2026.10.02 Random Week Thoughts
This was legitimately a pretty good week. Highlights included:
- having my brother (ex-BiL that I got to keep in the divorce) Jesse hang out at a Beeralicious with Amy, Ilhan, and Eric
- go-karting and Pat's Acres... and utterly dominating - albeit with some bruises from all the awesomeness
- a couple runs at a good-for-me pace (5.5 min/km average) with high-fives at the turn around point with Ilhan who ran from the office direction
- catch-up video call with Colin in Germany, planning for his trip in a few weeks to visit PDX
- plus, of course, tonight is game night with Dave reff'ing his AIF campaign with me, Amy, and Bonnie
But, there's other stuff swirling around my head. Besides the usual existential dread of the creeping moron-fascism, and worries about the global climate deterioration, and financial insecurity about how the hell we're going to afford the kids going to school or we could (eventually) retire.
Some of it is about the book series I've been reading:
- Dungeon Crawler Carl
- The Bobiverse
While both these books are well inside my nerdy Venn diagram of kinds of books I like, they represent two wildly different modes. DCC is ridiculous and hilarious but manages to land some very tender and moving emotional beats. Meanwhile, the Bobiverse is the kind of speculative "what if" that I like chewing on in detail. It's funny how it replicates my old Star Wars VS Star Trek juxtaposition - the magic-like technology of one lets it be accepted without trouble, while the trying-to-base-it-on-science of the other invites a parade of quibbles in my head.
All of which gets totally fucking demolished attention-wise by the discovery that a casual band of convicted rapists at Cornell University got barely even a wrist slap. Why? Apparently, in addition to horrific patriarchal bullshit, there is law that "intentionally getting inebriated" disqualifies a person from the protections of not being able to give consent. This has me gnashing my teeth with fury at the world we live in.