Changing weather means your face hurts

Rag and Bone 3

Nothing more to report here, though my schedule took a hit from a round of COVID followed by a round of flu. It still goes and goes, and it will go and go a while yet before the draft is done.

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Media
I finally finished The Good Place. My lovely wife and I had gotten to the final season together and then just never found time to watch the rest. This last week, we found that time. It was good! I love the tackling of moral questions through the silliest lenses possible.

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There’s still The Boy and the Heron to watch, though it will probably not be until June or July that I get around to it. I look forward to Dune: Part Two as well, and that one might get me to a theater seat. I loved the first one so much that it convinced me to finally read the book, and I have high hopes for this next installment.
I also finally got around to watching DC’s Son of Batman. The writers were clearly having a blast writing Damien’s dialogue, and I respect the commitment to absurdity in making sure Ra’s al Ghul’s operation absolutely refuses to invest in a single gunpowder weapon. Gatling crossbows and trebuchets holding their own against automatic rifles and combat helicopters? Delightful.

Miscellany
As I reread one of my favorite books that got me immersed in fantasy novels, The Cleric Quintet by R. A. Salvatore, I find myself remembering other speculative pastimes of my youth that I haven’t had the opportunity to indulge much in my adult life. D&D, LAN parties, rummy on a Friday night over cheap, bad pizza.​

​I had a sense, even then, that those times were not going to last, as people left for college and work and life. The realization struck me my senior year of high school that our time was running out, and I took to these times almost every weekend with feverish intensity, determined to strain every drop of fun from each night that I could. I miss it, sometimes. Not that I would trade my life now to get it back – the magic of fatherhood and marriage is too much to even dream of trading for anything else – but the loss is there.

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I fear that’s going to be a consistent theme, moving from one season of life to the next knowing that it won’t be permanent, and never being able to do anything to stop it. Ah, well.

That’s all from me, for now.
Tell your story!
– J. E. Ayers