The other game that I've played more recently is a card game, but it also has a board. So, cribbage. Probably considered a card game, but you can't just play with a deck of cards unless you -- I guess you could keep track, like on a piece of paper of the score. That game, I used to play with my grandpa. He might have been the one -- he -- I don’t know if he was the one that taught it to me or if my mom did. But even after he had lost much of his memory and was very much in the throes of dementia, he could still play euchre -- I mean, still play cribbage. And that was something that we did up until the December before he passed. We played in December and he passed in February. So, he was still, still with it enough to, to remember most of that game. I think we sort of helped a little bit, maybe with the counting or something, but he, he was able to still, still remember that. So my mom every once in a while wants to play cribbage, and if she does I usually will try and play with her because it's memories of her dad, and, and my grandpa.

I would rather be the hero. I would never ever want to be the villain. I have been the villain, in certain situations, as we all have. But my true desire is to never be the villain in anyone’s story ever again. We've all done harm to others, and I really, really want to dedicate my life to helping others and being just, a little light in this world like, you know, like the old song says, you know, "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine." You know, be the hero, be the light in the world, and I know I'm not that yet, but I hope to be that. And me and my wife have a little joke that she's the poor man’s Batman, because if she had his money, she could have everything he had and do everything he did. Because if we really think about it, Batman's just a regular guy. He doesn't have any superpowers, everything that he has is a gadget or a gizmo, that his, his inordinate wealth gave to him. So really, if we had the resources, me and my wife would be Batman and Robin, the best we could. Runnin’ around trying to save Gotham, and boy are we in Gotham.

But then, in the afternoon, I got a message from them that -- him and his mom, that he had wanted to do a Day of the Dead celebration. So, he learned about it in Spanish class, and his mom took him to Target to get some crafts and he made an ofrenda. Pretty much by himself, like they worked together but you know, he did some crafts. He did some, you know, they had some, some, skulls, and he had oranges, and he also had pictures from his, his great-grandma who had died and his great-grandpa, well, both his great-grandmas. And then a pet that he had lost, and it was a very, very nice -- He made that on Saturday, and he called and they invited me to go, and I took, took a picture of my son who had passed away, and then also great-grandpa. So it was a really, it was a really beautiful experience. One of the things that they talked about was having food that the person really liked, so they decided to have English muffins, with strawberry jam. Which was my mom's favorite thing to have. So, that was really sweet, and then they asked me what did, what did my son like to eat? And the only thing it could really think of was chicken nuggets. From McDonald's. And so they said, “Well, we just had chicken nuggets. We're having chicken nuggets for dinner right now.” McDonald's chicken nuggets, McNuggets. So that was very cool. That was on Saturday night so they had leftovers then to celebrate, but it was a very, very sweet, moving experience. His other grandparents came on Sunday, to see the ofrenda and to share memories, and we shared memories about our people. And it was really a very, very sweet, nice, a nice experience. And I was really proud of him for, for, just for his empathy and, and, kindness that he shows. And you know he's so sentimental. And he takes everything, he takes everything to heart."

"Would you rather live in a house of cards or a house of Doritos?” I would choose the Doritos mostly because the Dorito itself is triangular. Triangles are typically a better building form to allow a certain amount of integrity in the structure, and even though, yes, one is food and one is typically paper, the food could be preserved and treated and spackled in a way that could provide a certain level of stability that the house of cards would traditionally be a little lower. The other thing is, trying to treat the thing would be quite a challenge obviously because before everything got stale and hardened, alright, would all matter of creatures and beings, you know, be tempted by the scent of cool ranch or nacho cheese, is one of the first… Actually, that would be kind of funny if I think about it. Would your Dorito house be seasonally themed, or would it depend on the architecture and taste -- flavors of the area? Would the Midwestern bungalow be more cool ranch as opposed to nacho cheese in the southwest, or would some of the newer flavors enter the profile? For instance, now you can get sriracha flavored Doritos. I haven't tried those yet, but surely somebody's enjoying those. I'm thinking of how to spackle it together. Would it be sour cream? Would it be queso dip? Sour cream would seem to make more sense, one because it would look more like a spackling paste or a caulk. But, that does allow for a certain level of imagination...

This past Saturday, we were sitting, it was about 6pm, and we live in, I would say -- I guess -- how would you describe it? Like a semi-rural area? So, it's near a big city, and the houses are pretty spread apart, like maybe a quarter mile between a lot of the houses, so, we know many of our neighbors. And anyway, we're sitting there, I'm having dinner with my mom, my husband's giving my child a bath, and we suddenly hear this really, really loud noise. And we've been playing around with, there's this piece of -- I don't know how to describe it. It's like a trim piece basically, but it's like an architectural thing that goes over doors. Like, it's like a design kind of wooden thing, and we'd been putting it over certain doors, and like talking about it before my child's bath, and when I heard that noise, I thought it had just fallen. Like, I thought my husband had essentially leaned it up on a piece of trim above a door and then it just had fallen.  So, I'm like looking around for it, I can't find it anywhere. Everyone in the house heard the noise and was like, “What is that?” And I like look over and I see that trim piece on the counter, so I’m like, “Well, what in the world?” And as I'm doing this, both my mom and I are like, “I'm pretty certain I heard glass snap, and I'm pretty certain it came from over here.” So, I, uh, I open my husband's office door and suddenly realize that there is a bullet hole in that window.  So obviously feeling very, very concerned, I told my husband like, “Someone just shot our house.” And he realized the neighbors had been shooting like quite a ways away, like a quarter mile away earlier in the day, and he thought he heard it before, like earlier, just moments before. So he ran over there to say, “Stop shooting,” and they were already inside the house. And this is within like three minutes of this happening. So, pretty certain they knew or suspected they hit the house to like have, you know, packed it in and gotten inside so quick.  Um, and when it happened, my husband's from kind of up north Michigan. Like, I don't know, it's just a different culture…

About Harry Potter, I think it's just like, another big thing about it that I can't let go of and I'm also not going to let someone's bigotry take away the storyline for me is that that is how -- so Harry Potter is special also because that is like, the foundation that my relationship was based off of. I mean, I guess I don't want to say like that far, but my boyfriend and I started hanging out more closely as closer friends watching the Harry Potter series -- not the series, sorry. I cannot sentence words together. I can't even form thoughts right now, but I will try my best. So yeah. Yeah, like we started watching movies together and then he surprised me with a wand -- Draco's wand, from the local woods. He literally took the wood from a hawthorne, which many of those grow in -- on campus and then he carved it into a wand and stained it, colored it, everything. And made a homemade box and put velvet inside and all the way down to putting his name on the box as if it was like Olivander's and it was just like, so over the top. And he made all of that for me and then also he had like this lightbulb that he replaced one of the light bulbs in -- it was [building] Hall that we were in and that one was like, sound automated. So, when he told me to swoosh my, my wand, like the light turned on and started playing Hogwarts music. And that was crazy because I had never heard of like a Bluetooth light speaker thing. So, um, I was shocked and amazed and it felt truly magical. So, yeah, I definitely can't leave Harry Potter, I guess. And that's why I've opted to separate it from the author.

People tend to be uncomfortable when they realize that you understand something about themselves that they either don't realize, or that's an uncomfortable thing for them to come to terms with, or something that might change their perspective on the way that they're acting. People get uncomfortable with that, so I tend to be very careful with bringing those things up. And so for the first time in this relationship with this person, instead of being afraid that he won't love me, that didn’t matter anymore. And I went ahead and said what I said, and then it opened up other, other times since then -– since that first dice roll, where I was more comfortable with rolling that same dice again and — that same die, I guess, singular. I guess it depends on how many dice you’re rolling like a D&D game or something. But it’s turned out to be for the better because it allowed me to be on more equal footing with him as a friend and change the relationship dynamic because it used to be a dynamic of limerence and now it's more equal footing and it's empowered me to be more honest with him and myself and better analyze my previous relationship to him and it's much healthier than it ever was and it's allowed me to save my feelings and my wondering how is he going to react and all that kind of stuff that I used to be so worried about, I now don't feel so broken up over. So it was a little bit freaky the first time, but it turned out for the best.

This past Tuesday, I was going to help a director that I'm really close with, with casting for this year’s production of Christmas Carol. So, I have been in Christmas Carol for five years in a row as an actor playing Ghost of Christmas Past, Pageant Girl, Boy on The Street with Newspaper, and Belle, who is, like, Scrooge's girlfriend that breaks up with him. But I've been playing these roles. And I can't be in the show this year because I'm off at college, but the director’s like, “Yeah, you can come in and help cast the show. You can virtually assistant direct. It'll be fun!” So, I come in for the auditions and the director is, like, late. He's not there, and there are already people coming in, so I'm kind of like telling them where to go. And I'm not, like, an official member of the production team for this just because I can't physically be at a single one of the rehearsals. I was just helping with the casting decisions and a little bit of virtual consulting here and there. So I'm, like, introducing myself and telling people, “Just wait for the director.” So when the director gets here, he's like, “By the way, the vocal director dropped out, so I'm gonna need you to run all of the auditions for the choir. And, also, we don't have a piano.” So, I do have a little bit of experience vocal directing for this Christmas Carol show because it seems like every single year we have an issue with the vocal director not being able to be at a performance or not being able to be at the parade, and I just get stuck doing it.  So, I had to redownload the phone piano app on my phone so I could run these vocal auditions, but it was a little bit hard because people were, like, coming in before their time and after their time, so I had to keep redoing parts of the audition. And most of the people auditioning for the choir–there’s kind of three categories of people auditioning for the choir: people who are under the age of ten, people who are over the age of sixty–and some of them have lovely voices–but people who are auditioning for the cast that think their chances would be better if they also audition for the choir.…

It's Halloween on s- -- on Friday. My son is trick-or-treating with his friend. And then -- actually three of his friends. And this one friend is very, very organized, and he's a big planner, and he is -- he needs -- I don't know if he's a control freak or what his deal is. He doesn’t strike me as a control freak. He's just a very, like, he puts a lot of thought into every minute of his life. He's a great kid, and I really like him a lot, and I'm glad that he's friends with my son because my son is, like, the opposite. He is very go-with-the-flow, and doesn't want to make any decisions and wants people to just lead him around and tell him what to do. And so then he made friends with this guy who has all these ideas and makes them all happen and wants people to be on board with his ideas and makes all these plans and then just makes my son, like, be involved in all of his plans. And so, it's great. They're great together.  So, they -- they made a map. Well, this guy did -- this kid. Okay, so they're like thirteen years old. So he made a map of the best route for trick-or-treating. And they had a Google Meet where all four of them got together on the video chat and were like, “Okay guys, we need to pull up a map of -- of the neighborhood and see which way is the best, most efficient way to trick-or-treat.” And so they talked for, like, an hour and, like, “Well, if we turn down this street, there's only so many houses. If we turn down this street, there's only houses on one side. So, we really have to plan out which way we go.” And so then they -- so then, the next day, they emailed out, “Okay, here's the official map.” And they mapped out the entire route that they're going to be going on their trick-or-treat–on their trick-or-treating, which is far more than my son has ever done on his trick-or-treating. If -- we always would just trick-or-treat in our neighborhood, and we would just be like, “You want to go down this way? You want to go down [laughs] this way?” It's just whatever spontaneous thing we decide at the moment,…