I’m starting this blog post at 7:45 am on a Sunday while sitting in a parking lot waiting for a flash tattoo event. I’m more than two hours early and it’s raining and I don’t want to get out of my car but if I did I’d be first in the wait line to sign up.
I’ve had a pretty good week. I think some of it is due to downloading and using the Finch app to help manage some self-care goals. My brain says “yes, I will do this task so I can click a button to send a digital “birb” on adventures to collect gems I can trade for furniture and clothes”
This week I tried cooking steak.
The first attempt was bad. Although it looked good on the outside, inside it had the color, toughness, and texture of shoe leather. Seasoned shoe leather, but shoe leather all the same.
The second attempt was much better. Part of it was that I got a better cut of meat; part of it was that I used a better marinade.
I was also reminded this week that I set a trend at the Remfaire. Last year I wore a flower hat and had several people ask about it. This year I did not wear it but saw at least a dozen of the same hat. Go me.
Wednesday was our D&D game, wherein my new/returning character Leaf officially joined the party and helped them navigate what one of our players calls “Pleasanthell” – imagine a factory town “utopia” dedicated to industrialized warfare. Everyone is very happy and helpful and all crime is a capital offense.
This week I was talking with folks in their late teens or early twenties and they told me multiple times thing like “you’ve got mad lore” or “your lore goes hard” – so I did a thing on one of my social media account where I shared some personal lore. I’m sure you want to know what I had to say:
- Between 2001 and 2010, I was effectively vaccinated for rabies
- One time while out “walking the creek” with friends, we found a severed human hand in advanced decay. The game warden tried telling us it was the limb from a raccoon, but raccoons normally don’t wear rings on their fingers, do they?
- I went camping with those same friends many times. The most memorable was racing three-wheelers in the rain at 2:00 am powered by energy drinks and Mountain Dew – and I rolled/flipped the three-wheeler (I just told my mom this story for the first time last month 🤣)
- In the 1990s/2000s the Pennsylvania Game Commission said cougars/mountain lions did not live in PA. It was also a $500 fine for killing one. While driving to basketball practice one day, I saw one cross the road. My dad yelled at me, upset I didn’t kill it and leave it on the warden’s lawn.
- I learned to drive a car before I learned to ride a bike. My best friend taught me to ride a bike by tying my shoes to the pedals (why did I let me??) & pushing me down a hill toward a barbed wire fence. As I flew down the hill he shouted after me “if you pedal and steer you won’t crash and die!”
- In 2009 a multi-state high-speed chase ended when an individual evading state and local police carrying drugs on a stolen motorcycle crashed into my 1989 Buick Regal. He was going at least 60mph; I was stopped at a railroad crossing. His helmet left a black mark on my hood; the bike was totaled.
- Dec. 17 2011: Yukon Denali XL going 65 ran a red light into my Pontiac Grand Am driver-side door, pushing said door all the way to center console. First person on scene looked at the car, at me, and asked “why aren’t you dead?!” Meanwhile, the other driver said “I don’t know what happened, I was on my phone”
- Even separated by 600+ miles, my wife knew about me before we met. We each had a long-distance geometry course in high school, & a few years after we were married one of us started telling the other about that experience & we realized . . . she literally shouted “you’re THAT Jay from [town]?!”
- I once made a pen pal with a farmer in Ontario when he found my name and address on a balloon I’d released as a science project. We kept up our correspondence for almost a decade.
- One of only two classes I ever missed in college was the day we were supposed to watch campaign ads in a political communications class. I walked in & my professor sent me directly to the campus infirmary; my work supervisor was Patient Zero for a whooping cough outbreak on campus.
- I make apple pie from scratch as good as or better than my mom (her words and mine, lol). It took me almost five years of tinkering and adjustments but now even folks who “don’t like pie” will have at least one slice, & several self-professed pie lovers (including John Scalzi) say it’s excellent.
- I have 1000+ squished/elongated pennies & have written about them at times on my blog. One blog post was copied almost verbatim by Buzzfeed or other similar site (I forget which at this point) right down to my personal photos. When I pointed it out in the comments, the article disappeared 🤣
- If the US version of The Office were real, I would be Dwight Schrute’s cousin. Show canon places his beet farm in Honesdale, PA and he has at least one uncle with the last name “Eldred” – and I am an Eldred from Honesdale, PA
- My most-watched movie has to be A Christmas Story. We always watched it as it played all day Christmas Eve on TBS/TNT and since getting my own place I’ve watched it every day between Thanksgiving and Christmas for 16 years or so. I’ve worn out two DVD copies!
- My wife & I got stuck in an elevator with Barry Bostwick, & the 3 of us had a great time just chatting. When it started moving again he tactfully asked if we recognized him, & when we said yes, he thanked us for having a “typical” conversation with him as he didn’t get that often at conventions.
- I once found a piece of glass in a glass bottle of Nantucket Nectars orange juice. I sent the bottle to the company with a letter, and a few months later got a reply: they’d examined their bottling facility, found and corrected several issues, and sent me a shirt and a check for $20 (or similar)
- In addition to apple pie, I’ve also developed my own recipe for Lebkuchen. I’ve based the ingredients on several recipes in both English and German.
- I spent a summer or two cutting and punching snowplow blades. One day my coworker overloaded the forklift and a literal ton of steel dropped down toward my foot. I was able to avoid most of it, but if I’d been wearing steel-toed boots I would have lost several toes. The scars are now hairy?
- I had my picture featured on television for harvesting a wild turkey.
- A voicemail in which I described trying to make a rhubarb omelette was played on a now-ended public radio comedy podcast
- I was at the dentist the same days as the Oklahoma City bombing, the attack on the USS Cole, and 9/11
- Though I started driving at 16, I did not get my driver’s license until I was 22 because I could not parallel park. PA required it at that time, but the only place in the county with actual marked parallel parking spaces was the dmv driving course – which, of course, was closed to practicing
- When I was in 4th/5th grade my dad said he’d take me for pizza for good grades, but when I got home from school he was waiting with his 18-wheeler. He took me on a night run to a salt mine, we eat at a diner on the way, and he let me be late to school the next day. I never did get that pizza.
At this point in my day I’ve been here for an hour. The parking lot is filling up but no one is actually in line. Many folks are sitting in their cars on their phones. Looks like I’m saving this draft and I’ll come back this afternoon.
SEVERAL HOURS LATER
Hello! It’s now the afternoon, about three hours since I got done with my tattoos and about four and a half hours since I wrote the preceding paragraph.
I was pleased to get the same tattooist I got for my last flash, and though she didn’t remember me by name she did remember that she had me last time, too. We had a pleasant time chatting as she did her work.
Afterwards, the friends I went to the event with and I went and got some coffee and chatted, then I headed home (picking up lunch for Krystal on the way).
That’s when I took the pictures, and now I’m resting before our World of Darkness game this evening.
What are you up to?
Running In My Head 