pyat | Welcome to my Blog

About a dozen people have "friended" me in the last couple of months. Some of them don't really know who I am. So, let me provide some context. I'm Canadian - Southern Ontario specifically. We have our own genre of literature! I've lived in Burlington, Toronto, Montreal, and Hamilton. The entirety of my adult life has been spent in Hamilton.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Name:

pyat
Age: 34
Occupation: Technical Writer. Formerly media liaison for the local police department, Street Ministry Coordinator for the Salvation Army, computer magazine writer, reporter & photographer for a small-town newspaper, staff writer for an online school, and instructional writer for a non-profit office product association. Sometimes does freelance writing.
Notes: You’ll get to know me by reading this blog. Mostly, I like old-fashioned pen and paper role-playing games, and I own hundreds of RPG books. I’ve also written some, most notably Albedo and Usagi Yojimbo, which I co-wrote with

normanrafferty.

I am shaped like a barrel, except with arms and legs and a head.

I like reading about the history of office products, a quirk I developed while working as a writer for the Canadian Office Product Association. (“Down at the COPA, COPA Ca-na-da…”) I also like researching the history of various fandoms and attending science-fiction conventions. However, I don’t watch much television, I rarely see movies, and I don’t own a game console, so my knowledge of contemporary fandoms may be suspect. I like sitting in my gloomy basement and reading old Dragon magazines. I read a lot of books, but they were mainly written by dead Englishmen, so my knowledge of literature is also suspect.

I enjoy having people over to my house to play games, chat, and eat food. Sometimes we do play readings. I recently discovered that I like giving hugs to people and receiving them. I’m a democratic socialist because I trust "The People" even less than I trust "The Man." I have never been drunk, nor tipsy, nor high. My vices are alternately too dull to mention, or too shocking to admit in polite company. I attend furry conventions and pretend to be a talking mouse on the Internet. That may be one of the vices noted above, but then the Internet isn’t polite company.

Name:

velvetpage
Age: 33
Occupation: Public school teacher. Former library page, piano teacher, professional clown, itinerant knife peddler, and European traveler. She writes books from time to time, one of which has been published.
Notes: My wife of nine years. She is short, and every bit of her is suitable for hugging and/or burying one’s face in. She has unearthly blue eyes with a strange hazel fleck. Elements of her character will no doubt become apparent in my blog. In general - she is very, very clever and sometimes very focused.

She is a very bad housekeeper (but then, so am I), though she makes excellent jam and Christmas puddings. She can turn mere thread and wool into functional garments. She likes pen-and-paper role-playing games and the sort of boardgame that requires you to trade wood for sheep. She's lived in France, and has seen much more of the world than I have. She writes letters to the editor and gets into serious fights on the Internet, mostly about vaccination, socialized healthcare, and the need to not be a moron. I love her lots and lots. If you want to know more, go read her journal!

Name: Elizabeth (a.ka. “Little Bit,” “Busy”, “Pirate Fairy Princess,” “Mouse Fairy.” “Queen Elizabeth of all the Toys”)
Age: 5
Occupation: Student
Notes: My first-born. She was one of the quietest and most biddable toddlers in history, and has grown into a smart, sensitive little girl with her mom’s eyes. She likes unicorns and pink things and ponies, but also likes sword-fighting, dragons, and robots. Elizabeth draws and colours very well, and is starting to read books independently. She is (apparently) going to marry a boy in her art class, or possibly Princess Ariel. She hasn’t decided yet. She likes boardgames, but wishes her little sister didn’t have to play them too.

Upon seeing a WWII bomber fly over the city last month she informed me, with a happy sigh, that she was glad to be born “nowadays when there is no war.” She does worry about her Uncle John, who is a soldier. She does not believe in ghosts or monsters, but was sad when she heard unicorns aren’t real. She thinks my father is Santa Claus, and sometimes he is. She wants a puppy and she likes circus clowns. Finally, she wants to be a TV script writer when she grows up. She has a complete episode of Backyardigans, complete with tunes, in her head. Ask her nicely, and she’ll tell you about it!

Name: Claire (a.ka. “Clairebear”)
Age: 2
Occupation: Small child
Notes: Claire is our second (almost certainly last) child. She spent the first several weeks of her life in a hip brace, but you would never know it. Claire runs and jumps without fear, and demonstrates incredible endurance. During a recent airport layover, she ran in circles on the automated pathway for 90 minutes – she was running continuously for that time.

Claire dislikes wallpaper intensely, and has managed to remove it from one entire wall of her bedroom, sometimes in five-foot strips. She is a very sweet child, and offers comfort to anyone she sees crying, or hurt. She likes watching ants and looking at stones. Claire enjoys washing her hands, taking baths, and brushing her teeth. She does not like eating new things. She loves Blue’s Clues and talking animals, and really likes singing. She talks a lot these days, though it’s not always very clear what she’s saying. She likes hiding under her covers and surprising people, playing hide and seek, digging, and making towers out of blocks and then knocking them over. In recent weeks, she’s been carrying a baby doll around with her everywhere. The doll is only slightly smaller than she is.

Name: The Mousehold
Age: 85ish
Occupation: Container for stuff
Notes: Essentially a large, slightly irregular shoebox with a lid on it. It’s where we keep our stuff, including an elderly piano, an overly large dining room table, about 2000 books, and a smallish couch that sometimes manages to hold upwards of four adults at a time. Some of the pipes are galvanized, the attic is inaccessible, the garage has a notable list to the right, the dryer vents into a crawlspace, there is a mysterious and superfluous exterior door that leads nowhere, and mushrooms grow in the basement. We like it here.