Semi-annual update

 Yikes, half a year passes like nothing.
Lots of things have happened:

• Aki bailed on school (he was crashing and burning academically) but is now working at a technologist job that uses his talents very well, is adequately paid, he's happy and is solving problems for his boss. He moved out for a little while but first my mom didn't want anyone around, then he found another place but the landlord was insane so he fled in the middle of the night, and is now back with us. I'd like him to move on by the end of the year as he really ought to be more independent and out with chimps his own age. Frankly, it took me a while to get used to the idea of him not getting his degree, but he's old enough to make and take consequences now.
• Been very consumed, perhaps too much, with game designs. See http://brtrain.wordpress.com for the blow by blow.
  • So far this year I have had three games appear: Tupamaro, Chile 73 and Strike for Berlin, and decided I will not ever work with a particular publisher again, bringing the list to three.
  • Next week I am off to Tempe AZ for the Consimworld expo, bringing nine, maybe ten items with me: a set of four system games on brief border wars (El Salvador-Honduras 1969, Turkey-Cyprus 1974, China-Vietnam 1979, Israel-Hezbollah 2006); a set of four system games on operational level counterinsurgency that don't use dice (Algeria 1959, Vietnam 1969, Afghanistan 2009, Made-up Megacity 2019); a game on the battle for Mosul in 2017 that was designed by two students of a professor friend of mine, that I am developing and hope to hawk to a French publisher; and maybe my next (and last) COIN system game on China 1937-41, if I can come up with 48 ideas for cards in the next three days.
• Aside from the publisher's expo, I am planning on going to Washington DC for a wargaming conference in mid-late July, and another in London in early September. After that I want to take another week to go to Paris, where I have never been, and Berlin, where I haven't been since the Wall came down.
• In between work is getting crazy, and (more) organizational chaos looms. Partly avoiding it by posting here, so I shall end... and maybe write more in future. It's not as if nothing is going on!