Public Introspection

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Gaming Friday — Beer and Pretzels

February 12, 2010 in Gaming, Public Introspection | 3 comments

I’m supposed to be gaming right now, but Sarah had a going away party for a friend and we couldn’t get a sitter, so I was on kid duty. I’m bummed because the game is fun, but as I was kissing my wife goodbye and getting our daughter ready for bed, I wondered if I was bummed enough.

I know that sounds silly, neurotic even. What I mean is I wonder if I am becoming a “beer and pretzels” sort of gamer. According to Robin Laws, this is the guy who games because it’s fun, but also because he doesn’t have other stuff to do. Gaming is a diversion that’s done primarily as a social activity. If the game doesn’t happen (or if something better comes along) it’s not a big deal.

I’m not there yet. Gaming is important to me. I enjoy the folks I game with, but the game itself is important just as much as the social aspect. I like the combat and the unfolding story. But I am certainly not as active a gamer as I once was. Despite my DM’s best efforts, I don’t really participate outside of the regular Fridays (on the wiki and such). Time is certainly a factor, but I think a lot of it has to do with work. I’ve come to realize that the mental energy that powers my writing and teaching is the same as (or very similar to) the juice that powers my gaming. It’s no accident that my gaming peaks are in the summer when my work load is much lighter. It’s not like I cut grass for a living, which would require a different sort of energy, leaving plenty of the creative juice for gaming.

Do other folks feel like this? Or am I just weird?

Happy 8th Anniversary

January 5, 2010 in Public Introspection | 3 comments

Right at this moment, eight years ago today, I was probably floating in the hot tub at the Hampton Inn in Irving Texas. I was nervous, you see, and needed to relax away from the constant badgering of well-meaning friends and family. My dad and Brent (a friend and former roommate) were keeping me company, but other than that I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I was about to get married.

My nerves didn’t come from any doubt I was doing the right thing. I was utterly in love and committed. The nerves were just from the idea that this was A Big Deal and the fact that for the three days prior, I had been running around picking up people from the airport, tracking down flowers, and generally dealing with pre-wedding madness.

I got out of the hot tub, showered in my brother’s hotel room, put on my tux, and went to get married.

It was the best thing I’ve ever done.

Happy Anniversary to Sarah, my wonderful wife and partner these eight years.

The Four Dollar Date

January 2, 2010 in Films, Public Introspection | 2 comments

Eleanor was gone almost all of last week, visiting her grandparents in Tennessee. This left Sarah and I with a big quiet house and lots of time to do things together. The problem was it was the end of the month and right after Christmas, so we didn’t have a lot of money. That’s why on Tuesday night we had a four dollar date.

That’s right — we went out and only spent four dollars. There was no big secret, just some coupons and some luck.

Our plans were to go see a movie, then grab a bite to eat, then to head over to our friends’ house for some board games. We had the movie covered by two free tickets Sarah had gotten by participating in the blood drive they hold at Manchester Cinemas every month. Give blood, get a free ticket. Sarah is a regular donor, so she’d socked away two tickets for just such an occasion as our date night. I had earned a free drink coupon with my Regal Club card. I’ve had that card forever and use it whenever we go to the movies (which is not that often anymore). I bought my stepmother a movie gift card for Christmas, and that purchase had earned me the free drink. Then, Tuesday night was dollar popcorn night! This was just luck, as we hadn’t planned our visit around dollar popcorn night, but it just worked out that way. That means when Sarah and I sat down for the 4:40 showing of Sherlock Holmes, we had spent exactly $1.00.

Sherlock Holmes was great. I’ll post my full thoughts about the movie in another post, but the short version is Downey and Law brought new and fun stuff to their roles, the look of the film was awesome, and it reminded me favorably of Young Sherlock Holmes (which is a good thing).

Having managed to avoid the roaming lobster-tail vendor in the theater, we left the movies still having only spent one dollar. Then we did something that, in retrospect, turned out not to be a good idea. We ate at Taco Bell. It’s right across from the theater and Sarah had a coupon for a free taco. Between that coupon, water to drink (I had just had a free Coke, remember?), and ordering from the $.89 menu, we spent $3.02 at the Bell. I paid for our fast-food indulgence later that night and again the next morning in other ways, but we were so excited by our frugality, it was worth it.

After our extravagant meal, we headed over to our friends’ place. I had thrown a few bottles of cider into a cooler to take over there, so we didn’t have to spend any money on drinks. We all played Apples to Apples and Taboo for a bit, then Sarah drove us home. We had a really good time at the movies and later with our friends for only $4.00. If only we could do that all the time!

New Year, New Post

January 1, 2010 in Public Introspection | 5 comments

It was a quiet New Year’s Eve around the Pope household. With our daughter at her grandparents and a cold, foggy night, Sarah and I just opted to stay in. I cooked a nice dinner. We listened to music, watched the Chick-Fil-A bowl and then flipped between the various New Year’s Eve TV countdowns.

A few random thoughts about those things:

* We were listening to our local “new rock” radio station’s countdown of the 500 most requested songs ever for their radio station. That was infinitely better than the normal playlist.
* I was happy to see Virginia Tech beat Tennessee. I don’t like Lane Kiffen and like Virginia Tech as a school. It’s a very pretty campus. The couple of times I have been there, I’ve gotten a good vibe from the place. It feels a little like Texas A&M in the mountains.
* The TV New Year’s Eve Celebrations were all pretty standard, I guess. I told Sarah that, while I think it would be awesome to visit New York City during Christmastime, I have no desire whatsoever to be a part of that New Year’s Eve crowd in Times Square. Just too many people crammed in there for too long. I would, however, like to see Jay-Z perform in Rockefeller Center. I love how he’s reach such iconic status that he can just show up, perform his one song and his little part of Rhianna’s, then disappear. No hanging around with Carson Daily or working the crowd. He did the same thing (show up just before his performance, then take off right after) for the VMA’s. Hey, he’s a busy man. I saw him on Oprah.

A good New Year’s Eve, even if we missed our daughter. A good 2009, too. Eleanor grew into a full-fledged two-year-old, with all the craziness that entails. My wife ran a half-marathon! Work progressed for me: I had a paper published and submitted another one, served on some committees that may lead to other opportunities, and weathered furlough days. I read some good books and spent some quality time with friends and family.

2009 was fine, but I think 2010 will be better. I’ll run my 5K this year, which is an unfulfilled 2009 goal. I want to continue to grow as a father and a husband. My goals for my professional life have become a little clearer. One big goal is to put together a quality tenure and promotion portfolio, which I’ll have to submit this fall. But I also want to move in a more administrative direction, career wise and there may be some opportunities at Winthrop for me there. I’ve got another paper that needs revision so I can submit it somewhere. That’s the work stuff (along with a bunch of other smaller goals, like revising the service learning component of my courses). I want to be confirmed and baptized into the Catholic Church (I’ve started the RCIA program at our parish). I want to eliminate one of our piles of debt. I want to read 50 books (with no more than 20 being graphic novels). I stole that last one from Rich, so maybe we can help each other out on that one. And I want to blog more, hopefully in a way that will encourage people who don’t know me directly to read and to comment.

Here’s to all of that in 2010!

Third Time’s the Charm?

November 23, 2009 in Public Introspection | 4 comments

My daughter has been a fairly healthy child, thank God. We took her in for her two year appointment in April and haven’t been back since. Well, until ten days ago. Now we’ve visited three times in that short span. Hopefully, that’s it!

The first time was what turned out to be a (routine) ear infection. She had been stuffy and slightly feverish, then complained one day about her ear hurting, so my wife took her in the next day. A few doses of cherry flavored Amoxicilin later and she was back to normal. Until. . .

Last Wednesday she fell out of her chair at school and gashed her chin. The school called my wife, my wife went to pick her up and whisked her to the doctor. Some Dermabond and TLC fixed her right up. She even went back to school that day. All was well until. . .

Sometime on Friday, she got bitten on her foot by something or another. By Saturday night she was running a 102 fever and throwing up. This scared my wife and I to the point where I was looking up spider bites on Wikipedia and calling poison control at 3:00 AM. Both poison control and the overnight nurse were helpful, telling us to take our daughter to the doctor as soon as we could, but that unless there were breathing problems, we didn’t need to take her to the emergency room. Thankfully, our doctor is open for a few hours on Sunday, so we took her there instead of church. Whatever kind of bite it was on her foot, it was infected. Another antibiotic prescription! That, some Tylenol for the fever, and some snuggle time on the couch resulted in a daughter who was able to go to her Thanksgiving feast today at school.

That’s three. I hope that’s it!

Facebook Thoughts

November 20, 2009 in Public Introspection, Technology | 3 comments

First of all, don’t get mad at me. My thoughts on Facebook are not to be construed in any negative way toward my Facebook Friends or anyone I have met face to face — especially anyone I went to high school with.

In an uncharacteristic display of divorced-parent unity, my mom and dad dropped me off at college together. We borrowed my Uncle’s white Toyota mini-van, loaded it up with things we thought I needed (yeah, I rode that bike maybe three times), and unloaded it in Poteat Dorm at Furman University. I was very happy to be out of Conway, even though my college was only three hours away and sat on an isolated campus outside of the Greenville city limits. I was tired of it all — the small town, the boring high school, the small-minded people — and saw college as a way to get away from it all into a wider world. I am not saying I was correct in my seventeen-year-old perceptions, but that’s how I felt. Later, I would hear those feelings echoed in the wisdom of Richard Linklater as voiced through Randall “Pink” Floyd: “All I know is, if I look back and say these were the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself.”

With a few sporadic exceptions, I didn’t really keep in touch with anyone from Conway that wasn’t family. There were some letters –actual, paper and stamps sorts of letters — with Conway folks I didn’t even go to high school with. I’d see some old friends when I was back in town, but even that became increasingly sporadic when I moved to Texas.

Then came Facebook. I can’t remember what, exactly, prompted me to get an account. I was a late adopter; I had a twitter account before Facebook. Likely it was just bandwaggoning. My wife had gotten one and kept talking about all these folks she had reconnected with, so I signed up. Soon, I had a couple of hundred “friends,” a bunch of which were high school folks I knew back then. A significant percentage of those people were not people I considered friends in high school. And then there were the people I didn’t even remember knowing in high school, but records indicate we graduated at the same time.

Honestly, I am not sure what value I add to any of these people’s lives when I post my little Facebook blurb about having a good time playing D&D or a rough day with my daughter. I don’t see what value they add to my life when they post the same. There are a handful of notable exceptions, including a former classmate who is now a very good travel writer. For the most part, it’s mildly interesting what some of these folks are doing, but that’s about it.

If that sounds rude, then that’s the strange social space Facebook has created. We (or maybe just I) worry about possibly offending some “friend” who is actually someone we haven’t seen in ten years and, even then, was only a minor acquaintance.

I’ll hasten to add that the above reflects just my own perception of how Facebook adds/doesn’t add value to my life. It’s a fun distraction sometimes and there is occasional value in that. For my wife, though, it seems to add significant value. She’s generally a lot more social than I am and is thus able to value and nurture a lot more relationships at a variety of different levels. That’s an admirable trait, but one I don’t really have. Facebook has allowed her to reconnect with old friends. Those connections clearly add value to her life. More importantly, it allows her to maintain a local social network of moms, which is very important to her since a lot of her daily face to face social contact is with a two-year-old.

Based on all this, it seems I shouldn’t really be on Facebook. If only Bejeweled Blitz weren’t so damn fun.

Social Networks Part 2: Some Personal History

October 14, 2009 in Public Introspection, Technology | No comments

One of the things that prompted all this reflection on social networks is the increasing feeling of social disintegration. I have all these different networks that capture little strands of me, but nothing that really brings it together very well. Naysayers of these networks will describe that as an inevitable consequence of the tools — they bring about personal and social fragmentation. I don’t think that’s quite right, because I have always felt this fragmentation to some extent. Maybe we all do.

In high school, I really had three networks (it’s weird to call them networks. I am not sure I should, but I am trying to be consistent with my terms). There were my gaming friends. There were my punk rock friends. And there were my honors class friends. There was some overlap — a lot of my gaming friends started going to shows and such, but none of my punk rock friends ever delved into gaming. So I had these three fairly distinct social networks that I’d have to divide my time between. It’s Friday. Do I go to the show or play D&D? The show usually ended up winning, simply because they didn’t happen every weekend. When there was no show, I gamed. Sometimes I watched movies. Lurking beyond all that was a big social unifier — we were all in high school together and saw each other in that context.

College was different in that I didn’t game. I did my freshman year, but most of the guys I gamed with transferred after that. I remember wanting to game at various points in college, but never really finding the people or the time. I joined a fraternity, which became my primary social network, with some radio station friends forming a second sort of network. The two were pretty exclusive with one another. My radio station friends didn’t really come to fraternity events and, aside from a couple of times I snagged free tickets to a concert and enlisted some fraternity friends to drive me to Atlanta or Charlotte for the show, fraternity friends weren’t involved with radio stuff. In all honesty, while the fraternity network led to some very close friendships I maintain to this day and some friendships that I know I would not have otherwise made, it led to strained relations in other networks. I don’t think this is a “greek/non-greek” thing. I think it was the by-product of a general tension that exists between networks plus my own immaturity. So if you’re reading this, Jeff, I am really sorry I acted like an ass that time in the radio station staff meeting. I was dumb.

Oh, and I all but severed most of my high-school ties during college. Nothing dramatic. I just didn’t go home much and didn’t talk to many people when I did. One of my pet theories is that modern electronic social networking allows today’s college student to maintain their “home ties” easier. I am not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

Grad school in Texas was initially very hard, socially. I didn’t know anyone and had some trouble making friends. But I fell into a really good gaming group, which became my primary social network for over a year. Once I started working at Barnes and Noble, my coworkers became another network. And the philosophy department warmed into yet a third. I remember a lot of cross pollination of groups, especially between the bookstore and the grad students. I never felt bad about gaming on Friday. The gaming group survived people moving away. I maintained strong relationships with college friends (thanks to Winston and Jimmy for driving all the way to Texas to give me a ride. Thanks to Harper and Daniel for coming to my graduation). I also met my wife, so it all worked out pretty well.

In Virginia, my gaming network became quickly established and was my dominant social outlet. It grew way beyond gaming; we all became close friends, including our significant others. We didn’t just game together. We went to concerts and baseball games and were in each other’s weddings. My other network was a very small group of grad students, but the gaming centric network dominated and I was pleased with that situation.

Looking back on it all, college was sort of an anomaly, in that my gaming network wasn’t at all central. College had a lot of network unity, but the network itself was a different sort of thing. It produced great friends, but friends unlike friends I had before or since. My Virginia network seemed to be the most coherent — a core group of friends brought together by gaming whose friendship quickly grew beyond it.

That’s a quick sketch of my social networks prior to the electronic age. Observations?

Social Disintegration

October 9, 2009 in Public Introspection | 1 comment

The blog has been dormant lately, due to a number of factors. I have done a bit of traveling (to the SAPES conference in Chapel Hill) and have been writing other things (my paper on Dewey and popular culture is all but done), but I think the biggest reason I haven’t posted here in awhile is, again, I have felt pulled in multiple directions by my various electronic social networks.

I have no idea what constitutes the “norm” in terms of social networks in which one participates, but I feel I participate in a lot of them. I twitter. I Facebook. (Those are the two biggest). I participate in a ning site dedicated to the use of social networking here at my university (haven’t been to that one in awhile, though). I have recently begun poking around ENWorld again, mainly to follow some Story Hours I used to read regularly. There are my RSS feeds, which range from Social Foundations blogs to sci-fi news to web comics. Then, I have F2F friends who don’t participate in any of the above, but who live far away, so I try to keep in touch with them via email and other means. This is all for a guy who wouldn’t describe himself as extraordinarily social!

I wish there were a way to better integrate these networks, these lines of communication. I am sure there are network aggregators or something like that. I know some folks who use FriendFeed (and would appreciate any recommendations or comments about that or others). But it’s not just a technology problem. It’s a self problem.

By a “self problem” I mean I have a lot of different interests — philosophy, education, gaming, parenting, music, geek culture. Each of those interests has friends associated with it and I have some friendships (mostly from college) that aren’t necessarily built around interests at all, but instead came into being through shared experiences. I sometimes wish those interests were a bit better integrated, just as I wish my networks were a bit more overlapping. With my limited time, sometimes I feel it’s hard to nurture those interests and those networks to the degree they should be nurtured. I feel pulled in different directions, neglectful of one aspect if I spend too much time in another.

I realize all of this is probably normal, but can’t help but wonder if these networks that are supposed to connect us don’t also disintegrate us to some degree.

Running Without Music

September 11, 2009 in Public Introspection, Uncategorized | No comments

For Winston, I tried running this morning without the headphones. Loved it! My wandering mind was enough to keep me distracted. Without the music, I could no longer say to myself “Let’s see, each song is about 4 minutes long and I’ve heard three songs, so I am 12 minutes in.”
Thanks!

Run, like hell!

September 8, 2009 in Public Introspection | 4 comments

I’m sitting here at 8:30 in the evening, with my daughter asleep and my wife at the grocery store. My legs hurt.

I am on week seven of Couch to 5K. This is the week where the program goes from “here are some intervals of walking and running that gradually build up your stamina” to “just run until our little computer voice tells you to stop.” Right now, “stop” comes after 25 minutes. I know that’s not much, but for this little wuss, it’s a lot.

Today was the second day I’ve done the 25 minutes, but my first that I’ve done solo. I’ve found a running partner — a new biology professor who used to run a lot but fell out of it over the summer with the new job and moving. These past two Saturdays, I’ve run with Jason and I am amazed at how much easier it is to run with someone else. My major problem with running (and almost any exercise, really) is that I think too much. When I run by myself, I am constantly psyching myself in and out of going on. “How much further? Do you think I can stop when this song ends? What if I threw up in that sewer grate — would someone stop to see if I was okay? That would be embarrassing! NO! Keep running, you out of shape loser!” When I run with someone else I can at least talk with them, which distracts me from that puny little quitter that sits inside my head somewhere.

Also, I probably need new shoes.

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