Category Archives: By The Minute

You’ve heard of twitter right? Well this is our own version. Short-form notes and weirdness.

The whirlwind continues

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Yesterday we drove 5 hours from home to Houston to see an art exhibit Bev’s mom wanted to see, go to the fountain pen store Bev wanted to go to, and go to a play written by Bev’s mom’s friend Rob, who was in town to see the production.

Pretty fun to be out and about and doing real world things again! Play was really cool, only 4 people, and basically moving the props in the picture around to represent different rooms. Play was called Mama’s Boy, and is about the family life of the Oswald family is Dallas, in the years leading up to the Kennedy assassination. Really interesting historical information, especially if it’s not something you’ve ever really learned about!

And then we got up early and drove the 4 hours back to Dallas, straight to the airport. Off to Las Vegas again for 4 days to finish dealing with some family affairs remaining after our last trip. Cleaning out a storage unit specifically. Promises to be an exciting time… 😂

They’ve got my number

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LEGO has a surprising understanding of my love for spaceships of various types.

It’s… not great… for our checking account.

On the other hand, the mechanism they use to move the foils to attack position on Luke’s X-Wing is REALLY cool. Probably one of the coolest I’ve seen in a standard ‘play’ level set, so that was super interesting to build. And I can’t wait to build the Discovery.

Also, it’s a REAL x-wing, not that janky ‘resistance’ weirdness. Thank goodness LEGO still cares about the classics. 😎

News from the land of the ice and snow…

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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.

For some reason I get emotionally attached to blocks of ice, been a thing since I was a child. Very odd.

Heating and cooling almost as fast as the ISS!

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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:

The cactus shower curtain feels threatened.
Extra reserves.

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.

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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!

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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.

  • Merry Christmas
    All that bright natural sunlight doesn’t feel very christmasy.
  • Bevin excited about her new bread whisk
    Bevin is *really* excited about whisking bread dough…

And update thy bookmarks!

“Tabletop” RPG

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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

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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.

Sunbeam baking?

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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. 😂