The Hunter And The Hunted

 

It's been five years that I've been in Houston now, so Rish and I haven't been able to hang out a whole lot recently, but over on the Rish Outcast, we got together and reminisced about the good old days when the two of us used to drive all over both valleys in search of toys together.

If that sounds interesting to you, then you should head over to the Rish Outcast blog page...oh, or you could just right click HERE and download the episode. Then again, you could just lay there and click the play button below.

The Fozz

I asked my daughter if she knew who the Fonz was, and she said, yeah. He’s that bear.

 

Waka waka waka!

I kind of hate getting old.

Those Sweetest Words

I only got 369 words last night, but two of them were "The End" on my novel called "A Fire At The Center Of A Million Universes". 

That's my fourth finished novel...my fourth likely terrible finished novel. 

This time, I finished up the first draft, but this one will require a lot of rewriting, because I made many changes to the story as I went. Now I'm going to have to go back and see if I can't square up the beginning with the end.

Peach Creek

Camping today with my son and the cub scouts at a wilderness park that is right up the street from my house. It is both cool and surprising that something this nice is so close.

Space Battle

Not sure why I spent as much time as I did on this, but I did. I got myself a few of the Micro Galaxy Squadron ships as well as one of the Buzz Lightyear movie ships, and I thought it would be fun to make a mashup pic of them clashing. 

It's kind of what I'm writing in my book right now that I'm calling "A Fire At The Center Of A Million Galaxies." Though there's no space battles, the battles all take place inside the Nexus space.

Anklecast 47: Young Blue Eyes

It's the second episode of the new and improved Anklecast. When Frank Sinatra reached his 50th birthday, despite being on top of the world, he had a hard time with the milestone. However, his muse paid him a visit that day and brought him a special gift.

Announcer Man and I got together again, and we invited Rish along to talk about the story and even more about all the things going on these days, and what I've learned about improving my writing and maximizing my output. Hope you enjoy it.

Tena Kolokowski, and Rish Outfield provide voices for the story. I hope y'all enjoy it, and please come over and support the show on Patreon.

If you're subscribed to the podcast, you can find the episode in your feed...uh, any minute now. As soon as the ping goes through, and it updates, anyway. It took a while last time, but only a few hours. Or, you can download the episode by right clicking on this link. Or you can click the play button below and listen right here and now on this very weblog page on my website on the world wide web.

A Day In Waterton

While in Canada, we went out to Waterton National Park, and got the chance to see some mountains again. It was really nice, but made me miss them all the more. This is Cameron Lake.

It was kinda smoky when we were there, and it limited visibility a little (and made my wife cough a lot), but it did have some advantages. Check out this picture. Don't the further mountains look really cool as they become steadily less in focus and more grey and faded?

This is Cameron Falls just outside of the Waterton town site.

This is Blakiston Falls off in the distance over my shoulder. Looks small in the picture, but it’s a pretty big waterfall.

Here's a bunch more pics of Blakiston Falls. I can't help myself. Gotta share.

The one big bummer about Waterton was the state of the trees. If you didn't notice in the above pictures, here's a few more with the trees as the main focus.

There has been more than one fire that's swept through the area in the last few years.

Yes, it's a natural part of a forest's life cycle. Some trees can't even reproduce unless a fire comes through. While it's kind of neat to see all the little green pines in the pictures, it's also pretty sad.

The forest is not as beautiful in this state. It won't remain like this forever, but it will be a while before it returns to what it was like back in 2011 when we went there for the first time.

Waterton won't be what it was for a generation. By the time it returns to its former self, I'll be lucky if I can still walk enough to take the hike to Blakiston Falls. There's got to be a better way.

Where An Overgrown Kid Can Be A Kid

No, it's not a picture from 2017. Turns out Toys R Us in Canada was a completely separate company from the American version, so when all our stores were boarded up and abandoned...

Theirs kept operating just fine. Well, somebody like me visiting Canada is going to have to make a trip to a Mecca like a still-operating Toys R Us. You knew I had to.

My sister-in-law and her husband we're surely rolling their eyes, but I didn't care.

It’s cool to see whole aisles dedicated to toys that I love.

Even though I didn’t have to have this figure or anything, I really wanted to get something while I was there, so I bought this cool War Machine that comes with tons of accessories to really make him look like what a War Machine should be.

 

It was interesting to see how high the price was, but then see how low it actually was after the exchange rate.

If only Toys R Us still existed here in the States. Wah.

On The Nose

It finally happened. Today’s word count was exactly 1000 words. I’ve never hit that exact number before, but the stars aligned for me today.

CFL

We're in Canada right now, visiting my wife's family. It's been a while since we've been out here, so it's really nice to see everybody again. My wife's sister planned a whole bunch of stuff for us to do while we're in Edmonton. First thing was to see an Elks game.

I've seen a few Canadian Football League games in my days, but I've never been to Commonwealth Stadium before. So, it's pretty exciting. It's got a great view:

The Elks almost won, but they're a pretty bad team this year, so instead, they managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

 

It was family day at the stadium, and they invited all the kids to come down to the field and play around on the turf. That was cool, because I had a kid with me, and was able to get on the field and get this cool selfie.

One more thing, they had these funny signs in the bathrooms reminding you what you should and shouldn't do in the bathroom.

(My wife snapped this picture, by the way, I wasn't in the ladies bathroom).

I saw a sign like this in the bathroom at Arches National Park, but it was serious.