Because I know you were worried about never knowing how the story ended…
Curse your slow but inevitable betrayal
Image
Author Archives: Josh
News from the land of the ice and snow…
Sadly lacking in midnight sun and flowing hotsprings.
Well I can confirm that it got above freezing and then dropped right back below.
In good news, we’ve heard that the water mains are repaired, so I don’t have to feel guilty about dripping the taps overnight at least.
Maybe I’ll keep my new pet iceberg around for a bit longer though, just in case…. although it’s starting to look a bit sad.
Heating and cooling almost as fast as the ISS!
After several days of power being a couple hours on, followed by couple hours off, we no longer have rolling blackouts!
Unfortunately it looks like the reservoir system that supplies our town had a pipe break and repairs may take at least a day or two. So the only water we have is the water in the 2 water towers. Thus:
Also the fridge has every pitcher we have full of tapwater.
So we should be fine. Long as the water and electricity hold out through tonight’s final single-digit freeze and the pipes survive, we should be on the way out the other side!
And our driveways won’t be melted and refrozen ice rinks either.
As long as the power lasts the next 2 hours so I can watch the Mars Curiosity Rover landing I’ll be thrilled!
Advertising apparently works.
This is what comes of letting Bevin put herself on email lists….
It’s decidedly odd to have Kringle when it’s not Christmas. Almost… wrong… but it tastes so good!
Bevin just couldn’t help herself when she saw both Copenhagen (almond and cream cheese put together) AND the sweetheart (vanilla pudding and red velvet cake, with light chocolate frosting sprinkled with red velvet cake on top) at the same time…
And no, before you ask, the diet plan is not going well.
She’s also baking 2 sourdoughs AND a pie. Good thing we have company over.
Update thy bookmarks!
We have moved! Digitally speaking at least. Please update your bookmarks to point at the new site, https://joshnbev.proehl.us/ and let me know if you find any weirdness. 🙂
Hopefully soon there will be some new news about some other digital changes! Want to get a proper image gallery up, a way to share some videos, etc.
In the meantime, enjoy a couple of pictures of us from Christmas.
All that bright natural sunlight doesn’t feel very christmasy. 
Bevin is *really* excited about whisking bread dough…
And update thy bookmarks!
“Tabletop” RPG
Sitting around a table with people describing what your characters do in the world gets a teensy bit more complex when it’s with people from a thousand miles away.
The other two players will be joining us via video chat. We’re trying a new thing where Bev and I are on the same camera, rather than being two different cameras in the chat. We’ll see how it works out.
For some reason I got a wild idea for a cool story to tell, and starting today I’m running two different games in the same world. Maybe the groups will meet up eventually? Either way, I’m excited to see what they choose to do with the story! The adventure of being a writer with characters who are literally writing themselves does keep one on one’s toes. 😂
Sudden Gnome Death Syndrome
2 minutes ago it was clear and sunny. 30 seconds before I took this image I couldn’t see the house up the hill across the street. Sadly the camera doesn’t really show how much the rain is sheeting sideway. You can see it’s blowing a solid 5 feet into our entryway though. And the water is already halfway up the curb.
But, perhaps most worryingly of all, the sudden wind and rain appears to have caused our garden gnome to give up on life and go facedown in the newly formed pond. Poor guy, he could’ve knocked on the door and come inside.
Let the game begin…
Session 1, 3 adventurers, having joined the kingdom’s defense force, are sent on their first mission, to investigate wild animal and maybe… Monster?… activity near the border of the dark forest.
The DM is prepared. I think. I certainly have plenty of notes and note cards and plans for the area of interest. We’ll see if the adventurers stick to the script or wander off to start some sort of cow-worshipping commune. Letting the players make choices makes things unpredictable. Especially when 2 of them have never done this, and one of them is Bevin.
Speaking of Bev, her busy morning is completed.
My innocent new gamers are arriving, let’s see if I can make this interesting. 😎
Sunbeam baking?
I wandered out into the kitchen where Bevin is doing all kinds of crazy things, and discovered this:
Our sourdough, Doughy, (pronounced Doug-ee) appears to have become a cat and is sleeping in a sunbeam. I haven’t seen it do that before. 😂
Retro style SPACEPLANE
Last night, having sorted all the Legos, it was time to rebuild.
There are several classic sets that I want to rebuild and display, even though it means I won’t get to use some of their cool pieces in new projects.
First up, #1682, the space shuttle. Ish. A classic set definitely strongly resembling the space shuttle, although not quite right since it’s scaled down to fit one minifig in the cockpit, and also missing the crawler transporter, and the crane to lift the fuel tank isn’t a real thing. Also the launch tower looks more like the Apollo Era tower than the shuttle tower.
But hey, SPACESHIP!
While looking through the old lego instructions I found an advertisement for one of the sets I’d forgotten existed!
One of two Technic sets I really wanted as a kid. Although looking at it now it makes me want to design some kind of monster technic shuttle that’s actually even more accurate. Hmmm…