Star Crossed Musing

It's a common practice to make resolutions, but I very rarely do it. For one, I know me, and something promised does not necessarily mean something done in any reasonable time frame. Not that I won't do it eventually, but it's a thing and I'm bad at time managing my things. That said, the beginning of a new semester is an excellent time to shake up my routine and start settling some things into place. So while I won't really set goals for what I want to happen, I will tell you what I'm doing as of next week and certain things I have to achieve over the next six months, at least. Finish my reading list and formally assemble my committee -- due by the end of January, hard stop.  Work workouts into next semester, whether with Matt or on my own. I gained more weight last summer and fall due to the sprained ankle and loads of sedentary work, and I'm not happy about it. I at least need to get back to where I was before all that, and that requires going to t...

Chocolate Dice, courtesy of ThinkGeek So one of the things I get to do next semester is run a game for my gaming group. I've run two in the past, but had to wrap both of them up for school reasons. All my players want to play in these games again, and I'm pondering what to run. 1) Picking my Dresden Files game back up where it left off in Baltimore. This has the advantage of me knowing the system, it being pretty easy to add people in, and everyone's excited about it still when I bring it up. DF is a touch tricky, though, at least in the magic system, and nearly everyone's got magic of some form or other. I'm gonna go back to it sometime, and I've got ideas for it, I just don't know if now is the right time. 2) Non-Westeros Westeros? I ran a one-shot of A Song of Ice and Fire RPG set in a minor house in Dorne. Everyone was a member of the household, and most of them were siblings. It was awesome. The one problem is that nobody at the table, myself in...

So overall this has been a pretty good year for me and mine. The tree that fell on our house last winter was removed and the roof repaired (and insulated!), and we in effect got a new bedroom out of it, which was awesome.  The boys both entered high school and found stuff they like to do, particularly drama club and wood shop.  Si stopped chewing everything. My family is in pretty good health. I finished the fall semester of GAAAH (three full grad classes, man, plus teaching) with 3 As, a conference acceptance, and a prospective novel.  Our company got Tragedy in Five Acts out and in good shape, and it got listed by io9 as one of the best storygames .  My computer died, but I LOVE my Macbook Air, so that's okay. I get to teach classes I really wanted through the next summer, and my co-teachers and I got a grant for the spring. :) There were some less awesome things, but really, we lived through all of them and nothing that bad happened.  I'm re...

So, my husband Matt has an ongoing character creation project in which he wants to make a character for every roleplaying game he owns. As he is a collector of games and PDFs count, he will never be finished. That's beside the point, however. I occasionally join him in this endeavor. Game: Better Angels, by Greg Stolze Publisher: Arc Dream Degree of Familiarity: I played a demo of it at GenCon, haven't really read it, but looked over Matt's shoulder now and again while he did. The demo had pregen characters so this will be my first foray into making one. Books Required: Just the core. Step One: Your Human.  So, Better Angels is a game in which people get possessed by both demons and angels, and that's where superpowers come from. People possessed by angels get to be superheros. People possessed by demons end up as supervillains. There are some downsides, of course. No one gets asked if that's what they want before they're possessed by a demon, and o...

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 ...