We went to the Renaissance Festival in Holly, Michigan, as is our annual tradition (aside from my years in Alaska, I have gone every year since 1990).  We went with Janelle's brother (who is only in town until next week) and sister (and her family).  Despite a dire weather forecast, no storms (let alone major ones) marred our visit.  Here's the quick run-down:

A Zucchini Brother is back.  While still one of my favorite shows, his final act just seems desperate.

Ded Bob is still funny.  It's been a few years since I've watched the show, but although his voice seems slightly different and his "dummy" is considerably smaller than before, the old act still holds a massive audience.

One Step Further, the show that proceeded Ded Bob, was pretty entertaining, especially the "wall of jorgoling."  Some of their pop references went over my head; I feel old.

Prices are getting even higher: $2 pickles, $7 turkey legs, $6 bag of kettle corn (which I did not purchase) and $3 for a 1/4 pound of fudge (which I also didn't get).

Trevor bought a wooden sword to replace the one we bought him last year that he then broke by trying to smash ice with it.  I bought the other two boys wooden swords.  This was Rowen's first, and the one Connor wanted just looked cool to me.

We brought canteen backpacks that only hold about two water bottles worth of water but were well worth bringing due to their convenience.

My want list from the festival: a cool (in more than one way) hat, a leather (brown?) pirate overcoat, sturdy pirate-ish boots, comfortable pirate pants (are you sensing a theme?), and a new shirt (although the one Jenni made still works pretty well).  I like my current garb, and I really cant justify getting another outfit that I only wear one day out of the year, but I have been wearing it for about 15 years.  Still, see the note about higher prices ...

This is another idea which came to me from a random drawing in the margins of some of my notes for school.  In this case, I drew what appears to be a dead tree growing out of a pile of stones.  Perhaps due to my reading of Tolkien's Return of the King, I felt that the tree was still alive despite its appearances.  

A story came to mind of the tree being the source of magic in the world.  Due the drilling of oil and the depletion of natural resources, the energy that flowed into the tree has cut off.  A group of adventurous teenagers (this was an idea from high school) come across a cave that holds the tree.  Somehow they realize that they need to nourish the tree to bring magic back into the world.

As these teens are the first to nourish the tree, they are also the first to gain the benefits from the tree's healing.  They become masters of magic in a world where magic, true magic, has largely been forgotten.  This brings the attention of powerful people from around the world, many of whom with the worst of intentions.

The teens find themselves fighting for their lives and to protect the secret of the source itself.  As with many of my ideas, this one never got much further than this most preliminary stage.

I love playing Skyrim, to the point that I am rather addicted to playing it.  Aside from StarCraft II which I frequently play with my brother, I have logged more hours into Skyrim than any other game ... by far.  I like the sense of exploration and fantasy that the game brings.  I feel a level of immersion when I play that I don't feel with most other games.

Still, one of my original complaints about the game stands even after all of this time: so many of the quests are either evil or nearly hopeless.  If I am tasked with looking into the disappearance of a person (or a family, or even a civilization), it is an easy bet that whatever I am looking for came to a bad end.  Too often, the choices I am given in the game do not include a choice that I would make.  Many times, the only options are ones that only have bad endings themselves.

While I certainly appreciate the freedom that Skyrim (and games that attempt to be like it) give, it saddens me that I have to make "evil" choices to complete large portions of the content.  Actually, this often means that I miss out on large portions of the content because I refuse to make those choices.  Worse, there's no reward for being faithful or good in most cases.

However, those complaints obviously don't stop me from continuing to play, and enjoy, the game.

I'm now thirty pages behind (as in I haven't really written anything new this summer).  That isn't all that unexpected, but I also didn't finish the Rosary section this past week, which puts me a bit further behind schedule than I expected.

It was a bit of a busy week.  With a couple of meetings, various chores around the house, and several gaming sessions, I have been easily filling my social calendar this week, not to mention this summer.  While I have a few things on the agenda for this coming week, I do plan on putting a dent in my page deficit.

In prewriting news, I came up with a couple of solutions to my current writing block, so I at least know where to go with Vali and Orean once I pick up with their story again.  I think I have a track for them through even meeting up with their next friend.  Next week, those of you following this story will have something to read.

I've been reading the "Forever Evil" crossover from DC comics.  Now, I have an entire other rant about some of the trends in comics later, but that's not today's focus.  On the first day of the Crime Syndicate's appearance in the DC universe, Ultraman (the Earth 3 opposite of Superman) pulls the moon to create an eclipse of the sun because the sun is poisonous to him.  The eclipse darkens the entire Earth.

The entire Earth. . . 

In a solar eclipse due to the moon. . . 

You know, the moon that's one sixth the size of the Earth. . .

It's somehow blocking all of the sun's rays from hitting any point on the Earth. . . 

Never mind the aliens, super powers, alternate universes, the fact that Ultraman could move the moon, or that somehow the moon stays perfectly in place after a single alignment, THIS complete misunderstanding of how eclipses work has my blood boiling.  There are going to be people who believe this sort of thing is a possibility, who will think that just because they are seeing a solar eclipse, everyone in the world is seeing a solar eclipse.  How did the editors even let that pass?

I know . . . I know . . . a person reading stories about beings with super powers probably shouldn't get upset over nit-picky science-y things like this, but . . . 

SERIOUSLY?!

A week ago I posted that my plan was to write ten pages a week on my story, Vali's Tale.  As of this moment I have written ... one paragraph.  Yep, not a productive week for me.  Now I could say that part of the reason was that I spent time this week getting my Rosary section running (I'm still working on two sets of Mysteries), or that it was because we were out of power for the entire day on Tuesday, or because of the several events we attended because this was the week of Independence Day, but the truth is that my lack of writing is because I downloaded the Legendary version of Skyrim to my computer and I have almost no self-control.

Instead of creating my own fantasy story, I have spent most of my week in Skyrim dealing with their Dawnguard expansion story (and no, I won't play as the vampire lord).  Again, I would like to blame external forces.  It has been difficult writing in the mornings now that my sons have rediscovered the gaming systems attached to the TV in our "office."  Listening to Mario or Zelda music is not that conducive to writing (yet I manage to play Skyrim through it).

Even when I forced myself to sit down with the document open for over an hour, I just stared at my writer's block.  The problem?  Vali doesn't have shoes (or undergarments for that matter) and he wouldn't want to steal in (them) front of Orean.  It's a ridiculous problem that can be easily solved, but all I could think of was Skyrim.

As my wife reminded me, I need to set Skyrim playing as a reward for having completed writing (and better writing than what the paragraph I wrote turned out to be).  We'll see how things go next week.

Normally, I have been reserving Saturday posts for short descriptions of various story ideas that I have been chewing on.  While I have not yet come close to exhausting the current store of ideas that I have, I am a little concerned about eventually running out or putting up just whatever came off the top of my head (although that might actually be pretty entertaining).  The idea came to me that, as long as I was going to start writing a larger creative story, that I could use Saturday's as a weekly update for how I've been progressing.  Then, my mind decided to up the ante even a little more.

What if I gave people access to my document as I was writing it?  Now, I am a little concerned that this might not work out, and I've nearly ran screaming from the idea, but I thought that it might be worth a try.  The background for the story, and the link to the Google Doc where I will be writing the main story can be found here.

While you can read the details there, I wanted to just let you know a little bit about my schedule.  I will try to avoid writing this story on Sundays.  I will have very little time to write the story on Saturdays and will have almost no time on Fridays.  I plan on writing during the morning hours on Monday and Wednesday, but other plans might get in the way.  I currently plan to write more in the afternoons on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  I set Wednesdays as the main deadline for the summer because they are currently the most open of my days, and I might end up writing up until midnight to complete my self-imposed deadline.

I am setting this up as a motivation to keep writing a larger project.  However, I have several other irons in the fire that I also want to accomplish, so we will see how this goes.  I pray that it will be a positive experience for both me and anyone who wants to follow it.