Getting Our Geeks Packed: GenCon Indy '10

Today many bloggers with ovaries are packing their bags for a huge national conference. So am I (or at least I will be as soon as I finish this post).

While they're probably looking for their cutest shoes and hip new laptop bags, I'm packing up little capes, felt mustaches, and two pint-sized Brothers Plumber ensembles.

Tomorrow, in Indianapolis, geek vacation officially begins with the opening of GenCon Indy '10. GenCon is a ridiculously fun annual celebration of (mostly) off-line gaming (board games, strategy games, card games, miniature games, role playing games, and live action role playing games).

Popular (non-geek) mythology would claim that this is the time when lonely pallid beings crawl out of their parents' basements to commune with other nihilistic slackers over tables full of multi-sided dice, pizza, Doritos, and Red Bull (Jolt or Yoo-Hoo for the old-school storytellers). This hokey tale is far less intriguing than the truth.

GenCon Indy is a gathering of very smart people with humor and imagination. If your brilliant tech geek is on vacation until next week, chances are good that she is wrapping her mind around some fun challenges while cracking jokes with other quick thinkers. It's not fair though to portray GenCon as a science, engineering, and tech party (though I'm sure one can get good advice on optimizing a laptop or building a laser-based game in any food line), geeks come in all flavors- history, literature, and art geeks abound. I suspect that my summer reading about Georgian England and the creation of the first wide-scale municipal sewer system may come in handy.

GenCon gamers tend to be pretty community oriented in their day-to-day lives. These are the people who have regular parties, volunteer in their communities, and hold the elevator for strangers. The GenCon staff and community are extremely kind to children and their parents, probably because GenCon folks retain more joy and imagination than typical adults.

The come-as-you-are spirit of the convention is really refreshing. I'm pretty sure that I won't overhear any GenCon attendee asking "Does this make me look fat?" because there's just not enough time for that sort of insecure myopia.

Most of the Jones family is pretty excited to return to GenCon (at 21 months, Scout has no recollection of last year). Yesterday Ranger refused to get out of the car when we returned home:

"Buddy, it's too hot to stay in the garage."

"Just get my Mario costume, and we can go to GenCon now."

I had to laugh. And no, he's not still strapped into his car seat.

I am Jim is chomping at the bit to stalk talk with our game designer heroes, and we're both anxious to get some play time on new games and old favorites.

If I don't start packing soon, we will never get to Indy.

***Baby Toolkit is the ongoing saga of a geek family exploring the world. Though posts may appear in the meantime, we will be on vacation until next week. We are Amazon affiliates, so if you shop through an Amazon link through our site, a small portion of the purchase price goes towards paying a portion of our connectivity costs. Thanks.

Fearsome Fireworks: Drowning Out the Noise

As we get near the Fourth, Jim and I are planning for another bang-up holiday with two kids who dislike fireworks sounds.

We are packing up the hearing protection earmuffs for the Fourth of July party surrounded by highly munitioned kamikaze teens (and adults).  We'll cut out before the real boomers are unleashed.

Then the Jones domicile will rock with crazy loud music until some little people have danced themselves into a stupor.



















***Baby Toolkit is the irregularly updated chronicle of citizen geeks who are trying to raise the next generation of Americans with apple pie, multi-tools, and not too much screaming.

The Red Book: Instant Adventure, Just Add Words

Over a year ago, when we asked Ranger about his morning at preschool, we had a hard time getting a clear response.  His responses to any open-ended questions (like "What did you see at the zoo?") came out of left field, and didn't really answer the questions.  Often, he'd prefer to discuss something currently happening or something he wanted to do in the future.

Storytelling was clearly not one of his interest areas.  The resulting vagueness caused a lot of misunderstandings, and I was frustrated that he seemed disinterested in telling me about his experiences.

In the Spring last year, illustrator Barbara Lehman's wordless story The Red Book was featured in Ranger's Scholastic flier.  Intrigued by the cute book's mysterious story, I added a copy to our order.

The first naptime we settled in to read it, I asked Ranger questions about what he saw on each page and what he thought was happening.  Each vibrant page offers a lot of things to observe and describe, and the cumulative story is both magical and clearly understood by an older toddler.

The Red Book is a sweet adventure story about a new friendship where the narrative is told through sequential images that the reader can explore and interpret.  Lehman's nonverbal storytelling encompasses enough mystery and magic that the events mandate explanation with each new discovery.

Ranger really liked telling me the story of a child who finds a red book in a snow drift and the ensuing events.  He empathized when one of the main characters became afraid and celebrated when everything worked out in the end.


At naptime and bedtime, Ranger only wanted to read us The Red Book.  His storytelling got better and better, and we all found new information in the images to make the story richer and more interesting.

A month or two later, I bought all of Barbara Lehman's other wordless books:  Rainstorm, Trainstop, and The Museum Trip.
Each of her stories centers around brave discovery by a curious, courageous, and independent child.  This is a great message for children finding their wings as new readers and storytellers.

These are great books to get your kids talking and reading.  The Red Book and Trainstop each tell the story of a girl while Rainstorm and The Museum Trip have boy primary characters.  While the gender of the protagonist seems to have no influence on Ranger's enjoyment of a book, I like that Lehman varies boy and girl heroes in her adventures.

Ranger's storytelling reluctance receded as he practiced daily with Lehman's books.

These wonderful stories opened some important new avenues of communication for our family.

A visiting friend's observation on Ranger's relationship with these books matched our own perceptions.

Right now Amazon has The Red Book marked down to $9.32 (hardcover or Kindle edition) and a bargain paperback edition of The Museum Book for only $5.78.

If you have a pre-reader chomping at the bit or a reluctant storyteller, definitely check out Barbara Lehman's picture books at your local library.

Which kids' books helped your family?

***Baby Toolkit is a collection of dispatches from some bibliophilic geeks with young children.  While we love to curl up with a good book, we recognize that a lot of kids' books are dreadful.  We also confess that there are a handful of books shoved under our heavy sofa so we never have to read them aloud again.  We have no fiscal relationship with Barbara Lehman or her publishers.  DISCLOSURE: Amazon associations we are, so a small portion of sales through our Amazon links comes back to Baby Toolkit and pays for our internet connectivity (thanks!).

House of Shade and Water: Screen House as a Pool Shelter

Summer is here, and it is a scorcher.  Ranger and Scout (the toddler formerly known as the Raptor) want to be romping outside, while I am driven to stay in the shade.

Our backyard gets full sun most of the afternoon, so I've been reluctant to put out the wading pool and endure the relentless sunshine while the kids slowly boil in the pool.

In a recent bout of cleaning, I rediscovered a SwissGear Screen House we bought two years ago for $20 (as opposed to its MSRP of $130) and promptly gave a few cubic feet of our garage.

My clever friend mentioned putting a canopy tent over her kids' pool, so I decided our screen house might provide an oasis of shade.

The tent itself was a snap to set up with two adults (though it had been a laughable fail with our earlier toddler, preschooler, and one adult construction team).

The screen house not only offers shade and limits bug exposure, it also keeps the beach balls from getting away.

Though I think we may now need a bigger pool.

What summer solutions are lurking in your garage?

***Baby Toolkit is the unsolicited opinion of a couple pasty (rumored to be cave-dwelling) geek parents with boisterous, outdoorsy kids.  We have no fiscal relationship with SwissGear, but we are Amazon affiliates, so if you make purchases through our Amazon links a small portion of the proceeds power our family's secret Large Hadron Collider.  Okay, they just help pay our monthly Internet bill, but maybe someday...

A Motherblogger's Make-over: Improving Moms Without Plastic Surgery

Yesterday I got PR spam selling the virtues of "Mommy Makeover" plastic surgery.

Some PR agency thought that I as a woman with children and a blogger (let's be candid, I'm more of a motherblogger than a sweetie mommy blogger), that I would freely endorse helping mothers

"become a more improved version of themselves"

through the miracles of a tummy tuck, breast augmentation, breast lift, and liposuction.

I don't even wear makeup.  Ever.  The last time I used my blowdryer was to speed-dry a painted name banner two years ago, and the time before that was to de-ice my car's lock in 2003.

Through advertising and marketing, girls are taught from a tender young age that they are not good enough without flawless physical beauty.  It's disturbing.

As women we are continuously taught to hate almost every aspect of the bodies that carry us through life despite those machines' amazing reliability and beauty of design.  When we dislike our physical beings because we don't match impossible standards of appearance, we waste our lives.

During a recent workout, I was so impressed at the weight more experienced members of the class could manage.  As I watched us all in the mirror, they reminded me that each effort, every lift, made me stronger.  When class ended, the same women passed behind my locker discussing how they hated the classroom's mirrored wall and how they spent most of their time focusing on their bodies' faults.  When such strong and beautiful young women obsess over imagined (or minuscule) defects in themselves, it brings everyone down.

For ourselves and for our daughters, I do want moms to become more improved versions of themselves: Please take a week and contemplate what your body does well.

I am glad I can lift my children and other heavy objects.  I rejoice in my ability to see and read.  My hands move across the keyboard with a speed and accuracy that surprises me.  I can laugh until my ribs hurt.  I can climb up a hill or a playground slide.  Though I can't go as far on one breath, I can still glide under the water for a surprisingly long time.  When I smile, people tend to smile back.

This body is more than a casual transport for my brain, and it can do things now that it may not be able to do in 10 years.  Today offers me the gift of an able body, and I can revel in that miracle.

What do you like about yourself?

For an engaging documentary on American culture and female body image check out America the Beautiful (also on Netflix live streaming).

***Baby Toolkit is the mostly unsolicited opinion of a geek family.  These are not the Joneses that everyone is trying to keep up with.  We are Amazon affiliates so a portion of purchases made through our Amazon links defray the costs of the growing empire that is Baby Toolkit.  We have no fiscal relationship with the movie America the Beautiful or its partners.

My Bad Romance: Facebook

Hey.


When we met I thought we might be friends, but time has taught me that you cannot be trusted to respect my confidences.  And more than that, I'm tired of our ever changing relationship.  This perpetual Easter egg hunt for snippets of actual content gets caught up in the general gossip of other people's lives (what groups they're joining and who is invited to what party).  Time spent with you just feels too much like high school.


Sure, I'm thankful that you've reunited me with a few dear friends, but I just cannot take your incessant chatter.  I especially hate that you may be selling me out while you're wasting my time.


So, Facebook, this means delete not deactivate.  If you find anything that belongs to me, just throw it out.  I hope you will forget we ever met.


Adrienne

Captivity: A Haunting Hoax

...the strange, true tale of the Fox Sisters, the enigmatic family of young women who, in upstate New York in 1848, proclaimed that they could converse with the dead.

These words in the publisher's book jacket description of Deborah Noyes' Captivity set my geek heart all aflutter.  Those interested in American literature, social history, religious history, magic (top hats and card tricks variety), hoaxes, and/or marketing usually have a passing acquaintance with those wily Fox Sisters who opened the floodgates of the American imagination to "the other side."

The chance to "meet" them through a well-researched novelization was a bit of time travel I could not resist.  I also wondered if the author, like so many of their contemporaries, would be able to resist their siren song?  The centrality of the Fox Sisters suggested to me that the tale would either thrive on intrigue or belly-flop into a quagmire of hokum.

I contacted publisher Unbridled Books for a review copy, and I am pleased to tell you that Captivity offers hours of immersive reading.  This is a great summer read and a vacation unto itself (no beach required).

Noyes' story of a famous hoax ends up investigating the real things that haunt us.  This ghost story for skeptics includes mysterious happenings (not of the supernatural variety) that keep pages flying (as if under their own power!) until the very last page.

Captivity transforms history into warm-blooded fiction and marries it to historical fiction of the same era.  Readers who liked The Devil in the White City or The Thirteenth Tale will find themselves quickly caught up in the world of the Fox Sisters and (fictional) zoological artist Clara Gill.

Captivity's great pace, interesting characters, and a potent combination of history and fiction make this book a Baby Toolkit top summer reading recommendation.

You can see other books we've been reading, loving, criticizing, contemplating reading, and condemning to the dustbin (library donation box) at Goodreads.

Captivity is available in hardback ($25.95, currently ~$19 at Amazon).

What are you reading?

***Baby Toolkit is the independent opinion of two geek parents.  We're preparing for a great summer vacation by getting a jump start on some gripping fiction.  DISCLOSURE: We received a review copy of Captivity from Unbridled Press.  We have no fiscal relationship with Deborah Noyes or Unbridled Press.  We are Amazon associates, so a portion of the proceeds from sales through our Amazon links pay for our internet connection (thanks, Amazon shoppers!).