa Rica on Sunday morning with soul_diaspora!

We're going for two weeks, staying at a timeshare via my parents near Quepos. There will be nature-watching, ziplining, sailing, snorkeling, and lots of general relaxing. We went 15 years ago on honeymoon, and this is our first time back. I gather things have changed some, modernizing a bit; it'll be interesting to see.

I expect to be pretty much internet-free while we're down there; don't shut down LJ while we're gone, m'k?

The kenjutsu seminar was very enjoyable, and very different from last year's adventures at Aikido Summer Camp. There were perhaps fifty of us in total, and I met nearly everyone who is currently practicing this style at a senior level. The hardwood floors were good for traction and stability, but hard on my feet; I wore socks for some of the practice, and was far from alone in doing so. The soke (head of the school) is a brilliant, enthusiastic, and energetic man; I enjoyed his classes immensely. The sempai (senior students, singular sempai) were great to train with and learn from, too.

All told, I figure I got somewhere a little over 20 hours of practice during my trip, at various venues: the community center where they usually hold classes, the school where the seminar was held, and my host's home: I stayed with one of the senior students, who has a dojo in his house (it replaced an indoor pool), but was unfortunately unable to practice due to injury. He also has a couple of cats, to which I was surprisingly unallergic, and a pretty good wine and scotch collection, which he was quite happy to share.

One of the students who had been to Japan recently brought back a bunch of hakama storage cloths to give away, so I now have a very nice blue and bronze one. I may also have a line on a second-hand iaito (metal practice sword, blunt, not designed to be sharpened or used in combat) at a good price; we'll see what comes of that.

A couple of us went to visit the Muttart Conservatories, which were nice, but not all I had expected: I had the idea that there were birds and butterflies, but no, just plants. Pretty and interesting plants, of which some pictures may show up (here or on soul_diaspora's LJ) sometime, but very much vegetable-kingdom plants. A few of us also went to the Heritage Festival, where we ate some interesting food, saw a few demos, and generally relaxed a bit between fairly intense classes.

To finish the trip, my luggage just got delivered: WestJet mistakenly off-loaded it when I transferred in TO, but to their credit, called me over as I got off the plane in Ottawa and told me so right away, rather than making me wait for it to fail to show up on the carousel. As usually happens, they delivered it directly to me when it arrived.

I'm glad I have today to recover, and will likely skip tomorrow's aikido practice too. Friday, I'll teach the kenjutsu class, since my sensei and sempai are all away. I'll introduce a couple of the changes and refinements from the seminar, but not overload students with all of it in one go.

...why folks with full-time jobs and houses hire housekeepers. There's kind of a lot of stuff to do, and after an 8-hour workday, some other evening activity (e.g. aikido), and supper, there isn't a whole lot of time and energy left.

(soul_diaspora is out of town visiting her family for a couple of weeks, which is why this comes up!)

I'm managing, though. The driveway is shoveled and salted, groceries got, bathtubs cleaned, bird feeders reloaded, suppers cooked, kitchen cleaned, and I got out to the Carleton Strategy Club Wednesday, aikido Thursday, and kenjutsu yesterday.

Still, today should be manageable... I have to drop off a cheque to the residents' association, go to the bank¹, and spend the evening with mom and ilanikhan. Oh, and shower, dress, eat lunch, etc. (That last part may come earlier in final version of the plan.) With the RPG being canceled today, I have lots of time, and will probably spend a couple of hours spinning tunes² and/or playing computer games. Tomorrow, I'll likely go to church, and then go for boardgames at a friend's place.

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1: Yes, exactly like that.
2: It's a bedroom DJ thing, except that I do it in the living room where the stereo gear is. I don't generally get to do much of this when soul_diaspora is around, because much of the stuff that I play isn't so much her thing.

...and I like at least half of you half as well as you deserve.

I have, however, a fair number of obligations on my time these days, so if I haven't seen you in a while, it's likely not because I don't want to see you, but because I am busy. Admittedly, some of my busy is fun stuff, but it does keep me from seeing some of you. Things will be slightly less frazzled come the fall, and perhaps even less so in the winter, Insha'Allah.

So what's going on?

Aikido continues to keep me busy. I have finally started serious work on my ikkyu test in aikido, having procrastinated quite long enough thanks. The head instructor has given his blessing, and I'll do the test itself either in late September or mid-December; we'll see how he and I feel about it in a month. I'm still coordinating seminars; the next one is at the end of October. There is some uncertainty about our space, as the building may soon be bought (the deal is still conditional, afaik), so I'm hemming and hawing about setting up the seminar after that.

In other news, vacations are winding down, but next weekend, we have a little trip to Montreal planned, the RPG I play on Tuesdays is back up, and soul_diaspora's and my parents are all arriving in town just after Labour Day, so there will be lots going on for a while yet!

How can you tell when you're leaving Pennsylvania? The sign that says "END ROAD WORK"! Ba-dum-pssh! But seriously folks... we lost an hour to traffic slowdown (single lane for miles and miles) on I-81 in PA. A local told me it's been like that for months.

I managed to get a (mild) sunburn before we even got here, thanks to overlooks and hiking in Shenandoah National Park en route. Yes, I do have lots of Scots and Irish heritage!

The weather here is Hot. Even locals are complaining.

Why, in Ottawa, an urban area of about a million people, can we not have even one really good Mexican restaurant? Mexican food, even fast food, here is plentiful, cheap, and good. In Ottawa, "passable" is as good as it gets.

I think it'll take me a few days to spin down from work etc... my subconscious isn't here yet.

Another CanGames down... lots of railgaming (Railroad Tycoon, 1830), and Dominion, and running games. I announced that I'm stepping back from running RoboRally, in order to free up time to run other things; C.o'B. is thinking of taking up the job, since he won quite often, including this year's running.

Bolide was well-liked, but ran way long; I think it was as much a function of the players as the track.

It was good to reconnect with the various con-friends... for whatever reason, there are a fair number of people who, even though they're local, I see only there. Plus, of course, B.McD. and company from Toronto.

The lack of A/C this year (on the fritz) really sucked. I'm still recovering from what feels like heat exhaustion.

I've rolled Dominion: Alchemy into my magic spreadsheet now; it was less work than I feared it might be. Unlike the other expansions, it requires a cluster of cards to work, so I've set it up so that one can select how many alchemy cards to use. 4 seems to be a good number, and 6 is probably the maximum.

I hope my aikido schedule doesn't preclude me going in future years!

My grandmother died early this morning; may those who have gone before welcome her into God's love.

...but I should recover soon.

In the meantime, foms mentioned online Roads and Boats last time I saw him, and so I finally got around to trying it. Result: my best first-time score ever on a new map: 290 of a record 340 (high scores)! Higher scores than 340 may or may not be possible on that map. I think I can see where to get the missing 50 points, because I was 1 wonder brick away from 10 more points, and a turn too late on my 4th coin to get a second stock certificate, which would add the other 40 points. This is dangerously addictive!

I just found out that I'm preaching this weekend.

Yo, Spirit dude, I'm gonna need some timely inspiration here...

I've only read the past couple of days of posts, so if I've missed something important, please comment or e-mail!

The vacation was very pleasant, and relaxing. B&B's are a very nice way to travel, and aren't generally insanely expensive; three out of the four we stayed at were excellent, and the fourth was simply undistinguished, not terrible. We can particularly recommend Le Metayer in L'Isle Verte (near Rivière-du-Loup), Le Presbytèere in Percé, and Gîte Auger in Quebec City. The first is warm and homey; the third is quite bohemian; the second is hard to describe succinctly. It is definitely very comfortable and luxurious, but in a somewhat old-fashioned way. The building is, as its name suggests, a converted presbytery built over a hundred years ago, and reminds me in many ways of my great-aunts' former home in Amherst, Nova Scotia, so it evokes a lot of odd associations, both personal and religious. At all three, breakfasts were excellent, and generally, lunch was light or unnecessary afterwards.

So what did we do? Lots of hiking and bird- and animal-watching, and a good deal of reading, and quite a lot of driving. Also, pigging out. And finally, some shopping and a trip to the Biodome in Montreal.

The new car is still made of happy; mountain roads, dirt roads, heavy rain... lots of exciting stuff to drive in, and soul_diaspora got lots of practice with interesting driving conditions too. After the upcoming cottage weekend, I'm gonna spring for a thorough in- and outside wash.

Gaspésie is indeed beautiful. There's a distinct sense of being at the edge of the world there, with villages hugging the coast and cliffs dropping into an often-misty sea. As regards the cliffs, climbing would be pretty risky, because the rock is in many places a sedimentary agglomerate which is quite prone to significant rockfall. We didn't exactly linger over the drives to get there and back, but there were many breathtaking vistas along the way. We went around pretty much the whole peninsula, driving across through the Matapédia valley to the Baie des Chaleurs and up the coast on the way there, then returning along the South Shore of the Saint Lawrence.

Hiking involved interesting mixes of flat and hilly, open and wooded areas. We saw quite a variety of birds, although not everything made itself visible: boreal forests are dense with spruce, and many small birds hide quite effectively in there. soul_diaspora will likely post a species list at some point. The seabirds were particularly noteworthy. Black-legged kittiwakes aren't all that spectacular, looking like Just Another Damn Seagull, but the same can't be said of the gannets, guillemots and murres. Guillemots and murres are mediocre flyers and poor walkers, but very good swimmers; we saw them on and over the water along most of the shore, and nesting on the cliffs of Bonaventure Island and Forillon. The gannets were even more impressive; they're relatives of the well-known blue-footed boobies, and have many cute mannerisms; look forward to lots of pictures from soul_diaspora over the next little while! They nest on Bonaventure Island in vast numbers, and range far afield in search of food and nesting material, diving into the water and truly impressive speeds to catch fish from below (i.e. on their way back up). Ravens were much more common there than they are here, which pleased me greatly. We also saw a few interesting animals, including porcupines and a black bear, prompting us not to dally on that part of the trail.

I'm trying to learn to recognize the signs left by various animals, and finding it quite difficult without an experienced mentor. Lacking that, the only way to be sure that one's right is, in many cases, to see the animal leave the trace, and while bears doubtless shit in the woods, one isn't usually around to take notes firsthand!

Finally, a couple of restaurants deserve mention: La Maison du Pêcheur in Percé is excellent; not cheap, but very good food and service, with a great view of Bonaventure Island and the Rocher Percé, gannets diving for their (only slightly fresher) seafood in the foreground. La Brise-Bise in Gaspé is a very nice pub with friendly service, good food, and a cozy, cheerful, homey feel.

All in all, a very good trip, although the credit card took a bit of a beating on it; we'll likely be eating out a little less over the next little while!

CanGames was lots of fun, as were the post-Con evenings with dagibbs and others. My RoboRally game and assorted boardgames were well-received, and I got to play a number of good games of various flavors: two RPG's, a miniatures game, and several boardgames.

( lots of CanGames stuff )

A couple of people were sick, so I didn't get any bridge-playing in on Monday, but their health is improving... perhaps there will be another opportunity soon.

soul_diaspora's parents are in town, so the evenings are pretty booked this week, as is this weekend. Lots of good food and good conversation!

Work has its frustrations of course, but also its ego boosts. On one hand, I made a suggestion for how to fix a problem that's been blocking our power supply designer for a few days, and it's showing promise. He commented that I'm one of very few managers he's seen who can actually make useful technical suggestions. On the other, I presented the project status to a director, a VP, and a co-president, and pulled it off well enough to get kudos from my boss (the director). There was quite a lot of preparation for that half-hour meeting!

And finally, my copy of Camerer's Behavioral Game Theory has been returned, and so is available for loan. It's not a light book, mind you. If you're interested, speak up!

I survived this meme!

Okay, if that isn't good enough, I'm getting some things done on my strategic objectives at work, rather than being constantly mired in tactical firefighting. My mini-circuit board for testing a product is coming along nicely, although it is breaking our layout guy's brain... it's smaller than 1"x1", and has a completely screwy connector configuration that only makes sense in a very specific context. It may be our smallest PCB ever, but it's certainly not our simplest!

Got a lift in to work, so made it in safely despite transit strike, substantial snow, and substandard street-clearing. En route, we saw a raptor being chased off by other birds; I suspect it was a Sharp-Shinned Hawk.

More, not less, love is what the world needs right now: Keith Olberman on Proposition 8.

*sigh* The cold wind today was all too fitting to my mood.

soul_diaspora: We need to get a new fan for our computer... this one's falling ap--
Offstage, stage left: RRRRUMBLE-THUD!
ironphoenix: Err, what was that? Goes to investigate, then returns. Um, speaking of falling apart, that was the hall closet.
Exeunt omnes stage left, hurriedly. The computer and its fan stay behind.

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soul_diaspora returns home with a new, $600+ zoom lens for her camera.
ironphoenix: So this would be an A-one, kick-ass time to ask how much I can spend on games on the bulk order, right?

So, what have I been up to?

Work is interesting lately: we have a stability problem in a design, and it's a tough nut to crack: after three solid weeks of five people working on it, we're beginning to see glimpses of the underlying cause, but we haven't solved it yet. Working on this stacks with my project management work, so I'm a busy raven these days. soul_diaspora is still working there on contract, so it's good to see her during the days occasionally. Having today off, I figured it would be a good time for an update!

The social life has been pretty good, between various games (including last night's poker game with assorted cow-orkers) and various get-togethers and chats with good and close friends. (More on that in a later post, perhaps.)

Aikido is a long, slow business. A more senior student asked me recently how my aikido is coming along and I answered, "I don't know; I come, I practice, I come, I practice."¹ I'm really not the person to judge how good my own technique is. Subjectively, I feel much as I have for quite some time: I can do the movements, but there is so much to work on in the subtleties that I can almost never get it all right at once. There's always something that my mind, which is watching as I practice, points out as being out of alignment, or disconnected, or unbalanced, or lacking focus, or, or, or...

This weekend is pretty open right now; I'll likely be up for some social things; I might even host games on Monday if there's interest.

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1: The more senior student laughed and said that she should do that more, so I guess I'm doing at least that much right.

Anybody out there in LJ-land free and interested in doing something together tomorrow afternoon and/or evening?

If it's one or the other, I'll try to schedule things so that I can make it to aikido (6-7 p.m.), but it's not the number one priority.

I'm back in Ottawa, and looking to do social time... anyone free this evening? ETA: success already!

(Also, soul_diaspora is looking for intravert time.)

In other news, while walking home from the bus stop, I abruptly realized that there was a skunk about one foot away from me in the bushes along the path, and did not tarry in the vicinity. I didn't even know we had skunks there...

AFK until next Sunday... y'all take care a' yourselves, 'n ah don't want no swingin' in heah while ah'm gawne!

(Good luck tracking down the reference on that one!)

Or at least, soul_diaspora and I have solved our hunger, thanks to a visit with her parents to that bastion of Southern classics, the Cracker Barrel.

Starting at the biscuits and continuing right through to the end of dessert, we went right past "OM NOM NOM" and on into "MWOF MWOF MWOF".

Fed now. Sleep soon. Maybe movie between: soul_diaspora acquired a DVD of National Lampoon's Summer Vacation.

Did I mention that when I take holidays from work, I aim really high on the culture scale?