Tonight at dinner, Griffin saw a truck pull up in front of our house and wondered aloud who it was. Andrew said, “A guy in a t-shirt” to which Griffin replied, bewildered, “A dying teacher?!”
Aging Rapidly
Two age-related conversations with Griffin today:
“I want to go to Kindergarten soon.”
“Oh, why?”
“Because soon I will be a teenager.”
Later, while climbing some rocks:
“Daddy, why did you almost fall?”
“Because I’m old and clumsy.”
“Well, you are not clumsy, but you are very old.”
Ready Player One
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A delicious romp through ’80s geekdom! This is the sort of book I could have read in a single night, wrapping up before breakfast (as I once did with Ender’s Game some twenty years ago). Alas, sleep is at a higher premium these days, so I paced myself.
I was immediately taken in by the setting: a dystopian future where people spend their happiest hours immersed in The Oasis, a virtual reality where you can be the superhero/knight/wizard/jedi of your fantasies. (Think of a global, genreless World of Warcraft with infinite scalability and no lag.) The public schools have even gone virtual, since simulated schools have better facilities, stellar libraries, and no bullies (the school zones don’t allow physical contact between characters and you can mute anybody you don’t want to listen to). Meanwhile, the real world crumbles into islands of urban slums separated by Mad Maxish no-man’s-lands. The setting was painted in broad strokes leaving plenty of room for my piqued imagination to fill in the gaps. Vivid scenes gave the basic flavor. I reveled, for example, in the image of a public bus that traveled between cities (a la Greyhound). Fully armored, with a defensive gun deck up top, the passengers jacked into their VR rigs as soon as they boarded and spent the entire trip lost in another world.
The plot is built around an epic quest within the Oasis to locate the late lead-programmer’s Easter Egg, a deeply hidden golden ticket worth a dazzling real-world fortune to whoever finds it. The programmer built his puzzles and clues around the obsessions of his youth: 1980s geek culture (movies, music, video games, and classic role-playing games). To say more will lead to spoilers, and half the fun is applying your own knowledge to the puzzles, but I will say that there were many joyous epiphanies along the way as treasured memories of Atari cartridges and D&D adventures were given new life.
When I first rated the book I put four stars, but I’ve been considering the line between really liked it and amazing ever since. After writing this review, it’s clear that the overall reading experience was in amazing territory. With that said, the novel was not without flaws. Characters were often two-dimensional, and there were a number of relationships that didn’t quite gel. Foreshadowing was of the un-subtle variety. The plot was predictable, though a dash of cyberpunk toward the end was a pleasant surprise. In short, I kinda wish this wasn’t Cline’s first novel. In defense, one might argue that the source material suffers from all of these flaws in spades, but I think that’s a copout. Better writing would have improved the depth of immersion. Despite this, however, Cline easily managed to dunk me deep enough to have a blast. I want to read a book like this every summer.
Corn Weeder
He may have been born in California, but Griffin is definitely Minnesotan now. When I asked him about the cool lego train he built today, he explained that it was a “Corn Weeder.” Further discussion revealed that he was talking about a combine harvester. I didn’t even know what a combine was until a few years ago when Sarah explained that she drove one for a summer job long ago. Griffin is way ahead of me!
Strong Head
“I don’t have a headache because my head is very strong and tough.” — Griffin
Multilingual Laughter
After a particularly insane laugh at dinner tonight, Griffin announced, “I was laughing in another language!”
Double Meltdown
I was solo-dad last night. It was my first time attempting to manage Griffin’s bedtime routine while taking care of Maggie. At one point it got so ridiculous that there was only one thing to do: record it for posterity.
Maggie’s Surprise Package
Maggie got a surprise package yesterday. Inside was this letter:
“June 8, 2012
Dear Maggie:
We haven’t met, but I saw your baby picture on Facebook the other day, and I was very excited! My name is Maggie, too…short for Margaret. There are not too many Margarets around anymore, and I wanted to send you this silverware. It belonged to your great-grandmother, Margaret Crutchfield Roy. Your great-grandparents, Andy and Margaret Roy, were Presbyterian missionaries and lived in exciting and wonderful places, and traveled all over the world. Over the years, they were given many interesting and amazing gifts of art and porcelain and ivory from China and Hong Kong. They lived long and happy lives. After Margaret died, your great uncle, Dr. David Roy, and my mom, Nancy Robertson, cleaned out the garage and the closets in the Pittsburgh apartment so that Andy Roy, who was almost 100 years old, could move to a smaller place.
David Roy was very generous and cavalier about giving away these items from his parent’s storage. He didn’t want them. He was sure that his brother, Stape, would not want them, and that your daddy and your uncles (who were young unmarried guys) would not want them. “Take them!” he said. “Take them all!” My mother and I loaded up her car with family heirlooms and knick-knacks and drove back to New Mexico where we live. We sorted the items fairly so that her sister, Aunt Sally (Robertson) Foster, could have some of the fascinating mementos for herself and for her children, too.
This silverware came to me because it is engraved with our name, Margaret. I believe it was given to your great-grandmother one piece at a time as she was growing up, by her relatives who loved her. When Margaret was a little girl over a hundred years ago, many young ladies were given nice silverware at Christmas and on their birthdays so that they might have a lovely set for entertaining when they were ready to marry and settle down. Margaret married, but her life was not one of settling down! They lived overseas for many years and usually ate with chopsticks. Margaret was not a materialistic person, but she kept this silverware from her childhood all of her life for sentimental reasons. I love this silver, but I have always thought that if Margaret Crutchfield Roy ever had a great-granddaughter (especially named Margaret) she would be very, very pleased for her to have it…to eat with, to play with, or to sell to pay for something she needs.
I loved and admired your great-grandmother, Margaret Roy, very much. She was an intelligent, gentle, and courageous woman who raised wonderful sons and made the world a better place. She was a role model to me because she was unafraid to go out in the world with the man she loved and do work that was important in spite of danger to her and her family. She was my great-aunt by marriage, and my father named me after her. I think we are lucky to share her name and heritage.
Love,
Maggie (Margaret Robertson-Linsky)”
We are so excited to have a piece of Roy Family history, and especially to have something linked directly with Maggie’s namesake. We could not have been more surprised and touched by Maggie Robertson-Linsky’s thoughtfulness! What a treasure.
Not Tired
On our way home after seeing friends, close to bedtime, Griffin says, “I’m not sleepy or tired or resty or nappy, Mama. I just want to go home and relax with you.”