The World of Insufficient Light

Philcon is a very “literary” sci-fi/fantasy con that runs in Cherry Hill, NJ. We’d been to a bunch of them before; it was actually ARR’s first con years ago. We missed the last two years for obvious reasons, but decided that we felt safe enough this year to give it a go.

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Overall: I did three different cons with ARR this summer/fall, and each was a different sort of experience, and I was happy with all of them. I think we might try to take it a little easier next year, though.

Jethrien and I have been married for 15 years, y’all.

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Overall: This wasn’t a sightseeing tour for the ages, but it was nice to be away from my house and get downtime with my lovely wife.

Your Pokemon journey begins here!

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Overall: This is probably the best “introductory” pokemon game ever, and I found it more fun (and less tedious) that any of the others I’ve tried. And it was very well-timed for ARR going through his pokemon phase.

Jethrien has mentioned before that ARR really likes Monopoly. He’s played several variants at school and my parents bought him Dino-poly for Christmas. It wasn’t until I saw it used in full force that I realized he has a consistent, high-risk, high-reward strategy when he plays: He’ll buy Boardwalk and Park Place (or equivalent) at the first opportunity and load Boardwalk with houses as quickly as he can. While I suspect this wouldn’t work as well in a multiplayer game, when there’s only one other player, it means he’s unlikely to pay out enough in rent to bankrupt himself before you land on his massively-inflated property by pure chance. Yesterday, I owned half the board but he still had a good shot of not landing on my property (because a lot of spots went unowned), and because I hadn’t built much, the rent for any of my spaces was $10-50. All I needed to do was land on Boardwalk once, and the $2000 rent bankrupted me instantly, even if I mortgaged everything.

(Apparently, according to the internet, the optimal strategy to win a proper multiplayer game is to buy a cheap monopoly ASAP and build four houses on each, but never upgrade to hotels. Because you’ve tied up half the houses in the box, most other players won’t be able to build up their properties and you’ll eventually grind them all down.)

We’ve also been playing the “fast version” of the game, where you shuffle the properties and each player gets 4 randomly chosen ones to buy at the outset; and then the game ends after 1 hour. I’m eventually going to try to find other alternate rules that’ll hopefully make the game more fun and less random.

Jethrien and I had a whole week to ourselves while ARR was at “camp” with my parents. (Having a glorious time and eating all the things, by all accounts.) We tried to make the most of it by having a bunch of date nights.

Tuesday: We tried to go to Broa, but it was inexplicably closed. Instead we tried Gringo's (near Grove Street). It’s good and we had fun, but it's noisy and the food at Orale is better. I did have the most ridiculous taco ever, a fried chicken finger in what was effectively a waffle cone with cilantro and maple syrup. (And I appreciated that the taco plates are small, which meant Jethrien and I could get several and try them all.) Their salsa selection was lovely and even the spicy ones were good; their guacamole selection was lacking.

Wednesday: Mithrigil’s performance at Sid Gold’s Request Room. She did a fantastic job; she sounded great and her banter was well-put-together. The food there is decent, if a bit heavy (it’s bar/comfort food), and I do like their drink selection. I wish it hadn’t been like swimming through soup to get there; I suspect the turnout would have been better if people were more willing to leave their houses.

Thursday: Crazy Rich Asians is a hoot, and Jethrien noted that it was nice to see a comedy for adults, without vomit or pratfalls. (They also clearly expected a heavily female audience, as the beefcake is even more front-and-center than the last Thor movie.) I did need to read an explanation of the mahjong scene afterwards, as I know nothing of mahjong and it was clearly deeply symbolic.

Friday: The Archer, a bar/restaurant that won us with the promise of game meats. We had duck poutine, venison cheesesteak and smoked wild boar pasta; all of them fantastic. We can’t take ARR here but I’d totally go back.

Saturday: Didn’t get out of bed until almost 11am.

ARR returned on Saturday afternoon, so I spent a chunk of that evening being climbed on. On Sunday I helped Mithrigil move into her new place, then we hosted a mini-party for B and J’s daughter’s first birthday. On Monday I took ARR to Liberty Science Center, then I took an afternoon nap to recover while he and Jethrien wrote a book. (The Arthur exhibit had several fake books, and we were disappointed that we couldn’t read “The Zombie Substitute Teacher.” So now they’ve written it.) Jethrien and ARR came to my office for lunch on Tuesday and then went to an afternoon of school orientation stuff, and his first day of Kindergarden was yesterday.

Among my birthday gifts from my sister were Fire & Flavor Cedar Wraps. I tested them tonight with the Asian Salmon recipe listed on the package.

The good: They were easy to use, didn't crack, didn't leak, didn't catch fire on the grill, and held the moisture in the fish fairly well.

The bad: They didn't really impart any smokey flavor to the fish.

The takeaway: I should keep the Asian Salmon recipe--ARR loved it. I think I can do it in the future with my fish racket rather than get any more of these. Fun to try, though!

- We went to Hunter Mountain, which is only a 2.5 hour drive from Jersey City. ARR, desperately in need of naps he refuses to take, slept in the car halfway there and almost the entire way back.

- On Monday afternoon we went to the snow-tubing park, which is a relatively small area off to the side. $20 gets you all the rides you can squeeze into two hours, and I think we made very good use of it, despite the fact it was raining. ARR could nonetheless be quoted as yelling, “YAAAY! THIS IS SO FUN!” while coming down the hill.

- We stayed at Villa Vosilla which, while clearly in need of some renovation here and there, had everything we would have wanted. We went in the indoor pool, played shuffleboard and mini-bowling, and had chess, ping-pong and billiards as options if we wanted them. The restaurant serves Italian food, which severely limits ARR's meal choices, so we went out for dinner. Their breakfast was lovely, though, and all of the staff members were very friendly and helpful.

- We had dinner at American Glory BBQ which, while not quite matching Hamilton Pork, was very good. The three of us shared the “Q for Two” and didn't quite manage to take it down. The sauces are all very tasty; the smoked chicken was super tender and the pulled pork was excellent, and the cornbread was sweet and cakey.

- It was 50 degrees on Tuesday, but there was still plenty of snow on the mountain and it was a bright, clear day, so we went skiing with significantly fewer layers than originally planned. I saw people skiing in just short sleeves by mid-afternoon. The trails started icy and got slushier as the day went on, but the conditions weren't actually that bad. And it felt pleasant—though falling into snow without gloves on is weird.

- Skiing, like riding a bike, comes right back to you. Which is more useful, I suspect, when that doesn't mean rapidly going though all of your mistakes and bad habits from a decade ago in the course of a single trail. I recall being reasonably comfortable on blues by the end of my last time skiing, and my second-to-last run on this trip was down a blue, which I managed without wiping out despite the icy bits.

- (What I did forget was how to get off a ski lift without getting smacked in the butt and falling down. That was embarrassing. All three times.)

- ARR spent the morning at a “porcupine level” kids lesson, where he learned how to get skis on and off and how to slide around in them without falling down. Then they practiced turning on very gentle inclines and how to do the wedge. After lunch, we took him up the bunny slope. He thought the ski lift was cool and not at all scary, but was anxious about actually going down a big hill, even holding hands or poles with us. (His sliding backwards into a mud puddle did not help.) Jethrien eventually had a brilliant idea of holding him between her legs in a wedge position and skiing them down in tandem. He thought that was super-fun, and she managed a very impressive two runs like that. (I didn't even try—I knew I couldn't do it.)

- ARR's class included stretching. Jethrien and I forgot that part. My legs are actually fine walking and biking (I use those muscles a lot and they're nice and strong) but weird parts of my calves hurt when I sit.

- Should it come up and you are confused, ARR refers to his heavy mittens as “Cheetor gloves,” because they look like the paw-hands of [Beast Wars Transformer] Cheetor's Transmetal form. I encourage this, because it gets him to wear them in cold weather.

- As the goals for this were: 1) ARR has a good time and has a good opinion about skiing, 2) Jethrien gets to go skiing which she's wanted to do for years, and 3) I prove to myself I can still get down a mountain without dying or panicking, I think it was totally a success.

2017 Retrospective:

The thing is, all told, this wasn’t a bad year for me. Terrible year for the world at large, and I certainly had my problems and unfulfilled goals, but on paper, I did just fine.

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2018 Goals:

Let’s edit a bit, using the running theme as a template:

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I spent this past weekend up in Utica, NY with my dad, where he was a guest at Uticon. We've been up before for this and similar cons (Ithacon, Mighty Mini-Con), and they're fun little one-room affairs with an artist's alley and a dealer's room all rolled into one. We hang out at my dad's table, he sells a few books and signs some autographs, we chat with the other guests, and I do some bin-diving to find fun things at bargain prices. The fact that a four-hour drive is involved is actually a bonus, as without ARR along I can sit in the front seat, sing along to whatever we want, and actually hang out with my dad.

(Jethrien also noted it was ridiculous that I was going to a con and getting a good night's sleep in the bargain, but without anyone waking me up early, I got to sleep until 7:30. Luxury!)

Though the turnout for the con was mediocre (the weather was lovely in Utica and people apparently weren't that excited about an indoor activity given that), the dealers were out in force with some nice stuff. I found a bunch of Transformers for ARR (two non-transforming McDonald's toys I negotiated free with a purchase, four $1 Legends-class movie figures, and a $6 Galvatron), got myself a bunch of trade paperbacks (mostly from a $2 box), and found the Transformers movie adaptation and movie prequel comics for cheap. ARR is definitely not ready for the Bayformer movies, if for no other reason that they go for over an hour without any robots showing up. But he clearly has interest in that timeline and I would like to read comics with him, so this seemed a decent compromise. The comic version cuts out a lot of the human screen-time in favor of more pictures of giant robots, and doesn't have the jerky-cam problem of Bay's directing style.

A standout comic, incidentally, was Gamer Girl and Vixen: Flirty Money, an indie comic that I spotted and thought, "That looks fun." And it is--lesbian supervillians have a meet-cute and become partners (in crime and otherwise). I'll want to keep half an eye on if this creative team does another Kickstarter.

Overall: A good time! We might do it again next year.

- My back went “poing” on Friday afternoon, shortly before we got in the car to go. I threw my cane in the car as an afterthought, but in retrospect it made life a lot more pleasant. It wasn't until mid-week that I was willing to go roaming without it, because I was getting nasty spasms if I stood too long or bent over wrong. This was, however, probably the best possible week to hurt my back, as I had already planned to spend large portions of it lying down.

- I read and played my 3DS on an assortment of couches in our rented house, on my bed, on a lawn chair, and on the beach. (I had the option of additional lawn chairs but the mosquitoes were too much. I got some nasty bites just playing outside with ARR.) I also went to bed at 9pm some nights, and took several naps. This was the portion of the trip I actually considered vacation.

- I actually didn't do as well as Jethrien did in terms of eating lobster—I only had it a couple of times; one lobster roll and twice in assorted seafood dishes. I did, however, eat some form of seafood pretty much every day—and the scallops and mussels were arguably even better than the lobster. I also had a duck burger topped with pork belly, which was delicious and I very much regretted it the next day. I also had blueberries in the form of pie, muffins, whoopie pie, crumble, cheesecake, lemonade, and margarita. I thought the Popovers at Jordan Pond House were very good, but not worth the insane hype. And there is a LOT of good ice cream in Bar Harbor.

- The best cell reception I got all week was halfway up Beech Mountain, which was coincidentally where I was when I got the only call from work while I was away. (Also, I did exactly two hikes, this being the latter one, and they managed to call during one of them.)

- We took ARR to Timber Tina's Lumberjack show (which he very much enjoyed, especially the part where he got to try the big saw). We actually saw a lumberjack show in 2008 in Ketchikan, AK, and by intermission we confirmed that it was very similar because it was run by Timber Tina's brother. (They even had some of the same jokes.)

- I got a set of OiDroids for ARR on a whim, when I was building a collection of things to do on the trip that didn't take up much space. They're paper craft robots that don't require scissors or glue to assemble, which means that I bought a pack of 15 action figures that fold flat. That's a deal! (Also, you can cover them in glitter glue and feel okay about that.)

- Over 20+ hours in the car, the most effective entertainment for ARR was generally either his tablet or singing along to a mix of (mostly) They Might Be Giants, Barenaked Ladies, Weird Al and Laurie Berkner that I put together. But we also played various car games, played with multiple puzzle/game books, colored with crayons and colored pencils, read a chapter of The Hobbit out loud, and napped. The most effective of my pile of “car surprise” purchases was a Rescue Bots sticker book, which should come as no surprise.

- ARR got severely off-schedule via refusing to nap and staying up too late (despite being clearly exhausted from all the hiking he did), so on Wednesday, after a super-cranky morning, I wrestled him down for a nap. I haven't had to do that in months, but it clearly helped. Also, he was in full preschooler pickiness form about food for much of the week, opting mostly to eat potato chips, crackers and cereal. I suspect that some amount of dehydration and wacky blood sugar levels played a role in his moods, as well. We'd remedied a bunch of that by the end of the week. And really, he was generally well-behaved and clearly had a great time, but it's easy to forget that he's four and sometimes acts like it.

- We stopped to visit Jethrien's brother and his family on the way back, and the fact that ARR and his (year-younger) cousin FJG played for two solid hours, effectively unsupervised, with nobody crying? Blew my mind. We need to spend more time with them.