Show Notes - Week of January 13, 2020

You know it has been brutally cold when you comment that -24°C doesn’t feel all that bad. That was yesterday and today it is -21 and climbing. Daily highs will be over the freezing mark which will feel like nirvana, but with snow. 

The last week was filled with work, reading, volunteering, a couple new beers, and a bit of a breakthrough with on the curation of my D&D group. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

CKUA Annual General Meeting:
The CKUA Foundation AGM was yesterday, and I am grateful and humbled to have been reappointed to the CKUA Board for my third and final two-year term. This will be my fourth year serving as Vice Chair of the Board under and with the amazing leadership of our Chair, Cindy Andrew. The past few years have been filled with ups and downs, but happily with more ups than downs. 

CKUA is 92 years old, and my time on the Board will end just after the 94th birthday. Even though I won’t be formally involved after January 2022, I already look forward to being involved with the organization as it approaches its Centennial in 2027. My thoughts for the future were echoed by former CKUA CEO Ken Regan in a nice tweet at the AGM, and I was able to capture a meta moment of Ken in action.

DND OMG:
I commented back in December that I am looking to curate a D&D group, and this week I made some significant progress in that regard. I had thought about creating a post on something like Kijiji to announce that I was looking for a group of like-minded people to play with. It occurred to me that Meetup would be a much better choice for something like that and so I created a new Edmonton-based D&D group called “Casual but Committed”. Casual but Committed will be focused on story and character over rules and stats. There have already been four people join the group and I am hopeful that the personalities will mesh and we will have a good time. I honestly have no idea what will happen if we get a dozen or more players who want to join, but I suppose that is a problem for another day. Now I just need to figure out how to bring that group of people together so that we can learn and start playing. ​

Reading Pile:
Most of my reading these days revolves around the year-long reading projects of “War and Peace” and “The Count of Monte Cristo”. I did finish “Stuart Little” with the younger daughter this week, but that was the extent of my other reading. I know Stuart Little is considered a classic of children’s literature, but I really could not get into it. Stuart is a bit of a knob, to be blunt. He runs off on a fool’s errand, and has little to no ability to plan or control his emotions. I suppose he is just a child, but by today’s standards in youth fiction Stuart is overly emotional and rash. Not exactly a role model, to the point where my daughter commented on what a “weird” story it was. So book #5 for 2020 is done and accounted for, but I was really hoping for more especially after the glowing affection showed for it by the characters in last week’s book “The Tiny Hero of Ferny Creek Library”.

New Beers:
Three new beers this week, and two of them were pretty good. First up was the Een Paar Luilin Belgian Rye Dubbel collaboration between Common Crown and Dandy. I had a friend describe Common Crown as making really solid accessible beers, and Dandy as always pushing the envelope while being less worried about failing miserably. Pairing those two extremes in a collaboration is sure to bring out some interesting tastes in a tempered way, and that is what this beer was. Good stuff, solid flavor, nothing radical but definitely well put together. (3.5 / 5). The next one was the Before 9 Mint Chocolate Stout from Troubled Monk. That is a nice play on the After Eight mint chocolates working with the knowledge that mint and chocolate is a great pair, as is chocolate and stouts. But mint plus chocolate plus stout just did not work for me. (2.75 / 5). Last up was the Lupita Especial Kolsch brewed by Alley Kat for Tres Carnales Taqueria. This was a good beer, and while I don’t think it was their Scona Gold Kolsch which I really like, it was still decent pairing with tacos. (3.25 / 5)

New Words:
Quite a few new words this week given the limited amount of reading. Some of them come from some podcasts I listened to but most come from The Count of Monte Cristo or War and Peace. 

capacious
[kəˈpāSHəs]
ADJECTIVE

1. having a lot of space inside; roomy.

felicity
[fəˈlisədē]
NOUN

1. intense happiness.
2. the ability to find appropriate expression for one’s thoughts.

unction
[ˈəNG(k)SHən]
NOUN

1. the action of anointing someone with oil or ointment as a religious rite or as a symbol of investiture as a monarch.

cambric
[ˈkāmbrik]
NOUN

1. a lightweight, closely woven white linen or cotton fabric.

ecossaise
[ˌākōˈsāz]
NOUN

1. an energetic country dance in duple time in which couples form lines facing each other.

versify
[ˈvərsəˌfī]
VERB

1. turn into or express in verse.

inchoate
[inˈkōət, ˈinkəˌwāt]
ADJECTIVE

1. just begun and so not fully formed or developed; rudimentary.

limn
[lim]
VERB
limns (third person present)

1. depict or describe in painting or words.
2. suffuse or highlight (something) with a bright color or light

reticule
[ˈredəˌkyo͞ol]
NOUN

1. historical a woman’s small handbag, originally netted and typically having a drawstring and decorated with embroidery or beading.

bilious
[ˈbilyəs]
ADJECTIVE

1. affected by or associated with nausea or vomiting.
2. (of a color) lurid or sickly.
3. spiteful; bad-tempered.

execrate
[ex·e·crate]
VERB

1. To execrate is to detest, or to express great hatred.