Author Archives: David Crampton

Veterans Day

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While this is a little late, the photos were taken way before the holiday. It balances out in my head, just sayin’.

While on a walk with Nikki and Cian, we stopped at the Michigan Vietnam Monument Project just east of the Hall of Justice. (In Michigan, even the Super Friends get foreclosed on.)  The atmosphere was tranquil, and as it was a holiday, we had the entire monument to ourselves. I thought over and over that this is something that I should show my father.

The artistry of the architecture struck me. It seems simple and geometric, but much of it is actually suspended above the ground. I couldn’t help but remember my instructions, both in Safety Patrol and the Boy Scouts, that the American Flag never touch the ground when the colors are being raised or lowered. These plaques were afforded the same respect, much as our veterans deserve.

The rest of the plaza was empty and expansive. I thought that it might be meant for future expansion and added plaques, or it might be left for those that we will never be able to properly bury. It might be meant to remind us of those that will never be able to properly come home. The tile set this section apart from the plaques, which hover above concrete. Perhaps this is more meant for many to gather and remember, and to give thanks.

Closest to the Hall of Justice was a miniature rendering of the monument, complete with metal pages engraved with details about the project, if I remember correctly. The entire area struck me as a testament to what we can do when we decide to do something.

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Randomness

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  • We had two Halloweens, one Trunk-or-Treat in Pinkney with the sister-in-law, and the usual Trick-or-Treat on the 31st, this year in Owosso. The kids were excellent, had a great time, and took home an enormous amount of loot.
  • Rewrite of The Remembrance has begun in earnest, and I am surprisingly excited about making it a better book. Make no mistake, if what the wife and I are doing now is any indication, it will be a more cohesive, connected telling.
  • Chapter 11 of the Glass Crown first draft is done. Once I’ve gotten it typed up, it’ll be on its way to the alpha readers.
  • Kids have been sick and not, off and on. That’s to be expected with the severity of the weather change and being on the far periphery of Sandy. I’m still hoping that we get a little more Autumn before Winter settles in.

Daddy Power

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This post was partially inspired by this blog entry, as well as this one.

I’ve been reading a lot of blog posts, news articles, social media freakouts, and the like about what this election means to women. I’m ashamed to admit this, but it means more to me than it has in the past. I have a daughter now.

Sure, these issues mattered to me in the past. I have a mother, a wife, a might-as-well-be-genetically-related sister, and female friends. We’ve talked about the issues that single them out, that take away their control over their health and bodies, that reduce their pay, that can push them into a life of fear. This has been important to me since I began to understand that I wasn’t the center of the universe (not as far back in my youth as I’d like, mind you).

At that point, I was only back-up. My Mom can vote. My wife can vote. So can my sister, and so on. Whether or not they chose to go to the polls, they had a voice. A say. So, my voice, my vote, was cast in support.

My daughter is sixteen months old, and there are people in our government that say that she should not be in control of her body. They want her to be paid less than her brothers for the same work. They want to control not just her, but all women. They want to put women, my daughter included, back in their place.

Acelyn doesn’t have a say about what rights will be left to her when she comes of age. She doesn’t have a voice, or a vote. I will be damned if I let her rights and her control over her own body be taken away from her without a fight.

This Daddy votes. And in this election, he votes for his daughter.

EDIT: Also, this blog post.

#lovelansing ftw

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These mental meanderings were inspired by this post over at City Saunter.

I love Lansing. If we’ve ever spoken before, that’s probably not a surprise. I also love Detroit, though it’s necessarily a long-distance relationship. I love Flint in the same way. It doesn’t hurt that I was born there.

I live in Lansing, and as we continue to jump through the hoops of shopping for and buying a home, I put a great amount of import on living within the city’s borders. Lansing Township, Delta Township, East Lansing, Okemos, Holt, Mason, Dimondale, Dewitt… all nice places to live, I’m sure, but they’re not Lansing. I have lived in the area since 1995 (with a one-year break in Ypsilanti) when I moved from Shelby Township to attend MSU. I’m hoping to live here at least until all of my kids have graduated high school, and moved on to their own lives.

My cheerleading for this city has been met with groans and eye-rolls from many of my friends and family. I tend to get that response when I get passionate about things. Urban sprawl, public transportation, 24-hour diners, and Transformers are all on that list. Ariniko mentions campiness when jumping onto the #lovelansing bandwagon, and that struck a chord. Caring about things, normal everyday things that we see every day, feels campy, and gets the eye-rolls and the groans.

I think I need to be more campy. I think I should shoot for the groan and the eye-roll. I want to feel no embarrassment as I unabashedly enjoy living in Lansng. I want to utterly devastate the place-hate that seems so pervasive in the places I’ve lived in Michigan. When people say that Lansing sucks, I want to grab them by the collar and shout, “For god’s sake, have you EATEN here?!”

I should do that, without the grabbing bit, because that’s assault. In fact, I should ask all kinds of questions! “Have you sat by the Grand River on a nice day? The Red Cedar? Have you strolled around MSU campus, ogling the scenery? (Read that one however you’d like.) Have you gone to Zap Zone or a Lugnuts game or a concert at the Breslin Center or a play at the Wharton or a convention at the Lansing Center? Have you seen a local band at Macs or listened to the blues at the Green Door? The coffee is as plentiful as water in this town, and it is roasted right here! Have you never partaken of the Paramount bean?”

If you’re bored in Lansing, it’s because you’re not looking. If you think that Lansing sucks, let me prove you wrong. Ask me for something to do, some place to eat, where to get a dose of culture, who to contact to get active politically, whatever floats your boat. Unless you’re a sad sack that’s determined to be unhappy, I bet I can find you something to love in Lansing.

#lovelansing ftw.

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SRS BSNS

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This is how a lot of conversations have gone between my Dad, my brother, and I.  The first frame starts off with my Dad asking a serious, and likely relevant, question. The rest is pretty self explanatory.

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Writing Status Update

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A quick note as to the state of ongoing projects.

  • The Adam’s Name kickoff story is in line to be edited by the great and powerful Nikki.
  • It’s in line behind The Remembrance, which, post-edit, is heading for a rewrite and submission to an agent.
  • The Glass Crown is still coming along. I’ve finally found the groove for Chapter 11, and it’s full of revealed plots and machinations! Much like Clue, but with less Tim Curry running around.
  • I’m assembling both permissions and completed posts to assemble and complete a sequel to Todd’s Story. This one is also coming along nicely.

This has been your writery update. Please proceed with caution. Don’t walk under ladders. Smell the milk before you pour it. Don’t take wooden nickels.

On Fashion

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First off, I’d like to thank Jim C. Hines for getting my mind cranking on this topic. His post here echoes my recent glasses shopping experience nearly exactly. (Go ahead and read it. I’ll wait.) While the similarity is a little creepy, it’s really good to know that others are out there having similar experiences.

Instead of taking the gray man approach when the inevitable nerd shaming began as a child, I made an effort to completely change my wardrobe and be “cool”. I remember seeing it as a fun challenge, and so I picked out all kinds of new clothes and got a new haircut. Remember those bright pastels that were out in the late eighties? Remember spike haircuts? My fashion experiment would be described by today’s anthropologists (by which I mean internet denizens) as an epic fail. Whoo boy, there are some school pictures that should be burned, if they haven’t been already.

After that, I abandoned wearing what other kids wanted me to wear (it’d never be right anyway), or what my parents wanted me to wear, and decided to wear what I liked. Lots of dark colors. Black dockers. Black dress shirts with bright ties. Comfortable, oversized shirts. I remember liking B.U.M. Equipment a lot. And when I got my glasses early in Jr. High, I went with half-rim metal frames and huge lenses. I mean, if my vision needed correcting, why would I limit the amount of viewable area corrected? The bigger the lenses, the more of my field of view came into focus.

I was never able to blend into the background, as Jim tried to do. I knew that my physical stature would provide too tempting a target for the taunters and bullies to resist, so I poured every ounce of my clothes-buying power (awww, Mom, can’t I PLEASE put this white shirt back on the rack? They have plenty of black ones over there! C’mon, Mom!) into reflecting who I thought I was. And I took a lot of crap for it.

As the years went on, I wore more and more black. My glasses frames got smaller and smaller, until I eventually tried contacts. A near-miss with an eye infection ruled those out in college. Started wearing trench coats just in time for Columbine to make people afraid of me. I grew my hair long in a skater cut. Shaved it all off, Uncle Fester style.

Then I met Nikki. Tireless, implacable Nikki. She’s gotten me to wear earth tones. Off-white. Respectable coats. My closet has greens and browns and reds and blues in it. I own khakis. I wear shorts when it gets warm. My world has come tumbling down in the past five years. The walls have crumbled before the relentless “How do you know you don’t like it if you haven’t tried it in over 20 years?” And a lot of it, I don’t mind. But to this day, I feel the most like myself when I’m wearing mostly dark colors.

A few months back, we finally made time for appointments with a local optometrist. It was the usual, including the steady slow increase to my nearsightedness, and the ever-present mild astigmatism. When we went looking for frames, we both went with something out of our norm. Nikki picked some very cute frames with some design work on the arms, instead of her usual simple design.

On my last pair of frames, I had deferred to Nikki’s wisdom. My skin had reacted to the metal of the previous frames, so we had picked out a dark brown frame with plastic arms. They were smallish, as I liked them, and the corners around the lenses were rounded. Very nondescript, but not the black or gunmetal that I had purchased in the recent past. This time, like Jim, I wanted something different. They had plenty of styles close to what I usually got, but I wasn’t satisfied. The salesperson suggested a pair of black hipster frames, straight out of the 1960’s military. I tried them on, and was heartily amused when they didn’t look terrible. “You can pull that off.” “Really?” “Definitely.” I looked to Nikki, and she made a face. THE face. I slowly put them back on the rack, making no sudden movements.

I looked around a bit more, trying to find frames designed for large noggins. I found one pair with bowed out arms which seemed to have been designed that way, not mangled into the shape. They were black, and more striking than my usual, but not as crazy as the hipster frames. I slid them on, and they were comfortable. They didn’t squeeze the sides of my head. They didn’t even touch where they weren’t supposed to. I looked in the mirror and… liked what I saw! I turned to Nikki, and while she didn’t make THE face, she was not pleased. They were more pointed than she was used to, she said, and it would just take time to get used to them.

The good news is that she did, and I love these frames. While I echo Jim’s sentiment to all of these that have said “nerd” to me as if it was a bad thing, I send this message to show that despite all of their best efforts, I’m still happiest when I’m just being me.

Video Games & Family

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The living room is where both Nikki and I spend a lot of time. Our dual recliner couch thing is there. Our TV is there. When we have people over, due to the 100+ year old floor plan, many of our guests are there. So, when we were moving in and setting up the entertainment center, we put Nikki’s PlayStation 2 there. We knew that she wouldn’t get a ton of use out of it, what with the imminent release of her gestating fetus, but it’d be there when she had a moment or three to rub together.

Hunter would occasionally play it, as well. He’s the ruling gamer of the house, and would regularly want to take a break from his Game Boy Advance SP and play on something hooked up to a larger screen.

Fast forward a bit. Hunter saved up to buy his own used PS2. Mine came out of storage to serve as a DVD player for the bedroom, then went downstairs to my basement nerd cave for use when I was taking time to myself. Hunter upgraded his handheld to a DS, thanks to his Dad, and passed his GBA SP to Aidan. Cian got a Leapster 2. Nikki and I played EverQuest 2 on our laptops. We gamed, as a family, but casually and separately.

As my relationship with Hunter became gradually more strained, he reached out to play video games with me. This was hit and miss, and I realized that all of the games that I own and enjoy are single player games. Yes, this lesson echoes in many other aspects of my life.

I got bored with EQ2, and let my account expire. We had another podling on the way, and we got news that for Christmas, our family was going to be gifted with a Wii from Nikki’s Aunt and Uncle. Nikki and I made grand plans. We got each of the boys their own Wii remote, each with a different LED color, so there wouldn’t be arguing over remotes. I brought up the Super Nintendo from the nerd cave for classic gaming. I kept my eyes peeled for some classic games for the Dreamcast (have the system, but no games). We let all the grandparents and aunts an uncles know about the incoming Wii, in case they wanted to get the kids games. We’d turn the living room into a place where we could game together, as a family.

Yeah.

The SNES and the PS2 still hardly ever get used. The Wii is primarily a Netflix machine. Nikki plays Facebook and Jewel Quest games on her laptop, but hasn’t played EQ2 in forever, because the game outpaced her graphics hardware. Hunter plays his PS2 or DS in his room, Aidan plays his GBA SP in his room, and Cian… Cian is three. We still game casually and separately. Why? Where did the plan fail?

Mostly with me.

The kids’ excitement can get loud, boisterous, and overwhelming. I have problems dealing with all of the movement and the noise and the crazy, especially when I’m already stressed or emotional. So, instead of the living room being a welcome space for gaming and family time, the kids get swept up to their rooms, so that they can be crazy at a distance. The living room has stayed an adult space, unless it’s for something passive, like TV watching.

Off and on, Nikki has mentioned missing EQ2, and I’ve been getting the urge to try again to finish Myst 3. By this time, I had recognized my previous failure on some level, and wanted to fix it. There was only one machine left in the house with the hardware chops to play EQ2, and it was my desktop, which resided in the basement. (Hey, I can do amazing things with old-ass hardware, and hand-me-downs are free, which fits our entertainment budget.) It also had Portal and Myst Online installed. The rusty gears in my skull creaked and ground, and I had an idea.

Last Sunday, for my alone time, Nikki took the kids out of the house. I sprang into action (more or less) and dismantled the half-a-laptop that was serving duty as our media center PC. I took it downstairs, dismantled my desktop, and brought it upstairs. I shifted consoles around in the entertainment center to make room, and made sure that there would be proper air flow. Didn’t want the desktop overheating. Got it hooked up, set up my wireless trackball and solar keyboard, and set up some links to the sites we’d usually access on the media center PC. I got the wires tucked away out of sight, and took a deep breath. It was the moment of truth. I sat in our recliner sofa thing, adjusted the size of the fonts and icons on the TV (OMG resolution!), and then double-clicked on the EQ2 icon.

That shit looks really good on the big screen.

Since then, there’s been a bit more gaming in the living room. Nikki’s tackling the learning curve of all of the updates that she missed. I’ve made it into the Voltaic Age in Myst 3 on the PS2. There’s been some YouTubin’. Searching is a hell of a lot easier when a keyboard is involved, that’s for sure. This weekend, I’ve played some neglected DVDs for the kids, and they’ve been all over some Wall-E and Incredibles. But, in truth, the real test came today. During nap time, Hunter asked if we could do something together. He was respectful about it and wasn’t pushy, so I told him that it depended on my ability to get my chores done. I hustled, got them done, and came to another moment of truth. I sent a txt message to Hunter (What, you want me to risk waking up the baby by going up to the attic? You crazy?):

“Up for some Mario Kart?”

Achievement unlocked – Stepdad.