I spent Sunday last weekend installing new shelves in the garage and then reorganizing our storage.
Before:
The new shelves (Everbilt heavy-duty, steel, shelving system):
I didn’t even reach the point of wanting to throw stuff out a window. And I only missed the stud once out of 33 screws.
Now all the Christmas stuff can be in one location instead of scattered all over the garage:
And the final state:
We were planning to go to Erin’s house, but bad weather was making that dicey and then we all took turns being sick for the week leading up to Thanksgiving. So we opted to stay home.
I got even less game playing in this month than last month. Hopefully I’ll be able to turn that around next month.
Jess and I completed Quest 10 in Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall. We didn’t manage to destroy the giant moth monster, but we escaped without dying and reached our objective. So kind of a draw.
At the board-game meetup I played Creature Comforts. A very cozy game about collecting little luxuries and comforts to prepare your woodland-creature home for the long winter. Make the coziest home to win. I lost.
Had a friend over and played Wyrmspan with Jess. Jess won handily.
The Circuit: Executor Rising by Rhett C. Bruno
Humanity is clinging on throughout the solar system after a cataclysmic collapse of Earth. But the story has little to do with humanity’s fragility. Instead we’re focused on one man’s vendetta against humanity’s continued existence.
He’s kind of a mustache-twirling cartoon villain.
The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells
The classic science fiction story of a man who finds a way to turn himself invisible through a series of bio-chemical reactions. Unfortunately, it also drives him mad.
The Curiosity Cycle by Jonathan Mugan
Theoretically a discussion about how to inspire curiosity in your children. But it feels mostly like a bunch of blog posts smashed into a book. A disappointing lack of serious research analysis and more of “here are ideas I like.”
Recoding America by Jennifer Pahlka
This was a book group pick for work. Was not originally expecting to see Mike show up so much in it.
Long story short, government bodies fail at technological implementation because they’re structured to operate in a 19th century world and actual implementation of policy is considered an annoying detail that politicians don’t want to be bothered with worrying about.
It doesn’t have to be this way. But it currently is. I see a lot of the same organizational faults at the Lab and it’s supremely frustrating.
Whiteout by Ken Follett
It’s Christmas and trouble is brewing for a BSL-4 laboratory in Scotland housing some of the world’s most dangerous pathogens.
Meanwhile a monster of a snowstorm descends upon the region and everything gets more complicated.
After missing out on Halloween last year due to the whole family being sick with COVID we got to make up for it this year.
We carved pumpkins on the 30th. The girls each really participated this time with not just coming up with designs, but helping scoop guts out and Heather did almost her entire pumpkin herself.
Corinne’s design used the eyes to make ears. Heather’s is a cat sitting in silhouette. I added a side view of a cat to make a whole feline crew.
Corinne and Heather were both cats from the Warriors series. Heather was Firestar and Corinne was Graystripe. Jess did face paint for them to complete the looks.
Corinne’s friend was supposed to Trick-or-Treat with us last year, so we made that happen this time.
I’ve been putting the smoke machine out on Halloween since I got it, but just a little wind will clear the smoke almost immediately. So this year I pointed the smoke machine at the ceramic jack-o-lantern we have. So smoke fills the pumpkin and then drifts outs of the eyes, nose, and mouth. It was a much more effective result.
