'Oregon Trail' Gen X Nerd

Grieving my own way by Jen Davies, nerd Aug 19, 2026 If you're reading this, my grandmother has passed away. My grandmother was born in 1933 (Great Depression still raging, even in Canada) and grew up in a house with her father's parents and aunts/uncles from both sides of the family. Because that was what you did. Family and community were essential to making life happen (and remain so). And I'm feeling like I need to do more of "that". She was beautiful. She married at 18 and was a mother at 19. My mother made her a mother, the same way that my arrival in the world made her a grandmother. I had the great pleasure of taking them both to Las Vegas in 2017 or 2018, with my spouse's help of course. Why Las Vegas? I can vividly remember childhood sleepovers with my cousins in Grandma's upstairs, so "the ladies" could play poker, curse up a storm and smoke cigarettes all night at the dining table. Seeing the Grand Canyon with them was unf...

  Image from https://www.betterup.com/blog/types-of-rest Too much R&R by Jen Davies, nerd Aug 12, 2026 Apparently there is such a thing as too much R&R because I didn't get around to prepping any ideas for a blog post this week. Briefly, then, I'll talk about the importance of taking a break for refreshing your brain and therefore the quality and/or efficiency of whatever you're doing. I won't cite any resources, but it's pretty easy to find the psychological and educational research on the value of taking a break. Breaks can be short or long. Sometimes 5 minutes is all you need to refresh. My eye doctor says I should look away from my computer screen for 2 minutes every 60 minutes to let my eyeballs relax (not likely, but I do think of it, Doc!) On the bigger scale, I'm actually not a fan of long vacations, because more time off only has the effect of making it harder to get started again. Sometimes a break means doing something else , rather than doin...

  Image from https://tenor.com/view/reylo-ben-solo-kylo-ren-the-rise-of-skywalker-tros-ben-solo-gif-11375326834185082205 Ben Solo Joy: A Star Wars Experience by Jen Davies, nerd Aug 5, 2026 I feel like we get Ben Solo for about 5 minutes in SW Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker - apparently we had about 8-10 minutes depending on where you think Kylo Ren goes away, but it wasn't enough. Here is a collection of most of those too-few minutes in case you're not familiar with them (links below). If you ARE familiar with Episodes 7, 8 and 9 you might choose to rewatch these things, and I'd like to encourage you to pay attention to two things that I will talk about more below: a) the incredible shift in body language from actor Adam Driver, who plays the character(s), and b) the musical themes (which return in modified form from earlier in the films). Start where Ben throws Kylo Ren away:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yENbL9YwEg4 Arriving on Exegol Pt 1: https://youtu.be/4zCuOf...

Image from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076740/ Thief, Sorcerer, and being fated to psychological work (not a D&D post) by Jen Davies, nerd July 29, 2026 Like a lot of young people, my early taste in films was influenced (and managed) by my parents, and I'm grateful that I was subjected to a minimum amount of infantalizing TV and film due to the place and time that I grew up. As a result I saw a great many high quality films that young people might not otherwise get to see, just because they were what was available. There were many FEWER choices in the 1980s and 90s. Two films that were highly impactful on me were two films you might not be familiar with, because they did not become any of the masterpieces by the filmmakers. One is Sorcerer, starting Roy Scheider and directed by William Friedkin (most famous for The French Connection), based on the French novel The Wages of Fear. The other is Thief, starting James Caan and written and directed by Michael Mann (prob...

On the value of longstanding traditions by Jen Davies, nerd July 22, 2026 This month my spouse and I are making our annual pilgrimmage to Stratford, Ontario for the theatre festival. It was our honeymoon spot - all we could afford was a long weekend. We chose it because I had such fond memories of going in high school, and because he and I both appreciate literature, especially Shakespeare. To the best of my memory we have done it every year, except of course during COVID but we bought access to the online service launched by the Festival at the time so it feels like we attended, and we went to their open air tent production as soon as that was permitted the next year.  I'm not sentimental. If it were not for other people enjoying traditions, I would probably only recognize birthdays and holidays that have special memories for me like Christmas. I don't like to go to the same place when I travel. I like a weekly routine but it's fine if I don't end up sticking to one, s...

Image from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Love_vs._Hate.jpg Note what's wrong, appreciate what's good (CW: some strong language) by Jen Davies, nerd July 15, 2026 In an era when people earn an income on social media via watches and click-throughs (and ads), I find myself being choosy about what content I engage with because there are lots of such people who aren't interested in truth. They don't feel the need to fairly represent whatever thing they're talking about. Their headlines are typically  clickbait (surprising or controversial) because all they want is to get paid by having you look at their content. And I can tell from the trends in the bylines for all that click-so-I-get-paid content that negative things get more clicks: shitposting, criticism, and tearing down must get views, even though I myself choose not to engage with it. It actually isn't hard to write that stuff either, I don't think, just put your blinders on and get mad, so I rese...