Random Musings for a Wednesday Afternoon in Late July

    Okay, technically it is still morning when I write this, but the title sounds better when I use 'afternoon.' Anyway, I don't really know what time it is because my watch is broken.  Okay, I know what time it is, but this reads better the way I wrote it.  And, my watch isn't 'broken,' just the watch band.  I was carrying a few heavy bags back from the grocery store last week, and the handles pushed down on my watch.  The watch started to come off my writs.  When I looked at the watch soon after, I noticed that on of the major joints was breaking apart.  I was trying to bend it back into shape, when I had to put the watch down to answer the phone, landline.  I must have thrown the watch down to hard, because the other side of the weak joint broke, with the original weak side following soon after when I examined it.  I've had this watch since Christmas of 1992, although I started wearing one back in high school.  I had three different digital watches though high school, with only one lasting well beyond a year, although I had torn the plastic wristband off after my freshman year as it was getting too tight to wear comfortably.  The other two tore up whenever I tried to change the batteries, so I ultimately just left them alone, carrying the first watch with me whenever I really needed to see the time.  I guess my current watch corroded because I never cleaned it enough.  I planned on getting it professionally cleaned every year, but that never happened.  The store where I got my watch went out of business before the watch needed a good cleaning.  The store where I went to next either couldn't or wouldn't clean it carefully, possibly because it is a self-winding watch.  They said they would have to send to a special place to get it looked at, as they didn't really had the right materials for the work.  Or, it was due to the fact that I didn't get the watch there.  Anyway, it has never been professionally cleaned, although I have tried to keep it okay.  I accidentally opened it up one day trying to clean it, and it has had problems ever since.  For some reason, it tends to run fast.  Also, the timer function doesn't really work any more either.   The reset button just won't work properly most of the time. I'm looking into other watch bands, but I haven't set my mind up for a final decision yet.  Soon after my watch broke, I found out that the store where I was shopping is getting an exclusive new product from Hostess cakes, the first in their new fusion pastries.  This first experiment combines a Ding Dong with a Twinkie.  Basically, it is a round Twinkie covered in the same chocolate as a Ding Dong.  Technically a round Choco-dile, the chocolate-covered Twinkies from before the Hostess bankruptcy from a few years ago.  While I don't really like regular Twinkies, I loved the chocolate coated ones.  In particular, I loved the limited-edition banana split flavored ones with a banana-flavored cake, vanilla filling, a layer of strawberry spread on top, and all covered in chocolate.  Whenever someone combine banana, strawberry, and chocolate, I am there.  I don't know what other fusion possibilities exist, as most of them are already out there--chocolate Twinkies (albeit very hard-to-find now), chocolate honey buns, golden cup cakes, and a few others.  I'm thinking a fondant coating on a Twinkie, kind of like a Zinger in this regard, might be next, but that is just guesswork.  Finally, I had an unusual occurrence this weekend.  I almost ran over a young heron in my car.  It was just standing on the side of the road, trying to walk around, when I was driving towards it.  Of course, it flew off before I could hit it.  Strangely enough, this isn't the first time this has happened.  At least one other time, if not two.  Usually, herons just fly alongside or over my car. Yes, this has happened quite frequently to me.  At least once, it happened on the highway. However, almost running over a heron has been much rarer, but I get to see the bird close up just as it takes flight.  Sort of like a pterodactyl or some other ancient beast.  Magnificent really.

Back to My Old Ways, Like 2022

    I'm old enough to have experienced many flooding events.  Fortunately, most of them have just been close calls or minor inconveniences.  However, there have been three pretty much disastrous floods that I have lived through.  The first one, that I can remember anyway, was in the spring of 1984, probably late April or early May based on what I can remember about it.  It was a Monday, and I was charged with bringing in a bunch of cupcakes for a class sale.  The house flooded.  I was out of school for a week and a day.  The sale was on the first day back, which I missed.  I honestly thought they would have delayed it.  It took weeks for the house to be cleaned up before I could move back in.  I personally didn't lose too much, but it was still hurtful.  The second flood was in June of 2003, a Tuesday.  This time, a lost so much more.  Pretty much every memory and keepsake from my childhood.  It ultimately cost the house as well.  While the house was cleaned up, we decided not to move back in.  We were keeping some things that did survive there while waiting to buy a new place to put them in.  Unfortunately, someone, probably a disgruntled neighbor, had the house condemned and it had to be torn down.  Most of the things being kept there had to be thrown out, even when they should have been saved, but there was nowhere to store them.  The most recent flood was just last year, July 2022.  Fortunately, the rental place where I currently stay is safe from flooding in all but the most extreme cases, but that doesn't mean there weren't' any consequences. It started on Wednesday night, eleven.  A line of storms were racing down Floyd county.  They had already triggered some flood notifications to the north.  However, they looked like they were moving so fast in my direction that I didn't think twice about going to bed.  I went to sleep to the sound of thunder and moderate rain.  I woke up about one that morning, and I wasn't sure why.  I would later learn that there had been a blip in the electricity and a beep had gone off on something when it came back on a second later. I went back to sleep. No thunder and just light rain, if any.  I woke up again at 3:30 or so.  The power had gone out, although it wasn't really raining at the time.  Phone calls to the power company went without much of an answer.  I looked outside as best I could.  Water was rushing down the street, which isn't that unusual as this happens even during fairly light rain.  I couldn't see much else or how bad it was.  I tried to go back to bed to sleep, but it was no use.  Not only did a neighbor have a generator going to provide power, but the last line of storms came rushing through.  There was moderate to heavy rain and near constant thunder and lightning for over an hour.  I ultimately got up around six when there was finally enough light to see.  The street and parking lot were covered in mud, although there wasn't any real rush of water any more.  The creek, little more than a big drainage ditch across from my place at this part of its course, may have gone over its bank.  There was no way to know exactly.  My car was safe, though.  Just some mud partway up the tires, barely an inch or so.  I tried my mother's cell to see if I could get any information, but there wasn't enough bars in the area to get anything.  About an hour or so later, we got out to start cleaning up the sidewalk, when we met up with others who did have information.  Many places had gotten hit hard by flooding.  A tree had fallen on some power lines, that is what caused the initial power outage.  The electricity was cut off an hour or so later to prevent more problems.  Multiple mudslides and near bridge collapses were also reported.  At this point, I knew I had to get to Pikeville to check up on my store.  We waited until ten to set out, to make sure any major road problems were cleared.  I saw much of the damages as I drove out.  I even saw how the spot where my house had been devastated.  More slides and downed branches as I drove up to Abner mountain.  Suddenly, I saw something in the road.  It was an old barbecue grill and a toy baby carriage on either side of a break in the road that went about halfway.  I drove further to the top of the hill, avoiding the worst of the debris, when I saw someone parked at the top.  I stopped and found out from the driver that a delivery truck for a 'certain' discount chain had gotten stuck again, about an hour previously.  I decided to park at the top, staying about an hour with nothing happening.  The other driver left after about ten minutes.  I decided to take the long way around, as I didn't want to wait on the top of Abner any more, again without enough cell service to go online.  I starting driving north, surveying the same washouts and debris, until I hit Price.  There were major mudslides, still moving, washing across the road.  Just before I hit McDowell, the road was flooded and impassible.  I had to turn the car around and head back home.  I almost went via Big Mud, but I was afraid that it would be just as bad. (I may have been wrong.  I had to go that way barely a week later due to another wreck, and it looked like it had barely been effected.  Definitely not as bad as other places.). It was about noon by the time I got home.  My mother started calling people she knew in the road department to find anything out.  Nothing about the wreck, but plenty about how hard Whitesburg and Letcher county were hit.  By that time, the water tanks had run dry, even though they lasted over twenty-four hours during the Easter outage of 2020. (No power to the pumps and no back up generators, yet.) We decided to try again at one.  We passed the power crew on the way out of town.  When we got to Melvin, we noticed a road enforcement vehicle leading the truck and the wrecker off the mountain, meaning the road was finally clear after four hours.  The Pike side of Abner was a little clearer than the Floyd side, until the bottom.  A tree had come down, blocking the road and a crew had just finished taking down the 'road closed' signs.  At least that explained the long wait.  About halfway down Indian Creek, there was another break in the road, almost the entire lane this time.  The crew was getting ready to put up more signs just as we drove past.  The rest of the way better.  All through to Robinson Creek, there was hardly any debris and none of the slides I had seen elsewhere.  Even the creeks didn't seem to have gotten up that high.  By the time I hit Pikeville, you couldn't even tell there had been any rain.  The store was safe, at least after this storm.  I was finally able to eat something warm and go online to tell people I was safe.  I also got to see posts of all of the flooding.  It was even worse than I had imagined.  We stayed at the store for a few hours before heading back home.  We passed the power company leaving as we drove in.  They did the least amount of work they could do involving the tree as they could considering it was on private property, abandoned but private.  When I finally got to see the news, I found out what happened.  The storms that had been going south when I went to bed had started to train west to east approximately after they passed Price, explaining why Mud Creek and Pikeville had been spared.  The south tip of Floyd county had been hit hard, as well as points south.  I lucked out this time, just a very muddy car that was pretty much cleaned up after a huge downpour a week or so later and a few spots on my clothes.  If this cycle repeats itself, then the next bad flood for that area would be around August of 2041, a weekend.  Maybe early September.  All I can say for certain is that I will not be there for it.  I will have definitely moved to somewhere safer by then.

Niche Market Gaming

    Last week, I mentioned my 'lost years' of the late 90s and how I coped through those times by finding new interests.  One of those new interests was roleplaying games.  Although I didn't have anyone to play with, I still wanted to check them out.  Particularly one such game system and all of its individual game lines.  No, it wasn't 'Dungeon and Dragons.' That system just didn't call to me, even with the dragons.  No, it was from a smaller company, but one that was trying to make it big.  It almost worked until multiple problems lead it to break down.  Back in the late summer of 1996, I picked up my first book.  A few days later, I went back to my local gaming store and picked up the first supplement to that core book.  I was instantly hooked, and I would spend the next few months picking up each of the core rule books and major supplements that I could find.  By the spring of 1997, I was buying the newest titles as soon as they were available.  Soon, I was pre-ordering them as soon as they were announced, while still searching for older works whenever I could.  When I was forced to open my own business by my mother, I chose a bookstore, just so that I could order my books on a more reliable basis than I could at the gaming store.  Too bad that my main distributor didn't carry that company, but the secondary, larger one did.  Things were going great until June 2003, when a flood came along and destroyed over half of all my collection.  Adding insult to injury, the company announced that August that they were ending the game lines and replacing them with an updated new system the following year.  I managed to replace a few of the books, as well as copying some of the best information from most of the ruined books.  It was not easy going through so many water and mud-damaged books while having to wear gloves and a face mask.  At least it was good practice for 2020.   It took months, and I know I wound up missing some crucial parts, but at least I had something.  At first, I liked the new books, even though almost all of them would be hardcover and therefore more expensive overall.  I was also getting all of them new, soon after they were published.  I had gotten a new distributor for the store that would carry the new system, which turned out to be a godsend as my local gaming store would wind up not getting my pre-ordered books for an entire year.  Then came 2010.  The company was going to change their business model.  Instead of selling through retail stores, their new products would be digital, as either PDF download or print-on-demand from a partner site.  As I didn't have a computer, or a credit card, at the time, I was out of luck.  I would follow their releases for the next year or so, but I basically gave up the interest, just as the news came out that they would be coming out with a special twentieth anniversary edition of the rulebook for the original game line.  I pretty much ignored the company after that, totally missing out on how the company got bought out by a video game company from Northern Europe and dissolved.  A second company founded by one of the original creators brought many of the other game lines back for their anniversaries, with extra supplements funded through crowdsourcing, as well as continuing some of their follow-up new game lines. However, yet another video game company from Europe purchased the IP rights to all three game systems, with the intent of bring out a new, fifth edition of the 'classic' original games, with the new company being allowed to continue to produce new material for them until the new edition came out.  With the video game company's approval.  The other game systems were mostly left alone, for now.  When I finally got my computer, and a credit card, I realized I could start enjoying these games again.  I could only purchase the PDFs though, as I wanted to save money, and I doubt I get easily pick up physical copies in the mail.  I even joined in on a few crowdsourcing campaigns. I joined in online groups about some of the games.  I even anticipated the new edition of the first game, but it wouldn't last.  While the original game stayed mostly the same, so much was changed that it divided the community, with almost half hating much of the new decisions. The company hired to produce the new edition made some bad decisions, possibly from the video game company's fiat.  An entire section had to be rewritten as a preview contained possibly offensive material to some groups.  While some supplements were made by the original creator's company, a second different company was chosen to make further books, only to replaced by a third company for unknown reasons.  With this, new product slowed down coming out.  The second game line was delayed and a new edition of a different game line came out instead.  It wasn't to well received, as it totally changed to original game into something else.  Then, last fall, the official announcement of the third game to get update was made.  While there were a few expected changes, based on leaks, a few other changes weren't, and these didn't go over that well.  Answers from an online interview explaining these changes, actually made public opinion worse.  Not many of the changes went over too well with long-time fans.  When the official previews started to come out this spring, more controversy erupted.  The first art pieces were obviously traced by the artist from other sources, including an identifiable public figure who doesn't like to have his image reproduced without permission due to his tattoos.  The art was changed, but more copied work came out.  More changes from the original material were introduced, much of it seemingly counterproductive and contradictory.  An entire sidebar of material appeared to have been lifted directly from a previous attempt.  Online posters are wondering if the original author will be getting credit for it.  People are now wondering if the book will even come out when it is supposed to next month, although many fans had already decided to skip it and stick to previous editions.  I have ordered the book through my local gaming store, as the company making the book stopped going through my book distributor last year, I didn't pre-pay, so I won't be out anything if the book is delayed or if the store has a problem receiving it.  At one point in my life, I seriously considered going into game design as a profession, specifically involving these game lines, as it merged both my creative and analytic interests.  Nowadays, I know that it would be very, very difficult to make a living this way.  Still, the idea piques me.  I made a bare-boned attempt at making up a basic supplement years ago, although it barely went past a partial first draft.  I've had other ideas for fan-created work, but I just don't have the skills to make a useable draft and post it for sale.  Yes, there is a side-industry for this sort of thing, as well as a dedicated market base.  You can't earn much, but it would be an opening to bigger things.  It's just so sad to see something that has been so close to my heart begin to self-destruct due to corporate decisions.  It makes me want to find a way to buy the property out, somehow.  A huge pipe dream, but I remain hopeful that someone helps these games find there way back.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Meatballs

    During my "lost years' of the late 90s, I took up quite a few interests, such as weightlifting.  One such hobby that I developed was Italian cooking.  This interest actually started in high school, as evidenced by a personal narrative I turned in for a writing contest involving my difficulties making a lasagna for dinner. While I never got too deep into the cuisine, I did explore many dishes in both traditional Italian culture as well as the Italian-American versions.  One dish I quickly adapted was a ten/fifteen minute meat sauce that I served over rotini with garlic bread.  I was so good at that recipe that my mother suggested that I move on up to actual meatballs and spaghetti.  Yes, that's Italian-American, but she really wanted me to try it, so I did.  As luck would have it, one of the first times I tried out my recipe was on Independence Day.  Because of how long it takes to prepare, at least an hour with a twenty to thirty minute gap in the middle, I could only ever fix it on Sundays or other days off.  I now fix it on almost every Independence Day.  Including yesterday.  I start off with making the breadcrumbs.  I put some slices of bread in a pan into the oven and toast each side.  I didn't have a toaster when I first developed my recipe (and I still don't), so I use an oven.  It's better for the next steps anyway.  After toasting the bread, I tear it up into smaller pieces and then toast those, breaking them down into smaller bits.  I would then repeat this process two more times, ensuring that the crumbs are all but completely browned and small very fine particles.  I then cool the breadcrumbs and the pan down for at least twenty minutes before the next step.  I check the crumbs are finely ground and cool before adding my preferred blend of herbs and spices.  I won't tell you which ones or the amounts, as both sometimes vary a little.  I will mention that I use the same herbs in my sauce as in my meatballs, just in different proportions.  I use larger amounts of the spices that work better in the meat than in the sauce, and vice-versa.  In this way, the meatballs and sauce taste different, but similar enough to still match.  I then add the meat, along with some milk and Parmesan cheese as binders.  I'm a tad sensitive to eggs, so I try to avoid those as much as possible.  I make the balls and then let them rest for a few minutes while I start the sauce.  First, I sauté some onions and mushrooms, occasionally fresh garlic as well when I have it.  Yes, I should have some carrot and celery to help balance out the flavors, but I don't always have them fresh, so I have learned to make do without them.  I then add the tomato sauce, sugar, and the herbs and spices.  Again, no specific one or amounts.  I want to keep a few secrets here.  I let the sauce simmer as I put the meatballs in a hot pan and start boiling the water for the pasta.  If the timing is just right, the meatballs will just be about done with frying when it is time to add the spaghetti to the boiling water.  I sear one side of the meatballs, and then, after a few minutes, I flip them over to the other side.  I usually turn them over one more time before I add the pasta to the water.  Just before the meatballs are fully cooked, I add them to the sauce to finish them off.  In this way, some of the sauce gets absorbed into the meat, making sure that the balls are fully cooked as well as moister than they would be otherwise.  I then deglaze the pan, reduce the liquid, and add it to the sauce.  This adds a depth of flavor to the sauce, as well as some color and thickness.  It also increases the volume ever so much to make sure there's enough.  Once the pasta is done, I drain it, plate, and toss it with some more Parmesan.  I then spoon some of the balls on top of the pasta, covering them with extra sauce.  To finish it off, I sprinkle some mozzarella over the sauce and watch it melt.  All there left to do is eat.  This really is a special meal for me, and I am sorry that I couldn't give more exact details, but I don't want to give everything away.  I need to hold something back for later, after all.