Star Crossed Musing

In other words, I'm in New Orleans at the Popular Culture/American Culture Associations' national conference. It should be noted that early April is apparently a lovely time to visit, as it's warm but not hot, and the air is humid, but doesn't feel like you're trying to breathe honey. It's day two of the conference (I presented morning of day one) and I've seen a lot of really insightful game studies and gothic panels, as well as one that was possibly the most valuable to me, on using Native American cultures and literature respectfully and usefully in the classroom. Although the conference is ongoing today, I am spending it in my room, away from all the lovely panels and the book dealers. This is because today I hit the "like hell" wall, by which I mean my body, without checking with me first, decided it was done with the people and the noise and the weird chairs and pretty much any dairy whatsoever. I was retaining a lot of water and my blood p...

See what I did there? Of course you do. :) So, things I'm thankful for this year. Firstly, I'm thankful that I passed my exams. Like all the thankfulness that it's done. It pretty much ate my life for a year, and while I don't regret it in the least.... I have a number of other things I'd like to move on to, not the least of which is my dissertation. Secondly, I'm thankful for my husband. Matt made it possible for me to do... well, everything over the past year. He really honestly is the best thing to happen to me, and he makes all the rest of it worth doing. Thirdly, I'm thankful for my kids. Alisdair and William are really the best sons I could ask for. They live much further from me than I like, but I respect their choices -- our time together again will come. They're such awesome people, and it's a privilege to be their mother. Fourthly, I have these dogs, you see. As I sit crosslegged on the couch right now, Si has wrapped himself arou...

The Edgar Degas painting to the right is pretty indicative of how I'm feeling at the moment. So, exams are done. I passed both my oral and written exams without having to redo any of them. I've been asked to ponder my dissertation. I have to catch up on the grading and Latin I've let slide this past week. I am so very DONE, but I'm trying to at least keep a semblance of forward momentum through the rest of the semester. My committee was helpful in pointing out some of the weaknesses in my approach for moving forward, which is really helpful, and I need to take back a billion books to the library, which I'm actually really looking forward to -- but not today, as the weather is a complete pain. As I look out the window, the snow is coming down in what I think of as sifted powdered sugar -- light enough you can't really see it snowing unless you've got a dark backdrop, but enough to slowly blanket every freaking thing out there. I am due to phone my sons ...

So today I start my doctoral exams. I'm looking a bit like the woman in the image, except she doesn't have enough books lying around her. I've got 72 hours of doing nothing but writing like mad ahead of me, and I'm going to be crazy and non-responsive to the internet -- hell, to most of the world -- most of that time. That being said... I'm oddly grateful to be doing this. If you'd told me in 2000 that I'd be getting my doctorate in... well, anything, really, much less English, I'd have thought you were crazy. Now that I'm doing it, I'm pretty sure I'm crazy. But it's a good sort of crazy, I think, and it seems to suit me. I've turned into this person who half the time Yodas her way through things. Somehow I lost most of the ability to have someone tell me something they want that's crazy and agree with them. Now I'm on the path of, "you want that thing? So looking at this and that and the other, here's what i...

Soapbox time. So. We're only human, right? And one of the things we hate (as humans) is hearing about when we've fucked up. We get cranky. We get defensive. We get anxious. We feel attacked, and all those panicky feelings shoot us full of adrenaline and we have to react right the fuck now to make them go away. Heck, I even feel accused looking at the image I uploaded. Um, sorry about that. But here's the thing -- sometimes we fuck up. And when we mess up in a way that affects someone else, and that's a fairly common thing, it is often the right and proper thing for them to call us on it. Particularly, as it happens, if it's part of a pattern of error, or mistaken beliefs, or bad choices, or just mishandling we don't realize we're doing. It's entirely possible to be wrong and not even realize it, and our friends are doing the right thing if they call us on that, no matter how icky we might feel inside. The right thing to do, in that case, is not to ...

So I managed to make it to 50 posts! While I'm not posting daily, I'm posting semi-regularly, and that's something in and of itself. Today's post, then, is sort of a general update. 1) GenCon is done. We did well (I won't say we made money on the con as a whole), but we offset a decent portion of our expenses. We sold through nearly all the stock we brought -- we might have sold more had we been more ambitious about bringing material, but then we might have had to carry stuff home, too, so it worked out. I had a great time, my kids had a great time, and all is well on that front. And now on to Chill, 3rd Edition. *grin* 2) Classes start today. We got glowing reviews from the summer course I co-taught, so I'm thrilled with that. I've got Latin this afternoon but that's the only class I'm taking -- so long as I can order my books today, I'll be fine. 3) I've got a ton of studying and writing to do. No really. You don't even want to kn...

So I did day 1, and then GenCon happened, so now I'm doing a recap, because seriously. There's not enough time in the world. Friday: So Friday was a big booth day for me. I spent most of my day there meeting people and selling stuff. Seriously, we had a great booth that had very little downtime for the whole con -- I'm thrilled with the Indie Game Showcase and how successful it was. In the afternoon, I left the booth and went to a panel on "Intro to RPG Design" run by Mark Richardson, whose game Headspace is currently being playtested with an eye to release soonish. Very pretty, I have to say. Anyway, the panel was well attended and well received. We were able to give some suggestions on moving from idea to design and design to game. I think we may have been too broad in terms of what people might have expected to be covered, but it worked out well and people said they appreciated it. Following the panel, though, I had to high-tail it over to the JW. We all ...

So, one of the things I've figured out along the way is that the people I most admire and am personally wowed by are all actually superheroes. I collect them, in fact, and store up their reflected awesomeness in my heart and mind, so I can bathe in the light they generate in the world. They are the epitome of cool, the loci of wonder, and I rejoice secretly each time I meet a new one. Now, it is worth stating that when I say superhero, I don't mean Phoenix Jones, masked fighter of urban mischief in Seattle, or Superman, or even Wonder Woman. I don't need spandex or bracers or masks to garb my heroes in, though far be it from me to say them nay should the drive come over them. They may or may not actually fight crime in the guises in which they are known; I look on that as a personal choice, unrelated to hero status. I speak instead of the people who, in their public personas, wow me with their awesome, eclectic, one-of-a-kind personalities -- the kind of people who, if yo...