Grrrrrrrrrrrrr

I got out of jury duty early. Yeah!

I decided to push hard and try to finish this short story I've spent way too much time trying to write. It went well and I wrote 1500 words or so. I was a few paragraphs from being done.

When the computer blue-screened. And no, I had not saved.

On the plus side, I have just looked for and found a new word processing program called RoughDraft. It's kind of old, but it does a lot of things I have been looking for, including automatic saving. :)

I'll knuckle down and write some more once I calm down. I really want to finish this thing.

Catching up: Goals for 2009

This post is only 6 weeks late. To go along with my accomplishments of 2008, we have, in no particular order, my goals for the upcoming year:

Household Goals

• Fix the fence


• Build a garden to grow wheat in


• Insulate the underside of the bathroom (we discovered this winter that a large draft was coming in under the bathtub)


• Clean out the attic and have a garage sale

Personal Goals

• Read 20 fiction books


• Read several history books


• Listen to audio books


• Work on becoming more self-aware and in touch with my feelings and desires


• Get down to 175 lbs.


• Talk to people and network at conventions


• Write short fiction


• Write the outline of a novel

Work on Living History Projects

• Build a quern



• Build an oven


• Plant a field of wheat


• Make a batch of mead


• Make a batch of medieval-style ale


• Experiment with more bread recipes


• Go to Kalamazoo

Sabledrake Enterprises Goals

• Increase local awareness of us


• Sell significant quantities of in-stock books


• Print Ellis


• Start a line of d20/4e/Ellis compatible map sets of real locations (castles, churches/monasteries, inns & taverns)


• Do a book/pdf (with Lizzy) of fashion in Fantasy RPGs?


• Sell the sets of Lawn Darts I've been collecting

Catching up: The 25 Things Meme

This one has been going around LiveJournal and Facebook for the last few weeks. I'm sure everyone has seen it, if not been tagged by it, so I'm not going to tag anyone else. Here are my 25:

1. I took a long time to think about this because I wanted even my close friends to be able to learn something about me, so I had to put some effort into finding obscure but relevant items. Or maybe it's just another example of me overthinking things....

2. When I was in 5th Grade, I built a Star Trek captain's chair that I would sit in front of the TV to watch Star Trek in. It had switches and lights in the armrest and everything.

3. I find tatoos and piercings to be very unattractive, essentially body vandallism, and have a hard time looking at them.

4. I just can't stop eating good food (scratch that, any food), which makes it very hard to lose weight.

5. I love naps. I get a nap everyday that I'm not a work . . . and some that I am.

6. I still have an actual Atari 2600 (not one of those new joystick games) and a couple dozen games, but no way of connecting it to a modern TV.

7. When my father was learning hypnosis, he used to practice on me (back when I was in high school). I still do some self-hypnosis to help me sleep or de-stress.

8. I own a safe that I bought in the mid-90s to protect my collection of Magic: The Gathering cards. I have since sold nearly all of them, but still have the safe.

9. I believe that life is about learning: discovering one's true self as well as learning about the world at large.

10. I have three passions in life: my family, gaming and European history. My life is best when I can combine all three.

11. I'm going to be teaching my 14 year-old daughter how to ride a bike this summer . . . and that scares me, though not as much as teaching her to drive will.

12. I have a great love of languages, but am really bad at them. At various points in my life I have taken classes in French, German, Dutch (Flemish), Latin (on 3 separate occasions), Classical Greek, Anglo-Saxon, and Welsh.

13. I have three life-goals right now: Publish a Roleplaying Game (which should happen later this year), become a professional poker player (which I have decided to put off serious work on until my teenager moves out), and to write more (I'm not quite sure where I'm going with that one yet).

14. I hate ants!

15. Cheese is one of the most delicious things on the planet. I love it. I’m not a huge fan of blue cheeses or many soft cheeses, but I love most hard ones. My absolute favorite is a White Cheddar laced with Elderberry Wine by Cahill Farms.

16. Travel is one of the best ways of learning about life. Things never go as planned and you’re forced to improvise and problem solve; you meet people and are exposed to different points of view; and you get to see art, architecture, religion and culture in action.

17. My favorite author is J. R. R. Tolkien. I absolutely love The Silmarillion. I think it will be very hard to see, but Ellis is my tribute to Tolkien.

18. I don’t believe that global warming is caused by CO2. Nothing I’ve seen in the current climate models can explain the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Much more likely, in my view, is that global warming is caused by variations in solar radiation and this theory should be either proved or disproved within the next few years as we enter a projected period of lower solar energy. I do, however, agree that the pollution that goes along with most forms of man-made CO2 are bad for the environment and would like to see them go away. I often dream of retiring to the wilderness and living completely off the grid, with either hydro or solar energy powering my cabin.

19. Wikipedia is a wonderful thing. I can spend hours just reading and reading. Although I have to admit that after reading a few talk pages, I have less faith in the whole thing.

20. I still wear a watch (when I remember to put it on) even though I carry a cell phone.

21. In addition to medievalism, I am also really interested in Victorian England. I love Oscar Wilde (Dorian Gray is one of the best books ever!). Steampunk is even interesting. I’ve run a Castle Falkenstein game and would like to write a Victorian RPG someday.

22. I running out of things to say, but I refuse to say something like ‘One of the previous things is untrue’ or other foolishness like that.

23. I listen to a odd combination of Classical music (especially harpsichord pieces), medieval music (on period instruments), Gregorian chant, 80s Pop & hard rock and modern pop. (I’m listening to Music of the Crusades by Daviud Munrow right now...)

24. I am seriously concerned that my memory is starting to go. I have responded by keeping notes and making lots of lists, but it’s not quite the same. Here I am, almost 40 and I have to write myself notes in order to remember anything.

25. In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Movie is the worst movie ever made. Seriously.

RadCon

This weekend was RadCon, in Pasco, WA. That's about a 4 hour drive from Seattle/Everett (without traffic), and we usually do it after I work a half-day (until 1 pm) so we don't get there until after dark. This time we decided that I would take the whole day off and we'd get a nice early start.

That let us take our time and do something we've talked about doing for years -- stop at the Dairygold cheese factory and take a tour. The tour was disappointing -- it was a video tour in a small room off of the gift shop. The gift shop was disappointing too. For a factory that makes 170 million pounds of cheese a year (that's 5% of the US cheese production for those of you keeping track) they didn't have a very big variety of cheese, just cheddar, jack and pepper jack. But then, when you make that much cheese, I suppose it pays to make only very popular varieties.

We got in around 2 pm and Becca went straight for the Munchkin tables. Chris and I waited around and hung out in the Green Room waiting for the con staff to get organized. Becca and Chris both went to a panel about zombies at 5 pm.

Afterwards we had dinner and Chris and I went back to the room to sleep, but wound up watching (of all things) Wife Swap. Did anyone else see this one? The LARPing/WoWing family and the over achieving real estate agents? OMG! I’m not sure which family was worse, the slackers or the workaholics. Yes, I am, the workaholics were complete assholes with no idea of even how to have fun. Crazy.

Becca came back from Munchkin and then asked to go to the dance. Dance!?! Becca? We said yes, but she only stayed there for 25 minutes or so.

Saturday I realized that not only had I forgot my cloak at home, but that the ingrown toenail was not going to cooperate with my boots, so I decided to dispense with the costume. It’s too bad. I really wanted to wear it. Becca played more Munchkin and Chris went to panels.

I wound up talking to people. I had a long conversation with a small RPG publisher and made some good connections for both the store and for Sabledrake. I also talked to Don from Games Plus and had a good time swapping game store stories. Then I also talked with several of the SJ Games demo guys, the MiBs, and volunteered to organize SJG demos at MisCon in May.

I went back to the room after lunch and wound up falling asleep for 90 minutes. I wound up sleeping through the one panel I wanted to go to, on Brewing Mead. I took a long walk through the art show, watched in the LAN room for a while and chatted with various vendors. We called it a night early again, while Becca went to the late night Munchkin tournament.

She was due back by Midnight so when she didn’t show I went looking for her (Chris was long asleep). The guys in the gaming room said that the Munchkin game had ended hours ago.... After some searching, I found her, guess where? Yep, the dance, or as she called it, the Rave. She was well chaperoned by some of the MiBs, so I couldn’t be too mad.

We left late on Sunday, after several panels (one on villains and one on world building). The drive back was full of snow in the passes and was very pretty. We planned to go to Outback for dinner when we got home, but there was a half hour wait, so we just came home and watched Amazing Race.

Overall, an excellent con.