The new website is live, please give it a look

Today is the day where the real website is finally live.  Please check out Escape is at Hand.  This site combines parts of The Daily Score, and what I have built here over the last 12 years, with eventually a big travel focus as well.  There will be more reviews, more photos, more, well, everything as time goes on. 

There will likely be few to no more posts on this site, even after 12 years.  It seems silly to post the same content in two places now that I have a proper website with a proper domain.  Some of the back post catalog from here will likely eventually get ported over (besides the reviews which will all get ported over and most will get updated).  Regular posts that make it over to the new site will likely be rewritten or edited and updated as well.

Thank you everyone for being on this journey on here, and hopefully you will join in over at Escape is at Hand as well.

Three Days till Launch

Three days until launch date for the new website, and there is still a good deal to get done on it, mostly photography, as well as a little writing that needs to happen, but otherwise I think I have everything mostly under control I think.  That isn’t of course to say that I am not rather nervous about the whole thing as well.  I don’t know for sure if transitioning everything from here on WordPress over to something else and doing an entirely new format and entirely new everything is such a good idea or not.  Even though it has been something that I have thought about and wanted to do for years at this point.

Worst case I will give it a year and see how it goes, and if it doesn’t work out well for me, I may just keep the domain name and then just come back to WordPress.  I don’t know how likely that is, I am honestly hoping it isn’t too likely that is needed, but I feel like giving things a year is a decent enough time to try and get things going and situated there, and try and improve readership and all that was well.  Will potentially have to do a good bit more promotion than what I have ever really done for here. 

I just want to be happy with whatever the site becomes, presuming it becomes anything at all.  I have the feeling it will or can be.  It will just take a good bit of work, and I have to be willing to put in the work to have it happen as well. 

I am doing my best to be optimistic about all of it, which isn’t the easiest for me, as there is a lot of feelings of self-doubt and wondering if doing all of this was a good decision, the right decision, or if I am flying into this idea with minimal planning and organization and just hoping for the best.  Only time will tell with all that I think, and all I can do is try to make the most of it that I can as I go along.  There will be of course changes along the way, likely with design, content, and everything as things go along.

I am excited for everything going forward with it and I just need to make sure to do my best to make it all work out, however that happens to be.  I just know I have to work hard to be able to keep motivated, focused, and engaged with it, and not get bored as time goes on.  As long as I am able to stay engaged, keep things interesting, and enjoy myself, that is all I think I will need in order to keep motivated and stick with it.  I can’t let this be yet another project or idea that I get very excited about and then let it die, I do that enough with writing projects, I don’t need to let it happen here too.

The prep work is a struggle

Doing all the preparation work to launch the new website is exhausting and a little overwhelming.  I don’t know if I am doing too much, too little, or just the right amount of preparation, putting content on there that already exists on here, or what.  Trying to throw all this together in two weeks maybe wasn’t or isn’t the smartest idea, but it is what I am doing and I am just hoping for the best really.  I know good and well that there are going to be a lot of changes that I need to make with it in the coming weeks and likely even months as I make it work for what I want and the ideas I have in my head. 

I think though that I will feel better having the site up and live as opposed as having it in a perpetual draft state where it exists but not in a position where anyone can see it.  Changes and edits can always be made, as well as listening to feedback to see what others think about it as well.  Others are hopefully going to see any notice things that slip past my eyes, or see things from a different point of view as well. 

This whole project is going to have me a good bit busier in some ways but should also help me be a bit more structured with some of my writing and maybe home in my focus on things as well.  Focus is one of my downsides as evidence form some of my blog posts here where they are an overly rambling mess going on tangents from topic to topic, and I need to be better at preventing that and going into my writing with a much stricter sort of focus than I normally do.

At least now the separate blogs will be all in one place in a way so I can separate things out to the proper location instead of lumping everything together in one spot, which is exceptionally beneficial.  That has been my biggest issue on here, just shoving all the posts in one spot no matter what their content focus was, and that isn’t the best for keeping things nice and organized at all.  I am not at all the most organized person but potentially this website will be something that will help with that, with the organization of my thoughts and ideas and all that.  I have more than enough notebooks, journals, pens, and all that to try and keep things organized, so potentially I will finally be able to, and able to get on a concrete sort of posting schedule as well. 

I have the drive, the motivation, I just hope it sticks with me and I don’t manage to burn out on it after a few months.  That will I am sure be the hardest thing for me, to get bored of it as time goes on.  That is something I will have to very actively fight against, and something I am very hopeful that I am able to avoid.  I have gone through long time periods on here that I haven’t written and that is something that I am going to want to avoid on the new site.

Dealing with hoarding and windows that won’t open

Staring at a laptop screen having no idea what to write at all is not how I like to spend my Monday morning, or really any morning either.  On a Monday though, the start of the week it is especially hard to not be able to come up with anything worth writing.  I can’t focus enough to try and work on my novel, can’t focus enough on anything.  The weekend was exhausting and then some.  Dealing with the nonsense of everything at my aunts and trying to set up an air conditioner for her, only to have the window we were going to mount the exhaust vent out of, be unable to open.  Of course she has used this window before, I have seen it open before, but now it wouldn’t budge more than a quarter of an inch on one side and there was no reasonable way to try and get the window out of the frame either considering how much stuff is in that room.  It wasn’t great.

She had to clear a path through all the nonsense in that room, as she is a hoarder and then some, in order to get to the other window in the room, which thankfully opened just fine.  After that, it was trying to construct an adequate venting system to run the exhaust all the way to that window from where the freestanding air conditioning unit is sitting in her hallway. 

I am glad that she has it now, because although she has a central air conditioning unit, it is ancient, isn’t working well at all, and can’t be repaired because of its age, and she doesn’t have the means to replace it, which isn’t good at all.  Nothing about her situation is good at all, and is a cause of a lot of stress and worry for me.  Everything with her will eventually fall to me when she is gone, and that is exhausting to think about and then some.  Between the lien on house, back taxes, and all of the hoarding, it is just, all sorts of a bad time and something that I am not thrilled that I am going to be dealing with in the future, but that is of course an issue for future me, which future me is not going to be thrilled about when I have to deal with it then.  

I do love that house, so many good memories from when I was a kid there, but it is a wreck now, there is so much to get done in it, things to repair, insane amounts of cleaning, all of that is going to be the biggest headache in the world, and so god awful expensive.  The pool table there in the basement is something I would want to keep but lord know where I could ever move it too.  It isn’t like anywhere I would likely ever live would have adequate room for one and if I did, I in my overly particular state of exitance would want a different one, either a Brunswick Anniversary or Centennial, or a Gold Crown IV, depending on what I could find for sale, not the basic table that my grandfather had.  It is unfortunate that I don’t like that table as much, but if I had the room for one, I may as well have the one that I really want and not just settle for what I have.  

I am hopeful that it doesn’t all end up being too bad whenever I have to deal with all of this in the future, even though I know good and well it will be.  It is going to be an exhausting mess at some point in the future and I am dreading that so much.

Time to work on photography

The moving of a lot of content from this blog to the new website is more than a little challenging and time consuming.  More than I was expecting in some ways, but I want to make sure I do it all right too.  This blog has been incredibly light on photos, only with them posted on the Café Explorer posts as well as less than 10 other posts in the entire 14-year lifespan of this blog.  It worked for me, but going forward I don’t think that is how I am going to want or need to progress with things. 

The new layout calls for pictures more so than this layout ever did, which means I am going to have to do a lot more when it comes to taking photos, which is something I have said I have wanted to do, but not something that I particularly excel at.  There have been multiple times I have gone to a café to review it, gotten the post written, and then realizing I forgot to take phots of it and then had to go back another day to take them.

I couldn’t find photos for nearly any of the casinos I have visited, nor can I find any photos of most of the sports venues either.  Nothing from Everett, Kent, or Ontario, California.  Nothing from Angel of the Winds, Northern Quest, Swinomish, or Ilani.  As well as nothing from Chinook Winds and Spirit Mountain besides some photos of their sportsbooks, which is nice, but I would like some exterior shots too.

The photography needs to be a bigger priority, or maybe not just photography but graphics and images in general.  Screenshots from games I am playing, stuff like that would be a good fit for the gaming side of things.  But mostly it will be a chance to flex some of my photography skills that are largely out of practice.

Other than that a lot of it is going to be figuring stuff out as I go along for what I want to do, how I want to build and organize the site since it is really going to be nothing like the blog here in design, layout, organization, or in some ways even content since I am hoping to bring a much bigger travel focus to it.  At least that is the goal, and I need to figure out exactly how I want to go about implementing it to make it work for me and have it look professional as well.

Doing all of this is a chance to make things better for the website and myself. I know my goals, hopes, and dreams are likely a lot more than I will ever see with the new website, but I can least hope that I can build something that I am happy with and can grow over time to be what I have had floating around in my mind for years at this point. It is hard when the idea has been kicking around in my head for so long and I am finally doing what I can to make it a reality, I just hope I don’t manage to make a mess of it somehow.

Big changes are coming – A domain has been purchased

Well, here we are, I finally did something I have been talking about doing for quite some time, years actually, and bought a domain name for this blog.  The domain name will be different, the layout will be different, a lot of things will be different, but I feel it will be different in a good and better way.  The site will be moving over to Squarespace, which seemed like the best and easiest way to get something built that would both look good and be an easy and straightforward way to get it done, the domain, hosting, everything all in one go.

I am hopeful that I don’t regret going with Squarespace, but time will tell with that.  It is of course a good bit different than WordPress, which isn’t really a bad thing either.  I mean don’t get me wrong, WordPress is nice and all, I have been using it since the very first blog post went live on here all the way back in May of 2010, it has been a long strange ride of sorts on here, and I am glad to be here with WordPress.  I had a Blogger site once upon a time and I don’t think I ever particularly did much with it all the way back when I was living in Reno.  WordPress just seemed a lot more professional at the time, and it is, but it is time now, finally, to do something bigger and better.

I want, or plan for the new blog site thing to have a lot more on it, and in a much better organized manner than what this is.  There will be a lot more reviews, of cafes, casinos, sports venues, as well as other things like libraries, and a much bigger travel focus as well.  The travel side of things is something I have wanted to build and grow for years.  Ever since I hatched some of my travel goals and ideas, like the Amtrak stuff and the like. 

I want it to be a little Paul Theroux, a little William Least Heat-Moon, a bit Anthony Bourdain, some Hunter S. Thompson, and maybe even a little Nomadic Matt.

Am I thinking too big with all of this?  Probably yeah, I am.  At the same time, I would rather shoot big and have it not turn into anything, than going small and never really giving my ideas and goals a chance to grow, thrive, and become something big.

I have been a man of ideas and no action to speak of for far too long, and this, now, is the chance to put a lot of those ideas into the world in some form or another and see if they stick or become something.  I am never going to know if I don’t try, and if I don’t try I am likely to regret not taking the chance forever, which isn’t good either.  

I have the chance now to transform this silly little blog that has been a companion for the last 14 years into something more professional, even if the actual blog portion of the site is still going to have a good bit of my random writing and complaining about everything under the sun.  At current, playing around with the design of things on the Squarespace site I am looking at having three separate blog portions which will be the main blog like this, a thing all about gaming, and then ones that are going to be primarily the reviews of places (cafes, casinos, sports venues) as that will be I think the best and easiest way to organize them, or so I hope.

There is going to be a distinct learning curve with the new site and it is going to take a good deal of time I think to get it situated how I want it, but I think that is unavoidable.  I have gone through so many templates on this blog over the years, and some redesigns when I started adding the reviews, and the like.  I am just hopeful I am able to come up with something I like early on and am able to stick with it going forward.

A PNW Pen Show recap

This Saturday I attended the Pacific Northwest Pen Show that was held at the Monarch Hotel in the suburbs of Portland, incredibly close to my home.  This was my first pen show, as last year I missed it, and I wasn’t sure what to expect especially since it was being held in a new venue from last year as well.  It sounded like the venue last year was a good deal smaller and had dramatically more issues when it came to parking, as the Monarch has a massive parking lot at its disposal.

The show itself wasn’t the cheapest to attend, a advance entry for one day was $25, which seemed a little high to me, especially comparing to the entry prices for other shows online such as St. Louis and Colorado which were much cheaper in comparison.  The show itself was quite crowded when I was there on Saturday, more so than I expected.  Then again I didn’t quite know what to expect really, never having been to one before.

The crowd was a lot younger than I had expected, which was nice to see, there was a good mix of vendors, from one person shows like Carolina Pen Company, and Newton Pens, to larger vendors like Dromgool’s, Pen Realm, Travelers Company, and Portland’s own Oblation Paper and Press.  I was not expecting it to be anywhere near as crowded as it was either, I arrived about a hour or so after the show started on Saturday, so that was very possibly why.  It wasn’t overcrowded I would say but just more people than I was expecting, and also more younger people there than I was expecting as well.

I picked up several things at the show, some Travelers Company inserts for the Travelers Notebook I have toted around in my bag for years, the special California and Tokyo ones, as well as a bear badge pin for my coat that matches the leather and brass charms on my notebook itself.  I also got a show exclusive notebook from another company there. 

I picked up a show exclusive Rickshaw/Nock Sinclair with the flag of the City of Portland that I am very happy with as well. 

I picked up a Parker 51 that had been restored as well, my only pen purchase of the show.  I do have a soft spot for vintage pens, and thanks to the vendor I got the Parker from, I have a line on a gentleman in Nebraska to send my grandfathers pens to in order to get them restored so they can be used as well. 

I wish there was another pen show close to Portland, but the next closest is in San Francisco and that isn’t all that close at all.  It would be a lot of fun to go to one of these bigger shows at some point, San Francisco or Chicago or something, but that is something to think about for the future.  Overall I am very glad that I went to this one and had a very good time, and I am looking forward to making it back in 2025.

Continuing on with EHM

The EHM dilemma is real.  I planned on switching over from the freeware version of Eastside Hockey Manager to the next edition of the game, NHL Eastside Hockey Manager after this last season with Phoenix.  However, than that I have finished the season I am having second thoughts about that.  The reasoning for that is even though the last season was rather terrible, barely squeaking into the playoffs and then getting bounced in the first round 4 games to 1 by Colorado.  Generally speaking it was a rather bad season.

However, there were distinct positives, like Michal Handzus leading the league with 102 points.  The Coyotes were without Shane Doan for nearly 50 regular season games and all of the playoffs.  He scored 33 points in the 33 games he did play for the season.  I am fairly sure he is not in the last year of his contract and will be back for the next season.

How well Handzus, Doan, and Daymond Langkow played during the season while they were all healthy is reason enough for me wanting to give a fifth season with the Coyotes a go.  I feel like if I can manage for everyone to stay healthy there may be a good chance for the Coyotes to do better than a first or second round playoff exit.

I don’t feel like the team has enough depth to win a Stanley Cup., nut I do feel they could still give some teams a good bit of trouble in the playoffs.  Maybe I need to try and bolster the roster via trades, free agency, see who from the minor league I can call up, there has to be some way I can improve the team in a reasonable manner, maybe trade draft picks for players. 

If this fifth season is a bust, then I will probably switch over to the next EHM game.  If the Coyotes do well enough though, making it through the second round of the playoffs then I think there is a good chance that I might go on for more seasons if I felt like there was a decent chance at winning a Stanley Cup.  I don’t know if there really will be, considering how poor the last few seasons have gone.  I am hopeful though that if I can keep players healthy somehow, I think there is a legitimate chance I could do okay.

I am just glad I managed to get through four seasons so far with the Coyotes, after so many tries with Ottawa that ended up failing due to corrupted saves, or saving over the wrong file or things like that.  I a glad with future versions of that game that will not be an issue as the saving is more automatic which is a positive.  I just have to make the most of it and try and do as well as I can with this version of the game and all subsequent versions as well, because if I am not having fun why bother.

Café Explorer – Terrain Coffee Project, West 6th St , Vancouver, WA

Terrain Coffee Project
106 West 6th St
Vancouver, Washington, 98660 – Website – Instagram

The Details

Wi-Fi – Yes
Power Outlets – Yes
Restrooms – Yes
Parking – street parking only
Transit – C-Tran Route 71 at SW 6th and Washington
Hours – M-F 7:00 am. – 3:00 p.m. Sat-Sun 8:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Payment – card or cash

Seating

Indoor
3 four seat tables
6 bar/window seats looking out the windows
4 two seat tables
1 low six seat table
Outdoor
2 Two seat tables

The seating is average overall. It was comfortable enough and the tables were big enough for laptops and drinks

Coffee and Food

Standard cafe drinks. A few specalties and they roast their own coffee. There were a couple options for food when I was there, jalepeno scones and some lemon and Earl Grey cookies. The cookie I had was rather good. I am sure they offer more items but a lot was sold out when I got there.

Overall Feelings

This cafe is rather small and in an old building, which has some nice charm to it with the exposed brickwork and wood floors. A comfortable spot in general, but I could see it being a little too much if it was exceptionally busy.

Visit Date7/7/24

Already over the heat

The heat is getting to me a lot more than I thought it would this year.  It hasn’t even been that bad, only a little over 100 one day, a good deal of days in the 90s and this entire week expected to be as well, but I am enjoying the heat very little and not particularly enjoying being out in it.  True, I was out a good bit yesterday, did a little morning drive with the kid to get coffee in Vancouver, Washington with him.  Thankfully it wasn’t that hot when we were out and the car was able to stay fairly cool. 

We ended up also going down to Keizer to hit Target as a family and get lunch down there as well just to get out of the house.  It was damn hot, but we were able to stay cool enough in the car and everywhere we went was air conditioned as well, so it wasn’t too bad.  Home as well was able to stay cool thanks to the newish air conditioning unit we have from a couple years ago that is actually able to maintain a fairly comfortable temperature in the house much more so than the old one ever was able to do when it got this hot outside.

The heat makes me exhausted, more than any other part of the year.  True winter makes me tired when it is dark at 5:00 p.m. when I am heading home from work.  All I want to do is go home and sleep.  The heat though is exhausting and makes me have so little energy to do anything.  I also hate how sweaty I get now compared to when I was younger when I hardly sweat at all.  A lot of it probably has to do with how humid it is here compared to living in Reno when it was exceptionally dry all the time.  Not that Portland is all that humid mind you, but it is far more than Nevada. 

My allergies are at least somewhat less bad these last couple days than they were earlier in the week.  My nose hasn’t been running nonstop, which is always a positive, and my eyes haven’t been itchy or anything either which is also a plus.  I just want to feel mostly alive and not be suffering from allergy issues, even if it is just in the morning when I am first getting up and the first couple hours of the day.  Don’t get me wrong, still taking allergy medication daily just in case because I don’t want to have it catch me by surprise, but at least even in the mornings now I am feeling better than I had been before.

I am glad that at least this week after tomorrow the temperatures will be dipping back into the 90s and hopefully staying there.  The projected high of 104 tomorrow sounds horrible and I am not liking that one bit.  Even less so that the overnight low tonight is only going to be 69, that is going to keep things warm and unpleasant for sure.  Hopefully we won’t get a whole lot more weather in the 100’s this year, but it is hard to say what August might bring.