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Category: parenting.

the kids is playing them vid-jo games again.

Posted on by Marko

January 2013 127

We have now passed that developmental milestone where the kids can out-play the Old Man on the Xbox 360. They each got a new 360 game under the tree last month, and both of them have finished the “Brave” game from start to finish. I know that as children of the Gadget Generation, mastery of a gaming console is practically encoded in their DNA, but it’s still amazing to see how quickly they figured out the Xbox controller and the game mechanics without any prior instruction (and in Lyra’s case, without being able to read the on-screen directions.) This is especially remarkable because our gaming console prior to the Xbox 360 was a Nintendo Wii, which has a controller that’s completely unlike the two-handed/dual-stick multi-button affairs for the Xbox and the PS3.

(I tried a first-person shooter on the console once and couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from the inside. As a PC gamer, my hands and muscle memory are calibrated for mouse and WASD keys.)

It’s absolutely amazing to see the strides that gaming consoles have made since the days of the Atari 2600. Playing Iron Man or Batman:Arkham Asylum on the Xbox 360 driving a 47” screen with the audio coming from a Bose home theater speaker set would have reduced 12-year-old Marko from 1983 to an incoherently blubbering pile of gamer bliss.

Now I just need to get the kids their own World of Warcraft accounts and teach them tanking and healing, so we can do our own little in-house instance groups on Saturday evenings.

taking a breather between storms.

Posted on by Marko

I’m at the Fancy Bread Place, part of my weekly Dadcation ritual. (For those of you just tuning in, that’s when I get to leave the house for a morning once a week without kids in tow.) Two days ago, we attended a friend’s wedding over in the White Mountains, in a location that required us to do a lap of northern New Hampshire because you can’t get there from heah, at least not in a straight line. The wedding was lovely, though, and I’m glad we went.

Tomorrow, said friend and her husband are coming up to Castle Frostbite for a Halloween party. They’re bringing three little girls for a sleepover with our kids. We’ve done that before a few times, and it’s always fun, but LOUD. Five kids in the 3-8 age bracket can work up an amazing din. So right now I am enjoying a bit of quiet and calm before heading back to the Castle to get it ready for tomorrow’s festivities. There will be home-made “Bones of the Dead” cookies, mummy cupcakes, cocktail weenies, Halloween candy, and a bunch of, uh, special parenting sauce for the grown-ups. Tune in again on Sunday, when our intrepid correspondent live-blogs his hangover.

(I kid, of course. Our intrepid correspondent doesn’t get hangovers.)

 

newsletter from castle frostbite, july 2012.

Posted on by Marko

Oh, hey there, Internets!

Team Munchkin Wrangler had a busy week and a relaxing weekend. The kids enjoyed their science summer camp, and I enjoyed my five morning Dadcations. Lyra was in preschool day camp, which let out at noon, and Quinn’s camp let out at 3. I dropped them off in the mornings, went into Hanover or West Leb to find a spot to write for a few hours, and then came back to pick up Lyra at noon to take her home. With the return trip in the afternoon to fetch Quinn, I did a ton of driving back and forth. A tank of gas usually lasts for two weeks with my regular driving patterns, but last week I blew through a full tank by Thursday.But hey—the kids had fun, I got some time off, and that dinosaur juice was combusted for a noble purpose.

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We’re back to the regular routine this week, except for Friday when I get to go to Boston for the weekend and attend Readercon. A bunch of my writer friends will be there, so there will be plenty of geekery, shop talk, and consumption of adult beverages.

Cluckheim Keep still stands unmolested, and the chickens are reasonably happy with the new arrangement. With the way our handyman overbuilt the run, I don’t see any fox or raccoon getting into it. The only worry I have is black bear—friends of ours thirty miles away have had a persistent member of the species break into their shed and then their barn repeatedly to get to their chickens and feed. The run is ridiculously sturdy, but bears are ridiculously strong, and a determined black bear would be a challenge to keep out. The run is close enough to the house that I’m counting on hearing any demolition attempts and being able to come downstairs to, uh, strongly discourage Mr. Bear. We had one on the property two years ago, but he hasn’t returned since then. We don’t have bird feeders out, but you never know.

The fiction-writing business is coming along as always. A while ago, I had the brilliantly stupid idea to write two novels in tandem, and then I started playing with some ideas for a third one. The Military SF novel stands at 90% complete, the Urban Fantasy detective novel is 50% done, and the YA novel is at 30% or so. It’s nice to be able to switch gears and work on something else for a bit when you get stuck with one novel, but it sucks when you’re stuck on all of them. But things are progressing at a good clip now. (I’ve set up shop in the attic temporarily, where it’s kind of hot but very quiet, which may have something to do with the increased output lately.) I will have three finished novels to shop around later this year, in three different genres. Or I could just combine them all and mix chapters, see what kind of response I get from agents…

science camp week.

Posted on by Marko

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The new chicken run, completed and populated.

This week is a complete change in pace for us. The kids are attending a science day camp every day until Friday, which means we leave the house early. I get to drop them off and then take a few hours out in Hanover or West Lebanon to sit and scribble for a bit, which means I’m getting five Dadcation days this week. Lyra’s camp is only half-day, so I have to pick her up at lunch, and then we go home and let the dogs out and check on the chickens before going back out and fetching Quinn in the afternoon.

The kids are enjoying their camp. I’m enjoying the time off in the mornings. Lyra is kindergarten age now, and if I had them in public school, I could have a quiet morning every day. But then putting them in school would be more for my convenience than their benefit. I will, however, enroll Quinn in some extracurricular stuff this year. We’re already paying the property taxes that bankroll our local school; might as well start taking advantage of the facilities a bit.