Sam and I both have had lots of extra work lately coming in from some new clients, for which we and our checking account are very thankful. While that’s great news for us, it hasn’t been so great for the poor blog. No time to think, let alone write witty and incisive blogs. (I’m probably kidding myself that I ever actually do this, but leave a girl her illusions, k?)

I would say we’ll be back on the horse soon but the work just seems to keep coming. This summer is shaping up to be absolutely nothing like last year’s slow, lazy days… And I thought we were busy last summer! Or maybe I am remembering a fictional summer of long ago that was not busy. The best I can say is, we’ll try to keep posting now and then.

In the meantime, if you really must have some of our writing to peruse, you can always find it at the various Second Waves:

Upper Peninsula Second Wave

Northwest Michigan Second Wave

Mid Michigan Second Wave

And in other fine publications like the Marquette Monthly, the Saginaw News, Northeast Hunting and True North.

(This is really not a complete client list; I can’t provide the whole list here, but if you could see it you would so understand why we work All The Time.) But far be it from me to complain about the blessing of too much work. There are too many people out there struggling for any work at all; we can’t count ourselves anything but phenomenally lucky.

Thanks for reading and understanding. Lots of love to you all!

The whole uniting-our-families thing has been on both of our minds lately, and it’s brought up yet another subject: genealogy.

I have the good fortune of being in a family where both my dad and mom’s sides have excellent genealogist family members and a well-mapped family tree.

I remember poring through records and trees on both sides as a kid, and finding it wildly fascinating, the lives of these people, like something from a history book, except that they were related to me. How cool!

My interest in genealogy has waxed and waned over the years, as I’ve undertaken a bit of research here and there for friends, or for an article on something historical. But no-one among the Coffeys (my mom’s side) or the Hortons (my dad’s) needed me to work on the family trees, as they were pretty well taken care of.

So I think, once I officially become part of Sam’s family (the Egglestons), I am going to approach them about tracking down their family tree. It’s something both Sam and I are interested in finding out about, and I’m sure I’ll learn a lot about genealogy and researching it in the process.

There are several generations still alive, so that will be helpful in tracking the most recent family members. I hope to find out the rest through records and online research, and it should help that Sam’s family is in at least the fourth generation to live here in Marquette County, so the county records office will be very useful.

I’ve been excited about the possibilities for quite some time, but I wanted to wait until I was legally an Eggleston before delving into the history books, just out of respect.

I think while I’m at it, I will ask my family members for copies of my own genealogy. It’ll be nice to have all that information in one place, and who knows what connections I can find.

Do any of our readers do genealogy? I’ll be a relative newbie; beyond census and local records, I’ll be out of my depth. So if you have any great suggestions or useful tools, let me know.

The OLD Fantastic Four cast... really.

I’d be a liar if I told you I didn’t love comic books. I still collect a few, actually, though not nearly at the break-neck, wallet-deflating pace I used to in my teenage years. Of course, that reduction in the collection was simply due to the local comic shop closing when I was younger, and the cost of comics skyrocketing until I needed a full-time job just to support the habit.

Nowadays, I’m not quite so quick to drop my money on the counter. I’m not picking up comics to collect them with hopes they will fund my retirement in the future. Nor does a scantily-clad lady on the cover even get my attention anymore. Now I am mostly about storyline, and characters I really like. Doctor Who gets purchased for the lovely Kimberly, while I have a standing order for any and all Moon Knight comics.

But, what does get my attention these days isn’t on the paper inside those comic covers, but rather on the big screen. Super hero movies are coming out in droves, and I’m there buying tickets to each and every one of them. Some aren’t as good as others, but some are really great. So why do I go to all of them? Because I want them to keep making them. More and more, please.

The reason is simple: They didn’t have the capabilities to make these great comic movies when I was a kid. Sure, there was Batman (not really a SUPER hero, but rather a damn-good trained vigilante) and some Superman and Spiderman stuff. There was even a Flash television show and a not-so-hot Captain America movie (I’m anticipating this one to be better than that one). There was even a Fantastic Four movie that was so bad, it was never released. Thankfully, they released two more that were actually watchable (and, yes, I know the NEW Captain America is actually the same guy who plays the Human Torch in the most recent FF films).

The ability to use computers to create realistic-looking action and effects is mind blowing. It’s really great stuff. It is impressive to watch, entertaining and it allows the creators to make movies that are much more along the lines of the imaginations of those of us who read comics.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a super hero. My powers changed a lot, depending on my age (Superman powers when I was around 5, Wolverine’s abilities when I was an older teenager and the Invisible Woman’s capabilities somewhere in between. Most recently, probably the power of Captain Marvel–Shazaam!–or maybe just the ability to wake up without aching and still being tired.).  Having the movies makes me not have to live vicariously through my imagination.

So, I’m off to Thor (right now, actually) and I’m looking forward to it. Today, I get to be witness first-hand to a god coming to Earth. How frickin’ cool is that?

‘Nuff said.

Author’s Note: This is the latest post on my new travel blog, There and Back Again Go here to read more of them!

Sam & I are starting to look at routes and stops for our two-week, round-the-U.S. honeymoon this summer, so exciting! We’re using the AAA trip advisor site along with some other travel sites we usually go to. How do you plan long trips? Any great ideas on how to plot out such a long road trip?

One of the games that has really caught my attention isn’t new, it’s from 2007, and it’s called Jeanne d’Arc. The new thing about it for me is that we just recently added a PSP to our gaming platform collection, making it pretty dang complete now. (Xbox 360, PS3, DS, DSi, Wii and PSP, what else do I really need to buy?…) Anyway.

So everyone in the household has been trying out various new and old games on the PSP, and Jeanne d’Arc is among the most awesome I’ve come across so far. It’s a hybrid of a strategy and RPG game, and I probably don’t need to tell you who the heroine & main character is. In case you for some reason have not heard of Joan of Arc (as we Americans usually say), well. I can’t think of a good reason why you wouldn’t have.

Moving on. After an English attack on Jeanne’s French village, she rallies together a group of would-be warriors against the English (who are ruled by a demonic-child King Henry VI, and his evil sorcerer adviser). You lead the party as Jeanne, and it’s pretty typical party-style play, with an interesting element of strategy when it comes to who to position where during an attack. Some party members’ motions are limited, as are some actions, like healing, where you have to be within a square of the person you’re healing. One team member, armed with a lance, can throw it ahead farther than a sword fighter can attack, which reminded me just a little of a chess game.

So what could have turned out to be a standard RPG gets that extra layer of battle strategy and just drives the game forward with continued challenges. The fighting would have been too easy without the strategic elements, and too boring without the RPG interactions. Together, it’s a great little game that can easily keep you up too late as you forge ahead to the next encounter with demons led by English officers.

Jeanne d’Arc was made by Level-5 Games (better known for their Professor Layton games for the DS) and apparently was their first RPG as well as their first PSP game, which is downright impressive. The only thing I don’t quite get about the game is the useless chirping frog that tags along with the party in between battles. Still, I am holding out hope it has some purpose, since I haven’t finished the game yet.

If only I had a cool suitcase like this

Traveling is such a different kind of thing to write about. You’re out of your element, on a laptop somewhere, looking at things from an outsider’s perspective. For us, living up here in the rural North, it usually means driving many hours away. It didn’t seem like something that fit on the pages of this blog.  But we’re traveling more and more, and finding really neat things wherever we go, and I’d really like to share them!

So this weekend I put up the first posts on the new travel blog, which is hopefully-not-too-cliched in its name; There and Back Again.  I won’t take up too much more room here about it, but I’d love if you come over, read, maybe subscribe (hint, hint), share your own travel ideas and comments, and hopefully have some fun.

I should take a minute to explain: I’m saying “we” because with games that we both like, such as Dragon Age, Fable, Mass Effect, Oblivion, etc., Sam & I have our own tag-team method of getting through a playthrough. He does the majority of the fighting, while I do the majority of the conversations, treasure spotting, upgrading characters and comparing equipment, and running around to all the stores. Works for us.

Anyway, we made it to the end, and it feels oddly incomplete. There have been two previous Dragon Age games, Origins and Awakening. The first was pretty stand-alone, while the second was a continuation along the same timeline from the first, and could almost be considered an expansion. The decisions you made in Origins mattered in Awakening, and you could use the same character in both, if you didn’t die as part of the plot.

In this one, you have an entirely different character and setting, although you start out involved in the same events that shaped Origins. Instead of hanging around Ferelden, you cross the seas to the city of Kirkwall as a refugee, and climb your way up to the status of champion of the city. As the game goes on, years pass, and the events of Origins in Ferelden (if you played it and choose to include that information in the DA2 story) indirectly influence Kirkwall. Some of the characters from Origins and Awakening also can be found along the way.

The fighting seemed less challenging this time, although in some ways, more fun. The ability to use various items across classes was really helpful, as that was no fun in Origins. The facial and detail rendering on the characters also was vastly improved and quite realistic. I don’t think I saw a single graphics glitch, as opposed to Origins and Awakening, which sometimes had weapons sticking through hair strangely, or rough edges showing in cutscenes. On the other hand, they changed some faces of familiar characters so much they didn’t even look the same, like the mage Anders and the Qunari people.

Most of the world in DA2 was good, with interesting new settings and plenty of cultural depth to explore in the optional codex entries. The gameplay was really similar to the other two, so hardly bears mentioning. One change I wasn’t sure about, however, was armor for companions. The outfits they played in were unchangeable except for upgrades you can acquire that give specific abilities, like rune slots or defense bonuses. All the armor you find in the game is strictly for the main character, Hawke, so you end up not using most of it. But, for all I know, that was the key to the awesome graphics, since they didn’t have to be drawn out in a hundred different armor sets.

The strange thing about Dragon Age 2, when you’re done, is that it leaves the story ending so wide open. It feels a lot like the middle book in a trilogy; nothing major is resolved, and the future possibilities for the characters, even whole countries, are left with more questions than answers.

The champion of Kirkwall turns out to be a major instigator of social upheaval, at least with the decisions we made while playing, and maybe that’s why it feels so unfinished. We went from one chaotic setting to another. I guess there’s one thing for certain to be said: We’ll be looking forward to playing Dragon Age 3 when it arrives, and carries the story onward.

For now, I’m planning to replay DA2 with my favorite class, the rogue, and trying out a few different story decisions to see how the game changes.

Trinity College Library in Dublin, Ireland

When I was a kid, going to the library was an awe-inspiring event.

I grew up in a logging family, which means that we didn’t have much in the way of funds over the years, though the lack of a savings account was more than compensated for through the love of my parents and a work ethic that is just short of fanatical. So, when we were lucky enough to have time to make a swing to the library and get some books to use as entertainment, it was something to be excited about. I was always wide-eyed with wonder at the sheer number of spines and book titles that would greet me when I’d walk through the door. I’d pick out two or three and then check them out. The most amazing part was that we didn’t have to pay to use them–we just had to bring them back.

Unfortunately, in my lifetime, libraries of that sort may become a footnote in the pages of history. More and more small cities and towns are being forced to close their libraries due to funding issues. Here in the Upper Peninsula, some have already closed due to a lack of space to house them, while others have cut their hours and staffs so dramatically that you are hard pressed to be able to visit if you have an ever-changing schedule like I do.

But this isn’t a problem just in the U.P., but statewide (and, likely, nationally): Last week, the Detroit Public Library announced that they would have to send 20 percent of their entire staff–a whopping 83 employees–to the unemployment lines at the end of March. Troy, a city in Metro Detroit, recently voted to close its library–and this is a fairly affluent neighborhood.

Those who like to guess at what the future holds have already been spouting that libraries would be some of the first to go in the new world order. Why? Well, let me quote a reader that commented on the Detroit Free Press website the other day:

“Library’s are fast becoming a thing of the past due to rapid access and information that can be had via the Internet.”

Based on this person’s spelling, my mom would say that they probably should have spent more time reading in a library. I tend to agree.

However, the question of why we think it’s OK to replace libraries with Kindle and the Internet still remains. Not to mention that libraries aren’t just a place to pick up a tome or read the newspaper, but a place where people can come to use a computer, or to search for a job and even make copies, attend events and do research.

But the main reason for libraries remains, and always should be, the books. That means those not on a Kindle or other electronic reading device, but rather the kind that have a front and back cover and were actually printed. The books are then put on shelves and organized in a way that we can find them and–gasp!–read them.

If it weren’t for libraries, I would not be the person I am today. I would not write and edit for a living. I would never have picked up my first Clive Cussler novel and spark a burning desire to create with the written word. I would likely have not been able to woo my now-ex-wife, who worked in the very library in which I now sit, and eventually bring my wonderful daughter into this world.

Libraries, to me, are institutions that are far more valuable than they are being credited for. Walk down the street and ask 10 people if they are going to the library in the next week and you’ll get quite a few who say no. Maybe they just don’t have time, or perhaps reading is something they gave up well before their glorious high school days came to a close and the best part of their life was over.

I encourage my daughter to go to the library. I want her to read exciting stories and, just as important, discover new things and expand her interest. Sure, she can Google most of it, but she’s much more likely to run into information I don’t want her being forced to see, and much less likely to stumble across that gem that changes her life.

For me, it was Raise the Titanic by Clive Cussler. That book was one of thousands in our library at Mid Peninsula High School. In 10th grade, I wasn’t interested in reading. Instead, I had football, cars, hunting and, of course, girls on my mind. But an assignment by a teacher (thanks, Mrs. Brayak!) required I read a book. I sauntered into the library, disgruntled, and snatched the first book off the shelf that caught my eye.

I couldn’t put that book down that night. I finished it by the close of the next day. I was hooked. I ate up–and still do–everything Cussler. He sparked a fire inside of me that has not been extinguished and only continues to grow. Cussler made me love writing. He made me want to become a writer. He changed my life.

All because of a library.

Until then, I was dead set on working in the cryogenics field. Funny how life leads you in different directions based on the little things that happen, isn’t it?

I want my daughter to have that chance. I want her to make friends with Shakespeare and Heinlein and Keats. I want her to meet Holmes, Sawyer and Athos, Porthos, and Aramis–and, yes, even d’Artagnan.

But without libraries? Will she stumble across a book about Thailand that changes her outlook on life? Will she find a culinary adventure in a long-forgotten recipe? Will she marvel at the theological beliefs of man that existed long before the first library was even built?

I don’t want her to lose these opportunities. I don’t want anyone to–you never know who the next Abraham Lincoln, or Mahatma Gandhi or John Lennon is, or what will influence them to change their world.

Support your local libraries. Speak out when townships and cities consider cutting their services. Go to events. Donate. Volunteer.

Libraries contain our past and our present–and every time a child walks through the doors, they contain our future. Let’s make it a bright one.

The closest I had to a functional PC was my 2002-school-issued laptop, which was decidedly underpowered and could barely run the last generation of PC games, let alone the gorgeous creations on the shelves now. At home, I’ve run Mac desktops mostly, and limped along with the laptop for work.

Instead of the PC games I played when first getting into the gaming world, I made the switch over to various consoles, with a few second-hand Xboxes, Playstations, then the 360 and the PS3 that we have now. And I love console gaming as much, if not more, than I ever did computer gaming. Still, I have a special attachment to the old games that first drew me into gamerdom, like Alpha Centauri or Myst.

You can imagine, then, my out-of-my-head, little-kid excitement when I got an actual modern-day, dual processor laptop this week, and Civilization V to go along with it.

I should probably explain to those who have no history of PC gaming — the Civilization games are turn-based strategy games that have been around since the 1990s, and each iteration of the game has been successively prettier, fuller-featured, and more gamer-friendly. I’ve played each one and loved each one… until Civ V.

When it came out last year, the aforementioned lack of a computer able to run the massive new game was just something I had to resign myself to. I consoled myself with Civilization: Revolution on the Xbox, but it just wasn’t the same.

I longed for the complicated menus and tech trees, the minute attention to detail that Civ demands, the complex interactions between cultures. It’s one of those games for me that I can spend days straight, eyes fixed on the screen, fueled by energy drinks and not much else. Of course, life is different now, and I’ll have to restrain myself to playing until it’s time to pick up the kiddo from school today. (They frown upon leaving them there…)

But for a few hours I’ll be blissfully back in the Civilization world, ruler of all I survey. Excuse me, but I think the opening movie’s starting! See you later, much later!

So, what is about to follow is rare. Maybe it will happen again, but it likely won’t.

One of my clients (the folks who have me writing about hunting, usually) asked me to write up a post for their site about a company in Boston called Buck and Ball. As always, I readily accepted the assignment, even when they told me it was an apparel store. I had figured (i.e.: assumed) that the apparel would be directly related to hunting. After all, that’s pretty much all I have ever written for this client.

I was wrong.

Now those of you who know me are well aware I am pretty darn bullheaded. Just because something wasn’t going to be as smooth as I originally thought definitely doesn’t mean I won’t still do it. This was one of those cases. Instead of just going back to the client and explain that writing about a men’s fashion storefront was well outside of my normal boundaries, I decided to make it work. And, you know what? I’m glad I did.

The company I wrote about is called Ball and Buck–named after the once-common musket load that is one .69 caliber lead ball and three buck shot pellets packed at the same time that was popular during the American Revolution and Civil War. The store sells things I probably will never buy (like pocket tees that have pretty fantastic designs on the pocket alone, or tweed jackets) and things I would likely be interested in (hand-made leather wallets, cologne and–score!–even hand creams). But purchases or not, I had to spread the word about Ball and Buck because of their philosophy in the world of business.

You see, Ball and Buck was started by a Boston College graduate who just wasn’t thrilled with the nosedive the American economy is taking. Instead of searching out mass-produced items to sell, this entrepreneur went out and bought American-made products only.

Why?

Well, I’ll let them explain with this excerpt from their website:

We’re an all American company—born and bred with red, white, and blue running through our veins. The things that make us Americans, have always been the things we create. By incorporating the freedom and honor fought for by our forefathers whilst emphasizing American quality over foreign quantity, we’re refocusing on the pride America once had. Through hard work, honesty, & integrity, Ball and Buck is bringing America back to her roots.

Join the movement.

From the t-shirts they sell (which are getting a ton of exposure, by the way, as a unisex fashion must-have) to the same brand of cologne that President John F. Kennedy used to slather on before holding some beautiful woman close, Ball and Buck is American through and through. From the time you step into their store in Boston, or visit their website, you know that you’re not likely to find a company that is more proud of America and its people.

And, one day, the company hopes to help drive America in more ways than simply buying and selling products made here.

We’re going to begin a saving portion of our profits so that one day we can build our own factory.  We will fill the factory with honest Americans, the ones who craft with their hands.  We will pay them honest wages, supply them with great benefits, and help to enrich their lives.  We’re going to make the change we want to see in this country–a return to our core, hardworking values.  We will extend the opportunities to others that have been bestowed upon us.

Now that, in my opinion, is living the American dream.