Star Crossed Musing

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...

... then my backyard would be filled with manure. Let's back up. First, I wish I was more regular about posting. Certainly this blog would get a better readership if I were. The problem being, of course, grad school. I have three things due tomorrow, one of them an assignment and the others necessary steps for getting other assignments done if I'm to stay on target. Even now, this is still better than I've been about posting for the last, oh, two years or so, so I'm inclined to count that as a win regardless. Second, I wish the news I got last night had been different. There was a thing I wanted and I didn't get it. People I esteem greatly who had great ideas did get it, and I am happy for them even as I'm sad for me. There's a lot of internal conflict to go around on this thing, apparently, although I think overall it would have been good. I always feel bad for the chefs on Chopped who are out to win as validation, because although I think that's ...

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 I'm back from GenCon. I am exhausted, but if I don't write down the things in my head now I'll completely space it, and I'm already behind enough on this blog as it is. 1) The IGDN booth was largely my con-home-base during exhibit hall hours, and I think things there went really well. I'm excited to see the final sales number tally and there are refinements and improvements to process that can be made, but overall I'm very pleased with how everything played out. Also, it was great to meet so many of the other IGDN folks in person. 2) The Embassy Suites was a mixed bag of a hotel for us. It is unlikely we'll stay there by choice again, even as I clearly acknowledge that nothing was terrible in and of itself and it could have been far worse. The lack internet access that wasn't prohibitively expensive figures heavily into this equation, however (not even in the public spaces), and the free printing in the business center isn't enough to make up ...

Okay, so I'm a gamer and game designer and editor of games and what not. This list is grouped by relativity to this post, not exclusivity. I am married to another gamer/game designer/writer of game stuff person, and he has an ongoing character creation project here . I will occasionally join him in these endeavors, but since grad school began I think I have a near-zero number of characters made with him. Today, however -- today his game of choice is Earthdawn, and for that I had to join in. So, this is how it goes. I worked for FASA Corporation the last year it was in business, as it turns out. Earned my editing chops there and worked on Shadowrun and BattleTech and Crimson Skies and Crucible and VOR. What I did not work on was Earthdawn, as it was already sort of done by the time I arrived. I always thought it seemed really cool, though, and I was curious about it. Between babies and work and trying to scrape by, I never really got to do anything about that, though -- and then F...

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...

Image 1.1. This is my house.      . This is a story about my flowerbed project. Having come in from today's gardening, I feel as though people are unaware of why I hate landscape fabric so much and the righteousness of my cause, so today I have a post (with photos!) to justify my wrath. But first, let's have some introductory photos to illustrate the problem. So, in our first image, we have my house, as viewed from the driveway (and largely also from the road headed east about 50 feet to the right of this view (roughly). This was once a roughly grand-piano shaped flowerbed. It is now a weed patch that overwhelms my ability to make it not weedy through normal means. This year I found out  why that is -- the top 3-5 inches of dirt are not dirt, but roots, and they are almost exclusively roots because there is a layer of landscape fabric below that, meaning that only hardy, shallow-rooted weeds can live there, but they're almost impossible to get rid of by hand on...