March 11, 2009
Back from Intercon I
We're back from Intercon I ("Intergalactic"). :)
All's Well That Ends was totally awesome. I can't say it far exceeded expectations, but that's only because its writers warrant pretty high expectations in my book. It is in the running for best game I've ever played, along with one of their other games and several of the Freedmans' games (which is sort of like apples and oranges, but oh well). The players pulled out all the stops as far as costuming goes. Katie, Kathleen, and I formed the core of the court ladies and I think we made a respectable showing. ;)
Jamais Vu was fun for me, but a bit uneven for some of my friends. It suffered from a rather non-specific description, confusing physical space (I know there are limitations at a con, but there were ways to untangle things), some poorly built characters, and at least one very overworked GM (that lead to poor narration of imaginary places/encounters). I still thought the core concept of the game was good and most of the characters and the world were well written. I feel bad for the folks who got the crap end of the character pond, since it is never fun to end up with one of the hand full of inherently "bad idea" archetypes that occasionally crop up in large games. I do think there's a really brilliant game inside that generally good game. It's too bad we didn't get to play the brilliant one instead.
Future Imperfect: Gulag exceeded expectations with a very cool environmental build. I think I also ended up with a group of players who were particularly well matched to the experience that I wanted, but the core game was well written to give the players a lot of flexibility in their interpretation. The characters were very minimal, but I've seen minimal characters carried to a much more dysfunctional extreme in a boffer game, so this didn't really bother me. We were also cast ahead of time, so I felt comfortable with the idea that I could sort of interpret the character somewhat for myself. The folks running the game need a lot more practice with the logistics of running con games, but since they are actually new to doing so I'm not going to hold that against them. I am kind of sorry that I don't live in the area, as I would like to check out their long term sci-fi boffer game (which they describe as Firefly-esque).
I also played in my first horde game, The Time Travel Review Board. We apparently had an atypical run, but it was still very amusing. Most of the horde characters seemed relatively low key (although I suppose that might have been the result of tired, Sunday morning players), which was less demanding for my first try at that style. Playing in the horde seems to be a lot more like playing improv games than playing in a "normal" LARP.
I was still more than a little fried from being sick for so long in Feb., so I wasn't nearly as social as I would have liked, but it was a lot of fun none the less. We got home on Monday and immediately started trying to deal with house fixing and moving related stuff, but I'll leave the details of that for a different post. :)
February 03, 2009
So there is a meme going around the net of writing 25 random things about yourself. I've been "tagged" several times, so I thought I'd oblige folks, with the understanding that I don't tag other people for memes. If writing 25 random facts about yourself sounds amusing/inspiring to you, drop me a link to your post in a comment. :)
I'd imagine some of this stuff will be surprising and some will be very old hat for people who know me.
1. I suffered from huge amounts of social anxiety as a kid. There were days at school where my eyes never left the floor and I pretty much only opened my mouth to answer teachers.
2. When I took Saber fencing in college I discovered that my instructor was one of my parents D&D buddies from when they were in school, well before I was born. He is an excellent fencing instructor, btw.
3. I find it more difficult than some people to hear the difference between certain vowel sounds. Apparently someone noticed this when I was in elementary school. It made learning to spell properly in our stupid non-phonetic language an even greater hell.
4. I had 16 fillings in my baby teeth. I list this under "things I am not grateful to my Dad's genes for."
5. I attended GenCon as an infant of less than a year old. I later said my first word in the old MECCA center (not that year, obviously) and have only missed two GenCons in my lifetime (stupid little brother having to be born in the fall :P ).
6. I still remember the worst nightmare I ever had. I was like 3 or 4 when I had it.
7. I have two cats that are both named from Lovecraft's Mythos: Miskatonic ("Miska") and Unaussprechlichen ("Una" - from Unaussprechlichen Kulten). I'm still not sure how I talked my husband into this.
8. I took riding lessons (English) for 5 years as a kid. I miss riding, but don't have the patience to take lessons again or the money to own my own horse.
9. I still think of Batman: the Animated Series as being in black and white. Our color TV died the month before it premiered, so my brother and I watched it for quite a while on a tiny black and white set. It holds up extremely well.
10. I tend to obsess about hobbies and soak in knowledge for weeks whether or not I'm actually doing the hobby. I used to haunt libraries for this reason, now I roll around in the internet a lot.
11. For the last two years my Christmas tree has been about 15 inches tall with a santa ornament on top. I love that tree.
12. I own and have played all the Myst games. I have rants about plot continuity... yea, so another nail in the geekdom coffin. Even more damning is the fact that I own and have read all the Myst novels.
13. I actually think properly sized parachute pants made my butt look smaller.
14. I've been a Weight Watchers member for more than a year now. I've lost more than 30 pounds. I think I'm near halfway to where my weight should actually be. I still need more exercise.
15. As a small child, I had not one, but seven febrile seizures. Like the vast majority of children I grew out of them. I almost never suffer from fevers of any kind as an adult. Still, sorry Mom!
16. I love Art Nouveau. I am going to do my damnedest to decorate my house in Art Nouveau with a tint of Steampunk. Since I am not fabulously wealthy this will take a while.
17. I only started to enjoy learning history when I started collecting Victorian magazines. Looking at the period through the words of someone living it (even if they were talking about relatively trivial things) made it much more real to me.
18. I am very fond of British mystery shows. I watched Mystery with my Mom every week when I was a kid.
19. I was recently asked if I did any "outdoors" things and was a bit sad that the answer was no. I love being outside and walking and being in nature. The problem is that nature also loves me. My mom used to joke that you could find my dad and I at a camp site by following the clouds of mosquitos.
20. I've grown to be violently allergic to mosquitos. Bites will swell up and remain for days or even weeks if I don't refrain from so much as touching them and take major antihistamines. Why nature? Why? :(
21. I realized in advanced English in high school that if I was even going to find a spiritual grounding in my life it was probably going to be along a path similar to the one taken by some of the American Transcendentalists. I can see the possibility of finding the divine in nature and in solitary reflection. As nature appears to hate me (see 19 and 20), perhaps it's suggesting that I settle for Agnosticism? I'm still undecided here.
22. I have a scar on my right thumb that looks like /. I mean literally like the characters "/." I assume they arranged some cosmic mojo to brand me when I stupidly grabbed the front wheel of that exercise bike in middle school.
23. I've always been extremely stubborn about physical things. If I want to lift a box, I will lift it. If I want to take something apart I will figure out how. This tends to make me good at thinking outside the box when solving physical problems because their very unsolved existence pisses me off on a deep psychological level.
24. I've never been good at writing in books. I had a professor in college who required us to highlight our reading... total debacle.
25. I am poor at defining my own identity. It takes me agonizing hours to write a bio of myself unless I just write something stupid or flippant. I have a lot of silly bios.
26. I hate meme rules. They remind me of the chain mail spam I got as a kid with the "or you will die a horrible death" crap tacked on the end. I think meme's should inspire you, not make you feel like you need to be chained to your computer slavishly following the letter of their laws.
January 20, 2009
I'm watching the inauguration this morning. It took a while to find a station with mostly footage of the actual events on the Mall and minimal commentator "assistance." I actually ended up on some brand of CNN, but they're mostly behaving. I could do with a little bit less fussing about the historical roots of slavery (I absolutely haven't heard this 4 billion times during Obama's campaign...).
When I was a kid, history was a very abstract thing for me. It was this nebulous string of events and dates that came out of books and lived in "the past." Nothing I or my friends or family could do would actually change it and day-to-day nothing much would really be added. It took me a long time to accept that history is the horizon of now and that I will see things and can do things that qualify (I'm not likely to do any things that will make it into books, mind you).
I think part of the problem is that despite the fact that I've experienced a number of huge historical events in my life, it's taken me years to see my life as a journey. It's the sort of thing you hear older people talk about looking back on their lives, so it's hard to accept. It's sort of like accepting the truth of mortality. You'd think that at 27 that wouldn't be so hard for me. I'm out of school. I'm married. If all goes well we'll be closing on a house at the end of February. I can't pretend I'm not "grown up" or that my life isn't changing.
As Gaiman's Death told me, I get a lifetime. I'd hate to look back and realize that I wasted it. Even though hiding is easier sometimes, I'll try to pay more attention. Just because my story has to end some day doesn't mean I shouldn't live it now.
With eyes open I'll continue on, toward the horizon of history. At the moment, at least, I'm feeling highly optimistic. :)
December 21, 2008
I've had a pretty tumultuous year in 2008 and my life appears to only be headed for more complications and "interesting times." I can say, however, that I'm very grateful for the people in my life, both friends and family.
I wanted to wish you all Happy Holidays (or Merry Christmas if you prefer ;) and share this lovely image from a postcard in my collection (restored and slightly modified by me). The postcard summarized a lot of things I've been thinking about. To paraphrase the poem written by the sender:
All tunes and
Christmas Chimes
bring memories
of dear friends
and olden times.
Mom and Dad, I'm sorry I can't come home this year. I hope you have a good Christmas and hopefully I'll be able to see you some time in the spring. *hugs*
November 28, 2008
The pictures we took at the Halloween party as well as a page about the construction of my costume are up now. :)
I think making my costume was worth the work, although now I've got 23 birds and one pie that I'm not quite sure what to do with. I considered trying to get them into some sort of shape to sell on etsy, but I don't think that they're all that durable and to be honest, I'm not sure what to make them into... I mean as clothing patches they really aren't going to last all that long!
October 20, 2008
We're back now and we had a lovely time on our honeymoon. We won't have the professional wedding photos for a few weeks yet, but I wanted to give folks a preview of the amateur photos. We've got a pretty awesome set from the disposable cameras on the tables at the reception. :)
I'm going to try to get the full set of pictures up this month. I may break down and ask Brian if he can install Gallery for me, as I'm getting rather sick of dealing with my current system.
*For folks who wanted more pictures of my dress, here are some other shots of the cake cutting: Alan tries to decide how this "knife" thing works and cake cutting from a different angle.
October 03, 2008
I'm very busy with wedding stuff at the moment but I wanted to post to mention that I've changed my comment system to only accept comments from folks who have some sort of login. It's happy to take OpenID, so you don't need to sign up for Blogger or a Google account or anything.
Also, people who comment on my corset pictures telling me how fat I am and how I need to "get in shape" (as if I was ignorant of my weight issues and your response would motivate me to suddenly go to the gym every day? wtf?) my response to you: "go to hell." That's just a damn hurtful comment to leave randomly on someone's blog and I hope karma kicks you in the ass.
I'm not so damn dense I don't know I have problems and if you made any attempt to read the rest of my blog you'd know I've been making changes to my lifestyle over the last two years and have lost significant weight.
Okay. Done being angry for now. Back to working on stuff.
May 23, 2008
May 19, 2008
May 06, 2008
Yes, I suck and haven't been blogging lately. I've mostly been sick, busy, or both. I've got piles of stuff to share (pictures, scans, session notes, etc.) but no time to deal with getting them online. I'd imagine things will continue on like this for most of 2008.
Anyway, I didn't decide to post to tell you about how much my life is stress at the moment. I wanted to mention that my friend Joe has just publicly released the coolest game ever. I promise you, it is awesome. Also, I love the main character. We dubbed him the clock-bear during the beta testing. ;)
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