Category: WWdN in Exile

She rolled a sixteen. Good for her!

Posted on By Wil

When Ryan was a Junior in college, he moved to a place where he couldn't have cats. Anne and I agreed to foster them until he took them back.

That was nearly three years ago.

When he moved across the country for his job, we officially adopted the cats we'd been fostering for years. Ryan misses them as much as we miss him, but it's worked out well for everyone. Anne and I grew to love his cats, and if you follow me on Twitter*, you know that I find the cats to be endlessly entertaining.

One of the cats, Luna, can be rather insistent about us paying attention to her. One of the ways she lets us know that we're not doing her bidding** in a way that pleases her involves pulling all of the tissues out of the tissue box when we're gone for a day, completely shredding a roll of paper towels while we're at the store, and unrolling an entire roll of toiler paper over night for some reason.

All of these things are intended to capture attention from both of us. When Luna really wants to get my attention, though, she goes after my gaming dice.

Seriously. One day, I found two full sets of dice underneath the couch in my office. The thing is, those sets were on a shelf in my closet, in a bag. I don't know how she did it, but I'm convinced that whatever skillset she used could just as easily be applied to the task of murdering me in my sleep, so I just laughed it off and told her that it was a real good thing that she did that. Real good, Luna! REAL REAL GOOD! It's a real good thing that you did that! HAHAHAHAHAHA! 

Um. Anyway.

A couple of days ago, I took my wallet, keys, and the d20 I carry with me just about everywhere (unless it's a d12 for some reason)*** and set them on our kitchen counter. About twenty minutes later, while I sat in my office, I heard a clang! sound, followed by Anne laughing. I walked out to see what was up, and Anne showed me the picture she had taken, shortly after the clang!:

IMG955264

In case you can't tell, Luna knocked my d20 off the counter and into our dogs' water dish. That's her little head reflected in the silver dish, which actually makes this picture kind of cute.

"She rolled a sixteen," Anne said, a touch of admiration in her voice that I've never heard whenever I've rolled a sixteen.

"Of course she did. It's not like it was a difficult to-hit roll."

Anne looked at me.

"I mean, she has terrain advantage, her target is prone, and…" I trailed off.

"You know what? Forget it. I'm just going to pick up my d20 and be on my way."

Anne and Luna gave me disapproving looks as I walked back to my office. I wiped my die off on my pants and gave it right back to them.

*I'm sorry, really, I am, but I told you that you shouldn't. You have nobody to blame but yourself.

**Dogs have masters; cats have staff.

***Like the one I gave Hardwick when I was on his show.

In which I am a proud father (this is not a repost)

Posted on By Wil

My son, Ryan, graduated college with a creative writing degree this past December. He got a job immediately after school, and moved all the way across the country to work there. I miss him every single day, but I'm incredibly proud of him, and the work he's doing.

Earlier today, I read something he wrote for work. It was so evocative and beautiful, I emailed him, quoted it, and told him how much I loved it.

He wrote back, "Not going to lie, I thought to myself, how would Wil say this? That's a little bit of you there."

I got something in both of my eyes. He was talking about the phrasing, but… in my mind, he was talking about something much more meaningful and personal to both of us. After my vision cleared, I replied, "I am so happy for you, and so proud of you. I have something in both of my eyes. I love you!"

He sent back, "You're the best. I love you too."

I got something in my eyes all over again (I really need to change the filter on our heater, I guess), and then I read the email chain to Anne. She didn't get anything in her eyes for a change, but she told me that she thought it was awesome.

And you know what? It is awesome. I don't know if every parent thinks the way we do, but when our boys were little, we believed that we were not just making sure they were healthy and safe; we were doing our best to help them grow into the kind of adults we'd like to have around us. We took the responsibility of raising (rearing, if you're pedantic about that sort of thing) our children very seriously. It wasn't easy, with their biological father undermining us at every opportunity, and making things unbelievably hard on all of us. No, it wasn't easy at all, but we always stayed focused on what was important, and today, every time I talk to my kids, they say or do something that shows us we succeeded… and that is the most awesome thing in the world.

In which I am easily amused (again)

Posted on By Wil

A few days ago, I saw this awesome thing that happened:

Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa flew 220 miles into space to play with toys. His recent stay on the International Space Station included several hours of building a Lego version of his orbiting abode.

When it was done, it looked something like this:

Legoiss_610x404

Because I am easily amused, and very bad at Photoshop, I was inspired to improve the image thusly:

LEGYO_DAWG

The moral of this story, kids, is that the more easily amused you are, the more amusing things are to you.

THE END.

I’m on a boat: Stupid Cell Phone Videos

Posted on By Wil

I’m on JoCoCruiseCrazy 2, and I’m taking an Internet vacation until I get home. So every day while I’m gone, something from my archives will post here automatically, for your entertainment. I had a lot of fun picking these different things out, and I hope you enjoy them again, or for the first time.

Today, I'm linking to the first stupid cellphone videos I did. If you're as easily amused as I am, you can watch them all on my YouTube channel.

We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

Originally published September 2010.

I'm home for a few days before I go back to Vancouver to finish out the season on Eureka. It's nice to sleep in my own bed, actually see my family, and work in my actual office, instead of sitting at a desk in a hotel.

Doctor Parrish was very heavy in the last episode I shot, so I worked 5 of 6 days, an average of 14 hours each day. It was exhausting work, but I loved every second of it. I wish I could get into the details of it, but that is right in the middle of Spoilertown, so I'll just say that it was a lot of fun, and I got to do a lot of origami.

There's this saying, possibly apocryphal, that actors work for free and get paid to wait. One of my days last week, I was called to the studio early, and then ended up not working for about seven hours. This sometimes happens when the scene before me takes longer than anyone expected, or it turns out that they're not going to see me in the background of a shot like they thought. Rookie actors tend to bitch about this sort of thing, but salty veterans like me have learned to be grateful for the job, appreciate that I'm getting paid to wait, and pack a Bag of holding that's filled with books and games and diversions. (Back in the old days, I'd bring tons of stuff, but now I just bring my iPad and a book.)

On this particular day, I played the hell out of Plants Vs. Zombies HD, re-read Metatropolis, spent some time looking for the end of the Internet, and actually started to get bored.

Once I started to get bored, my brain spit out an idea, that went something like this: "Hey, your cell phone has a video camera on it. You should make stupid videos with it, and upload them to YouTube!"

This sounded like a brilliantly stupid idea, so I did as my brain commanded, producing this:

I told Twitter about it, and there was much rejoicing. A few hours later, I did this:

Then I was finally called to set, where I was no longer bored, and my cretive energy was directed into the very useful and productive task of bringing Doctor Parrish to life.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that my stupid videos had been viewed about 7,000 times. "See, we're entertaining more people than just ourselves," my brain said, "let's make more stupid cell phone videos!"

"Yes, sir, Mister Brain," I said. I enlisted the help of some friends, and made this:

I don't know how long this will last, but it's easy, it's amusing to me, and it's a lot of stupid fun, so I'll keep doing it until I lose interest or get distracted and chase a red balloon down the street. If you want to see these stupid things as they become available, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel.

 

in which my wife is nerd-adjacent and comedy ensues

Posted on By Wil

I came across a bunch of posts that I'd marked as drafts, but never published. Most of them are ideas that never turned into actual posts, or things I wrote and decided not to post for some reason I've since forgotten.

This one was originally written in November of 2009. I'm not sure why I left it unpublished for over two years.

"Hey," I said to Anne while we stood in the kitchen last night, "remember that song from Avenue Q, 'The Internet is for Porn'?"

She made a gruff Muppet voice and sang, "The Internet is for porn, the Internet is for porn … porn, porn, porn." She stirred whatever was on the stove and said, "that song?"

"Yeah. That song."

I put my hands in my pockets, and leaned back on my heels, striking my famous I'm-so-proud-of-what-I'm-about-to-tell-you posture.

"I ordered a T-shirt last week, and it says 'The Holodeck is for porn' on it!" I smiled and waited for her to join me in laughter.

At first, all she did was blink. Then, she frowned, like she was trying to solve a puzzle. Finally, she just cocked her head to one side and looked at me like I had spoken in some foreign language, which I guess I had.

"You, um . . . you don't know what the holodeck is, do you?"

"I know that it's from Star Trek," she offered, helpfully.

I told her what the holodeck does, and how it works, doing my best not to speak in geek, which as it turns out is very difficult to do when you are describing the primary functions and inner workings of the freakin' holodeck.

"So, you see," I concluded, "if the holodeck was real, everyone would use it for porn, and that's why that T-shirt is so funny."

"…okay…"

We looked at each other for a few seconds.

I said, "I can't believe you've been married to me for ten years, and this is the first time we've ever talked about the holodeck."

"Yeah, I don't know how we managed that."

—

Sometime during the two years since we had this conversation, something changed for Anne. I honestly think it was when she got an iPhone, and was able to have quick and instant access to the sort of technology I've embraced since before we met. She's made friends who are into the same sort of sci-fi and fantasy that I'm into, and I guess she's just absorbed the things we love by being geek-adjacent all the time.

I don't think I'll be able to convince her to watch Game of Thrones or Doctor Who with me, and it's unlikely she'll want to read a stack of comic books every Wednesday like I do… but she knows what the holodeck is, and she agrees with me that it's for porn.

So… baby steps. Baby steps.