Issue 0058 // Anniversary, Mothership, Bacon

Just A Peck

Welcome to the latest issue of Just A Peck. I’m glad you’re here!

JOURNAL

I spent a lot of time this week thinking about Mothership, a sci-fi/horror TTRPG. I developed a short introductory session to run at Excalibur Con, and last Sunday I workshopped it with a group of experienced TTRPG friends who gave me great feedback and suggestions. I made adjustments throughout the week, ran the session twice at Excalibur Con on Saturday, and I’ll be running it two more times today. So far, all of the sessions have been a bloody, violent, stressful good time. (That’s a good thing. It’s that kind of game.) My awesome friend Scott (Scoot Along Productions) snuck a few photos while I was thinking up ways for my players to die.

Justin behind the GM screen at Excalibur Con, hand on his chin, two laptops in front of him showing the ship's readouts
The Mothership table from above: character sheets, dice, a deck plan of the Rimor 89, and a laptop displaying the ship's gauges
Justin leaning across the table toward a player during a Mothership session at Excalibur Con

We spent a second week with a broken heat pump, so I passed a lot of time sweating in my 90-plus degree office. It was hot enough to boil a monkey’s bum in there (as the Prime Minister said to the Queen). On Friday the wind finally shifted and things cooled down significantly which, coincidentally, was when the HVAC company was finally able to make it out to repair things.

A thermostat reading 93 degrees at 2:02 PM

On Tuesday, Jody and I voted in the primaries, which had a historically high turnout in Minnesota.

Justin and Jody with 'I Voted' stickers outside the polling place, an American flag on the brick wall behind them

Wednesday was a total solar eclipse, and although we couldn’t join the group of our friends who were on a cruise ship off the coast of Iceland to see it, we watched a series of webcams as the totality swept across Iceland and Spain. (FYI, stuttery webcams are not the same thing as experiencing a totality in person.)

A map of the North Atlantic showing the path of totality sweeping from Iceland down across Spain

On Friday, Jody and I celebrated our THIRTY THIRD wedding anniversary! Insane. If there had been prediction markets in the early 90s, no one would have bet on this working out. We were absolutely too young and naive to know that the gamble we were taking on each other was going to pay off (and continue to do so for decades). We both worked a long day, but we were able to steal away after work for a quick trip up the shore to celebrate. The waves were really huge at Stony Point, and we walked to a cool bridge overlooking Iona’s Beach that we haven’t tried before.

Justin and Jody taking a selfie on the cobble beach at Stony Point with Lake Superior behind them
A wave breaking over the flat black basalt shelf at Stony Point
A larger wave exploding upward off the rocks at Stony Point
Spray from a big wave shooting into the air above the ledge rock at Stony Point
Justin leaning on the railing of the new bridge above Iona's Beach
Justin and Jody taking a selfie above the pink rhyolite cobbles of Iona's Beach at sunset
Jody and Justin on the trail back, a rock face and wildflowers behind them

On Saturday, after my first two Excalibur Con sessions, Jody picked me up and we went to our friends Lindsay and Jeff’s annual “Bacon and Chocolate Bonanza.” So much incredible food, and a backyard filled with friends. The list of new culinary creations each year is always startling, so I’ll refrain from listing them and just leave you with this picture of Jeff carving one of his smoked meat logs.

Jeff in a BACON hat carving one of his smoked meat logs under the string lights of the backyard grilling pavilion

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK

Finished:

A copy of Motorman by David Ohle held up, its cover a surreal drawing of a tugboat, a giant hand, and a yellow sun
Motorman, by David Ohle. A surrealist experimental novel that felt like an unnatural coupling of Flann O'Brien and Richard Brautigan. If I had read this when I was seventeen, I think I would have loved it. But I'm a long way from seventeen, and it irritated the hell out of me.

In Progress:

BOOKS I PURCHASED

That's an embarrassingly long list. I might have a problem.

MEMORIES

Five Years Ago:

Spamalot rehearsals restarted after an 18-month pause for Covid. We were masked while singing and dancing and testing multiple times each week, but it didn’t matter — it felt so good to be working together again “to laugh and smile and dance and sing”.

The masked Spamalot cast crowded together in the rehearsal room for a group photo

Ten Years Ago:

The Playhouse Youth Theater was performing Twelfth Night, one of Kaylee’s first stage managing gigs (maybe her very first one?) and another of my friend Kate’s many directorial triumphs.

The young cast of Twelfth Night posed in a tableau on the Playhouse stage

Fifteen Years Ago:

We were still in the thick of the Soccer Season of our lives, and Alex and the guys were having one last “guys night” before heading off to their first year of college. (Fifteen years later, this group still regularly gets together.)

Two teammates in soccer jerseys, numbers 2 and 19, grinning outside on a summer day
Alex and three friends piled together on a couch on their last guys night before college

Twenty Years Ago:

Another treehouse party at Grandma and Grandpa’s!

The kids and Grandma lined up in front of the van before the treehouse party
Four boys on the bunk beds inside the treehouse
The treehouse up in the trees with the kids leaning over the porch railing

WHAT I'M EXCITED ABOUT

We’re heading to APT this week! Always one of the highlights of my year.

The American Players Theatre logo over a painted illustration of the Wisconsin hills

My project for BigBadToyStore launches on Tuesday and the countdown has begun! I’m eager to have this thing launched and out of my head.

A countdown screen reading T-MINUS 02 DAYS TO GO

MY FAVORITE QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Bricks are usually rectangular, because in that way they are most suitable for building the vertical walls of our houses. But anyone who has had to do with the stacking of stones of a non-cubic type will be well aware of other possibilities. For instance, one can make use of tetrahedrons alternating with octahedrons. They are not practicable for human beings to build with, because they make neither vertical walls nor horizontal floor. However, when this building is filled with water, flatworms can swim in it."

— M.C. Escher

That’s it for this week. Stay safe, friends. Thanks for reading!

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