Bryce Moore's Blog, page 156
March 7, 2017
Heavy Meta #5
In today’s episode, we talk with Paul Gies about his novels and writings.
Heavy Meta #3
It’s all about our favorite book series today. Click on over to hear us chat about them!
Heavy Meta #2
Join Kelly and Bryce as they interview . . . Bryce. The first in their author interviews series. (Hey–we had to start somewhere!)
Solving Family Problems with Excel
Denisa texted me yesterday with a problem: household chores had gotten out of control. The kids seemed to be taking them very lightly, and she was feeling overwhelmed by having to continually run around cleaning up after them. So I turned to the one resource that never lets me down in times of crisis: Excel.
I suppose it says something about me that when I’m confronted with a problem, I like to break it down into cells, columns, and rows. But really it’s true. If you take any big overwhelming job and break that up into individual pieces, it becomes far more manageable. Sort of like building something awesome by following Lego instructions.
So I made a family chore sheet.
I searched the internet a bit first, looking for inspiration (and hoping someone already had such a sheet that I could just copy). I didn’t find anything that satisfied our immediate needs, so I created one by scratch. There were a few things I thought it would be important to have on the sheet:
Rotating chores: We’ve been doing permanently assigned chores for the last year or two, and that just hasn’t seemed like it was working. The problem (as I’ve seen it) has come down to an issue of equality and the grass is always greener. It’s easy to look at the chores someone else is doing and decide they’re getting things much easier. With rotating chores, that problem is solved. If any of the chores really are easier or harder, it’s no big deal, because everyone takes a turn with them.
Parental inclusion: I knew either Denisa or I had to be part of the rotation. It didn’t make sense to include Denisa, so I volunteered myself. For me to be able to pitch this as a family chore sheet, I needed to prove to the kids I was in the trenches with them. Otherwise it turns into an us vs. them mentality. Nobody needs that.
Very clear instructions: “Clean your room” hasn’t been enough, it seems. The definition of a clean room is too up in the air. So now I put on the sheet precisely what cleaning a room will entail.
Carrots and Sticks: The carrot is simple. Once the kids are through with their chores, their time is their own to spend as they see fit. Video games, computer, movies. Whatever. But the stick is also simple. Until the chores are done, no electronic devices (anything with a screen that plugs into the wall) can be used. And the only way they can be deemed “done” is by having Denisa or me sign off on the sheet.
Mechanism for squelching complaints: I came up with a three strikes policy for this. Kids get strikes each week for talking back, lying about chores, using electronics when they shouldn’t, or needing more than one reminder to do a chore. The first strike is a warning. The second strike means they can’t have dessert the rest of the week. The third strike means they need to pick a chore from a separate list (with chores that don’t need to be done as often) and do that in addition to their other chores that week. Any additional strike costs them $5. We’ll see how that goes.
So after I had the sheet made, we introduced it to the kids last night. I didn’t think it would take a terribly long time. Go over the sheet and move on. It turned into an hour long discussion. The kids wanted precise definitions of what was expected of them and when. But after all was said and done, they seemed at peace with it all, and they all agreed to follow the new rules.
In the end, I believe a lot of the success or failure of this new approach is going to rest on the way it’s enforced by the parents. If Denisa and I can stick with it for a few weeks, I think things will be fine. But it’ll take some work to keep at it, and there might be some growing pains involved. But if the end result is kids who are more active in keeping the house tidy, that would be great.
Wish us luck.
March 6, 2017
Daddy Daughter Dance 2017
Saturday was the yearly Daddy Daughter Dance, and this time I took both the girls with me. MC had been looking forward to it for months. She was ecstatic at the thought of getting dressed up like a princess and going dancing. It was fun to see her and DC talk about it ahead of time, with DC filling in her little sister about everything that was going to happen. This was my fifth year going, if that can be believed. (Here’s my report back on my first time, if you want a stroll down memory lane.)
As we have in years past, we went out to dinner with a group before hand. Having two daughters to keep track of made things a bit trickier, mainly because they both wanted a different experience out of the meal. DC was having fun being in a nice restaurant. MC wanted to run around and play. Splitting my attention made it so neither got exactly what they wanted, though I think they still had fun. DC graduated to ordering pizza this time instead of chicken fingers. MC was all chicken fingers all the way. They both had dessert: lava cake for DC, and a scoop of ice cream for MC, who only had a bit and then decided she didn’t want more.
On the way to the actual dance, MC started complaining that her stomach was hurting. Probably from all the fries, bread, chicken fingers, lemonade, water, and ice cream she’d downed before running around the private room our group had reserved. DC sagely suggested this might be the case, and MC was much more ready to listen to her wise words of experience. MC did say it was a “long day” to get to the dance. (Anytime she gets impatient for something, she says it’s a long day. I’m not sure why.)
It was way cold and windy, which the girls were not fond of. But the dance itself was great. We took pictures, the girls got glow sticks, and then there was dancing and cake and grapes and punch. I tried dancing some with MC, but she really just wanted to dance by herself, twirling around in place, recreating princess moves in her head. DC was much more up for dancing with me, as she had much more experience with it.
Around 8:30, MC tapped my leg. I had to get down on my knees to hear her (because for some reason there’s this unspoken rule that dances have to be about 3,000 decibels too loud.) “I’m done with this dance,” she said. DC agreed, so we headed home, another successful outing in the record books.
March 3, 2017
Requisite Accountability Post
Here we are, with two months gone in 2017. I thought I might update you all on how my goals have been going. Because what’s the point in setting goals if you just forget about them a month or two later? Let’s go down them one at a time.
Submit another book to editors. I’m more than 30,000 words into TOP SECRET at the moment, which popped up to replace UTOPIA as the likeliest candidate going out to editors this year. It’s basically outlined and going quite well. I think this goal is well in hand.
Get down to 180 pounds. I started the year at 192.6 pounds. This morning I was 186.4. That looks like great success to me, though it hasn’t felt like it the past week or so. I’ve hit a wall at this point, and I’m going to have to press forward to get below 186. I know from experience with weight loss that this happens, and I think I’m on it. Still, it’s helpful to remind myself that I’m doing well.
Read a book a week. I finished my 10th book of the year yesterday, and if you count up the weeks, you’ll see that we’re only 9 weeks into the year so far, so I’m a book ahead of where I need to be on this goal. Super! And that’s even with picking a few books that I didn’t really love, and one I enjoyed, but which took me 1.5 weeks to finish. I’m happy with this goal, and glad I set it.
Improve my Slovak. This is where I’ve really slacked off lately. I’ve been busy with other things in life, and I’ve done nothing on this goal for at least 3 weeks. I’m not sure if I’ll get back to it soon, either. Just keeping it real here. I’d like to keep to it, but it’s been tough.
Continue to declutter my house and life. The house is doing okay, and I’ve been trying to keep at this goal. For now, I’ve been focused on organizing my game collection, which takes a whole lot more time than you’d think. Something about going through and organizing 100,000 cards will do that . . . I’m taking this a bit at a time each day, and I’m making progress. Probably not as much as Denisa would like, but there you go.
Continue reading to DC each evening. We’ve done an okay job with this. Most weeks we get it done 5 nights out of 7. That’s a very good thing.
So there you have it. Doing great on some, terrible on one, and okay on the rest. I’m happy that the goals that are the most important to me are the ones where I’m doing the best, though. Weight and writing are the two biggest.
How are your goals going this year?
March 2, 2017
But How Can People Still Support Trump?
From my point of view and much of the sentiment I’ve seen expressed among many friends online, the Trump presidency so far has been nothing but a big hot mess. He’s appointed terribly inept people to his cabinet. People who are the antithesis of what that role is supposed to do. He’s had numerous scandals. He’s got these ties to Russia which are only snowballing in potential impact. The list goes on and on.
It’s so bad that the big takeaway from his speech to Congress was that he didn’t royally screw it up. He read the teleprompter and didn’t start ranting about random things. He hasn’t Tweeted anything wildly alarming in the last 24 hours!
It would seem like if any other president in the past were doing even a quarter of the things Trump has done in 40 days in office, they would have just thrown in the towel and quit.
The question I’ve heard a number of people bring up is simple: how in the world can people still like him? Sure, he’s got a disapproval rating around 55%. But how is it that 45% of people still think he’s swell?
In my opinion, the answer is pretty straightforward. I’m going to assume most people asking this were Obama supporters, so I’ll address them directly. Think for a moment about all the negative things that were said about Obama over the years. Think of the allegations, from Benghazi to trampling on the Constitution to bowing to other heads of state. Think about what a big deal Fox News made about all those things.
Now think about what sort of an impact those things made on you. Were you upset about them at all? Or did you just shake your head and dismiss them as overblown accusations that didn’t really amount to much? Were they just the right wing media doing their thing, playing to their base?
I’m imagining that for many of you, you didn’t think twice about them. But realize that for a good portion of the country, those things were a big deal. A very big deal. And for years, that group of people was told by the group that’s currently upset that the fears they had were unfounded. That they were making too big of a deal about it.
So is it any wonder that now the situations are reversed, that it’s playing out in a similar fashion?
Trump supporters call the stories that deride or criticize him “fake news.” And while the term might be loaded, how is it any different from how liberals treated Fox News during Obama? If a story came out on Fox News, it was dismissed as being “on Fox News.” Same process at work. Just a different f-word.
This post isn’t about whether the stories about Obama or Trump ever had any merit. It’s seeking to explain how a group of people can look at what one side views as overwhelming evidence that the President is corrupt or inept, and then ignore it. Both sides have accused the other of doing it now. My hope is that at some point, this partisan politics completely breaks down as citizens stop choosing Red or Blue and start pushing for sanity.
Too bad that hasn’t happened yet . . .
March 1, 2017
TV Season Review: The Magicians
The Syfy show was put up on Netflix a month or so ago, and I’d heard mixed things about the series, but I loved the book, so it seemed like it was worth giving it a shot. (Especially when I’d heard rumblings that the second season has been a really nice upgrade from the first. Always good to hear shows improving.)
The book series is basically Harry Potter mashed into Narnia, with Game of Thrones thrown into it for good measure. It’s very much an adult series. Not for kids. But I’ve always been a huge Narnia fan, and so I was interested to see what Grossman had to say. It’s quite dark and depressing in many parts, but I had a great time with the trilogy. Imagine Hogwarts is an exclusive American university, and some students there discover Narnia isn’t just real, but the series told about actual events. But the books had been cleaned up for kids, and the reality turned out to be much darker and violent.
The TV show started strong, and Denisa and I pretty much binge watched it. (13 episodes in 10 days. That counts as bingeing for my schedule.) It was what I expected, more or less. Very much an adult show, but tons of winks and nods to fantasy fans. It’s not quite the adult level as an HBO series would be, meaning they don’t have full on nudity, but it’s got pretty much everything else as far as violence, language, and sex goes. So it isn’t for everyone.
But it’s pretty compelling. There were no episodes that I was completely blown away by, but each one was a solid base hit or double, and the first season managed to keep the tension high and the virtual pages turning. The characters took a bit of time to become established, and the plot lacked focus now and then, but by the end things were humming quite well.
I felt like they rushed a few areas of the plot too much, no more so than in the finale, which had to resort to a completely new storytelling device to manage to cram everything in. That was too bad, because other than that, the finale was pretty awesome. Tons of plot movement. Big surprises. Great stuff.
I’m encouraged, though, because the series made some big changes to the books, and I’m left hoping they no longer feel the need to cover everything that was in the novels and can instead just go start doing their own things. The stage has been set, but I think it’s been clear that when they tried to follow the books, they just didn’t have the budget or the time to do everything justice. I’m excited to see where they go now that they’re unfettered, and I imagine that might be one of the main reasons the second season has been doing great things. We’ll see.
In any case, check this one out if it sounds interesting to you. I’d give the season an 8/10 in my new tougher rating system. Though be warned that you’re in for a big ol’ cliffhanger at the end of the first season . . .
February 28, 2017
The Groundhog Limerick Winner
And here we are at the end of the contest. I didn’t push it quite as hard this time as I did before. Too many other balls in the air at the moment, and often when I have to choose which ball to drop, the blog takes one for the team. But after all the votes have been cast and the dust has settled, the winner is . . .
#2
Once an old groundhog from PA
Snuck into the garden to pray
While there on a stump
He just thought of Trump
And gave up and moved to Bombay.
Let’s face it, people. Trump has invaded pretty much every part of our lives. Even my groundhog limerick contest. You can get a lot of votes by drumming up the anti-Trump crowd, it seems. 
In second place, we had #9:
I recently started to worry
That if things don’t change in a hurry
We’ll be doomed to repeat
Sins we thought we had beat.
Just like that film with Bill Murray.
and #3 came in third:
There’s an animal hogging the news
And casting shadows on views
It’s the groundhog, of course
Our annual source
Of featherbrained seasonal clues
I have to admit that my personal favorite is #3. It was on point, and all about the groundhog. But my opinion doesn’t matter in this case. The people have spoken! And I’m actually pretty at peace with this winner, because it’s the same winner as the Groundhog Haiku from years ago. She got her name in a book that has yet to be published, so I’ve always felt kind of bad about that, as far as prizes go. Now she can have her name in a second book.
Here’s hoping it might get published . . .
Thanks to everyone for playing along. There were some great entries this year. Go groundhogs!!!
