Star Crossed Musing

Here, it's a picture of a cute pig from the Internet. Enjoy. So, Dear Reader, the last we saw of each other was when I got that amazing survey back and could not figure out what the heck I was going to do with it. (I am much closer to doing something with it, btw, but that'll take another few months.) I had every intent of posting again, and soon, but then... well, my dissertation ramped up and ate my life. I've been making good progress, but I'm on something of a deadline at the moment, so I'm forced to ignore pretty much everything that isn't it, including this blog. I still love you all, though. Truly. Would Little Piglet lie to you? No, it would not. Oink. In life updates though, in the past five months: Both my sons are graduating high school I've finished drafts of three and a half chapters I've been a guest at a convention (Breakout Con in Toronto, ON!) I've been elected president of a game developers trade organization (IDGN!) I...

So, I really meant to post more in December, truly I did, but then the end of the semester happened, and then I fell and broke my thumb, which put a damper on my typing overall. I just got my cast off yesterday, and it's a glorious feeling. (See pic of my son cosplaying John Bender from The Breakfast Club to embody that emotion. :) ) It's sore, and I can't ask it to do too much, and I have a splint to wear at night for support, but it's so much better than it was. So I have more about game design to post, but I'm going to take a bit to do the obligatory end-of-year post. 2016 seemed like a year of huge upheaval for just about everyone I know. Some good, some bad, but lots of it regardless. My eldest son moved in with us and started his senior year again, for example. He's doing well, but it was an adjustment. My dad had health issues but is doing okay. My car got wrecked (by my son) and replaced with my parents' old minivan.  I had a chapter approved fo...

The coffee shop/bakery across the street from me sells the best latte I've ever had. No, seriously. It is that good. Here is it. Apparently it's part of a small chain, but if it serves coffee this good, I don't care. Also, their regular coffee is quite nice as well. The only thing I don't care for is their insistence that everything should be served on a small plank. A plank is not a plate. Even trenchers had a carved indention. It's not that hard, people. If they tell you that they have crispy bacon, they're lying. Or else "crispy bacon" is code for "not-crispy-at-all bacon, but it has grill marks. See?" On the other hand, ham hereabouts is amazing, and I don't even really like ham all that much. Public restrooms are hard to come by. Some places don't have them at all, some places hide them unless you ask. - Traveling and being an introvert is hard. I'd been pushing myself because, after all, I don't have that long...

So, despite the fact that I need to be dissertating (and I am, I promise!), I keep having ideas for games. Some people do this with short stories; some people do this with article ideas, or crafting ideas, or whatever. I've gotten to the point that I do it with games. Now, I'm a person who believes that it's not the idea, but the execution that makes something awesome, so I don't mind talking about my ideas. I also think there's only a couple of people in the industry I know of who might be willing to take them and run with them, so it's not like there's a huge risk. As such, I'm going to list out my game ideas and hope that they'll leave me alone until next year, when I can actually start to do something about some of them. If, of course, some of my fair readers wants to comment on some of these ideas and tell me what they think, I'd be interested. Do note, these are mostly working titles. Vovetas: My Game Chef entry from last year -- a r...

... but I've gotten a lot of work done, so that's something. I've finished three knitting projects and started on two (2!) pairs of socks, one color work and one plain that a friend requested. I'm looking at starting on a star-stitch scarf, because obviously we all need another scarf in the world, and I can't let this yarn I bought that's the wrong size for what I want to do go to waste. It's really pretty, even if it is far too yellow for me to use in a lot of ways. (I look like death with yellow next to my face. Seriously. Not a good thing.) Sephi got out of the yard yesterday and went wandering, and I went this morning to pick her up from animal control (she's fine -- the lady there knows her and knows us, we just couldn't get back by 3:30 to pick her up, given that we finally got the call at 3:25). All is well, though we have to make sure her paperwork is caught up and get all the collar batteries for the invisible fence updated. My gothic ...

My dear readers, I am greatly happy to be able to post again. I was paddling my little boat along when suddenly a great wave of Grad School and Work came along and swamped me, and I've been bailing furiously ever since. I've just now gotten my head above water again. The final effort was a recitation from Cicero's First Catalinian Oration, lines 4-17, for my Latin 201 class yesterday. I am happy to say that I have survived it and now in some circles can be considered a real student of Latin. Apparently this is a traditional torture inflicted on Latin students once they get far enough in their studies. You can see you tube videos of it if you look. One person in my class even wore a toga-ish garment. I was not that dedicated. Of course, naturally once one finishes a great work, one gets sick. I have no voice today, so my talking has been curtailed and instead I am using my online voice to write a post! I hope to actually write a couple of posts today -- I'm dreadfully ...

Today was a day full of cold and rain. I got halfway through the day, huddled under a blanket with long sleeves and pants and socks on and my hands freezing while I typed before I finally gave in and suggested we should turn the heater on. The high for today was 48 degrees Farenheit or so, which means cold. It's much more pleasant now that the heater is on, really. That said, it's OCTOBER THIRD, people. What the heck is up with that? The rest of the week should be warmer, and I'm glad of it, because I really don't need to be running the heater all winter starting now. That's crazypants. I've been working on editing today, and I've almost gotten through a chunk of the book I'm working on, which is lovely to contemplate. I've also almost got the Totoro baby romper completed -- just two more snaps to sew on. And here it is! All done and laid out and ready to be sent to its new home. It is, admittedly, too big for said little girl, but it means she...

So I am currently anxious, because I have far too much going on in my life that have deadlines over the next few weeks. It's all good and workable, but it's all got to be done, and that's okay. But here's the thing -- stress makes me stim. (Stimming, for those that don't know, is a desire for tactile sensory input and activity that focuses on that sort of input. It's a neurological autism sort of thing.) Over the years, I've sublimated a lot of my stimming behaviors into things that can "pass" -- tapping my fingers together in time to music, running my hands through my hair, etc.. My husband always notices when I'm stimming, though, even when I haven't noticed it myself. Some people are just observant like that. Now, though, in the past few years I've hit on like the best one ever -- KNITTING. I mean, could be crocheting, whatever, but for me it's knitting. The yarn, the motion, the fingers running over wood (I prefer wood to meta...

Okay, so I'm going to start doing periodic status posts to kind of keep myself honest about my workload and what I'm focused on at the moment. I'm working on balancing freelance gigs + coursework + school work + teaching + dissertation reading. I'm staying home today and not doing a whole lot out of the house (maybe going to pick up the ceramics I did with my stepdaughter), so hopefully I can get things done. Here's my current statuses across the categories: Freelance:  Redlines for the one of the Dark Eras for the Onyx Path book; finished one era, still one to go. Deadline of Monday.  Started in on the next chapter for Emerald City , the Interface Zero 2.0 book I'm working on. Got 500 words done yesterday -- aiming for at least that much today.  Coursework: Read another two chapters on Cicero.  Finish translating Ad Familiares 7.1. Study vocabulary. Teaching: Grade 11 1st drafts with global and local feedback for Monday.  ...

So designing games. One of the weird things I've discovered over the past year is that I actually have ideas about games. I have the game I made for Game Chef (called Vovetas), I have another all-ages game I'm still working out, I have Daedalus, and I have A Comedy in Five Acts still on my plate, in addition to some far flung ideas about the steampunk mad scientist game, and a couple other RPGs and other things that I'm doing freelance (and, you know, my dissertation and syllabi and whatnot but lets not talk about that right now ). I have discovered during this period of time that yes, I really am a game designer. Not just a mechanics inventor or writer or editor, but a designer, designing games from scratch. I have opinions about what works and what doesn't, and although I don't get things right all the time, I get them right often enough in games that I feel as though this is not going to be something I give up lightly. I think it's especially important gi...

So, I have hit a new game design threshold today -- I found a game system that I appreciate as a player, but I have no real interest in designing anything for it, as does the thing it does and doesn't have a lot of room for customization. That's not a bad thing, especially if your goals for game theme line up with the themes of that rules system. I'm a hippy indie gamer at heart, though, apparently, and I really have a thing for custom (or customized) rules systems that focus on bringing out a particular feel in a game. This is not to say that universal systems are bad, but rather that they aren't my choice anymore -- and I say that as someone who came up in the industry during the d20 boom. I mention this primarily because I think one of the underrated things about game design, particularly as a woman in game design, is having opinions about games. And I don't mean ethical or cultural or feminist opinions, because those are actually expected and hang like neat ...

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...

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, back to the whole getting the grounds at the house fixed up thing. This rose is called Laura -- this color spread is actually my favorite. Once upon a time, this house was owned by people who enjoyed doing garden stuff. I can tell this, because the things they did were really quite expansive and required a decent amount of money to do. Unfortunately, they got old/died/sold off the house, and no one after that has cared quite so much, and now it's over a decade later and I'm excavating the garden, essentially, to find what they did and whether I want to/care to recreate it. I really like old-fashioned roses, and this one's hardy. This year, my sons are old enough and big enough to handle and even subversively enjoy some light manual labor stuff. I have therefore put them to work in the garden to help me with some of the heavier lifting. In the last week they're here, I'll have them help me with planting, perhaps -- we'll see, but at least we can g...

So I'm two weeks into my six week class over the summer, and I'm really liking what I see in the students and the class. I had to reach down deep to find my happy place in the course after some changes we made to the curriculum, but now that I'm in it, I really like what I'm seeing and how everything is coming together. One of the things I'm happiest about, honestly, is how far my teaching has come. I've found out that I'm likely to co-teach a class I've taught before in a previous semester. It was one of my first teaching experiences where I took on a lot of the responsibility, and although there were areas in which I was very happy with how things went, there were a number of things I could have done better. One of the things I realized today, though, is that in thinking about that upcoming course assignment... I know what to do to fix it. I've already got plans. I've learned so much since my first time through and I know how to address t...

The pic is from my yard last year, but it looks about the same this year (except more snow) so it works. Winter in Ohio, people! I am bad at time management. I'm not as bad as I used to be (and for those who know me and are good at it, there's your shot of horror for the day) but I'm still like an old car with a sticky transmission -- it goes, but never smoothly. That said, this year I am forced to get my shit together as never before -- because in October, I take my qualifying exams. Now, for those not initiated into the funhouse that is grad school, qualifying exams are the exams you take to prove you know enough about your speciality to be something of a subject expert -- certainly enough to teach it. Unlike comprehensive exams, which demand that you know everything about everything in your field, qualifying exams only demand that you know most things about the areas you're in which you are specializing. You set the reading list, you do all the research, and yo...

Some people engage in retail therapy. I have never had enough spare money to do that, although I've skirted the edge a time or two for a meal out or a skein of yarn or a book. Some people go see a therapist, which might be the wisest thing, but by and large general "ugh, this is a really stressful time" is not really a sufficient condition, since it will resolve (unless you are thinking of self harm, which is an entirely different issue). Some people juggle geese, or so I'm told. When I am stressed, I will either travel (or plan travel, which is nearly as escapist), play video games (assuming time and availability), or stress bake. Stress baking is, so I hear, a time-honored tradition. It was not so with my mother, or her mother before her, but it seems the sort of thing my dad's mother would have done. I never caught her doing it, but we didn't live close to them and I only saw her once a month or so -- which is pretty good for a two-hundred mile distance b...

Well I can't change Even if I try Even if I wanted to -- chorus to "Same Love," by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis featuring Mary Lambert One of the great successes in my life (and there's more than one, but this is one of the biggest) has been going back to school. At first, "going back to school" was simply going to night school and getting my BA. But then it shifted, and became moving to go to grad school -- and then it became getting my doctorate and becoming a professor. I know people who credit me with putting the idea in their heads to go back to school as well, and I know people who look at what I've done and are happy for me, but at the thought of doing it themselves they give a quiet "fuck that" because it's not something they need or want. And that is TOTALLY OKAY. I can't even say with any certainty that this will put me in a good place at the end of it all, financially speaking. It's a risky sort of thing, and it's ...

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...

I'm done with the semester! This puts me at the end of my first semester of PhD coursework... which looks a lot like my Masters coursework, except that a) I have more teaching responsibility, b) I seem somehow to have managed to get myself together more thoroughly, and c) I can see sort of a sea-change in my academic writing. Something took, I think, and I'm managing to engage more thoroughly with my research topics and moving more toward primary sources, which is what I'm supposed to be doing, so that's all to the good. My house plans for the summer thus far include: 1) Clean and decorate the bedroom, including art on the walls and curtains. 2) Clean the library, including reclaiming my desk from my knitting and random stuff piled there. 3) Get the hole from the old iron stove fixed, even if it won't be beautiful. 4) Clean out the remaining cabinets that haven't been touched since before I moved in and get more usable storage space out of it. 5) Get at l...