OryCon and SF Authorfest Schedule

North Carolina was hot and humid and generally awful to Seattlite me. Good things and bad happened; more good than bad, all things considered. Dad’s memorial was 90% good and 10% awful. I enjoyed and appreciated everything that John (BIL), Shannon (sister), and Pastor Stan (former pastor) said and did. I think those parts of the service were a memorial worthy of Dad. Unfortunately, the “new” pastor—he’s been there 3 years and I still can’t remember his name—took a religiously myopic view of the service, turning the memorial into a sermon without any regard for the friends and family of differing faiths that my father had. I mentioned this to Mom a couple days later. I’m glad she likes him, he is her pastor after all, but I think he really needs to rethink his process for future funerals/memorials. Basically, he preached that Dad was baptized at 50, thus saved…and...

This weekend was a whirlwind trip through Port Townsend and the surrounding area. The Husband decided we needed a weekend away and we had volunteered to clear parts of Port Townsend for a mega-field (Ingress game). One of the beauties of playing Ingress while vacationing is the fact that seeking out unique portals to hack and capture leads me and the Husband to some of the neatest places. [Quick aside about Ingress. It’s an ARG—augmented reality game. Think of it as a cross between digital geocaching and capture the flag. All the portals are based on real world locations and you must be within 30 meters of it to hack or capture. Two portals can be linked. Three portals can be linked to make a field. No links can cross each other. Nothing can be linked if they are under a field. There’s a lot of layers to the game....