Star Crossed Musing

Evil Goblin by caoimm @ Deviant Art Opening Song: The Sky is a Poisonous Garden Tonight , Concrete Blonde So standing in the hallway, listening to the scrabbling on the roof, Uno calls Zeke and says that Heidi is going to host his party and oh, by the way, there's something weird going on and maybe they should come over. Zeke nods, everyone starts getting in the car, but then Adia realizes Eldi is missing. Zeke goes looking for her and, with his keen eyes, realizes that she's pretending to be a flower in a flower stand. He goes to retrieve her, but she insists on being purchased, being a flower and all. Zeke rolls his eyes and buys her, then gives her to Adia, suddenly embarrassed because he's realized it looks like he's giving flowers to someone not his girlfriend. Adia stuffs Eldi back in her purse hurriedly ("Watch the wings!") and they all pile into cars. Dylan and Viktor ride in his car while everyone else goes with Zeke. When you let the kinetom...

Opening song: Glory and Gore , Lorde We pick up our story at Mo's, with a depressed Uno trying to justify ways to not get married, but kind of failing -- leaving the one reason that he doesn't want to, but more than that, he doesn't want to choose yet -- and he has to in order to get married. The group ponders who would have sent them the items, but no one has any set ideas. They're sitting down to try to get through that when Zeke's phone rings -- it's work. They've got a strange local murder, and they're wanting him to come consult and take a look at it, if he would. Zeke takes off to meet the officer at the scene. Uno also takes off, as he wants to meet with his changeling posse and tell them the news. While the rest of them are finishing lunch and preparing to go head off on their various plans for the day, Adia gets a text -- from her ex, Mickey. saying that he wants to talk to her and has some information for her. "Call me."Over...

The other morning, I was tooling around Facebook (like you do) when I encountered a link to this article:  5 Reasons Why I Got Engaged Before 23 . I was so moved to post that I went out and found that engagement picture, which is not mine, but which I chose because regardless of any associated aesthetic qualities, it was pretty obviously taken at the University of Oklahoma campus, which was also the setting for my own really misguided adventure into holy matrimony at a young age. Disclaimer: I got married at 19 to a 19 yr. old guy. We were both each other's first official girl/boyfriend and had not dated, really, prior to our relationship. We had dated for a bit over a year before we were married, and a bit less than six months before we got engaged. We were married for fifteen years before getting divorced -- not a bad run time-wise by any standards, I think. We have two children together, and have both remarried since. I personally know people who got married at similar ages ...

Rising Waters, Season 2 Session 1 Opening song: Team , by Lorde Our setting is Baltimore, Charm City. The story opens with a concert at Moe's, which also is accorded neutral ground within the city. There's a group of changelings who've formed a band, and Duff from Charm City Cakes (a former changeling himself) is sponsoring their concert (about half the band members work for him). The band's name is Tempest, and their style is something like you might get if a ren faire, the Lumineers, and a goth metal band all had a baby together. That said, it's not bad... just wildly uneven. All the PCs got an invitation to this, as really there were very few people who were friendly to Duff who didn't. He catered it, you see. So they all show up, including Zeke's new girlfriend, who is into local music and wanted to give it a try. Uno's working front of house, in an effort to stretch his human legs a little more and get some spending money, Dylan's ma...

Seriously. A ton of them. The house I'm staying out is out in the woods and there are a lot of ponds and rivers and inlets in the area. The front of the house is quiet, but man, out by the back windows, it's a chorus of basso profundo frogs in fine voice, making with the joyful froggie sounds in earnest. The odd thing, to me, was that when I first heard it, I was suprised and had to think of what it was. I honestly couldn't place it for a sec, and then when I did, I was both happy and sad. Happy to be hearing it again, and sad because at my house, there are no frog sounds from the woods and wetland. The forest floor is silent. Down in the bottom of our yard, you see, it is not anything one would recognize as a pond. There used to be something more pond like on the other side of our property line, on land owned by a church, but they went to a lot of trouble to drain it -- of course, they didn't level it, so it came back, which makes me wonder just what the point w...

So back in the day, I ran a Dresden Files RPG game. It was the first game I'd GMed in quite some time and I was really nervous, but it came out well, I think. You can read the write-ups here, if you want.  It ran for 13 sessions and wrapped the first "season" pretty well. (I like to use the TV show metaphor for planning games -- it helps me get a handle on character arcs and such.) That was before my MA exams -- god, back in 2010. But now, here in 2014, most of those players are still in the weekly group, and they're still wanting to play in the next installment of this game. Plus I've got two new people, both of whom are excited. With everyone on board, let slip the corgis of adventure! Ahem. Anyway, so some background: This group has chosen Baltimore as its city, though not the Baltimore writeup in the core book. This Baltimore's problems include it being a last stand of the Black Court, having demons in the driver's seat, and there there's m...

I did not finish all my movie reviews, and it's now the night before Oscars, and I have made (in preparation for our Oscar dinner bash) cider syrup, candied black sesame seed "stars" and Guinness chocolate cake -- as well as cleaning a ton of the things. There are still things to clean, mind you, but with the help of a terribly good friend and a remarkably good-natured stepdaughter, great progress was made. So. The last of the Oscar movies that I've seen: Movie: The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013) Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), Best Supporting Actor (Jonah Hill), Best Director (Martin Scorsese), Best Adapted Screenplay (5 nominations total). This is based on the biography of Jordan Belfort, who is really just an odious human being who got rich through have absolutely no sense of ethics or responsibility to himself or others. He's done his time in prison and now we have his book, which is about all the things...