Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

We just finished moving and I am currently without internet service, at least until next week. If you follow me on Twitter then you’ll hear from me more regularly. If not, I’ll be back once AT&T does their thing.

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

I get these little emails from Chabad.org every day called the Daily Dose, a short insightful/inspirational dose of Torah thinking. Today’s Daily Dose just hit me:

True Naivety

What is it that the child has to teach?

The child naively believes that everything should be fair
and everyone should be honest,
that only good should prevail,
that everybody should have what they want
and there should be no pain or sadness.

The child believes the world should be perfect and is outraged to discover it is not.

And the child is right.

That’s me right there. Yes, I have a cynical side that often gets the better of me, but deep down that’s me. That’s why I sometimes get taken advantage of, why I became cynical in the first place, because I believe those things and got burned more often than not when I discovered it was not like that. But I continue to believe it all.

I guess you could say deep down I am as Lawful Good as they come. And you’d be right.

You want to know me? Remember the above.

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

I love November. I honestly don’t know exactly why, but I do. And especially this year since we rolled back the clock right at the start of the month.Granted, it’s hot as heck in Miami still, so none of the awesome autumn cool breeze to speak of. But hey, November!

My November will be spent moving from our current apartment to the new one in South Beach. We already have the lease signed and the keys so we’ve been working on getting the new one ready for the stuff we bought and whatever will come with us. Tomorrow I’m painting the dining room and waiting for a delivery from Ikea and in the week of the 16th we’ll move once and for all! I’ve had little teases of what it is to live in South Beach and so far I’m loving it.

This means, however, that I won’t be doing NaNoWriMo, as much as I wanted to. It’s just not realistic, so I’ll save myself the headache and the guilty feelings.

Now, if only the temperature would go down to at least the 70s during the day.

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

We’ve been looking for a new apartment to move into since late September. We’re frankly tired of the area where we live (Normandy Isle, North Beach) and given that leaving Miami is not a possibility at the moment, the next best thing was to move to a new area of Miami. Thus South Beach.

Now, when most people think of South Beach, they see this:

And granted, that’s part of South Beach, but not all of South Beach. This side of SoBe is a few streets east of where we’ll be. This is my South Beach:

Very different, no?

Between Washington Av and Alton Rd sits a veritable village made up mostly of apt buildings with a few single-family homes, all inhabited by people looking to live a normal life in South Beach. We’ll have Flamingo Park less than 2 blocks away, and pretty much everything we need within 10 blocks at most. The place is highly bikeable and getting more so every day, not to mention connected to a large number of public transport options and perfectly located should we decide to start doing more long-range bike commuting. I can literally foresee parking my car and not having to move it for days on end. And that’s if I keep it, but more on that later.

Trust me, I was as surprised to find this here as well, and we both fell in love with it.

I can’t wait to move (although I dislike the process of moving!) and see what life feels like in a place where we are far more connected to other people and the city around us. Expect to hear more about the moving odyssey; after 7 years in this place, it’s a bit like a hermit crab moving into a new shell.

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

Today I turn 35 years old. It’s a bit of a scary number, I have to admit. If 70 years is the general life expectancy (and the psalm kinda reinforces that), it means I’m squarely at my mid-life point. I’m not going to go out and buy a convertible or leave my wife for a 20-year old bimbo (though I did get a new bike, see below), but it does make me think about what’s gone on and what’s to come.

The most important event of my past year simply was the illness, convalescence and death of my mother; it simply dominated 2009 for me, having me spend a combined 4 months in Puerto Rico spread out from February to August. This has also affected me deeply, making this day a bittersweet affair. I spent all of last week in a really bad funk (though I tried not to, unsuccessfully) because of the simple realization that today would come and go and I would not get a call from Mom. I’m better now than I was last month, but I still feel it from time to time, and last week it was overwhelming. But I know she would not like it all to see me in this despair, so I move along.

This year, however, I opted not to have a birthday party of any kind. It helps that 99% of my friends are all people I interact with online and do not live in Miami, so it makes putting a party together a bit harder. Besides, it just did not feel right.

As I look forward, I see my desire and plans to enter the School of Nursing at FIU, and simply cannot wait to get that started. I hope to have all the admissions stuff ironed out by the end of this week, next one tops, so I can get on with the rest of the paperwork needed. I want to start in the Spring, period.

This move into Nursing actually matches a general shift in my mood and personality of late: I want to do things that are greater than myself. Even when writing about bikes in Slow Bike Miami, I am hoping to turn that into a way to help out the general bicycling community, to help the City of Miami/Miami Beach, to reach out beyond my own experience into connecting with others. I am tired of worrying only about myself and my immediate surroundings; I long to affect an area greater than me. I’m still figuring out how to do that, but that’s where my inner compass is taking me. I know Mom would be proud.

So, we’ll see what 35 brings. I’m ready to face it and make the most of it.

On a lighter note, I can talk about two birthday gifts I have gotten so far, both of which are amazing.

The first one is a book given to me by my wife. I actually got this about a month ago as an early present, and it still astounds me.

Gray’s Anatomy: The Anatomical Basis of Clinical Practice, Expert Consult – Online and Print

This is a massive book. Huge. Gargantuan,even! Here it is compared to the 575-pages Pathfinder RPG and the 630-page Starblazer Adventures RPG, the other two massive books I own.

All that medical awesomeness AND it comes with an online version as well. It’s an awesome gift, and I thank my wife so much for it. With this, my Nursing Library has now officially been started.

The second one is the new Electra Amsterdam bike I bought for myself. You can read all about that gift over at Slow Bike Miami.

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

Wow, you blink and a month has gone by since the last roundup. It’s been a busy month so let’s get to it.

Highmoon Games

• Egg-citing News! (9/11/09)
• Highmoon Games Welcomes One Bad Egg (10/1/09)

The Gamer Traveler

• The Greatest Lesson From Travel: Awe (9/8/09)
• Win a Trip on the Orient-Express at the Ticket to Ride World Championship (9/23/09)
• Geeky Clean Soaps Perfect For All Gamer Travelers (9/25/09)

Miami Metblog

• No More Bike Miami? (9/8/09)
• Autumn Sky (9/30/09)

Slow Bike Miami

• Sunday Afternoon Ride (9/7/09)
• The Time To Upgrade Has Come (9/8/09)
• Bike Miami No More? (9/9/09)
• My Bike Miami Wish List (9/10/09)
• Shopping For A New Bike – The Dutch Bikes (9/11/09)
• Biking to Synagogue: Shabbat Edition (9/13/09)
• Slow Bicycle Blogs (9/14/09)
• Bike Miami’s Back For September And October (9/15/09)
• My First Flat Tire (9/16/09)
• The Final Miami Bicycle Summit (9/17/09)
• I (Bike) Miami Shirts (9/18/09)
• New Year, New Look, New Logo (9/18/09)
• Miami Cyclists: Please Be Nice (9/21/09)
• A Cycling Webcomic: Yehuda Moon & The Kickstand Cyclery (9/22/09)
• Shopping For A New Bike – Test-Riding the Electra Townie (9/23/09)
• The Practical Pedal, A Free Magazine for the Slow Bicyclist (9/25/09)
• Bike Miami Ride: Upper East Side (9/29/09)
• Shopping For A New Bike – A Latecomer & A Decision(?) (10/1/09)
• Shopping For A New Bike – And The Winner Is (10/2/09)
• [SBM Bicycle TV] Down the Bridge (10/5/09)
• Dreaming of Bicycle Boulevards in Miami Beach (10/7/09)
  

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

Read the Intro, First Session Report, Second Session Report, Kale’s Second Session Report and Third Session Report.

I had guests over for dinner last night so I thought I would be unable to play in the ongoing game of Lady Blackbird. However, by 10:30 PM our guests had gone home, so I fired up the laptop and hopped onto Skype to join the group and the game, and right in the nick of time, too!

By the time I joined the group had been playing for about an hour, mostly on scenes dealing with all the other characters. They had just mentioned something that happened with my character, Kale, but we hit the rewind button and replayed the same scene with me at the helm.

Turns out I heard some noises up in the Owl’s general area and when I came up from the engine room, I had only just enough time to see three ratlings kidnapping Lady Blackbird before my own world went completely dark, courtesy of a sap to the back of the head. I came to some time after that to find the ship rattling as Snargle prepped it for launch. This time the image of Kale as channeled through Steve Buscemi was very clear in my head, so I was able to tap into that characterization immediately. This time around, however, it was angry/ranting Steve Buscemi in control (for the most part).

After getting Snargle to turn off the ship and join me in looking for Lady Blackbird, we run out into the streets of Nematron, a place I personally would rather avoid due to some gambling issues. I’m talking a mile a minute, knowing my hide’s on the line and will be claimed, painfully, by both Captain Vance and Pirate King Flint.

As we’re about to break into a sprint into the heart of Nematron, I hear Naomi (played by Mick Bradley) yell out our names from behind. She *just* appeared there, but I don’t ask too many questions as I know Vance can work some warp juju and supposedly they were together. Nor do I ask about the hundreds of tiny, bleeding slashes over Naomi’s bandaged-and-clad-for-combat body. Hey, I don’t judge. “We gotta get outta here,” yells Naomi. “No we can’t, Lady Blackbird’s gone,” I yell back as we run towards the other. That catches her attention, and thankfully not in a I’m-gonna-kill-Kale-Arkam kinda way. We then break off to find Vance, wherever he is.

Well, wherever is coming right at us at breakneck speed as we also are running into the Nematron bazaar. Something having to do with Mother Six (*shudder*) being indisposed (which of course is completely an euphemism). “I told you to prep the ship!” Vance says. “Yeah, we can’t, cause the Lady’s gone,” I tell him. There’s a round of fingerpointing and I’m pointing them right at someone else in the market cause I don’t wanna have Vance and Naomi bust my chops. Someone says something about Snargle’s ratling friend but it kinda washes over me (wait, Snargle has a friend? A ratling? A he?!) as I inspect the area for clues. Naomi tried and found some hair that could belong to the Lady, so I know I got a good chance.

Kapow! I don’t find any actual clues, but I can read the crowd like the experienced (if now slightly reformed) huckster I am, and I notice two ratlings being *too* casual by the entrance to a bar not that far away. I motion to Vance, who knows me, just knows me, and he starts advancing. So I decide to slam those ratlings with a nasty surprise and spin around casting a Shatter Spell. Except it misfires and instead of shattering their weapons, it shatters their liquor. “The beer? Seriously?” I say as I run over.

Vance pulls out a nasty, nasty, NASTY move and gives one of the ratlings some head ventilation when he proves uncooperative, but the other one vomits out the location of the Lady inside the bar. So we march in, guns drawn.

“Don’t anyone move, or I’ll shoot you. I’LL SHOOT YOU DEAD! I swear!” This screamed at the top of my lungs, with a wild and crazy look on my face, while I wave two guns around the room while standing next to the twin-drawn guns of Captain Vance and Naomi (she’s a weapon all by herself).

The bartender cooperates and we find the Lady in the side room he motioned to us. Of course, Vance and Naomi pick this moment to have a tete-a-tete on who the frak goes first through the beaded curtain, while I’m left to cover a roomfull of bar patrons, some of which I know are packing– “Hey, what the heck you think you’re doing? Sit down, sit the frak down! Don’t get any funny ideas none of you!!!”

Vance finally goes through and convinces the ratlings that, with Mother Six dead, they ain’t got orders anymore. Takes the little runts a bit to get it, but they let the Lady go and we’re outta that bar faster than Vance’s warp juju could do it, I swear. Except when we get back to the Owl, Snargle is nowhere to be found. Great!

Vance goes off to search for Snargle, while I go in to prep the ship for take-off. Lady Blackbird decides she wants to cure Naomi’s hundred thousand cuts and asks me for some alcohol (do I look like a drunk?). I don’t know what it is about Lady Blackbird that makes me so nervous I can barely put a sentence together. Frak! Stupid, stupid!

Well, I know *exactly* what it is about Lady Blackbird, but we ain’t gonna talk about that…

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

Long story short, Vegas After Midnight has changed considerably in form since the last time I wrote about it here back in 2007. Back in those days, VAM was to be based on the FATE System, the same engine under the hood of Spirit of the Century, but it was discovered (via playtest that included the one I did at Gen Con 2008) that the side effect of that system’s close association with the Pulp genre yielded VAM games that were way too high on the crazy/wacky scale and very low on the horror/desperation dept.

After some fine-tuning, VAM was re-imagined using Don’t Rest Your Head as the driving engine; same company, different system, very different play experience. DRYH is a game of psychological horror and nightmares given form, perfect for the idea of the Madness in VAM. Creator Mick Bradley and co-designer David Moore have been working on translating the idea of VAM to the new language that is DRYH and the results so far look fantastic. Along the way, Mick has also reworked and updated the imagery of the game, and this has allowed him to have the art support the new premise of the game.

As these small-press projects go, VAM will be ready when it’s ready and not a moment sooner than that, but in the meantime, Mick maintains a window into the design process firmly open for anyone wanting to peek inside the workshop. Updates are fairly regular, and comments are welcomed and encouraged, as they help the process of creation.

Understand that, while I remain one of the periphery people most related to VAM (and possibly still its eventual publisher via Highmoon Games), I’ve not had a direct hand in the design in months. My involvement has been more of the Greek Chorus type to Mick’s posts, just offering feedback on whatever new glimpse is offered. But the thing is, I am very much a fan of the game as well, and fans want to be a part of that which they like. So when Mick posted the draft of what will be the Introduction to the book, a piece of in-character speech from the game’s guide, a DJ broadcasting from the top of the Stratosphere named Picchiatello Jack, I got the idea to record the dialogue in my best approximation of what Jack sounded like based on the conversation in the comments.

Go check out [VAM] A Voice in the Wilderness and listen to the audio. Leave Mick some feedback as well if you’re so inclined. Get in the Game.

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

My wife sent me the link to this music video that came out of Cuba. It’s a soft-beats rap song called “Decadencia” (Decadence) and it is a lyrical and scathing condemnation of the Cuban regime. I wish there was an English translation available, and if one pops up I’ll copy it here, but even if you don’t speak Spanish, you can listen to the music and the tone of the song, hear the desperation, the fury, the hope in the notes, see the images and wonder how it is that the Cuban government, and many around the world, can claim that they live in a free country.

I hope to G-d that Cuba will be truly free soon, because enough is enough.

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

Kale Arkam

Kyle is described simply as “A burglar and petty sorcerer, first mate and mechanic of The Owl.” That’s all you get in the realm of character/roleplaying notes. The Traits reinforce the descriptors in the sentence, and the Keys & Secrets (think of them as major issues of the character that should/will drive his personal story) just add an extra bit of info (Kale’s greedy, has an unbreakable bond of friendship with Captain Vance, and has a mission he wants to complete at all costs). Beyond that, it’s all up to me how I portray Kale.

Having there been already one session of this game, wherein the crew valiantly escapes the clutches of The Hand of Sorrow, we started our tale about an hour after that. We were all in the ship’s mess hall, regrouping, and eating some food cooked by me.

We started off a bit slow while everyone got into character. Arnold slipped right into the role of Snargle the goblin (who has a Key of Banter) and started chatting it up. That made it easy for the rest of us to join in. During those early scenes, I was still feeling Kale out, and the few lines I had I played him as confident, sarcastic and determined. After an almost-suicidal escape maneuver from a giant sky squid, I pushed for the responsible thing to do, meaning refueling in some space-forsaken planetoid where I gambled a lot and would not be a welcomed sight.

While most of the crew headed planetside for provisions, I stayed behind to do some repairs. I also stayed behind with Lady Blackbird and it was during my one scene with her that Kale truly emerged. My personal nervousness about playing after so long, playing over Skype, playing a game new to me, with a new player at the “table,” all these got combined and refocused into my roleplaying. Kale suddenly was shifty and nervous, almost nebbish, talking a mile a minute, playing with his hands, looking all over the place (my fellow players could obviously not see these gestures over Skype, but nevertheless it was what I was doing while talking in-character). He delivered his message to Lady Blackbird, that Captain Uriah Flint was waiting for her and that it was his mission–beyond her hiring the ship to transport her–to deliver her safely, “in one piece,” to the Captain (hitting my Key of the Mission right there).

I then told her, “You make me nervous.” Which surprised *me* as the player! She asked why, and I told her it was because she was a noble, and I’d had some run-ins with some of her peers here and there. What houses have you had dealings with? she asked. “Oh, well, I can tell you, not yours.” Tell me of one of those dealings, she said.

“Oh, there was this one time, at a ball, there was this young noble girl, very pretty, and we danced, and well, you see, I mean, I swear, it’s not like, I just ended up with, well it was a misunderstanding, really, I stole these rings from her, but that was all a misunderstanding because what I really was after was the bejeweled sword she was wearing, but the jewelery, well, it was so easy… I was a bad person; I’m trying to be better. … … That is a very shinny golden vase you have there, Lady, very valuable, I can see. … I’ll be in the engine room, if you need me, which you won’t, but if you do, just bang loudly on the hull, I’m sure I’ll hear it, or use the comm system, as well, yeah. Good evening. Deliver you to the Captain, in one piece. Engine room. Yes, later.” As he walked away, Lady Blackbird could hear echoing through the halls, “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

After the game was over, the guys were nice enough to comment about the portrayal, and I believe it was Mick who said the two magic words: Steve Buscemi. Yes, that’s precisely it. He’s both the confident mo-fo that can be cool as a Reservoir Dog, yet nervous and shifty and yappy, all in the very same portrayal. That’s my Kale Arkam.

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

I finally managed to get together with my Wednesday night Skype gaming group (Rich Rogers & Mick Bradley of Canon Puncture and Chuck Hedden). Ever since playing a session of Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies back in July, while I was in Puerto Rico, I’d been unable to rejoin them for anything. Tonight, however, it happened. Except it almost didn’t.

I went on Skype and found only Mick. Rich was apparently having problems with his computer so would not be joining us. I figured I’d just chat with Mick for a while, and while were setting things up, we see Arnold, a friend of Rich’s from Jacksonville, come online. Then we see Rich, and then he disappears. Long story short, 15 minutes later we were all there, and after some more finagling with PowerGrammo by Rich, we decided to get our game on and play. What game? Not S7S, and not the playtest of Rich’s baseball RPG called Making the Bigs or his Game Chef 09 entry. So we played Lady Blackbird.

Lady Blackbird is a short-form game/adventure mod created by John Harper. The document is 15 pages long, and it contains a starting situation, a map with some entries, 5 pre-generated characters, a ship technical readout and the rules (which are, in essence, a very stripped down version of The Solar System as found in The Shadow of Yesterday). A character’s sheet is half the character info and stats, and half all the rules the player will need to play the game. The scenario is intriguing in that it has tons of potential for story all presented at the moment when it is all about to explode. Since the story can go in a thousand directions based on the actions of the players and the GM, it works out as a great, no-prep RPG. It’s a free download, so get it and check it out.

With Mick having played it once before and deciding to continue playing the same character, Naomi Bishop, Arnold chose the goblin Snargle, while I decided to play Kale Arkam, the first mate of The Owl.

And thus our story goes…

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

It’s been one month since Mom passed away, and today, 1 month since we, I, buried her. It’s been easy sometimes then really hard at others; there’s nothing in between those two. I’ve days when I can look at her pictures and smile and feel great, then I’ve others when a mere passing thought can topple me down like so much rubble. I assume, and I’m told, this is normal; this too shall pass. I continue to say Kaddish for her, and little by little things will normalize. So here’s to 1 month, and to the elevation of her soul. I love you, Mom.

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

I’m starting a new feature on my blog called the Project Roundup.

I keep a handful of blogs on different subjects. Before, I would have them syndicate that content here into this blog as a way of making Highmoon’s Pondering an all-things-me clearing house. Problem is, I find that tactic ends up diluting this blog’s content. The Roundup is a way of keeping this blog a central info place for all the stuff I’m doing without the clutter of syndicated posts.

The Project Roundup will be done on a weekly to bi-weekly basis, depending on how much content there is on the other blogs.

Highmoon Games

• Now Supporting Pathfinder (8/23/09)
• Liber Sodalitas: The Dream Healers (Pathfinder edition) now available (8/24/09)
• Thoughts on Pathfinder (8/27/09)

The Gamer Traveler

• The Gamer Traveler Website Gets A Facelift (8/5/09)
• Not Going to #GenCon, But Still Almost There (8/8/09)

Miami Metblog

• Miami 21 – Round 2 (9/3/09)
• Miami 21 Passes First Reading! (9/6/09)
  

Slow Bike Miami

• We’re Now SlowBikeMiami.com (8/27/09)
• BikeTown Miami (8/27/09)
• New Bike Store in Miami Beach: Federal Bike Depot (8/30/09)
• Two Awesome Bicycle T-Shirts (9/1/09)
• Copenhagenize vs Amsterdamize Slow Bicycle Race (9/3/09)
• What Is Slow Bicycling? (9/6/09)

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

Due to dealing with family issues that had me spending a lot of time in Puerto Rico, I’ve not been on the bike almost at all this year (attending the last Bike Miami Days in May being the big exception). That changes today.

I’m heading out now to Bayfront Park in Downtown Miami to attend BikeTown Miami, sponsored by Bicycling Magazine and the City of Miami. Bikes will be given out and raffled, and we’ll celebrate biking in the city. I only wish (so fervently) that my wife was coming along.

I’ll post a review of the event later on. Now, it’s back on the bike again!

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

It’s been 18 days since Mom passed away and little over a week since I came back home to Miami. I’ve put off blogging on any of my various blogs because, well, just because. The only thing I’ve done is be on Twitter and do some stuff for Highmoon Games, mostly so I could keep busy and thus not think. It’s only been partially successful.

I wanted my next post after the announcement of Mom’s passing to be an eulogy, perhaps the one I wasn’t able to fully articulate at the burial (I am a writer, not an orator), but even though I’ve composed parts of it in my head, I can’t bring myself to write it, not yet. Heck, I haven’t even written in my pen-on-paper journal for the same reason.

That said, I need to start working towards establishing a sense of daily life, of normalcy, again. I’m not done healing, I don’t know when, or if, I will, but life doesn’t stop because of that, and Mom would have been the first to tell me to start taking things one step at a time. Engaging with people via email, Facebook and Twitter was the first step; working on Highmoon Games was the second step; this is the next.

I’m reopening my blog. There’s things going on that I’d like to talk about, things I’d like to share. Some may even be frivolous. My fear was that a cycling/gaming/travel/etc. post right after the one from August 8 would make it all seem trivial (and understand, this is my own insecurity talking). I guess that’s one reason why I’m writing this one, as a buffer zone.

I may yet write the eulogy for Mom and post it when I’m finally able.

Thanks to every single person that is around me to hold my hand if/when I falter. Especially my wife, because I can’t imagine going through this without her.

Ready for the next step.

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

It is with a heavy heart that I let everyone know that my Mother, Wanda I. Robles Ortiz, passed away today Saturday, August 8th, 2009, her birthday, at 3:00 AM in the morning. She was 56 years old.

I cannot find enough words to celebrate my Mother. Suffice to say she was the noblest person I’ve ever known and I learned so much from her. Indeed, all I am is thanks to her. I will miss her, but I know she is in a far better place.

My thanks to everyone who throughout this year has sent good wishes and prayers our way. I know they had an effect, and I know they will continue to do so.

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

To the point: I have made a decision to go into Nursing and get a BSN degree to become a Registered Nurse.

The longer version (you’ve been warned)…

Most people that know me would find this a very strange decision, almost completely out of character, but the truth is that those who know me of old (and I mean basically all my life) would know the seeds for this can be found in my early years.

When I was a school-age child, I loved science, way more than I loved languages/literature. It was always my favorite subject, and I devoured it with the passion that I now show for games and sci-fi/fantasy. I would literally come home and recite my classes back to my Mom; I just had a knack for it. It wasn’t an easy subject for me; I had to work at it, but I got it and did well in it. When I went into high school, it was Biology that consumed me, even if I didn’t know it consciously or let it show. Chemistry was ok, nothing I was too keen on but a class in which I also did well with a little work. Physics was right up my alley, though, and I became one of the go-to guys in my class when other people had problems understanding concepts.

When I went into university and discovered that Electronic Engineering was just not for me, it was Biology that I first changed concentrations into, not English. I completed my Biology 101 with an ok grade mainly because I was lazy and did not put the extra work it took for me to do great in it. Frankly, the reason I continued in the English/Literature track was because, as good as I was in science, I was equally so in that subject matter, except I didn’t have to do any work. In short, it was the easy way out. I rode that train all the way to a BA in English in 2002, achieving a 3.75 GPA and graduating Magna Cum Laude on the strength of my memory, innate analysis skills and an uncanny ability to write papers the night before that would nevertheless score in the high 90s. To be honest, I never knew what I would do with an English degree, but I had one and hey, I could always get a Masters and a PhD and teach in college! In fact, that was my plan, but it didn’t turn out like that.

Getting work on the strength of an English BA was, and continues to be, an uphill battle. Though the world desperately needs people who can write well, do effective research and distill ideas into cohesive arguments (the true skills of an English degree, along with tons of info about Shakespeare and such), the corporate environment is quite content to rely on their MS Word spell-check and churn out mediocre writing than to pay someone trained to do that (but I’m not bitter). Then when I went back to start my Masters in Literature, after a couple of weeks, I dropped out. Why? Honestly, because I got scared. Masters classes were not like my undergrad ones, where I could cruise and do last-minute work. I felt lost, powerless, and I chickened out hardcore. So I left it and made tons of excuses.

Fast forward to this year. My Mom’s cancer has been acting up horribly and has had her in and out of the hospital since February. Of the six months of 2009 so far, I have spent 10 weeks in Puerto Rico with her at the hospital, helping her, caring for her. The fact that I have been unemployed/working freelance has given me the freedom to do this, but it hasn’t been easy for me or my wife, especially since we’ve never spent so much time apart and because, as meager as my income was doing freelance, it has drained down to zero while I’ve been traveling. Spending days at the hospital with Mom, seeing the nurses care for her when she’s been at her worse, seeing all the doctors around, all the various health technicians (Respiratory, Physical, Orthopedic, etc), seeing with my own eyes the difference they make in people’s lives–literally, in their lives, as in saving them–has been extremely humbling and has had a huge impact on me. Suddenly, going back to Miami (in the few breaks I had in between flights back to Puerto Rico) to write, edit, lay out and sell games seemed so vapid, so insignificant to me. How is a new issue of Targum Magazine, or a new installment of Heroic Moments really going to make a difference in a life, in the world? (There is an answer to this question below, so keep reading.)

I have spent all of June (except for a few days) in Puerto Rico with Mom in the hospital. Earlier this month there were times when we thought we’d lose her for sure, and it was the expedient care of her nurses (as well as, of course, the will of G-d) that kept her here a little longer. It stared at me in face way too many times for me to ignore it any longer. When this year began, I knew it would be a year of change. I wrote in an early entry in my journal that I was looking for three Rs in my life: Retrain, Refocus, Renew. Sometimes G-d engineers things so as to make His message to you so obvious it is almost impossible to miss, unless you outright set out to be blind to it. I decided not to be blind anymore. I decided that it was time for me to step up, to walk out of the comfort zone I had been in since entering university back in 1992, to take those three words I myself wrote and make them a reality. And so it was, after talking it over with my wife, that I decided to go into Nursing.

So you see, it isn’t really a radical new thing for me, but rather going back to a seed that was planted in me long, long ago. I know it won’t be easy, I know I will have to work at it, hard. But I want to do it, more than I have wanted anything in my life. My Mom always thought I should have gone into Medicine; all moms say that, I reckon. But my Mom said it because she recognized that I had something within me that allow me to do well in that field, that I had the right stuff for it. It was I who did not believe in me, who sought the path of least resistance. No more.

I don’t regret the choices I have made to this point, though. In talking with a friend who is a nurse now (she’s my go-to person when I need Medicalese translated into English) I said to her, “So this is what you were learning at my apt while we all played Vampire, huh?” She replied, “Yup.” It would be easy to be all like, oh man, I shouldn’t have been playing Vampire/D&D/whatever and instead been studying blah blah blah. I wouldn’t have made this decision back in 1998 when said game was happening. Heck, I wouldn’t have made that decision last year while I attended GTS and Gen Con and had one of my best gaming years. This was a decision for now, and everything I have done, everything that I have gone through, has made me who I am today, the person that can make this decision in 2009 and say yeah, let’s rock.

Will I stop making games? Probably for a while, yes. I don’t know that I’ll stop playing, though. See, having been through some really rough times at the hospital with Mom has made me very appreciative of my friends and colleagues who make games. When I was mired in dark thoughts, exhausted and despondent, it was playing these same games with my friends that gave me the mental rest that I sorely needed. When my days have been little more than keeping track of what medicines they are giving Mom, what procedures are they ordering, what progress the doctors are/aren’t seeing, checking out what my gaming group has been up to in setting up our Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies game, or reading a couple of good news from fellow publishers finally putting out books I know they have been working on for a while, or just reading brief reports about other people’s games, these are the things that have kept me sane. So while for me making games is not going to be where my future is at, I am glad that there are others (far better at this than me, I might add) who are making a part of their lives the business and hobby of creating games. They are making a difference in my life, and I thank them for that.

So yeah, I’m gonna be a nurse. I’m gonna concentrate on becoming a nurse first, but I also have in the back of my mind that I might want to eventually continue on to Medicine and become a doctor, maybe an oncologist. But that’s the far future. My immediate goal is to enroll in the Nursing School at FIU, get my BSN and become a Registered Nurse. And I cannot wait to get started on that. I’m already searching for cool, geeky scrubs in my size (I’m not seeing any on Google, in my size or otherwise, so the industry now has a couple of years to make some!).

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

There are days when you are feeling down and something happens that restores not only how you feel but also your general outlook on life. Yesterday was one of those days.

Tuesday was not a good day for me. I felt down, sad and quite lonely, especially at night. Early yesterday morning, nursing a mild hangover, I get an email from (met-in-person-once-but-mostly-online) friend and fellow podcaster Adam Pinilla (The Podgecast) offering some words of support and asking if he had my permission to do something for me, open a ChipIn account to help out. I had no idea what ChipIn was, but it’s not hard to figure it out; I said “sure” and gave him my PayPal email acct. Then I went out to visit Mom at the hospital and do a few other things.

When I got back in the late afternoon and opened Twitter, I saw a barrage of @replies show up on my personal @Highmoon account, and many more on my @GamerTraveler account as well. I followed the link provided by Adam (@bafadam) and saw the page he created at Chipin. I then saw the little widget that tracks the donations and was, honestly, moved to tears.

I could write a long message to every single person who retweeted Adam’s message and to those who donated, but wordy as I am, I can’t quite articulate how I feel. Instead, from myself, my wife and my mother, I simply say to you:

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

My wife got to Miami yesterday, Sunday, early in the morning. Her mom picked her up and they went off to do a bunch of stuff. Late at night, when they went to get my wife’s car from her mom’s house, she realized that they had broken into the car and stolen the radio. They didn’t break any windows so it seems they used a tool, and the radio removal was actually fairly clean, except that when they pulled, they yanked the center panel forward as well, and now the AC is inoperable since one cannot reach the levers.

Needless to say we were both fairly pissed (my wife way more, obviously). Here she is, returning home from having spent a week and a half with me in Puerto Rico, taking care of my mom in the hospital, doing a noble deed, and this is what greets her upon getting back home. I mean, we are firm believers that everything happens for a reason, but it doesn’t stop us from saying a few expletives when something like this happens! As we conversed on the phone the issue of getting a new car came up again; it’s something we have been talking about for a while, something we need. For the record, her car that got broken into is a 96 Toyota Corolla, a great car, but it’s up in years and miles.

This evening I get a call from her that, along with her parents, she’s at South Florida Toyota checking out cars and that they have found a perfect car for her, a used 2009 Toyota Matrix with 14,000 miles. Her parents helped us (well, her really, but you know) with the downpayment and a couple hours later I get this pic on my phone: my wife has now a new car!!!

My wife totally deserves this, and more. She works super hard and it’s good to see that work rewarded. Yes it means some adjustments, but it is all for the better. I know I will feel a lot better knowing she’s in a safer, more dependable car now. Plus, let’s face it, it’s super cute! I love the color, and we know from experience with a friend of ours that the Matrix is spacious enough for all our needs, starting with fitting my frame comfortably inside.

So, there we go, we have a new car! Yay for my wife, many thanks to her parents, and woohoo all around!

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

My Mom simply has no idea the amount of people who have sent her good wishes for her recovery, and I’d like to show her. In order to show her something that will make her feel good and lift her spirits, I have created an account for her on Facebook: Wanda I. Robles Ortiz.

Wanda I. Robles

Create Your Badge

If you’re so inclined, what I’d like to do is have people leave a nice message for her on the Wall. Then I can print out a screen-cap (or show her on the computer once she’s out of ICU) of all the messages. It’s corny, I know, but consider it an online version of a gigantic “Get Well” card.

I’m the one controling the account, so just friend her and I’ll accept it so you can leave your message.

Thanks!