It started a couple of days ago.
Even though we’re non-religious, Rasa loves the Christmas season. She loves decorating the house and putting up the tree and doing all the stuff associated with the holiday. At least the non-secular version. To be fair, when I was a kid, I really loved going to friends’ houses to help them decorate their trees. It’s a great family thing.
That little elf to the left there, that’s Nykštukas. Now, in general, he’s only an elf. He’s used as a logo for various products and as the name for schools. He could be one of Santa’s helpers. In fact, the literal translation from Lithuanian is really any kind of small fantasy creature.
After our recent trip to England, we weren’t sure we’d get another chance to go anywhere this summer. Rasa certainly wanted to maybe take a day trip to the beach, or we could hit the labyrinth park again, or really, just anything to get out of the house. Thing is, with the economy the way it is, not to mention our work schedules, it just didn’t seem likely anything major would happen.
I don’t know about you, but I have always been fascinated by the inner workings of mechanical watches. They are a marvel. Any intricate mechanical devices intrigue me.
Continue reading “Watchmaking”
Day 7 – June 30
Thursday was the last day we had anything planned or pre-booked. Today’s adventures were a boat ride to explore the “Jurassic Coast” and then meeting up with Rasa’s colleague Dai and his wife. The boat was leaving from Poole, a little bit further along the coast than Bournemouth (where we had been a few days earlier and where we would be meeting up with Dai) and since it had a precise departure time, so did we.
Day 6 – June 29
Honestly, today was the day around which this entire trip had been planned. Today was the day we were going to Paultons Park, home of Peppa Pig World. I’m not sure where we first heard about it, but once we did know it existed, Monki was determined to get us there. The park was about 20 minutes from where we’re staying and I was determined to get there early, like when the park opened, not having faith that it wouldn’t be crowded like Legoland was.
Day 5 – June 28
Tuesday, after Legoland, was supposed to be a rest day. In our planning, we knew we’d have been going strong for several days, sleeping in four different places in 5 nights, and so we figured that we’d take it easy before heading off to Peppa Pig world on Wednesday.
Except…
Day 4 – June 27
Monday morning came and Amy had to go to work. Luckily, we were up early enough to say good-bye and thank her and Clive once again for their generosity. We also had to say goodbye to the cats.
Day 2 – June 25
Waking up in Nottingham, we had to figure out our plans. Before we had parted the night before, I had declined John’s offer of attending a birthday party for the child of a friend of his so we were definitely Oxford bound, it was just a matter of how and when to best get there. We would spend the next few days staying with my old friend Amy and her husband Clive. I met Amy somewhere around 28-30 years ago when we both worked for the Groundlings in LA. I was a booth jockey and she was a stage manager. Since then, we’d kept in touch over social media, even managing to see each other once or twice since she’d moved to the UK. Now, she had graciously offered us all a piece of futon covered flooring in her craft room and we gladly took her up on the offer.
Prologue
Back in February or March, Rasa was informed of a conference in her field coming up in Manchester, England at the end of June. We talked it over and decided it would be a good idea to go. It would be her first in-person conference as a PhD student (due to the pandemic) and was scheduled to include a number of big names in her field as participants, including her unofficial supervisor (whom she would be able to meet in person for the first time).
Here in Lithuania, Father’s Day is always on the first Sunday of June, which means it could be anywhere from the 1st-7th. Children’s Day, however, is always on June 1, so there is a chance, although it didn’t happen this year, that they will fall on the same day. But this year, on May 31, Monki was very excited for Children’s Day because, as she rightfully points out she is “a children” and so expects presents and wonderful things on this day.
My time working on Comic-Con Baltics 2022 started with working on Comic-Con Baltics 2020, when I interviewed RJ Mitte to announce his attendance. Of course, then COVID hit and everything was postponed.
Then postponed again. And again.
Continue reading “Comic Con Baltics 2022”The Disney film Encanto is pretty big in our house and, for some reason, Chronicle Books has decided to release the big art book, The Art of Encanto for free online. So I thought I’d share it.
Seriously? It’s the end of 2021 already? How did that happen? I mean it’s been a helluva year for sure. We’ve seen friends and relatives die, related to COVID and not. We’ve seen new governments take control and, in some cases, make things better and in some cases make things much, much worse (and while I’d like to say this is an objective statement, I, better than anyone else since I repeat it several times every semester, know there is no such thing as objective.)
Continue reading “2021 wrap up”
This is my last entry in this year-long Storyworth project. It’s number 52 and even though I could write more, I think 52 entries is a good number. I wrote my first one back on December 22, 2020 and now it’s December 29, 2021 and since I was late a few times, this seems like a great place to finish up. Continue reading “How was the Storyworth project for you?”
Getting the Hang of Thursdays 