Bad news is that I’m still coughing and still have a leaky nose. My voice is still off and I can barely hit medium notes. On top of that I’m still not at full energy, I’m having trouble standing/walking for more then a half hour without feeling faint. I’m still very dizzy but that is a side effect of the pills they gave me for my heart.
Good news is that I’ve got more energy then I did, I don’t need naps anymore. I am able and okay with writing. I can think clearly most of the time and I should be fine to work from home next week.
Unrelated to the RSV, I still have numbness in my face and pressure in my left temple. My wrists and arms are not bad, which is nice.
I have an appointment with the MS clinic next week, an internal specialist in 2 weeks, and the heart institute in March. Hopefully one of them will help with the long term stuff and hopefully the RSV leftover symtoms will go away.
Thanks for following and hope you have a healthy new year.
This is one of my favourite movies, so I had to include it. Also, it’s never too early to introduce time travel to kids! (Yes, that’s a joke, but also true!)
Singing, listening to different pieces, learning piano, learning guitar
Crochet
On break
Basic Information
We talk about the days of the week and play games with the cutouts of the names. We do the same thing with the names of the months of the year. You can find the print-outs here.
Printing words
Download material
Counting objects/math-type activities
Practice counting objects and writing how many of each type –(in download material)
Addition and pattern – worksheet
Storytime
Activity
Draw a new invention (link here) Lava Lamp Experiment (link here) Make book of shapes – one shape per page, colour it and describe it (eg. A purple square, a green triangle, a pink heart, a yellow star). Use staples to attach pages together.
I want you to know that I’m watching you closely and I think you need to be the “rebel” year where everything goes well for everyone. I think we all need one year to rest and have nice things happen.
I took 2023 off from making Resolutions because of my arm injury. I’ve improved significantly, and then in December 2023, I almost died from RSV.
The combination made me realize that I need to strive to improve and give myself goals. These resolutions aren’t cheap promises; they are things I want to do.
1. Write a serial story.
This is year 11 of me writing 1000 words a month for a serial story. I’m very proud of them and think they’ve helped me think on my feet.
I’m not sure what this year’s will be but I’m going to write 1000 words per month, and if I miss a month I have to write an extra chapter.
2. Finish Speaker of the Rebel Sun
I’ve been working on stories involving Hal the Sun Speaker and others in his universe for almost 11 years. I have 63000 words in a compilation book and I just need the big ending. I had planned on it being the serial story, but I’m not sure if 12000 words will be enough to tie everything together and end the series.
Either way, I’d like to have this done and ready for submission by the end of the year.
3. Finish Fanatics! Inevitable Honeymoon Crashers
Jen and I have been working on this one since early November and we’re a good 6 chapters in. Between health and life, it’s going slower than we’d like but it’s still moving. I’d love to see this done by July but I’ll be happy by end of year.
4. Clean up FADDS and continue the re-skin towards making the Aetherverse the default setting.
I’d like to get FADDS published sometime in the next decade. The rules are almost there and it just needs some cleaning up and re-skinning to set it in the Aetherverse. It’s the perfect combination since it has elements of fantasy, urban, sci-fi, and horror.
5. Play more Ukulele and Bass
I haven’t played in over a month because I’ve been too sick and dizzy but I’d like to get back into it. It’s a great way of relaxing.
6. Work weekly on my magical café
My wife and kids gave me a build your own thing (Christmas 2022) and it’s wonderful but takes a lot of tiny details. I asked for it and I think I was overly ambitious. I got frustrated and didn’t keep going but I’d like to finish it.
7. Read at least 10 books
I’m slowly working on letting myself read for pleasure. It’s been hard since COVID, and I’ve felt like it’s a selfish thing. I need to get over that and read for fun.
8. Be kind to myself
I’ve been really hard on myself the past few years, concentrating on what I couldn’t do instead of what I did. I’ve felt a little like a failure despite quantitative proof to the opposite. I need to be nicer to myself.
9. Find time for more
I need to find a few minutes everyday where I relax and take time for myself. I’ve been doing that more in the past month since if I didn’t, I’d collapse and it’s helping emotionally as well as physically.
December 2nd was the last movie I managed to review. Unfortunately, with getting sick it’s taken a back seat. Both watching and reviewing. I’d like to restart hopefully by February and stick to a weekly schedule, but we’ll see.
I think this is a good set of goals, ambitious without being unreasonable.
Hiding on an enemy ship is a lot easier when they don’t have security cameras. The Blue-Sun ships relied on their Sun Speakers to see any threats coming. Thankfully for Nessa, they still hadn’t figured out how to track felines like herself.
Unfortunately, it would only take one guard seeing her for alarms and violence to start. I’d best be extra stealthy, she thought.
The most obvious place to look was the now emptied prisoner cells. Unfortunately, Zuri wasn’t there. She was trying to decide where to go next, having only been on one of these ships once and having only seen the cells, med facilities, and hangar bay, when all the screens turned on at once.
Aria, the Sun Speaker, started to talk the second she was on screen. “Myrddin ships. We have found Arthur and she has agreed to join our cause.”
A mechanical voice replied, “If this is another trick we will be displeased.”
“Here is her DNA.”
After a few minutes, the Myrddin fleet responded, “All hail Arthur!”
Zuri was now pulled on screen and Aria said, “Tell them!”
The young girl looked angry, there was fire in her eyes and a scowl on her face. She looked off camera and mouthed, “Deck 42, room 631.” Then she fixed her eyes on the camera and said, “Myrddin ships. Blue-Sun and Violet-Sun are on a holy quest to rid the universe of all who do not worship the glory of their Sun god council.”
Nessa didn’t waste time watching at one screen. It was being broadcast across the entire ship. She hurried to deck 42, hoping that was the kid’s way of asking for rescue.
“Get on with it,” Aria said as she poked Zuri.
The younger girl smirked and said, “The original Arthur was a Sun Speaker for the sun of old Earth. They are waging a holy war against that sun. Against our origins. They must not be allowed to succeed. Return to Earth and protect its people and the god Sol.”
There was swearing and the feed cut off. Nessa chuckled and thought, Way to go kid.
She was almost at the right room when Aria burst through the door, red with anger. “Take her to medical. Scan and dissect her, I want to know how her powers work so we can reproduce them.”
The door closed behind Aria and the woman stormed off. A few minutes later, two large men walked out each holding one of Zuri’s arms. They were half dragging her and it looked like she was asleep.
Suddenly in Nessa’s head, Zuri’s voice said, Glad you came back for me. Wait until we’re closer to medical before taking these guys out.
How are you talking to me in my head? Nessa asked, fighting a panicked feeling.
The Sun Speakers of Blue-Sun are very well trained in how to use their powers but not in shielding their minds. When I touched Aria, I experienced her whole life. Now I know everything she knows. Which is surprisingly little but enough to start my training.
Okay, Nessa said, it was all she could think of saying. The idea that Zuri could see someone’s whole life from a touch was disconcerting.
When they reached the medical facilities, she shot both guards in the back. They were stunned and Zuri was free. The moment both men let go, she stood up and ran to Nessa for a hug.
“How do we get out of here?” Zuri asked.
“Bart’s fighter is still in the hangar, but we’ll need a distraction. Do you think you could write a virus or something that will shut this ship down?”
With a big smile, Zuri replied, “I already have. I had a few minutes alone in my cell and they never frisked me for my computer.” Nessa thought that was weird and was about to say so when Zuri added, “I thought it was weird too. I checked and they uploaded a tracking app to it. I’ll have to leave it behind. Don’t worry.”
“Can you not read my thoughts? Please.” Nessa asked.
Sighing loudly, Zuri said, “Try thinking quieter then.”
They moved slowly and finally reached the hangar bay. Zuri attached her computer to the wall and pressed several buttons. All the lights in the ship turned off, leaving only emergency lighting.
They hurried to Bart’s fighter ship and got inside. It looked like it hadn’t been touched. Zuri gave it a once over and said, “Either they’re way more clever than I think or they didn’t expect anyone would try to escape in a short range fighter.”
With the power off there was no way to open the hangar doors and Nessa took pleasure out of blasting a hole for them to escape. No power meant no alarms, and they escaped without any trouble.
Nessa was setting a course for the closest debris field in hopes of hiding until the fleets left. From her scanners, the Myrddin fleet and the Violet-Sun fleet had already left. She almost crashed into the Galahad when it decloaked in front of her. It took all her skill to turn the fighter and land in her ship.
Bart met them as they exited the fighter and said, “You didn’t get any scratches on her, I hope.”
“You were supposed to be on the transport ship. What are you doing here?”
“It was really cramped and they had a fighter. The doc and I took it and convinced the crew to wait for you. It didn’t take much convincing. Despite you being a Feline, we all love you, Captain.”
Ness smiled and gave him a big hug.
He blushed a little and turned to Zuri, “And you, young lady. Just because you’re Arthur doesn’t mean you’ll get any special privileges around here. You’re a member of the crew same as the rest of us.”
Zuri stood a little taller and smiled. “Yes, sir.”
One the bridge, Nessa addressed the crew, “Thank you for waiting for us. Now we need to decide what to do. Those bastards who destroyed our homes are going to do it again at old Earth. We can stay here and help the three systems regroup and rebuild or we can go join the fight at Earth. I won’t order you, this has to be a group decision.”
They all looked at Zuri who shook her head. Everyone was silent until Alexandre spoke, his lizard hiss extra pronounced as he said, “Our systems have been at war for centuries but I have never felt closer to a crew than I do all of you. I say we teach those sun worshipping bastards what war really means.”
The rest of the crew cheered and agreed.
“There’s only one problem. They have engines that can make the distance between systems in seconds. How will we ever make it back to earth in time?” Bart asked.
With an impish grin, Zuri replied, “We have a few antimatter bombs and if I can get the math just right, we can replicate what happened last time we were hit.”
The end?
While you wait for the next serial story why not read a previous one?
Overall, I am incredibly happy with how well the homeschooling of Pegasus went this semester. I thought I knew how this would go, and barring a couple surprises (he really doesn’t like colouring, and he really does like reading) he did a great job.
However, some things are going to change next semester, as I feel like the usefulness is not to it’s full potential.
Overview of each section:
Dance
Ballet and martial arts on alternate days – this will stay the same, although hopefully we’ll be able to do more martial arts. I’ll also try to be more structured with it.
Music
Singing, listening to different pieces, learning piano. Piano will continue as long as Pegasus and my mother are okay with it.
Crochet
He finished his poncho. I need to come up with a new project for this semester.
Basic Information
We talk about the days of the week and play games with the cutouts of the names. We do the same thing with the names of the months of the year. We are also doing the seasons of the year, but verbally. – We will keep doing this. He’s doing well with it.
Printing words
I am happy with the vocabulary words.
Counting objects/math-type activities
I am going to have two different worksheets in here. One will be a grid similar to this past semester, and the other will be an addition/subtraction and/or pattern worksheet.
Storytime
This will continue, as Pegasus enjoys it, especially since the library has excellent resources.
Vampirina or other short Disney Junior shows will be watched one episode/day in French.
Activities
These have been a big hit and I will continue doing them.
I will be continuing this blog in the new year with a whole new set of movies, sarting with these four in January:
Pegasus absolutely adored this, although he pretends he doesn’t know what was going on.
Dance
I haven’t been doing much formally for this one. I’ll put music on and he’ll dance to it unprompted. (repeated from last week)
Music
He has been diligent about practising his scales and doing the exercises from the book. He also says out loud what the scale letters are as he plays them.
Crochet
We’re on break for now.
Basic Information
We alternated between listening to videos for the days of the week and months of the year (M, W, F), and attempting to put them in order with the pieces of paper (days on Tuesday, months on Thursday). He sang along unprompted. He didn’t need any prompting with the days of the week this week.
Printing words
He enjoys doing this activity and completed it on the second day this week. He’s working on making his letters smaller and more contained. I’m trying to get him to put more of a space between his words.
Counting objects/math-type activities
He did well on his counting. He asked me to trace a 6 in the air, and even then had some issues with it. We tried again, with it written down, and he did much better.
Storytime
We read one of the French books. He did well.
Activity
Finish zine (put everything together) – He took out the background of the cast and placed them in his zine. Then we used the cutter to remove the edges and he folded it into a complete zine.
Bake cookies – I wasn’t sure we were going to have time for this, but we squeezed it in on Saturday. He didn’t have the patience to put them on the cookie sheet, but I can’t say that I blame him!
Finish previous week’s projects – We completed the buttons that were Christmas gifts, as well as write on the gift tags and wrap the presents.
Monday the 24th of December, 1990 – Westmeath, Ontario
There it was, the sound of hoofbeats on the roof, followed by gentle jingle bells. For any other child on December twenty fourth, that noise would bring joy. Not so for the fourteen-year-old Jason Johnson. He knew it wasn’t Santa, and he was ready.
A little over a year ago, he’d developed powers. Like his father, he could manipulate shadows and he could also travel inside them. Hiding his powers from everyone but his best friend and his father, at night he became The Phantom. His one goal was to find and save the people who were being kidnapped from his Community.
His father was the leader of the Aetherborn of Oldtown in Westmeath, Ontario. Aetherborn are people created from the chaos of magic with the help, mostly accidentally, of the human imagination. It meant there were a lot of pop culture and mythological people, and regular humans weren’t very accepting.
They found safety in Oldtown, but something had been preying on the innocent Aetherborn and they’d been disappearing. Jason had heard rumours of something taking kids around Christmas. He’d spread some rumours that he’d been misbehaving and was waiting up in his all-black Phantom suit for something to happen.
He heard the noises and waited; nothing happened. Then in his mind, he heard his sister scream for help. Mindspeak was something Aetherborn could do with family.
Zoey, what’s wrong?
She didn’t reply. Either she was already too far away or unconscious.
Jumping out of bed, he scrambled to his window and climbed the trellis to the roof just in time to see something horrible; A half goat demon with a large basket. He could see several heads poking out, asleep.
The demon didn’t fly or leap into the air, it melted into shadow and reappeared on another roof. Jason stood in shock and almost lost sight of the creature. The air left behind had an awful smell, like meat that had been in the heat too long.
The smell was incongruous with the frigid cold air. Jason regretted not having a coat under his black outfit.
Knowing there must be more kids in the thing’s lair, Jason decided to follow and save them all instead of fighting it on the rooftops. He’d have a better chance on even footing than on the snow and ice covered roofs.
Travelling by shadow was draining and Jason had never gone this far. He followed the thing across Oldtown and into the downtown core. To his surprise, the last trip had the thing land on the top of one of the new skyscrapers that housed a tech company. He’d expected a dark cave or abandoned warehouse, not the top of a shiny new building.
On the roof, he realized how new the building really was. It had a state of the art camera system and keycard lock. Jason tried the door and was pleasantly surprised that no alarms went off; it seemed nothing was hooked up yet.
The heat was thankfully on, and Jason tried to be both quiet and stay loose. His martial arts teacher had told him that he needed to be ready for a fight at any time.
“Boo!” a loud voice said just behind him. He punched toward it but it was gone. Stumbling down the stairs, Jason reached the top floor, which was one large open office with no furniture yet. Another, “Boo”, and failed punch and he knew he was being herded.
“What do you want?”
“Krampus wants to snatch the naughty little boys and girls.” Its voice, high and nasally, came from a dark corner of the room. It looked like he was perched on a chair or a rolled up rug. “I want to eat them too, but Beast says I cannot. Sad for me, but still fun to snatch.”
“Why’d you let me follow you?” Jason could see dozens of children asleep on the floor. He needed to stop this thing, but didn’t know what he could do if it kept disappearing every time he tried to hit it.
“You didn’t fall asleep like the others. You play with shadows like me. I wanted to have some fun.” The Krampus disappeared and reappeared right in front of Jason. He tried to punch it, but the thing was already travelling in shadow. “Ho ho. Not very fast are you? Maybe you’re not much fun.”
It was trying to make him mad. It wasn’t going to work. Zoe was an expert at making him mad and she was unconscious here somewhere.
The room was flooded with shadows from the lights outside, this should be his environment. This should be where he was in control, but he couldn’t tell when this thing was going to move.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Maybe he could feel the shadows and they could tell him. Reaching out, he felt his senses expand, and just like that, the room was as bright as day for him. The Krampus was still perched, but Jason could see his perch was an old man with a grey-white beard.
He could also see that the Krampus was wearing an amulet of pure shadow. It didn’t travel naturally.
This time when it said, “Boo,” Jason faked a punch and grabbed at the amulet while it travelled through shadow. It ripped off the thing’s neck and Jason smashed it. A black smoke came out and tried to fly toward Jason, but a ball of glittering energy contained it first.
As he watched, the Krampus transformed, writhing into a man. It was old man Dulac, one of the Oldtown Council members.
The former perch wiggled his eyebrows and whole body before flopping to his side, trying to get free. Jason rushed over and cut the ropes holding the man and helped him up.
The old man straightened and reached out to the shimmering ball. He waved his hands and the ball turned into a stone with the smoke hidden deep inside. The man put it in his pocket and said, “Well, well, if it isn’t little Jason Johnson.” The man’s dark brown skin looked almost grey in the shadows, and Jason could feel power emanating from him.
“Are you…?” Jason couldn’t finish. Was this just some wizard or was it Santa? With enough belief and magic, it could be.
The man laughed, he was thin and not round like on television, but it was a sound of pure pleasure. “I have been called the S word a few times.” Changing the subject, the man said, “However, now it looks like I need to deliver the children to the presents and not the other way around.”
“What about Mister Dulac?” Jason asked.
The old man walked over to the council member and poked him gently. “A small transmutation spell stored in the amulet. Nasty piece of work. I bet someone gave it to him, and he won’t remember a thing.”
Jason hoped that was true and the Council members weren’t involved in the abductions.
“Do you know everyone here?” the man who might be Santa asked. Nodding, Jason recognized them all as Aetherborn from Oldtown. “Good good. Here’s a map.” A flick of the wrist and a three dimensional overhead map of Oldtown appeared on the wall. “When I’m done with one, you point out their house.”
“Done? What are you going to do?” His tone was challenging, but the other man was an unknown wizard, and Jason was worried.
In a calming voice, he said, “It’s okay, Jason. I’m going to give them all a small freckle. Inside that freckle will be a spell that will help prevent them from being kidnapped again. It’s not much, but it’s something I can do.”
Each child was marked and Jason would point out the house, then the man would pull open a blue portal and place the kid on his bed. The portal would snap shut and they continued on with the next child.
They’d returned all the other kids and Mr. Dulac with only Zoe and himself left. As Santa, maybe, put the freckle on the back of Zoe’s neck, Jason burst into tears. “Thank you!” he said.
The man’s eyes were blue, soothing, and so sad. He hugged Jason and said, “I can’t give you one. It would change too much.”
Through the hug and the crying, Jason said, “That’s okay. You got Zoe. She’s safe.”
Jason carried his sister to her bed and turned to see the portal closing. The old man placed a finger next to his nose and smiled.
The boy was never sure if it really was Santa, but decided it didn’t matter because there was a man who looked like Santa out there and he helped protect Zoe. That was the best present he could ask for.
