Day in the Life of an Idiot

Mason bought me a solo RPG called The Bird Oracle for the holidays. I'm several days into it and just wanted to share a bit of my adventure. (Most of this will be under the cut, so those of you who would like to ignore it can.)

Here's a page from my journal:



Image: sample page of my The Bird Oracle journal, where I've glued in a printed color photo of the nest I built, per instructions.

The basic premise is that I've inherited the cottage of the previous Bird Oracle and the job that comes with it, which is providing divinations for the people who write to me.

Initially, however, Jane (the mentor who left me this cottage) has given me various assignments to ease me into my new role I'm meant to take on. She's teaching me her mystical arts by asking questions I'm answering in my journal (pictured above). Previously, they've been things like what you can see if you expand the picture above where I'm supposed to think about what "egg" might mean to me and respond to a question like, "When do you feel protected?" This is all prep to lead me to coming up with my own definitions for bird-related divination prompts. Sometimes Jane comes with little crafting projects, like above, where I was asked to build a nest for Twigs, the carrier pigeon who also comes with the cottage. (I also later decided there are chickens, but I'll get into that in a second.)

I am not playing as Lyda, however, because, for me, that isn't role-playing. So, I've been feeling around for a character as I've been answering these questions. I finally hit on something as I was writing up my entry for "feather," which turned into an actual story. The only other thing I'll say about this above the cut is that I love playing villains, but RPGs are largely cooperative when played around a table (not all of them, obviously, but player v player isn't much fun when what you're playing is "let's all kill this dragon" or other such things where, you know, it's best if people have the same agenda.) In a solo RPG, I can choose evil.

I'm not choosing to be actively evil in this excerpt, but you can sort of see how it vibes like a villain's origin story (if you choose to read it.)


( Cut for potential boringness.... )

The problem with local cons is, because I don't stay at the hotel, I don't tend to remember to take the time in the morning before the con is open to write-up the day before. But I'll do my best to try to remember the entire weekend. (EDITED TO ADD: My memory is decent enough and this is getting long enough that I think I will break this up and report on it over the next couple of days.)

FRIDAY, October 3, 2025

What I remember most about Friday was how nervous I was. I really wanted Gaylaxicon to be a success and, of course, so many things can go wrong at a convention including, but in no way limited to, people just not showing up. I knew we had a pretty decent pre-reg, but would it be enough to make the con seem lively or would it be "empty hall syndrome"? As I noted, I did managed to break into the mundane press to let people know about the con, but who know if that works? I wish, in a way, that we either had a post con evaluation form with a question like "how did you hear about Gaylaxicon?" on it, but then we'd still be gathering and collecting all that information and I am feeling just as happy to be done for awhile.

naomikritzer and I went back and forth a bunch of times via text and email about when we were headed out and whether or not Eleanor A. needed a ride... (turned out no) and eventually, unable to hold out anymore, I left for the hotel sometime right after lunch. The first panels were at 1:00 pm. One o'clock was possibly too early for programming on a workday, but my thinking had been that the people who took Friday would be happy to have something to do as early as possible. I showed up and discovered that despite my fears, things were already sort of hopping. Of course, I might have mistaken all the high energy for the fact that Adam Stemple was in the hallway chatting with a bunch of the other panelists/attending professionals who'd arrived. Adam is generally a major source of high energy. But, that worked? One thing I will say is that, throughout the weekend, even when people were scattered there was a lot of energy in the place.

I am trying to remember what I did. The program book reminds me that I either went to "Gay YA and Children's Books: Why Representation Matters (or it Doesn't)" or "Tarot in Media," or "GMing in the Age of AI," but I only remember seeing part of the first and peeking in at all three just to make sure everyone seemed happy and had at least a little bit of an audience.

KD Edwards who was on the "Tarot in Media" panel was a consumate GoH. We had many GoHs? Like, six of them, and all of them were great, but he went beyond in terms of getting the word out to his fans. His books are the kinds that inspire a strong following and he worked his butt off and made sure that as many of his loyalest fans made it to the con. I saw him both Saturday and Sunday morning conducting a clearly organized (but not by us!) breakfast gathering. I asked him about it when we passed in the hall because I wondered if these were all local people or...? He said no, there were a whole bunch of his fans who flew out special to be here. This made me suddenly really happy that we'd made space for some of his more specialized panels. He did a special panel where he and two of his colleagues--one an ancient Rome scholar (and professor, I think,) and the other a good writing friend (neither of them local!)--did a kind of "live" world-building session for the audience. I will admit that I was a little suspect that it would be a draw? But, it turned out both of the panelists he recruited to attend also did other panels for us and, as I said, he clearly brought the fans to the yard, as it were.

Impressive.

This is the sort of thing that makes me reconsider things like a newsletter, you know? I suspect that KD has one and that's how he activated the phone tree, as it were.

But, back to Friday. I had a panel at 2:30 pm "Cyberpunk and Bodily Autonomy," with my friend Lee Brontide. It was just the two of us and we were in the smallest (and, as it turned out, most out of the way) programming room. This did not deter our audience, however. The room was by no means full, but they definitely outnumbered the panelists! I should have counted, but I feel like we had more than five? I just remember thinking that it was pretty good for this early in the convention. Because it was just me and Lee, I told the audience that there wouldn't really be a moderator since I hoped it would be more of a conversation, but, then I ended up basically moderating (or at least facilitating,) anyway. Lee is super fascinating, really knowledgable and I highly recommend (if you're interested in bits and bobs of research, etc.) doing what I just did and subscribing to their newsletter: https://buttondown.com/LeeBrontide

Newsletters again. I am telling you, I am seriously reconsidering my allergy to this sort of thing.

It sounded like the other two panels went well? I had really wanted to see the one that Nghi Vo was on about the things writers end up leaving out of their writing, but, obviously, I had to attend my own panel!

After this, I sort of wandered aimlessly trying to suss out what our attendance looked like. At this point, I think we were hovering around 180 and this sort of depressed me (even though it's actually quite a good number for a small con!) and so I ended up following some folks up to the con suite. I dragged along my friend tallgeese  and we had a rousing discussion with one of the other GoHs, Emma Torsz (rhymes with dirge), Kelly Barnhill, Adam Stemple, naomikritzer , and three or four people whose names I am spacing on. It was a conversation that ranged through publishing woes, religious upbringing, and life, the universe, and everything. My favorite kind of con conversation, actually. I got in a little trouble because Emma suggested that she was really uncertain she wanted to attend opening ceremonies and I told her that she could, in fact, skip them if she wanted. We aren't the boss of her. But, then she got nabbed by Anton and--I mean, I probably should not have suggested she could go because the opening ceremonies are the chance for con goers to be introduced to the GoHs. But, I stood out in the hallway and sort of fumed about it because my feeling is that, while we do compensate our GoHs to attend, it's not a contract written in blood. If someone is tired and people'd out they should get to make adult choices, even if those choices aren't necessarily the right ones for the con. But apparently a compromise had been struck and so Emma skipped out as soon as her introduction was over. So, that's fine. I just feel badly because Minnesotans (and, particularly women) have been socialized to be terrible at boundary setting/self-care and so when asked, "Are you sure it's okay?" The answer is often, "It's fine," even when it's not.

Anyway, I could go on about that more, but in many ways I recognize that I was wrong to have given Emma a promise of an out.  The next thing that was up was the banquet. I ended up sitting at a table way in the back with a bunch of concom folks that I love, James B. (who I accidentally called by the wrong name, twice! UGH. I hate that!), tallgeese , our mutual friend and fellow Star Trek: Adventures player, Erik, and again some other lovely folks whose names are lost to oblivion (which is a bummer as I really rather liked James' friend!)  The banquet was hotel food and was fine and... I won the very last raffle prize, so I now have a Star Wars board game?

Speaking of, I ran off around 7 pm to play a Star Trek:Adventures game GM'd by one of our other GoHs, Jim Johnson (of Modiphius.) That was fun! I had to duck out before the time was over, however, because I had a 10 pm panel where, at least, I was able to apologize to Emma because she was on that panel with me and Kyell Gold. I just wanted to say sorry not only for getting her hopes up, but also in case I'd gotten her into any kind of trouble. That panel went well, but we probably needed a moderator who wasn't me? Ten is WAAAAY past my bedtime, so the conversation which was supposed to be about "When Magic is Queer-Coded" veered so far off topic that we talked about whether or not we dreamed in conversations and if birds had language. That can be fun to watch? But, you know, I also feel sort of beholden to stick to the subject at hand, which we decidedly did NOT and my sleep deprived brain could not summon the spoons to keep us on track. 

So, oops.

Generally, I'm not sure what I was thinking with such late night paneling. I think I was remembering the Minicons of old when there were enough people still up (and we were ALL so much younger) to make those make sense. Again, I will confess? I thought Teh Gayz partied??? The place this misconception was most noticible was the caberet. Like, I thought that room might end up standing room only, but it was barely at half capacity and that was scheduled for Saturday night at 7:30 pm. 

Oh well. Lessons learned. Either I have to actively recruit the youngs or I should just never have programming beyond RPG and board gaming and those sorts of things past the dinner hour. Which, actually, would have been fine. 

Speaking of RPGs and such, I should go back and talk a bit more about the Star Trek game. I have watched Jim Johnson play Star Trek before because Modiphius has a YouTube channel where you can watch all sorts of things about their RPGs including interviews with bcholmes . (Sidebar: we had initially wanted BC to come be a GoH, but traveling to the US was very reasonably out of the question. Jim was actually our second choice, but don't tell him.) 

Jim was a good GM, I thought. I always push a bit for more than a little bit of roleplay, which I did here, as well. Not too much, though. I knew, of course, that a lot of people game at cons to try out new systems so I try not to push TOO hard for roleplay uber allis at one-shots at cons, because I understand that there are people at the table who are solely there for the mechanics. However, I lucked out in that I came early enough to the game room that I had a chance to pick which character I wanted out of the pre-generated sheets. There was an Andorian chief of security that was the right kind of hothead for me and I think I was able to add a little flare to the game without being too disruptive.  

The could-have-been a distaster distruption was to my left, as it turned out. We had a very young, very deep into the spectrum player who was still  learning when it was okay to blurt out actions or thoughts. I will say to Jim's credit he handled this person (a high schooler) with grace and kindness. Meanwhile, it may have helped that I FULLY adopted this player, whom I will refer to by their character's name Lt. Hernandez. This wasn't a rescue to be clear. I adored this young person. Yes, Hernadez struggled with volume control (but so do I when I'm excited) and, yes, their insistence in returning to some elements of their character over and over again could have been (and may have been) more than a little annoying to folks who wanted the game to continue at a pace. But, what ended up happening is that we consciously (as in me and Hernandez) chose to decide that in the world of the space utopia of Star Trek, neurodiversity continued to exist and that, if this was a true utopia, things like ADHD would not only exist, they would be accomodated and cherished. The turning point happened when I, as player, announced that I'd like to spend the momentum to retroactively create a trait in which we had regular security check-ins with the USS Challenger. Hernandez joked that sometimes that character would be bad at responding because they were enthusiastically focused on sciencing. I noted that probably given that this seemed to be a character trait, probably even on the ship there was a Hernendez Protocol so that someone periodically checked-in with Hernandez to make sure she had eaten a food and drunk water. This then became a funny, fully accepted running joke with the crew. And Hernandez leaned into that aspect of role-playing much to their obvious pleasure.

I found the whole thing with Hernandez delightful. 

I'm sure there were players at the table who would disagree with me. But, you know, when you're at a con, you get the players at the table. It's not cool to shun or ignore someone unless what their doing is a disruption more akin to the kind of harassment (sexual or bullying or like) where the GM should then really just tell them to leave the table, full stop.

And, you know, us problematic players need to stick together. I'm atypically problematic because I will push to do as much personal interaction as possible which people tend to see as a positive, but like my Andorian had a pastime of poetry and so at one point, in the shuttle craft, I had him randomly recite a poem I'd desperately scribbed into my notes. And I did so without comment. So, later, when a group of us decided to finish off this episode (which is what ST:A likes to call its sessions) one of the returning players was, like, was that in character or just.. you writing spontaneous poetry? I was like, "Oh, I was just so into character that I didn't remember to explain what the hell I was doing!" So, it totally came off like me randomly blurting out poetry, possibly just as a player??? Hilarious. 

Anyway, the scenario was what it was and it's a preview of one of Modiphius's mission briefs so I won't say too much about the actual events since it would be a spoiler. 

This got long, so I'll end it here.

 What if I tried journaling two whole days in a row? 

I'm willing to risk it, if you are.

I should be working on my novel, but I got out of the writing habit and now I've got to figure out how to claw my way back into a routine. This is going to sound counter intuitive, but luckily we are headed up to a friend's cabin tomorrow morning for a weekend of lakeside bliss. I will not even try to write over the weekend. HOWEVER, Monday will already be very Monday, being post-vacation, so I will just put my head down. I have a writers' Zoom every M-Th, so there's even a time to "show up to work" already scheduled. This should be a very effective restart button.

At least I hope it will be. 

In the meantime, I have been, once again, working far too hard on preparing for the one shot I want to run at Gaylaxicon. I have, in the past, complained about some of the mechanics about Thirsty Sword Lesbians. Some of you may have heard this rant before (and still others may not give a hoot about RPGs,) in either case, feel free to skip the next little bit. I will even been kind to you and put it under a cut. You will miss the photo  of what I've been calling my enrichment program, but them's the breaks, I guess. Your loss.

( Cut for likely disinterest )

But, yeah, so I've been occupying my time making these things for about 18 different pre-generated character sheets (2 choices for each of the nine "playbooks"). I always allow people to make their own characters on the spot, if they really, really prefer that... but in a cyberpunk setting knowing "what's allowed" can be hard. Plus, because the one shot is supposed to be fast and fun, I've pre-loaded all the pre-generated characters with some cool cyberpunk-y extra powers that won't really affect game play but add to the vibe.

Feel free to burst into applause at my effort. 

Thank you, thank you very much!

 I was feeling pretty smart that I remembered that today was "What are you reading Wednesday," but then I popped on here only to discover that the LAST time I posted was LAST Wednesday. Well, given that, I think I will forgo the list of reading material and tell you, instead, about my life. 

Last Saturday was Imbolc (also known as Saint Brigit's Day) and Sunday was Groundhog's Day, so, of course, Shawn and I decided to have a Sunday High Tea. As some of you may remember, last year, for her birthday, I gave Shawn a trip to the Saint Paul Hotel's fancy dress high tea. We had also been hoping to attend a tea ceremony at the Como Conservatory's Japanese garden, but, I had neglected to remember that Shawn's knees were failing, so we ended up canceling that. As part of her "year of tea" last year, I bought Shawn a subscription to a very genteel magazine called Tea Time, which literally is just recipes for fancy tea cakes and sandwiches and pretty images of people's tea sets. So, we decided to make a ham salad recipe from one of her Tea Time issues which we spread on bagette slices...



Image: mostly these kind of look like mayonaise-covered dog food? But they were insanely deliciously and curry-flavored.

For me, the real star of the show, however, were the raspberry filled tartlets. In comparison to a lot of the very picky and time-consuming recipes I have made for our various teas over the years, the tarlets (and the ham salad, honestly,) were shockingly easy. Like, the the biggest thing to making the tarlets look good? Owning a tartlet pan. Which, OF COURSE, we do. 



Image: Raspberry tartlets on top, lemon poppy seed pound cake on the bottom tray.

I just ate the very last leftover of the tartlets this morning. They're such an oddly enchanting "mouth feel" because the bottom is philo and the top is more like a soft muffin. In-between is a generous spoonful of raspberry jam. So they're kind of "springy" and chewy on your teeth? It's odd, but, as I can personally attest, weirdly addictive.

Surprisingly easy to make given how fancy they look, too.

Yeah, so, this is how we're surviving the state capture of the United States by a criminally dangerous South African immigrant that I would sincerely like to see rounded up and deported. If we could just send him to Guantanamo instead, I dunno, innocent children that would be fantastic. Weird how no one has thought to send ICE agents into the Treasury Office. That would have been my first phone call.

My next would be to a nice, young Italian man....

But, I digress. 

In other news, I been running some absoluely soul-rejuvinating TTRPGs. Last night, my Thirsty Sword Lesbians solved an interdimensional-dimensional rift and a yakuza turf war with a bit of flirting and some donuts. Ah... I mean, my shoulders just dropped two notches TYPING that. Last night, I was just grinning happily for a couple of hours post-game.

Last Saturday, my Dungeon & Dragons party rescued a dozen Dwarven miners from an as of yet unmet Infernal foe. A little less universally satisfying, but on its way, and to be fair, we had a thrilling marketplace heist pulled of by none-other-than our party's PALADIN. I am still laughing about that. Good times.

 So, we take it all one day at a time.

How are you doing?

 My parents noted that I left the car story on a cliffhanger. 

So hang no more!

Car is stil not fixed. I have a temporary solution, which was always the temporary solution, and that's currently how we are getting around. I need to try to make an appointment somewhere else, but I have failed to have the appropriate number of spoons to do it. It's even worse, as it's one of those situations where I have several really good recommendations, I just haven't felt up to making the call to see when/if I can get in.

My spoons have been low this whole last week because I've been really rather broken over yet-another-drama in one of my roleplaying games. It's apparently surprisingly difficult for people to be kind and empathetic when I'm not the one doing the emotional intelligence gathering and heavy-lifting, I guess? It shouldn't be a surprise, after all this time, but here we are. I'm feeling fully wrecked over something that is ultimately very, very, very, VERY stupid* and not worth this much of my time or energy.

I've lost a full week and at least one friendship to it and that's just dumb.

On the flipside, my players pulled off an amazing conclusion to a D&D mini-campaign on Saturday and I spent a full twelve hours HIGH on the experience of that. We laughed, we cried, we solved not one, but THREE (well, two and a half, as per D&D one of the victims was revivified!) murders!  It really felt exactly like what a good gaming session should feel like. It was not quite enough for them all to level up next time, but they were handsomely rewarded and avoided starting a full-on Seelie/UnSeelie Fey War.

What a f*cking amazing game. 

So, there is hope, my friends. There is always hope.

===
*The fact that this is all happening over a game that should be fun is stupid, to be clear. Not the problem.

 Egads, I've been terrible about keeping up here.

To be fair to me, I've been deep in RPG game planning as an antidote for the continual storm of terrible news from the Worst Timeline. As many of you know, I've recently taken the plunge, moving from player to game master. I still play in plenty of games! However, much like my move from reader to writer, I have discovered that if I want a certain type of game, I might just have to run it myself.  This keeps me occupied to the point of distraction, honestly.  I do have to watch my obsessive tendencies, a bit. Given my druthers I'd almost always rather play or plan an RPG than almost anything else.

Otherwise, I had a birthday on Monday.

Shawn typically takes the day off work for my birthday, so we were able to go together to enjoy some daytime shopping, which was nice. Specifically, I wanted to go to Barnes & Noble to windowshop the manga section there and then head off for what is becoming an annual birthday event, shopping for fabric at S. R. Harris.  It doesn't make sense to catalogue the fabrics I got. Just imagine a nice pile of things that appealed to me--bright and cheery solids and interesting and unusual patterns. To be fair, the big excitment of going to S. R. Harris the dizzying array of choices and the fact that they removed biggest barrier to enjoying fabric shopping for me: waiting in line for your fabric to be cut.  You are allowed to cut your own up to four yards. This always makes me feel like a rogue, a ciminal... like I'm getting AWAY with something.

But, since today is "What Are You Reading Wednesday?" I will go ahead and bore you with the details of that shopping trip to B&N.

I only bought a couple of manga from artists that I really want to make sure to support. First, I bought the official fourth volume four of The Summer Hikaru Died.   The way I introduced this series to the readers of my manga review site was, "The Summer Hikaru Died is a poignant, deeply sublimated, barely acknowledged (but definitely queer) love story between a boy and… the monster that returned in the body of his dead friend. A new genre, perhaps? Horror Romance or Romance Horror?" It's not Chuck Tingle and company's "monster f*ckers." This is love mixed with horror--kind of a perfect coming out queer metaphor, perhaps. It's so, so good. If you want to read my spoiler-heavy review of the first volume, you can find it here: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/2024/03/06/hikaru-ga-shinda-natsu-the-summer-hikaru-died-by-mokumoku-rei/

I also picked up I Think Our Son is Gay, volume 5. I described this one to a friend as "I Think Our Son is Gay is, as you might imagine from the title, a manga about a mother coming to terms (sort of side-by-side with the son who is coming out to himself) that her kid is gay. What I love about this manga is that it reads very true to life. There are moments when the son is clearly experiencing his own homophobia and backing away from his own truth and mom is sometimes ahead of him in this area, and visa versa. Though unlike the kid, mom has a part time job in a bakery and has a friendly adult gay man as a colleague who she sometimes works up the nerve to ask questions.  Dad is sort of set up as the antagonist, but he's also literally only around every so often as he has a job that keeps him away from home for months at a time. Dad doesn't mean to not get it, but he's there to represent the usual attitudes towards gay stuff, if you know what I mean?"  Again, if you're interested in my review of the first volume, it's here: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/tag/uchi-no-musuko-wa-tabun-gay/

Otherwise, Shawn got me a couple of blank notebooks (technically "dot-lined") from one of my favorite notebook makers, Congative Surplus. IF I HAD ANY BIRTHDAY MONEY LEFT, I would totally pick-up one or two of their new "Dark Analysis" notebooks that have black paper and these insanely cool covers: https://cognitive-surplus.com/collections/dark-analysis.  Holy crap, these are cool!

Anyway. I also always request that Shawn make my absolutely favorite cake, which is a cranberry upside down cake. The only trauma with this particular recipe is that for some reason Shawn's success rate with it is 50/50. I am happy to reort that this year it was a complete success. In fact, after I finish writing this to you all, I'm going to go have one of the last pieces left for an afternoon snack!

Speaking of 50/50, it seems as though there is a possiblity this weekend's Star Trek game (where I am a player) might be cancelled. The GM, tallgeese is having cataract surgery (I think today!) and so isn't sure if he'll be fully recovered. First of all, I need to say that I hope his surgery goes off without a hitch and that he does feel up to it, and of course I am not so much of a monster that I won't understand if he's not feeling fully recovered. But I will admit that I'll be deeply bummed out if we end up having to cancel again. It's been awhile since we've played. So long, in fact, that I'm not entirely sure we have a December date picked out yet. I should be sure to offer to run my alternate game-- which is basically, "what if all our same characters were somehow all at Starfleet Academy the same year?" I would offer it is as an alternate relaty version of the same group of people (Think Chris Pine vs. Shatner 'verses), so no one has to roll a new character unless they really wanted to. 

Also, I should say that if you are someone who regularly gets postcards from me, I have not stopped doing those... I just got way off schedule due to All The Things. Also, I'll be honest? After the election I considered just sending everyone a black postcard with just "Help!" written on it, and then I said to myself, "Lyda. These postcards were started to cheer people up during the pandemic. No one wants a story where your time/space traveling heroine has been thrown into an abyss, never to return."  But so, when I was at the coffee shop yesterday, I spotted a local artist selling cute little greeting cards of their work and, though it is not a postcard, I will be sending those out this week just to let my postcard recievers know that I am alive and still planning to continue this project.  

I think that's everything? I hope you all are still keeping on keeping on.

 Quick administrative note before I get into the rest of it: I've changed my policy about who I'm granting access to my locked posts to. I didn't have any problem that precipitated this. So, if you are finding yourself suddenly dropped, please don't imagine it's because you did anything wrong!  I've decided for simplicity's sake that I'm only granting access to folks who subscribe to me. I'm doing this in part because I discovered that I was following a bunch of dead accounts, all of whom still had access. I just figured that while I was there, I might as well make everything consistent. The chance that I will let you back in if you ask is incredibly high. In fact, if you'd rather not subscribe but still want see my locked posts, just drop me a request. I apologize for any disruption in your service, as it were!

==

Okay, so.  I can't believe it's already noon and I've accomplished next to nothing.

It's kind of been like this since last Tuesday, however?  

The specifics of this morning go like this. Shawn and I got up and were doing our usual things when we realized that we needed to get our car off the street by 7 am for the street sweeper. So, I threw some lunch together for her (I have been making bento for Shawn since we bought a fancy, double-decker bento box several years ago), and we rushed out the door without breakfast. We decided to stop at Brugger's and although we're enough of regulars there that the guys behind the counter start making my sandwiches before I order, I really need to change that order because my GERDS can no longer handle the Swiss and sausage egg sandwich. But, as I'm sure some of you can relate, 1) it feels too hard right now to ask them to change the order, and 2) honestly, the kindness of the gesture is worth the stomach upset. Like, I need small kindesses so much right now, you know? 

I got home and did some of my usual morning internetting, which no longer involves checking social media. I have largely given up being on Facebook, outside of using it as a place to post cute pictures or pictures of food I am making or have made. If you want to follow me on a social, I am at Bluesky: @lydamorehouse.bsky.social


Image: half-eaten tray of fresh, homemade hot cross buns

Then, my alarm went off reminding me to get ready to record my podcast with Ka1lban. I was also working on a new review for MangaKast, which I have not updated in well over a month, and so I didn't really notice the time go by... until it was almost a half hour past when he usualy shows up. I dropped a note to him in Discord, wondering what was up--but apparently he doesn't get notifications from that... and anyway, he hadn't been planning on recording today, anyway, unbeknowst to me. 

This is where things start to feel very abortive, you know? Like, I'm all prepped for something that just isn't happening. 

I'm a little worried that something similar is going to happen tonight as well. I'm supposed to be running a Thirsty Sword Lesbians game at 7pm for a new group that I've assembled. I am embarrassingly prepared.  Like, it's a cyberpunk setting and I made two little mini movies of "found footage" for this group (if they follow the right clues!!) This is part of what I did to occupy my time while we were waiting for the news last Tuesday night, so I mean... it wasn't like I could concentrate on anything else. 

But this morning one of my players, haddayr , emailed to say that she's feeling too sick to fully participate. She's going to try to listen in, but no garuntees. This is our very first session? Players (at least the first one to respond, anyway,) made it clear that they are willing to go ahead without her, but... given how today is going so far, I'm sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

To be perfectly clear, it would be okay if it did. I have learned from my other online groups is that it's always best to have at least two dates arranged ahead of time. So, if we have to cancel this time, we KNOW when the next session is supposed to be. It's already on the calendar. 

It's more that this has just felt very typical of almost all my days since last Tuesday. I feel very much like I can't get my feet under or, when I do, it's for something that is no longer happening or gets postponed or just doesn't work out for whatever reason. 

How are the rest of you doing?

Several weeks ago, naomikritzer tagged me on Bluesky so that I would be sure to see that someone was promoting their new Dungeons & Dragons 5e module: Solidarity: Drunk Girls* in the Bathroom. The concept: the adventure starts because your characters stumble across a drunk girl sobbing in the bathroom. Your quest? To undo the wrong what was done to her!

The whole thing is very…


Image: The "You have my sword" meme.

The concept sounded AMAZING.

I bought it immediately.

( Cut for length )

I managed to forget my friend haddayr's wedding on Sunday. At least I had never RSVP'd and I had only been invited to the post-ceremony Open House. Shawn and I were supposed to be away this last week in Saint Louis, MO, for the CoSA (Council of State Archivists) meeting. As previously discussed, Shawn is being extra paranoid about infections and decided that travel was ill-advised and so the trip was cancelled. I had the invite sitting on our piano as a reminder, but I never did get around to RSVPing, so I suppose it's fine. It was such a lovely day yesterday, though. I would have liked to have given the two of them my best.  Alas!

However, it turned into a weirdly busy day, even without the missed wedding.

Shawn is gathering all the things she's going to need post-surgery. We have gotten a bath transfer bench from someone off buy nothing, but a couple of friends of ours  happened to have a daughter (I know, too young!) who had to have knee surgery who offered us a toilet set frame. So Jason and Carrie (two horror movies, as they like to remind people) came over with that and of course it wasn't just in and out. We had to stand around on the porch and chat. 

Mason, who has been incommunicado because he caught COVID immediately upon returning to campus, was feeling well enough to chat so I skipped my usual Zoom with my folks and caught up on the life of our nearly college grad. Mason is a senior this year, if you can believe it! Then, he and Shawn stayed on the line a little longer and booked him is flight back for Thanksgiving weekend. 

Then. our friend Lana came over to return a bread pan that I'd loaned her. I have two of those double-loaf French loaf pans and I went over to make bread with her one Sunday several months ago and had to leave before the bread was out of the oven. Since I have an extra pan, I told her to return it at her leisure. Lana is a regular performer in our local A Klingon Christmas Carol troupe. This year, she'll be playing The General in I'll Be Home for Kahless: The Hallmark Parody of the Season (at the Phoenix Theater in Minneapolis.) I'm thinking that this might have to be the year I finally see one of these things. 

Shawn ended up giving Lana a tour of the house. Like you do.

Oh, and in there somewhere around noon, Shawn and I also got our seasonal flu shots. So, we are now fully upgraded for the season, having gotten the newest COVID vaccine two-weeks prior. 

On top of all this, Shawn and I spent hours working on our Health Care Directives. You can not say Shawn is unprepared for this surgery. Not only do we have all this stuff, but we literally have updated our wills and Health Care Directives. 




That was all just Sunday

Saturday, Shawn and I got her rollaway bed put together for the downstairs (again, for post-surgery.) We don't have a couch, so it seemed like a good thing to own so that Shawn can rest as needed without trying to do our stairs--particularly that first week or two. Then, I think the only other things I did were RPG-related.

I spent a huge amount of time working on a possible dungeon crawl for the folks who I've gathered to play Solidarity: Drunk Girls* in the Bathroom , on the off chance they go that way.

Then, I turned around and tried to catch up on the changes in the Second Edition of the Star Trek: Adventures Role-Playing Game for the monthly game I play in. We had a shorter than usual playing session as bcholmes led us through the character conversion process. That went decently well for most of us, except that one of our players, lcohen , completely lost her species and abilities in the upgrade. So, that was no fun for her.  But, the game itself was action-packed. We said goodbye, in-game, to one of our long time members, jiawen , who will be very much missed -- as we immediately blew up one of our long time NPCs, due to a lack of caution. (Okay, actually, that was just the way I played him and it turns out our Chief Medical Officer has a new superpower that allowed us to make a miracle rescue.)  Due to the power vacuum created in jiawen's absence, my character has gotten a promotion that he is highly uncertain about. I'm looking forward his growing pains as he figures out how to command. This problem--feeling your way into command--feels very much like some of the stuff I loved about Saru from Star Trek: Discovery, if you watched any of that.

So, that was my weekend. How was yours. Forget any weddings???

 Shawn and I have a notebook full of allegorical names for a farcical mystery we are never going to write. These are names like Scott Free and Helena Handbasket. I wonder if General News is in the list? I should check. It's been a while since we added a new name.

But, on to the actual general news (as opposed to the allegorical one.) I don't think I have a huge amount to catch you up on this week, but it's been a while so I thought I'd catch you up on the goings-on arounds these parts.

Tuesday ended up being a skip week for the podcast. While my co-host tested negative for COVID, he did come down with something nasty enough to keep him off the air. What was ironic about that, is that I had Shawn reschedule her pre-op appointment because it had conflicted. Then, suddenly, neither of us had anything to do at that time. (Well, I mean, Shawn went to work, but it was a very, "Damn it, we coulda..." sort of thing.) It has been, I think you'll see, a week like this.

Wednesday, I was scheduled to record with Cheryl Morgan--my editor and publisher over at Wizard's Tower--for her podcast. That went really well, but it was funny the extent to which I'd forgotten a lot of the plot of Resurrection Code. 

Yesterday, I had both an in-person Wyrdsmiths (my writing critique group) and I hung out with my friend jiawen for a couple of hours, which was nice. We talked about everything from WisCON to the recent presidential debates, volcanos, and our various lives and such. Good times. 

Then I went for a very short walk and now I'm hot and tired. Dang exercise, making me sweaty!