Listen to Episode 12b

2025 - Year of New Orbits

I’m writing this on the first of the year. A lot of balls went up last year and most of this year will be dedicated to keeping them in orbit. Foremost is my daughter starting High School. It’s a big change. She’s on the swim team and that’s had practices at all hours of the day. It’s great to see her get into something right away. The kids on the team all seem very co-supportive. I think she found a great starting crowd.

Mad Bread came back this past year. Plus I found a cover band. After two years with no shows, I played onstage more than once a month in 2025. That will need to continue to stay on top of the whole being a musician thing. School of Rock hasn’t needed much subbing lately and I only teach my own private students.

Podcasting has been the largest source of activity by far. It’s all been worth it as we’ve released 24 episodes so far on the feed without missing a week since it started. This year we finish up Babylon 5 and move on to the next season topic.

2026 - Year Mike Returned to Alters

I’ve been missing one of my hobbies lately: painting. Andy is now at the age where we can play Magic. He turns 10 this year and we got really into the Spider-Man set. I got him a few packs of the Avatar set. He had the idea to put together fake packs of the Avatar cards together to draft, not realizing he had re-invented Cube. 8 )>

I added a new page to the website at alters.html. For now it’s a basic gallery of my altered Magic cards that flip when you hover on them. I’ll add some UI spice to add this effect in mobile when you click on them.

This is a good way to remind myself that I intend to start card altering again this year. The big hope is to connect it with some of Jeff’s pack openings and alter cards for his patrons. I’d love to post a process video showing how to make those architectural blueprint artifact alters.

For now, I’ll have a gallery up to start showing off what I can do. It’s super amateur as I mostly do it for my own cards. But It’s something I love doing, talking about and teaching.

This Week’s Guest

David Christopher Bell is a podcaster, Zomboy and Babylon 5 un-enthusiast. You can hear him on the “Gamefully Unemployed” podcast network. Search for “Gamefully Unemployed” wherever you get your podcasts or check out their Patreon.

David Christopher Bell, Zomboy David Christopher Bell

What Did We Learn?

Mike is exactly like James Cameron in every way.

Next Episode

For the next full episode, we cover Babylon 5: Season 3 Episode 22 “Za’Ha’Dum” with just Mike and Dre. Coming to you Sunday, January 11th.

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Cheers, all!