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8/10/2018 Off to Otakon!

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I'm off to Otakon! Well, it's not like I'm going anywhere, it's a half hour drive. But anyway, I'm really looking forward to it. Otakon is always a lot of fun and this year there's going to be not one, but two Distant Worlds concerts. I've been wanting to go an official Final Fantasy concert for years, and now I get to go to two!

Anyway, I'll post a travelogue about it sometime in the coming week. For now, I'm off!

Josiah

8/8/2018 Coming up...

Only 2 1/2 weeks left before the start of fall semester. Sigh... Summer disappeared so fast... So what am I going to do in that time? Well, I still have some work to do around the house (a lot less than a few days ago, but some), and once the repair work downstairs actually gets finished I'll have a bunch of shelves to put together and a lot of unpacking to do to get my office and library set up. Though I don't know if I'll be doing that before classes start up or trying to squeeze it in afterwards. But I do have some fun stuff coming up, like Otakon this weekend. And we're planning at least a couple other outings, though some might actually get postponed until after the start of classes depending on weather and such. Honestly, I'll be happy when things calm down enough that I can get some regular game playing going again. Between the trip and the move, I've hardly played anything other than cell phone games over the last couple of months. More time for the Aurora's Nightmare demo would be great too.

Anyway, for now I'll just look forward to Otakon and keep working on that to-do list.

Later!

Josiah

8/6/2018 Progressing

On the bright side, I've made some serious progress on my to-do list over the last few days. On the down side, Zack hasn't been sleeping very well, which means I haven't either. Really hoping that will change soon.

Later!

Josiah

8/3/2018 Sigh...

Once again, TWC is working, but I'm posting the bonus comic here as well. Basically, I had some research I needed to do which took longer than I planned and didn't leave me with as much time as I'd hoped to make today's PV strip. And I'm too burned out to stay up late to work on it. It's partly still from last week along with the work I had to do this week, combined with that cold. Other things, like my camera breaking, some issues with scheduling the repair work for that water leak, and getting told that I'm most likely going to have to pay for it all myself haven't really helped. There have been some fun spots here and there (like the fruit picking), but it's still been busy, my to-do hasn't shrunk as much as I'd like, and I haven't gotten all that much time to relax. And with my books, game consoles, and the like still packed, I can't really do most of my usual relaxing activities either even if I did have the time.

Hopefully the coming week will improve. At very least, I've got Otakon to look forward to.

Later!

Josiah

8/1/2018 Miku

Well, I'm pretty much over that cold, but I think my throat will need a day or two to heal. The online class stuff is finished (not counting any revisions I might have to do after it's reviewed). So now I'm free to relax...or not. More like free to start working on the to-do list I was putting off due to the summer class and online course work. Or at least what I can do while waiting for my office to get repaired after that water leak. No idea when that's going to be over and done. The contractor is taking their time scheduling the repair work now that things have been dried out.

Anyway, Connie and I got away for a bit on Sunday morning to pick some berries and peaches, which was a really nice change of pace. And I've had time to play with Zack more, which is also nice. Though it doesn't help at all with my to-do list. Unfortunately, my luck has not been going well either. On top of the water leak and the cold, a couple other things went wrong the last couple of days. One is hopefully nothing, and I don't really want to get into it right now. As for the other? The display on my camera suddenly died with no warning or reason. I'll get in touch with tech support today, but if there's no simple fix, I'm pretty sure it'll be cheaper to get a new one rather than a repair. It's not a really big deal. I mean, I've had the camera over three years and a replacement isn't horribly expensive. But I didn't have any particular desire to upgrade and it's just another hassle and expense on top of everything else. I really wish I could just get everything done, relax, and enjoy the new house. But at this rate, by the time I get to that point, it'll be time to start work again...

But anyway, I'll get that last travelogue entry done today. That's something.

July 12th (Thursday): Miku Expo
Thanks to the places I've lived, I've gotten to see a lot of different concerts over the years, many of which I've written about in various travelogues. Well, this summer gave me the chance to see two more that have been sitting near the top of my list for years. One of those will be coming up at Otakon, so more on that later. The other was Hatsune Miku. I've written about Miku and Vocaloid music before in depth so I won't do it again here. To give a quick summary, Miku is a Vocaloid, a computer program that acts as a virtual singer. She's the most popular of the Vocaloids by far and featured in thousands of songs by numerous artists. I'm a big fan of Miku and the other Crypton Vocaloids thanks to the Project Diva games.
Now, Miku is so popular that she even has live concerts. How does that work? Well, there's an actual live band (from Japan) playing the music and Miku herself shows up as a hologram. I love a lot of Miku's music, and I also thought the whole hologram thing would be a pretty neat, so I've been wanting to go to a Miku concert for a long time, but never before had a chance. Luckily, this year's Miku Expo tour had a stop in DC so I was sure to get a ticket.
The show was at a club in the harbor area, where I hadn't been before. Seems like a nice place to hang out, eat, and shop, though parking was a bit of a pain. Even more so because the scanners in the garage were glitching and didn't recognize my parking pass. Annoyances aside, I did eventually park and get to the show. I was there fairly early, so I had chance to look around a bit and grab a good spot (unless you spent a lot more for a seat on the higher levels, it was standing room only). I opted to stay a bit further back from the stage in return for a less crowded area and a higher vantage point, which paid off when the place filled up. It was a pretty large, and very passionate, audience. On a side note, they must have made a fortune on those glow sticks, you could only buy them at the official merchandise table it seemed like nearly everyone had at least one.
The concert itself was pretty awesome. The hologram tech they use for Miku was seriously impressive. There were some faint outlines of the screen they use but, if I could ignore those, I could nearly believe that it was a real person in a really good cosplay. The set list didn't quite have everything I would have wanted, but it did have many of Miku's biggest hits, including a lot of my favorites. And Miku wasn't the only one. All the other Crypton Vocaloids got at least one song (with Luca and the twins getting a few), for a total show time of about 2 hours (including the encore). As a note, while those videos don't really show it, Miku wore her regular outfit for most of the set list and only a couple songs made use of the hologram for special effects or backgrounds. While part of me felt that was a missed opportunity, another part of me felt that it helped keep things feeling "real". And they did, mostly. There was a part maybe 30 or 40 minutes into the show when Kaito was singing his song that he did a fancy jumping spin move. For a second, I was actually impressed. Not with the animation, but with his actual dancing skills. Of course, a moment later I remembered that he was a hologram so pulling off a tricky jump wasn't really anything spectacular. Still, that moment stuck with me as a sign of just how real the concert felt and how good the holograms were.
Anyway, the show was a blast and I would definitely go again if given the chance. Even if you're not especially familiar with Miku's music, I'd still give it a recommendation for the sheer novelty.

Later!

Josiah

7/27/2018 Almost done UPDATE 7/30/2018

UPDATE: Sorry, but I'm skipping Monday's update. There's no single reason, it's partly because I pushed myself too hard last week with everything and caught a small cold and partly because I still have a bit of work to do for that online class. Updates should resume on Wednesday.

It's Friday so use the TWC button to vote and see the new bonus comic!

Whew... This week has been a blur. I've either been at campus working or at home either working or taking care of Zack pretty much non-stop since Sunday. Looking forward to finally wrapping things up today. Well, mostly. The last bit of work for that online class is probably going to bleed into the first part of the coming week. I still have one more travelogue entry to write but it's late so I'll save it for next time.

Have a good weekend!

Josiah

7/25/2018 Show time

As previously mentioned, I've got a couple of travelogue entries to write for things that happened after I returned to the US, so here's the first.

July 8th (Sunday): Cirque du Soleil's Crystal
Looking at this travelogue, it's been quite a few months since my last entry, which also happened to be for a Cirque du Soleil show. I had picked up a ticket for Crystal a while back. Connie thought about going but opted to take Zack out instead of hiring a sitter. However, with my mom here to help with our move, she reconsidered and, fortunately, I was able to get another ticket.
Since the show was in Baltimore, we all decided to make a day of it. We started at the Baltimore Farmers' Market, which Connie and I visited once a while back (you can read about it in my first Virginia travelogue). It was pretty much the same as I remembered, and a lot of fun to walk around. After we finished there, we made our way to the Inner Harbor area where we walked a bit, met up with my cousin (sorta), who lives nearby and got lunch at a nearby Peruvian chicken place. Nothing too exciting, but it all made for an enjoyable morning.
After lunch, we split up, with my mom taking Zack and Connie and I heading to the nearby arena for the show. Crystal is one of the more unique Cirque shows as it takes place entirely on ice. It's also one of the more story focused ones, at least for Cirque, featuring a relatively coherent plot and a bit of narration at the start of each scene. Basically, it's about a girl named Crystal who has trouble fitting in at home and school. While skating, she falls through the ice and into a magical world were she struggles to come to terms with who she is and her place in the world. There's nothing too ground-breaking there (think a less trippy Alice in Wonderland), but some of the narration is rather poetic. Of course, no one goes to see Cirque du Soliel for the storyline. As far as the performances go, I've seen a moderate number of ice shows before but none of them could match Crystal in terms of atmosphere, costumes, or music. And Cirque certainly brought some interesting twists to ice skating. I didn't find the first half to be especially spectacular (good, but nothing too amazing), but they mixed it up more after the intermission with some pretty unique acts. Though I still feel that they could have taken it a bit further at times. Over all, Crystal was an enjoyable and impressive show, and very different from other Cirque performances. But, at the same time, I feel that having the whole thing on ice was a little limiting and kept it from quite reaching the more breathtaking heights of many of the others. It's still very much worth seeing, but I wouldn't rank it quite as highly as many of the others. That said, you'd be hard pressed to find a better or more unique ice skating show around.
After the show, we met back up with my mom and let Zack play around the harbor for a bit before heading home. It wasn't quite a full day, but between Zack and all the work left to do for our move, we decided not to push it.

Well, back to work for me. Later!

Josiah

7/23/2018 Ugh...

Well, I'm still working on stuff for that online class (long story short, it was decided kind of late in the process to make some additional content, and that's what I've been scrambling to get finished). I'm making good progress, but still have a decent amount of work to do on that front. And, as previously mentioned, I'm teaching a summer game design class this week. Well, not teaching so much as supervising a bit and doing a few lectures, but it's still a full time thing.

Well, that would have kept me busy enough, on top of getting my office and library set up. Unfortunately, we had a big rain storm over the weekend which ended with water leaking into our new house and soaking a corner of my office. Actually, we'd found out about that leak prior to purchasing the house and it was supposed to have been fixed prior to the sale but either a new leak just happened to start in the same spot, or it wasn't repaired properly. So now I've got to coordinate with my insurance and a contractor or two to dry things out (I really can't afford to get any mold), repair the water damage, and seal that stupid leak for good. That's probably going to require replacing the carpet and redoing some drywall which means I won't be using my office for a while, or unpacking much of anything since I had to move all my stuff into the library which doesn't really leave me with any space to put shelves together. Even worse, the forecast says that it's going to be raining all week, which might delay the repair work and likely means more water getting in while I wait. If it's just in the office, it's probably manageable, but if it spreads to the rest of the floor, it could be a real disaster. Then there's the question of who is paying for it. My insurance, I hope (they most likely will, but I can't be sure until after it's appraised). Though even then there's still the deductible. I'll pay what I have to, of course, but if someone else is at fault (there's a several people I can think of who might have botched the original repair in one way or another) I really don't want to have to spend my own money, especially on top of all the time and stress that's already involved. Anyway, I should know more in a day or two. For now, I just have to hope that the rain doesn't get too strong...

So yeah, not a great weekend for me and a really busy week is starting. I've got a couple more fun things to write about, but they'll have to wait a bit. Maybe Wednesday.

Later!

Josiah

7/20/2018 The end of the trip

Sorry for the Blooper Reel comic today. TWC is working fine, I'm just overworked. I think I committed to too much this month. Moving, finishing an online class design (which ended up involving a lot more work than I originally planned), and teaching a summer class all of the coming week on top of everything else I normally need to do is leaving me with too little time for anything. Sigh... Well, if I can just get through next week and get the rest of the lecture for that online class recorded on time, I'll be good. Though by good I mean that things will calm down and leave me with time to finish unpacking my office and library and work on the Aurora's Nightmare demo. Anyway, today I'll finally get the Europe travelogue finished.

July 1st (Sunday): Back to Zurich
For better or worse, we decided to get a round trip ticket from Zurich for the trip, rather than trying to fly in there and fly back from Florence. That meant taking the trains all the way back to Zurich. Unfortunately, it wasn't an especially smooth trip.
The first complication was buying the tickets. I actually did that in the evening a few days back (I wanted to make sure we got seats), but decided to write about it now just to stay on theme. Anyway, when you need to buy train tickets in Italy you can use the machines in the train station or a web site, but only so long as you're staying in the country. If you want to travel to another country, you need to go to the ticket office. So I waited in line and then told the agent that I wanted tickets to Zurich on Sunday morning. Strangely, the request left him really confused and he spent several minutes trying to figure out what I wanted and telling me it wasn't possible while I (who had naturally looked up the train routes ahead of time), insisted that it was. The fact that he spoke very little English and I spoke no Italian didn't really help. At first, I thought he was confused by my rail pass but finally, after getting increasingly frustrated with his refusals, I took out my phone and and showed him the trains I wanted on the Eurail app. That finally worked. See, there are no direct trains from Florence to Zurich and, apparently, it never crossed the agent's mind that I could change trains along the way. It that so uncommon in Italy, or was that guy just rather slow? Anyway, I finally got the tickets.
Fast forward to Sunday morning and Connie and I took Zack and our luggage and made our way to the train station. Our first train was from Florence to Milan. It ended up being about ten minutes late. I didn't mind that too much, since we had 45 minutes to change trains. But the fact that they didn't actually announce the delay and just let the train's number sit on the board without a listed platform after the scheduled departure time passed stressed me out a bit while we waited.
But we boarded the train and everything was good...until we got to Milan. We arrived to find that our train to Zurich was running 45 minutes late. That was annoying. Then 45 minutes turned into 1 1/2 hours. It actually ended up being even later than that but at the end they decided not keep updating it on the board (either they were lazy or didn't want to show how late it was). Eventually though, we got on the train and were on our way to Zurich. Though I have to say, I really missed the big Swiss trains with their kids' play areas.
It seemed that the train between Milan and Zurich runs back and forth all day so the delay was affecting not just our trip, but all the rest for that day as well. Now, normally when a train is running late there are things the company might due to help catch back up a bit. One option is to increase the speed and make the trip faster, though that can only do so much. Another option is to send out another train to cover its later routes, so at least they aren't impacted by the delay. Trenitalia (Italy's train company), on the other hand, decided it would make more sense to have the train force everyone off in a small town an hour away from Zurich and go back to Milan early. That sucked for us, and everyone else on the train. And I'm sure it sucked even more for all the people in Zurich who were waiting for the train to Milan. Even worse, they didn't offer anything in the way of an apology or compensation and, since we were in Switzerland, we couldn't really complain to Trenitalia staff. Long story short, Trenitalia sucks.
Fortunately, we were able to get a local train to Zurich (they didn't check tickets, so I'm not sure if we would have needed to pay or not). So we did make it, albeit considerably later than planned. It's a nice looking city, but due to the delays we didn't have a lot of time explore. We did walk around a bit in an nice old area by the river to find a restaurant. The food was good, but cost about three times as much as it would have in Italy. After that, we let Zack spend some time at a nearby playground and then called it a night.

July 2nd (Monday): Returning to the US
Our hotel was right near Zurich's main train station and from there it was a quick ten minute ride to the airport. Unlike the previous day, everything went pretty smoothly. The plane left on time, and Zack was fairly well behaved on the flight. Honestly, there's not too much to say, it was a straight forward trip. We had to wait in a really long line to get through customs back in the US, but that was it. It sure was nice having a direct flight for a change.
And that was the end of our big Europe trip. I'd say that I'm now pretty comfortable traveling in Switzerland and Italy and wouldn't have any real problems going back to either one. It was a great trip and I really enjoyed my time in both countries, though for different reasons. Hard to say when, but I suspect Connie and I will revisit both Switzerland and Italy eventually...

Whew... Next week I'll try and post a bit about what I've been doing since returning to the US and then I'll be totally caught up, at least as far as this site is concerned.

Later!

Josiah

7/18/2018 Wrapping up Italy

Ok, let's see if I can get the travelogue wrapped up...

June 30th (Saturday): Siena
We had a couple options for our last day trip, but we settled on Siena. The train station is actually a little outside the main town. You can walk for around half an hour (all up hill though) or take a short bus ride to get into Siena proper. We took the bus, though finding the right one was a little tricky (there's three bus stops near the station).
Siena isn't especially large, but it is a neat old town. What really sets it apart is that it's on a hill (or rather several hills, I think). So expect to do a lot of climbing. There also seemed to be a strong Roman influence, so it appears that Siena and Rome had close ties, though I haven't had a chance to look into its history.
We walked through the town for a bit as we made our way to the Piazza del Campo. It was very different from other piazzas we've visited. As you can see in the picture, it's sloped and surrounded by a dirt road. There's also bleachers all around the the sides (old fashioned wooden ones hanging over the shops and restaurants). Apparently, there's a big horse race, or some such, that's held there. And I can't forget about the birds. There's a ton of them living in the nooks in the buildings flying all over above the piazza. It's a pretty unique area, and cool to see.
The big building with the clock tower on one end of the piazza is the Palazzo Pubbilico, which is where the ruler of the city lived. It's pretty fancy inside, though only a relatively small part of it was open to the public. But there was some nice art and the upper level had a good view. I wanted to climb the clock tower, but entry was on a time system and the time slots didn't really sync up with our schedule. A little disappointing, but it's not like I hadn't already climbed plenty of towers on this trip.
Our next stop was Santa Maria della Scala, an old hospital that had been converted into a museum containing some art and a collection of Catholic relics. There's also a chapel inside. I feel like we probably missed a lot of it though, since we paused for a while to rest while Zack napped.
Right across the street from Santa Maria is Siena's Duomo. I grabbed combo tickets for everything without paying too much attention to the details. Turns out one thing on the ticket had a timed entry but we had some time to kill before that, so we headed inside. While smaller than many of the Duomos we'd visited, Siena's was very unique in a number of ways. The zebra striping on the walls and pillars immediately jumped out. But another interesting element was that, aside from the impressive paintings and architecture, the floor was covered with a large number of designs. Some seemed purely artistic, but the majority were of different scenes from the Bible. The choice of subject matter was pretty unusual though. I suppose Moses with the ten commandments is pretty iconic, if slightly odd for a Catholic church. But Sampson using the donkey's jawbone? Or Absalom getting caught in a tree? Now that's a story that rarely gets any sort of artistic depiction... The library (in a side room) was also worth a visit due to the art and collection of illuminated books.
Once we finished exploring, we headed to the meeting place for our timed thing. Turns out, it was a tour of the Duomo's roof. While nowhere near impressive as the Milan Duomo's roof, it did give some nice views of the interior and Siena itself. I enjoyed it but, considering how much extra it cost compared to the regular combo ticket (which gets you in everything else), I'm not sure it was really worth the price.
The combo ticket also got us into a museum which contained a bunch of relics from the Duomo and another viewpoint (though I skipped that since only a few people were allowed up at once and we had limited time), a large crypt, and probably the nicest baptistry we'd seen anywhere in Italy.
Connie didn't want to get back to Florence too late so, after finishing up everything on the ticket, we made our way to a bus stop and then back to the train station. I walked around a little in Florence that evening, just for fun (and a last gelato), but that wrapped up our time touring in Italy. Connie and I both really enjoyed it. Neither of us were especially fond of Milan, other than the Duomo, but the other towns and cities we visited were really nice and many of them would be worth revisiting in the future. If you like history, old buildings, and/or art, Italy is certainly worth a visit. Heck, Connie said she'd go back just for the food. While a return visit to Italy isn't on top of my international travel list, it would be a lot of fun and I can already think of plenty of other things to see and do there.

Hmm... I was hoping to finish the entire travelogue today, but that entry ran a bit long so I think I'll stop here and do the last little bit on Friday.

See you then!

Josiah

7/13/2018 Always more to do

It's Friday, so you can vote on TWC to see the latest bonus comic!

Hmm... I'd like to do another travelogue entry or two. I really hate that it's been so long since the end of the trip and it's still not done. On the other hand, I just got back from Miku Expo (expect a travelogue entry on that once I finish the Italy travelogue), it's late, and I've been pushing myself pretty hard since getting back with all the moving stuff (which isn't done yet, though we've made pretty major progress). So I think I should probably get some sleep instead. Sigh... Oh well, the travelogue is getting pretty close to the end. I should be able to finish it on Monday or Wednesday for sure.

So, have a good weekend and I'll see you (hopefully with a large travelogue entry) on Monday.

Later!

Josiah

7/11/2018 Whew...

Yesterday was a bit of a blur. The movers came to take the furniture to our new place (Connie and I have been moving the rest of the stuff ourselves, since it's such a short distance) and after that I spent a while putting furniture back together. Then there was some runs back and forth to move a few more things from the apartment to the town house, unpacking, and the like. Anyway, the moving should be finished today (there's not much left), and hopefully most of the unpacking as well. Except for my office and library stuff, which will likely take quite a while, especially since I can't really spend a couple of solid days on it or anything. I'm pretty worn out, but let's see if I can at least get one day of the travelogue done.

June 28th (Thursday): Pisa
Florence makes a really good base city from which to visit a number of interesting smaller towns and cities. I planned several potential day trips for our stay, and decided to start with the most famous, and the easiest to get to.
Pisa's most famous attraction is a 20 minute or so walk from the station. But it's a pretty nice walk, running through a scenic stretch of the old city. On the way, I noticed that Pisa actually used to be a walled city. Some of the wall remains and there are places where you can climb up and walk on it, though we didn't have the time for that. I did get some good gelato though.
Of course, the main reason we came to Pisa, well, the main reason everyone goes to Pisa, is to see the Leaning Tower. It was a bit smaller than I expected... But Zack was getting pretty restless so, before we could explore, we needed to let him run around a bit. Fortunately, while the area immediately surrounding the tower was packed and people were limited to the sidewalks, the area off to the side of the Duomo just past the tower was fully open and much less crowded.
We had combo tickets for the entire complex (minus a couple museums which were undergoing renovations) and decided to start with the Composanto. Actually, we had no idea of composanto meant when we went in. Turns out, it's a really fancy cemetery. Presumably for Pisa's rich, powerful, and very religious. The older tombs dated back hundreds of years, while some more recent ones were from only a few decades ago. It was a very peaceful place, with some nice paintings and carvings, and even Connie, who normally doesn't like cemeteries of any kind, really enjoyed walking through it.
Our next stop was the Battistero. As far as baptistries go, this one was pretty straight forward, though you were able to walk up to the second level and get a nice overview.
The last stop on our ticket was Pisa's Duomo. While considerably smaller than the Duomos in Milan and Florence, it was very nicely put together and decorated, with lots of large paintings. They even had an organ player (though he wasn't playing the main organ). So, while it wasn't as overwhelmingly impressive as the others, it was still really nice, to the point where Connie actually considers it her favorite church from the entire trip.
By the time we finished in the Duomo, Zack wanted to run around again, and it was getting close to the time slot on my last ticket, which was for climbing the Leaning Tower itself. As a note, I had purchased all the tickets in advance online. That wasn't really necessary for the combo ticket. Actually, it wasn't necessary to climb the tower either, but from the look of things, purchasing a ticket on the same day would have required waiting a few hours for an available time.
Unlike the other towers I'd climbed, the Leaning Tower had a really strict no bag policy, to the point where they wouldn't even let me wear the empty Ergobaby. Fortunately, they did have a free bag check, though you had to go there no more than ten minutes before your time slot, which means some running back and forth. Why was the Ergo empty? Because children under six years old aren't allowed. A little annoying, but it was nice not to have to carry so much extra weight on the way up. Climbing the tower was relatively easy, certainly less strenuous than any of the others, though a little disorienting due to the tilt. It wasn't super obvious once you were inside, but it did cause the stairs to ascend at odd angles. It didn't help that they were very worn and slick. The views from the top were nice, though I had trouble deciding if I should hold my camera flat (like I was standing), or turn it to match the tilt of the tower.
After snapping some pictures, I headed back down to meet up with Connie and Zack and we walked around in Pisa a bit longer before returning to Florence and getting another great meal at Za-Za.

Random Italy Comment: Pickpockets
Italy has a reputation as a haven for pickpockets, especially in the more touristy areas. Is it true? Well, all I can say is that Connie and I didn't have anything stolen over the course of our trip, nor did I notice any attempts. That said, I consider myself pretty difficult to pickpocket since I keep everything in my front pockets (without anything sticking out) and wear a backpack (or in this case a baby carrier) with two thick strips. Connie took some extra precautions on the trip as well, forgoing her back pockets and getting a belt holster for her phone. So maybe the pickpockets aren't as bad as they say, or maybe they passed us up for easier targets. Or maybe we just got lucky.

Later!

Josiah

7/9/2018 Art and attractions

Let's get right back to the travelogue.

June 27th (Wednesday): The Galleries of Florence
Note:
The photos accompanying this entry include some statues and paintings of nude figures. They're all famous works of art, but I feel I should mention that for ratings purposes.
Following the advice in my travel guide, I'd booked some tickets for today in advance. They were time stamped, which was a bit inconvenient, but very much worth it considering the lines. So, after breakfast, Connie, Zack, and I headed to Galleria dell'Accademia. Ignoring the long lines, we swung by the nearby ticket office to trade my voucher for our actual tickets and then headed inside. The Galleria is, as the name implies, an art gallery. There's some statues and paintings, but pretty much everyone goes there to see one thing, Michelangelo's David. Got to say, the real thing is pretty impressive, and the replacement we saw the previous say in the piazza just doesn't compare. Other than David, Connie and I found the plaster cast collection pretty impressive. There's also a smaller upper level, that almost no one visits, which has a nice collection of Gothic painting (though I'm still not a fan of the style). In the end, while the Galleria was worth visiting, it really didn't take that long to see.
Moving on, we had some time to kill so we swung by Mercato Centrale, an indoor market comprised of a lot of different stalls selling, produce, meat, olive oil, and the like, along with some small restaurants and cafes. Nothing too exotic, but it was fun to walk through and we picked up a couple things on the way.
After dropping our purchases off at the hotel, we started making our way towards the river and our next destination, the Uffizi Gallery. We had a timed ticket (once again, to dodge long lines), and got to the area a bit early, so we began looking for a place for lunch. We ended up at a pizza place right by the gallery which seemed like it probably should have been a tourist trap but had good prices, reviews, and, of course, food. Got to say, I do enjoy eating out in Italy.
After lunch, it was about time to enter the Uffizi, which is the city's most popular art gallery. It's comprised of a large number of rooms, connected by long statue lines hallways. While I'm not a major art buff, I've visited a decent number of galleries and museums over the years and I'd say the Uffizi is easily in the top three. It's also pretty large, and took Connie and I over two hours to get through, even going at a pretty decent pace. Other than one special exhibit, the entire collection is comprised of classic works of art, mostly Gothic and Renaissance. To avoid a picture overload, I'll just post a few highlights like this statue of Hercules and Nessus, the original Birth of Venus, and the Adoration of the Magi (started by Da Vinci, but completed by Lippi when the client got tired of waiting). And, for a break from the art, there were also some nice view points where we could see the Ponte Vecchio and Palazzo Vecchio.
It wasn't especially late when we finished, so Connie and I walked around Florence a bit. We ended up near the Basilica of Santa Croce, though didn't really feel like waiting in the line, so we just looked out the outside. Other than that, we snacked a bit and spent quite a lot of time letting Zack run around and chase pigeons, since he'd been stuck in the Ergo for most of the day.
And that wrapped up our second day in Florence, and our last one focusing on the city itself. Florence's old city is certainly a lot of fun. While we hit the top attractions, there's easily at least two more day's worth of stuff to see and tons of interesting stores and restaurants. Both Connie and I wouldn't mind a return visit sometime.

Random Italy Comment: Food
I already mentioned how eating out in Italy is pretty cheap. So what do you actually eat? Well, it might sound cliche but most of the restaurants really do primarily serve pasta and pizza (along with wine and coffee, if you're looking for drinks). As for street food, there's a lot of stands selling pizza slices. Though it's not like that's all Italians eat. Depending on the part of the country you're in, you may also find rice dishes, soups, and other slightly less common Italian foods. So what if you don't want to eat Italian? Well, I did see a moderate number of Asian places (mostly either sushi or Chinese) and doner kebabs.
And for dessert, or a sweet snack? Gelato (and sometimes sorbet) is the main choice (it's everywhere, especially in tourist areas), but you might find some cannolis as well.

Hmm... I was hoping to get two days done, but I've a lot more moving stuff to do so I'd better go.

Later!

Josiah

7/6/20018 Still behind

TWC is working, but I'm posting this week's bonus comic here too just to help me catch up on things a bit. This actually isn't the first time I've come back from an international vacation only to throw myself immediately into a move, but it's even more hectic with a wife and a toddler, especially one who needs a few days to adjust to the time change.

June 26th (Tuesday): Off to Florence
We got an early start and made our way back to the train station (once more lugging the suitcases over the bridges) so we could head off to our final destination in Italy. Got to say, train rides feel a lot longer when I have to try and keep Zack entertained the entire time.
Anyway, we arrived in Florence and headed to our hotel. Going by the map, it should have been a fairly quick and easy walk. However, the map didn't account for a whole bunch of construction or all the beat up cobblestone roads we had to get the suitcases over. So it ended up taking a lot longer than I expected. But we eventually made it. Since Florence was our longest stop on the trip, I'd tried to book a fairly nice hotel. I did get a good location close to the train station and right in Florence's old city. And it was a rather fancy hotel. Though, being in the old city, it was also inside an old building. That made for kind of a neat room but, being an old building, it was built before elevators, and the hotel didn't really see the need to update that particular aspect. So getting to our room required climbing a rather ridiculous seven flights of stairs. It was also one of those hotels that was fancy enough that they try to nickle and dime you for everything. Actually, nickle and dime isn't the right phrase considering the prices... One thing they advertised was upgrades to premium rooms. Connie joked that meant rooms on the lower floors. Considering our room was the highest one, she might have been right...
After settling in, we headed out to get a start on the sightseeing. Florence's old city is huge (the largest I've seen) and many of the streets are lined with shops and restaurants. We were on the north end, which was a little less fancy and, for some reason, had quite a lot of Chinese restaurants (we got lunch at one). But it was also a very short walk to the Duomo. As a side note, Duomo is the Italian name for a church built to serve as a cathedral, so there are a number of cities with Duomos, though Milan and Florence's are some of the larger and more famous ones. Anyway, Florence's Duomo doesn't match the amazing high Gothic architecture of Milan's, but it's extremely impressive in its own right, especially in the use of different colors of marble in the facade.
If you're curious, it was begun in 1296 and completed 140 years later. Quite a long time, though nothing on Milan's Duomo in that regard. It's also a lot smaller than Milan's Duomo, but still one of the biggest churches in Italy and features the largest brick dome ever built.
Despite it being mid afternoon, I was able to get tickets for everything except a climb up the dome (that was sold out for the next three days) and the line, while it looked moderately long, moved pretty quickly so we didn't have to wait too long to get inside. Once again, the interior wasn't as large and elaborate as in Milan, but it was still impressive. The highlight was probably the painted dome, though I also enjoyed the archaeological area below the foundation with its remnants of former churches that once occupied the spot.
After finishing up inside, I decided that, since I couldn't go up the dome, I should at least climb the bell tower, At 414 steps, it's pretty tall (though slightly lower than the dome) and offers some great views of Florence's old city. I'm glad I went up, but climbing a steep tower while carrying Zack in the Ergobaby wasn't easy. After I got down, we let him chase the pigeons for a bit (though there weren't nearly as many as in Milan) then went to see the nearby baptistry (a separate church building, usually large and round, where baptisms were held). It was mostly notable for the detailed fresco decorating the inside of its dome.
Moving on from the Duomo and its outer buildings, we had some time to kill so we walked around Florence a bit. Our first stop was actually a nearby gelato place that my tour book recommended. I usually don't pay too much attention to restaurants in my books, but when it mentioned organic gelato, I figured it was worth a try and yeah, it was good. Gelato aside, we wandered around for a while and ended up at the Palazzo Vecchio. In addition to the fortress, the attached piazza holds a lot of famous statues, including Micheangelo's David... Or at least it used to. At least most of the statues there now are copies, with the originals relocated to better preserve them. It's still a cool spot, but the imitations lack some of the detail and splendor of their originals. There's a famous fountain in the area as well but, unfortunately, it was undergoing restoration so we weren't able to see it.
Continuing on, we walked for a little along side the river and took a peak on the Ponte Vecchio bridge, which is entirely covered with jewelry stores, before starting to make our way back towards our hotel. There was no lack of restaurants around, so we resorted to Yelp for dinner plans and found Trattoria Za-Za which was both nearby and had excellent reviews. Well deserved too. Other than the bread they put on the table (which was almost tasteless), the food was excellent and affordable.
And with that, our first day in Florence came to a close.

Random Italy Comment: Prices
How much do things cost in Italy? Well, hotels were about what I expected (so not too different than the US) and admission tickets were in that range as well (maybe a little cheaper on average). What about food? Well, I've heard stories of restaurants in very tourist heavy parts of Venice and Rome that don't show you the prices on the menu and than hit tourists with insane prices when they go to pay. I also heard from my brother that restaurants along the coast are pretty expensive. From my own experience though, restaurants in Italy tend to be cheaper than the US. I previously said that restaurants in Switzerland cost about one tier higher than they would in the US. Well, Italy is a tier lower. Outside of one tourist triply type restaurant we ate at in Milan, excellent pasta, pizza, and other Italian dishes in fairly nice restaurants could be found for around $8 - $12 (or Euros). Of course, if you like to pair your meal with wine (which is pretty typical in Italy) or follow it up with coffee and deserts, both typical Italian things to do, the costs can add up.

Hmm... I really wanted to get another entry done today. On the other hand, it's getting late and I haven't gotten as much sleep as I should have lately due to Zack adjusting to the time difference. So I think I'm going to stop here. I hate having the travelogue run this far behind, but there's just too much going on right now. Sigh... Hopefully another two or three updates will do it...

Josiah

7/2/2018 Heading home

UPDATE: 7/4/2018 - Ugh... Zack is having some serious trouble with the time change. After a very busy day, I had to spend a ridiculous 3 1/2 hours to get him to sleep. Now I'm exhaused and barely had a chance to touch my to-do list, which I'll have to try and squeeze into today's schedule, on top of everything else I have to do... So yeah, no PV update.

Today, Connie, Zack, and I are ending our trip and flying back to the US for the rest of the summer. Though we've got a lot going on so expect some travelogue entries and other stuff. For now though, I've still got about a week's worth of travelogue entries left to write for this trip. I'm not going to finish them all today, of course, but hopefully by the end of the week... Anyway, let's get to it.

June 25th (Monday): Further Explorations in Venice
This was the day I planned to hit Venice's most popular sights since, being a weekday, they should be less crowded. I had also followed the advice from my tour book and purchased some tickets in advance online a while back so we got an early start and hopped on a vaporetto (Venice's boat equivalent of a bus) on the Grand Canal. Unfortunately, the weather that morning was cool and rainy and the vaporetto was packed so we didn't really get to enjoy the views. But things were starting to clear up by the time we disembarked at the Piazza San Marco.
The Piazza is home to Venice's most popular tourist attractions and it's normally packed solid but we were early enough to beat the crowds so it was empty enough to let Zack chase some pigeons while we waited for our timed entry into St. Mark's Basilica (or Basilica di San Marco, if you prefer, I'm a bit inconsistent when it comes to using Italian vs. English names). We had to stow our bags first (there's a free back check) then head to the entrance for people with prepurchased tickets. Even at a relatively early hour, the line for people without tickets was already really long and it just kept getting more ridiculous as time went on. Prepurchased tickets are for specific 15 minute time slots, but we ended up at the front of the line about 10 minutes early and they let us in, so there's a little leeway there. Unfortunately, St. Mark's is the one place we visited on this entire vacation that didn't allow photos of any kind inside. The interior was very impressive though, especially in regards to the frescos that covered the walls and ceilings. That photo of the outside should give you a basic idea. Near the exit, for an extra fee, you could access the upper level which contained a small museum and gave a closer look at the frescos. It also let you go out by the horse statues on the front, which offered a great view of the piazza. I managed to hit that at a good time as well, since the line to go up had grown considerably by the time I headed down.
Once outside, we retrieved our bag then headed to the Doge's Palace. I had prepurchased tickets for it also, which let us skip a very long line. Though, unlike the Basilica, there was no time slot. Anyway, the Doge was the ruler of Venice (think a duke, or some such). Aside from the courtyard, the lower level had some rooms with statues and the like, but the vast majority of the things to see were on the upper levels (which required a bag check to access). The route started out with a series of elaborately decorated rooms which were used for various official functions, led through a cool collection of weapons and armor, and then over the poetically named Bridge of Sighs into the nearby prison before eventually circling back into the palace and through some private quarters. The variety was impressive and it was a fun and interesting mix of sights. As a side note, you can also book a special guided tour that focuses on secret passages, hidden rooms, and the like. Unfortunately, children under six aren't allowed, so I had to skip that one.
By the time we left the palace, the piazza was packed with tourists. I would have liked to climb the bell tower, but didn't want to wait in line for who knows how long, so we headed out. At first, we followed the main series of roads that goes between the train station and the piazza which, unsurprisingly, was jam packed. Though after taking a quick look at the Rialto Bridge (the one bridge in Venice with shops built on it), we broke away from the main drag and things quieted down considerably. Even more so when we stumbled in a fully residential area which lacked the restaurants and stores that fill much of the city.
After lunch, we took a quick look at the paintings in the Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo then ended up at the extreme north end of the city, which gave us a nice view of some of the nearby islands. We wound our way to the Scuola San Giorgio degli Schiavoni for some more paintings (there's no end to old buildings with fancy paintings in Venice) then let Zack play for a bit. At that point, we'd done a lot of walking and wanted to get to the other side of the city, so we decided to get back on the vaporetto and ride there (our passes let us ride for 24 hours). This time, the weather was perfect and we were able to get decent seats, so it was a much more enjoyable ride than in the morning. While it's not the same as riding one of Venice's iconic gondolas, it's a much, much cheaper was to enjoy the views along the Grand Canal.
Our final stop was back in the ghetto to see the Jewish museum, which featured information about and artifacts from Jewish life in the ghetto. For an extra free, you could also tour an old synagogue. We skipped that, though we did peek inside.
By the time we finished, the various tourist attractions were starting to close, so we began to make our way back in the direction of our hotel. Connie really wanted to try a Chinese restaurant she'd seen and, while it wasn't my first choice, I figured that we didn't really need to eat Italian food for every meal and it ended up being pretty decent.
Zack fell asleep early, so I did step out for a bit later in the evening to walk around and grab a slice of pizza. In the end, I found myself hanging around outside the train station waiting for the moon to move into position for a perfect shot...
Over the course of a couple of days, Connie and I saw quite a lot of Venice. I really liked it there. Water cities are rare and interesting, there's a nearly endless number of things to see, and it's just so picturesque. Good food too. I could probably spend another day or two wandering around the city, and one more on top of that visiting the nearby islands such as Murano (the glass blowing island). For now though, it was time to move on...

Random Italy Comment: English
How hard is it to get around Italy without speaking any Italian? It's not too bad, but it can be a little rough at times. Important signs, information panels at museums and attractions, and the like are often in Italian and English, as are announcements on trains (if you can hear then), though not always. Of course, pretty much every restaurant in a tourist area has English menus as well. While a decent amount of people speak at least passable English, there are a lot of others who don't (including some who you'd think really should). Overall, I'd put the general English level of Italy a good bit below that of Switzerland, but above Japan (though not quite as far above and you might expect). That said, Italian does use the same letters as English, so if you can figure out the pronunciation, reading is easy enough.

Ugh... I had planned for two travelogue entries today, but Zack had other ideas and now I really need to end this and get some sleep before the flight. Sigh... Still hoping to finish the travelogue this week, but it's starting to look less likely...

Josiah

6/29/2018 Continuing in Italy

Sorry for the Blooper Reel today. TWC is working fine so you can vote and see it too. I'm just running late and have a lot to get done so I decided to prioritize the travelogue. Not going to make any progress on getting it caught up, unfortunately, but I can at least do a couple more entries.

June 23rd (Saturday): Lake Como
While we could have found some more things to see in Milan, we already hit the biggest attractions so we used our last day in that area for a day trip to nearby Lake Como. It's a large lake surrounded by picturesque towns and a very popular summer resort area. Our starting point was the town of Como, which is the most common entry to the lake area.
Como is a pleasant town and felt a whole lot more European than Milan did. Especially when we reached the lake and the old town with its large cathedral. It's often referred to as a Duomo, though it's technically not one, but regardless it's a nice cathedral with a large collection of tapestries on display. After touring the inside, we continued walking around the old town for a while, enjoyed the street musicians, and even stumbled across a playground where we let Zack run around for a bit.
Once he'd had enough, we went back to the lake and walked along the shore to the edge of town where there's a ropeway that takes you up to the small town of Brunate. Actually, it seems like most of the "town" is a series of very fancy private villas. We ended up following signs towards a fountain. The fountain turned out to be really lame, but there was a nice viewpoint just past it. Back near the ropeway station, there was another viewpoint, which offered a good view of the town of Como itself.
After exploring for a bit, we headed back down. We had been thinking of taking a boat to one of the other towns on the lake (boats and busses seem to be the most common way to go between them), but the times didn't match our schedule very well so we walked along the lake for a while in the other direction. It was a pleasant walk, though a bit crowded with lots of tourists hanging out, making use of a couple tiny beaches, and the like.
After letting Zack play for a while at another playground (there's at least a couple along the shore), we made our way back to the station and returned to Milan. While it's too bad we didn't fit in a boat ride, we did have two days of lake cruises in Switzerland, so it wasn't a huge loss. Como was a really nice place though and I certainly wouldn't mind returning in the future to further explore the lake and surrounding towns.

Random Italy Comment: Trains
There doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency in Italy in regards to train models or ticket checking. Sometimes you need to show a ticket to get on the platform, sometimes you don't (depends on the station). Sometimes your ticket will get checked, sometimes it won't. I'm not really sure about the pricing since Connie and I have Eurail Passes, but they introduce another complication. A large number of trains in Italy require reservations. Not all, but quite a lot (for many routes, it's the only option), and it's not especially easy to tell which is which if you're just going by the listing in the train station, or using Google Maps to plan your route. Eurail has an app, however, that makes it clear which is which. So what if you need a ticket? You can get it in the ticket office or use one of the machines in the station or even do it online (so long as you can show a printed or digital copy on the train). But if you don't want to pay full price, you need to show that you have a Eurail Pass, which is a pain in the neck on the website and the machines. First, you need to dig around and find the other discounts option list. Then you choose Global Card...which isn't Eurail, but they didn't feel like adding an actual Eurail option to the menu, so instead you choose Global Card and enter your pass number there. Something I never would have figured out without some internet searching. Oh, and even with the pass, you still have to pay to reserve a ticket (it's a flat per-person fee, though it varies depending on the length of your journey, but expect at least 10 Euros), so the Eurail Pass isn't quite as good a deal in Italy as it should be.
Once you're actually on the train, they move pretty fast and are fairly comfortable. Though the announcements for stations and such are played at such a low volume that it's often near impossible to hear them. You might also encounter some beggars who go down the aisle handing out cards (sometimes rather professional looking ones) with a sob story then come back down and collect the cards and any money that's given to them. It's probably not allowed, but they seem to time their visits to avoid the ticket checks (presumably hopping off at the next station).
One more thing to keep in mind is that Italian trains often run late. The fact that all of the info boards at the stations and on the train monitors have a dedicated column for showing how late the train is running should clue you in. From my casual observation, I'd say somewhere around a third or more of all trains in Italy run at least 5 minutes late, sometimes considerably more so (I've seen more than a few that are over an hour late). So try not to schedule a trip that relies on a lot of connections.

June 24th (Sunday): Venice
After a last good breakfast at our hotel, it was off to the train station to catch a train to our next destination. Venice, as you likely know, is a city set on the water. When traveling there, it's important to keep in mind that there's Venice proper, and also the sort of new Venice, which is an ugly industrial city on the coast. Staying there is cheaper, but you have to take a boat, train, or bus from there to get to the real Venice, so it's better to just stay in Venice itself if possible. You also need to make sure you don't get the train stations mixed up.
The view of Venice when leaving the train station is pretty great and instantly brought to mind my mental vision of the city. But there wasn't much time to admire the view since we had to get our suitcases to the hotel. I booked a hotel pretty close to the train station, but it still required crossing two bridges, which was a chore since most of the bridges in Venice are steep and covered in stairs. You can hire porters to take your bags, or take a water bus or taxi depending on location, but since we weren't far, I wanted to save money.
Anyway, our hotel was on a quiet side street on the edge of the city and was pretty decent and affordable for Venice. After getting checked in, we were finally able to enjoy the sights. We got lunch at a nearby restaurant and were pleasantly surprised to see that prices for food actually aren't bad at all, at least assuming you avoid the tourist trap places. It was the cheapest meal we'd had so far in Italy and the best as well.
Since it was a weekend, I decided to steer clear of the city's more popular areas and explore some that were less likely to be overrun with tourists. That worked out quite well. A nice thing about Venice is that, as popular as it is, there's really just a couple of areas that most of the tourists hit. Avoid them, and the city is much more peaceful, even on a busy day. The souvenir stores tend to be cheaper as well once you get away from the beaten track, so keep that in mind if you're looking to shop.
We wound our way to the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. A scuola was a group founded by influential private citizens of Venice sort of like an exclusive club. There were multiple scuolas and many of them later evolved into charitable groups, some of which are still operating today. This one had quite the fancy building, with detailed paintings all along the walls and even on the ceiling.
Next, we made our way to the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa, an impressive church filled with sculptures, many of which seemed to be to decorate the tombs of various notable figures.
Back outside, we continued our walking tour. While I'm trying not to overload these travelogues with pictures, I'll note that in Venice it seems like there's a post card ready view around every corner, whether on land or water.
One thing you'll see a lot of in Venice is pizza restaurants, offering slices on the go for a reasonable price. Most of them are actually quite good, but I saw a few offering this monstrosity. Can't believe anyone outside of Japan would ever think french fries on a pizza is a good idea... Another street food you see everywhere is gelato, which is often really good as well. Try to go to the places that make their own, rather than the ones that just sell generic gelato for the best experience.
We eventually ended up back near the train station and were able to enjoy the views of the Grand Canal. From there, we spent a bit of time walking along one of the more touristy streets, before crossing over to Ghetto Nuovo. The Ghetto is a small part of Venice where all the city's Jews were forced to live for several hundred years to limit both their power and their interactions with the rest of the city's inhabitants. While such ghettos eventually became prevalent throughout Europe, the Venice Ghetto was the first. Though, on the bright side, Venice was also one of the earlier European cities to abolish the Ghetto system later on. Now, it's still a predominantly Jewish area and features some shops, restaurants, and a museum. It was getting kind of late in the day though, so we just looked around a bit before starting to head back to our hotel.
Zack slept early, and Connie was kind of worn out as well, but I headed out for a bit to get water bus tickets for the following day, eat some pizza, and just enjoy the city before calling it a night.

Random Italy Comment: Graffiti
Parts of Switzerland (and the US, for that matter) have a graffiti problem. Italy in general has a major graffiti problem. They seem to be able to keep it away from the main tourist spots but beyond that it seems like every city has serious amounts of graffiti anyplace that seems a little bit run down or abandoned. Whether you're riding the trains or walking through a city, you'll likely see lots of graffiti. Do the police not care? Or maybe they lack the resources to prevent it and/or clean it up? Either way, it's kind of a shame and I hope that it doesn't get any worse.

Later!

Josiah

5/27/2018 Take Two

I was just finishing up a lengthy travelogue entry when my web editor very suddenly and unexpectedly closed on me and I lost the whole thing. Now I'm normally the type of person who saves frequently when working but I get a bit lax in some programs which tend to be very stable and I apparently forgot. So I just lost a bunch of work. I can recreate it, but it's getting late so I'm afraid I'll have to stop at one entry today (instead of two or three like I'd initially planned). I hate letting the travelogue fall further behind, but I need to get some sleep. Anyway, here goes my second attempt at our second day in Milan...

June 22nd (Friday): Milan
Zack slept late so Connie and I decided to let him and after that and a nice breakfast at our hotel, we set off a bit later than I had hoped. By the time we made it back to the Duomo, there was already a long line waiting for admission. Since I had purchased the combo tickets that granted us access to several areas, the guy checking tickets at the back of the line suggested we go around to the line for the roof, since it was shorter, see it first, and then enter the cathedral from there. Well, the roof line was a lot shorter, but it also moved really slowly so I'm not sure if that was the best call. If Connie had been up to climbing the stairs, we could have skipped some of the line, but she was still recovering and besides, I'd already paid for the elevator anyway (it costs more than the stairs). It took quite a while, but we eventually rode up the roof and it was worth the wait. Rather surprisingly, the roof was designed for easy access and you can walk all over it and get close up looks at the carvings and terraces and great views of the Piazza down below. Exploring up there was amazing and I'm really glad we did it, wait and all. Eventually, we made our way to the top level, which had more great views, then down around the other side and to the entry into the cathedral. Once again, there was a line for the elevator, though people taking the stairs could skip ahead.
The roof was incredible but the inside of the Duomo was equally impressive. Though that picture doesn't begin to show just how huge the building is. This one is a bit better, but it's still only showing a portion. And with good reason. The Milano Duomo is the largest church in Italy and the third largest in the entire world. As such, there was a ton of things to see inside such as the main pulpit and organ, paintings, sculptures, elaborate stained glass depicting dozens of Bible stories, and a crypt. There was even an underground area showcasing the findings of an archeological dig researching the churches that sat on the same spot before the Duomo was built. On that note, construction on the Duomo began in 1386. However, due to technical difficulties, changing politics, costs, and the sheer size and scale of the design, work stalled and started numerous times throughout the centuries, with the last few items finally being completed in 1965.
We finally left the Duomo and after a pigeon chasing break for Zack, decided to get a quick lunch and move on to our next destination. Our tickets would have also gotten us into a nearby museum about the Duomo, but time was limited so we made our way to the Pinacoteca di Brera. The Pinacoteca was a former noble's mansion before it was turned into an art gallery, with his private collection acting as the foundation. It also hosts an art school and library. As a note, the signs suck and Connie and I spent a while wandering around the art school before we finally found our way to the gallery (straight though to the back and up the stairs). It's a nice gallery, though with a bit too much Gothic art for my taste. It also doesn't match up to the National Gallery in DC, but that would be a tough one to beat. It's a nice collection over all, especially if you like the specific artists it specializes in. They even had the Last Supper...albeit a totally different painting by a different artist. Same subject matter though, so that's something.
After we made our way through the gallery, it was time to let Zack chase more pigeons and then he and Connie returned to the hotel while I went to do a little grocery shopping and get train tickets for the coming days.
We finished with a meal at out hotel's restaurant, which was pretty good (featuring a number of traditional Milanese dishes), even if the service was a little slow, and a whole lot cheaper than the places in the Galleria.

Random Italy Comment: Smoking
In Switzerland, some people smoked. In Italy, lots of people smoke and there's clearly no restrictions against smoking on the streets, train platforms, and the like. Though I haven't had any issues in restaurants. It's impossible to avoid and what must be a rather lax litter law also means that there are cigarette butts everywhere. While that doesn't look great in general, it's especially annoying when you've got a toddler running around who wants to grab everything that looks interesting.

Well, that's one at least. Sigh... I'll have to be more careful about making frequent saves next time.

Josiah

6/25/2018 Finishing Switzerland

Just one week left in the big Europe trip. I had another night where I dozed off while trying to put Zack to sleep, which left me a bit behind, but let's see how far I can go. I'd really like to get this thing caught up by the end of the trip... Well, we'll start with a RSC I meant to include last time.

Random Switzerland Comment: Smoking
I didn't notice many people smoking in the mountain areas, but in the cities like Bern, there were a lot of smokers around. I can't say how it compares to the US, percentage-wise, but there were a lot and that included young people. While I never had any problems with smokers at restaurants, I did see some places with ash trays, so I guess it's not under a blanket ban like in the US. Smoking also seems to be allowed on public streets so if you're in a city, you might not be able to do much to avoid it. Compared to other countries I've visited, I'd say the level of smoking in Switzerland is worse than the US and Japan (at least as far as second hand smoke goes), but better than China.

June 19th (Tuesday): Zermatt and the Matterhorn
Sadly, it was time to say goodby to Grindelwald and the entire Jungfrau region and move onto the second (and last) stop on our family Switzerland trip. We weren't sure if the weather was going to hold out past the morning at our destination so we left early, though not as early as originally planned since Connie and my dad were still dealing with that annoying cold.
The route required several trains, one of which we nearly missed due to a delay (fortunately, it was delayed too). Once we left the Jungfrau area behind, we stayed in the mountains (or maybe went back up into the mountains is the better way to put it), though there was a very different feel. The flora changed a lot, indicating that we were in a much dryer area, and even the architecture changed. The houses mostly lost that picture perfect Swiss mountain feel, though they did gain some cool stone tile roofs. Sorry to say though, but the Zermatt area just isn't as scenic as the Jungfrau region.
Anyway, if that last line didn't clue you in, our destination was the mountain town of Zermatt. While there isn't much of anything near it (just some little towns that didn't appear of any particular interest when passing through), Zermatt itself somewhat makes up for that with a ton of shopping and things to do. It's very touristy (for better or worse), and reminds me a lot of some of the big Colorado ski towns.
Anyway, Zermatt is known for skiing, tennis, hiking, and, most of all, Switzerkand's iconic Matterhorn mountain. Since my dad and Connie weren't feeling great, they opted to wait for check-in to start at the hotel. The rest of us hopped on a special train to go up closer to the Matterhorn. And by special, I mean expensive. The Swiss Pass gave us a 50% discount and it was still over $40 a piece. For a maybe 30 minute train ride.  Seriously. There's no way you can justify charging around the same price as a ticket to Disney World for that.
Complaints about the price aside, we rode the train all the way up to the top where they have an observatory, which also serves as a hotel for people who want to spend a whole lot of money to be in an extremely inconvenient location. I really hope the guests at least get unlimited tickets for the train. Anyway, the area did offer amazing views of the Matterhorn and the surrounding mountains. It also has the world's largest chocolate Matterhorn (in four different varities) as well as some smaller versions you could purchase and take home.
We had originally been planning to hike but, while the temperature was ok, it was just dirt and snow as far as the eye could see and we didn't really want to hike over the snow so, after looking around for a bit, we took the train down to a lower station for some different views. Then, finally, it was back down to Zermatt to check our cool but quirky hotel rooms.  You don't quite get the full effect from a photo, but it's the best I could do with a single shot. Unfortunately, as cool as the rooms where, they were very very not childproof so keeping Zack from breaking anything or hurting himself was kind of tough. But hey, they did have a nice hot tub.
Later that evening, we went out to find a place to eat and ended up at a bar and restaurant that had just (that day) switched over to an Asian fusion menu. Not really authentic, but pretty good.

Random Switzerland Comment: Prices
Switzerland is a bit on the expensive side compared to the US. Prices for everyday things aren't much different (a little more, a little less, depending on the item), but restaurants (other than fast food) all seem to charge about one tier above what they would in the US and the ticket prices for some of the special trains and cable cars are crazy (get a Swiss Pass, it helps a lot). Traveling in Switerland is still managable on a budget, but don't expect an especially cheap trip.

June 20th (Wednesday): Around Zermatt
That morning, after a nice breakfast at our hotel, we set out to do a bit of hiking. While we didn't really have a sepcific trail in mind, there were a few that started from the far end of Zermatt so we made our way there. Of course, you couldn't miss the Matterhorn, no matter where you went. We passed a pretty cool looking ropes course (which I would have loved to do if I had more time) and ended up following the signs to a gorge.
The gorge walk was fun and offered several possible paths at the end, we opted for the shorter one which looped us through a forest and around to a tiny little village above Zermatt (seems some people make the trek there for the restaurant). Rather randomly, there was also an official Ricola garden, which featued all the different herbs contained in Ricola (dang it, I want to do the call like in the commercials every time I see the word). There was even a contest you could enter, which involved matching up the different herbs with their proper names. From there, it was a fairly straightforward walk back to Zermatt.
Back in town, Connie and I walked around the town a bit (I finally decided to pick up a new Swiss Army Knife) then took turns watching Zack so the other could play around in the hotel's spa. It had seven different rooms, all loosely themed after the seven days of creation. A little gimmicky maybe, but kind of fun.
Finally, we all went out for one last meal together and got some pretty good pizza to finish up the day and our last night in Switzerland. While I do have to say that I like the Jungfrau region a lot better overall, Zermatt is still a fun town and I wouldn't mind going back again sometime.

June 21st (Thursday) On to Italy
As I previously mentioned, it felt like a waste to fly all the way to Europe for only a week and a half, so Connie and I ended up planning a week and a half in Italy on our own once the family vacation wrapped up. Why Italy? Well, you have to admit that it has a cetern allure to it. I was also there many years ago and have been wanting to go back for a better look. Finally, with all the stuff going on in Europe right now, Italy seems to be one of the safer countries to visit.
There were a few options for getting from Zermatt to Milan, our first stop in Italy. But two of the train routes were a lot better than the others...except for the times. One was really early, one was really late. I wasn't expecting much but Zack woke up early so, with a little help from my family (who were also catching an early train), we managed to rush through breakest and get the early departure.
Even then, we had a tight connection and ducked onto the train going to Italy without taking a close look. Apparently, it was more of an Italian train than a Swiss train in terms of style and operation. It looks like we should have reserved seats ahead of time, but we nanaged to find some empty seats and between our Swiss Passes and Eurail Passes, the conductor let it slide.
The view from the train was... Actually there wasn't much of a view for a while since we were going in and out of a constant series of tunnels. It got nicer eventually, but Connie and I didn't have especially good seats to enjoy it. So we just toughed it out and tried to keep Zack happy until we arrived in Milan.
Milan Central Station isn't as large or maze like as some of the major Tokyo stations, but it could probably give them a run for their money in sheer amount of traffic. My goals after disembarking were to activate our Eurail Passes and find an ATM so I could get some Euros. Neither was quite as straight forward as I hoped. Activating the pass wasn't bad, but it required finding the proper ticket office (which took some doing) and waiting in a long line. Finding an ATM wasn't very straight forward either. First off, the station has a ton of automated ticket machines which look a lot like ATMs, so there was some initial confusion there. Then there's the fact that the name of Milan's subway system is officially abbreviated as ATM, so most signs for ATM are referring to that. Finally, there just aren't many actual ATMs around for some reason. But I did finally track one down with some help from the lady at the ticket counter. Then it was time to get to our hotel.
There are a lot of options when it comes to getting around Milan. Walking is generally doable, at least among the more important locations. There's a also subway, street cars, and busses. We, somewhat randomly, settled on the subway. Seems like subways work pretty much the same no matter what country you're in.
We arrived at a pretty nice business type hotel and spent a while settling in and recovering from the move (dragging a bunch of luggage plus a baby around is hard work) before deciding to head out and do a little bit of sightseeing.
First impressions of Milan weren't great. I'd heard it wasn't one of the prettier Italian cities but it really just looked like a very generic city. Things did start to improve as we got into the old city, though it still had absolutely nothing on Bern. It does have its attractions though, such as our first stop, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Italy's oldest active shopping mall. It was built in the 1860's and named after the first king of the united kingdom of Italy. More of a shopping arcade than a mall, it's really fancy, as you can tell, though not especially large so it didn't take us all that long to explore it.
Exiting the Galleria, we found ourselves face to face with the extremely impressive Duomo di Milano. I've always loved high gothic architecture and the Duomo is a masterpiece, and the first major example I've been able to see in person. But I'll talk about it more in tomorrow's entry. Today all we did was walk around the outter walls and buy admission tickets for the next day. Why? Well, it was getting a little late and I didn't want to rush our visit. Plus, there was a decent length line waiting to get in, and I figured we could dodge that by hitting it first thing in the morning. But the main reason is that Zack was getting antsy after being carried around most of the day and really wanted to move around so we spent quite a while letting him chase pigeons in the piazza (plaza) outside the Duomo, which is dedicated to the Lord of the Pigeons, er, Vittorio Emanuele II. Though, honestly, he may have well been considering how many of the things were covering his statue and the surrounding piazza.
Anyway, Zack had a lot of fun and we ended up staying there for quite a while. Since it was getting a bit late, we ended up eating at a restaurant in the Galleria on our way back. The food was ok (nothing amazing, but ok), but definitely a bit overpriced. Oh well, I'm sure we'll hit better Italian restaurants in the coming days.

Random Italy Comment: Seating Charge
It's pretty normal for restaurants in Italy to add a seating charge to your check. It's a flat per-person fee (babies don't seem to be counted) that I've seen run anywhere from 2 - 6 Eurors each. Kind of annoying, but you don't tip here so I suppose it events out a bit. Just watch out since some restaurants seem to jack it up pretty high. I've even heard of cafes and coffee shops adding a seating fee if you opt to enjoy your drink there instead of taking it out (though I haven't experienced that myself).

Hmm... I really wanted to get one more entry done today to wrap up Milan and get this thing all but caught up, but it's getting late and I'm pretty tired (Zack did not sleep well the other night, so neither did I), so I think I'll stop here.

Josiah

6/22/2018 Back on track

Vote on TWC to see the new bonus comic!

Sorry about the missed update Wednesday. I did have an internet connection (albeit not a great one), but I was having trouble putting Zack to sleep. Basically I had to rock him, put him down, and lay down for a while to see if he'd end up crying again or actually going to sleep. Well, I ended up dozing off in the middle of that since it took so long. I'll try to get things caught up as much as I can over the next few updates, though Connie and I will be switching hotels a couple of times, so I can't really guarantee my internet access.

June 15th (Friday): Murren and Piz Gloria
This was another perfect weather day, which meant more hiking. To start, we took the train to the nearby town of Lauterbrunnen. You might remember we also passed through there on our way to Trummelbach Falls a few days back. It's just over the mountain from Grindelwald, but there's no tunnel so unless you take the cable car over, like we did that first time, you have to take a train part way to Interlaken then switch to another going the other direction.
Anyway, from Lauterbrunnen we immediately hopped on a crowded cable car going up the mountain on the other side of the town (opposite the the one that Wengen and Grindelwald are on). Well, most of us. Connie was feeling a bit off so she opted to hang around the town for a while. The rest of us had a short but steep ride up. From there, we could have taken a quick train ride to our destination, but opted to walk instead.
We set off on a pretty path that more or less followed the railroad tracks through flowery meadows, small forests, and groups of happy cows. It was a pretty easy hike with some great views. About half way, we came across a little roadside shop where one of the local farmers was selling milk, yogurt, and cheese (on the honor system) from the cows on that very mountain. The yogurt was awesome, and you don't often get the chance to get it so fresh. Just after that was a restaurant with a nice playground and indoor play room, which the kids really enjoyed. Eventually though, we needed to keep moving to reach our destination, the town of Murren.
Murren is a small town high up on the mountain that doesn't allow any cars (other than a few services vehicles and such) so the only way to get there is via cable car and then train or hiking. Despite the remote location, it's popular with tourists and actually has a number of rentals and hotels. It's a pleasant place and the views are spectacular. We had been making good time, and stopped at a nice cafe for a drink and a snack before walking around the town a bit.
While we were walking, we spotted a cable car which led up the Schlithorn (a mountain). Hannah (my sister-in-law) realized it was the one we'd seen advertised as going to Piz Gloria, which is where they filmed part of a James Bond movie. It was supposed to be a pretty expensive ride (some of the more tourist centered trains and cable cars in Switzerland are ridiculously expensive), but looked like a pretty awesome view and the others decided to head up. I was interested, but also felt kind of guilty for leaving Connie alone for so long, so I took the train out of Murren, went down on the cable car, and met back up with her. Actually, she was doing better so we then took the cable car right back up, got back on the train to Murren, and then headed for the cable car to Piz Gloria. So I still ended up going, just with a detour first.
Luckily, the cable car ended up being free with our Swiss Passes (we saved a ton of money with those things over the course of the trip). Though, according it my parents, it wasn't on their visit. They think that some of the attractions covered by the pass change every so often, so keep that in mind if you plan on going.
Anyway, the first cable car goes up to a stop named Brig. You could just hop right on the next one to Piz Gloria, but that'd be a mistake. In addition to awesome views, Brig has the thrill walk, which is a cliff walk kind of like the one on Grindelwald First, but better. Now there isn't much that scares me, especially heights, but the thrill walk was so high it made even me a little nervous. It also had some fun additions like a glass floor section, an optional cable walk, and a chain link tube you could crawl through. I walked on the glass floor and across the cable but, unfortunately, I was carrying a sleeping Zack at the time, so I had to skip the tube. Still, the whole thing was utterly breathtaking and so worth it.
Connie was feeling really motion sick after the ridge up (the cable car swayed a lot, so I couldn't blame her) and decided to wait at Brig while I took the next cable car up even higher to Piz Gloria. It's one of the highest peaks in the area, and a good distance above Brig. As previously mentioned, it's the place where they filmed part of the 007 James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service. As such, they really play up the Bond theme with Bond music on the cable car, Bond souvenirs and info boards, and even a Bond museum. I'm not really a big Bond fan though, and Connie was waiting, so I didn't pay too much attention to that and focused more on the awesome views. Now I've gone up a lot of mountains, but usually it seems like there's always a higher peak nearby. It was pretty spectacular to actually be atop the highest peak for a change and I'm really glad I want.
After that, it was down, down, down... A number of cable cars and trains later, it was back to Grindelwald to wrap up another great day.

Random Switzerland Comment: Money
The currency in Switzerland is the Swiss Franc which, at the moment, is almost exactly equal to $1 US. Coins are used for smaller dominations, including 1, 2, and 5, with bills for 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 1,000. I've never seen a 200 or 1,000 Franc bill, but they do exist, which is kind of cool. There's also the centime, which is like the US Cent, and there are coins for 5, 10, 20, and 50.
As far as getting money and paying for things goes, I had no trouble using my American ATM card at the ATM in the airport, but the Francs I got there have lasted me the entire trip so far, so I haven't had to pay any attention to how common international ATMs are elsewhere. Given the large amount of tourism and Switzerland's reputation as a banking country, I would assume they're not too hard to find. Visa and Mastercards are pretty widely accepted as well, and I've had no problems with mine. Though I'll note that a decent number of smaller shops and restaurants are cash only, so you can't rely solely on a card.

June 16th (Saturday): Lake Brienz
We'd had a couple of good hiking days in a row and my dad and I had come down with a cold (unrelated to the hiking, of course). It was relatively mild, at least in my case (it didn't slow me down at all the previous day), but between those two things, we decided to go with a more relaxing plan for the day.
Now, I mentioned before that Interlaken is situated inbetween two lakes. We explored a bit on and around Lake Thun a few days back, so today we decided to go and take a boat across Lake Brienz. The landing was right outside of the train station and soon we were off. It ended up being a smaller and older ferry than the one we had the other day. Not that there was anything wrong with it, just a bit more crowded and without as many amenities. Lake Brienz seems to be a bit smaller than Lake Thun, and has fewer stops, so it's a quicker ride, but there are still plenty of great views and it was a nice relaxing trip. The ride ended in the town of Brienz. It seemed like a pleasant little place, especially how they had stations with free to borrow canvas chairs all along the coast for people to use. But when we were there it was in the midst of the STIHL Timbersports competition so they had a bunch of tents up selling stuff related to logging and some related events like seeing how fast contestants could saw through a log. The problem with a chainsaw competition, by the way, is that it takes around five minutes of setup for each match, which then lasts around 12 seconds. We walked along the coast a bit, watched the sawing a little, then decided to get the next boat back. It ended up being one of the big boats just like the one we road on Lake Thun, which was nice since we were able to let Zack and Isaac play in the kids' area the whole way. Got some different views too, including this very old and famous hotel, which is reached by an old and famous ropeway.
Instead of going all the way to Interlaken, we decided to get off one stop early in Bonigen and walk the rest of the way along the water. It was a very nice path and kept with the relaxing nature of the day. Even on a sightseeing trip, it's important to work some easy days in there.

Random Switzerland Comment: Famous Products
Switzerland is known, as least in the US, for several product types and brands. But are they really as big here as we think?
Swiss chocolate? Well, chocolate is everywhere with every grocery store and souvenir store having a massive selection, much of which is from Switzerland. So yeah, the Swiss love their chocolate.
Swiss watches? I haven't been paying attention to how many people actually wear them, but there are Swatch (and other Swiss watch brands) stores everywhere.
Swiss army knives? Yep. Every souvenir store seems to have pretty much the entire (extensive) official lineup. They also all seem to charge exactly the same price, so bargain hunting isn't too useful (though you might be able to find free engraving). One special thing about buying a knife here in Switzerland is that the normal color for the outer case is red, which they don't sell in other countries. So you can prove that you went all the way to Switzerland (or ebay) to get your knife.
Ricola? Them too! You can't get away from the world's most popular cough drops. I've seen lots of ads, lots of bags for sale, and a bunch of related stuff. They're just as popular here in their home country as they are in the rest of the world, if not more so.

June 17th (Sunday): Back to Murren
We were originally thinking of doing a particular hike that requires first riding a special train from a nearby town up a mountain. Thing is, said train was rather expensive and not covered by the Swiss Pass and it was looking pretty cloudy there so we decided against it. My parents and brother decided to go back to Murren via a longer and more difficult hike. Meanwhile, since Connie hadn't done the regular Murren hike the other day, she and I did that again. So we followed the same trail I already wrote about, got some more great yogurt, and saw some nice wild flowers. We took it slow and let Zack walk for a while so we only made it to Murren a short time before the others. Though we soon split up again for lunch, with Connie and I eating at Murren's lone, and surprisingly decent, Chinese restaurant.
Afterwards, we all took the train and cable car back down then took a train up to Wengen, which we'd only passed through before, and walked around a bit. It's a nice town, and even has a sort of adult park with things like ping-pong and a slack line (I was the only one of the group to make it all the way across). It was a nice relatively low key day.

June 18th (Monday): Bern
The weather in the Grindelwald area wasn't all that great, so we decided to take a day trip to Bern, a city out past Lake Thun and the "de facto" capital of Switzerland (Connie, unfortunately, was still rather sick and opted to stay home). It was a bit of a ride, but we ended up on a large double decker train which, coolly enough, often have a family car with a kids' play area. Got to hand it to Switzerland and their love of playgrounds. On a side note, those big trains also tend to have dining cars, though I never took a close look at one.
Connie and I had changed trains and gotten lunch in Bern on our way to Grindelwald, but we were only on a corner of the upper platforms and didn't realize how large the station was. It's a pretty big and fancy one, with lots of shops and restaurants. I especially have to call out this place (a chain) for their awesome pretzels.
Leaving the station, we emerged into Bern proper. Noah wanted to check out a couple of stores so we did that before making our way to a nearby, and really fancy looking, Indian restaurant for lunch. My impression of Bern at this point was that it's a fairly nice city, though nothing spectacular. Then we finally got to its old town... Now that is what I always imagined a medieval European city to be like. Maybe not with all the fancy modern shops, but just walking down the street and taking in the buildings, statues, and paintings was really cool. If you didn't notice, the "knight" in that photo is actually a bear in armor. Bears are the symbol of Bern, so you'll see them around here and there. There's a park with some live ones as well, though we didn't make it there. The main street of old town stretched on for quite a while before giving way to a still rather old fashioned looking housing area by a river.
By the time we'd walked down and back through old town, it was about time to head back to Grindelwald (we needed to pack up and prepare for the following day). I did glimpse what looked like a pretty cool cathedral, but didn't have time to check it out. Oh well, I'm sure I'll be seeing plenty of those in Italy.
While a bit different, it was a fun way to wrap out of town in the Jungfrau region of Switzerland. It was an awesome week or so and I would certainly come back again if given the chance.

Whew! Well, that's still several days behind, but it makes a good stopping point. I'll try to wrap up the Switzerland portion of this travelogue (and possibly move on to Italy) on Monday, assuming I've got decent internet at our latest hotel.

Have a great weekend!

Josiah

6/18/2018 The Swiss Alps

Ok, I've got a lot of travelogue entries to write, so let's get started...

June 13th (Wednesday): Lake Thun
The city of Interlaken (the biggest city in this part of Switzerland) is so named because it sits right in the middle of two lakes, Lake Thun and Lake Brienz. Since the weather was still iffy, we headed to Interlaken then hopped on a bus heading along the coast of Lake Thun. Our destination, the St. Beatus Caves. As a note, the caves are reachable by bus and ferry, but the bus is a lot faster. The train does go around Lake Thun too, but only on the other side, so it can't get you to the caves.
Anyway, the caves are actually a decent climb above the road, but it's a pretty scenic trail in its own right. The cave is pretty high in the mountain side and has a river running through the middle of it. And it's really the river that gives the cave much of its charm. The formations, while decent, are nothing spectacular (at least if you've been to lots of other caves, like I have). But I haven't seen many with such large and active water ways. It's a pretty large cave too, with the trail going back quite a ways into the mountain.
After finishing our tour of the cave, we got back on the bus and headed to the town of Thun on the far end of the lake. It's a nice place with a strong European flair, at least in parts. We started out by walking around, browsing, and snacking a bit. Not sure if it was a special day or something normal, but there were a lot of food stalls set up kind of like a farmers market. We got some really good olives and cannolis on our way and eventually meandered over to Thun Castle. The castle dates back to the 1200's and was originally built as a fortress then later became the residence for the town's mayors. Now, the inside has been turned into a museum (free if you have a Swiss Pass) with some historical information and relics and some great views from the top.
After touring the castle, we walked around Thun a little longer then decided to take the boat back to Interlaken. As we'd heard, the boat was a lot slower. Mainly because it makes a lot of stops and has to zigzag back and forth across the lake to reach them all. However, it's also very scenic and a pleasant way to spend a few hours, with lots of great sights both across the lake and along the coast. The boat even had a kids' play area, which was pretty convenient.
We eventually make it back to Interlaken, where we walked across the city to the other train station (there's one on each side), stopping for dinner along the way. It seems like a nice enough place (rather small for a city), though not quite as "charming" as some of the Swiss towns I've seen. After that, it was back to Grindelwald to wrap up the day.

Random Switzerland Comment: Language
Switzerland is a bit odd in that it has four official languages (in order of popularity): German, French, Italian and Romansh. Which one is used seems to come down primarily to what part of the country you're in, though German is by far the most common, with French a rather distance second. They have their own dialects though and Swiss German definitely sounds different (better, in my opinion) than traditional German. We're in a German area, though I've heard a tiny bit of French here and there.
Fortunately, they all use English letters (with the occasional accent mark), so reading signs and stuff isn't a problem. Though understanding them can be, since there isn't always an English translation, even in the tourist areas (there's a decent chance, but it's not a sure thing). Conveniently, however, just about everyone seems to speak decent English, which makes it pretty easy to get around and communicate.

June 14th (Thursday): Grindelwald First and Lake Bachalpsee
After a few days of cloudy and sometimes rainy weather, the skies were finally clear so it was time for some hiking. We started by walking to the far end of Grindelwald and taking a ride on the Grindelwald First cable car (a different cable car than the one we rode a couple days back; First is the name of the mountain, BTW). It's a pretty long cable car, with a couple of stops along the way, and a number of activities as well. Our goal was the hike to Lake Bachalpsee, but we got sidetracked at the top by the First Cliff Walk. I've seen walks like this before on the internet and on TV, but this was my first time seeing one in-person and it was really cool and offered spectacular views. I even spotted some mountain goats off in the distance.
After finishing the walk and admiring the views for a bit, we finally started on the hike itself. There was a decent ascent at first, though the trail leveled out a lot after that. We decided to let Zack walk a bit to burn up some energy, and he really enjoyed that. After some ups and downs and a lot of snow spotted mountain meadows, we reach the lake. The really interesting part was that the lake was divided in half and while one half looked normal, the other was frozen over, creating an odd contrast.
Once we'd finished taking in the lake, we backtracked to the cable car and started heading down the mountain. On the way up, we'd noticed that the first stop (ascending; second stop descending) had a really nice playground, so we got out there to give Zack and his cousin Isaac a chance to play. It was a cool playground and the views really couldn't be beat either.
We spent quite a while there before we started to think about going back down into Grindelwald. The question was, how to go. Sure there was the cable car, but the area also featured zip lines, tricycle type things, and scooter bikes (well, more scooter than bike). The scooter bikes were the only one that went all the way down to Grindelwald and a few of us split off from the rest of the group to give them a try. It ended up being a lot of fun. We basically coasted down the mountain, following a curvy road through grassy meadows and fields. We had to watch out for the occasional car and hiker, but it was a fairly quiet road and there was no need to actually push the scooter until the very end when we got into Grindelwald itself (we were riding the break the whole way). If you ever happen to be in the area, I really recommend it.
We met up with the others and took a break after that before heading out to dinner. Being in Switzerland, I figured that we had to try fondue at least once. Now, you may or may not know that there's a few different types. The best known in the US is probably chocolate fondue, where you dip fruit and other sweets into melted chocolate. Then there's cheese fondue, where you dip bread and vegetables into melted cheese. And finally, the one I'd never heard of, meat fondue, where you dip meat into boiling oil. We ended up sharing a couple orders of cheese and meat fondue. It was...ok. Not bad, by any means, but it didn't quite live up to my expectations either. Maybe it was the restaurant (there's at least half a dozen fondue places here, and we didn't put much effort into researching them), but I really don't have enough fondue experience to say how their fondue ranks (I've only had fondue one other time and that was years ago). In the end, the general consensus among all of us was that it was a fun experience, but just an ok meal. Also, they really don't give you enough vegetables to dip.

Random Switzerland Comment: Playground
If you're traveling with kids, one really cool thing about Switzerland is all the public playgrounds scattered around. It seems like every town has at least one nice one, and even many of the mountainside cable car stops feature excellent playgrounds. Expect a lot of wood, ropes, and climbing features, making them a bit different than what you typically see in the US. While I'll admit that I pay a lot more attention to these kind of things now than I used to, as far as I can remember, no other place I've been has the number of quality playgrounds I've seen in this part of Switzerland.

Still a couple of days behind, but I need to get going so I'll see you Wednesday!

Josiah

6/15/2018 Switzerland

As usual, you can vote on TWC to see the new bonus comic. And now, onto the travelogue.

June 10th - 11tt (Sunday - Monday): Off to Switzerland
Why Switzerland? Well, my parents went to the Swiss Alps several years back to do some hiking and really enjoyed it. On top of that, both they and my brother's family were already going to be in the UK for a conference, so they decided to try and get everyone together for a big family trip and show us the part of Switzerland they visited back then. So that's why Connie, Zack, and I are doing a Europe trip this summer. There's more to it than Switzerland, but we'll talk about that when we get to it.
On a side note, this is actually my second trip to Switzerland, but the first was part of a long Europe trip my mom, brother, and I took back when I was a kid, long before I started writing travelogues or even doing Pebble Version. Plus, the Switzerland portion of the trip was a quick one, so my memories of it aren't very strong.
Anyway, flying from the east coast US to Switzerland is actually really easy. We were able to get a direct flight to Zurich that both left and got us in at convenient times. So we departed Sunday evening and arrived in Zurich Monday morning. Since the flight was mostly during Zack's bed time, we got him to sleep for much of it, which was great.
Everything went really quickly and smoothly and before long we were on the first of several trains heading towards our destination. The scenery leaving Zurich wasn't all that great, but started to improve as we neared the town of Bern, where we stopped to eat lunch and change trains. Speaking of lunch, the train station had a pretty nice food court and, like much of Europe, Switzerland has awesome bread. After Bern the scenery started to get really nice. I would have liked to take a few pictures out the windows, but I spent most of the train ride trying to keep Zack happy. Anyway, he finally took a nap and we made it to Interlaken (so named because it sits right inbetween two large lakes), where we switched trains one more time for a relatively short ride to the mountain town of Grindelwald. Unfortunately, the weather was not on our side and it was raining pretty hard.
Since the rest of my family was running late, Connie and I trekked through the rain to the rental office to get the keys for our... Chateau? Rental condo? Well, it's more a rental than a hotel anyway. We got a ride there then settled down to wait for the others. Annoyingly enough, the rain stopped around 15 minutes after we reached the office, so we could have waited it out and stayed dry. Anyway though, the rental was really nice and had a spectacular view, which featured a large number of waterfalls (some due entirely to the rain).
By the time the others arrived and settled in, the weather had improved considerably, so we walked back into down town Grindelwald. Grindelwald is a small mountain town with a strong tourism focus. It features skiing in the winter and lots of hiking and other activities in the summer. Honestly, if you change the architecture around, it reminds me a lot of some of the ski towns I've visited back in Colorado. We looked around a bit and did some grocery shopping and then headed back to our rental so everyone could relax and Zack and his cousin could get reacquainted.

Random Switzerland Comment: Graffiti
One of my earliest impressions of Switzerland was of just how much graffiti there was everywhere. Way more than I've seen anywhere else. The amount dropped significantly as we got further away from Zurich (though every city I've visited seems to have issues), but it still was a bit of a surprise.

June 12th (Tuesday): Trummelbach Falls
The weather forecast for the next couple of days was iffy, so my parents (who did most of the planning for this part of the trip) decided to do something where rain wouldn't be too much of a problem. Fortunately, the weather started out great and we walked to a cable car on the outskirts of town. The cable car was a long one, taking us up over forests and grassy slopes to the top of a nearby mountain. The top of the mountain was covered in a thick cloud, so we didn't stay long, but there was a really cool playground there complete with a giant wooden cow (you could climb up and enter via its butt and slide out on its tongue), outdoor bowling, and a lot of other fun stuff.
From there, it was a short walk to a second, fancier, cable car (complete with a roof you could stand on, for an extra fee) going down the other side of the mountain to the town of Wengen. But we didn't stay there long before hopping on a short train to Lauterbrunnen, the town a bit further down the mountain (close enough that it wouldn't have been too bad of a walk, actually). From there, we got on a bus to our main destination, Trummelbach Falls. Now, that might seem like a rather complicated route, and it is. We essentially took the scenic way.
But anyway, Trummelbach is set in the side of a mountain. What makes it so special is that a glacier river carved its way through the rock, creating a twisting tunnel of water falls going from the top to the bottom.  It's a little hard to do it justice with photos. Starting from the bottom, you climb a whole lot of stairs up and into the mountain, following the path of the river. It's a bit like going through a slot canyon, albeit with a whole lot of cool water falls along the way, which makes it rather unique and certainly worth a visit. It's fairly physically taxing (lots of steep wet steps), though there is an elevator that goes part way up (though you'll miss a lot if you take it). On a side note, kids under 4 aren't allowed, so we ended up having to split our group up so some people could stay behind and watch them.
On our way back to Lauterbrunnen, we got off the bus early and walked over to Staubbach Falls, which is a pretty impressive waterfall dropping of the edge of a rather sheet mountain cliff. The water doesn't even making it all the way to the ground before misting and condensing along the mountainside, where it resumes its descent. The walk to the base was pleasant, and there's a path you can take up and under the falls. Unfortunately, the path doesn't really give you any views of the falls themselves, but you do get a nice view of the town.
Once we'd finished there, we walked back to the train station and caught a train to Grindelwald to wrap up the day. It was a lot of fun and a good way to kick off the trip. Even better, the rain managed to hold off until we were nearly back to the train station, so that all worked out pretty well.

Random Switzerland Comment: Trains
Like most of Europe, Switzerland has an extensive train system. It's not quite on the level of Japan's, but the trains are clean, timely, and a convenient way to get from town to town. The layout and style is a little different from Japanese trains as well, but not really in a bad way.
While they have ticket offices and ticket machines, I really can't say anything about the process of buying tickets since we all had Swiss Passes which, much like the Japan Rail Pass, gives you unlimited train travel for their duration (as a bonus, you also get free bus and boat travel and discounts on a lot of attractions). You can actually print the passes at home and then just walk onto the train you want (there's no assigned seats). Sooner or later a conductor will probably come to ask for your tickets and you can show him or her the pass.
It's all very nice and convenient, though I find the trains and the process of navigating the stations and finding the proper route a step below what I experienced in Japan. Regardless, it's a great way to travel and the Swiss Pass is worth looking into if you don't plan on spending your entire Switzerland stay in a single location.

Well, there's a couple more days to go, but we'll stop here for now.

Later!

Josiah

6/13/2018 Hello from Switzerland

I'm writing this from a small mountain town in the Swiss Alps. And, while the weather could have been a little better, the trip has been off to a pretty good start so far. I was hoping to kick off the travelogue tonight but Zack is still adapting to the time change and I had to spend quite a while coaxing him back to sleep. I, on the other hand, am just fine with the time change (one night and I'm usually good) but am still a bit sleep deprived from the trip here so I don't want to stay up too late to finish the travelogue work in top of the other things I had to do. So the travelogue will start on Friday.

See you then!

Josiah

6/8/2018 Off we go

Use the TWC button on the left to vote and see the new bonus comic!

Connie and I leave on Sunday for our Europe trip, so here's how that's going to affect PV for the next few weeks. First off, there will be no update on Monday since I'll be traveling to our first destination. PV will hopefully return on Wednesday and update normally with both comics and travelogue posts. That said, I never know for sure what my internet access is going to be like when traveling internationally, so there's a chance that one or more updates will be skipped if I can't get a good connection at my current hotel, or if I have an especially busy day. Assuming that I can update, updates will be posted several hours earlier than usual due to the time difference.

I think that's everything so, if all goes well, I'll see you on Wednesday!

Josiah

6/6/2018 Getting closer...

Not much to say. I'm still just trying to get a lot of assorted things done before the trip and that's really about it. Not that there isn't anything I could write about... I just don't really want to take the time when I've got so many other things to do. Sorry about that, but hopefully the upcoming travelogue will make up for it.

Later!

Josiah

6/4/2018 One more week...

One more week until the trip and things are... Well, I've gotten all the most important things done, but haven't made quite as much progress as I'd like on some other stuff. Plus some things came up over the last couple days that have been kind of stressful... But I don't really have the time or inclination to go into details. I've got lots to do and relatively little time to do it.

Later!

Josiah

6/1/2018 Vacation plans

You can use the TWC button on the left to vote and see the new bonus comic.

For a while now, I've been talking about a summer trip. Well, here's the details. My dad and brother are going to the UK for some work stuff and, since they'd be over there already, it seemed like a good starting point for a family vacation. But not in the UK itself. My parents did some hiking in Switzerland a couple years back, which they really enjoyed, and they wanted to take the rest of us there. So it was decided that the whole family would spend a week and a half in the mountains in Switzerland. But, while my parents and brother have work, and my sister-in-law has family to visit, Connie and I would just be going for the family vacation. And, to me, it seemed like a waste to go all the way to Europe and only stay for a week and a half. While we decided not to make the trip too long, since we have a lot going on this summer, we added another week and a half on our own in Italy. So, in a little over a week we'll be off to Switzerland and then Italy, returning to the US just in time to move out of our apartment and into our new place. Yeah, it'll be a busy summer... Should be fun though.

Anyway, I'm planning to keep a travelogue while in Europe and hopefully keep PV updated as well. Though making comics won't be a particularly high priority for me so, if I don't get a good buffer built before I leave, I might skip some updates. There's also the issue of internet access, which will hopefully be fine, but you never know for sure with international travel, so we'll see.

Anyway, I've got another week at home first, and plenty more to get done in that time, so I'll see you on Monday.

Josiah

5/30/2018 Sleep...

Sigh... Zack is still having some sleeping problems which means less sleep for me, especially the last few days so I'm too tired to write about much of anything today. I'll try and talk about my upcoming trip on Friday. Sigh... It wasn't that long ago when Zack would always sleep until 8:30 in the morning. I really miss that...

Later!

Josiah

5/28/2018 Two weeks...

Two weeks left until the big trip and the planning is 99% finished! Which leaves me with two weeks to deal with everything else on my to-do list... As much as I want to, I'm doubting I'll get the Aurora's Nightmare demo done before the trip. This summer, definitely. The next two weeks? That could be tough, especially with the other stuff I have to do. Anyway, speaking of the trip, this would be a good time to talk about it, but I'm running pretty late at the moment so I'll save that for next time.

See you Wednesday!

Josiah

5/25/2018 Progress

TWC is still buggy, so here's the Blooper Reel comic for this week.

Well, the meetings are done, trip planning is close (should have the rest taken care of over the weekend), and I've made some progress on pretty much everything else. Though there's still a lot I want to get done over the next couple of weeks. Sigh... This is not the most relaxing start of a summer break. Doesn't help that taking care of Zack really limits my working hours. To some extent, I kind of miss the days when I could just spend 10 - 12 hours a day working on things non-stop. Can't say I ever really enjoyed it when that happened, but sometimes it was worth it to get a lot done in a short time. Now, it's not really an option.

Anyway, I should get some sleep (Zack is still causing some problems in that area as well) then get back to it.

Have a good weekend!

Josiah

5/23/2018 Last day

Once today's meetings are finished, I'm finally completely and totally on summer break. Well, if you don't count that online course development I'm doing for the university, but that's mostly on my own schedule and doesn't require going into campus. How's everything else going? Well, said course development is pretty far along and I have more than enough done for the next "due date". That said, there's a moderate amount of work remaining and I'd honestly like to get most/all of it out of the way before my upcoming trip so I don't have to worry about it later in the summer. Speaking of the trip, I'm around a third of the way through the remaining travel planning. I'm hoping to have it all finished by the end of the week. Or maybe the weekend. I probably need another 2 - 3 days worth of work (or one full day, which probably isn't happening) to finish it. And the Aurora's Nightmare demo? The scenes are coming together nicely and I'm happy with the pace (wish I had more time to work on it, but it moves fairly quickly when I do), though going by nothing but the script, I've still got a ways to go. At this point though, I know what I'm doing and it's a pretty simple process. Just takes time. Other than that... Just some assorted things to get setup in preparation for the move into out new place in July. Nothing too time consuming, I just need to get around to doing it.

And that's that. Now, let's see about those meetings...

Josiah

5/21/2018 T-minus three weeks

What's in three weeks? This year's summer vacation. I'll go into details sometime soon. For now, I'm just trying to get as much as I can done before then. We'll "only" be gone for three weeks, which is on the short side for my summer trips, but we'll also have a lot going on here in Virginia once we get back.

Anyway, what's happening right now? Not a lot. I've mostly been focused on finishing up the semester (totally done with that now) and taking care of Zack. Haven't had much time to play games, but I've been trying to keep up on TV shows. Haven't quite managed that either, but I'm close and, with most of the current seasons coming to an end, it shouldn't take too much longer to catch up on the rest. Not really sure what more to write about. West World is pretty amazing. It's one of my new favorite shows, in fact. But I really can't say much about it without spoilers and it's very much M / R rated. Not quite on the level of Game of Thrones, but close enough. If that doesn't bother you though, I highly recommend it.

Anyway, now that finals are over, I should make rapid progress on my to-do list (Aurora's Nightmare included) and get a bit more inclined to come up with something interesting to write about.

Later!

Josiah

5/18/2018 Calming down

TWC is having problems again, so here's the Blooper Reel comic.

As for me, grading is finished, graduation is finished. Though I still have a day of meetings next week and some other things I have to work on over the coming days and weeks. Hopefully stuff I can get finished before our upcoming summer trip. Sure would be nice to not have anything I need to work on for a change, though I really can't imagine that happening any time soon...

Later!

Josiah

5/14/2018 Last one! UPDATE

UPDATE: I was up late finishing my grading and didn't really want to stay up extra late to get a strip done, sorry. But, now that the grading is finished, there shouldn't be anything getting in the way of future updates.

Final exams for my last class are today (well, presentations and projects, not an actual exam) and tomorrow should be my last day of grading! Though that still leaves graduation and a day of meetings. Not to mention that I've been putting off finishing the day to day plans for our summer trip a bit longer than I should have. So there's all that, a few other things, and Aurora's Nightmare whenever other stuff isn't taking up my time. But still, I'm almost on break and I'm really looking forward to it.

Later!

Josiah

5/11/2018 Sleep...

TWC is working ok so you can vote to see this Blooper Reel comic as well, but I'm pretty worn out and don't have a buffer, so I posted it here too. I'm making decent progress grading finals, but still have a ways to go and it's rather tiring work (mentally, at least). What's worse is that, ever since that stomach thing he had a week ago, Zack has been in the habit of waking up an hour or more earlier than he should and refusing to go back to sleep. That means less sleep for Connie and I and it also messes up his daily nap schedule, which can be a real pain in its own right. So yeah... I could use some rest, though I think work and stuff will be keeping me busy for another week or so. As for Zack... Honestly, training him not to wake up in the middle of the night is one thing. Training him to go back to sleep in the morning if he wakes up a bit too early is a lot harder. So yeah, we'll see.

Later!

Josiah

5/9/2018 It begins

Tomorrow is my first big day of grading finals. Which tends to mean sitting in front of my computer pretty much the entire time and going through project after project. I might try and get started today, just to reduce the number a bit. Though you'd be surprised how many students wait until the last few hours (or even the last few minutes) before the due date to submit their assignments, so doing some early grading usually doesn't make that much difference.

Later!

Josiah

5/7/2018 The calm...

I'm in that point near the end of every semester when I'm done teaching classes, but don't have any finals quite yet. Which basically means I've got a few days without anything much going on before I get really busy with finals (grading them more than giving them). It's a good chance to work on some other things and recover a bit. Maybe get a bit of a buffer made for PV strips. Well, probably not since I have other things that take priority. Would be nice though...

See you Wednesday!

Josiah

5/4/2018 Recovering

Top Web Comics is working again, so you can vote to see today's bonus comic...or just look here on the main page. I'm pretty worn out and I don't want to stay up late to get a regular comic done for today. I'm fine, just tired. I mentioned that Zack was sick over the weekend. Well, his fever went away after a couple days and we thought he was all better. Unfortunately, that was followed by several days of some sort of stomach problem. He remained in a pretty good mood, but he threw up a lot and didn't sleep all that well. Which also meant that I didn't sleep all that well. Fortunately, he seems to be fully recovered. Now I just have to hope he sleeps through the night and doesn't wake up really early like he has the last few days.

Have a good weekend!

Josiah

5/2/2018 Last day!

It's the last day of classes! Though I suppose there should be as asterisk on the end of that. Yeah it's the last day of regular classes, but it will be followed by days of finals, grading, and meetings. So it's not like I'm really done yet. Or even have any more free time or anything. But hey, all that isn't too far off.

Later!

Josiah

4/30/2018 Summer is coming

It's been a tiring weekend. Mainly because Zack was sick for a couple of days, which meant more stress and less sleep. That aside though, this is the last week of regular classes. Though I'll have another couple weeks after that of finals, meetings, and the like. And I really have to fit in some more planning for this summer's big trip. I've got the basics nailed down, but still need to work out a lot of the day by day details. Well, I've got over a month, to go, so that shouldn't be a problem so long as I actually take the take to work on it.

Anyway, for now I've still got classes to teach and projects to grade so I'm off.

See you Wednesday!

Josiah

4/27/2018 Making progress

TWC is still having issues so here's this week's bonus comic. Regular story updates will resume on Monday.

I got to put a decent amount of time into Aurora's Nightmare this past week. At this point, all the back end work is done for the demo and I've actually got the first few scenes complete and playable. I'm really enjoying it. Between moving, new jobs, getting married, and having a kid, I really haven't had a lot of time to do much actual game design or writing over the past few years. Teaching about it isn't bad, but it's really not the same. Hopefully, from now on, I'll be able to ensure that, no matter what else is going on, I'll still have a decent amount of time to put into my own projects. That said, I'm not sure I'll be able to pull it off, at least not for another couple of years. But we'll see. At very least, I'm going to try.

Later!

Josiah

4/25/2018 Wrap up

Today's strip marks the end of this little Detective Torchic mini-series. And...that's really all I have to say today. I've had some...well, not late nights so much as early mornings lately and I'm a bit worn out.

Later!

Josiah

4/23/2018 So fast...

This semester has really flown. There's a little less than a month left of work, then onto summer break. Which should be a somewhat busy but fun one with an international trip, some events and sightseeing, a bit of work, and probably a move. Leaves me wondering where the time has gone. Though, I suppose this is hardly the first semester that's left me with this feeling. Well, I suppose there's nothing to do except make the best use of the time as I can.

Later!

Josiah

4/20/2018 Planning for a move

Top Web Comics is having that problem again where I can't upload Blooper Reel comics, so here's this week's instead. Regular strips will resume Monday...unless I decide to do another Detective Torchic, since I have ideas for a couple more.

Anyway, things have been kind of busy lately. The reason? Well, I didn't want to talk about it until everything was pretty certain, but it's probably 95% now so why not? I think I've mentioned before that Connie and I have been looking at houses for a while now (since last fall). While this is the nicest apartment I've ever had, it's a little small, especially with an active toddler who likes to get into everything, and a few steps down from my house in Hawaii. Not to mention that rent in this area is ridiculously high so it makes more sense to be paying off a mortgage. Anyway, real estate here is expensive as well (about the same as Hawaii, surprisingly enough) and finding a place that hit all our criteria and was within our price range wasn't easy. We actually did make offers on two different places in the past and almost a third (someone made a much better offer right before us) but got beaten out. Well, we made an offer on another place a couple of weeks back and had it accepted. There's been some back and forth, but we're at the point were it's mostly locked down. It doesn't really top the list of places we've seen in any single category, but it's pretty good all around and should work out well, at least for a while. Anyway, we won't be moving in until July, so I don't think I'll say much more until then. But that's one of the things I've been busy with lately and now that it's mostly taken care of, I should have some extra time free, which will be really welcome.

Later!

Josiah

4/18/2018 Cirque

I've got one more travelogue entry, so let's get to it.

April 15th (Sunday): Cirque du Soleil's LUZIA
I got on Cirque du Soleil's mailing list ages ago, so I always hear if any of their traveling shows are going to be stopping nearby. Seems like northern Virginia is a pretty good location in that regard. Connie and I already got to see Kurios and Ovo in the year and a half or so since we moved here and on Sunday we went to see the Mexico inspired Luzia. That said, like all Cirque shows, it's extremely abstract and dreamlike. There were a couple elements that were very clearly Mexican, but I probably wouldn't have pegged the show as a whole as such if the ads didn't say so.
Anyway, the story, such as it is, involves a tourist who goes to Mexico, finds a giant wind-up key, and lots of crazy stuff happens after he turns it. Like I said, very abstract and dreamlike. As expected from Cirque du Soliel, the music, costumes, and over all atmosphere were extremely well done and the acrobatics were amazing. While I enjoyed Ovo (the last Cirque show I saw), it didn't really have any types of acts that I hadn't seen before. Luzia didn't have that problem. There were a number of unique performances and many of the ones that started out kind of familiar ended up having interesting twists of their own. The use of water, for example, was completely unexpected but really cool.
Connie says Luzia is her favorite of all the Cirque shows she's seen. I wouldn't go quite that far, but I'd probably put it in my top three. Probably. It's kind of a hard choice. Regardless, Luzia is an excellent show, even by Cirque standards, and I highly recommend seeing it if you get the chance.

Later!

Josiah

4/16/2018 Another trip to DC

Let's get right into another travelogue entry.

April 8th (Sunday): Museums and Blossoms
Awhile back, we made plans to visit DC on the 8th to see the cherry blossoms with some friends. Unfortunately, things didn't work out as well as we hoped. The weather took a serious down turn over the weekend. No rain or anything, but it was a rather cold day. Plus, it turned out there was a marathon in the morning, which resulted in a lot of road closures, so we had to change some plans around. In the end, we decided to start out at a museum and walk over to the blossoms afterwards once the race was over and the weather was a bit warmer.
Connie had been wanting to see The Museum of the American Indian, so we met up there. From a design standpoint, it looks like one of the newer Smithsonian museums, so it's very modern and well designed, with a good mix of information and artifacts. We started out in an interesting exhibit on treaties before walking through one on the native peoples of Central America (the museum isn't just about "American Indians").
We hadn't gotten the earliest start, so it was getting close to lunch time. Now, most of the Smithsonian museums have restaurants, but a lot of them aren't anything special. This one though focuses on early American food so there were lots of dishes incorporating things like bison, turkey, and traditional American vegetables. The menu is pretty interesting and I really liked the food. Honestly, I might go to the museum just for the restaurant if I was already in the area.
After eating, we headed to the third floor and spent a while going through the surprisingly large kids' section. While our friends' son was a bit too young to do much, Zack had fun and I'm sure older kids would get quite a lot out of it. In the end, we probably saw about a third of the museum before we decided to go see the blossoms. While it was never high on my list of DC museums to visit, I actually found it pretty interesting, so I'll be sure to go back and see the rest some time.
On the way to the Tidal Basin, I spotted something interesting in the center of the National Mall. It was the fifteen millionth Ford Model T, which was also the last one of the iconic cars created before they shut down the assembly line. Anyway, we eventually made it to the basin. It was pretty but, as previously mentioned, it was cold and, being the weekend right after peak bloom, the crowds were pretty crazy (maybe it really isn't that different from Japan), so we didn't stay for too long.
In the end, it was a fun day, despite a few issues. We'll have to plan a better cherry blossom viewing day next year.

That'll do it for today, though I have one more travelogue entry for later in the week. See you Wednesday!

Josiah

4/13/2018 Cherry blossoms

Top Web Comics is working ok, but I'm running behind, again. Sigh... It seems like I never have as much time as I think I will. There's always something coming up. Anyway, I can at least do a travelogue entry.

April 6th (Friday): DC Cherry Blossoms
While it's Japan that's known for sakura or cherry blossom trees, there are other places you can go to see them, even in the US. And one of those places is Washington DC. The mayor of Tokyo gave the city of DC a large number of trees as a gift back in 1912. They were planted all around the Tidal Basin area and have since spread to other parts of the city and the general area. It's not the same as seeing the blossoms in Japan, but probably the closest you can get without traveling to Asia.
Last year, the weather really hurt the blossoms and prevented us from getting a good look. This yeah, however, we got a couple nice days just as they were hitting their peak, so Connie, Zack, and I headed in for an afternoon.
I was hoping that, since it was a weekday, we'd be able to snag one of the free parking spots near the basin. Unfortunately, despite it being a weekday, there were a ton of other people going in to see the blossoms so we were way too late for the free spots and had to fight our way through heavy traffic to get to any parking at all. But we eventually made it to the basin...and into a different kind of traffic. The blossoms were beautiful, though it seems like the majority of the Tidal Basin trees are the white variety, as opposed to the more well known pink (though there are plenty of those too). The path around the Basin was packed, but there were some parks along the way where we were able to get out of the crowds and enjoy the blossoms in a more open area. Zack certainly had a lot of fun, though he cared more about playing with sticks than anything else.
In the end, we actually didn't walk that far along the basin. It would have been fun to go all the way around, but we had to be back home before it got too late and, while the temperature wasn't bad, it extremely windy by the water. And other places, for that matter. It seems that the area around the Washington Monument is a very popular kit flying spot on windy days. Though not everyone knows how to keep their kite in the air. I saw at least a few that had gotten caught in trees or on power lines and abandoned.
While the wind was annoying, it was a pleasant couple of hours and, while it certainly wasn't the same as being in Japan during the sakura season, it did bring back some memories.

And there's all for now. I've got another travelogue entry planned, but it can wait until next week.

Later!

Josiah

4/11/2018 Solving the case

Sorry to interrupt the main story line, but I've been playing Detective Pikachu lately and couldn't resist. I might make this a little mini series, or this might be the only one. I haven't decided yet. But there might be a few more of these, either back to back, or just dropped in occasionally like today's.

Speaking of Detective Pikachu, it's surprisingly good. When I first heard about it back before release, I was tempted to write it off as some corny kiddy spin-off title. So I skipped the pre-orders and waited for the reviews. And, surprisingly enough, the reviews were really positive so I decided to give it a try myself. While the mysteries and puzzles are on the easy side compared to something like Ace Attorney, the story and characters are surprisingly engaging and it's kind of fun to explore the pokémon world as someone who doesn't catch, train, or battle pokémon. And hey, a gruff coffee chugging pikachu is pretty amusing. I'd recommend it to any Pokémon fan, or even non-fans who like mystery games.

Later!

Josiah

4/9/2018 Tax time

There was no comic on Friday due to it being the last day of Passover. I thought I announced that back on Wednesday, but it looks like, with the cold and everything, and I forgot. Sorry about that. Anyway, updates will be continuing normally and I'll have a couple travelogue entries coming up as well (just need to sort the photos). So what are my plans for this week? Well, it actually could be kind of relaxing after everything that's been going on. Except for Tuesday. Tuesday I have to file my taxes. I normally like getting it done a lot earlier in the year, but I was waiting on a rather important document that I only just got. So yeah, that's going to be "fun".

Later!

Josiah

4/4/2018 Not again...

Zack had a runny nose for a couple of days, though he otherwise seemed ok. And, whatever he had, I think he passed it on to me. It's a relatively mild cold, but still a cold. Sigh... I'm usually really resistant to things (and hey, it's not that bad of a cold), but I guess this semester has taken its toll a bit. Despite having a much better class load than back in the fall, I've got other things going on at work that take a good amount of time. Then when you add in Zack, errands and household stuff, and house hunting, among other things, I suppose I have had more stress and late nights than I really should have.

And, on that note, I'm going to go to bed a bit early. Hopefully I'll be feeling better in the morning.

Josiah

4/2/2018 Taking in the art

Another week, another to-do list. Though, as much as I have planned for this week, I think it'll be a bit less busy than the last couple and next week is looking pretty good. Anyway, let's get that travelogue entry out of the way.

March 27th (Tuesday): The National Gallery of Art
Connie had to stop at an embassy in DC to apply for a visa for our summer trip (more on that in the future), and we haven't really had the chance to do any sightseeing since we returned from Hawaii, so I wanted to take advantage of the day to do something in DC. We finished at the embassy fairly quickly. Connie wanted to get an early lunch, and she'd had her mind on a Chinese place she'd read about called Dumplings and Beyond over near the Chinese embassy. Unfortunately, we had to drive there (not all the embassies are in the same part of the city), but fortunately we were able to find free parking and the restaurant was pretty good (we got dumplings, of course).
After that, it was finally time to do some sightseeing, so we drove over to the National Mall (unfortunately, parking around there isn't free (or cheap)). Anyway, we ended up parked pretty close to the National Gallery of Art, and that's one of the Smithsonian museums we hadn't seen yet, so we headed inside. The gallery is a pretty impressive building spread over two floors. The first floor was an odd mix of exhibits including early American furniture, carvings and sculpture, and some paintings (though I didn't quite figure out the theme for those). Most of the paintings, however, were on the second floor. My favorite part was the impressionist gallery, which had a number of works by Money, Van Gogh, Renior, among others. There was also a very impressive collection of landscapes and the like, and Renaissance art. I wasn't quite as interested in the portraits, the Gothic art (I like Gothic architecture, not painting), or the current special exhibit, but all of them had large and well organized collections as well
Taking it all into account, the National Gallery is one of the largest art museums I've visited and I really appreciated the complete and total lack of modern art. Honestly, if you look at great artwork of the past (Renaissance, Impressionist, even Gothic, and the like) and then look at modern "art", you have to wonder what the heck went wrong over the past 50 years or so... That aside, it's very much worth a visit if you're in the area. Strolling through the entirety of the gallery, more or less, will take at least two hours, but an art lover could easily spend a day or more there.
By the time we finished, Zack had woken up from his nap and we were in danger of getting caught in the start of rush hour if we stayed any longer, so we called it quits a little early and headed home. Not a really full day, but pleasant and it's nice to finally be doing some sightseeing again.

See you Wednesday!

Josiah

3/30/2018 Passover

Top Web Comics...is actually working just fine this week so you can vote and see the bonus comic if you want. Or you can just look on this page. This week ended up being even busier than I expected. I'm keeping up with everything, but I've been working constantly for the past couple of days so I don't have a comic ready.

Passover is starting tonight. It's always one of my favorite holidays, so I'm looking forward to it. Though, at the same time, Connie and I are keeping our plans simple this year since we've got a very active one year old with a limited attention span. Should still be fun though.

Hopefully next week will be a bit calmer. And hopefully I can finally take some time over the weekend to sort all the photos that have been piling up on my camera. I've got a travelogue entry ready once I do.

Later!

Josiah

3/28/2018 Half way through

The week is progressing and I'm steadily making progress on all the stuff I need to get done. Not always as quickly as I'd like, but that's the way things go. Connie and I did get to have some fun in DC yesterday, which was a nice break from everything. I'll have a travelogue update at some point, though I'm not sure if I'll have time to get my photos sorted for Friday's update or not.

Anyway, I've got to get back to it.

Later!

Josiah

3/26/2018 Another week

Well, here goes another week. I'm actually running slightly behind on my grading, but it shouldn't take long to get caught up. Other than that, Connie and I will be in DC on Tuesday for an errand, but we're hoping to do some sightseeing afterwards, so there might be a travelogue post later on. And then Passover is starting on Friday night, which is fun, though required a decent amount of prep work. And that's what's going on this week.

See you Wednesday!

Josiah

3/23/2018 Snow day

TWC is still having problems, so here's this week's bonus comic.

Well, I still think that they probably didn't need to shut the university down on Wednesday, but we actually did end up getting at least several inches of snow, which was pretty surprising. It was the biggest snow I've seen since I lived in Colorado. But by mid-morning on Thursday most of it was already gone. Kind of winter's last stand I guess. At least I hope so. It was kind of fun having all the snow, but Zack is too little to really enjoy it (though I did take him out) and I'm ready for some warmer days.

Have a good weekend!

Josiah

3/21/2018 Cool down

Ok. Hopefully there won't be more missed updates any time soon.

Weather here has actually been kinda cool for a while, but it rained all day yesterday (with a bit of snow and slush mixed in) and it's supposed to snow all day today to. To the point where they actually shut down the university. I think they're probably being overly cautious there, but we'll see what happens. Anyway, it's not like I really get a break anyway. I may not have to go in and teach, but that just means I can spend more time grading, since I've got a huge stack (well, not literally since they're digital) of mid-term projects to work through.

Later!

Josiah

3/19/2018 The second half

You can learn more about Aurora's Nightmare (the visual novel I'm writing and developing) at its official dev blog.

So why no PV strip today? Well, for one thing, I did want to tease Aurora's Nightmare a bit, since I've been working on it a lot lately and will hopefully be ready to launch a demo in the not too distant future. But also, while I'm feeling a lot better than I was on Friday, I took things easy over the weekend to help me recover, but didn't really get a chance to work on PV much as a result, so I'm still running behind on strips. And since I'm getting over a cold or something (even a mild one) and have a big day of work ahead, I didn't want to push things and stay up late last night to finish the strip. Really sorry for all the disruptions lately. I know it's not at all normal, and hopefully this type of thing won't happen again. If nothing else happens, PV should return on Wednesday.

Later!

Josiah

3/16/2018 Not my week

A bonus comic? Yep. Top Web Comics is having issues so I'm posting this week's bonus comic here instead. Honestly, that actually worked out in my favor. I spent a lot of the last couple of days working on the demo for Aurora's Nightmare (the visual novel I'm developing) and, between that and all the other stuff this week, I didn't have a comic ready in advance. I was planning to make one last night...but I think I might be coming down with something. Yeah... This spring break has not really been going all that great. And it's back to work on Monday with a whole lot of mid-term projects to grade. Yay...

Well, have a good weekend and here's hoping I feel better by the end of it.

Josiah

3/14/2018 Back and burning

Maybe I should say burning out, since that's how I'm really right now. Spring break isn't really the relaxing break I was hoping for, at least not so far. On the bright side, I've gotten a lot done, so that's something. Looking like I might not get to do any sightseeing this week. I could, but the weather isn't great and, the way I'm feeling right now, I'd rather take it easy. The cherry blossoms are coming soon though, so I'll be sure to make it into DC before too long. For now though, not much to talk about.

See you Friday!

Josiah

3/9/2018 Always something UPDATE

UPDATE: I really hate to do this, especially after running a bonus comic on the main page, but I'm going to have to skip Monday's update. I had a bunch of things I needed to get done before spring break started and didn't have any time to get a comic done in advance. In that situation, normally I'd just make one Sunday night before updating, but I've been out for most of the day and running on too little sleep (Zack kept me up really late the night before) so I don't have the time and am too tired to stay up late to work on it. Sorry. Regular updates should resume on Wednesday.

Well, I may be done with classes for a little while, but I don't really feel like I'm on break yet (and, technically, I'm not). Between work related stuff, errands, and other assorted tasks, I'm keeping pretty busy at the moment and, while I do plan to take some time off and do some fun stuff this coming week, I think there's still going to be quite a lot of things I'll need to work through. Sigh... I kind of miss the times when I could just spend a solid day or two ploughing through my to-do list to free up the rest of my schedule but, with a very active one year old to take care of, that just doesn't seem to be an option right now.

Anyway, see you Monday!

Josiah

3/7/2018 Wednesday?

Yep, it's Wednesday. And, actually, this my last day of teaching before spring break! That said, I'm not really off of work until next week, so I still have things I need to do for the next few days. And, um, yeah... I really can't think of anything to say.

Later!

Josiah

3/5/2018 Marching on

Ok, that was a bad pun... Seems there was a really big wind storm on Friday, though Connie and I didn't really notice much. Parts of some nearby towns did lose power though, so I suppose we were lucky. Didn't seem that bad to me though. Then again, I was inside working most of the day. Well, maybe something good will come of it and the government and/or ultility companies around here will decide to bury some of the power lines. Probably not, but you never know.

Later!

Josiah

3/2/2018 March is here

Remember to use the TWC button to vote and see the new bonus comic.

It's March and that means... Well, not a whole lot. But spring break isn't too far off, and the cherry blossoms in DC will be blooming a bit later in the month as well. Hopefully we'll have a day with nice weather when we can go over there this year. There's also some cool movies coming out, but Connie and I don't get to the theater too much these days, so we may just wait for the blu-rays. We'll be doing some fun stuff this month anyway. For now though, I should get going.

Have a good weekend!

Josiah

2/28/2018 Racing...

Over the past week or so, I watched The Ridonculous Race on Netflix. If you haven't heard of it, it's an animated parody of The Amazing Race and a spin-off of Survivor parody Total Drama Island. I wouldn't say it's quite as good as Total Drama but, while I never got into Survivor, I do watch The Amazing Race every season. Actually, I just watched the finale of the latest season yesterday. I've always thought it would be a lot of fun to compete on The Amazing Race and watching all that stuff makes me want to apply. Will I? Not sure. I mean, I've got a one year old kid, so that complicates things. And, if I did apply, who would I team up with? Connie would be fun, and her Chinese skills could potentially be a big advantage, but until Zack is a lot older I don't think both of us could go anywhere without him. My brother would probably be a solid choice (and the most physically fit of my options), though he's got a baby now too and a job I'm not sure he can step away from for a couple of weeks. Then there's my mom. Honestly, in a situation like that, I get the feeling we'd fight a lot. Which would be bad for making it through the race, but might actually boost our chances of getting selected since producers love drama. Anyway, I suppose it's probably just idle thought right now. But hey, maybe in a few years...

Later!

Josiah

2/26/2018 So...

Once again, I can't really think of much to talk about. I had a pleasant weekend, but nothing too exciting. Just visiting with some friends and playing with Zack. Speaking of which, he's starting to walk. Though, at this point, he can't go too far without falling down. He is getting really good with a walker though. A couple weeks back, I was going through my photos of him from the past year. While Connie and I don't notice it as much day to day, the photos show just how much he's grown and it's pretty amazing. And he's only fourteen months old now, by the end of this year he'll have changed even more.

Anyway, I should get ready for work so I'll see you later.

Josiah

2/23/2018 Time flies

Nearing the end of February already? Where has the time gone? Anyway, seems like even on what should be my less busy weeks, I still find way too much to occupy my time. But that's just how it goes these days.

Have a good weekend!

Josiah

2/21/2018 Spring is coming

It might be February but spring is here...at least for yesterday and today. Then it cools down a bit. Not much else to talk about today since I need to get some rest before classes but things are going pretty good this week and that's that.

Later!

Josiah

2/19/2018 Another new year

Now that I think about it, I really do have a lot of new year's ever year. There's regular new year's, which is also my birthday, Jewish new year (actually, Judaism has several news years, sort of), and now (thanks to Connie) Chinese new year. Thought about going to see the Chinese New Year's stuff in DC, but ended up just going to the one at the local mall instead. Not especially exciting, but easy. And things have been busy lately.

Anyway, happy new year...again.

Later!

Josiah

2/16/2018 A crazy ending

As always, vote with the TWC button to see the new bonus comic for this week.

Well, I finished Danganronpa V3. The main story anyway. The post game stuff will probably keep me busy for another week or two. As I mentioned before, while it lagged a bit in the middle, it really picked up in Chapter 5 and then Chapter 6... Wow... The ending was really unexpected. Seems like it's pretty controversial with some of the fanbase, but I really liked it. It's not what I was expecting, or even what I necessarily wanted, but it's very clever and, as much as the Danganronpa 3 anime wrapped up the Hope's Peak story arc that had run through the original batch of games, V3 (despite not being a direct sequel) feels like a very fitting way to finish the entire series. Not to say it's definitely the last one, but it would be a great place to end things and, honestly, I'd feel a little conflicted about another sequel at this point. Anyway, I really can't say anything more without spoilers but, if you've been following the series, V3 is very much worth your time. Maybe the way it ends isn't for everyone, but it certainly makes you think.

Later!

Josiah

2/14/2018 Grading

I'm currently grading the first set of assignments from this semester's classes. It's always an interesting time since it gives me an idea of what I can expect from my current batch of students. Which are hard workers? Which are particularly skilled? And which are too lazy and/or disorganized to get things done?

Unfortunately, I'm not quite as far along in that process as I'd like. I had to run some errands and run into a ton of bad luck which caused them to take much longer than expected, really eating into my grading time. First off, I tried to use an ATM to deposit a check. Now I normally just deposit checks with my phone, but the app couldn't seem to read this particular check. Neither could the ATM, which then preceded to jam and eat the check instead of returning it. Ironically enough, the problem check was from that same bank. Nice to know their own system can't read their checks... And my errands didn't really get any better after that (though, fortunately, they didn't get any worse either).

Anyway, I'll get it done soon enough. And then on to a bit of summer travel planning and some serious work on the Aurora's Nightmare demo.

Later!

Josiah

2/12/2018 Shocking

Played a bit of Danganronpa 3 over the weekend. Seems like I had switched back to Mario Odyssey right before a massive plot twist. I'm glad to see the story ramping up as it nears the final act. As much as I've been enjoying it, it seemed to lack a bit of the impact of the first two games. Now though, it's really looking up.

But, that's enough games for now. Back to work.

Josiah

2/9/2018 Moving on

It's Friday so use the TWC button to vote and see the new bonus comic!

Well, I made it through my gauntlet of meetings. Unfortunately, my to-do list just got a few new items, which will likely keep me busy at least through the middle of next week. Sigh... Ah well, just a few more days, a week at most, and things should calm down.

Have a good weekend!

Josiah

2/7/2018 The meetings continue

Not much to say here. I've got a couple more days of meetings to get through in addition to my regular work, and a last item or two on my to-do list. But that should all be done by the end of the week...just in time for the first batch of assignments to grade for my classes. But hey, I won't have nearly as much to grade as last semester (where I could have 100 - 200 papers to get through some weeks). I'm also down the last area in Mario Odyssey. While I am looking forward to finishing it up and moving onto some other games I've been wanting to play, it's been a blast to play all the way through and I'll be a little sad to see it end.

Well, back to work.

Josiah

2/5/2018 Just another week

I finally got my PowerPoints finished, along with a lot of the other stuff on my to-do list. But I have a lot of meetings I need to get through this week before things totally settle down. And...that's about it really. Nothing too interesting or exciting going on right now. I'm sure something more exciting will come up sooner or later but, for now, it's just normal everyday stuff. But hey, nothing wrong with that sometimes.

Later!

Josiah

2/2/2018 Time flies

TWC is working again, so you can vote with the button on the left to see the new bonus comic!

This week has really flown by between my classes, meetings, errands, and the like. I should have my last PowerPoint finished a bit later today though, which will be good. Next week I've got another bunch of meetings to "look forward to" but after that things should fully settle down.

Anyway, have a good weekend!

Josiah

1/31/2018 Gaming

While my free time has been rather limited since getting back from Hawaii, it's been nice to have access to my consoles again. While I did manage to beat Mario Odyssey shortly before I left, I've still got a ton of post-game content to work through, which has been a lot of fun so far. Then there's Danganronpa 3, which I started during the break, but haven't finished yet. What comes after both of those? Probably that last DLC episode for Final Fantasy XV, though that should only take a few hours. And then? I'm not sure. I've certainly got a lot of options, between recent releases and titles that have been sitting in my backlog for awhile. I don't think there are any bad choices there, though I certainly wish I had the time to actually start catching up on all of them. Oh well, that's just the way things are.

See you Friday!

Josiah

1/29/2018 Week 2

Spring semester continues! I have a bunch of meetings this week and next week for various things going on at work, which will keep me a bit busier than usual this early in the semester, especially since I've still got a couple of PowerPoints I need to finish. Shouldn't be too bad though, and I'm looking forward to wrapping up the PPs so I can focus on some other projects (like Aurora's Nightmare). I also have a bit of planning I need to do for summer. On that note, we do have a summer trip planned. Not as long or elaborate as last year's, but still pretty cool. We'll be spending most of the summer here in Virginia though, which should also be fun. Anyway, summer is quite a ways away, so I'll talk more about that closer to the time.

For now, I should probably head off. Zack still isn't sleeping perfectly and I've got a long day ahead at work.

Later!

Josiah

1/26/2018 Wrapping up

I'm still having trouble with TWC, so here's this week's bonus comic.

Zack is starting to sleep better, which is good, but I finally caught that same stomach bug he and Connie had a few days back, which, combined with the lack of sleep, knocked me out of commission for half a day. As a result, I didn't quite make it through my to-do list for the week. Anyway, let's wrap up that travelogue.

January 16th: Heading Home
Our time in Hawaii came to an end sooner than I would have liked. Time really flew. But it was a great trip and I got to do all the stuff I most wanted to do. Our flights back got rescheduled a few times, but in the end the we got a relatively ok set. There really isn't too much to talk about when it comes to the trip back itself.
So how was it being back in Hawaii? Well, the trip gave me a taste of what it would have been like if we had never left. And yeah, I still really love it there. The climate, the culture, the beaches, mountains, all the special events, the food... And, most of all, having my family around. Of course, this trip also reminded me of some of the things I didn't like about living in Hawaii, like the state government and the serious homeless problem. Still, the end of this trip hit me a little hard. Both for myself and for Zack, who really enjoyed both the beach and spending time with his grandparents. I'm not sure if I'll ever live in Hawaii again. Even if I have the opportunity, I can't say for sure if I'd take it. But I am really glad that, so long as my parents' have their place here, I'll have plenty of opportunities to return.

Have a good weekend!

Josiah

1/24/2018 Getting there

Zack and Connie seem to fully recovered, though getting Zack's sleep schedule back to normal will likely take a bit longer. Still, things are starting to calm down. If I can just get a good night's sleep for a change, and get a few more start of semester tasks done this week, that should do it.

For today though, I'm going to keep it short and try and save my last Hawaii post for Friday.

Later!

Josiah

1/22/2018 Ugh...

Classes start back up today and I'm...sorta ready. I got all my most important prep work done, but still have a couple things left on my to-do list. Plus, I'm a bit sleep deprived. Zack caught a stomach bug or something not long after we got back from Hawaii and Connie got it shortly after. I've managed to avoid it (so far, at least), but Zack's sleep schedule had already gotten messed up in Hawaii and with the time zone change and the stomach bug on top of that, it's totally shot now. So now I have to sleep train him again, which is a lot harder now that he's older and stronger. I haven't gotten a full night's sleep in days...

Anyway, I've got a long day ahead and need to get however much sleep I can before my first class starts, so I'll try and finish the Hawaii travelogue later in the week.

Josiah

1/19/2017 Whales

For the first time in quite a while, Top Web Comics was having issues so I did what I usually do in those situations and posted today's bonus comic here. There will be a regular strip on Monday.

In other news, I'm back in Virginia. My current focus is catching up on the usual post-trip things and preparing my spring classes (which start on Monday). Got a travelogue entry or two left though. Here's one for today and I'll try and finish it up on Monday.

January 14th (Sunday): Whale Watching
We had talked about going on a whale watching boat a few weeks ago but nothing ever came of it. But then my mom heard from some people who had gone and seen a lot of whales and decided we should give it a try. There's a lot of whale watching boats around, but we ended up going on The Star of Honolulu, which has been around for ages and also does dinner cruises. As a side note, whales only hang out in Hawaii for several months, coming down to get away from the cold winters up north. So if you want to see them, you have to time your visit
The weather was great. We set off and soon were treated to some great views of the coast. We actually ran into our first whale pretty quickly, and saw a steady stream of them from then on. The boat did a good job of following the whales around and the crew chimed in with some occasional whale and Hawaii facts. And, when there were breaks in the whales, I could always watch the parasailers. The boat also had a buffet (though we ate before we went), a few little Hawaiian culture activities, and was pretty kid friendly. That said, after getting Zack to sleep (which took a little doing), I spent pretty much the entire time up on the top deck looking for whales and enjoying the view. At two and a half hours, it was a fairly long trip, but didn't quite feel "too long" either.
While going on a larger boat is a bit more laid back than a small cruiser, it is more comfortable and allows for more amenities. If you want a relaxing whale watching trip, I'd say that The Star of Honolulu is a pretty good choice. They even give you a free return ticket if you don't see any whales. Connie, my mom, and I all enjoyed it and it was a nice way to spend one of our final days in Hawaii.

Later!

Josiah

1/12/2018 Zipping around

It's a Friday, so you can use the TWC button to vote and see the new bonus comic.

Time has really flown lately. Hard to believe my month in Hawaii is almost over. While it'll be nice to get home in some ways, I can't really say that I'm especially looking forward to the winter weather, or getting back to work. Anyway, for now it's back to the travelogue.

January 4th (Thursday): Climbworks Zipline Tour
I started doing high ropes and ziplines as a kid back in Colorado, but one thing that has changed since those days is the introduction of the zipline tour. Basically, instead of just doing one zipline, a zipline tour involves spending two or three hours doing a series of ziplines, usually with some other activities inbetween. The last time I did one was actually in Hawaii as well, but many years ago on a different island (Kauai). Zipline tours only came to Oahu few years ago but now there's two or three of them. That aside, my mom thought it would be fun for Connie and I, so she got us tickets as a birthday present of sorts.
Climbworks is on a farm on the north side of the island. My mom took Zack off to play, and Connie and I joined another couple and a Japanese family and set off for the ziplines. The first was a sort of intro line right by the entrance. Probably to make sure no one freaks out before starting the tour proper. After that, we hopped on an ATV and headed to the top of a nearby hill. From that point on, it was ziplines and walkways all the way down. Inbetween, there were a few talks about the farm (they grow bananas, tomatoes, and Vietnamese curry leaf) and the north shore in general, along with some obstacles (drops, climbs, and swaying rope bridges). I'm pretty used to these things, but this was only Connie's second time on a zipline. Fortunately, she did fine and we both had a lot of fun. The ziplines passed over forests, valleys, and the farm itself. One even went through a short canyon (though it's kind of hard to tell from the photo), which was really cool. I don't think this one was quite as good as the zipline tour I took back on Kauai, but that's a different island and the Climbworks tour is a lot of fun. If you don't mind heights, and are looking for something fun to do on the north shore, give it a try.
We finished up the day at the Kailua farmer's market, which is more or less on par with the Blaisdell one in regards to food selection. Definitely worth a visit if you're in the area Thursday evenings.

Later!

Josiah

1/10/2018 More fun on Oahu

I've still got several travelogue entries that need writing, so let's get to it.

January 1st (Monday): The Polynesian Cultural Center
I've already been to the Polynesian Cultural Center several times, and written about it two or three times as well, so I'm not going to go into too much detail here. But anyway... A lot of stuff closes on New Year's Day and my mom wanted to work in a last trip to the cultural center before her membership ran out, so she, Connie, Zack, and I headed down there for the day.
The center hadn't really changed much since the last time I was there, and I'd already seen all the main shows, but I did get to look inside some buildings that I hadn't before and check out a couple of the smaller presentations. One, for example, was on how to make coconut oil. It's actually just a couple of extra steps added to the process of making coconut milk. What surprised me was that you only get a table spoon or so of oil per coconut. I can't imagine how many it takes to make the big containers of the stuff that I buy at Costco...
One thing about the PCC that does seem to get a bit better every time I visit is the food and drink options. We actually thought about staying after the main park closed for the luau (which I haven't done) but, unfortunately, they were booked solid due to the holiday. Still, it was a moderately fun day, despite the familiarity.

January 3rd (Wednesday): Breakout Waikiki
Back when I was living in Hawaii, I actually toyed with the idea of setting up an escape room, either as a commercial project or a sort of fun university activity for my game design students. Well, due to everything that happened, I was never able to do that, but some people clearly had similar ideas and there are now several escape room places around the island.
If you're not familiar with escape rooms, the basic idea is that a group of people (usually around 6 - 8) is locked in a themed room and have to solve a bunch of puzzles in order to unlock the door before the time limit (generally 1 hour). I love escape rooms and mentioned the possibility of going to one here a while back. In the end, Connie and I, my parents, some friends of theirs, and Zack teamed up and reserved a room for ourselves. Not that Zack helped, but he was able to ride along in his carrier without a problem.
We went to Breakout Waikiki, which is in King's Village by Waikiki Beach. Why that one? Partly due to the convenient location, and partly because it has the biggest selection of rooms. We chose one called The Hatch, which was loosely based off of Lost. Without spoiling anything, I think it's the best real world escape room I've done so far. It had a good variety of puzzles, none of which were especially failure prone, and don't come across as too gimmicky either.
So how'd we do? Since my game design knowledge and my escape room experience (real and digital) gives me a leg up on these type of things, I spent a lot of time running from puzzle to puzzle getting the others started and helping them out when they were stuck. And, of course, solving a few myself. Though everyone contributed strongly at various points, so it was hardly a one man show. That said, with so many things going on, I didn't feel like I couldn't always go as fast as I needed to given the time limit, which might have bottlenecked things a bit here and there. In the end, we didn't quite finish the room, though were came close. We were on the final puzzle when the time ran out. I do have to say that it was two or three difficulty levels above everything else in the room (posing a bit of a balancing issue), but I think that we probably would have solved it given another 5 - 10 minutes. Over all, I was pretty happy with our performance (minus a couple of dumb mistakes), and had a lot of fun. I really should try and do some more of the escape rooms in Virginia some time and I'd still like to try my hand at designing one..

Well, I've still got one entry to go, but it can wait until Friday.

Later!

Josiah

1/8/2018 A little more time

Time has really be flying on this trip. Just a little over a week left to go. Sigh... I do miss living here. Virginia has its good points too, but Hawaii is special... Anyway, here's a bit more of the travelogue.

December 31st (Sunday): Ko'olina and Kapolei
We didn't have anything in particular to do on the 31st, so my mom suggested going to to Ko'olina to spend some time at the lagoons. It made for a pleasant morning, and Zack had a lot of fun on the beach. I got to do a little snorkeling as well. Admittedly, I was never that impressed with the Ko'olina lagoons as a snorkeling spot. It doesn't really compare to Oahu's top snorkeling areas such as Electric Beach and Shark's Cove. That said, it was a bit better than I remembered. I saw a decent variety of fish, and it's a really easy place to snorkel, so that's a plus.
Later in the day, we stopped by Kapolei's new mall, which I'd be wanting to see. It's an outdoor mall situated near the UHWO campus and the end of the rail line (whenever that actually gets done), though said line weirdly ends around half a mile away from the mall itself. I'm not sure what the logic is there... Anyway, it's a fairly nice mall, with movie theater, a decent restaurant selection, and plenty of stores (though mostly not the type I shop at). I wouldn't say it's worth driving out there from Honolulu just to visit the mall, but it's certainly great for people who live or are staying on that side of the island (Ko'olina, Kapolei, Ewa Beach, etc.). The main reason I wanted to visit is because I'd been rather eagerly awaiting its opening back when I lived here, since it would have only been a 5 - 10 minute drive from my house. And it certainly would been convenient to have around. Sigh...
Anyway, we eventually made it back to Honolulu and spent the rest of the day hanging out. Though I eventually headed down to the beach to watch the New Year's Eve fireworks show on Waikiki Beach. It was a good show, though it didn't really feature anything I hadn't seen before. One cool thing though, which I didn't really notice in past years, was that I could looks down the coast and see lots of other fireworks shows taking place in the distance. They were fairly far off, but it still made for a neat effect. And with that, 2017 was brought to a close.

Well, I'm off for now. I should have another entry or two ready for Wednesday so I'll see you then!

Josiah

1/5/2018 Resting up

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We crammed a number of activities into this week. It was fun, but also a bit tiring and I'm still sorting through the photos so I'm going to keep it short today and try and get a travelogue entry or two ready for Monday.

Have a great weekend!

Josiah

1/3/2018 Hiking in Hawaii

Let's make a bit more travelogue progress.

December 24th (Sunday): The Aiea Loop Trail
This trail was on my to-do list for quite a while when I was living in Hawaii, though I never got around to it. But, when looking for a hike to do with the whole family, it seemed like a good fit being moderate length but not especially difficult (nothing tricky or especially steep). Especially since Connie and I aren't at our best right now in terms of physical fitness (taking care of a baby has left a lot less time for proper exercise).
We started at the upper part of the loop and set off through the trees. For the most part, it was a pretty flat hike, except for one decent followed by a not overly steep or long climb towards the end. While not one of the most scenic Oahu hikes I've been on, you go through a surprising variety of vegetation along the way. White trees, pine forest, bamboo, shady tunnels, and more. We also got a good view of the H3 highway. Over all, it was a pleasant hike and neither Connie nor I had any real trouble with it. That was encouraging, but we both still really need to get back in shape before our big summer trip...
After we finished the loop, we got a somewhat late lunch over at Little Sheep (Chinese hot pot) before walking around the Ward Center a bit. On the down side, they're demolishing a large chunk of it (which I rather liked) to build more condos. On the plus side, they did add a kind of neat new area in the back.
We took it easy after that, though I did slip out at night to check out the Christmas Eve festivities near Waikiki, making for a pleasant end to the day.

Later!

Josiah

1/1/2018 Happy new year!

Another year... 2017 was fairly hectic. Partly because of work and travel, but mostly because of raising a baby. Still, it was a pretty great year over all and a lot better than 2016, which was a rather lousy year with a few highlights thrown in. Here's hoping that 2018 continues the positive trend. And now, for a travelogue entry.

Random Hawaii Comment: Returning to Hawaii
It's a little odd coming back to Hawaii this time. I mean, I lived here until a year and a half ago and, while I've been pretty happy with things in Virginia, I'm still rather sore (to put it mildly) about the circumstances that caused me to leave Hawaii in the first place. And I have to admit, I've spent a little time thinking of exactly what I'd say if I happen to run into a certain person...
That said, returning to a familiar area is always kind of fun. Especially an area that I really like. I enjoy visiting different places I used to frequent and seeing what's changed and what's stayed the same. In terms of shops and restaurants, I'm pretty happy with the changes, though a few places I really liked have disappeared. Over all though, I think the new stuff outweighs the losses. Outside of that, however, things have mostly stayed the same. While that's good when it applies to things like the weather, general culture, and the like, it also means that none of the island's major problems have really been addressed. The light rail (though a good idea) is still an over budget, mismanaged mess that's ridiculously behind schedule. The homeless issue hasn't really improved in the least (if anything, it might be slightly worse than when I left). And the government still can't even get potholes filled in a reasonable amount of time. There's also a certain amount of melancholy when visiting the beach, a favorite restaurant, or the like that I really miss having regular access to. Or when I see something new and think about how great it would have been to have around when I actually lived here...
I still really like Oahu, and I love spending time here. So, at least as long as my parents have this condo, I think I'll be coming back fairly regularly. Would I live here again? That's a bit tougher. Maybe, though it's such a complicated and expensive move that I'd have to be extremely certain about the job. Once burned, twice shy, and all that. And I'm not sure much of anything could give me any sort of trust in, or positivity about, the university system or the state government in general. But, on a vacation like this, as long as my family and I are enjoying ourselves, that's all that matters.

Happy new year!

Josiah

12/29/2017 Hawaii

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While I probably won't be writing a ton of travelogue entries on this trip, I will be doing a few, starting today.

December 14th (Thursday): Traveling to Hawaii
Connie and I were always planning to go back to Hawaii for winter vacation. I even had a bunch of frequent flier miles I could cash in for tickets. Unfortunately, that made it a bit more complicated than it needed to be, especially considering how expensive flights can be during winter break. In the end, Connie and Zack actually left a week earlier than me (it was a cheaper ticket plus they didn't have to hang around to give final exams) and I headed off a few days earlier than I probably should have to avoid a huge ticket price spike. But all the tests and presentations were done, and I can grade things from anywhere with a good internet connect.
Anyway, thanks to using those miles, I didn't get the greatest flights. The timing wasn't bad, but I had to change planes twice (three flights total) and one connection was extremely tight. Fortunately, there were enough other people trying to make that connection that they actually delayed the fight 10 or 15 minutes, giving us enough time to make a mad dash through the airport to the gate. It was a bit crazy but, in the end, I successfully made my connects, and left the mainland behind. After that it was just clouds and ocean until I landed on Oahu. Surprisingly, my luggage made all the connections as well so I rejoined my family, ready to begin my vacation.

December 15th - 23rd (Friday - Saturday): Hanging Out in Honolulu
This vacation is more about relaxing than sightseeing so I'm not going to be writing as much as on some trips. And I had to spend half of my first week grading final projects anyway. That said, it's still been pleasant so far.
For starters, my parents moved into a new, larger condo across the street from their old one (so there's room if my and my brother's family visit at the same time). While I liked their old condo a lot, the new one is even better and has an awesome view.
Zack seems to enjoy the beach, both the water and the sand. My mom even has him taking a baby swimming class.
While I haven't had time to fully explore yet, it's interesting walking around Honolulu after being away for a year and a half and seeing what has and hasn't changed. A lot of my favorite shops and restaurants are still around, though some have sadly disappeared. On the bright side, there's some great new places like Nojo, which has excellent chicken hot pots and ramen, along with awesome shave ice (it ranks up there with Island Vintage as the best shave ice I've ever had).
Some new shopping areas that were still under construction when I left have been finished as well. The new International Marketplace lacks the old, kinda kitchy charm of the original, but it's really nicely designed and has some good restaurants. I may write about it in more detail in the future. There's also Yokocho, the new Japanese food court in the basement of one of the shopping buildings on Waikiki. I've only had time for a quick look so far, but it seems to have some cool stuff.
So that's been my time in Honolulu so far, a lot of work (which is now pretty much done), spending time with my family (especially Zack), and doing a bit of exploring nearby. But we'll be doing some more interesting activities later on and I'll have some write ups for them and possible some other things, along with my thoughts on being back in Hawaii.

There's more, but that should do it for now. See you in 2018!

Josiah

12/27/2017 Seriously?

So, I actually made a special Christmas strip, for the second time ever, and it didn't upload right. The news post updated, and even the strip title updated, but the strip that was displayed was still the regular one from last Friday. Sigh... So, here's the Christmas strip...two days late. Naturally, this strip is not cannon. The actual battle will resume on Friday.

Later!

Josiah

12/25/2017 Christmas and (not in) Washington

Merry Christmas!

Now, back to work on those long delayed travelogue entries from my Thanksgiving trip to Washington state.

November 23 (Thursday): Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving was, of course, the main reason for our trip. In addition to myself, Connie, and Zack, my brother's family, and my cousin, my aunt and uncle (the parents of said cousin) came as well, along with a couple of my brother's friends. So we had a fairly big group. It was a fun day. I cooked, we played some Catan, had a great meal, and so on. Not a whole lot to say, but it was a good Thanksgiving.

November 24 (Friday): Tacoma
My aunt, uncle, and cousin left, leaving just myself, Connie, my brother and his wife, and the babies. In the end, we didn't really want to go into downtown Seattle, or do any Black Friday shopping, but we didn't really want to just sit around all day either. So we ended up going to Tacoma, which is the nearest small city / large town to where my brother lives. After lunch at a nice Asian fusion place, we headed to the Museum of Glass. It features a gallery with works by Chihuly and several other glass artists. The gallery isn't huge, but it had some interesting pieces. There was also the glass bridge outside. Unfortunately, the bridge itself is not made of glass, but it does have more glass on display along the sides and a Chihuly designed ceiling. Back inside the museum, the biggest draw is the glass workshop, which features multiple glass artisans working on a variety of projects for most of the day. When we were there, they were making a solid glass guitar. It was interesting to watch the process, though we didn't stay to see the entire thing (that would have taken hours).
I wouldn't really say that the glass museum is worth a detour from Seattle (especially considering that there's an entire Chihuly museum near the Space Needle) but, if you want to watch the show, it's not a bad place to visit if you happen to be in the Tacoma area.

November 25 (Saturday): Seattle Parks
The synagogue we went to was either in or near Seattle (though not the downtown area) so we decided to do a bit more sightseeing afterwards. I'll note that we had to drive to these places, as they weren't really within walking distance of downtown, or each other, for that matter.
Out first stop was Gas Works Park. If you couldn't guess from the name, it's an abandoned gas works that was changed into a public park. While the rusty tanks and equipment were fenced off, they were rather cool to see and gave the place a neat vibe (sort of the whole green post-apocalypse thing). The park also features great views of the bay (or is it a sound or something?) with downtown Seattle in the background. It was a cold day, so we didn't stay too long, but Gas Works park is a neat place to walk around and take some pictures.
Getting back in the car, we drove over the the locks. Locks, in this case, refer to the locks used in canals and rivers to raise and lower boats so they can move between uneven parts of the water way. Kind of interesting, and you can watch the locks work when a boat comes along, but I'm not sure they really should qualify as a tourist attraction.
And that was it for the day. We headed home the following evening (after a fairly lazy day) so I could get back in time for Monday's classes.
While I still haven't spent all that much time in Washington State, there's certainly a lot of fun things to see and do there. Though I'd really recommend trying to time any trips to the Seattle area during the 3 months or so of good weather that they get in the summer.

Ok! Now, with that out of the way, I can switch focus to Hawaii in future posts.

Later!

Josiah

12/22/2017 Seattle

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Well, the grading is finally finished and I'm fully on vacation. I'll still be working on my own projects, but that's on my own schedule. So, it's finally time to start on that Seattle travelogue. Why not a Hawaii travelogue? Well, there will probably be some of that sooner or later (though this is more of a relaxing trip than a sightseeing one), but for now I want to get that long overdue Seattle one out of the way.

November 22 (Wednesday): The Seattle Underground
Since my brother and his wife came to visit Connie and I last Thanksgiving, we decided to visit them this year. It was also our chance to meet our new nephew (and Zack's cousin). One of my cousins came as well. Since we arrived on Tuesday night, we decided to spend Wednesday doing some sightseeing in Seattle. Noah recommended an underground tour (there's several), so that's where we all headed after taking the ferry into the city.
What's the Seattle underground? Well, it turns out that the city of Seattle was originally built in a rather lousy location. There were reasons, but it ended up flooding frequently. The fact that they went with quick and shoddy construction for the roads and such didn't really help matters. Fortunately, the city burned down. Yes, I said fortunately, as it gave the city planners the chance to start over and do things right. That involved not only sturdier, less flammable construction, but also transporting massive amounts of dirt from the city's hills (drastically lowering their height) to raise the elevation of the lower areas. Thing is, the shop keepers didn't really want to wait years for that whole project to finish before rebuilding. So they rebuilt at lower levels and, over time, as the roads were raised, what used to be the sidewalks and first floors of the buildings became underground walkways and basements instead.  For a while, it was used as a sort of underground shopping mall, lit by skylights built into the sidewalks above. However, it was eventually condemned and sealed off as part of a very aggressive (and affective) effort to prevent an outbreak of plague. But that didn't stop the underground from being used illegally over the years for shady business ventures, trash disposal, and homeless encampments. Now, it's no longer condemned. A lot of it is run down and sealed off, but some sections are open and used for tours, storage, clubs, and the like. The tour we took featured a few spots in the underground, though we had to go above ground to travel between them. The guide was really good, and gave both a history of Seattle and a lot of trivia, both on the underground and the city itself. This totem pole, for instance, was actually stolen by some city officials who happened across an empty Indian village on their way back from a trip to Alaska and were looking for a souvenir. They got in trouble, but bribed the US marshal and got off with a slap on the wrist. Then the pole burned down years later so the officials actually hired the Indians they stolen the original one from to make them a copy. Talk about a crazy story... Anyway, it was an interesting tour and something I'd recommend if you go to Seattle.
After the tour, we grabbed a quick (and late) lunch and walked around the city a bit. Stops included this little hidden waterfall park (that we learned about on the tour), which was built by UPS (they got their start in Seattle), the city's oldest glass studio, a cool toy store, and Pike's Place Market. After watching the sunset (which happens pretty early during Washington winters), we made our way to a Moroccan restaurant. Now, I love Moroccan food but Moroccan restaurants aren't too common in the US (at least not anywhere I've ever lived) so I normally have to cook it myself. Being able to go to a real restaurant for a change was nice and it was a great meal to wrap up a fun day.

Well, I've got a few more days to write about on that Washington trip, but I'll stop here for normal and hopefully continue on Monday.

Later!

Josiah

12/20/2017 Last day

I've spent most of the past couple of days grading final projects. I've made good progress, but still have a large chunk that I need to get done today so no time for travelogue entries. After that though, I'm good for the rest of the vacation.

Back to it!

Josiah

12/18/2017 Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I successfully made it to Hawaii! However, I didn't get much sleep the night before the flight, which came on top of a lot of late nights. Zack was rather fussy my first night here as well, which also didn't meant much sleep. As a result, for the last few days, I've been finding myself getting deathly tired long before bed time. So working on PV has been a struggle to get things done before I get too tired to work. The end result? I managed to get this comic done but "still" haven't been able to do those Washingon travelogues. Pretty sure I'll have them up later this week though.

Right now, I need more sleep...

Josiah

12/11/2017 A few more days...

Well, it's nice to have a few days to myself, but I've been pretty busy. Work, errands, cleaning, getting things ready for winter break, and so on and so forth. So it hasn't really been especially relaxing, or left me with as much free time as I thought. On that note, while I did manage to get a PV strip done for today, I haven't had a chance to build any kind of buffer so, by the time I got it done, it was too late for those travelogue entries. Sigh... I really wanted those done a week or two ago... Well, soon anyway. With vacation coming up, I can't stay busy for too much longer.

Later!

Josiah

12/8/2017 So close...

You can vote to see the new Blooper Reel comic...or just look right here on the main page. Sigh... I've been working through my to-do list, and I even got the photos for my Seattle travelogue entries ready. What I didn't manage to get done was a regular Pebble Version strip, or the actual travelogue write-up. I thought I'd be able to, but a couple extra things came up and, on top of that, I got all of 3 1/2 hours of sleep last night since I had to get up very early to take Connie and Zack to the airport (they're leaving on winter vacation a bit earlier than me since it was cheaper that way and they don't have to hang around for final exams like I do). I wasn't going to get a lot of sleep to begin with, but then Zack decided to wake up even earlier and wouldn't calm down. That doesn't happen very much, but it's certainly annoying when it does, and meant me waking up a lot earlier than planned. Anyway, even if I wanted to stay up a bit longer and get today's strip done, I'm just too tired.

Regular updates really should resume on Monday.

Later!

Josiah

12/4/2017 Crunching UPDATE

UPDATE: I really hate to do it, but I'm skipping Wednesday's update. I'm very nearly caught up with everything (grading is done, just working on some misc stuff), but I haven't had any time to work on PV and I can't afford a really late night to get the comic done with my schedule for the next couple of days. Updates will resume on Friday.

Sigh... Well, it's Monday and I'm still grading papers. On the plus side, I did get the biggest most complex assignments finished. But I still have 40 - 50 papers left to grade, which takes a while even if they're the shorter and simpler ones. Hopefully I'll get them out of the way soon so I can finally get some other things (like those travelogue entries) done.

Later!

Josiah

12/1/2017 Hello December

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Seems like there's been lots to catch up on since Thanksgiving, and I still have more to go. On that note, I don't have time for those travelogue entries today, as much as I wanted to get them done. I'll aim for Monday, though they may slip into Wednesday depending on how long it takes me to finish grading the latest batch of student projects. I will be so glad when this semester is over...

Have a good weekend!

Josiah

11/29/2017 Back home

Well, I'm back from Thanksgiving, but only for a few weeks before heading off to Hawaii for winter break. Anyway, I have a couple travelogue entries coming up from my time in Washington, but not today (I'm still working on my photos). Now that I'm back home, it's back to work as well.

Later!

Josiah

11/24/2017 Holiday break

Sorry about posting a Blooper Reel today instead of a regular strip. I just haven't had much time to work on the comic the last few days. I hope all my US readers had a good Thanksgiving. Connie and I are having a nice time in Washington (state, not DC). We spent Wednesday doing some stuff in Seattle, so expect a travelogue entry sometime next week. Other than that, remember that there will be no update on Monday due to the timing of our return flight. Regular updates will resume on Wednesday.

Later!

Josiah

11/20/2017 Dropped shows

First off, a couple of announcements. Connie, Zack, and I are going to be visiting my brother for Thanksgiving. Due to our travel schedule, there will be no PV update on Wednesday or Monday. I will try to squeeze one in on Friday though.

Continuing with the TV theme... Here's some quick notes on the shows I watched last season but decided not to continue with this time around. Note that I'm only listing shows I deliberately stopped watching, not ones that were canceled.

Shows I'm Not Watching This Season:

Super Girl
Outside of the whole "girl power" thing, I thought the first season was rather mediocre and I only continued on to season 2 because I was hoping that, when it moved to CW, it would take some lessons from Flash and Arrow and improve. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. If anything, it got a bit worse by trying to be overly "progressive" whether or not it made any sense for the plot. I dropped it part way through the last season and have completely ignored this one. I'll probably watch one episode due to the whole Flash, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow, Super Girl cross over that's coming up, but that's it.

Quantico
I really liked season 1 but the plot of season 2 was a bit of a mess and it got even worse towards the end when they decided to focus on political grandstanding instead of actually advancing the story. I finished the season, but have no interest in returning for the next one.

Hmm... I think that's it. Ok then. Have a great Thanksgiving (if you're in the US, anyway), and I'll hopefully see you Friday.

Josiah

11/17/2017 Continuing with the TV

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Let's talk about some shows I'm planning to watch, but the new season hasn't started yet.

Upcoming Shows:

My Little Pony
Actually, the latest last season just ended a month or so ago. While I still enjoy the show for the most part, I think the last couple of seasons haven't been as good as the earlier ones.

Agents of Shield
Last season was a bit of a mixed bag. The Ghostrider story arc in the first half was just ok, though the Agents of Hydra arc in the second half was really good. This season was delayed so they could run Inhumans first, but will be starting in a couple weeks. And, for some reason, they're in space. Curious to see what the deal is with that.

Doctor Who
I felt that the last season was just ok. Capaldi was never my favorite Doctor and I wasn't a big fan of last season's new companion either. But next season will have a new Doctor and a new companion. And the Doctor is going to be a woman. To be honest, I saw this coming. They've been teasing the possibility for ages. That said, it's still a bit of a weird move. The question is how they're going to handle it. With some smart writing it could be a fun change of pace. But considering how a lot of episodes have been going lately, I suspect it'll be more like, "The Doctor is a woman! Look how progressive we are! Did we mention she's a woman? We'll be reminding you about it every five minutes just so you don't forgot how awesomely progressive we are." So yeah, I'm apprehensive.

Whose line is it anyway?
This is another one where the season actually just ended a little while ago. It was still hilarious and they added back a few more of the old skits, which was nice since if there's any issues with the newest incarnation it's that it tends to over use a few particular skits.

Elementary
I still haven't gotten overly invested in the characters, but the mysteries themselves are still fairly interesting. For reason, the new season isn't starting until January.

Milo Murphy's Law
Another one where the season actually ended a month or so back. Milo Murphy was created by the guys behind Phineas and Ferb and the title character, who is a walking magnet for Murphy's Law, is voiced by Weird Al. While I don't think it's on the same level as Phineas and Ferb (which is one of the best modern US kids cartoons I've seen), it got off to a good start and I enjoyed the first season quite a bit.

Ok, I think that's everything. I'll probably do another post or two to cover anime and shows I've dropped.

Have a good weekend!

Josiah

11/15/2017 Work, work, work...

Well, to be fair, this week isn't overly crazy but I do have multiple meetings and a bunch of stuff to grade so it's busy enough. And today, I'm running late so I need to cut this short.

Later!

Josiah

11/13/2017 Off on an Odyssey

I finished Gravity Rush 2 and moved onto Super Mario Odyssey. Nice to be using my Switch for a change. Not that there aren't lots of games I want to play on the Switch, I just haven't had the chance to get to them yet. I played through Shovel Knight after launch, and that was about it, mainly thanks to how long FFXV and Persona 5 were. But I'm certainly looking forward to spending some time with Zelda Breath of the Wild, Splatoon 2, and Mario & Rabbids, among others. But first, Odyssey. I'm not too far into it yet, but I'm really enjoying it. As much as I love games with deep storylines and complex systems, Mario games are just pure fun. And, speaking as a designer, the main series titles tend to be about as close to perfectly as possible. I really have to give credit to Miyamoto and the rest of the team at Nintendo. They are, without question, some of the best in the industry.

Anyway, I'll probably write more about Odyssey when I've gotten a bit further. For now, I'm off.

Later!

Josiah

11/10/2017 More TV

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Last time, I talked about the returning TV shows I've been watching this season. Well, what about the new ones?

New Shows:

Young Sheldon
This one is a Big Bang Theory spin-off focusing on Sheldon's family when he was a kid. I think they're trying to channel shows like Malcom in the Middle, though so far I wouldn't say that Young Sheldon is especially funny. Mildly amusing at best. Unless it picks up soon, I can't see myself watching more than another episode or two.

Duck Tales
We didn't actually get the Disney Channel when I was a kid so I didn't grow up watching the original Duck Tales like a lot of people my age. Though I did see the movie once or twice. Anyway, I decided to check out the new version on a whim, since I saw so many posts on social media about it. And it's actually pretty good. I can't compare it to the original, but it's entertaining and some of the episodes are actually quite clever in ways that are designed to appeal to an older audience. Check out the episode where two of the nephews intern at a tech company to get an idea of what I mean. So yeah, I like it even without the nostalgia factor.

Marvel's Inhumans
Inhumans is part of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) and they've been delaying the new season of Agents of Shield to run it. Honestly, I'd rather be watching Shield. Inhumans is about a hidden colony of Inhumans (people with super powers due to alien DNA) on the moon. But said colony soon falls into civil war when the king's younger brother stages a coup, which results in the king and his allies fleeing to Oahu. So, it sounds promising on paper. Thing is, the story revolves around a civil war and I don't really like either faction. The royal family is selfish and propping up a regime that supports slavery and other unsavory aspects. On the flip side, the king's usurper of a brother talks about seeking the good of the people but is really a tyrant looking to improve his own situation. Sure there's a bit of character development going on, but even now, as the short season is nearing its end, I don't really care much for either side. As such, I'm mostly watching for the Hawaiian scenery and the fact that I'm a fan of the MCU in general.

The Gifted
Sometimes I do start to think that I'm getting overloaded on super hero shows... Anyway, this one is set in the X-Men universe, though in a version where the X-Men mysteriously disappeared and mutants began to be locked up by a shady government organization. A seemingly ordinary family finds their lives turned upside down when their two teenage children develop mutant powers and the entire family is forced to go on the run, teaming up with a resistance network dedicated to helping protect mutants and guide them to freedom. It reminds me a little bit of Heroes (though without the big convoluted plot), and has a different feel than the other super hero shows currently running. I wouldn't say it's amazing, but I'm enjoying it enough to keep watching.

Well, I think that will do it for now, but I've got another post or two left in this TV show set so I'll see you next week.

Josiah

11/8/2017 Restless night

Zack was having a tough time sleeping which meant a late night for me so I'm just going to end this here.

Later!

Josiah

11/6/2017 Fall 2017 TV season

The fall TV season is well under way (though I'm still waiting for a couple of shows to start) so this seems like a decent time to write a bit about what I'm watching. For now, I'm just going to focus on shows currently running on TV, not stuff I'm watching on Netflix or DVD (I might write about those in a future post). So, in no particular order...

Returning Shows:

Designated Survivor
While it's a little weird to see Kiefer Sutherland not shooting anyone after all those seasons of 24, Connie and I got pretty hooked on Designated Survivor and its mix of mystery and political drama back in season 1. This time around, the politics seem to be taking priority over the larger mysteries, which is a little disappointing, but it's still interesting and fairly intense. And I really appreciate it that, so far, it's actually managed to avoid coming across as overly preachy or partisan, despite touching on some real world issues, which often happens with politically related shows.

Bizarre Foods
Technically it's Bizarre Foods Delicious Destinations now. It's still a fun show if you're into food and/or travel, but I do miss the old hour long format that focused on a whole country rather than a single city.

The Flash
This show is still a lot of fun and one of Connie and my favorites. Definitely the best super hero show on TV (at least as far as live action ones go, I'm not watching the animated ones so I can't compare). To some extent, it's going back to the status quo after the supposed departures of some of the major characters at the end of the previous season but it's nice that they're mixing things up this time with a non-speedster as the main villain and some rather unique meta-humans as well.

Arrow
Last season was a bit below par, but they're certainly changing things around this time with some different dynamics in both the team and the characters' personal lives. And, for the first time, no more flashbacks to five years ago. So far, it's too early to say whether or not this will be one of the better seasons, they haven't even introduced the main villain yet (or not obviously at least). I'm still enjoying it so far, though Connie decided to take a break for a few episodes.

Big Bang Theory
Even after so long, I still find it to be pretty funny. I can't say that they're doing anything too new or different this season, but they don't really need to. If you don't care for Big Bang, there's nothing to change your mind, but if you like it, it's still a pretty hilarious show.

Star Wars Rebels
Rebels is still better than Clone Wars and a fun side story to the Star Wars universe, though certainly not on the level of the movies. My only real complaint is that it introduces some plot holes to the story of the original trilogy. Mainly in regards to why all these characters, especially some (good and bad) who are very powerful weren't involved with the events of the films.

The Simpsons
It's been going on forever and The Simpsons is still The Simpsons. Need I say more? While I wouldn't say that the current season is on track to live up to the series's best, I still enjoy it.

Gotham
Does anyone ever actually die in Gotham? It's seems there's always an excuse to bring dead characters bad to life. Of course, I do understand the reason, and there are a few characters I'm sure are permanently dead. Anyway, Gotham is still dark, tense, and entertaining. Especially now that, after several seasons, it's actually getting relatively close to turning into a full on Batman show.

Hawaii 5-0
There were some casting shake-ups this season, with a couple of the regulars leaving and at least one new character being brought in to replace them. But really, I haven't watched this show for the plot, or even the individual cases, for ages. The writing has never really risen above "ok", aside from some of the banter between the characters. But Connie and I watch it mostly for the setting, especially since we used to live there.

Once Upon a Time
The new season acts as a soft reboot of sorts, jumping something like 15 - 20 years into the future and moving to a new setting with only a handful of the old cast retuning (the rest are presumably busy living out their "happily ever after"). Considering that I felt like the old storyline got stretched out several seasons longer than it should have, this is a good thing. Though I'm not entirely sure yet if I'm sold on the reboot or if they should have just ended the series. At very least, I'm annoyed that the now adult Henry's relationship with his girlfriend from the previous seasons seems to have been completely forgotten, without even a hand wave, in the name of setting him up with someone else for the new narrative.

Well, I think that's all the returning shows, at least the ones that are currently airing. I'll write about the new shows I'm watching another day.

Later!

Josiah

11/3/2017 Meh

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I'm feeling a lot less burned out than a couple days ago, which is good. On the down side, I had to get a wisdom tooth pulled (it went really smoothly, but still not a fun experience), I haven't even gotten half way through my grading, and I'm running really late right now. So yeah, I really should get going. Hopefully by Monday I'll be healed up and caught up.

Later!

Josiah

11/1/2017 Burnout

The title for this post isn't referring to the game series, but how I feel today. I don't feel like going into details, and it's not like it's really serious or anything. But yeah, not really in the mood to write much of anything. Hopefully I'll be feeling better come Friday. Though I've got a dentist appointment later today, so that's not necessarily hopeful...

Josiah

10/30/2017 Another week

So what's going on this week? Pretty normal stuff at work along with some grading (though not on the level of mid-terms) and no sightseeing plans or anything. Actually Connie and I were thinking about going to Shenandoah National Park yesterday but the weather wasn't very good so we didn't. But I've got a car appointment and a dentist appointment to "look forward" to. No Halloween plans either. Not that I normally have any though.

Other than that, just keeping busy with Zack, trying to finish Gravity Rush 2, keep up with all my usual stuff, and the like. Hmm... I haven't written about the new TV season yet. Maybe I'll do that later this week.

Anyway, enjoy Halloween (if you celebrate it), and I'll see you Wednesday.

Josiah

10/27/2017 Art and Asia

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For what was supposed to be a sort of relaxing week, it really hasn't been. I mean, it's been better than grading mid-terms. But between catching up on other things, internet issues, a really bad toothache, and a few other things, it's been moderately busy as a bit stressful as well. Anyway, time to finally get to that travelogue entry.

October 15th (Sunday): The Freer Gallery and Illuminasia Festival
Connie heard about a an Asian festival in DC so we decided to check it out. It turns out, it was being held to coincide with the re-opening of the Freer Art Gallery which is part of the Smithsonian just off the National Mall. The Illuminasia Festival was held outside of and around the gallery. The most popular area was the market street which had a small but diverse selection of food stalls. It wasn't your typical quick Chinese/Japanese/Thai food you usually see at this things. Instead, the focus more more on southern and west Asian countries and it was fun to try new things, even if the lines were a bit on the long side. There were also cooking demos, some music and other performances, and some talks on Asian art and related subjects. After eating and walking around for a bit we decided to check out the gallery itself. The Freer Gallery is the Smithsonian's Asian art museum. It's often combined with the nearby Sackler Gallery, which I previously visited. While the Sackler is more southern Asian and Middle Eastern art, Freer focuses more on works from East Asian countries like China and Japan. The collections aren't overly large, but they do have some nice pieces. That said, thanks to my travels, I've seen tons of Japanese and Chinese art before so I actually found the Arabic section more interesting. The original Peacock Room was also there, which was pretty cool. Add in a nice little courtyard (which was hosting a tea tasting for the festival), and it's a pleasant gallery to browse for an hour or two.
We had a nice half day or so between the festival and the gallery and it reminded me just how many parts of the Smithsonian we have yet to visit. There's plenty of keep us busy in the future.

Josiah

10/25/2017 The internet is down

Well, not quite down, but a couple hours ago my internet speed suddenly dropped to a virtually unusable level. Naturally, I tried all the usual fixes, but nothing worked so I think I'm just going to have to wait a while and hope it fixes itself. And, if not, give my ISP a call. I had that travelogue post ready to go, but there's no way I can get the photos uploaded with my net connection like this. For that matter, I'm not entirely sure if just this basic update will upload.

Well, here goes nothing...

Josiah

10/23/2017 Whew...

Well, the past week was a whole lot more hectic than I expected but I finally finished grading mid-terms and I've got a bit of a breather now. Which, among many other things, means I can sort through my photos from a week ago and then do that travelogue entry I've been wanting to write. For now though, I just finished the grading and catching up on a few other things so I'm going to head off.

See you Wednesday!

Josiah

10/18/2017 Mid-terms UPDATE

Sorry for the missed update. I'm in a bit of time crunch grading mid-terms and then Zack was having a lot of trouble sleeping last night and, as a result, I completely forgot about the comic. Updates will resume on Monday.

Well, it may be a "normal" week but I do have a bit more grading to take care of than I first realized. Mid-terms were due over the weekend and the university requires that mid-term grades be submitted for all students, at least for 100 and 200 level classes. So that gives me a bit of a deadline to deal with (though I normally try to grade everything pretty quickly anyway).

Well, back to it.

Josiah

10/16/2017 A normal week

For a nice change of pace, there really isn't anything special going on this week. Though I do have a decent amount of grading to get done since mid-terms just came due. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy holidays and stuff, but sometimes it's nice to just have time to focus on normal stuff. Especially when I've got a lot of things to grade. Connie and I did go into DC yesterday though, so expect a travelogue entry later in the week.

See you Wednesday!

Josiah

10/13/2017 A full week

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The past few days, I've constantly found myself wondering where the time went. I've had a list of things I've wanted to do, but it seems like I never have time to finish it all. Getting close to catching up though. And, without any more holidays coming up for a while, I think I'll be able to get back on track this coming week. Anyway, let's try and get that travelogue entry finished...

October 9th (Monday): DC With Friends
My friends Silver and Colly, from the forums, were passing through DC. We hung out a little Sunday night and, since it happened to be Columbus Day, I had the day off so I was able to join them for some sightseeing in DC. Zack had been kind of fussy for the last couple of days, so Connie decided to play it safe and stay home with him instead of joining us.
Since Silver and Colly were visiting, I let them choose the day's itinerary. Fortunately, despite it being a holiday, pretty much all the notable DC attractions were open. We started out at the Air and Space Museum. I got to go through a couple of exhibits I'd missed last time, including an interesting but oddly out of place one featuring art, photos, and memorabilia related to WWI. We even spotted the Enterprise. At this point, I'd say I've probably seen around 75% of the museum, give or take.
We didn't want to spend all day in one place so, after a while, we walked over to the United States Botanic Garden. While the main garden is indoors, there's an outdoor garden next to it which we walked through first. While October probably isn't the best time of year for it, there were still some flowers and other interesting plants around. That said, I've been a lot of gardens over the years and, while this one was fairly nice, there wasn't anything really special about it. The indoor portion of the garden was more interesting. It's divided into half a dozen or so zones themed around different climates and plant types. I wouldn't say that there was anything truly spectacular, but the garden does offer a very wide variety of plants that you can see all year round and it takes less than an hour to walk through so it's worth a visit if you're in the area.
At this point, we didn't have a ton of time left, but we were still able to swing by the Museum of Natural History. There, we took a quick walk through the animal bones to see the dinosaurs. As a note, it seems that there's currently a bigger and fancier dinosaur section under construction, though what they have now isn't bad. After that we made our way through the bug exhibit and spent a few minutes in the undersea section before the museum closed. I'd say I've probably seen 40% or so of the Natural History Museum now, though I just skimmed a couple of the exhibits and would like to take a closer look. I definitely need to make it back there sometime soon and go through the rest.
After that, we headed back to Fairfax and picked up Zack and Connie for dinner before going our separate ways. It was a fun day, especially since I hadn't had a chance to explore DC in a while, much less hang out with friends.

Ok, I've got another busy day coming up so I'm off. Have a good weekend!

Josiah

10/11/2017 Fun with friends

I got to hang out with Silver and Colly (from the PV Forums) Sunday night and Monday, which was a lot of fun. Saw some new stuff in DC as well. It was a fun holiday weekend but then back to work yesterday, albeit with longer hours than usual. Between that, some errands, and playing with Zack, I wasn't able to get much else done. I should have the travelogue entry ready for Friday, though I've got some more errands and work related stuff to take care of today, so we'll see.

I should probably get back to it so I'll see you later.

Josiah

10/9/2017 Holiday weekend

Happy Columbus Day to my US readers. I get the day off (though I have to work extra tomorrow), and I'm planning to spend it in DC with some friends who are visiting for the day. Expect a travelogue entry later in the week. For now, I'm off!

See you Wednesday!

Josiah

10/6/2017 Living the MMO

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Over the last couple of years, I've been reading a lot of Japanese light novels. "Light novel" is a Japanese term used to refer to short to mid length novels (usually in the 200 - 300 page range). They also tend to be aimed at the teens and 20's market and quite a lot of popular anime and manga are actually adaptations of light novel series. Unfortunately, I can't read them in Japanese (I don't know enough kanji) but, over the past few years, a couple of publishers have begun translating a number of the more popular series into English.
I've been meaning to write about some of the series I've tried. Well, there's too many to cover in one go, so I figured I'd start it off by focusing on a few series based around a particular theme. Specifically, the "trapped in a MMO" style story popularized by Sword Art Online. If you're not familiar with it, the basic setup involves one or more regular humans who find themselves physically pulled into the world of their favorite MMORPG and trapped there, taking on the role of their avatar in order to survive and find a way out. It's becoming increasingly popular, with quite a lot of different series, all offering a slightly different take on the setup. So here are the trapped in a MMO series I've tried.

Sword Art Online
Most people probably know SAO from the popular anime, but it all began with the light novels. Anyway, SAO begins with the launch of the first fully VR MMO, using an advanced type of VR that allows for full immersion of all five senses (unlike current real world headsets). However, the creator of the game traps the players inside, preventing them from logging out. Their only chance of escape is to progress through all 100 levels of Aincrad (a massive world like tower) and clear the game. But it's not that simple. Death in the game means death in the real world as well. The first novel focuses on the attempts of Kirito (one of the top players) and his friends to survive and clear SAO. And it deserves its popularity. It's tense, engaging, and provides an interesting look into minds of the players trapped in such a dangerous situation. After that, however, the series moves away from SAO itself as the characters go on to face different challenges in other games and in real life. Those later story arcs range from pretty good (Phantom Bullet, Alicization) to mediocre (Fairy Dance), but the stakes and, as a result, the tension, never reach the same heights as the first book. That said, it's a fun and interesting series. The first book is definitely worth a read and I'd recommend sticking with the series after that as well.
As a side note, there's also a SAO spin-off series titled SAO Progressive, which goes into detail about Kirito and the others early adventures in SAO, most of which were skipped over in the main series. If you liked the first SAO book, it's worth a look.

Log Horizon
All over the world, players are logging in to a popular MMO (regular, not VR), eager to try out the new expansion only to find themselves pulled into the game world. Unlike SAO, the characters are all long time players, so they start the game with high levels and powerful equipment. There's also no risk of death, as dead players respawn just like in the normal game. When the series starts, there's no indication as to how or why the characters ended up in the game world or what they need to do to leave. As a result, the stakes are low and the series provides a more relaxed look at what life would be like inside a MMO world. It's a slow paced story, which isn't helped by the fact that the author loves to take time out to explain every single game system and mechanic in great detail. Honestly, I've only read one volume so far. It wasn't bad, but it didn't do anything to hook me either. There was no main plot and the characters, while fine, weren't engaging enough to keep me reading just for their sake. I suppose I wouldn't mind reading the second book sometime, but it's pretty low on my list.

Overlord
Overlord is a bit different. It opens with a very somber mood as Momonga sits alone in the empty hall of his once great guild, reminiscing about friends who have long since left the game behind and counting the minutes until the game's servers shut down for good. However, when the shut down is supposed to occur, he instead finds himself transported into the world of the game...or is it? While Momonga's guild hall (more of a dungeon, really) is there, complete with a quirky cast of newly sentient NPC servants, it's apparently been transported to a completely different world. Deciding to accept the situation, Momonga sets out to lead his guild of undead and monsters to greatness while searching for any other players who may have come to this new world. Overlord has a very different feel to it from other trapped in a MMO series. The tone is more serious and a bit dark, especially considering that Momonga is a fairly neutral character, neither hero nor villain, and it manages to stay engaging despite how extremely powerful he is. So far, only a few volumes have been released in the US but I've been really enjoying it. I recommend giving it a try, even if (or especially if), you're feeling a bit burned out on trapped in MMO stories.

Well, that's all for now. Have a good weekend!

Josiah

10/4/2017 Happy sukkot!

Sukkot starts tonight. Unfortunately, being in an apartment, that means I can't actually build or sleep in a sukkah, which takes some of the fun out of it. Well, hopefully next year...

Not much going on the last few days. Had some problems with the Aurora's Nightmare dev blog over the weekend, so I had to spend some time fixing that. And Zack didn't sleep very well Monday night, which meant Connie and I didn't sleep very well either. Add in some grading, some errands and the like, and that's been my week so far. But there's a sukkot celebration tonight, and I'll be meeting up with some friends over the upcoming long weekend, so things should get a lot more fun.

Anyway, I've got a few things I've been meaning to write about, so I'll aim to do one of them on Friday when I'm a bit better rested.

Later!

Josiah

10/2/2017 Welcome to October

This fall seems to be moving really quickly. So what's coming up in October? Well, sukkot starts this week. Beyond that... Not much, though there might be the occasional travelogue entries. Most likely DC stuff and/or Shannandoah National Park. Also, lots of cooking with apples, seeing as we've barely scratched the surface of the four bags we picked a couple of weeks ago.

For now though, I'm off. Later!

Josiah

9/29/2017 Cool down

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Well, this has been a busy week (coming right after another busy week), but it's starting to calm down...I guess? I mean, the grading is done (until Monday, when I'll have another, albeit smaller, batch), my paperwork is done, as is a bunch of other assorted stuff. At this point, there's only one thing on my to-do list for the week that I haven't gotten to yet and I'm hoping to take care of it today. Actually, I kind of have to today or it'll be too late. Fortunately, it's optional so missing it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. That said, I'm pretty sure I can squeeze it in before Yom Kippur starts tonight. And yeah, Yom Kippur this weekend. Not exactly a relaxing holiday. Oh, and I can't forget to pick up my SNES Classic today either. Don't think I'll have time to play with it, but I do need to get it from the store.

Anyway, I hope you guys have a good weekend and I'm looking forward to things probably calming down in few days.

Josiah

9/27/2017 Done

Well, the grading is finally finished...until next week when I'll have a new (but thankfully much smaller) stack of assignments to deal with. But for now I'm free...to move on to that paperwork I mentioned. Like I said, it's an exciting week.

My brother was recently able to get a really good deal on Kindle Fires. Now, I never really had much interest in ebook readers. I prefer paper books for a number of reasons. That said, I do occasionally read ebooks on my computer or phone. Usually if it's something I really want to read that isn't available in print, or if I want to kill time with my phone without draining the battery too much. But anyway, it was such a good deal that I figured I'd have him get me a Fire to play around with. If you're not familiar with Amazon's different ebook readers, the Fire is essentially a highly customized Android tablet, rather than a pure ebook reader. As such, it has a color screen and can run all sorts of apps, play music and movies, and the like (though you're locked into the Amazon app store). Anyway, I've been playing around with it a bit. Gotta say, it does have a very nice screen though it's still a screen, so it's not as easy on the eyes as paper. But both regular books and manga do look great on it. If you've got both a Kindle of some kind and Prime, you also get access to a decent amount of free books (some classics, some popular stuff (generally first volumes meant to get you interested in a series), and some self published stuff of hit or miss quality. And, if you're willing to pay an extra $10 a month, you can get a whole lot more free books. Actually, the Fire does like to throw lots of ads at you. Want to subscribe to Kindle Unlimited? How about Audible? Do you need some Amazon app coins? There's a sale on a book you might like... It's not horribly invasive (they're mostly on the lock screen), but a bit annoying.
Right now, I really can't see myself using the Fire all that much at home unless I really want/need to read a book I can't get a physical copy of. But I can see it being rather nice to take on trips so I don't have to lug one or more big novels around. What I really wish is that books would start taking a page from the film industry and giving you a code for a digital copy when you buy the physical one. If anything would get me to read more ebooks, that would be it.

See you Friday!

Josiah

9/25/2017 The grading continues

Well, I'm still grading. Honestly, this is pretty ridiculous considering it's not even mid-terms or finals. Basically, it was an unfortunate combination of classes and enrollment that led to this. Most of the semester shouldn't be nearly so bad though. Last week just happened to be a time when way too many assignments came due at once. Anyway, I've got somewhere around 50 to go and will probably finish later today or tomorrow. And after that...I can get started on some paperwork. Yay... This is not shaping up to be a very exciting week. Though hey, the SNES Classic comes out on Friday and my copy of Danganronpa V3 is in the mail, so there's that.

Anyway, back to work. Again...

Josiah

9/22/2017 Still grading

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Well, despite taking a day off for Rosh Hashanah, I've managed to grade somewhere around 60 papers so far. But, by rough estimate, that still 100+ to go so yeah, this could be a busy weekend.

Later!

Josiah

9/20/2017 Busy week

It's a fairly busy week for me. Quite a lot of that comes down to the fact that I've got over a hundred papers to grade, but there's also some errands, some around the house (er, apartment) type of stuff, and Rosh Hashanah coming up tomorrow. Fortunately, it's not an especially stressful week, but there's still a lot that I need to get done. So yeah, back to it.

See you Friday!

Josiah

9/18/2017 All the food

Here's a quick travelogue entry.

September 15th (Friday): The Natural Products Expo East
Earlier in the year, my parents and brother spent a day at a natural products expo in California. They enjoyed it and came back with a ridiculous amount of product samples. They also learned that there's an east coast version in Baltimore in September. It's not open to the general public, but my brother was able to get Connie and I tickets (yay for family connections). There's a lot of parts to the expo as a whole (talks, presentations, etc.) but we only had tickets for the expo floor. But that's fine since it's all we were really interested in anyway.
Backstory aside, while the expo lasted for several days, we only had time to go on Friday. But I'd say one day is good for seeing the expo floor. I've been to various expos before, but this is the first natural products one. The first (very large) half of the show floor was devoted to food. A lot of the major brands you'll see in a health food store had booths, along with a lot I'd never heard of before. Of course, they all had the usual expo stuff. Product fliers, pens, clips, and other branded junk (well, mostly junk; I did pick up a nice mug, several good canvas bags, and a fidget spinner). But they also had lots and lots of samples. Chocolate, coffee, and tea seemed to be the most common, but that was only the beginning. Dried fruit, energy bars, candy, milk, cheese, sodas, juice, crackers, popcorn, jerky, ice cream, etc., etc., etc. Most of it was meant to eat there, and Connie and I had a lot of fun wandering around and snacking on whatever looked interesting. But we also filled a fairly large bag each with samples to take home.
The second half of the show floor was devoted to health and beauty products. Not nearly as much fun as the food (at least for me), but I didn't have much time to look around that part either since we were planning to meet my cousin (well, second cousin) for dinner. While we did have to occasionally stop to take care of Zack (though carrying him around also got us a bunch of free baby food and wipes), and I had take a few breaks to deal with some important phone calls and e-mails, it was a fun day (if a bit more hectic than it needed to be).
While not everyone can go to the Natural Products Expo, I'd recommend checking it out if you get the chance. Apparently the California one is a lot bigger, but I'd say you can still spend a day exploring the expo floor in Baltimore. Just make sure to skip lunch, you'll want to leave room for all the sampling.

Later!

Josiah

9/15/2017 Off for the day

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It seems like there's always lots of things to do and consider these days in relation to work, my own projects, and life stuff. I'm pretty happy with things over all (though I always wish I had more time to devote to this or that), but I do kind of miss when life was simpler. Anyway, Connie and I have what should be a rather interesting day trip planned. I'll write about it next week. For now, I should get going.

Have a good weekend!

Josiah

9/13/2017 Drowning in despair

I've been a fan of the Danganronpa series since the first game was released in the US. If you're not familiar with it, Danganronpa is a murder mystery game, a bit like the Ace Attorney series, though a lot darker. In a nut shell, a group of high schoolers, each with a special talent, are trapped together and the only way to escape is to kill another student and successful avoid being fingered as the murderer in the following trial. If the murder is identified, they face deadly consequences. If they successfully pin the blame on someone else, they walk free and everyone else dies. Your goal is to find a way to stop the game while solving any murders that take place along the way. Despite the often outlandish characters, the series provides a very interesting dive into the human psyche. What would drive someone to commit murder? The killing game itself usually isn't enough since there's always the option of everyone living together peacefully (if imprisoned). But as things progress more incentives are added. Would you kill someone for money? To protect you greatest secret? To save a loved one? Like I said before, it can get really dark but, throughout the games, there's also the underlying theme of how hope can shine and triumph against even the greatest despair. While Danganronpa 1 and 2 focus primarily on the killing games, there's a larger narrative built around the creator of said games and their efforts to plunge the entire world into despair. It was interesting, but many of the details were vague, leading to a lot of situations where you just had to accept that the villain had somehow accomplished various seemingly impossible objectives in the past to bring things to this point. Some of those details were finally explained in the spin-off game, Ultra Despair Girls, though it still left a lot of unanswered questions and also failed to offer a final conclusion to the story. Then it was announced that the next game, Danganronpa V3, would be separate, taking place in a new future setting (though whether it's a completely different world or the far future of the current world I'm not sure) and the current storyline would instead be concluded in an anime (Danganronpa 3).

Anyway, with V3 (the new game) coming out soon, I decided it was about time I watched the anime (3 without the V) to draw a curtain on the Hope's Peak story. And wow... In an unusual move, it's divided into two separate story arcs. Future takes places shortly after Danganronpa 2 and follows the surviving main characters along with some new ones. Meanwhile, Despair acts as a prequel, finally explaining most of the unanswered questions that have haunted the series. Interestingly enough, it's structured so that you're supposed to jump back and forth between the two, watching one episode of Future, then one of Despair, then back to Future, and so on, with one final concluding episode called the Hope arc. It's an odd setup, but it works and the anime is spectacular. It's intense, does an excellent job of both continuing the story and filling in the gaps, and makes the narrative as a whole seem a lot more plausible than it used to. But it's just as dark the games ever were, maybe even more so. I found some parts, especially the last few episodes of Despair, really depressing and hard to watch but there's still that underlying ray of hope... So yeah, Danganronpa 3 is crazy, dark, intense, and really hard to stop watching. All that said, I really can't recommend it unless you've already played Danganronpa 1, 2, and Ultra Despair Girls. If you haven't, there's a whole lot of the story that simply isn't going to make any sense. Not to mention that it would spoil a significant portion of said games. And really, playing the games is your only option. The first Danganronpa did get an anime adaptation (which I've heard very mixed things about), but the other games didn't. Fortunately, they're now available on Vita, PS4, and Steam, so they're not too hard to pick up. As for me, I'm looking forward to finishing the anime and seeing how it all ends and then, with V3, what comes next.

Later!

Josiah

9/11/2017 A moment of silence

Given the date, rather than write about something frivolous, I'd like you to take a moment of time to remember what happened 16 years ago. Those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it. Never forget.

Josiah

9/8/2017 Another weekend

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Well, I really can't think of much to say right now. Holiday aside, it's been a fairly normal week, and we didn't do anything special on Labor Day anyway. I've been a bit tired all week, though I'm not really sure why. Maybe I just need more sleep. So, on that note...

Have a good weekend and I'll see you Monday!

Josiah

9/6/2017 What's next?

I certainly have a lot less time to play video games than I used to but I still try to play as much as I can. For fun, of course, but also because, as a game designer and writer, I need to keep up on things. So, now that I'm finally finished with Persona 5, what's next? I've got a couple of short things (some demos, in-game special events, etc.) that will take two or three days but after that? Well, I really should get to Zelda Breath of the Wild soon but after Final Fantasy XV and Persona 5 occupying so much of my game time this year, I don't really want to jump into another super long game right away. Right now I'm thinking that I'll probably play Gravity Rush 2 next, since I loved the original so much. And by the time I'm done with it Danganronpa V3 should be out. After that? Zelda maybe. Though, then again, I've got Splatoon 2 and Sonic Generations waiting for me (among others) and Super Mario Odyssey coming up... Well, we'll see. Can't put Zelda off for too long though...

Later!

Josiah

9/4/2017 A long game

Well, I finally finished my second playthrough of Persona 5. Even on New Game+ and using the fast forward option at almost every opportunity, it still took me 60 hours to get through (a little less than half what my initial playthrough took). That is one long game. Especially considering that it's not open world, or full of optional post game stuff or the like to pad the play time. It's an extremely awesome game though. I get the Platinum trophy and thoroughly enjoyed all the time I spent with it.

In other Playstation news, apparently the PSN now has its own share of those "hey want to chat?" spammers like I used to encounter all the time on e-mail and AIM. Sheesh, I get enough spam on my computer and phone. Do I really need to get more on my game consoles as well? I kind of miss it when consoles didn't have hard drives or internet access...

See you Wednesday!

Josiah

9/1/2017 One week down...

TWC is working, so use the button on the left to vote and see the new bonus comic! In other comic news, it appears that Wednesday's strip didn't upload properly so I'm posting it again today so everyone can actually see it.

Well, the first week of school is done. Seems to be off to a fairly good start so far. Though, like I said before, I like to withhold judgement until I see how my students do on their first assignment. But at least I don't have any particular causes for concern so far.

And now for the holiday weekend! Yep, feels way too soon to say that...

Later!

Josiah

8/30/2017 Classes are go!

I hope some of you actually got that reference and didn't just assume it was a typo or something...

Anyway, classes are off to a good start...I guess? Honestly, while things are going fine so far, it's always a little hard to judge what a class is going to be like until a few weeks and one or two assignments in. So we'll see. For now though, it's going ok and I've even got a holiday to look forward to this Monday. Yep, the first holiday is one week into the semester. Personally, I always feel it's a little awkward when that happens. It just seems too early. Well, whatever. For now, I need to get back to work.

Later!

Josiah

8/28/2017 It begins

And by it, I mean fall semester. I've got a fairly full day today so I'm off. Here's hoping everything gets off to a good start.

See you Wednesday!

Josiah

8/25/2017 A little off

Seems this week just couldn't keep going entirely smoothly. Wednesday was fun (see travelogue below), but I had a sore throat the entire day. Not a serious one, but annoying. Come Thursday, I knew I had a cold. Fortunately, it's been a pretty mild one so far, but it's still a pain, especially since I had to spend almost the entire day on the computer (three classes finished, one to go). Then, Top Web Comics wasn't letting me upload the new Blooper Reel, so here it is instead. Actually, I guess that's a bit good and bad since I haven't gotten my comic buffer rebuilt yet and it saved me the work of creating a new strip for today. Anyway... Hopefully I'll be mostly over this in the morning and ready to power through that last class. Who knows, maybe I'll even be able to get my comic buffer done over the weekend. But for now, travelogue.

August 23rd (Wednesday): Mazes and Mishkan
In addition to Otakon, one thing I really have to do every year while I'm living in this area is go the Amazing Maize Maze at Cherry Crest Farm. And with a moderately busy class schedule coming up, and the operating hours getting restricted starting in September, this seemed like the best time to go.
This year, the theme was Charlotte's Web. Since we came a bit earlier than last year, the corn was still nice and green and, as always, lots of fun to walk through. This was one of my slower maze completion times, but pushing Zack's stroller along the paths, while not especially difficult, did reduce our pace a bit. We also got turned around once after stopping for a while to feed him, which led to us accidentally backtracking into a section of the maze we'd already explored pretty thoroughly, completely missing the turn we needed to enter the final stretch. But it was fun and Zack did pretty well. I'm looking forward to taking him when he's a bit older and can appreciate both the maze and all the other games and activities they have set up around the farm.
While we didn't get as early a start as we could have, the maze didn't take all day, leaving us with time for a bit more sightseeing before dinner. This time, we ended up at the Mennonite Information Center. Not to learn about the Mennonites (we got a bit of a crash course on them last year at the Amish farm), but to visit their recreation of the Biblical tabernacle (or mishkan in Hebrew, hence the title of this post). They had both the outer courtyard and the inner chambers done up in a fairly faithful fashion and a nice tour guide spent 30 - 40 minutes going over the details of what the tabernacle was, how it was made, and how it was used. I already knew pretty much everything, but it was still an enjoyable and educational tour and I would recommend it to anyone in the area with a strong interest in the Bible.
Finally, it was off to dinner. Connie and I had really enjoyed the buffet at Hershey Farm last year, so we went again. While certainly not the healthiest choice, it's a fun way to sample lots of New England, and especially Pennsylvania Dutch, comfort foods.
It was a fun day and, when planning it out, I was reminded just how many interesting things there are to see and do in the Lancaster area, especially when Zack gets a bit older. Not sure if we'll manage to get out there more than once or twice a year, but I think I'll always be looking forward to it.

Josiah

8/23/2017 Got it!

This week is going pretty well. I've got two of my four classes ready to go and I managed to get a SNES Classic pre-ordered. That was mostly luck and good timing. I had signed up to get an e-mail alert for when pre-orders started on Best Buy, Target, and Amazon...and none of them bothered to actually send out those alerts. So, by the time I knew, they had all sold out. Not sure getting an alert would have helped, considering how fast they disapeared. Still, that bugs me. Fortunately, Gamestop did sent me a text message, though the link they included didn't actually let you make pre-orders. After a bit of confusion, I figured that, if they weren't doing it on their web site, maybe they meant they were taking pre-orders in store. And I was just about to go do some errands anyway, so I went to the nearest Gamestop. I ended up fourth or fifth in line and got a pre-order. Good thing I arrived when I did though. There were at least ten people behind me when I left and I don't think the store had that many available.

Anyway, things have been going pretty good and Connie and I are going to have some fun today before I get back to class prep so I'll see you later.

Josiah

8/21/2017 The last week

It's the last week of summer break. While Connie and I may do something fun this week, I need to spend most of my time prepping my classes. This time around, it's mostly updating some material and setting up the online portals, though I do have some things I'll need to create from scratch as well.

Other than that, not too much is going on right now. I'm just trying to get some various things done while taking care of Zack and the like. Speaking of which, he's starting to crawl now, which makes the big playpen I set up for him a while back very useful. Though we're really running out of space in this apartment. As much as it's a nice complex and location, between the size and the high rent, Connie and I are thinking that we'll probably need to buy a place sometime in the not too distant future if we're going to stay in this area (and, for now at least, we don't have any plans to leave). So that's something else for the to-do list...

Later!

Josiah

8/18/2017 Ovo

No problems with Top Web Comics this week, but I don't have today's strip done and I'm running pretty late after a week with a lot of late nights so I'd rather not pull another. Sigh... I really need to get my comic buffer rebuilt. Here's a quick travelogue entry though.

August 17th (Thursday): Cirque du Soliel's Ovo
Connie and I haven't really been going to movies or shows or anything lately since we can't take Zack with us. But we couldn't really resist Cirque du Soliel, especially when it was at the arena at my campus, just a few minutes away. This show was Ovo, which is my sixth Cirque show. So what's it's about? Bugs and an egg. Though, as usual, the story is rather dreamlike and more of a loose excuse to tie together the various acrobatic acts. Speaking of the acts, there was a good variety. Nothing I'd consider truly unique to this particular show, but all extremely well done, of course. I was especially impressed with the slack rope and trampoline acts. Though the contortionist was extremely skilled as well, and then there were the diabolos, and the trapeze, just to name a few more. And, of course, you can't have a Cirque show without elaborate costumes (all insect themed) and great live music. Combine them all together and, as I've come to expect from Cirque du Soliel, you spend much of the show feeling like you're in some fantastic dream.
All in all, Ovo is an awesome show. I'd probably rank it a little bit below the other Cirque shows I've seen, but the bar is so high to begin with that you shouldn't consider that much of a negative. As always, I highly recommend seeing Ovo (or any of the main Cirque shows) if you get the chance. It's fantastic and very much worth it.

Josiah

8/16/2017 Otakon in DC

Let's get right to the travelogue.

August 11th - 13th (Friday - Saturday): Otakon 2017
Otakon this year was a bit different for a few reasons. First off, Connie and Zack went with me. Connie, because she enjoys cons too. Zack, because we couldn't really leave him with a sitter the whole time or anything. Turned out, we weren't the only ones at Otakon with a baby, and it actually went fairly smoothly. Didn't get to do any late nights, and we had to make sure to keep him happy and take breaks to feed him, but we were still able to enjoy the con.
The other big change is that this year marked Otakon's move from it's long time home in Baltimore to Washington DC. From what I heard, it may or may not be a permanent thing, but it will be in DC for at least a few years. Anyway, the convention center is a little bit north of China Town. As far as locations go, it's a nice enough area. There isn't a good outdoor hangout area right outside (like Inner Harbor in Baltimore), but you do have a much better restaurant selection. And hey, if you want a longer walk you can get to the National Mall and all the big DC attractions. Though I will note that I've found driving and parking in DC to be huge pain (much more than Baltimore). This time around, I tried booking parking in advance online, which helped a lot.
One big advantage that DC has over Baltimore is the convention center. It's a lot bigger and more modern. While a few of the halls still got a bit congested, for the most part things were a lot more open and it was pretty easy to get around and find seats. Even the dealer's room wasn't too bad. Heck, they had room to spare in there. There were a few little issues here and there. The biggest I noticed was that the convention center required a bag check, which slowed down entry and re-entry, especially Friday morning. Not terrible, but a bit annoying.
Anyway, Connie and I enjoyed the con. We mostly just browsed around, took in the cosplay, artist and market areas, and the like. We did go to some panels and video screenings though, with Zack around, not as many I usually do. I didn't get to spend much time in the game area either (though they had an awesome selection of titles). Didn't get to any of the concerts this time around. Partly due to the timing, partly due to the bands this year, and partly do to the new structure. They partnered with an outside group this time. The plus side being there's more and bigger concerts. The down side is that all of them except the Sunday concert require buying a separate ticket. All in all though, Otakon works pretty well in DC and I still had fun, despite the limitations. As always, I'm looking forward to next time.

Josiah

8/14/2017 After the con

Not much to say today. Otakon was fun, though having Zack around was a bit limiting. Anyway, we were still able to do a lot and I should have a write-up ready for Wednesday.

Later!

Josiah

8/11/2017 Off to Otakon!

It's another one of those weeks where Top Web Comics isn't working right so here's this week's Blooper Reel strip. Hmm... Maybe I should just skip the Blooper Reel on weeks like this and post a regular comic instead. If you have a preference, feel free to let me know. That said, on weeks when I don't have a buffer built up, not having to make a comic for Friday at the last minute is kind of nice. Especially during a big battle, since those strips usually take a lot longer to make.

Anyway, I'm off to Otakon! Well, maybe "off" isn't the right way to phrase it since it's not like I'm going to be staying in a hotel or anything. It's only a 30 - 40 minute drive from here. Hopefully Zack will behave himself...

Have a great weekend!

Josiah





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