Digital Changeling

Neato Game

2008-05-06T22:44:00.002-05:00

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. ;)

Eberron Haiku

2008-04-05T21:37:00.001-06:00

city of towers
why won't the rain stop? it's not
city of brollies

(Yea... I've been busy with cleaning and sewing prep, so this is all I've got for the moment.)

A Joyous Eastertide

2008-03-22T21:50:00.002-06:00

(Link to the page for this scan.)

New Victorian Magazine Scan

2008-03-22T19:03:00.002-06:00

I've just finished uploading a scan of the October 1885 issue of the Delineator.

I've been pretty busy with work stuff for the last two weeks. I suppose the fact that we have Rock Band hasn't really helped either. I'm on a personal enforced "no singing" ban for this weekend because I sang my voice raw every night last week. I also discovered that up until the point where I start losing control of my pitch, I can play hard on songs I don't know and still get accuracy in the area of 90%. I have no idea when this happened either.

I have a bunch of scanned photos, postcards, and trade cards I want to get up soon, so hopefully I can ignore the call of the music a bit next week.

Costume Stuff

2008-03-11T21:29:00.002-06:00

So Intercon H went pretty well. I was sick on Sunday morning, but I had loads of fun in the Friday and Saturday games.

I've managed to put up costume info from Intercon H and some leftover stuff from GenCon as well. Hopefully that will be an acceptable offering until I can get back to doing regular photo and magazine updates. ;)

Terrifying Can Attack

2008-02-16T11:50:00.003-06:00

On Friday I manged to slice my hand open while trying to pull the lid off of a can of cat food. The doctor in immediate care assured me that it wasn't deep and didn't need stitches, but it's still the worst I've cut myself in... ever (unless you count the terrifying exercise bike attack, but I usually don't). I have to wear a splint over the weekend so I don't bend my left index finger (opening the cut back up) and I'm not allowed to get my hand wet. So I guess this will be a yucky, bathing optional weekend.

I'm doing pretty well with coping, I think. I type much slower but I'm doing okay with sewing so far. I have a lot of sewing to do this weekend, so we'll see how I hold up in the long run.

We win!

2008-02-12T22:38:00.001-06:00

It's official. Madison wins snowfall. ;)

Cold

2008-02-11T21:30:00.000-06:00

Today it was warmer in most of Antarctica than it was in WI. Despite being inside my feet were cold all day at work. It was really hard to concentrate.

I think I'm taking my slippers to work tomorrow.

Depressing Thoughts and A Good LARP (with bonus kittens!)

2008-02-06T22:40:00.000-06:00

This post is a bit morbid. I'm really okay, really. I just thought that getting this stuff outside myself might help me to deal with and understand some of it better. To reiterate, I'm not that upset, just stressed out and having a touch existential angst on and off. I'm sure it'll pass, perhaps more swiftly with the cute kitten photos I've just uploaded.

I'm turning 27 this year. I'm now moving firmly into "late twenties" and I can't tell if that inherently bothers me or not. I've been a bit stressed lately, which I think is causing the persistent thoughts of death and loss that I've been having. In my mind I know it's dumb to be so upset about it. I get one lifetime of a finite duration and I shouldn't be wasting parts of it worrying about that fact. But it still preys on me sometimes when I can't sleep.

In a way that seems ironic, since what usually upsets me is not the fact that I will die, but the possibility that I will cease to exist. It would be nice to have a firm faith in the existence of the soul as separate from our corporeal bodies to fall back on, but I don't, and I have to live with that. It's sort of hard to think about, since by definition I've never known a time when I did not exist, except by the shallow comparison to times that I just don't remember. Like sleep. I don't fear sleep (that would be silly) but I can't help but think that death is very much the same problem with less experience to reassure you. You give over your consciousness and wait to see if you get it back. You fundamentally don't know any given night if the you who goes to bed will be around until your memory kicks in again in the morning.

I played in a game recently that was very cathartic for me. If you're playing in Anandi's game at Intercon H, you might want to stop reading now. I'm talking about a related game, and I don't really know what's a spoiler and what's not. The game I played in wasn't really about death. It was about life, life's story, and how you deal with it. The characters (and players) didn't really catch on to this however until quite a bit of the game had pass. The basic concept hit me a bit below the belt, because I ended up inadvertently method acting with a twinge of that death-fear coloring my mind. There came a point in the game when my character realized that no, she really did exist and would continue to do so after death, and I was so relieved that I literally cried.

It was a good game. It brought the players together in a way that I have never experienced before. There was at least one point where I genuinely felt like I knew everyone else in the room, really knew them like I'd known them my whole life. On one level it was all IC, but on another, I don't think I've ever felt like that in real life. Usually there is, what seems to me like, an impenetrable layer of difference between people. Even when you want to know each other you can never really completely understand each other, because we are separate people who've come from different places and lived different lives. Maybe I dwell on it more than other people because I acutely feel the discordance as social anxiety when those differences are too great (or I don't know yet what they are). For a short while during the game that feeling was completely gone. I could sincerely trust those other character (those other people) as if they were me.

I really don't know how Anandi did it, but she cast me as a character who was so like me in some ways that I was blind to it. The character back story spent much of it's time talking about making or doing or wanting to do creative things. She wanted to make something new and special in the world. It came out much later that the character was, in fact, meant to personify creativity. But I never would have guessed it on my own. The feel of that sheet seemed perfectly normal and natural to me. It took me a long time to realize that was because that's who I am in my real life. I spend an inordinate amount of my time wanting or trying to make beautiful, useful, and interesting things. On some level I don't know how some could not feel that sort of creative drive.

LOL Miska

2008-02-02T13:08:00.000-06:00

Okay, I know I promised more kitten pictures, but hopefully this will tide you over for a few days. I've culled the 560 candidates down to about 70 really good ones, but I've got a bunch of other stuff I need to work on over the next week, so it will be a little while before they're up.

(Sorry!)

Cats are most awesome!

2008-01-19T23:55:00.000-06:00

This really makes me want to laugh manically. :)

Pysanky Time

2008-01-15T23:22:00.000-06:00

I've gotten back into decorating Ukrainian easter eggs (pysanky) in my "copious" free time. I'm somewhat limited by the fact that I'm completely incapable of drawing a straight line for more than about a quarter of an inch. I am really enjoying it though. The process of wax resist dying with an egg and bee's wax heated by candle is just satisfying in a way that most of the other crafts I do aren't. I mean I love the results I get out of drawing and sewing, but I don't really enjoy the process so much.

Anyway, I think the eggs I've done so far have turned out pretty well. I got most of the patterns from Luba's Pysanka site. She's got some stunning eggs. I'd like to be that good some day, although I probably won't have the patience to get quite that good. ;)

There are a few other existing patterns I still want to try. I've got a some pysanka books including the one I bought when I got into making the eggs back in high school. There's really no end to the neat things you can do, since the technique itself limited to traditional patterns. While I was going through my old stuff I actually found one of the first eggs I did way back when. It has a cute little Hello Kitty holding a stuffed giraffe. It is nice to just copy existing designs sometimes though. It can be more relaxing not to have to be creative all the time.

On a sort of unrelated note, my mom is going in for (relatively) minor surgery on Wednesday. So please think good thoughts for her if you have a chance!

Kitteh!!!

2008-01-08T23:02:00.001-06:00

As the picture suggests we brought home these two adorable fuzzballs on Monday. They're female purebred Siberian cats from Absolutelay Siberians in New York. I would definitely recommend Absolutelay Siberians to others. The breeder, Lori, is really nice and worked very hard to help make sure Alan has the best possible chance of tolerating the kittens.

The gray kitten is Una (short for Unaussprechlichen, as in Unaussprechlichen Kulten ;) and the silver tabby is Miska (short for Miskatonic). They're both very sweet, although poor Una is only just starting to recover from the trip home. Our flight was canceled because of fog in Madison, so we had to wait an extra four hours, fly into Chicago, and drive a rental car home. Fortunately Mark very kindly let us crash at his place.

Miska is very, very people oriented so far. She's perky and interested in everything and every one. She actually follows us around in a very puppy like way at times. Poor Una spent the first day or so hiding behind the stereo and TV. She's just starting to relax a bit. This morning she was sleeping inside the bookshelf behind the Webster's Dictionary, but now she's out on the cat tree and she's letting us pet her or walk around her as long as we are a bit quiet and slow. Hopefully she'll be feeling a bit better by the end of the week.

They both love the climbing structure and are enthralled by the Cat Dancer and laser pointer that we rounded up for them. We wedged the Cat Dancer under a book on the coffee table so that one end dangles invitingly and they are both very amused by it. They've also got a pile of different balls (some with noisy things inside) which they play with on and off. The other toys seem to be sort of hit or miss. They've been keeping to the living room, but I expect they'll get more adventurous as they get more used to us and the apartment.

They've got very different "play" mannerisms than I'm used to. They both make squeaks and chirrups, but only Miska seems to meow. They tend to rear up on their hind legs with attacking something small and bat it back and forth between their front paws. They also do an "I crush you!" pounce onto things with both front paws extended to slam into it. I think the only other cat I've seen do that sort of pounce is a serval. They also have the cutest leaps and bounds. I'm not even sure how to describe them, but they're not like other little kitten jumps that I've seen before!

Alan took them into their first vet visit today, and apparently they were both very good. Apparently many of the staff commented on how pretty Miska is. Alan was joking that poor Una will have to put up with being the geek child, since Miska has already claimed the supermodel slot. :P

Despite the fact that I can only photograph them reliably when they're sleeping, I've already got over 200 pictures to sort through. There will be a gallery at some point when I'm not quite so wiped out from all the traveling.

Happy New Year!

2007-12-31T22:09:00.000-06:00

(I joked with Alan that this was our Christmas tree... just kidding!
We had a real one too. See how Princess is testing it already for our kittens? ;)

Happy New Year folks!

I thought I'd mention that we are in fact getting kittens this year. They'll be arriving next Sunday. A kitten-warming and absinthe party* will hopefully follow in the not too distant future.

* No kittens will be given absinthe contrary to the implications of the party name. And No, it's not illegal anymore (absinthe that is, not giving it to kittens, that's still animal cruelty).

It Snowed Today

2007-12-04T18:10:00.000-06:00

We got some exciting snow and ice on Saturday. It was generally pretty gross, with intermittent hail and freezing rain or sleet later in the evening. Today it's just really cold and it's been snowing on and off since some time this afternoon. I couldn't use my car this morning (the plow managed to plow it in and then the snow was covered with so much ice I can walk on it without it cracking... thanks so much plow person) so I had to walk home from work. Alan's still caught in slow traffic on the way home.

About the only up side I can see is that the snow is beautiful.

You know how malls have displays with super fake sparkly snow? I would not have believed that sort of snow really existed if I hadn't seen it myself. It's like every bush is covered with diamond dust. :)

Hallween Party Pictures are Up

2007-11-18T10:27:00.000-06:00

The Halloween party pictures are up now. Making the gallery went much faster than I expected. :)

October and November LARP Pics Up

2007-11-17T23:31:00.000-06:00

I've managed to get the pictures from Pale Ice and Black Ice up today. :)

I'll be working on the GenCon and Halloween pictures next I think.

Pretty New Plants for My Fishes

2007-11-12T22:03:00.000-06:00

(More pictures here!)

So after running a second go of anti-fungal meds my fish are finally sans mouth fungus. Hopefully it is really dead and will not be returning.

On Sunday I did some major cleaning and redecorating. I did a 50% water change, cleaned the inside glass, and washed all the wood (it was getting a touch slimy). I also tossed out the larger of my two plants, as it was dying and had grown a rather impressive glob of trailing algae. I had some problems with my filter pump, but I manged to resuscitate it. I'm going to have to watch it more carefully in the future as I think the motor is much more likely to burn out that I would like.

I stopped off at the fish store and picked up some hornwort and two little SAE. They're terribly cute although much smaller than the one I had previously. I'm not sure if I believe the store guy that the two of them are going to get along, but they have plenty of tank at this size and I can move or sell one of them when they get bigger.

I really like the hornwort. I think most people use it to back their tanks, but as my tank is viewed from both sides I've spread it around so the fish will feel like they have more cover. It's quite lovely and even if I manage to kill it I can afford to buy more (it was cheap!).

The fish store didn't have much in the way of tetras, so I wasn't particularly tempted to get more. I'm torn between wanting more tetras and liking the fact that I can count all my fish. I think the red phantom tetras would like to have a bigger school, so I'll probably get another six at some point. There should be plenty of space in my tank for that many fish I think.

And also, Bento

2007-11-11T10:11:00.000-06:00

The other thing I forgot to mention is that I'm like six bento behind on my postings. I haven't been making them recently, so I'll do catch up bento posts at random for a while.

This one was made on July 24th, 2007. Its a pretty simple, if inauthentic bento. On the left is a cup of sushi rice (4 weight watcher's points) with a garnish of dried vegetable bits and seaweed (zero WW points). On the right is a sandwich of sweet red bean paste on whole wheat bread (I've forgotten the points for this one) and about an ounce worth of star candy (2 points). I cut the sandwich up in eight tiny triangles to arrange it (after toasting it and cutting the crusts off). I liked how this one turned out, although the red bean paste didn't add nearly as much to the mix as I might have liked.

On a tangential note, happy Veterans Day! Be sure to say thanks to all the men and women who have made sacrifices to defend our country and ideals. I know I'm thinking about you, Dad, and about Grandpa. :)

I'm still alive, I promise!

2007-11-10T17:18:00.000-06:00

The last month has been very busy for me. I had two LARPs and Alan and I hosted a Halloween party. I wore three different Halloween costumes on three different days (although to be fair, one just amounted to tossing a commercial time turner around my neck) cleaned the hell out of our apartment and stressed out a lot about the party.

I have over a dozen folders of pictures that I still need to put online and I have a bunch more TV reviews to write. I also agreed to be part of a high-fashion goth challenge this winter. I'm looking forward to that, although I don't want to do much other sewing. The SR game that I normally play in is on hiatus until January, so Alan and I will be hosting Tuesday night board / card gaming until then. Other than that I'm going to try to do less and relax more for the next two months.

I've been sick entirely more than I would like recently. Through sheer force of will I've managed to keep the being sick during work hours to a minimum, but I'm losing a lot of nights and weekends to it. I still don't think the HR lady believed me when I said that the weather sometimes brings on my headaches. My doctor is exploring new medication that will hopefully help keep this crap to a minimum in the future.

On a more pleasant note, Alan and I might be getting kittens in January. I'm cautiously optimistic. Now have some cute kitten pictures that will hopefully pacify you until I can get more photo galleries up. :P

Trip to Ohio

2007-10-01T23:59:00.000-05:00

So over the last weekend Alan and I headed down to Ohio to visit my Grandmother (and uncles). It was really nice to see them, since I haven't been able to visit for quite a few years.

We also organized the trip to coincide with a game that was taking place in Columbus. It was a heck of a lot of driving for one short game (on Sunday night) but the game space and the costumes were amazing. I've just managed to get my pictures from the event up after spending most of the evening being violently ill (stupid migraines).

I think my costume came out pretty well, even if I did fail to get the jacket I wanted done. There's always time for more sewing in the future I guess. ^_^

New Late Bustle Era Victorian Scans

2007-09-10T22:50:00.001-05:00

(The color fashion plate from the new issue.)

Instead of working on my natural form skirt over the weekend (like I was supposed to) I instead did up some more magazine scans. This time it's an issue of Strawbridge and Clothier's Quarterly magazine from the winter of 1885/1886, which is half ladies' magazine and half mail order catalog. It has some amazing illustrations and a lot of information on accessories and various linens, curtains, and needlework projects.

Anyway, all 120 pages of it are uploading now (they should all be there in an hour tops). I'll try to actually get back to focusing on my sewing for a while. ^_^

We're Engaged!

2007-09-07T20:57:00.000-05:00

An alternate version of the announcement can be found here.

My Best GenCon Purchase in Years

2007-09-01T21:08:00.001-05:00

(Can you guess which thing in this picture came from GenCon?)

Okay, so I guess I lied a bit when I said there was just about nothing in the exhibit hall that interested me. :)

His name is Zander and he's claimed the wall spot of honor in my living room. He was created by Heather V. Kreiter, who is truly an artistic Godess among women. If you want to see some close ups of what he looks like, you can check out the the gryphons section of her website. She still has two (Zara and Zenos) who are looking for homes!

Poetry Friday, Random But All Mine

2007-08-31T22:54:00.001-05:00

This poem was written by picking a random topic that I like (1890's Fashion), going to it's Wikipedia page, selecting a sentence randomly from the top section of the page while not looking, and then using the first letters of each of the words in that sentence as the first letters of each line. I didn't have any dice handy. :P

The sentence I chose randomly:

In the very late 1890s the corset elongated, giving the women a slight S-curve silhouette that would be popular well into the Edwardian era.

The sequence of letters that gives me:

I t v l 1 t c e g t w a s S s t w b p w i t E e

The final poem:

Importance
By Eva Schiffer (copyright 2007)

In my heart, people are important
things can be replaced
very quickly if you have money
left behind are those you love

1 fight should not end a friendship
there are so many things more important
clearly we should tread lightly, religion
even politics is not safe

give more than you expect to get
thank people so they know you care
wait before you speak ill
always remember how lucky you are

sometimes, these rules are not enough
Still there will be conflict, hate, anger
so I must learn to let it go
truth is admirable, but not always right

with people who love you everything is easier
being yourself should be painless
protect them and they can protect you
with their help you can reach for peace

if things weigh you down, shake them off
they are not as important as your joy
Ever irreplaceable are the more intangible
enough patience will bring them to you