plans for a tournament of pies

we have been over my haphazard recipe cataloging skills before. did I ever think I'd need to change my habit of just sorting through a pile of recipes-written-on-the-backs-of-whatever to find the one in the handwriting of a lovely Canadian on a square-ish grease-stained piece of blank notepad paper? not really. it's a fine enough system. I know how it works.

but nevertheless, one of my current projects is to sort out all the recipes I really want to keep from the pile where they sometimes mingle with too-ambitious recipe printouts that I only thought I might want to follow someday but never have, to rewrite any that need to be rewritten, and then organize them all into proper usable sections. the fat yellow folder that used to hold them has long ago been repurposed for something else, and I've kept recipes since then in a little black binder. or in a manila folder in the cupboard. or bookmarked in my phone. it's messy.

for my last birthday, Jeremiah bought me some butter-themed fabric with which to cover the new recipe binder, as soon as I might get around to it. there are a handful of savory dinner-esque recipes to finish sorting and writing out to fit. all the more fun things like brownies and brunches and custards and pies are already done and filed in a sort-of-thematic-sort-of-alphabetical way in their sections.

pies are my favorite things to bake. my mother's pie crust recipe almost doesn't need to be in the recipe book, because I've memorized it by now and could probably mix it up blindfolded if I needed to.

and ever since the tournament of RPG books a few summers back, I've been pondering what else to write tournament-style reviews of... so why not pies? it's perhaps not quite as ambitious as this neat pie-baking project (also far less likely to get a book deal, I assume...), but pretty fun anyway.

baking sixteen pies is a lot though. and for a proper tournament experience I might need to bake the winners of opening rounds multiple times as they advance in the bracket... so... I am still not totally sure how I'll plan this out, schedule all the celebratory pie tastings, ration my supply of butter and eggs properly, and all that. but I have gotten as far as choosing eight savory and eight sweet pies which could contend against one another:

chicken pot pie,
shepherd's pie,
mushroom and barley pie,
vegetable cornish pasties,
tomato corn pie,
squash galette (this one or this one? hmmm...),
quiche (not sure what type...),
spanikopita;

and 

pumpkin,
mixed berry,
cherry,
peach,
apple,
key lime,
french silk,
banana cream.

I do not like lemon meringue so it is not invited, even if it is a very classic variety of pie.

what I haven't decided yet is which pies should face which other pies to start with. and should we narrow down all the sweet pies to one, all the savory pies to one, and have those winners face off against each other? or would it really be more fair to have them share the victory?

it hardly matters, since it's all just a silly excuse to bake and eat 1.3 dozen pies (or more) in some too-short span of time. I'll figure it out at some point and see how it goes.

today is pi/e day, which is a great day for baking pies (or for talking about math and Greek letters, a la the legendary Vi Hart-- who seems to have taken down all their great pi- and tau-related youtube videos from back in the day. odd, but I can't say I blame them). but alas, I am not organized enough yet. maybe for next year I can time everything to announce final winners on Saturday, March 14, 2026. let me know if you want to come visit and share the responsibilities of pie-judging and dish-washing with me next year.

another spring semester

so far, this corner of the world has felt abnormally like spring for the past eight weeks, save for two days of snow-dust several weeks ago. everyone is dreading how dry and fire-prone the whole area is going to be through the summer. let us hope we have a few good monsoons in store at some point. please?

eight weeks since classes started means that half the semester is over by now. but I can still blog about a new semester even when it's halfway over, right? why not?

there isn't much to say. this semester is basically a repeat of two years' ago's with only minor updates. one section of Technical Report Writing (this time with extra usability and UX flavoring), one section of The Art and History of Podcasts (quite a bit improved since my first semester teaching it), and plenty of other academic work on top of the usual teaching: meetings galore, emails that should not be so draining to read and write and manage, various professional development adventures, research and writing of my own in small snippets.

I enjoy this teaching career, such as it has become for me, because it involves so much learning. or at least I always used to think so and say so. am I still learning anything? am I still enchanted by the process of stretching my brain in new directions, of finding little corners of wonder amongst all the mundanity of things, like it seems I always used to be? well yes. mostly yes. students and colleagues say things all the time that make me think new thoughts and appreciate new things. their questions and my questions often join forces in pretty excellent ways. it's fun.

novelty seems rarer, these days, though. there is a lot of sameness, and it feels far too easy to let the sameness subsume everything else. do older brains prefer more sameness, I wonder? or does accumulation of experience just mean that any novelty we find is easier to handwave away as not-really-that-interesting-after-all-actually-kind-of-just-like-that-other-thing-I-already-know-about? or maybe our comprehensive eyesight starts to fade somehow, rendering us less able to appreciate shining novelty even when it's just as plentiful as ever?

I'm not sure. 

what is new and notable for me lately?

with enough time and energy, and given a wide ranging definition of "notable," I could list so many things. an onslaught of information from news and social media and instant messages. knee-jerk reactions and opinions and maybes in response to all of it. the absurd loveliness of a few calm, rich summery days in February. bundles of anticipation accompanying sprouts and buds and new greenery underneath dried leaves. earlier sunrises and later sunsets. a recent trip for work to Albuquerque, including a not-for-work visit to this cute new fiber arts shop. (I bought 300g of a wool/viscose blend called "crumpet tweed." awesome name, eh?)

also, 'tis the season for (a perhaps ridiculous amount of) excitement about the tournament of books. it starts next week!

I've read only four of this year's contestants (which is four more than I usually manage to read before the opening rounds): 

The Book of Love, by Kelly Link

James, by Percival Everett

The Wedding People, by Alison Espach

and Beautyland, by Marie-Helene Bertino

I read them in that order, because that is the order in which the library served them to me--three in nice new hardcovers and one (The Wedding People) as a short and sweet audiobook. now that I've finished Beautyland, I really need to relisten to the So Many Damn Books episode about it. 

do I have a favourite? do I hope one of these four wins? it's hard to say. James and Beautyland have the most depth, I think; I read them both quickly and could see myself reading them again someday. the other two were excellently enchanting to me though, and both The Wedding People and The Book of Love delighted me with their neat and just-twisty-enough plots. 

but I don't like to make predictions. if I fill out a tournament bracket in the next six days it will be as random as anything might be, and I will not be attached at all to the idea of my random picks matching up with the true official judgements.

let's just see what happens next.

moments and years

I missed the chance to commemorate the true birthday of this little blog, last Monday. but today, January 19, 2025, marks exactly 20 years since the first actual, fully-fledged post: a response to our first key reading assignment about webdesign and such.

what a different world. such a different place it was. or maybe twenty years ago wasn't so very different, and it only seems so because I and my perspective have changed so much since then. 

what happens if I stitch together a few snippets from all the blogged Januaries of each year since 2005? what new montage will spill into this digital page in between them all?

I tried my best to pull from sections nearest to the 13th and 19th of the month (a thing much easier to do from the posts before 2014ish, when the apex of graduate school + its aftermath slowed down my writing here so much).

what I notice amongst these snippets and what you notice will be different, I imagine. I notice the unending pulse of learning and academia. books and thoughts chasing each other in circles. comments about the weather seem to sit neatly in the background with questions of identity and all its tangly unspooling. these words always have been for me more than anything. does all this pontificating from past amelia still sound like useful advice? mostly yes, I think. but I would say that, wouldn't I?

2006

the fact that energy is behind it all is somehow unifying. simple

...

linguistic structures will be a low-key class. it is full of people i don't see in my other classes. the other english majors. non tech writing people: the lit majors, the teaching majors. it's weird.

2007

get used to the fear and the doubt. get used to being faced with new facets of your own ignorance. get used to the pain. embrace humility. you can't always feel in control.

but really, how comforting is that?

I don't know. I'd take humility over false confidence anyday. but then the humble rarely get much respect.

2008-2009 (a pause.)

2010

the world is big.

there's a lot going on in it. even in this mostly empty house, there's me sitting at the table, typing, stretching a bit of CSS out over a half-built website skeleton, scribbling a few what-ifs, listening to Radiohead. and I made banana nut muffins this morning.

2011

in the beginning, this blog was just a place for all my first impressions--all my doubts and worries about the usefulness or meaningfulness of all the stuff I was learning. after that semester, I decided to keep blogging--mainly about writing (Starcustard and random short stories), school (rhetoric, more webdesign, and Isotope), and life (philosophical thoughts about my job, vague complaints about boys, and so forth). and so it continued. I'm still here. I still blog.

...

what do those stories say about me?

I'm thinking about all the texture of my life. all the patterned and patternless history I've collected so far. telling stories is one way to remember it. and on the other hand... telling and retelling and re-remembering these stories is one way to completely revise the past. after a few months or years, it becomes easy to bend the details. to emphasize the funny parts. to leave out the things that make you look like a bit of an idiot.

how I envision myself is pretty complicated, I guess. perspective is weirdly limited like that.

2012

 

which we am I talking about, anyway? and when? and where? 

2013

it may not make any huge difference in the long run, but even so, the ultimate pointlessness of things should not be dragged up as an excuse for us to stay in bed all day. at least not more than once or twice a year, anyway, right?

2014

this seemingly misnamed semester will inch along to spring in due course. and when that happens, finals and stress will no doubt prevent me from enjoying it as thoroughly as I could, but for now... well for now, the semester is glowing with warm, cozy pillows full of insight and excitement. this might be the best January ever.

2015

I have spent much (but not enough) of this long, mostly-pleasant weekend sitting by the window, trying to focus on readings for classes. 

.... 2015 is here, still all new-feeling. gradually we'll get to see both how it changes my life and how it doesn't.

2016

today it is raining in spurts, like a chilly and unkempt spring. Tuesday's snow is long since melted. it'll be back this weekend. the universe is giving us yo-yo-ing seasons, somewhat drab all the way through, with occasional bright sunset smudges.

the trees are bare. my apartment windows open onto more distant views than they did in summer and fall. at night, more and more streetlights perpetually leak into my bedroom under the edges of the blinds. I notice the faces of buildings I have never seen from such an angle before.

2017

it's empowering to reflect on the background structure of your whole life. to actively participate and acknowledge your role in either accepting/reinforcing or resisting/revising the culture you swim in. and that seems important. that's what it takes to make all of that power and structure more open-book, more readable, more transparent and less like a vice.

2018

if I had the brainpower on this Friday evening to make some additional academicalish comments on how these beautifully-commentated marble races and our fascination with them could link up interestingly with some of the tenets of object-oriented ontology, I would. but I don't know all that much about object-oriented ontology myself, and should probably not let it distract me much more than the Marblelympics already have from writing up nicely finished dissertation chapters about digital ethnography and distributed commons-based peer-production and what that all may mean for technical communication and human culture and such.

2019

and then the speaker said something about facebook hopefully having a major role in someday establishing some kind of global online government. after that, according to my notes, I typed out this:

"eeeeek."

does the world want and need to be connected by a central online platform, really? is the capitalist interest that facebook has in being the medium by which everyone is connected anything we can trust?

2020

all this potent potential meaning curled up in to hold. and then there are all these phrasal verbs, too: hold back, hold up, hold out, hold off, hold against, beholden to...

to be held as a parent holds a young baby is to be safe. comfortable. cared for. right?

to be held is also to be restrained. controlled. and to be restrained isn't usually considered comfortable, though... right?

or is it?

2021

and when I listened to this recent episode of So Many Damn Books with George Saunders I felt more affinity for Saunders's love of teaching writing than perhaps I might once have felt. his advice is to remember that you're never just teaching 20-somethings who barely know what to do with their adulthood when you meet them-- you're also teaching the 40-something-year-olds that they'll become. I like that. (not all college students are 20-somethings, but the concept holds. we are all humans-in-progress.)

2022

why does this small saga of knitting woe and triumph deserve documentation in this little blog of mine? I don't know if there's an answer, other than my typical interest in capturing bits of experience and emotion in as vivid and accurate description as I can. I like to write these vignettes of where and when and how, with all the metaphor and adjectives they need to vibrate satisfyingly from my imagination to yours.

2023

I trust that learning is happening, little by little, in all of our spongey-curious brains.

2024

January, perhaps fittingly, seems so very long. all the transitions it spans-- all the shifting, deepening of the dark season, the post-holiday recoveries, the shiny new beginnings of a calendar year and of an academic semester-- all of that is a lot for 31 average winter days.

I don't know if it really did feel longer for me this year, or if I'm only saying that because it seems like an appropriate thing to sigh into this semi-bleak and impermanent world.

- - -

and now what? do I still blog? 

time will tell. if you'll indulge me, I have one more excerpt, this time from May of 2014, when so much of me was so unsettled and rearranging itself and I clung to my love of writing as if nothing else mattered:

from time to time I wonder what it is I'm trying to do here. does it matter what I'm trying to do here? I write. our reasons for enjoying things are seemingly inarticulable. is there irony in that? I claim that words can make everything better. is that true even when the words crumble into meaninglessness as they fail at encompassing feelings? do I mean that even crumbled words are worth something?

yes. crumbled and halfhearted attempts at capturing it all still beats blank silence. I know only so much stuff fits into one life. there are only so many live possibilities. this is the way it needs to be, I guess. but the way everything is carved up now isn't how it'll always need to be carved. our crumbled communications don't stand still; they change.

.... and even if I can't really say I know exactly what writing means, I can try to explain what I like about my practice of it.

I like the pausing and sifting through potential descriptions and the shuffling of parts of speech. I like the dancing of clauses and punctuation and space. I like the starts and stops and backtracking, the meandering fragments that stretch so subtly for their finish. I like the way these little symbols can twist and mold intangible thoughts into a dozen differently shaded shapes. I like unknotting a tangly draft, picking out the pieces that don't belong and pulling away each piece that does, tidying it all into a hopefully-clean curl of interesting prose. sometimes I save the scraps for later. sometimes I can't. .... I write for the writing's sake. I sketch and wonder and experience plenty of other things for the same reason. they don't have to be means to some other end, these creative processes. maybe all the best things are their own ends, or at least neatly wrapped around something like one.

after twenty years, does this blog count as art? as an end in itself?

doesn't matter. it's here. I'm here. for now.

sidewalk-henge

at a certain time of day, the shadows that fall from the southeasterly sunrise across the somewhat-elevated sidewalk behind our house line up just exactly right with the angles of wide concrete pavement and granite-pebble landscaping and the gully on one side. and for however long the sun and earth match up that way, we get to watch a shadowy parade of me with the pugs, walking with perfect balance on the top of the shadow of the earth against itself. 

I suppose the conditions for this must happen at least twice in a day, whatever times those may be depending on the time of year and the slant of the earth's axis. in the mornings, lately somewhere near 8:00 a.m. or so, the shadows slant northwest. we don't often walk that path during the other half of the day, but I imagine in the early evenings the shadows must slant more to the northeast.   

so what? 

 

it is a thing to notice. a small event-thing among many other variously-shaped event-things. 

I haven't bothered photographing our shadows. it's nice enough to just notice it when we happen to be out walking at the right set of moments. 

the morning pug walks require more layers this month. hats, gloves, fluffier scarves. I crocheted a new puppy pug coat in red and beige for the skinny little Faramir. his old grey pug coat still barely-kindof fits, but it didn't look as warm all stretched out of his lanky body.

these photographed trees and their shadows are not trees near us (we are quite starved for trees in this neighborhood). but they are very autumnal, aren't they. I took these photographs some years ago, mostly in Chicagoland and perhaps a few in a town near the Wisconsin–Illinois border, October 2022. 

miscellaneous tapestry

the many instantiations of various spinning and weaving arts and crafts consume me. there remains no time for blogging.

these are little tapestry weavings in various sizes. 

and I have a scarf-in-progress too:

so much in the middle of unfinished. which is as it should be I suppose. a merry-go-round of works in progress. 

bunny vs. fence

the other day, this lengthy stretch of fencing (branded nicely enough with so much black, white, and red to represent the construction company Sundt, whose slogan seems to be three standalone words, "Skill. Grit. Purpose.") went up all along the drive that goes between my academic office building and various parking lots between here and places off-campus.

I'm told that they'll be building a new dormitory somewhere on top of the rocky, scrub-filled gully on the other side. it'll have more student housing and more classroom space. so cool. so necessary. 

some of us in my academic office building are mildly worried that this new construction will block our most excellent west-facing views of Granite Mountain. we shall see, I guess. I remain hopeful that the slope of this gully will mean the top of the new dorm will be low enough for us to look over from our third floor offices.

as I walked back out from my office to my car last Tuesday, I noticed a little grey-brown bunny frantically searching for a way through the fence, up and down the hill in short bursts, back and forth over the blaring red curb, every so often sprinting for its life all the way across the road back to the unfenced rocks and bushes to the east.

I watched it for a solid few minutes. it hopped away in panic from my slowed footsteps, then dashed in further panic across the path of someone's big white SUV driving up past us both. 

I didn't see the bunny come back that evening. so I studied the fencing as I walked. surely one little bunny would eventually find a gap to squeeze under, I thought. (the creatures seem to squeeze through pretty tiny gaps in our back garden gate, after all.)

if the chainlink were bare of this black branded tarp, then could a little bunny more easily get through? or if the corners of each fence panel were less square and more rounded, that would surely help.

I wonder if any of the planners and facilities and maintenance people worried about the impact of this construction project would have on the non-human critters in the area. hopefully at least a little bit. probably not as much as they worried about other aspects though-- the costs of labor and fencing and other materials; the design and the blueprints and the building's whole physical footprint; and the timing and logistics and how soon they can start selling spots in the new dorm.

at the bottom of the hill, the fence merely ends,. for now. the sidewalks remain open and the parking lots in regular use. for now. if the bunnies are persistent enough, they will find their way back into their hideaways in the scrub-filled gully. 

and hopefully they will all find new hideaways once the gully is dug out and filled with a bunch of concrete and whatever else dormitories are made of.

and if not?

they're just bunnies. some of their cousins, whichever side of whichever fence they've ended up on, will replace them soon enough.

fall semester, 2024

the word semester shows up in at least 130 of my past blogposts, which is a little more than 10% of all the posts I've thus far posted. considering that this little blog has always been roughly half focused on various academic and intellectual pursuits, this makes plenty of sense. semesters are like seasons.

the word itself is not even 200 years old, the etymology dictionary tells me: "...semenstris 'of six months, lasting six months, half-yearly, semi-annual,' from assimilated form of sex 'six' (see six) + mensis "month" (see moon (n.)). The word, and the idea, were picked up in the U.S., where the German higher education system served as a model."

apparently the Latin-y adjective forms semestral and semestrial are a few centuries older. interesting. 

anyway, I'm glad our semesters are not a full six months long these days. four months is plenty. 

and for these upcoming four months, I'm teaching three batches of students, including a few repeats from past semesters. the longer I hang out at this institution, the more that will keep happening I suppose.

COM 221: Technical Report Writing
counting the two sections I have this semester, I've taught practically a million versions of this course (okay, 15 total sections. that is still a lot). it's becoming a bit of a struggle to not get completely burnt out and bored of it, but I'm doing my best to keep it interesting for me. we're only in week 3, so I'm still getting to know the vibe of the students. we'll have some fun together I hope though.

HU 356: Audio Production & Podcasting
this one is going to be interesting no matter what-- it's a brand new class, only recently outlined and designed and proposed by me for our catch-all Humanities & Communication department. I am pretty excited to see how this goes. so far I'm having students practice various little audio recording tasks, then we'll level up to remixing all those clips into some fun story-arc, before finally moving on to pitching and workshoping individual podcast projects. the students all have great ideas so far. (wish me luck persuading the one who simply wants to copy Mr. Rogan's insufferably long-winded (at least it is to me) format into doing something at least slightly more inventive.)

what else? I signed up for a weaving class next month. some family is visiting next week. we have some more camping planned for during fall break. we're having a brand new screen door installed sometime soon. and our Monday evening D&D group is on the brink of moving up to level 8. in November, our crazy puppy will turn 1 year old.

at some point we should work on the mish-mash garden projects and other household tasks that need doing. and eventually figure out our holiday plans. 

or maybe we let go of shoulds for a while and enjoy the almost-autum while it's here.

unknown or reknown

thinking about my grandmother lately, off and on, I sometimes puzzle over how close and also how distant she seems. her birthday is coming up in a few days.

this painting (well, this print of a painting) hung over grandma's nice upright piano for as long as I could remember. and now it hangs in my office/craft room/guest room. 

I feel so grateful to have inherited this art, and I do not care one bit that it is a relatively commonplace mass reproduction. the light and shadow and movement of it say something-- something too immediate for words. I don't think my sense of this is just nostalgia, though there are indeed decades of memories sprinkled on whenever I look at it. 

today I looked up the name and artist engraved on the little plaque, for the first time. Moonlight Sea. Peter Ellenshaw. he did a lot of these beautifully peaceful ocean horizon paintings, apparently. prints like mine seem to have been pretty popular in the '50s and '60s. 

before then, Ellenshaw also worked as a matte artist for plenty of old films, inncluding 1959's Darby O'Gill and the Little People and Mary Poppins too. did grandma know that, I wonder? I only know it because the internet and Wikipedia exist at my fingertips. 

but I'm sure my grandma had so many other ways of knowing things. 

it's funny what our brains remember or don't. or think we remember. 

this grandmother was the first person to wink at me, as far as I recall. the full conspiratorial meaning of it was likely lost on me as a child, but it felt fun and silly and made the moment into a story. 

my other memories of grandma are a montage of bright and faded. so many quilts for the chilly basement bedrooms. green grass and a clothesline. frozen whole wheat waffles. cereal on the top shelf of a gaping deep dark pantry. sitting on the cement steps for photographs. plastic toys on a thick, round, stripey rug. and her voice piping up if anyone looked at any corner of that piano--a little raspy but bright and cheerfully insisting-- 'play us a tune, won't you?' 

and usually someone would. 

perhaps the strongest, deepest memory I have of that house, just a stride or two left from the piano and its painting, is the narrow closet full of toys and games and books (among them, this old woven fairytale). 

maybe the closet still has books and toys in it. newer ones, if any. the whole house looks hugely different now from how it did when I was young. there are no photos of the closets in the listing... but a closet of games and books for visiting tourists could make sense, couldn't it? 

I find myself wishing that I knew more about what my grandmother thought of this painting. where did she get it? was it bought, or a gift? did she see the same things in it I think I see? would she have better words for its movement and shadow and light?

she would have been 96 this autumn. 

if I live that long, I'll get at least 56 more autumns (hopefully, anyway. I hope I always live somewhere with a proper autumn.)

.

in other news, there are twenty standard weeks until this little blog turns 20 years old.

and then what?

wheels and spindles

apparently I haven't blogged about the Tour de Fleece here yet. (you can read a bit more about this July spinning challenge event thing if you like). I've partly kinda-sorta spun along with the bicyclists in past years, but I never focused on it very well or had much of note to show for it at the end.

but this year I had the whole month as free as any summer month could be, and plenty of spinning experience and equipment and goals to work with, so I made some plans. 

 

starting with Jillian Eve's official Tour de Fleece 2024 bingo card, I narrowed her suggested challenges down to 20 that looked doable/interesting, and determined to let 1d20 pick one for me each day of the tour. here's the full list, with those the dice picked in bold and those I accomplished (whether or not their number got rolled) marked with checks + annotations. I've got a few photos of some of it, too.

✓ 1 Spin the oldest fiber in your stash (caliente red Kraemer roving)
✓ 2 Spin the newest fiber in your stash (cherry red Kraemer roving)

 

✓ 3 Spin outside (my back patio; the parking lot of a busy cafe one morning)
✓ 4 Spin in public (aforementioned parking lot, Fiber Creek, Sharlot Hall, various waiting rooms)
✓ 5 Spin a fiber you've never spun before (gorgeous CVM/merino blend from Cactus Hill Farm; BFL from Greenwood Fiberworks)

✓ 6 Use a new technique (drafting two rovings together)

✓ 7 Spin more than 1 hour in a day
✓ 8 Teach someone else to spin (hurrah for enthusiastic newbies!)
✓ 9 Spin a chunky yarn (well, as chunky as I could manage)
✓ 10 Spin a lace-weight yarn (usually my default so pretty easy for me)
11 Spin a plant fiber (glad this one didn't come up actually. I am scared of cotton)
12 Fractal spin (started this one late and haven't quite finished it yet... so it only sort of counts)
✓ 13 Spin a textured yarn (the pre-carded Finn was almost too textured, I say)
✓ 14 Spin fiber you processed by hand (just a sample of re-carded Albuquerque Finn-- but I tediously and lovingly carded all the rest of it for later)

✓ 15 Spin local wool (llama and alpaca from 2 different local ranches)

16 Ply with thread (someday I'll try this but I'm not in a hurry to)
✓ 17 Create yarn that tells a story (I am still not sure what I want this to mean. we'll see.)
✓ 18 Hold your fiber in the opposite hand (easier with the little e-spinner for some reason)

✓ 19 Spin while watching a movie (La La Land. it was alright)
✓ 20 Spin while listening to an audiobook (mostly Demon Copperhead. loved it)

in case you're as persistently curious about abbreviations as I am, CVM stands for California Variegated Mutant, a highly regarded and unique breed of American sheep. slightly less interestingly, BFL stands for Blue-faced Leicester, another highly regarded breed of sheep, from the UK. 

it took me a bit longer than the official tour to get anything finished, but that wasn't necessarily part of my game. I'm happy to have tried some new things and stretched my spinning skills in a few different directions. and I have every intention of continuing. who needs the excuse of a cycling tournament going on?

next goals:
finish the 4-ply alpaca (just needs washing and measuring)
wind off the CVM spindle soon-ish
finish the fractal BFL sample
ply the second half of a commissioned spin for Rose
spin more blended red (get 3 bobbinsful at least)

 

P.S. I also spent a decent chunk of the month working on this fun addition to my spinning arsenal. if I can figure out how old she is I'll see about naming her after another suitable ancestor of mine.

and spring semester 2024

eleven years ago, back at the very beginning of my academic career, I trekked 6 hours west from Lubbock, Texas, in my very old leper of a car (the paint was all but totally peeled way from its poor hood), to attend my first ever academic conference in Albuquerque.

this week I'm gonna trek 6 hours east and attend the same conference, this time in a rental car, with way more academic experience, an institutional credit card for travel-related purchases, and a significantly different research agenda. I'll be presenting this Saturday all about how I designed and get to teach a fun little class on podcasts. 

 {the title slide, so far anway}

 

and I'll get to see some of my old professors from USU. very excited for that bit. 

it'll be fun, hopefully. I hope I'll meet some other cool new interesting fellow scholars along the way, too. we shall see, given how sunny and warm it looks to be in Albuquerque this weekend, how much of the conference I actually sit through.

in the more normal weeks of this semester, I'm teaching a couple sections of technical writing. the same old basic tech writing course, only slightly different every time by virtue of new students and a new me and a new world.

besides teaching, I'm also working on a book chapter about podcast transcripts and leading various faculty from various other programs through a series of mushy but important assessment adventures. friend Caroline and I are still working on soliciting content for a new issue of the campus literary arts magazine (the second since we took charge of it last year). maybe we'll have an official reading event at the library with the creative writing class-- fingers crossed. 

it's all nearly haflway over, this set of 16 work weeks called spring semester. at the moment the halfway point feels encouraging. time ticks onward. work gets accomplished. knowledge is made and shared and reinforced. skills are modeled, practiced, learned, forgotten, re-learned.

in other news, I'm also finally getting to see some work from the past year come out in official publication! perhaps the coolest online academic journal of all, Kairos, made space for my multimedia oral history-ish interview piece all about two colleagues who recently retired.

and then colleagues and I have a co-authored piece in the most recent issue of Programmatic Perspectives (the differently cool but still very awesome journal from the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication). some awesome Purdue colleagues have an article in the same issue, which is quite cool to see. 

time ticks onward. I've been here 4 years. 2 more until hopefully they give me tenure. 

in the meantime, age and experience accumulate. some days I feel older and other days not at all. 

next January, in the auspicious year of 2025, it'll be 20 years since I started this blog for a class. how will we celebrate that, I wonder?

goodbye, January

since the eve of 2024 one month ago, it feels like so much has happened. some of it too fast, too soon, too painfully. 

the grief of losing the first little doggo that I ever really shared my longterm day-to-day life with... I cannot describe it. as much as I'd like to keep trying to, the feeling altogether and gargantuanly transcends words. the whole experience is impossible to talk about in any satisfying, accurate, indubitable way. "losing"? "letting go"? that we "had to" say goodbye? what kind of stupid, broken euphemism circus is this? everything about our language-cloaked expressions of such pain just feels utterly inadequate.

{ I suppose we can't have sunrises without some sunsets. }

{ and nothing lasts forever; dog-years are too extra short. }

it is probably irrational to think no one else could ever know what I mean, even if the words and metaphors feel so flimsy. it's not like I'm the only person to ever experience this sort of sadness. nor is this the first unexpected loss in my life. but it has been the closest and the sharpest. so far.

on new year's day I wrote something about how the world (a world so embroiled in hate and genocides and ugly senseless conflict!) is an absolutely crushingly horrific mess, how my heart hurts and hurts and hurts, and how this loss seems to prefigure and to threaten-- or, even more, to promise-- every other inevitable loss I will ever have to face for as long as I live.

it's one thing to philosophically observe, in general, that nothing can last forever. okay. of course. to confront and deeply feel it-- specifically-- as one solitary ending to the life of a inimitably cuddly goofy fuzzy little domesticated animal... that is different.

other aspects of this January were plenty normal, whatever that means. most of my activities seem to come with rather suitable words with which to sketch them into sharable imagery: going to bed early and sleeping in. checking out library books. reading and ignoring and sorting and replying to emails. seeing friends. enduring snow and rain and cold. demonstrating crafts at the museum. putting birdseed in the feeder in the backyard. talking with family on the phone. eating quiche. drinking tea. making soup. needing a haircut but not yet ever managing to go out and get my hair cut. sweeping the floor. running errands. craving hot chocolate. writing lists and syllabi and assignment sheets. spending money. making things. existing. 

{ eclipse shadows from October, 2023. Wesley's last weekend camping trip with us. }

sure, nothing lasts forever. change is nature. this too shall pass: all of these phrasings alternatingly as full of solace as they are of tragedy, representative of a fact more solid than perhaps any other so-called fact. death and endings are, from one point of view, more normal, more mundane, more irrefutable than any of the other relatively comfortable, unassuming, smoothly proceeding lifestuff I might casually document and remember about this particular month of the year. that's what feels so difficult and impossible about it.

the vortex of this heartache felt immeasurable, indescribably vast and infinite, from the inside. 

even so, from a day or two or ten beyond, it begins to shrink and fade. all future moments frame it into something more manageable.

but again the words seem to balk and fail me. "manage"? is that what we are meant to do with these feelings? this grief? is that actually possible? the stringy, endless paradoxes curl up inside of each other, confounding my basic little human brain with ineffability.

{ classic pug-under-the-table photo, new year's eve 2023 }

January, perhaps fittingly, seems so very long. all the transitions it spans-- all the shifting, deepening of the dark season, the post-holiday recoveries, the shiny new beginnings of a calendar year and of an academic semester-- all of that is a lot for 31 average winter days.

I don't know if it really did feel longer for me this year, or if I'm only saying that because it seems like an appropriate thing to sigh into this semi-bleak and impermanent world. 

one month ago, as the cold moon began to wane and the spinning earth began to tilt just barely back towards the sun, our little old dog ate his last breakfast and went on his last stumbling walk and took one final car ride, sitting on my lap. I only knew him for half his life. I wasn't sure if I'd get along with such a beast at first. but we did get along, so well. I loved that pug and I'm glad he was here to share so much of the too-short day-to-day of my life for a while.

the tournament of TTRPG books, final round

the final round:
Dungeons & Dragons (5e) vs The One Ring (2e)
 

in the beginning, along with a lot of scribbly scattered notes and spreadsheets of metadata on each RPG book, I mapped out my relative prior experience with each of the 16 systems, like so:  

None-- The One Ring (2e), Cyberpunk RED, and A Song of Ice and Fire
    
Barely any-- Wrath & Glory, Scion: Hero, and Exalted 

Some-- Pathfinder (2e), Shadowrun (5e), Mage: the Awakening, and Changeling: the Lost

More than some-- World of Darkness, Star Wars: Force and Destiny, and 7th Sea (2e)

Lots-- Vampire: the Masquerade (5e) and Dungeons & Dragons (5e) 

there were some idle thoughts about coming up with a color code to go along with this, even. maybe it would've started with grey, then blue, yellow, green, up to a nice purple for the ones I've played most, or something like that? not important, I suppose. arbitrary distinctions to signify those slightly less arbitrary.

in any case, The One Ring has already vanquished one of my most-played RPGs. does it have what it takes to beat the other? 

either way, it will feel like Tolkien wins.

we recently finished listening to The Fellowship of the Ring narrated by Andy Serkis. so excellently done-- all the voices and the singing. I loved it. at least 20 years have gone by since I last read the book myself. I still mean to reread them all at some point, but who knows when. there is such a richness in that story. it is beautiful, touching, deep, and timeless. I'm not saying anything here that hasn't been said a hundred times.

last week, we gathered friends at our table to begin another D&D campaign. I'm still working on putting the finishing touches on my first-ever bard: Ennagold Lindenrill, a wood-elf from Waterdeep. the rest of the party shall include a couple of wizards, a couple of clerics, and a paladin. it's exciting to be gearing up to play once again after about a year and a half spent in other game systems.

judging these two against each other is as expectedly challenging as most of the last few matches have been. which do I value more? the focus, simplicity, and artistry of the newer book, or the flexibility, openness, and mainstream appeal of the older? which deserves this more? the world-changing system that paved the way for pretty much all the others, or the beautiful latecomer based on a world-changing fantasy that paved the way for it in the first place?

SYSTEM	Dungeons & Dragons (5e)	The One Ring (2e)
cover tagline =	"Arm yourself for adventure."	"Enter the world of Middle-earth..."
publisher =	Wizards of the Coast	Free League Publishing
pub. date =	2014	2020
original cost =	$49.95	$49.85
length =	11 chapters / 320 pages	10 chapters / 240 pages
my exp. level =	very much lots	none prior

---

 

the easy part is judging these two on aesthetics. The One Ring will probably never lose on that count. I bet the designers of this book put as much attention and effort into its appearance as Tolkien himself put into the elvish language. it seems to me almost as perfect as any functional book could ever be (semi-garish cover notwithstanding). beyond the surface of the pages, too, the aesthetics of this epic storyworld come with all the depth and richness of their source material. it's lovely.

and while The One Ring is soaked in the vibes of deep green-grey forests and cozy, semi-lit hobbit holes, D&D injects all that with a little more brightness. the saturation is turned up, the gleam of adventure a little more polished against a grab-bag stage-set of fantasy. they aren't opposites, but we might say they are different shades of the same hue: The One Ring a deep piney dark-olive, like those magical woven elf-cloaks in shadow; D&D more like new grass, or spring-time oak leaves in the sun, or a green leather satchel freshly polished. you can tell serious, weighty stories in either game, but D&D will always feel lighter to me.

judging on mechanics, I have a harder time choosing which I like more. The One Ring is simple and unique. it's character creation options are very focused, its gameplay processes similarly so. destiny and heritage and lore combine to draw strong lines around the possible story arcs. player characters rotate through adventuring phases and fellowship phases. journeying, counseling, and resting are given just as much attention (if not more) than combat.

D&D divides its gameplay slightly differently into exploration, social interaction, and combat. it's close enough to the same ingredients, but used in a significantly new recipe. and much like an easy, endlessly-adapatible recipe (like this one-- so easy and so fun to mix and match with), D&D feels infinitely flexible. dial down the combat and add more exploration or skill challenges or socializing if you're feeling like it-- it'll still taste awesome. it will still be exciting. 

in terms of approachability, do these games come out equal? as I've said before, D&D has the advantage of being very well known, with an established fan base and a widespread community to help ease new players into it. practically, playing D&D can be as basic or as convoluted as you choose.

without the same relatively longstanding advantages, The One Ring does just fine. I like its organization and approach a bit better, and that beautiful simplicity earns it plenty of points here.

if we wanted to get quantitative about it, we could tally things on a rough scale like so, dividing a pool of 10 points per category between the two systems...

SYSTEM	Dungeons & Dragons (5e)	The One Ring (2e)
points for aesthetics =	2	8
points for mechanics =	6	4
points for approachability =	6	4
total =	14	16

 

a close match if there ever was one, eh? and honestly, I keep wanting to fudge the points further. (full transparency: I have fudged them up and down and back already a few times. this is my tournament, so it's allowed, right?) I mean, are the aesthetics of D&D so very lackluster in my eye? and maybe shouldn't the mechanics be weighted more heavily, given that's what the game is essentially built out of? 

but beyond my trusty old three-pronged rubric... I wrote last time that I value vividness, simplicity, and consistency in these forms of interactive art. I seem to have the most imaginative fun with a clear framework in which to invent freely, wildly, with all the power of the game's limitations to help me build something cool. 

so which of these truly offers me more of that feeling?  

in another prior match-up, I also wrote that compared to D&D, The One Ring's character creation process seemed so limited, so relatively constrained. this remains pretty much my only grasped-at disappointment with The One Ring, I think. a barely-there complaint. and yet I concede that there is a nice structure to it and to everything else in the game, though. it's fitting, given the game's setting and all that. it's a great framework for narrative gameplay, narrow and vivid in its scope.

on the other hand, D&D has a bigger, wider frame. just as sturdy and serviceable, if far less technically beautiful. 

I think what really makes the most sense, to me today, is to add a fourth category and do a little bit more math. so here we go-- along with aesthetics and mechanics and user-friendliness, I'm going to look quantitatively at flexibility. 

and there, using this arbitrary system I've suddenly applied across this match, I'd give D&D a whole 7 and The One Ring the remaining 3. it's still awfully close, but D&D ekes out the higher score. 21 to 19. 

 

imagine approximately three seconds of a low and subtle drumroll for us, please?

the 2023 champion of the Tournament of RPG books: Dungeons & Dragons (5e)

tournament of TTRPGs: opening round review

here we are, at a midpoint in this somewhat random tournament of roleplaying games. in this post, I'll summarize the opening round matches and finally, unequivocatingly, declare winners for each.

this all started almost six months ago with a tournament introduction. since then, I've played half a dozen new RPGs and tried to articulate my opinions about them all. it's been fun. 

Jeremiah asked me which of the new one-shots we played were most enjoyable, and at the time my answer was Cyberpunk RED. looking back now, I'd want that one to share a three-way tie with The One Ring and A Song of Ice and Fire. Cyberpunk was certainly the most fun in a wild hijinksy way. The One Ring was fun in a simply beautiful and heroic way, and A Song of Ice and Fire was fun in a  sweeping, majestic way.

the others were fun too, in their ways-- just a little bit less for me: Exalted in an almost frighteningly epic way, Werewolf, in a mystical have-we-bit-off-more-than-we-can-chew sort of way, and Scion, in a extremely bombastic and colorful way.

making final decisions about all these pairs has not always been so fun or easy. a few were really very hard to choose, but I had to. for the tournament. so without further ado, here are the winners--

match #1 "Dark vs. Grimdark"
(World of Darkness vs. Wrath & Glory)
I haven't changed my mind about this one-- World of Darkness still wins for its artsy storytelling approach and flexibility. but I will say, we've played a bit more Wrath & Glory since May, and it has grown on me a little.

match #2 "Power Fantasies"
(Dungeons & Dragons 5e vs. Werewolf: the Forsaken)
I thought this might be a close one, and while Werewolf was a great experience and I'd love to play more of it, the thrills of Dungeons & Dragons pulled ahead for me in the end. is it still unfair? yeah, it kinda is.

match #3 "So Much Potential"
(Pathfinder 2e vs. Mage: the Awakening)
given than neither of these systems left me with the greatest first impressions, it was hard to choose between them, but Pathfinder wins out for thus far having provided more enjoyable gameplay overall.

match #4 "Fatefully"
(Changeling: the Lost vs. Star Wars: Force and Destiny)
this one was absolutely the most difficult. the enchanting style of Changeling still holds plenty of sway over me, but ultimately I couldn't let it win just on vibes and potential; thus, Star Wars takes it.

match #5 "Two Flavors of Epic" (Scion vs. The One Ring)
at least we can't say this one is so very unfair-- as limiting as first impressions may be, The One Ring wins for simply being so thoroughly cozy and inspiring and marvelous.

match #6 "Masked and Unmasked"
(Vampire: the Masquerade 5e vs. Exalted 2e)
not many RPGs, in my view, could stand up against V5 and expect to do all that well. both it and Exalted are intense games with some complex elements, but I find Vampire more engaging.

match #7 "Once and Future Risks" (7th Sea 2e vs. Cyberpunk RED)
this one was so, so close as well-- I had the hardest time weiging the epic historical adventure against the flashy futuristic excitement, and 7th Sea does kind of win for mere stylistic preference, all else being way too even.

match #8 "Here there be Dragons"
(Shadowrun 5e vs. A Song of Ice and Fire)
A Song of Ice and Fire truly does deserve to win here for deftly evoking a really neat and engaging world and providing mechanics for a truly sweeping game; I promise I'm not only using this as a chance to snub Shadowrun.

and a few honorable mentions:
Changeling and Cyberpunk RED earn my top tier honorable mentions. I love them both quite a lot despite the less-than-perfect-fit I feel with their mechanics. one tier down, Exalted and Werewolf earn some brownie points for just feeling really cool to roleplay in. it is not their fault that they got matched up against the two games I've played the most and have the fondest memories of.

and so we continue on into a new round. here are the new match-ups--  

Dungeons & Dragons 5e vs Pathfinder

7th Sea vs Star Wars

Vampire: the Masquerade vs World of Darkness 

The One Ring vs A Song of Ice and Fire 

I almost do want to play them all again for the quarterfinals. wouldn't that be fun?

for the sake of time, however, I'm afraid we'll have to imagine all the gameplay we can and work with the experience I've been able to glean so far from these 8 potential champions. only one pair of the lot includes systems that were brand new to me when I started this thing. those two being matched together seems fair enough. 

how will I approach this second round? I think I'll revisit each book directly and reconsider aesthetics, mechanics, and approachability in context of the new contrasts of each match. I'll likely draw on my prior reviews a bit as I do so, but I'll avoid as much repetition as I can possibly avoid.

palimpsest

seasons of 90 days each. seems like plenty of time. one quarter of a full circle, fair time for each mood of the year.
what was I wanting to blog about?

paper and trees. loud noises and how to hear through them.  

-

I've been thinking a lot about my grandma. grandma Ashdown. she comes into my dreams

my coat pockets for the past two winters have held traces of that March funeral three years ago: a whole pecan my dad had given me. bottle of lotion from the hotel. baggage claim slips. 

-

this week the seasons tangibly tilted, almost all at once, one into the other. winter-spring chills are banished by the baking warmth of full-on spring. snow and freezing feel like the smallest of old memories from here.

there are new plants! phlox and day lilies and an easter cactus.

the last day of classes, yesterday. the whole semester at its boiling point, with only grading and emails left before it all simmers away.

for summer break? so many art plans.
and exercise plans.
reading and rereading,
writing and rewriting.
paints and puzzles and games. plenty of sunshine too.

I'd been thinking about all the roles from whatever Goffman theory of something or other... but I'd forgotten the words for it.

my other grandma was a teacher. she taught much younger humans than I get to teach, and I don't know how she had the patience. but if it weren't for her and others like her who somehow do, all the building blocks of reading and writing wouldn't be there for my students to use for anything more advanced.  

-

six years ago, riverside vows in the rain.

now? I must finish all this grading and work. then we'll go lay about in the sunshine. fix my bike. go camping at least 3 times. family reunion adventures in July. rent kayaks every week if we feel like it. 

-

I found this letter in the back of an old mostly-empty journal. it's a letter I never sent, for some reason. there isn't year with the date of Jan 22 in the corner-- but all evidence (the stationery, my careful handwriting and lack of capitalization, the turn of phrase and the doodles at the bottom) points to 2001 or thereabouts.

it is written to yet a different grandma-- step-grandma, if we need to be that specific. it conjures different memories. twenty-two years ago? when I was barely almost kindof a grown-up?

"grandma chesley:
greetings! all the family says hi and wishes you well. i decided that i would write this whole letter just because. [hearts] life's been crazy as it always is. i wonder when it will all settle down. anyway meanwhile i go on through all these crazy experiences, thinking all sorts of crazy things while in so many different moods. it seems like everything changes, but never the way people expect. i really really hope my life turns out well. most of the time it seems like i have no clue and won't amount to anything special. the things i care about can be so ridiculous and yet so serious... that's just more proof that life is a paradox.

for all the wrong in the world, the truth seems extraordinarily unbelievable at times. it certainly is hard to concentrate on the good and the beautiful when so many trivial matters lie in the way. i think i would give anything for an eternity of peace, and i guess that is really what we are reaching for.
[smiley, heart, flower, star, leaf, raindrop, rainbow]"

dear past self, it will not settle down. but you'll learn to settle yourself and settle into yourself. eternity may or may not exist in any meaningful way for these limited human brains of ours, but peace does, at least.

moon wear

the clouded sky out west thismorning was solid, stoic blue-dark-grey, except for a very little patch low to the horizon where it looked like the moon had worn a hole straight through. the (almost unbelievably and excessively bright) golden glow shone clearly underneath a stretch of threadbare overcast just exactly like the ball of your foot would show through an old sock.

could we darn the clouds against the friction of the morning moonlight? it's great to imagine such a project. what would one use as mending threads and darning needles? would they need to be enchanted or celestial tools?

I haven't so much as darned a simple sock yet, so I do not know. 

for now, I know that winter is slowly fading into the past. it's finally a bit warmer in these pre-dawn hours for walking with Hamilton around the bend of our cul-de-sac without a heavy coat. 

we shall see what the sky looks like tomorrow. 

be

I bought this cheap yoga mat from target for $5 or so, purely so I could do yoga outside more often without worrying about getting my nice (and way more expensive) yoga mat all dusty or scratched up on the patio concrete.

this cheap yoga mat gets used way more than the other one.

 

it was only $5 so I didn't fuss too much about the cheesy sentiment spelled out at the top. "do what you need to be OKAY" it says. the okay is in white, and the rest a dark blue. usually this kind of adornment is very meh to me and I avoid it whenever possible.

it is a nice yoga-ish sentiment though. very much in line with Ms. Adriene Mischler's "Find What Feels Good" mantra. 

the other day, with my knees blocking out most of the all-caps "OKAY," I got thinking, as I do, about doing and being and all the stories, from barest anecdote to most intricate parable, that alternately draw bold lines of dichotomy between them or twisty lines of intertwining for me. 

 

1. being is opposed to doing. being is calm and simple and passive and inevitable. doing is rambunctious, busy, and difficult. 

I've been reading Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing recently and its premise fits with this distinction. we don't always need to be doing things. it is perfectly fine and natural and healthy to just be. just sit in a public garden and stare into space. walk along the beach and forget about your to-do lists.

 

or... 2. being is as doing does. you can't be something or someone without some actions that align your being-self with whatever or whomever you want to be. you can't be a professional football player if all you do is wear a certain color of jersey. there's more to it than that. and you can't be a pink flamingo if you don't eat the exact right kind of shrimp to turn your feathers pink. 

 

(the flamingo example was one of the drawn-out parable kinds of stories. pink flamingos are to their shrimp diets as true Christians are to the words of Jesus, or something like that.)

of course all the nuance and mushiness of our beautiful human language means that it can be both. being can be separate from doing. and doing can be absolutely everything that supports our being.

so the phrase "do what you need to be" has been rattling gently around in my head for weeks now. often the thought is shadowed by a somewhat-related question as to the meaning of need vs. want.

needing and being and doing. how would we draw out a diagram of how these versatile verbs truly relate to each other?

it seems impossible to be without needing. and so much of our doing is to fill our various needs. I suppose, too, that how (or whether) we meet which needs shapes whoever we are. circular.

do what you need to be. 

so many ways to parse and ponder on that phrase...

are the 'do' and the 'be' two sides of a math formula, one in which the what you do-- the variable--must equate just so with your whole being, irrevocably? 

or is the fulcrum of the sentence further over to the right, after the emphasis on need, as if to give us permission: do whatever it is you need to do in order to give yourself space to simply be?

I like that interpretation, I think. but I still don't quite know if I understand it. does it prioritize doing too much? does it make the rambunctious, busy, difficult staircases of doing a prerequisite to calm and simple being?

the cool thing is that I can keep thinking about it. meditating on it. being, doing, and both.

week eight

after blogging almost everyday for seven weeks, summer activities and naps and plans took over and left no time. 

but I have still been writing. journaling... work notes... DnD vignettes... mental rants about politics and society... and yes, various blogpost drafts. 

some of that writing will become conventionally useful in future lesson plans or tenure/promotion paperwork or letters to congress.

some of it will simply exist. 

other things I've been up to since last week:

reorganizing and tidying the china hutch, carefully

-spinning wheel practice, frustratedly

-making cheesecake, indulgently

-watering plants, generously 

-planning a weekend camping trip, hopefully

-taking Hamilton for short walks, lazily

-dealing with our fritzy air-conditioning, longsufferingly

-and, resignedly, failing at Wednesday's wordle. 

I fail at Worldle all the time (despite having won 2nd place in a geography bee once upon a time; someday I really need to sit down and try to master all the countries in Africa), but I don't think I've failed any of the daily Wordle puzzles before this. ever.

I still think the game should have a mechanism for signalling when a letter shows up more than once. but maybe that would make it too easy...

oh well. 

life is about way more than mere success, thankfully. 

Wordle 396 (20 July 2022) X/6

⬜⬜🟩⬜🟨
🟩⬜🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩