Joy Archives - Lunar Obverse

My entire Rose City Comic Con 2024 experience

Joy

I went to Rose City Comic Con Saturday. My co-worker and team lead, J., very graciously gave me 3 day badges they and their spouse couldn’t use. They’ve been sick with Covid-19 all week, maybe longer, and they were not feeling up to the convention. So their loss is my gain! I do love going to the convention.

I wanted to do a cosplay but I wanted to do a subtle one. I didn’t want to go all out. So I put on hole-y jeans, a ratty t-shirt, my well-worn Dodgers cap, and beat up Chucks, and strapped my Pip-Boy on my arm. I was a random wastelander! Just the thought of it made me smile.

If I was really doing it right, I’d have dirt on my face and clothes, and a pack full of odds and ends, like a caps stash, a stimpack, some Rad-X and Radaway, stuff like that. Maybe next year! I could make a backpack with those items hanging off them. It’s too bad Andy & Bax closed; military surplus gear is perfect for stuff like that.

Also need protection. After all, the wasteland is a dangerous place. Something small, like the Delivererer or That Gun or a 10mm pistol. Could I 3D print one of those? I still have to make use of my co-worker’s 3D printer at some point.

I wish I could have gotten a picture of my dad’s face when I walked down the stairs and posed, arms akimbo, and announced I was doing a subtle cosplay! His flash of confusion, spotting the Pip-Boy, and his snort of laughter was just perfection. He’s never played the Fallout games but he did watch the TV show and liked it well enough; he recognized the thing on my arm.

I spent probably a good 20-30 minutes trying to find legal parking near the convention center. I ended up parking at Lloyd Center and walking. Technically illegal but I wasn’t the only convention-goer parking there. They can’t tow us all! OK they could probably tow us all but the likelihood of that is low.

Several people complimented me on my Pip-Boy and I told every single one of them “Oh, this thing? I found it on a dead jerk in a blue jumpsuit.” I wasn’t just proud of this cosplay, I had a ready-and-waiting joke to open a conversation with.

And then… the convention itself. Inside was fucking jam fucking packed. There were so many people, and it was so warm in there. I was drenched in sweat, and I was just wearing a t-shirt and jeans. I couldn’t imagine the people in full costumes with masks and cloaks and all that. My wrist under the Pip-Boy was soaked; sweat dripped down onto my hand. Hated it.

So many people. I was never comfortable in crowds, being a neurodivergent introvert, but today was more people than I’ve seen in a very long time. The pandemic really has cooked my brain. I masked up inside, and wandered around the show floor, and looked at the cool costumes, and then after maybe a half-hour or 45 minutes, had to go outside, drink some water, take my mask off, and sit in the shade under a tree.

I did that cycle one more time, and then just could not bring myself to go back inside. I left; walked back to my car, and drove to Kay’s Bar for a beer and a giant jalepeño burger, before heading home for a nap. How exciting. I can’t be in a crowd anymore. Great.

Mom’s Eulogy

Joy

While I’m attending XOXO Fest, I’m running older writings that have not yet been published. Here is the eulogy I wrote for my mom’s funeral, back in July of 2001. Probably this would be more symbolic if I posted it on an even anniversary, but regardless here it is. Enjoy. I’ll be back soon, recharged and ready to create again soon.

On Christmas of 1993, I gave my mom a blank book. I intended for her to use it as a journal, to record her thoughts, her poems or whatever she wanted to write down.

She kept the journal, off and on, until 1999. The book spans five years of her life. There is a gap coinciding with her first bout with cancer. I think that she was embarrassed by it, even in so private a place as her journal.

In going through her belongings, I found and kept her journal. I completed the circle; I gave it to her, and I’d like to think that she would have wanted me to have it now.

I sat down with it a couple of days ago, and read it straight through in one sitting. I had never, during her life, thought to read her journal. My mother was a private person; there are still parts of her life that I will never know. I had a question, however: what did my mother feel was important enough to write down?

First, it’s interesting to me to make a comment on what she didn’t write about. Herself.

In five years of keeping a journal, my mother commented on her health exactly three times. On December 29, 1993, she wrote: “Max is not up to play today. He has a slight fever and cough. I have one too. I hope we all stay well this year.”

Then, five years later, on December 30, 1998, she wrote of a Christmas trip to Cancun: “I was not feeling well and it took us four hours to leave Mex.”

Finally, on February 10, 1999, she wrote: “I went to the Dr. and have to take Blood pressure pills.” That was the final entry.

Three times in five years, she wrote about herself. And what fills the rest of the pages of her journal? What was important to her, important enough to write down, off and on, for that length of time? What did she want to record, presumably in a place that only she would see?

Family.

Entry after entry, she talks about her family. Everyone appears in there. She talks about dad coming home from work and taking her out to dinner. She talks about Lisa, stopping by to visit her, or going over to Lisa and Bill’s house. She talks about me, moving to Texas to follow a silly dream of working for a silly computer company. She talks about hearing from Donna on Mother’s Day, and Kevin, and Daniel. She talks about her sisters and brothers; Carol coming over to stay the night, or taking a road trip to the beach with Mary and Carol to visit Marge and Bill. She talks about dinner with Don and Helen. Aunt Lois appears in there.

And Max. She wrote about Max a lot. December 30 1993: “Max and I spent the day together. He is joy.” I can’t believe that that was a typo.

She felt that way about all of her family. Her family was joy. This was a woman who knew what was important in life. She rarely mentioned things, and money doesn’t make a single appearance in her journal. Her family, however, is front and center.

My mother was a human being, like all of us. She had strengths and weaknesses, like all of us. I really hesitate to try to force a single lesson out of a life as rich as hers was. But if I had to do it, if I had to point to one lesson that we could all take away from having had her in our lives, it would be this: family should be the one thing worth remembering.

What do you think about cats?

Joy

I said goodnight to my friends and logged out of 7 Days to Die. From my computer room, I could hear the faint noise of a TV drama playing downstairs. The wall of the stairwell flickered light and dim. I got up, picked up my empty 20 ounce beer can, and went downstairs.

“Hello!” I dragged out the vowels, trying to sound goofy.

Dad sat on the couch, watching TV. He angled his head to his left. His neck, now pinned with steel rods, didn’t have much articulation left. “Helloooo!” he said, mimicking my goofy tone.

“You’re back from the bar?”

“Yeah. I said it was me when I came in but you didn’t hear me.”

I patted his shoulder as I walked behind him; the couch was placed so the path behind it led to the back door and the kitchen. “I was online playing games with Max and Luke. Had my headphones on.”

“Oh.”

In the kitchen, I turned on the water to rinse the can out. There were a bunch of bottles by the sink, mostly glass Mexican Coke bottles. I kept the water running and started rinsing them out. Some of the bottles had a greenish tint to the glass; others appeared clear, at least in my yellowish kitchen light.

Behind me, through the open window between the living area and the kitchen, dad said “There were a lot of women at the bar tonight.” He said it deliberately but not slowly.

I chuckled. “Is that good, or bad?” Dad is an incorrigible flirt, even at 86ish years old.

“Well, that’s good!” Now his tone was bright, cheerful. “There were a couple of ladies in there I’d never seen before. One was a stone cold fox.” His use of old slang made me smile. I felt sentimental. Nostalgic.

I made a new… pile? Stack? What’s the word for a bunch of bottles standing up next to each other? Pile or stack implies verticality; these were horizontally arranged. I could hear dad grunt a little as he levered himself forward and up off the couch. He pointed the remote and turned off the TV, cutting his show off in mid-plot.

I poured a little dish soap on a sponge, and turned the faucet water warm but not hot. I started scrubbing the dishes and untensils in the sink.

Dad walked past me, tapping a cigarette out of a pack. He paused in the kitchen entryway, watching me wash. “I should have taken out the recycling.”

I tsked. “You don’t have to do that. You’re a guest.”

“Oh, fuck that. I can pull my own weight.” He opened the back door, and through the kitchen window I saw the flare of orange as he lit up in the dark on my patio.

I carried the bottles, three or four at a time, and dumped them in the recycling bin hung above my washer and dryer, in the closet. I was careful not to open the folding door to that closet too far, or it would prevent the back door from opening up, in case dad finished and wanted to get back in. The clear bottles and the green ones all made the same clinking noise. Yes, the bin was full, but I didn’t want to take it out tonight. That’s a tomorrow job.

That done, I saw dad’s bald head and beard softly glowing in the tobacco ember, outlined by the kitchen light through the window. I leaned against the door frame, watching him.

“What do you think about… cats?”

He again angled his shoulders to point his head at me, cigarette held between two fingers. “I like cats.” His tone of voice was exactly the same as his comment before about women being at the bar. “You, uh.. got a supplier?”

Was that a dirty joke? Or was he just being funny? I smiled. I snorted a short laugh. “I was just thinking, now that I’ve got a stable job, I’d like to have a cat. I think I can take care of it now.” Dammit, a surge of emotion threatened my eyes with tears. This moment. I wanted to remember this moment. I resolved the write it down, soon. “Maybe keep you company during the day, at least while you’re here.”

“Yeah. Cats are cool.” Dad took a drag on his cigarette, then leaned down and rubbed it out against the concrete. Standing back up as straight as his broken back would let him, he burst into a sudden arm-out throw, tossing the butt over the fence into the vacant lot behind the townhouses.

He chuckled, recognizably the same sound I make, the family sarcastic laugh. “Someday someone’s gonna do something with that lot, and they’re going to be pissed at all the butts over there.” As he walked past me back into the house, he didn’t, couldn’t, look up at me. For most of my adult life he’s been taller than me. Not anymore. I don’t think he could see the sad affection in my eyes.

Surprise Joy

Joy

When you start looking for something, you start to find it more and more. Or maybe you just notice it more. I’ve been trying to find a little joy in my life. Just starting out I didn’t find much, but it’s starting to show up more and more.

Portland has been having a heat wave for the past week or more, with temperatures in the high 90s and even reaching 100 a couple of days. Since Portland is not built with high heat in mind, unlike say Phoenix, so folks are generally miserable unless they’ve been able to spend the money to upgrade. I’ve got a single window air conditioner unit that I install when the temperature goes up, and it works OK.

The office I work in has decent air conditioning so my work day is covered. I tend to buy lunch so I have to leave to get food, but there are plenty of close places for foods. My car, my old slowly-falling-apart mid-90s Honda, used to have working air conditioning but sometime before this summer it stopped blowing cold air, so my commute home has been sweaty.

Driving in the heat does not spark joy, not for me. I’m not a fan of driving in traffic, and being uncomfortably hot increases the stress and anxiety. With the windows down, the noise makes it hard to hear music; music would help, surely.

So there I was, last week, driving home in the hot, hot, heat. This was before my recent confidence boost, so I was anxious and full of self-doubt, trying to talk myself into accepting that this was a good job, that I did fit in, that I could do this. Will I fit in here? I stopped at a Plaid Pantry to pick up some Mexican Coke and a lottery ticket, because a) my dad and I love Mexican Coke, and b) can’t win if you don’t play, right?

Picture, somewhat faded from being taken facing the sun, of a stair and sidewalk that leads between two rows of townhouses. On the sidewalk, in the middle distance, is a five foot tall inflatable orange dinosaur. — This little spot of color made my evening.

I pulled in to my parking lot. I drove toward my reserved parking spot. And sitting on the sidewalk between the townhouses was a splash of bright orange: a 5′ tall inflatable orange dinosaur. A delightful and unexpected sight, putting a smile on my face. Where did this dinosaur come from and why is it here?

On closer inspection, the dinosaur had a hose fitting near its foot, and its mouth had a sprinkler outlet. One of my neighbors had bought this and had been using it (or planned to use it) to keep cool from the heat. I’ve seen the neighbor kids playing with the hose, or water balloons; this was just another sun mitigation tactic. A silly and fun mitigation.

I got a selfie with the dinosaur, because of course I did. Looking at the picture now, I don’t look very happy. I’m good at masking, turns out. I blame the hot, hot, heat for my blank expression, but, reader, inside my heart sang. I was so happy to have this surprise dinosaur outside my apartment, you have no idea.

Selfie of the author, a middle-aged white man wearing glasses, an Adidas baseball cap, and a green plaid shirt, standing in front of an orange inflatable dinosaur. Apartment windows and doors are in the background. — I may not look happy but believe me, I was.

A sign from the universe that says “you never know when something silly will drop in to your life, Brian” which is the kindest sign I could have received. Thank you, universe.

The Joy of Beverage

Joy

When I say, or write, the word beverage, I always smile. The positive associations between that word and my delight were installed a long, long time ago, when I was very very young. Let me explain.

I did a search for the word beverage. Hard to believe I’ve never told this story on the blog before. “It’s a core formative memory, and I link it, at least in my head, to another core memory, one of the earliest behaviors I can remember in my mental chronology of myself.

As I’ve written about before, I learned to read at an incredibly early age. It was pre-Kindergarten, I’m almost sure of it. The family legend is that when we would all go somewhere in the car, I would read out the signs on the side of the road. I associated the primary colors and simple four or five letter words, and through questions of my parents and repetition, cracked the code of the English language.

We’d pull up to a Stop sign and I’d say “Stop!” We’d pull on to a highway and I’d see the yellow sign and shout “Yield!” I loved words and reading, and I wanted to share this mystic secret with everyone around me.

To this day I have a deep-seated urge to say out loud traffic signs when I’m driving. I warn new friends about it when we go somewhere; my old friends are surely used to the behavior by now.

My family tells another legend about my reading, though I don’t know which came first. My mom told the story of walking in to the living room one Sunday and saw me and my 13-month older sister laying down looking at the colorful Sunday comics from the newspaper. Except as mom watched, we weren’t just looking at the pictures. I was reading them to my sister.

This connects to beverage, I promise you. Where would I have seen the word beverage? Why I would have seen it on menus in diners and restaurants. Picture us now, on those road trips and nights out, the Moon Clan approaching a counter to order, or sitting down with menus, and the little tow-headed round faced boy shouting out “Beverage!” as soon as I spotted it.

My mouth loved the shape and feel of the word. The hard B, the similar but softened V, the buzzy G. A linguist who applies Grimm’s Law could tell you if those sounds are connected; maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. I just love them, in that order, all together.

Dad would chuckle and ask me if I wanted a beverage, which I did (I preferred 7-Up over Sprite, Pepsi over Coke). Mostly though I wanted to find that three sylable word in the sea of words before me, and yell it out like I was playing a game of Bingo and I’d filled out my card. Beverage!

Knowing this, it feels weird to me that I have used the word so little in the decades of runnning this blog. It only appears in eight posts, which seems low. This word is a source of a happy memory for me; I smile when I say or write it. I don’t feel any shame or embarassement. I learned to human by learning a game with words. I won’t deny myself that joy moving foward.

Beverage!

Marie Kondo but for bookmarks

Joy

In my browser (I use Edge, don’t @ me) in the bookmarks bar, I have five folders, left to right: Weather, Tshoot, Money, Funtimes, and Other favorites, pinned to the far right.

Weather is rarely used; it’s not only got weather sites, but sites for reporting the Air Quality Index and smoke from fire, since Portland and the Pacific Northwest now has a Fire Season.

Tshoot has links to my network router/cable modem, my Synology, and a bunch of bookmarks for collecting network information and troubleshooting Windows and Mac computers. I use this more often than the ones in Weather but not as often as the rest.

Money has multiple sub-folders but they’re all related to my budget, my bank and credit cards, utilities and bills, memberships and subscriptions, healthcare costs, paycheck calculators, you name it. The top bookmark here is to my budget spreadsheet.

I use this folder a lot, and I mean a lot. I’m opening something from here multiple times per day if I’m sitting at my computer. It might be unhealthy, how often I’m using something from here. I’m using it more now that I have a job and income, to help plan out paying down my debts, than I did when I was unemployed and had no income in-coming.

You can kinda sense a theme in these three, right? They’re informational or related to responsiblities and duties I have. There’s very little joyful about figuring out if the weather is going to kill me or not, or finding out why my Xfinity connection has dropped again.

Next one up is Funtimes, and it’s where I put links for entertainment sites, time-killers, social media, as well as sub-folders for running my online D&D game, or other gaming-related sites: wikis for games I play, that kind of thing. You would think that this folder is full of nothing but joyful things, right? It’s there in the name: Fun Times ahead, all ye who click here.

You might think that; you’d be wrong. In fact, the observation that kicked off this whole post was when I opened that folder this morning. I saw that the top folder in there, the first thing my mouse cursor hovers over when scrolling through the links, is “Site Management”. That’s where I put links to login to this blog, the hosting site, the Analytics page, domain renewal, DNS, that kind of thing.

I’m the one who put it there but I couldn’t tell you what that has to do with fun times. I do enjoy writing but I admin my blog as basic maintenance and upkeep. I like having a well-maintained blog but it’s not joyful, y’know? Seeing that today, realizing what it means, I moved that folder over to Tshoot, where it fits better.

Below that folder is Creative, and it’s full of folders. The top one in Creative is Writing Tools. In here lives a link to my favorite online text editor, Writer from Big Huge Labs, which is where I draft all my posts. This is joyful. If I’m writing in here (as I am now) I’m freely putting down words to express an idea, and that is joyful.

The rest of the folders in Creative are for drawing and art programs/pages like Inkarnate, which is joyful for me to use. Also a folder for Generative AI links (yes, I use these, but sparingly, as I’ve explained). Still looking for more ways to add joy to my days.

The Joy of Eating

Joy

Still thinking about joy, motherfucker, do I feel it? I probe for the feeling of joy the way someone would poke the socket where thier tooth used to be. It’s missing. I don’t know where it’s gone. I have to think about it, which I know is less than ideal. It should bubble up from my feelings-place. Laughter and happiness, not cold analysis.

I might need to make it a practice to try to spark joy in my life. I will have to seek it out. Find joyful things, expose my heart to them, ask, “what does this make you feel?”

But I did find one thing recently that always makes me feel good in the momemnt. A category of thing: food. There are many kinds of foods, meals, that I just love. I can list a few of them, and how they make me feel.

Brian’s Burger

Close up of a homemade cheeseburger; lettuce, tomato slices, white onion slices, pickles and banana peppers, along with catsup, spill out of it onto the aluminum foil that wraps it up. In the background is a Yeti microphone, a bottle of Squirt soda, and the bottom edge of two computer monitors. This person is eating at their desk. — I made this!

There’s nothing like biting in to a big old cheeseburger. To me, the perfect cheeseburger starts with thick, medium-rare beef patty that’s been seasoned with salt, pepper, onion and garlic. To begin, in-between a toasted bun (Kaiser rolls are great), I want catsup, spicy brown mustard, thick slice of medium cheddar cheese (as an Oregonian, it’s hard to beat Tillamook brand) that’s been melted onto the patty when it was cooked. Garnish with fancy lettuce (I tend to buy 50/50 spring mix of baby greens and spinach), slices of pickles, white or yellow onion, tomato slices (Roma tomatoes have the best flavor).

Add some banana peppers just for fun. Maybe a drizzle of sriracha for spice. Also could add slices of bacon for flavor and texture. Now that’s a good burger. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. Making and eating one of these is absolutely a joyful practice for me.

Pad Thai

There are meals that I love that I don’t know how to make. One of these is pad Thai noodles with chicken. At its most basic it’s a sauce made of tamarind paste and fish sauce, stir fried rice noodles, and veggies and some protein (chicken is my favorite). I know that in Thailand it’s not really fancy food, it’s street food, simple and easy to make and serve. Just haven’t attempted to make it myself.

I remember a trope on sitcoms back in the 80s and 90s was someone taking a pad Thai class. It was a signal that that character was pretentious and upper-middle class. They had spare time enough to take a class to make a specific kind of Asian food. It’s entirely possible that that idea soaked into my brain and has created a barrier that won’t let me learn how to make it. Kinda sad, if true.

But eating it is absolutely a joy for me. Accordingly, when eating it, I love the tangy sauce, the slippery noodles, and the cruncy bits of bean sprouts, green onions, sliced carrots, as well as the ground peanuts (I always order extra ground peanuts.) Simple, filling food that I would eat many times a week if I could. Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t know how to make it? I might learn to get tired of it. Until then, though, joy.