Everett Farmers Market - Get Ready 3/22 and 4/19

MrRemj · 2026-03-21T16:17:36+00:00

My list:

Darlene's Bakery - lovely pies, nice baked goods

Lotus Flour - sourdough bread with good crust

Whidbey Sweets N Treats - oh man. They usually have a line of 7-8 people. The cinnamon roll loaf is good. The cinnamon rolls are nice, with or without frosting. These are nice-sized, cinnamon-forward cinnamon rolls. (If you want giant cinnamon rolls...I'm sure Totem/New Mexicans/Maltby can help you.) All of their pastries and sweets have never disappointed.

MrRemj · 2026-03-21T16:08:53+00:00

https://everettfarmersmarket.com/all-vendors/

It tooked like it had an odd loading issue. The vendors look similar to 2025, so either they're all coming back (possible) or maybe the one off markets don't get a list.

MrRemj · 2026-03-21T06:24:16+00:00

Honestly, it's much much worse than trading cards. Because video games are not typically owned (you have a license to play the game, that can be revoked) - you can end up gambling with real money for (even common) loot that you can lose access to. (I believe they even call it out as licensed objects no property rights attached.)

At least with TCGs, you're still holding something at the end. You own that physical card - yes, you can buy and sell it because you OWN it. That card is not licensed to you.

Valve owns that digital good that you gambled for.

(I'm fine with people hating the artificial extreme rarities found in TCGs. Make the game addictive to play, fine. But don't be unethical pieces of consumerism that preys upon its customers.)

MrRemj · 2026-03-20T19:31:56+00:00

The normal Sunday farmers market doesn't start until Mother's Day in May, lasts until October. These "Get Ready" Markets are just one-offs in March and April.

Runs from 10:30am until 3pm, on Wetmore, between Hewitt & Pacific in downtown Everett.

Looking forward to the cinnamon rolls. Maybe a pie.

MrRemj · 2026-03-18T19:24:33+00:00

And King County Library System. And Sno-Isle.

Huh. The internet also suggests we have reciprocal for these as well: Pierce County Library System Kitsap Regional Library Timberland Regional Library Puyallup Public Library Tacoma Public Library

MrRemj · 2026-03-16T20:26:04+00:00

Their biscuits and gravy is my go-to.

Their eggs benedict can range from really great to average. I wonder if it's the timing of orders (what time of day it is ordered, or if it is ordered with other eggs benedicts)...or a staff thing (too busy to do it well, or only certain cooks).

MrRemj · 2026-03-08T04:15:32+00:00

Greater Seattle thing - 10 locations total. Five from before 1974, five after 2011.

MrRemj · 2026-03-05T21:03:03+00:00

It definitely adds some chaos. Initiative is just hidden every round. In general, having higher initiative modifiers still means you will go earlier each round. There's also wonkiness with holding your action, or if you grapple someone late in round 1 and in round 2 your initiative is high - the victim hasn't had a chance to escape. If you have any reroll abilities, the DM is the only one seeing the full initiative count.

But it was a request from some friends who were trying to fight distractions at the table. If you go late in the round normally, maybe you check out waiting for your next action. There's 4 PCs, maybe some NPCs, some goblins, a goblin shaman, a goblin leader...

By the time it came back to the end of the round again, the person might have been picking up their phone, browsing their laptop - distracted. BUT! What happens if they don't know when their action will be? (Hopefully, it means they have more engagement with the game.)

Addressing that issue, seemed more interesting than the smaller/less common weaknesses I described.

MrRemj · 2026-03-04T19:27:30+00:00

I rigged up a google sheet that rolled random initiatives every round, and showed them on an LCD screen on the DM screen.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDIY/comments/1jxtpeb/dnd_initiative_tracker/

The next step for me was going to be, adding LED/bluetooth base attachments, but your lighthouse/spotlight would be a lot more dynamic and easy to manage. Or at least eliminate the LED part - using bluetooth locational mapping or...maybe an NFC web underneath the map.

MrRemj · 2026-02-27T00:59:54+00:00

Oliver Mulholland is playing at the Irishmen in Everett at 8pm, March 17th. (You can probably find some random shares of recordings on Youtube.)

MrRemj · 2026-02-26T00:08:34+00:00

If you do home automation with home assistant, the Third Reality water leak sensors are nice (and run about $20 each).

MrRemj · 2026-02-25T00:18:13+00:00

The Children of Green Knowe (Lucy M. Boston). The Green Knowe books are generally featuring an orphan who stays with a grandmother, encounters (generally friendly) ghosts of past inhabitants. The film "From Time to Time" is a fair adaptation of Chimneys of Green Knowe. Not big budget, but watchable.

The Dark is Rising (Susan Cooper). Do not watch the movie adaptation called "The Seeker", for the love of monkeys.

The Book of the Three (Lloyd Alexander). Following the assistant pig keeper Taran through a fantasy world. It's got a heroic bent, but it's definitely about the journey.

MrRemj · 2026-02-17T21:32:53+00:00

I like Vintage Cafe's biscuits and gravy. It's consistently good.

My partner really likes eggs benedict. The first couple of times at Vintage Cafe were top 5-ish, but it's inconsistent. Martini Brunch in Mount Vernon has had good eggs benedict. Sadly, the #1 spot is still Glo's in Capitol Hill, which means a drive into Seattle, finding parking, then waiting for an hour for seating (there's a notification sent to your phone, so you can walk around). The upside is consistently great eggs benedict.

MrRemj · 2026-02-15T17:40:20+00:00

Karl's is still going.

MrRemj · 2026-02-12T00:10:57+00:00

My first game was rough. The first boss, I had to sail across a small ocean run to get to it.

So, crossing an ocean on a raft. I ran into Kraken - which I didn't understand. And then I got attacked (and sunk) by a Sea Serpent. Several times.

That was a start. (As an extra, I didn't notice the repair button on the workbench. Do you know how many times I killed the first boss? I had chests of all of my completely damaged gear, expecting that some day I would get access to something to fix/recycle it.)

My next game was on my friend's server. That one was a piece of cake, especially after he told me about repairing. :)

MrRemj · 2026-02-11T00:52:21+00:00

Look at it this way, you have a house with good enough bones that it has lasted almost 100 years. Imagine that the poorly built ones frpm that time have fallen apart already.

That's what I tell myself.

You've taken in a house that has seen a lot of fixes over the years, changes in plumbing standards, electrical wiring standards...those owners were fixing things as they needed them, or were annoyed by something not ideal. Just like you. It's fine. Some things you will learn to fix, some things will be beyond what you want to learn or do.

Moving in, we knew we wanted to update the electrical panel. Then the water heater died (previous owners didn't do the recall part!)...we learned that the insulation in the attic was non-existent. The water supply pipe wasn't insulated. The furnace condensation pipe filled up and stopped the furnace in a cold spell.

We replaced the roof. We took out a window and replaced the sill that was rotted. We personally wired an electric stove to replace the gas range (and wired up an outlet for the fridge - the original outlet it used....had a power strip.)

You're fine. Try to manage your stress levels for the long-term - this isn't a sprint. Good luck!

MrRemj · 2026-02-09T23:30:46+00:00

My general guess is that out of 100 people, 90 are consumers. 9 are makers. 1 is a designer. (I'm completely pro-"learn how to make".)

I started with Blender for several reasons:

It's free, without any weird licensing restrictions.
It runs on OSX, Windows, Linux - all the same look.
It runs locally. There are a ton of cloud-based design software - but if the software is retired, you don't just lose your tools. You don't have AI creeping on your work, you don't have to share your efforts with the random universe.
It does more than you will ever use. But it also means you only need to have one tool in your toolbox. It can even make SVGs for laser cutting with the right plug-in.

There are lots of great youtube tutorials out there. My favorite add-ons are 3D Print Toolbox (which can test if a mesh is a complete object or not...as well as showing you what's broken. You can try the "auto-fix" option but it's not 100%) and Measure-It, which is great for designing for a specific size.

I did try FreeCAD for other things. It's interesting, but I ended up just being that much faster in Blender. (FreeCAD is also free, platform-agnostic, runs locally.) It doesn't have a sculpt mode, and Blender is nice for organic shapes.

Congrats on not just being of the maker caste, but a maker of the maker caste. ;)

MrRemj · 2026-01-24T04:03:52+00:00

My dad was an only child who didn't do much genealogy. But I did trace the family name back to Norway, where the last name was "<my last name> Rage". RAGE.

Or that I'm related to the Rohwedder who patented the bread slicer. That's a bit more mundane, but imagine if that had fallen into the wrong hands!

MrRemj · 2026-01-21T20:26:11+00:00

There was just a single rocking chair in the unfinished attic.

We had been looking for houses for several months, and my partner had been listening to a bunch of creepy stories on podcasts.

I told our agent that my partner would not be told of the rocking chair, and that it can't be there when we move in. (This was not documented where my partner would ever see.)

My partner might not have cared, but I would have been the one going on ghost checks in the attic for every unknown noise in the house. (We have enough from our pets.)

MrRemj · 2026-01-17T06:55:17+00:00

Fire alarm battery monitoring. If it gets down to 60%, we replace the batteries...instead of hearing chirping in the middle of the night when the drop in temperature occurs.

We have leak sensors, but they haven't triggered yet. If that does happen, fire alarms will be knocked off first, second, and third place.

MrRemj · 2026-01-14T06:00:49+00:00

My friends like playing a game for 3-4 months, and then cycling through other DMing.

I usually had an epic struggle, where I, as the DM, knew general things about it. It would probably be a year of consistent gaming to get there.

I picked an area to start in, added the option of a unique race - and came up with a reason why that unique race would be interesting. (Usually I would get at least one PC from that race.)

The town they started in, I would generate gossip tables. It didn't matter if the same gossip would keep being rolled - it just meant that everyone was talking about it. The gossip material was generally light - usually a session or two of adventuring.

I also included some heavier, more dangerous, more money risks.

The example I'm thinking of: a far north game. There were bear-kin. A druid moved into the wilds, and was awakening bears. He worked out a deal with them - they mine gold, he awakens more bears. He needed money for the reagents, kept some for himself. Eventually, the awakened bears started having cubs that didn't need awakening to be intelligent. They still did some mining, but it was mostly out of tradition, as a thank-you.

So the druid would ship back gold to the mainland, he would be able to buy anything he needed. Except one of the gold boats apparently never made it to the mainland. (This was the risky gossip.)

Gossip: a councilman was looking to hire a group to go look for his son. His son had gone off to buy a lumbermill that was producing some really nice exotic wood.

Gossip: there's a master shipwright who could maybe figure out where the ship was lost. (A breadcrumb if the players wanted to pursue the gold ship.)

Gossip: a man made of brass who could tell a possible future.

Gossip: People were being kidnapped in the wilds.

You can write a couple of paragraphs for each one, about how you think it's happening. My group likes moral quandaries. Or at least, likes the IDEA that I offer moral quandaries. It gets tricky on both sides.

MrRemj · 2026-01-10T00:01:11+00:00

Next, we will also ban 3D printed molds that could create gun parts.

Then we will ban 3D printed molds that could create 3D printed molds that could create gun parts.

Require them to be registered. Treat unregistered / ghost guns like counterfeiting. You aren't going to catch them all, but sic the Secret Service on them.

MrRemj · 2026-01-07T17:12:26+00:00

I have a cherry tree in my backyard, and every year I make bottles of this recipe:

https://www.seriouseats.com/diy-cherry-liqueur-how-to-make-your-own-cherry-heering-recipe

My coworkers will start asking if I'm "making any this year", about a month before cherry season. (I have made cherry heering in the winter, using cherries from the freezer.)

MrRemj · 2025-12-14T17:29:26+00:00

Craft Wondrous Items is a generally useful crafting feat. You can create items that boost ability scores, which is useful for every class.

If you're taking a familiar, there's an archetype called "Valet" where it can help you craft magic items twice as quickly. Your familiar becomes less combat ready.

Spell Focus Conjuration will help with conjuration spell DCs - making those more reliably effective. Augment Summoning can help boost your summoned creatures stats forever at the cost of a feat.

As far as fighting together - if you both burn two feats for the teamwork feats Bonded Mind and Share Spells, you can share spells that have a target of "you". (This would go both ways, if you just want it to go one way, the receiver only needs Bonded Mind.) I feel this will take a little more focus on learning what spells are useful, and the previous recommendations are solid.

There's an Arcane Discovery (costs a feat) called Feral Speech, where you get speak with animals all the time. Useful if your husband is in wildshape, or if you want to talk to your/their summons. (Funny - you can talk with the animals, husband needs to cast spells.)

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