Family Life
-
Things My Daughter Has Said
My daughter, Rosebud, is a bit of a ham. She’s always loved to sing, dance, pose for the camera, and keep us entertained. Lately, she’s said a few things I really don’t want to forget, so I’m writing them down here: The other day Rosebud and I were playing a card game together and she was getting pretty excited about it. Rosebud: I hope you lose!Me: Rosebud, be polite.Rosebud: (in her softest, sweetest voice) I hope you lose, please! She might be a little competitive, because a short while later she was playing Super Smash Brothers with her brother, Bubs, and started crying. I asked her what was wrong, and…
-
Prophecies of Christ in the Bible and Book of Mormon: A Downloadable Christmas Program
One of my very favorite Christmas traditions is gathering as a family on Christmas Eve and reading the story of Christ’s birth. Growing up, my dad always read from the book of Luke in the Bible. A few years ago I was asked to put together a church Christmas program, and it struck me that while there are plenty of prophesies of Christ’s birth in the Book of Mormon, most members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints mimic the programs of other Christian faiths who believe the Bible to be the only word of God. Why do we do this? Directly under the cover title of…
-
Game Recommendation: Broken Age
So there’s this game called Broken Age that came out five years ago. It’s a point-and-click adventure game, which means you have an interactive story that moves along as you solve puzzles. It has gorgeous two-dimensional art, a fantastic story, superb voice acting, and a live score featuring the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and a small ensemble of San Francisco musicians. In short, it is a marvelous game and I can’t believe I’d never heard of it until recently. (Come on, Big Brother, if you’re going to violate my privacy and use consumer algorithms to inundate me with ham-fisted advertisements, you should probably have figured out what games I like by…
-
Meet JJ and CC – The First Tylerbots!
This is CC (below left) and JJ (below right), the new mascots for ChristineTyler.com. I’ve actually wanted some robot mascots for several years now, and started collecting materials when I was in Japan. CC’s music box, for instance, plays Always With You from Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. I knew I wanted a robot theme for my blog images when I rebooted the site, but since I hadn’t made the robots yet I had to settle for stock images. Apparently taking pictures of adorable little robots doing daily tasks is already a thing! Now that I have my own robots though, I can take much more specific pictures + I don’t have…
-
Adventures in Research: Bad Luck Bananas
I’ve researched a lot of random things in the name of my writing. To my left is a bookshelf with titles on it such as: The Conlanger’s Lexipedia, The Secret History of the Mongol Queens, Science and Society in the 16th and 17th Centuries, the Crystal Bible, Crowning Anguish: Memoirs of a Persian Princess from the Harem to Modernity, The Secret Life of Plants, and — my personal favorite — Barbecued Husbands. You can tell a lot by looking at people’s bookshelves. Particularly if they’re a total weirdo or not. The thing is, even though the research is done for my book, it often just translates into a familiarity with…
-
Things My Son Has Said
I’ve had a few interesting conversations lately with my six year-old son. We call him “Bubs” online. (Here’s an autobiographical video I helped him put together about a year ago.) I’ve been meaning to write these stories down, and I figure the blog is as good as anywhere else, and maybe you’ll get a kick out of it too. First story, a couple weeks ago we’re driving home in the car… Bubs: Can we watch Boss Baby: Back in Business when we get home? Me: Um…no I don’t really want you watching that show… Bubs: Why? Me: Because I feel like it’s just kind of stupid. Bubs: Well, you don’t…
-
Adventures in Albuquerque
Last Friday my little family packed our things and piled into the car for a trip to Albuquerque (and I CAN NOT say that word without getting the Weird Al song stuck in my head). One of Nathan’s relatives passed away and his family was planning on holding a memorial on Saturday morning. Of course events like this are really important for all sorts of reasons, but on top of the obvious, a lot of Nathan’s extended family were going to be there, some of whom the kids and I were looking forward to meeting for the first time. And of course, the kids were stoked to see Grandma and…
-
Time Capsule
Hey. I’m Christine. I’ve thought a lot about what I want to write as my first official entry in this blog. I imagine that someday, when I’m published, I might wander back here to remind myself what things used to be like. I hope there may be a person or two who will enjoy my work enough to be curious about where I started. So my aim here is to create a Time Capsule, to capture a bit of who I am, what I’m working on, what’s important to me, and where I want to go with it all. First and foremost, this is a writing blog. I create YouTube…
