GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Artifacts

  • Inktober ’25, (eight pack 3/4+Magic: The Gathering Arena+Civilization)

    The end of the second week and start of the third weeks the a doldrums of a month-long challenge. Engagement falls off as people slam into reality. That’s why I did it all in September.

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    blunder

    I started by cribbing Arthur Baker’s brush script. I have a hard time with the verticals of his b (skinny at the bottom to wide on top) but that’s gonna take focused practice.

    It will likely take a month of pure brushwork to drill into my hand and brain that the flat brush can make different shapes depending on how hard I press (unlike a steel nib).

    Ultimately I decided to give it another go after getting a big fat hake brush (which also inspired my retake on “sting”). I’m a lot happier with this one than the original blunder.

    10/17

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    10/18

    Ornate

    Three versions of Ornate, the top two different surfaces of the Handwritmic ruling pen, the last one the Dreaming Dogs Aldus ruling pen with a curved edge.

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    10/19

    DEAL

    One of the pieces that went from straight from brain to paper. It still took several tries to get good enough, and of course I still have my quibbles, but I got my fun out of this one.

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    10/20

    ARCTIC

    There are three types of color inversion in GIMP. This one was the “value invert” where colors keep their main characteristics. After that, I nudged the curves to highlight the overlaps to better define the letters.

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    10/21

    rivals

    I had a rough time with this one. Words are inherently cooperative things. The letters patiently stand in line, more or less in teh right order.

    At first, I tried something competitive within the word that just didn’t work. So I settled on gothic, harkening to sports team logos. But that was boring.

    A few days later, I thought of going upside down. The capital R is so distinctive that it still reads upside down, and the flourish on the l makes it read both ways. The upside v is forgiven cause it’s in the middle, plus it resonates in the graph as an apparent capital a.

    So again, third time was the charm.

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    10/22

    Blast

    I clearly have a blast with ruling pen cursive. But this time, print letters felt right.

    Then again, the as lives on the cusp of cursive. With calligraphy, I have finally started understanding the weird cursive conventions that was drilled in 2nd grade (such as the weird-s shape).

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    10/23

    Button

    More cursive, with a circle.

    With any concept, there are still so many little choices in the execution. A medium-small buttOn felt right.

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    10/24

    FIREfly

    More cursive+block text. Even though I try to let each word speak on its own, the line of thought from piece to piece becomes obvious in retrospect.

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    In August, we visited Springs Preserves and my dad let the grandkids play with his SLR.

    I then spent September celebrating an unplanned liver party at UMC.

    I finally took the photos off his camera, which reminded me to dig up my old camera.

    While looking the Nikon D40, the boy asked “so you’re looking for a real camera, like without a phone?“

    Cya next time!

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    PS—Magic: The Gathering Arena

    Twenty-three years ago I joined my first poker night. It was also my last poker night. It was so fun that I quit on the spot.

    Two decades later, I came across MTGA, getting all the gambling kicks without spending real money.

    Like any online game, there are plenty of ways that Hasbro can steal your cash, but you don’t have to give it away.

    Having been an adult through the rise of social media and freemium mobile game evolution, I see exactly what’s going on with multiple currencies, regular rewards, multimedia stimuli, and daily prompts. Like any sucker, I can see all the warning signs, but it’s so fun.

    It teaches compassion towards the victims of con-men. Many of these marks must know they are onto some bad stuff, but do it anyways.

    We’ll see if this kick holds up after a few months. It’s mega fun, but it’s not building towards anything bigger in life.

    Is the time worth it? I know it’s not. Maybe it’s my subconscious rebelling against the pandemic.

    —September 2021

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    PPS—Ominous Roost

    I’ve been playing so much MTGA that I need to go cold turkey.

    But first, I brewed my own deck—a case study of why the game is so alluring in an online environment.

    In this game, I love having lots of creatures and things that make them for free. So this card is perfect, since it is all about creating free creatures.

    At first, I started with what I had in my digital collection and added all the relevant cards.

    After playing it a couple times, I realized the concept was workable so I used a couple precious “wildcard” tokens to buy a few extra copies. Then I pushed the deck wide, using a copy of all the cards with the special ability “Disturb” to explore how they interacted together.

    Once I sensed how the individual pieces worked together, I culled the deck to the to the bare essence. In constructed Magic, there are many great cards, but only 60 slots. Once the goal of the deck is decided, it has to be refined.

    This deck tried to build lots of flying creatures to kill the opponent before they killed me. The engine was a couple of card draw / discard spells that would simultaneously create more creatures and build up defenses. For interaction I had a couple surprises to mess with the creatures in play.

    Thus arises the central paradox in deck building. One is limited in engine cards because the engine requires fuel. This deck relied heavily discarding “spirit” cards, but all my engine makers and surprise cards are not spirits.

    This is where the online part of MTGA kicks in. It’s fascinating to slowly refine this deck. The entire library of Magic is at your fingertips so you can tinker endlessly and your opponents won’t get bored because it’s a new player each time.

    With each test, the wicked question comes up. Did my most recent changes improve the deck or was it a lucky card draw?

    I’m not sure. Let’s play again!

    —October 2021, I quit MTGA a few weeks later. It was too obsessive! Four years later, I remember nothing from this deck except what’s written here.

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    PPPPS—Sid Meier’s Civilization, 1991

    Every decade or so, I get sucked into this game for a couple nights of mindless clicking.

    Of course I played quite a bit when it first came out. And then in Berkeley, Houston, and now Las Vegas.

    This time on an online DOSbox emulator on the Internet Archive (a legit site, I’ve donated to them in the past). But I must be getting old—I got a bad headache and I’m still hungover the morning after.

    Like much of my entertainment, I stick with what I know, so I’ve only played the original version. It’s just the right balance of challenging but actually pretty easy.

    I always focus on a high infrastructure strategy, going heavy on research, connecting all my cities by (rail)roads. Once I have an edge, I defend with strong military unit and buy off cities with an army of Diplomats, strangling the other civilizations.

    You’d think it gets boring, but a little randomness keeps it fun, just like Hollywood recycling the same formulas to entrance the world for a century.

    Coda: I got sucked in for a second night. Fun enough, but not the best use of February 18-20, 2022. Now I need to avoid this program till 2032. Maybe I’ll finally try out Civ II (1996).

    —February 2022

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    PPPPS—Practice

    March 2025

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  • Inktober ’25, (eight pack 2/4+Divination and the Four Arts)

    Another week. This one goes quickly, and suddenly you’re halfway through!

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    10/8

    RECKLESS

    It was obvious that this should be written on a background. I got plenty of sheets for that. I vaguely remember using my right hand to write this, to make it a little extra reckless.

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    10/9

    heavy

    The one on a background was just for practice, but I liked the touch of color. Plus “sunrise” felt like a nice contrast to “heavy”.

    1/4

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    10/10

    sweep

    This was rough. I wasn’t happy with any of the early versions. But a week ago, I was reminded about the practice of taping two pencils together to test one’s lettering skills. I tried it with two flair pens, then three flair pens, then two brush pens, and which became four brush pens.

    It still took a few tries to get it right. I started on the letter-sized sheets before going to the tabloids. It was sooooo fun to sweep big letters with a megaplex brush pen! But the smaller composition turned out more sweep-y on the screen.

    Sometimes, more fun is not more correct. But always take that detour.

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    10/11

    sting

    Unlike other pieces, this one was straightforward. It always takes a few tries, but it’s nice to not be tortured for every single assignment. Though S’s are always torture.

    That’s what I wrote when drafting this newsletter. But the morning of the assignment, I thought of a making something with a big sloppy brush.

    It was meant to be rough and quick, but with a wide open Saturday I darn sure overcomplicated it. I suspect the best version is the second shot (single barb, green text on white background), but I played a lot in the computer, including learning how to better play with masks and even the difference between 8-bit and 16-bit encoding.

    Last year, I started Inktober thinking I would single-shot a piece every morning. I did that for a couple of days before architecture-school training kicked in. I’m not competitive but a well crafted work is a sign of respect. So if I’m gonna do it, I have to chase a certain level of respectability!

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    10/12

    SHRED

    I tried a few variations on the stripes, but the most literal (figurative?) attempt was the only version that worked.

    Just before uploading this piece, I realized it would read better with a grey background. Last year, I framed each piece inside of a square format (like that “sunrise” piece from January), but my wife pointed out that it was claustrophobic. But once in a while, it’s the right move.

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    10/17

    Drink

    I changed this the morning of the upload. The first one was fine, but insufficient. For this second version, I started with some ornate flourishes that disappeared over 33 tries to get it right.

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    TRUNK

    I tried to mimic a car trunk, but it didn’t work. Those initial attempts led me into Roman capitals. I tried overlapping letters to fit the page; they decided to combine instead.

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    ragged

    Even with pieces with a crazy background, I always test the graph on a clean sheet. I like to make sure that I can do it straight.

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    I just (re)watched Ponyo with the kids. I’ve always remembered it as a bit slow, but maybe I’ve slowed down. It was an absolutely a visual treat. Definitely recommend!

    Last week was Flushed Away, a movie by the Wallace and Gromit studio that was way better than I expected. It’s trapped in the early 2000’s animation style, but a fun story well told!

    Cya next time!

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    PS—A Divination Journey

    Art and Chance
    In college I played with chance operations in creating art. It never led to anything spectacular, but I loved the idea of delving into randomness to spur the next move.

    Glass Bead Game
    The Herman Hesse novel. I read it. I remember nothing, except the cover the paperback I owned.

    Tai Chi
    The Christian fundamentalists who are scared of yoga should worry about Tai Chi too. The grand ultimate fist is a practice that also leads to eastern philosophy. The body moves the mind.

    Decktet
    A brilliant double suited deck by PD Magnus, whose book of games included a chapter on divination. Instead of contacting the occult, this philosopher deconstructs readings as randomness interacting with the subconscious.

    Tarot
    Once demystified, a Tarot deck is just a 5-suited pack of playing cards, an obvious game development from the standard European 4-suited decks. Not spooky.

    War
    For a while, I played War with my daughter using a cheap tarot deck. After repeated interactions, the deck became as mundane as that copy of Operation collecting dust in the closet.

    Waite-Rider
    I got one. Not a fan. I prefer pip decks.

    Daoism
    It’s the cool Chinese philosophy in this individualistic age.

    Confucianism
    Yin needs its Yang. During the pandemic I finally read the Analects and realized that this old guy also spoke to my sense of societal order, likely due to my upbringing.

    I Ching
    Wait, Confucius was into this book? I should look into it. No surprise that Daoists dig divination, but if Confucians are studying it too, then that’s an universal text.

    Yarrow Stalks
    Divining with yarrow stalks is the best! The half hour it takes about to determine a reading becomes a meditation on the question, calming the mind before contemplating the answer. Any other practice feels like child’s play.

    Too much Tarot
    In spite of memorizing the I Ching, I fell out of the practice. And then I went on a Tarot deck buying spree. It was bit of pandemic mania, but it’s nice to own these lovely art pieces.

    Calligraphy
    Now that I have a productive hobby, I’ve lost interest in divination. Life is simple—work, play with the kids, and graph when I have time. Why delve into the subconscious? I enjoy enough randomness with each stroke of the brush.

    But I do need to get back into Tai Chi. Then again, I don’t need cards or coins to know that.

    —September 2025

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    PPS—More thoughts on divination

    PD Magnus’s chapter on divination in his Decktet book pushed me past any residual Fundamentalist fear of this sort of “occult” activity. Divination is a randomly generated lens for focused self-reflection. And as an atheist now, what is there to fear?

    I started with a crappy tarot deck at the bookstore which sat unused for a decade until I started playing War with my daughter (the fifth trump suit makes it much more fun than with a normal 4-suited deck). After the deck came into regular use as a game deck, I tried a few readings.

    But the booklet that came with that deck was way too predictive. It’s one thing to say “love is in the air”—your brain can plumb a vague comment to find its own meaning. Totally different beast to predict “you will have problems with your lover”. Such definitive pronouncements will implant counter productive seeds. Who knows how that might manifest!

    I also tried a couple readings with the Decktet. PD Magnus did a great job of using vague typologies for pronouncements, just like how I Ching also avoids the overly predictive problem (it can be a bit of a word salad at times).

    I also tried a couple readings with the Decktet. PD Magnus did a great job of using vague typologies for pronouncements, just like how I Ching also avoids the overly specific (sometimes by being a world said). But I’m still wary that this is toying with fire. Not because of any supernatural stuff, but the potential for this practice to reinforce perverse subconscious feedback loops.

    As such, I don’t practice readings while the kids are awake. I don’t hide the books or cards, but I don’t want them thinking that readings are to be trifled with. I doubt I would have properly handled the randomized subconscious before my 40’s.

    But I also rue missing out on playing with I Ching chance operations in my undergrad art classes!

    —August 2021

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    PPPS—The four arts

    With my recent discovery of the joy of sketching, I realized that I am pursuing the Four Arts in a 21st century way.

    Qin (琴) Music
    I need to get on a regular practice schedule but a ukulele and banjo both got strings and make noise. Occasionally I get the timing right and you might call it music.

    Qi (棋) Go
    I got two bookcases of boardgames. A proper scholar would focus on one game, but I like variety.

    Shu (書) Calligraphy
    Well, I’m not writing with a brush. But I am writing a lot, tapping into my poetic side. Plus, with thirty months of as a professional hand draftsman, I’ve got great handwriting when I want to show off.

    (Update: two years later, calligraphy has completely taken over my world. I now understand why the ancients took calligraphy so seriously—it’s endless practice distilled into a moment. And the brush doesn’t lie.).

    Hua (畫) Painting
    Again, no brush. And not silk. But my motley collection of fountain pens and notebooks seem close enough.

    Bonus—Divination
    Hard to be more Chinese than consulting the unknown with fifty sticks. But I’ll also happily check out the Tarot as well. Both have been great ways to delve into the subconscious.

    And so here we are, what’s old is new again. In a new way.

    —August 2023

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    PPPPS—Practice

    March 2025

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  • Inktober ’25, (eight pack 1/4+Dominion)

    This year, I focused on the words. My spring explorations of folded cards pulled me away from the 5 Word Poems and the summer detour into the ruling pen (which loves big) didn’t help with the resuscitating the 5WP format.

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    9/30

    inkTober ’25

    This was done with a dryish brush with old clumpy ink. It made for a great texture on the page, but left a few spot marks on the scanner cause I rushed to get them into the box.

    I cheated slightly, pulling the “ink” to overlap the “Tober”. Even though I try to avoid over processing, I’m not above digital. These compilation posts are my confessional booth.

    I’ve been playing a lot with Gothicized Italics, so it naturally became a big part of this year’s scripts. This was my last assigment for Inktober since it was more important to complete the daily pieces first.

    Last year I tried to make each piece on the morning of the challenge. That’s hard! This year, I finished everything in September while convalescing from the that liver infection. So now I’m posting leisurely and enjoying what others are sharing.

    So really, my true #inktober is copying flourishes from Arthur Baker’s sample books.

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    10/1

    Mustache

    This was made with a ruling pen, dipped in a grey wash of saved water after cleaning my tools.

    I’m really happy with this piece, a strong start to the month. I wasn’t as happy with all thirty-one pieces, but that’s life.

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    10/2

    weave

    Confession: I digitally swapped the final period from bronze to blue.

    This piece is a direct variant of my August experiments with overlapping Gothicized Italics in a notebook.

    8/25

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    This crown was slighted tilted, but the crossed O felt like a gem.

    10/3

    This crown is well balanced and I prefer the curved n as a mirror to the C.

    crOwn

    The red and blue design was a second series after scanning in the initial set. Even so, I’m still not happy with the final piece—calligraphy is an ocean of practice poured into a single moment, that might not go your way. If this was my profession, I’d be obligated to hit perfection, but as a hobby, I can settle.

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    10/4

    murky

    This was made with a Dreaming Dogs Layla ruling pen, which has a slight curve. Videos show that you can make a very wide line, but since I was using the thin grey wash, this is about as wide as I can get.

    I love split line effect when you go really fast with this pen.

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    10/5

    deer

    I had a brutal time with this one. I tried to capture the leap of the Deer using cursive, but was unhappy while scanning it. So I tried making a logo. Again unhappy. Finally found something by starting with a lowercase “d”.

    Fortunately the paper is thick enough to reuse the back of the sheets. Even after failing both sides, they become the background for experiments before attempting finished pieces.

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    10/6

    pierce

    Unlike deer, I had a concept that executed beautifully. There were several pieces that were presentable, but this one stood out with the bleeding red.

    Even then, I’m still a tad dissatisfied with the piece. The piercing action would have been more pronounced if I stopped it inside the opening of the “p”.

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    10/7

    Starfish

    One of my mantras is “when in doubt, add noise”. The ruling pen gave a little splatter, but it had more promise by using the back of a practice sheet. Right before posting this piece, I utilized a new mantra “try inverting”. I don’t love this digital crutch, but it works too often to ignore.

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    That first week in October just flew by. While I’m certain my body is still quietly recovering from my liver infection, the most noticeable thing is catching up at work. Being semi-chastened with that medical scare, I’m now much better at letting things slide into tomorrow.

    There’s always more work.

    Cya next time!

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    PS—Dominion

    My daughter and I have been playing Dominion a lot.

    Even at seven, she reads darn fast. Enough to play a game with lots of text.

    My wife hates wordy card games, but the girl has a lot of fun because she enjoys buying stuff.

    For a while we played without attack cards, but she’s warmed up to the inclusion of such cards when I promised I wouldn’t purchase those cards.

    She also prohibits deck thinning cards. She senses the power of this strategy but has no interest in trashing old purchases.

    The original 2008 base game is better for playing with a child than the revised version. The new deck manipulation cards are fine for lifestyle gamers, but sometimes simplicity is better.

    Either way you can’t go wrong. Dominion is an amazing game. It’s too bad I didn’t realize it when I was gaming every Friday night.

    Then again, it’s damn cool to explore it with my own kids. That’s a trade I’d gladly make, eight days a week.

    —August 2021

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    PPS—Dominion Prosperity

    Top tier awesomeness is hearing your daughter claim Dominion as her favorite game when introducing herself to the 2nd grade class.

    Admittedly, we’re not playing competitively. She’ll take credit if she’s winning, but if she’s losing then we’re on a team while her stuffies take the fall.

    But no matter, she enjoys playing.

    The strategy is simple. Spend all game buying stuff that lets you buy more stuff. A nice intuitive mechanic—even the 3-year old has taken to directing us to “buy” this or that.

    She still won’t let me play the attack cards, but I’m just happy to be able to watch them in action.

    If you like money and buying stuff, Dominion Prosperity is a great addition to the base game. Based on this article by Donald X. Vaccarino, I suspect I’ll be buying Empires for Christmas.

    Is there a better endorsement than continued patronage?

    —September 2021

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    PPPS—Dominion Empires

    Unlike his sister, the boy grew up with an older sibling who gives no quarter.

    So unless it’s Snorta, he only plays cooperative games. As such, Dominion Empires has not gotten much play.

    Two summers ago, I found a cooperative variant. He had fun a couple times as I basically played for both of us. Last week, we watched My Neighbors the Yamadas with subtitles so I realized that he can read at the level to play the game proficiently.

    It worked OK, they enjoyed the time. But she still doesn’t fully enjoy the cooperative version and he still has no interest in playing Dominion competitively.

    —October 2025

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    PPPPS—Practice

    3/5

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  • stripes

    I had to cheat a little for this one. Is this six stripes or seven? And there’s more stripes if I shift the frame a little.

    In collecting these numbers, I went out on an early morning walk and snagged a bunch of them. I had trouble with four and six, but it doesn’t take much to find the numbers and letters out there.

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    They created a library after an episode of Bluey,
    Furniture piled in the center of the room as a reference desk.

    They lined my books along the wall “for adults”.
    (They already had a shelf books from the library district)

    Mini was the library pet,
    Mr. Little Wooden Guy held up signs.

    I was a teacher bringing a class of stuffies,
    Field trip to the the library!

    The next day, I returned with a family of bears,
    Daddy, Mommy, Bear Bear, and Adventure.

    When the show was ready, they ushered us into the bedroom stage,
    We bought the cheap seats—they came with a sheet over my head.

    I watched the shadows of the boy and girl,
    Dancing with abandon.

    —26 August 2023

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  • Leaping into Spring (five pack fifteen+Monkey King+New Tales of the Monkey King)

    The italics is strong in this one!

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    3/4 Inktober 52 (2024), week 18

    breathe
    spirit
    in
    each
    stroke

    I cheated a little in this one, moving some of the words in the box to fine tune the composition. I never feel great about digital manipulation, but as time passes, I feel less guilty about it.

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    3/6

    dirt
    our
    home
    to
    be

    I love how the colors came out on this one, especially the inversion of the colors with the words.

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    3/8 Inktober 52 (2025), week 10

    a
    chain
    of
    black
    daisies

    This 5WP was banked on inverting colors in the computer, but the image of a black daisy won out.

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    3/9 Inktober 52 (2024), week 12

    spring
    forward
    lose
    an
    hour

    It’s interesting to revisit the layering of colored words months after graphing the pieces.. Clearly the top example was the best, but it took a few shots to explore the possibilities. I often compare calligraphy to hitting the slots.

    The greatest thing about the constant practice is that once I land on a good composition, I am supremely confident than I can get it right. Unlike the previous Inktober, I don’t worry about whether I can replicate a good turn of hand from a practice sheet onto the final sheet.

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    3/10 Poetry Haul #9

    try please love
    turn vulnerable

    unraveled sweater
    we broken burden

    alive date
    new fresh chapter

    More play with italics.

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    I am constantly in awe of the Monkey King. I never thought I had any affinity to superheroes until I saw my kids watch old Sun Wukong videos and read the books myself.

    Then I realized I did have a favorite superhero all along, planted when my mom would read stories from old Chinese picture books to me and my sister when we were little kids.

    Cya next time!

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    PS—Monkey King, Wu Cheng’en, trans. Julia Lovell, 2021

    I’m typically too snobbish to read abridged versions, and now I’ve gone through two of them with the Walden audiobook and this Lovell translation.

    In some ways it hearkens to the proscribed system in How to Read a Book where one takes multiple passes at varying levels of detail. I’m pretty good at skimming books, but it certainly helps when someone has done that work for you.

    As for this book itself, it’s one heck of a story. The introduction warns you that this is satire, and it follows through on the promise. The Taoists are venal, the heavenly bureaucracy is minimally competent, the Buddhists aren’t much better, and I don’t think there is a single happy marriage in the book. Our gang of pilgrims are least dysfunctional bunch of the lot, which isn’t saying much.

    As an abridged book, some of the stories are cut as was most of the poetry, which seems to be a distinctive aspect of the original novel. But that’s all good, it’s a fun read and it enticed me to read an unabridged version. Hard to give it higher praise than that.

    After reading an unabridged translation by Anthony C. Yu, I must admit that cutting out the poetry quite impoverishes the experience. As much as I appreciate that this abridged version introduced me to the original, without the poetry it’s like reading a screenplay and ignoring the movie.

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    PPS—A Field Guide to Roadside Wildflowers at Full Speed

    Any excuse to bring up this gem makes it a good day.

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    PPPS—New Tales of the Monkey King

    I guess this TV show was a fun romp.

    I don’t particularly mind the cultural appropriation because it’s way different than the original book and it’s Australian. I got enough problems in my own continent, I can’t get bothered over what they do on the other side of the globe.

    But the first season was just OK. It certainly wasn’t anything that I would have watched without its nominal relationship to the 西遊記.

    Yeah there’s a monk and his/her three disciples. The disciples are all gods in exile, and there are demons in this world, but then it goes off into its own universe.

    Unlike the clear heavenly imperium of the original, the screen writers went for a good versus evil mega-battle—the bane of all superhero comic book movies. It’s a complete change from the original book. Instead of four folks on a long journey, they’ve been dumped into a Manichean struggle.

    Even so, I enjoyed watching how they took an old story and modernize it to a contemporary popular medium. I can’t fault them for taking inspiration from the source and blazing their own trail.

    But I must quibble with their depictions of Monkey and Tripitaka.

    Monkey is depicted as a vain illiterate creature in this show. He’s certainly vain, but he’s a fucking badass. He’s quite literate, he should always be depicted as a Superman.

    I’m fine that they recast Tripitaka a woman. One of the problems in the original story is that it’s a sausage fest. However, the screenwriters are much too kind to Tripitaka whose defining feature should be his helplessness. I dislike that she even learned kung fu in this show. I get that they are trying to avoid the damsel in distress, but if so, they should have chosen a different character to gender shift.

    My the ultimate judgement?

    I never watched Season 2.

    I don’t regret the time spent on the first ten episodes, but if I want to know what happened on this TV show, I’ll just read the Wikipedia synopsis.

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    PPPPS—Practice

    2/24

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  • blades

    As an architect, I stare at ceilings. While being wheeled to the MRI and getting a drain stabbed into my liver, my main memory was watching the details where the ceilings met the hospital walls.

    Ceiling fans, especially with light kits, are an unloved feature of residential architecture. In today’s conditioned age, they are somewhat redundant. But they’re still part of life in a hot climate. Even if they don’t get used, it’s better to have one—with four to six blades—than to have none.

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    My wife made homemade noodles last night. She uses a recipe that is 2 parts flour, 1 part water, and 1part eggs.

    I’m a fan of a decadent 3:2 flour to egg recipe. But no matter, her noodles were tasty and springy. It was great in a soup, then as part of a stir fry, and finally as a treat for lunch.

    When we first started making noodles, we rolled it by hand. That’s a lot of work! So we got a KitchenAid attachment, which was expensive but has been among our most used kitchen gadgets.

    These noodles might be an unnecessary expense of time and money, but what a savory little luxury!

    .

  • quacking into march (five pack fourteen+The Mentor Leader+The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck)

    The Portland trip took a lot out of us. The trip was great, but planning and then recovering took a bunch of extra time before and after the actual time off. And then we followed it with a jaunt to San Diego right before school started. Travel is fun, but it eats into “free” time for sure.

    ,

    2/25 Inktober 52 (2024), week 21

    quack quack
    sexy selfie sandwich

    How did duckface became a social media phenomenon? I guess every era needs its thing.

    ,

    2/28 Inktober 52 (2024), week 20

    we don’t see our
    mythology

    I went light for a white on white vibe. Then reversed it.

    ,

    3/1 Poetry Haul #8

    somewhere we assemble wonder moon
    meet rich star light award
    fall and honor sun girl

    I had some fun with extended italics as I wrapped up February.

    ,

    3/2 Inktober 52 (2025), week 9

    lamp
    with a fresh genie

    The flat brush runs fine, but I’ve continued to have trouble with cursive with a pointed brush. The Pentel brush pen works great, but I’ve never gotten the hang of normal pointed brushes.

    ,

    3/3

    touching
    hands
    through
    a
    loupe

    I had purchased a collage by Duane Toops and zoomed in with a jeweler’s loupe. Collage is a tactile art, I could see his hand in the cuts and ridges of paper on paper.

    The cursive looks like it has regressed, it might be time to add it back on the list as a monthly focus.

    ,

    Again, it feels like I’m trying to just get something in before another month disappears. Things have been super busy at work. But it’s a good busy. I’m doing good work on great projects.

    I just need to slow down the pace. As much as I hate to admit it, things at the airport can wait, especially as time with the wife and kids continues to drip away.

    I didn’t get this posted in time for August, and then my body revolted to put September on hold for three weeks.

    Even worse, after returning from the hospital with my liver abscess, another family member went to the ER after dropping a bunch of weight and experiencing serious discomfort in the gut.

    The family is going through a bout of organ revolts. We’ve had a good run, so I guess we were due.

    Health shouldn’t be taken for granted, and yet, that is exactly what we do during the good times. One can’t live on permanent high alert, but I need to cultivate a practice of gratitude to savor the quiets between the storms.

    Cya next time!

    ,

    PS—The Mentor Leader, Tony Dungy, 2010

    In 2021, I stopped reading self-help books—I got what I needed out of them.

    After starting a work-related newsletter, I tried to restart the habit to grab some professional ideas to go with my artistic interests.

    Naww, I’m past peak Self-help.

    There’s nothing wrong with this book. This book matches Tony Dungy’s public persona—a quiet dude who makes everyone around him successful.

    I blasted through the book at 2x speed. His main point is that a mentor leader should be humble. Being humble means receding into the background; success is found in elevating those around you.

    I dig it! I bet I’m less humble than I’d like to believe, but I appreciate the appeal of his message.

    Tony goes heavy on Christianity, but given my recent forays into ancient wisdom literature, that’s fine, even as an atheist.

    Worth a quick listen if you’re in the mood for a generic leadership book, though you might remember nothing from it four years hence.

    ,

    PPS—The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson, 2016

    It’s kind of amazing to listen to a self help book and have nothing to say about it, even after trying to come up with an interesting take for a few days.

    Just standard tough love, self-help fare, with a lot of F-bombs. The title is perfect for this book. If you pick it up, you’ll most likely dig it.

    I didn’t disagree with Manson’s main points. There are only so many ways to approach life and his recommendations match how I see things, in spite of his crass delivery.

    • Pick your priorities (chose your f’s).
    • Control your reactions.
    • Owning your world is better constantly being the victim of your own psychodrama.
    • Avoid highs—chemical, relational, any type. They’re temporary and the crash only gets worse the longer you delay.
    • Commitment is freedom. It creates depth versus breadth.
    • Don’t pursue the results, pursue the process. Or if you don’t enjoy the process, give up on the results and chase what you enjoy doing.

    The unconvinced will not be persuaded, but the book is fine if you want another take on such riffs. Another listen for 2x speed.

    ,

    PPPS—Practice

    2/19

    .

  • 8 nights and 8 days

    Night 1

    I landed in the hospital with an abscess in my liver, which revealed itself by a relentless fever with soul sucking fatigue.

    Morning 4

    The first days in the hospital continued to be a haze of fever and fatigue, though greatly relieved with the interventions by the nurses and doctors.

    Night 7

    I was initially diagnosed with an ominous “growth in the liver” at the ER. Fortunately this ambiguity was resolved in a couple of days with an MRI, it was “just” a bacterial abscess in the liver.

    Morning 7

    I felt the full force of our health care technological complex, with ultrasound, CT scan, MRI, endoscopic ultrasound, and finally draining the abscess by an interventional radiologist, who used ultrasounds and x-rays to pinpoint and pierce the mass. And that doesn’t include all the other everyday hospital technologies that the nurses utilized throughout the week.

    Night 8

    Midway, I was transferred from a single room at the fifth floor to a double room in one of the oldest remaining wards. It was fun to explore this architectural relic. The air conditioning and roommate made it feel like riding an airplane.

    Morning 8

    Golden hour never fails. This new room had a streetside view of a residential subdivision. I wonder what it’s like to live in the shadow of the city’s major medical center. I guess you stop hearing the sirens.

    Afternoon 8

    As soon as the labs on my liver goop was completed, the doctors updated my prescription and sent me home that evening. My parents, who visited every day, came back to pick me up. I was happy to come home to the kids, but it was a sudden transition back into civilian life.

    ,

    Yeah, that was one long week. The fever started right after Labor Day, and a two days later I was in the ER digesting the news that there was a growth in my liver. Thankfully, an MRI clarified that it was “just” a golf ball sized bacterial abscess.

    As for cause. The official explanation is dumb luck—a stray bacteria snuck out of the gut and wreaked shop in the liver. Overworking might have made things worse, but other people work much harder and longer with minimal consequences. Then again I’m not other people.

    I’m on the mend, popping antibiotics, swimming in serious night sweats, and there’s still that a drain line…but I gladly take this over the specter of the C-word.

    As painful as it has been, this was a clarifying event in my mid-forties with some takeaways:

    1. My personal priority rank is Family > Health >>>> Work > Calligraphy > Reading >> Blogging >>>>>> YouTube (this last one is tough!).
    2. Due to various reasons, Work had snuck in front of Health. No more.
    3. Until I adopt a consistent health practice, I will not to pursue a promotion. I may even start going back to my old Tai Chi school, even if the kids continue to show no interest in martial arts.
    4. As much as I love my calligraphy as a meditative practice, it doesn’t pay bills and it doesn’t improve my health. I need to “pay myself first” in the morning with exercise and move the pen if I still have time. If I miss morning exercise before dropping the girl off at school, I might walk some laps around park near the office. My work is flexible and I’ll just start late.
    5. I didn’t regret anything up to this point. It would have been nice to take more trips abroad as a broke college student, but that’s an ancient regret, colored by the fact that I now have savings, which was not in my portfolio during the great recession.
    6. We’ll see how the bills line up, but if I read the documents correctly, the cost of the hospital stay may be laughably small for an American. If so, I might keep working to maintain this awesome county employee health insurance thru 65 (instead of 62 as allowed by the pension). Of course this is predicated on still enjoying the job.
    7. Moving forward, I’ll be both looser and tighter with money. I have a habit of buying books on the thought I’ll read them one day. When mortality strikes, buying “on spec” stinks of hubris. However, if I think I might enjoy something right now, I’m not gonna wait.
    8. Investment wise, no changes planned. My wife and I have always been conservative, and it was comforting to know that I wouldn’t need to make any tweaks to the portfolio, even with an extended career disruption.
    9. We have a slew of papers that need to be executed (advance directives, wills, homestead exemption). Once I’m well, those will be the top priority for our home economics. Second in priority is getting my wife fluid through the morass of retirement and investment accounts.

    Interestingly, I intuitively knew each bullet point (except #6) before this chaos in September. So nothing has changed, just the universe reminding me, emphatically, to get it done!

    Funny how things work, hopefully y’all not need such an incident to finish what you already know needs to be handled.

    .

  • magnets

    On vacations, we have settled upon magnets for our souvenir, usually purchased on the way out of the park after it has closed.

    Last summer, I initially settled on a nice, mid-mod, metal and enamel Disneyland magnet, only to find this quartet of Munchlings at the next store over. So the Mouse got us twice.

    We also got a 5-pack of Mickey Mouse lollipops to ostensibly alleviate the boy’s motion sickness. It did not prevent a couple of incidents on the winding road up to Big Bear.

    ,
     

    ,
     

     ,
     

    ,
     

    I can’t believe our Disney + Big Bear1 trip was almost a year ago. As the years tick by, I’m becoming more aware of how few of these trips we will have together. That said, counting down futures vacations is a very nice problem to have.

    This year’s summer trip was a family reunion out in Portland. With the advice of a friend and my sister we hit up a bunch of cool places over five action packed days.

    • The falls. As advertised, this is the must visit. Take the Historic Columbia River Highway and hit up the falls along the way. We went on a weekday, but I suspect it’s impossible to find parking on Summer weekends. Visit the Gateway to the Gorge Visitor Center for a possible free parking permit at the famous Multnomah Falls.
    • Mount Hood Fruit Loop. We drove around and got some nice scenery, but it was late in the day so we didn’t get to see much farmy stuff. We had already eaten by the time we got to the “Gorge White House”, but this place had a great vibe.
    • Bonneville Fish Hatchery. A free must visit to say hello to Herman the Sturgeon. The kids had a blast feeding trout for a quarter.
    • Farmer’s Market at PSU. Epic vibe on a lovely Saturday morning.
    • Peninsula Park and Rose Garden. Late one evening, we ended up wandering around the Rose Garden with my sister. The warm weather and the late summer sun made for a magical moment. It was nice to offload the kids for fifteen minutes with their aunt.
    • International Rose Test Garden. Lovely as well, but nowhere as intimate or charming as the garden at Peninsula Park.
    • OMSI Museum. What you might expect from your local kid’s science museum. The highlight was a chemistry lab which the Vegas Discovery Museum does not have.
    • Portland Japanese Garden. Gorgeous garden. Not cheap, but we easily spent a good four or five hours there before heading out to the airport.

    Even though public transit in Portland is better than most suburban metropolises, I’m certain that it is vastly preferable to have a car. And if you have a car, the “Parking Kitty” phone app makes it super easy to pay at the meter. Aside from that, I guess one’s visit is at the whim of the weather gods. We hit record highs, but for folks from Vegas, that wasn’t a deal breaker.

    In all, a great visit. When we go back, I’m guessing we’ll check out some other places to mix things up, but we’ll return to the Falls, Bonneville, Farmer’s Market, and Peninsula Park.

    .

    1. In the post with the wolves, I forgot to mention that the kids had named them Sesame, Vanilla, and Cloud. So the full name of the stuffy from the gift shop is named “Rocky, Sesame V. Cloud”. ↩︎

  • vials

    The boy gave me three vials filled with colored water. She followed behind, shooting photos with a wide angled lens. I’m not sure what they were scheming, but they were giggling the whole time.

    I can’t believe how quickly time flies. Last year, work was grinding down my body and psyche. Fortunately I only had three weeks left before jumping out to the airport.

    I was trying to do right for the Division on the way out, but it was time to decouple.

    ,
     

    ,
     

     ,
     

     ,
     

    We played Marco Polo at home

    Marco’s white cane was
    a roll of old drawings.

    She started next to the bed
    I walked circles around Marco
    until cornered by the bathtub.

    He cheated,
    hiding in the closet,
    standing on the toilet.

    Never said Polo!

    Finally caught,
    he grabbed Marco’s shirt
    and followed her around,
    a little red caboose.

    We finally made him Marco
    He squinted, not blind,
    swinging his cane as a baton.

    Ouch!

    —August 2023

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