Day in the Life of an Idiot

 I 100% FORGOT to go to the Cat Tour. 

This is the problem with a thing that happens on a Wednesday, when I work Tuesdays and Thursdays. I was telling a friend that it's not working, per se, that's screwing me up. But the fact that, when I work, I start in the middle of the middle of the day. I am in fact the sort of person who is best suited to 9 to 5, not 3 to 7 pm.

ANYWAY, enough of that.

On Saturday, I ran a one-shot for only two of my players. I'd hoped to have at least three, and had thought we had nearly a full compliment of the troupe (we are a troupe because we have two bards, and most the of characters met because they performed in a band together.) But, things happens, especially with adults. We considered not playing, but decided to, anyway. I'm not sure this was such a good idea? It did mean that the two players who don't particually get along well in real life, did have to figure out a minor mystery together. That was either really good for their dynamic, or torture. I am feeling like a slightly bad GM/DM, because I don't tend to plan a lot of combat-heavy campaigns, not even my one shots, and one of the players who showed up really does kind of want to kill things and take their stuff (a valid way to play the game!) I have mentally vowed to have more adventures where there are more opportunities for violence for those who might like a little pretend murder. To be fair to me, this particular troupe does not tend to choose violence, generally. If they are met by a literal army of orcs, they will attempt to go around or negotiate safe passage.That fits my personal style pretty well, but I mean D&D character building does reward a certain kind of game play and for those that like it, I should let them do it a bit more often. 

Then, on Saturday night, the game that I usually get to PLAY cancelled. The GM offered to let me run a one-shot in that world and I have something that I'm half ready to run, but it was only half ready. I was putting finishing touches on my D&D one-shot, so I ended up saying I wasn't quite ready. I'm going to try to get that scenario slightly more fleshed out and then it will be ready next time that people feel up to it.  I am, however, less comfortable running the Star Trek game. I very much feel like the amateur GM that I am whenever I do, and I'm not convinced that my "eh, let's wing it!" vibe goes as well in that universe. I mean, maybe if we were playing the Lower Decks version?

Today, we are roasting a turkey. Shawn has a very humorous tendency to want to hoarde turkeys when they come on sale around Thanksgiving and we were getting a fairly ridiculous stockpile in our freezer. So, I told her last year that I would let her buy a second turkey, if she promised to pick a day in the middle of the year for us to make one of the others. Today is that day. In fact, I am about to put some socks on and head out to the grocery store to pick up our sides and other fixings. The bread is already rising on the counter.

Oh, and our mulberry trees have been going to town, so I made a mulberry pie to tonight's desert.

 
Image: bread made from steel cut oats (leftovers).

Yesterday was Mason's TWENTY-FIRST birthday. For some reason, despite the fact that he's been an official adult for some time now, 21 feels... old. Like, I have a grown-up child all of a sudden. It feels very weird.

At any rate, we had a lovely day. Shawn took the day off and I cancelled all my usual plans.

However, we didn't have a huge agenda. In fact, one of the gifts Mason wanted to give himself was a long, solitary walk--for three hours. One of the things Shawn and I have been doing when we have spare time is to go through the zillion and a half cookbooks we've collected over the years. In one of them--a vegetarian cookbook from 1978--was a very gnarly recipe for bread using leftover steel cut oats (though I think their recipe might have called for oat groats.. I know for sure that it absolutely wanted wheat germ.) At any rate, I thought to myself, "Huh, I have some leftover steel cut oats in the fridge. I wonder if there is a modern recipe out there for bread that could use those up?" SURE ENOUGH. I found one immediately. 

Unfortunately, this recipe made THREE LOAVES of bread. I... do not know what we're going to do with so much oatmeal bread??? It's tasty, but very.... let's just say it still vibes very 1978. It is... CRUNCHY in a granola-head way. My family is very uncertain about the steel cut oats because my family mistrusts any food over three days old. Mason generally laughed to see me making this stuff and rolled his eyes because he has noticed that I've been gravitating towards these kinds of cookbooks lately. I've been threatening "something with tempeh" for dinner for several days now. This is an empty threat... mostly (though I did buy some when I saw it was still in the stores.)

Is it nostalgia? Maybe? Although my mother never cooked like this. I didn't even really hang around people who did, either. I think it's some version of FOMO nostalgia. Like, I always thought the hippie granola-heads were COOL in the 1978s, so now I am attempting to be one. Which is so me... because now is not the right time as finding bulgur wheat is damned near impossible these days. I know because I looked for it a couple of years ago and EVENTUALLY found somewhere unexpected (I had STARTED at the coops, and maybe found it at Target??) Anyway, the point is, I not sure anyone even really liked this food when it was popular. I am probably chasing some FOMO nostalgia I won't even be happy to have recreated. :-)

And now I have three loaves of it. As it were.

Image: Cardamom buns on parchment paper, fresh from the oven.

The recipe might be behind a paywall, but I got this one from our local newspaper, the Star Tribune: https://www.startribune.com/ring-in-the-new-year-by-baking-cardamom-buns/600130101/.

I told Shawn when we decided to make these on Sunday that I felt like, because it was NOT YET February, we could still TECHNICALLY consider ourselves "ringing in" the New Year.

Regardless, they were delicious.

I notice that I didn't report on anything else that happened over the week, since my last HeyGo round-up. I apologize for being so remiss. Part of it is that I am finally starting to feel the malaise that so many of my friends have felt since the beginning of the pandemic. This frustrates me because I normally find a lot of value, even joy, in the mundanity of life. I am totally the sort of person who considers a trip to the pharmacy as "a side quest." But,. lately, I've been struggling to find the day-to-day interesting, and I don't quite know what that's about.

My current hope is that this, too, shall pass.

I did want to talk about one thing of interest that happened over the weekend. Shawn and I went to the Roseville Ramsey County Library on Saturday because Shawn has a standing "order" with the Friends of the Library to pull any Minnesota related cookbooks for her--we're talking about all the church, synagogue, community cookbooks that are hyper localized. She buys them all, and, because she works at the Minnesota Historical Society, she'll check the history center's library's catalogue and see if there are any that the history center doesn't already have. Whatever they don't have, she donates. On Saturday, we brought home THREE grocery backs full of these quirky community cookbooks and most of them will be going to the history center.

If you're wondering WHY anyone would collect such things, there was a lovely article that was picked up by MPR that went around during the holiday season specifically about Minnesota cookbooks, https://www.minnpost.com/arts-culture/2021/12/the-enduring-appeal-of-the-minnesota-church-cookbook/, in which a member of Shawn's staff was interviewed about the history center's collection.

One of the ones I was looking through yesterday wasn't a church cookbook at all, but the cookbook of the local "linemen," the folks who work on electrical lines. The recipes were kind of terrible?? But, the story of how the cookbook came to be was pretty fascinating.

I am not one of those people who reads cookbooks like novels, but I do LOVE thumbing through them, especially the very, very old ones. I'm sure everyone out here already knows about this TikTok guy, Dylan Hollis (I linked to his YouTube, but you can always find him on TikTok), but if you've never watched his "cooking" show/60 seconds, you really should.

 
Image: Man, you can tell how dark my shade garden is, can't you? Also my faux bird bath with petunias and a frog statue.

I think it's pretty obvious that Mercury is Retrograde. Scandals are roiling through the SF/F community once again, our internet dropped for a good solid six hours yesterday (ahead of the storm,) and I tried to slice my pinky off while doing the dishes yesterday evening.

That damned mischievous planet doesn't go direct until July 12.

And before anyone asks: no and yes, okay? No, I don't really believe in astrology. I do not actively base my life on the movements of the sun, the planets, or the moon. Does it entertain me? Yes, and at the level of Tarot, which is to say I have moments of being rather serious about it, while not taking it SERIOUSLY, if that makes sense. 

As for the scandals, I'm not sure where to begin. I normally am not a big Reddit fan, but this person has a nice round-up here: https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/hgbjry/fantasy_books_a_number_of_authors_are_coming/

So, I did what I often do when things get sh*tty. I made a pie.


Image: lattice work pie, including goofy heart-shaped cut out. A good-looking pie that we didn't actually cook enough so the rhubarb stayed kind of hard. Alas!

 I am sitting down to write this to you a little later than usual during the day. I just spent the morning, while it was cool and before the supposed thunderstorms roll back in, turning the compost pile. 


Image: a bunch of dirt. I am uncertain what I thought you'd see here? "Black gold" as some gardeners call compost?

I once took a master gardener class in composting. I tell you this because I am objectively fairly terrible at composting. I do what I believe experts call "the slow method," which is to say: nothing.  Or rather, next to nothing. I put together these lovely bins which actually work surprisingly well. After all, here we are, years later, and I can, in fact, still unclip the little holders keeping the fence together and swing open a "gate" to get at the dirt.

One of the few things I do, however, is periodically flip the compost and move it from one bin to another. 

And add to it, of course. In that lovely dark compost pictured above is all my yard waste, kitchen scraps, and... a sock, a couple of Legos, and weird plastic bits of garbage that find their way in due to living in a busy urban area. I honestly think one of my favorite things of turning compost is discovering what ended up in there accidentally. One year, I found a pair of my glasses. 

Oddly, that was fun. Tiring, but weirdly rewarding, as I shoved out all of the super dark dirt and mulched it around my various gardens. Surprisingly, there wasn't  a ton, so I spread some in the O-Jizo-sama garden (aka the established shade garden) because it has always had pretty poor soil. Every year, it seems to sink below the line of my lawn, the plants are so hungry for nutrients. The other place I amended the soil was where my jack-in-the-pulpit and the baby jacks are kind of struggling. Hopefully, this will help? I'm also making plans for a trip to the garden store to get some other soil amendment stuffs.

So there you go. Several paragraphs and a photo about DIRT.

We are still waiting on the results of Mason's COVID test. Hopefully, we will hear today.  The phone rang just now and I jumped up to get it thinking that was it, but for some weird reason I couldn't actually pick up the phone (this is our ancient landline.) I'm sure Mason gave his cell phone number to the health care workers, anyway. I am annoyed in general the extent to which telemarketers have taken advantage of the fact that we all kind of have to pick-up unknown calls these days, since it can be test results or an tele-appointment or, in our case, sometimes Mason's teachers making a checking-in call.  

Of course, that last one isn't a concern any more. As of Tuesday, we have a high school senior (final year before college/university for my friends in the rest of the world) in the house. Whoo!

Other things going on in my life include the fact that I will probably spend some time this evening baking cookies, because I signed up for a Zoom Pride event: Drag Queen Cookie Decorating.  Apparently, on Friday night, we are making drag queen cookies, not, alas, being taught to bake cookies BY drag queens, but whatever. Out Front Minnesota has sent me a number of Pride Event notifications and, while I almost never went to a lot of Pride events now that it's become so commercialized, I am super down for queer baking.

The other thing is that rachelmanija put out a call for submissions for her charity anthology (https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2377903.html)  to benefit Outright Action International and I have answered. In fact, I wrote about 2,000 words already so I should have zero problem making the October 1 deadline. Although, as is my custom these days, I have informed Mason that I have a deadline, so that he can start nagging me about whether or not I am writing. I'm actually having way too much for with this and that's kind of new? I have really been struggling to write ANYTHING during the pandemic/riots and so I guess that's a big THANK YOU to Rachel for inspiring me.

How have y'all been?

 I've finally decided to try my hand at a butter-folded danish. This is one of those things like making croissants at home that I would normally leave to the experts because it is picky and time-consuming.  But, the pandemic really has me in CHALLENGE ACCEPTED mode. 

In fact, just the other day, we made tortilla wraps from scratch... and now we may never go back. I did not know tortillas could be light and flaky!  I will happily post the recipe to that if people are interested, but, be warned, we have a tortilla press. You can, apparently, roll them out by hand, but.... with the press I only have to roll them out a little and then they end up looking almost exactly like store-bought.  We also have a really nice round griddle to finish them off on, so we may have some advantages that your kitchen might not.

It's raining in St. Paul today, a nice soaking rain. 

I realized, looking back on it, that I had said that I had planted 'cover' seeds yesterday. That is true, but the majority of the seeds are actually CLOVER, though I also tossed in something colloquially known as 'self-heal' or 'heal-all' on the ground as well, as my bee resources (namely the University of Minnesota's bee pages) told me that the bees like those.  The internet informs me that, if I get a good crop, I could also eat it. myself.... hmmm, hopefully, it won't come to that. Self-heal/heal-all is apparently also a home for a specific butterfly's eggs (clouded sulfur butterfly), so that would be cool if it takes off.  (Prunella vulgaris: https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=prvu).

I'm just not interested in mowing and now that I can post signs that say "Excuse the Mess, It's for the Bees!" I am doing that EVERYWHERE.  

...

Okay the pastries came out of the oven. I nailed the butter/puff pastry from scratch thing, but failed presentation. They look like angry blobs of jelly. But, they are really, really tasty. 


I am an angry pastry, mes ami!  I should be beautiful because I am delicious, but no, I am a blob of mess! Sacre bleu!

 First of all, I would like to welcome sourdough starter, Vera, to our family...


Image: a bubbly, sour-smelling gift from the goddess....

I am here to tell you that Naomi is absolutely correct about the abundance of wild yeast in Minneapolis/St. Paul. This stuff was actively bubbling within three days. 

You may be wondering about the name.  Interestingly several of the cookbooks that I consulted for a recipe to start the starter suggested that it was traditional to name your starter once it begins to show signs of life.  First of all, it is, in fact alive... and needs to be fed, daily, on a schedule. Secondly, apparently the yeast that you have captured is UNIQUE to you and your household. So, this really is, in many ways, your baby. Though, Shawn and I have decided to think of our yeast not quite so much like a baby (though I did make a birth announcement on Facebook, because I am silly,) but as an old auntie that has come to live with us, since this is such an ancient tradition. Hence the name Vera. Yes, we named it after the BBC detective, but it's also just an old-fashioned name to our ears.  

I am fascinated by all the things that seem to be true. When it started to bubble it really did smell pleasantly sour. When it wants to be fed, however? STINKS. And, then the instant you feed it? Back to smelling lovely and tasty.  

Ironically (?), fortuitously (?),  the day that Vera here started to bubble, our across-the-street neighbors texted us to offer up a loaf of Jonas's sourdough.  Jonas has been practicing and perfecting his sourdough for months. We have been consistently been offered his second loaf (most recipes make two). Yesterday's loaf? AMAZING. He's really hit is stride. I may be texting him for tips and tricks once my starters is ready to bake with.

We have been trading in baked goods (and other pandemic needs, like a can of tomato paste and some pry bars for a home improvement project they started.) Since both of us have "air-lock" porches, we can do no-contact drop-offs very easily. I've never been happier that I am an extrovert and made fast-friends with them the moment they moved in. Jonas is a university professor of economics, a recent immigrant from Sweden, and Cherylynn has a PhD is some science, and is working with the Department of Health, I believe. Midway is the kind of neighborhood that appeals to professors (we have a Hamline anthropology professor and her artist husband to the north of us) because we are convenient to a lot of the local universities and we are cheap as hell because the houses are modest and tend to sell to working class folks and we have a number of rent-controlled apartments/duplexes, too.

In fact, I took a few pictures of some of the houses near us yesterday for Facebook. We didn't go very far from home because Shawn was feeling headachey. She got her first cluster headache of the stay-at-home order, alas. Interesting that it's been the longest in-between stretch. I think, even though there's stressful stuff at work, there's something about being home that has reduced some trigger or other. 

Lastly, I thought I would show off the progress I have made on my anxiety quilt.

It is now large enough to hide under:


Image: Lyda hiding under the craziest of crazy quilts.

I added another line of squares and rectangles last night and when I pointed out to my family how AMAZINGLY crooked I'd stitched it, Mason just smiled and said, "Lyda Morehouse: putting the crazy back in crazy quilt."

I feel this perfectly encapsulates my crafting style.  It is now my new motto.

So, that's me, in a nutshell. How are things where you are? Everyone staying well/well enough? Getting enough sleep? 

 
Image: Void cat peeking over a purple plaid blanket.

It's difficult to get work done in these conditions. I believe this co-worker may be flirting with me. 

Yesterday was sunny, at least. Shawn and I went for a long walk around the fancy neighborhoods of St. Paul. I took a ton of house pictures again. So many, in fact, that a lady out walking with her dog and child (safely across the street from us) yelled out to ask if we were new to this area. I yelled back that we were playing tourist in our own town and that I absolutely adored the architecture of Saint Paul and that seemed to make her happy because she yelled back that "now was a good time to do that."  We later watched her go into one of the lovely houses, so I'm sure she was actually very worried that we were out casing the neighborhood. Though, how you would think we were up to no good with Shawn and I loudly blathering about dormers and other such house features, I don't know.

Mason was funny, too. He had us drop him off at the top Summit, near the Cathedral, and told us that he wanted to see if he could find his way home. He must have been walking for four hours, but I am happy to report that he did, in fact, find his way home. He loves a long, long walk, so that was good for his soul, too, I think. 

I probably won't post the house pictures here unless someone begs me.  If we go out again today, I will take more, however, because I think people who are scrolling through Facebook really need relief from coronavirus updates.

I was able to poke a bit a fiction yesterday, too, which was lovely. I didn't get a lot written, but I did commit words to page. It's kind of a break-through, honestly.

Wyrdsmiths, my writers' group, had an impromptu Google Hangout, which worked pretty well... though, like everyone, we are still working out some of the virtual hiccups. But, we got four out of six folks to join and it was lovely to hear everyone's voices again and find out how they're all coping. Turns out my phone works perfectly well for all of this, though I am still sorely in need of a new computer, as mine has a "best if used by" date of 1999.  :-/

We will probably take our government stimulus money and spend it on new computers all around.

Anyway, that's me today.  

I made a pretty amazing bread yesterday, a French boule, for dinner. The dinner was otherwise underwhelming. I had picked up some pre-made chicken Kiev from Kowalski's that I liked the spices of... but the rest of my family really didn't. However, we had baked potatoes and asparagus on the side which were darned good.


Image: smol, crusty loaf

We will at least eat like kings for the apocalypse!  Tonight, I have to pick up some cabbage during our afternoon walk, so that we can have potsickers tonight. Yum, yum!

 ...than using up my leftover homemade French bread for bread pudding.  I don't know why, I probably should feel more like someone who lived through the Depression (Captain America?).  

For those following along, it's a bazillion degrees below zero here. Mason's school is cancelled AGAIN for tomorrow. As he pointed out, now the only day he will have school is Friday and then it will be the weekend again. He says, "It's going to feel less like going back to school and more like a break in my winter vacation."

It's been lovely to have both him and Shawn home. We've done a whole lot of nothing all day; none of us is out of our PJs and it's 5:37 pm.  I did some stamping, but mostly I've been cooking and eating... and napping. I really have to say that this cold weather is working for me. I'm also really glad that several local businesses have taken it upon themselves to close. My coffee shop closed. The postal workers didn't try to deliver. People who could, should stay home, inside, and warm.

In less lovely news, my Loft class was officially cancelled.  I was really looking forward to it, but alas. I only got 4 people interested. (Worse, we could have used the money. Ah well.)

On the other hand, Broad Universe is trying out a mentoring program, and I signed up to be a mentor. I've got myself a mentee, and we've started working together. By chance, she's written a fantasy novel involving the sidhe and Irish politics. Considering that I wrote something similar (my first novel, which got weirdly published via a pay-as-you-go outfit: https://tapas.io/series/sidhepromised), I'm VERY excited by her novel.  So, that's a yay. 

I am reading something, but I'm not enjoying it. I decided to try to pick up the books that are up for the Philip K. Dick award and I started Claire North's newest book 84K. I'm... not much liking the fact that she leaves sentences trailing off, unfinished, and there are a LOT of fragments and fragmented scenes. I'm not QUITE ready to give up on it, but, man. It's tough going.

What are you reading this fine Wednesday?

 

I see that the last thing I reported was that gingerbread cookies were on the agenda for Thursday night. I am happy to report, they were made. We have successfully captured the gingerbread people (including the rare cyclops ninja)  and trapped them inside this cookie jar.  Resistance is futile.

As you can see, we had too much fun decorating these. Initially, I thought I'd stay out of the kitchen and let Maria and Shawn catch up. Maria is a former colleague of Shawn's. She used to work at the Minnesota History Center, but has now moved on to records management, maybe? (I wasn't entirely paying attention early on), at Thrivenet, formerly Lutheran Brotherhood.  BUT, when it was clear that what they wanted to do was drink wine and chat, I let them settle into that and did the rolling and baking. At this point, it's second nature to me, so I could join in the chat while getting things together.

When the cookies were cooled, everyone did the decorating.  

I had bought the "googly' eyes from Micheal's along with a bunch of other odd edible bits, including lips and mustaches--they all came in a packet for a couple of bucks. I also bought a few frosting tubes because I was there and decided that I was feeling too lazy to do the frosting from scratch on top of everything else.

They're quite whimsical, so I'm very happy with them.

Tasty, too.

I got together with the usual crew on Friday afternoon, except for Eleanor, who was off getting her hair cut. pegkerr brought along her holiday cards to label and stamp. It's interesting to note that Peg's family has always done a Christmas family newsletter. She and I had both come across recent articles talking about how fewer people are writing these sorts of things any more and how this is a concern for historians, as sources of 'mundane' life.  The article I had read was from the Smithsonian and was called "The History of Our Love-Hate Relationship with the Christmas Letter".

I happen to enjoy a well written holiday letter, myself. But, given that I still enjoy the long form of blogging, that's probably not a surprise.

But, otherwise, we were all fairly low-key on Friday. naomikritzer is still, in many ways, recovering from her trip to Taiwan and China. And, I think we were all suffering from a lack of sunshine (though it's been more sunny here starting on Friday. Previously it had been gray with gray sauce.). These dark nights have been tough on me. I'm already an early to bed sort and when it's dark at 5:30 pm, I think, "Okay, great! Time for bed!" Except, yeah, it's like 5:30 pm.

Saturday was a busy day for our family. I took Mason into his job at the Science Museum at 10 am. I was able to say "hello"/"goodbye" on a hangout with jiawen , but then had to take off to go to Mason's work's "open house" that they had scheduled from noon to 2 pm. The Science Museum is not normally more than 10 minutes from our house, but we have gotten in the habit (thank goodness) of leaving a bit earlier because it always seems that there is something happening at the Xcel Center. Saturday seemed to be no exception. There was a Minnesota Wild (our hockey team) game happening and we ended up having to pay $20 for parking. (Outrage! Except, that Shawn pointed out that we could think of it as a donation to the Science Museum, which we happily support in all of its endeavors.)  

The open house was cool.

The program that Mason works for is called KAYSC, which stands for the Kitty Andersen Youth Science Center. They're a nifty little organization that focuses on bringing STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) skills to high schoolers in underserved communities. Mason goes to one of their target high schools, which is how he ended up able to apply. Washington Technical has a predominantly Asian-American student body, with Caucasian students making up only 6%. At KAYSC, Mason gets an opportunity to get paid to learn STEM and project management skills, with a focus on using the sciences to served local communities--something the KAYSC people call "STEM Justice," which is a term I adore. Honest to gods, I would have killed to have a job like this when I was Mason's age. Heck, I'd love one like this _now_.  

At the open house, we got to see some of the areas of interest that the students had identified for themselves. They had set-up various presentations (some static/interactive displays, a couple of video programs, and one tour). I wanted to do the tour, because they were going to talk about gentrification, but we also didn't want to miss the big team reveal at the end of the open house, where Mason would find out which project leader he would be assigned to. They have four "tracks." There's an environmental sciences and sustainability one, which is where Mason ended up, a Engineering and Design, a Biological Sciences and Public Health, and a Media and Technology one. There were some really well put together displays, including Mason's which focused on stereotypes in storytelling.  I was also really impressed with a team that had micro greens growing and talked about ways in which low-income houses could cheaply incorporate more nutrient rich foods.  Another group has a display about the problems GLBTQIA+ students have in high school.  

So you can see the sorts of things they focus on.
 
Mason seems very happy with the assignment. Engineering and Design had been his first pick, but Environmental Science was his second. Given that he has an engineering track at his high school, I imagine they factored that into their decision where he might learn the most.  Because, getting serious, this job is 100% about getting paid to learn, which is why it is SO awesome and probably the best first job any high schooler could hope for. 

But, the event was high energy and full of people moving around and OMG, even this extrovert needed a NAP after that. 

Mason, meanwhile, had us stop at home to pick up some gaming stuff and headed over to his friend's house to play D&D with his robotics crew. He was there, with them, until almost 10 pm. 

Shawn and I came back and collapsed into a heap, but we got back up to make homemade pizza for dinner. Shawn had a work holiday party at a house on Summit Avenue (fancy!) which I bowed out of for a bunch of reasons, but not the least of which was that I am staring up some RPGing of my own. 

I had such a lovely time doing a Star Trek: Discovery one-shot with jiawen and bcholmes at CONfabulous this last year, that we decided to try to make it a regular thing. We spent Saturday night rolling up our characters, and I'm already very happy to watch everyone's character histories comes through my e-mail feed. We're doing this online, as our players are scattered across the globe. I'm looking forward to the campaign beginning in earnest. It's been some time since I had a regular gaming group... probably college, which is going on 30 years ago. Though to be fair, I did keep up with some folks a few years after that, so let's call it 25 years ago?

Even so, that's a long time ago.

I had gone cold-turkey from gaming about the time I started concentrating on novel writing as a career because, for me, I felt it used a lot of the same mental muscles. I felt I could EITHER use those muscles to write _or_ RPG. I'm not sure I was right about that, however--I know a lot of pro writers who could do both.

But, that was the choice I made. 

I'm excited to get back into it, regardless. I also love that in the twenty-five or so intervening years the demographics have flipped. The STRONG majority of us are women (4/5ths). There's only one guy gaming with us. That's amazing. I can't wait to find out what that's like. In the past I was always the only woman or one of a very few... I met my wife gaming, but we drifted together partly _because_ there weren't many women in that campaign... though I think there was at LEAST one other. (To be fair, it was actually love at first sight, since when she asked me to draw her character and said that they should have blonde hair and brown eyes, I told her I thought that was an unusual combination, and she said, 'that's what I am,' and I looked up and literally said, "Oh. You have the most beautiful eyes I have EVER seen." So, you know....)

Anyway. I'm not sure exactly what happened on Sunday, except that Mason and I got into a hormone fueled bickering session that ended with us marathoning several hours of the new Super Smash Bros, Ultimate game on the Switch in order to work it out (which we did. Gaming as therapy is real in the house of hormones, which is what we call our house as Mason is in puberty and Shawn and I are both in various stages of menopause.)

So, that's me. How's by you?