Even though this page is titled "My Hobbies", it was initially created so I could put significant information on my MeetUp profiles. The first profile for which I found this to be really needed was boardgames, so that's why games is topic number 1. Since then, I have created new sections as the fancy struck me. Perhaps when I get all these (below) written, I will go back and re-order the whole page such that my most favored activities are at the top. But I kind of doubt it, since I would always be re-ordering as my mood changed. I have quite a few hobbies, and I find new ones pretty regularly, so I don't think I could ever keep this page entirely "up-to-date".
2003-10-13: I decided to add new sections at the top of the page, so the most recently created sections (which are probably the most interesting to me at the time) are at the top. Here are the sections in "creation order":
games , reading and books , quilting , home brewing
Other things that I haven't put up here yet include cooking , Lego robotics a.k.a. Mindstorms , woodworking , gardening , Esperanto , model railroading , computer stuff and model rocketry. (What's really scary about this list is that I've probably left some out!)
2004-08-20: Holy cow! My first brew club, the Brew Angels, seems to be alive and well! I'll have to try and get to their next meeting and see if I recognize anybody...
2004-08-07: Started working on this section. I moved several years ago (Oct 2000), and I haven't had a chance to unpack all my brewing stuff. Hopefully I will get around to brewing this fall!
I created this section in order to post some information about local (Sacramento- and Central Valley area) homebrew outlets. If you're not in this area, check your local yellow pages under "Beer Homebrewing". You can also check Jack Keller's Winemaking and Homebrew Shops. Here's the information I've compiled for this area:
![[ Yahoo! Maps ]](http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/mp/gr/mplogo.gif){kind=small}
There is a quilting Meetup group, but the Sacramento "chapter" has yet to meet. This might be due to the fact that most quilters in the area are already members of the numerous clubs, guilds, and other quilting groups. I will add contact information for these groups as I find them. The only one I have so far is River City Quilters' Guild. (Full information at their web site.)
I'm a novice quilter. I finished my first one about April 2003, after working on it for about 3 or 4 months on-and-off. This was a simple rail-and-square design, which seemed pretty appropriate for a beginner. At the time I completed it, my wife and I had just purchased a longarm quilting machine, so I haven't suffered the exquisite agony of hand- or sewing-machine- quilting! Here is a picture of the quilt, one of the blocks, and a close-up of the block detail. (Please excuse the terrible pictures. They were taken under poor lighting with a cheesy camera by a terrible photographer.)
My second quilt was a king's highway design with an Asian theme. The focus fabric shows cranes in flight on a background of colored clouds, so I called this one "Cranes' Highway". This was really my first quilt, since my wife helped me quite a bit on the one above. Again, this one took many months because I was working in fits and starts. I think I started this one soon after April 2003, but I didn't finish it until August. Here is a very poor picture of the quilt, for those with too much bandwidth and/or time on their hands.
My wife and I teamed up for my third quilt. This was a convergence design which Ricky Tims is famous for. Since the focus fabric shows koi swimming about, we called it "Koi-vergence". I saw a few of these convergence quilts at the Marin quilt show (2003), and something about them really fascinated me. I figured out how they were made, and then my wife and I put this quilt together in about 5 or 6 hours! This picture doesn't do justice to the quilt. It's quite striking in real life. (Time for a decent camera, and a better photographer!)
I wrote this section up so that other members of the BookCrossing ("BC") and science fiction/fantasy MeetUp groups could see my reading list, book recommendations, BC bookshelf, and book-related rants.
I don't put every book that I read into BookCrossing. I often donate books to the Marian O. Lawrence Library, the Galt branch of the Sacramento Public Library, and I obviously read library books pretty frequently. I'm trying to figure out how to keep track of library books that I've read and/or donated, obviously without putting BCID's in them.
A book I donated recently, about media's mis-coverage of the Iraq wars in the 90's and recently: Target Iraq by Norman Solomon.
Here's one that I recently read, a great book on parenting teenagers: Uncommon sense for parents with teenagers by Michael Riera.
Both of these work as long as you have not changed the library
filter from "All Libraries". It also depends on the library system's
database, I think. It appears that I will have to make sure that the
title and author are shown in plain text, in case anything breaks.
Currently reading (I usually have about 3 or 4 books "in progress" at any one time):
Books I started, but am not actively reading:
A partial listing of my TBR (To Be Read) pile:
Reading List
(Yes, this really is a partial list!)
Recently finished books (most recent first):
Books that everybody should read:
This topic was initially going to be "boardgames" (for the boardgames MeetUp group), but that's not quite accurate. So I have broadened the main topic and added sub-topics which are hopefully more meaningful. I am also using this topic for the wargaming MeetUp.
Some Sacramento-area boardgaming groups are SABA, meets monthly at various members' homes primarily to play strategy games. Sacramento Board Game Club (email), meets 2-3 times per month at Weatherstone coffee shop, mostly interested in faster, more popular games ("party games", see below).
I'm not much of a card player. The only games I'm very familiar with are "Oh heck!" a.k.a. "Oh shit!", and "Chairman Mao's Rules". I don't have anything against cards, but my interests lie elsewhere. I included this section because a number of boardgame members indicated that they were card players, and I wanted them to know that I am (at best) a rank amateur.
If lots of time and willing opponents are available, this is what I most enjoy -- serious brain exercise! At some point I may create a matrix listing games I own or have played, showing how familiar I am with the game, how badly my opponents (or I) tremble at my play, etc. But for now, I'll just list the ones I most prefer to play:
Now don't get me wrong. Some of these games take serious brain power or tactical thinking. I include here games that have generally wide appeal, faster play or tend to be easy-going, compared to those listed above.
I used to enjoy playing "Dungeons and Dragons", but to properly role-play any game takes more time than I have available. However, I have considered introducing my kids to this sort of thing, because I know it can stimulate a lot of research and creative thinking.
Another good role-playing opportunity is to use "Car Wars" (above) as an RPG. The GURPS Autoduel book is particulary good for this; however, you will also need the GURPS Basic Set as well. Some other useful GURPS sourcebooks for this would include:
