Category: play

• chills

  November 2, 2015

  space geekery

  New favorite moonshot find on the internet: recordings of the intercom chatter between flight director Gene Kranz and the members of the “White Team” that were on duty when an oxygen tank blew up on Apollo 13. The cool of these guys is jaw-dropping, especially Sy Liebergot, the guy who eventually noodled out what had… Read.

• pagan

  November 1, 2015

  holiday

  Well I hope you all had a good time at your various pagan celebrations last night, not that I think there’s anything wrong with pagan celebrations. I am, in fact, a supporter of almost any celebrations at all, particularly if drinks and noshies are on hand. And if it’s a party where you dress up… Read.

• Our First Dinner at Ishnala

  October 25, 2015

  food & drink, My Darling B, O’Folks, play, restaurants, T-Dawg

  We had dinner last night at the Ishnala Supper Club near Wisconsin Dells. It’s a bit of a drive, just under an hour, but as things turned out, our visit there was worth every minute on the road. We learned about Ishnala from “Old Fashioned: The Story of the Wisconsin Supper Club,” a documentary we… Read.

• The End Of All Things

  August 16, 2015

  books, entertainment, play

  Last night I finished reading The End Of All Things, the latest science-fiction novel from John Scalzi, and I have to say that I felt he overpromised and underdelivered by several orders of magnitude. All the things did not end. Not even close. There were, to be fair, a number of things that did end,… Read.

• garble

  August 16, 2015

  hobby, space geekery

  I’ve passed some time these last two weeks reading the Apollo Flight Journal, an annotated transcript of the transmissions from the astronauts who went to the moon. This is some pretty geeky stuff. The transmissions themselves would be nerdtastic all by themselves, but the annotations are so packed full of detailed moon-shot minutia that I… Read.

• booze

  June 15, 2015

  booze, entertainment, food & drink, play, television

  In a scene from an episode of True Detective that we were watching the other night, the characters played by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey passed a pint bottle of Jim Beam between them, each taking a generous swig at the end of each line of dialogue before passing it back. This was not the… Read.

• walking on the moon

  June 14, 2015

  beer, books, entertainment, food & drink, hobby, My Darling B, O’Folks, play, space geekery

  After our weekly visit to the farmer’s market on Madison’s west side, My Darling B and I crossed the street to the Hilldale Mall where B had to shop for a dress to wear to a wedding. B hates shopping with the blazing white intensity of a thousand exploding suns, but the wedding is just… Read.

• drainage

  May 25, 2015

  beer, food & drink, hobby, homebrewing, play

  I just finished doing the almost unthinkable: I poured twenty-four pints of beer down the drain. That’s three gallons of beer, in case you’re trying to do the math in your head. To explain: They were all home brews, and not particularly good ones. The vast majority of it came from a batch of brown… Read.

• 205

  May 21, 2015

  travel, work

  There are a lot of fun things to do in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Staying overnight at a hotel alongside the highway is not one of them. But this is for work, not play, so I didn’t really expect to have much fun here. There was a little bit of a problem with the room; I… Read.

• road warrior

  May 16, 2015

  travel, vacation

  Wednesday, I drove 146 miles to Wausau, 31 miles to Wittenberg, and 29 miles to Shawano. Thursday, I drove 41 miles to Oconto, 174 miles to Madison, and 115 miles to Waupaca. Friday, I drove 109 miles to Algoma and 109 miles back to Waupaca. Today, you couldn’t get me into a car for any… Read.