My blog has words and stuff

So I’ve just been informed that it’s not enough to just have a blog; you also have to put stuff on it.

I write, primarily speculative fiction. Most of it is comedy; well, some of it’s all comic, and some only part. A lot of it would be termed “fantasy”, but I don’t like calling it that, for two reasons. One is that “spec fic” is broader, and I’d rather not pigeonhole myself in a genre. heresy alert Lord of the Rings is pretty good, but problematic in so many ways that I wouldn’t try to imitate it.

The second reason is that whereas “fantasy” should connote giving one’s imagination free rein, to many people it means “elf going on a journey”. I don’t write about elves going places. (And if I did, the elf would be stuck in traffic in midafternoon heat with no AC cursing the dwarf’s low hygienic standards and listening to the others whine and argue, until finally he snaps and shouts at the hobbit, “I don’t care if you’re a hundred and forty years old! If you’re only three feet tall, you have to be in a booster seat!”)

What I do write I’ll get to in another post.

For a living, I teach philosophy, part-time at U. of Alberta and part-time doing distance ed for Athabasca U. They’re both nice gigs, interesting work, though the lack of any job security is frightening at times. I wrote my Ph.D. thesis on metacognition – how we regulate our own thinking. I do some research, mainly on intellectual virtues, though it tends to end up on the back burner these days because it’s not nearly as fun as writing.

I follow politics obsessively, and will likely post often on that.

And then there are these two scoundrels, whose escapades are sure to occupy much of this blog:

The one on the left with the crazy hair and the dimples is Milo. The one on the right with the crazy hair and the ski jacket is Gabi. Remember that now.

This picture was taken at Milo’s sixth birthday party. The party was supposed to be held at the skating rink across from the downtown library, but the rink was closed because it’d been above zero for several days. Gabi and two of her aunts were at the library building and programming that Lego robot, so we joined them. They have an amazing little room set up there called the MakerSpace (I think), with a number of computers, a printing press, and a 3D printer. After a few hours there, we went to Churchill Square where the kids chased each other around and ate cupcakes – and I do mean that they were doing those simultaneously. It was a completely improvised and yet entirely successful party. (Improvised by the kids’ mother, by the way. I was too fascinated with the 3D printer to help.)