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December Meme – Day Eleven (Yesterday) Roll dem bones.

Dec12

(reference: http://gosimpsonic.tumblr.com/post/54091186115/roll-them-bones)

The Meme

Today’s prompt is from [personal profile] thnidu: Rolling the dice.

Oh ho ho I could go so many… okay, two or three ways with this.

The first that comes to mind is the literal. I have, like any good pen-and-paper gamer, a bag full of dice, most of which have more than six sides (I have some D4s because they amused me; I don’t think I’ve ever used them in a game).

The thing is, although I’ve been playing tabletop games on and off since college, and although I learned HOW when the kid down the street ran D&D for me back in high school (My guy friends who had a regular game wouldn’t let me play with them. Seriously), most of my gaming career has been LARPing.

No, not like that movie. Well, maybe a little bit. (Not like the Supernatural episode, either.)

I did World of Darkness (Vampire, Werewolf, Changeling, Mage…) LARP, which wasn’t boffer and was rock-paper-scissors. No dice involved! I tended to describe it, offhandedly, as “I spend my weekends pretending to be a vampire. Or a werewolf.” And it really is just make-believe.

You see, I never outgrew make-believe. Other kids stopped playing with me, but I kept thinking up the stories. Once I found out I could get other people to write stories with me – or read and engage in those stories – I was right back on the playground, having the time of my life.

So rolling the dice comes from, for me, a very similar place as writing. I’m playing in a fictional world, and I love it.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/864808.html. You can comment here or there.

December Meme Day Six – Fire, Fire Fire, Fire, Fire!

Dec6

The Meme

[personal profile] kelkyag‘s topic was: Fire.

I like this one! (I’ve liked all of ’em so far). But this one…

Okay, if you believe in Zodiac, Aries is a fire sign. And, whatever the birthday on the LJ/DW/Twitter says, I’m an Aries. (So’s my husband. We get along just fine, and yes, people have asked).

As a kid/teen, I thought that I was an earth sign inundated by water, or perhaps the other way around, and in the end, I think maybe I just like nature.

But fire, at the moment: fascinated by it. I grew up heating with wood, fire, and we heat with wood now, so I don’t have a lot of ~romance~ attached to fire: it involves buying or cutting down wood, hauling it, chopping it, hauling it some more, cussing at it, and then getting it going so you can enjoy it.

But when you’re done, you have this magical thing you can stare at. And that’s just hypnotic. Meditative, even (<.<).

Candles, too. I love candles. I love playing with the wax and the flame, lighting things on fire – I once lit a napkin on fire (mostly on accident) at a restaurant. I like the light. I like the warmth and the way it changes things around it.

I’m not particularly coherent about fire, I suppose. But I like it, a lot. And not just because it’s what’s keeping me warm right now.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/861406.html. You can comment here or there.

December Meme – Day Four

Dec4

The Meme

While [personal profile] kelkyag gave me a bunch more pick-a-day-prompts, I’d been thinking about this, so I wrote it 🙂

Today I’ve been thinking about Farmville (big surprise there) – as well as Civ, Sim City, and Carcassonne, and how they relate to my writing.

The thought first came to me a week or two after I’d gotten enmeshed in Farmville, which really can devour quite a bit of time. I was running Addergoole scenarios in my head (like ya do) and I realized that the character was sort of playing Farmville IRL.

My first thought was “I’ve been playing this so much that it’s leeching into my characters.”

But THEN I thought about the backstory for Elle and Reynard: rebuilding Buffalo, complete with farms. I thought about the backstory for the Planners: (they started out as) hippy survivalists, with farming, including urban farming. Dig far enough into many of my settings (not, say, Dragons next Door), and you find gardens, farms,and rebuilding buildings: reclaiming, generally, unused or underused land.

The thing is, for all that games like Farmville and Civ, Sim City and Carcasoone are immensely engrossing games, part of why I play them so intensely has to do with how they speak to me. They’re world-building games, creating something out of nothing and making it work to your own plan.

Brb, my electronic cows need feeding.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/859078.html. You can comment here or there.

December Meme – Day Three

Dec3

The Meme

[personal profile] aoifes_isle asked: Snow, love it or loathe, and why.

That is actually an immensely complicated question!

Okay, so I grew up in the Snow Belt. Snow is a major feature in my life, anywhere from October through April (average year: November through March). I took Driver’s Ed in the snow. My city twice lost power for a week in March. (Once may have been April). That was ice, though. Snow is a fact of life for me.

That being said: I hate driving in snow, though not as badly as I hate driving in freezing rain, ice, sleet, or hail (or driving rain). I don’t particularly enjoy shovelling snow, and I don’t really like slogging through snow to the garage (Woodshed) or compost bin.

But I love snow days, when the road is impassible and I can sit at home guilt-free. I love the look of the snow, bright and crisp and blanketing everything – snow, like love, covers a multitude of sins. I still like playing in snow, even if I don’t really enjoy shovelling it. I like putting Oli ((one of)my norwegian forest cat mutt(s)) out in the snow and watching him play. And I love winter clothes and a chance for layers on layers on layers.

And, I admit, I love the no-yardwork nature of winter, when one can sit back and, well, write more words.

What about you?

~~~

Tomorrow’s topic is still open! Leave me a suggestion?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/858550.html. You can comment here or there.

December Meme – Day Two

Dec2

The Meme

[personal profile] kelkyag asked: Garden Plans?

Garden!

Well, at this time of year, I need to get some cardboard and more mulch over the carrots to overwinter them, and come up with something to do with the last of the kale.

Over the winter, I am contemplating a three-bay compost bin. Our current compost bins are about as simple as can be made: a circle of chicken wire (or the plastic version, in one case) held up with three sticks.

What I’m thinking of doing, probably from scrap wood, are three boxes each sharing a side (Something like this: http://www.besthorsestalls.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/compost-bin-01.jpg, but less large all around), with the front of each box being fold-down or screw-off, and the three back sides being lined with chicken wire or the like. This gives me two bins to rotate every year, and then a third “slow burn” for things like bones & kitty litter.

As for next year? Only one tomato plant, probably only one pepper. Giving the ground a chance to recover from the tomato blight.

Lots of brassicas! Those did really well this year.

And I’m going to mound the squash next year, and hope that does me better.

That’s enough garden planning for early December in the North, I think. <3

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/858214.html. You can comment here or there.

The Thornes Go to Hershey (#altonbrownlive)

Nov16

We’ve been watching Alton Brown on TV for years. We watched Good Eats nigh-on religiously, watched Next Iron Chef when there was nothing else Alton-y to watch, and watch and love Cutthroat kitchen.

We’re the sort of people that brine our turkey every year; I make biscuits by Alton’s recipe for our soup and we do own two of Alton’s cookbooks. I think it’s fair to say we’re fans.

So when the live show was coming to Hershey, PA, well… that’s only four hours away. We’ve driven three and a half hours to Albany three times between September and October (there was a wedding); we can drive to Hershey.

T and I don’t take many vacations. We used to do conventions with the Camarilla™, back when we belonged to said world-wide live-action Roleplaying game, and we did Dragon*Con once – in neither case did we pick the hotel. We’ve turned weddings into vacations for ourselves – again, we didn’t pick the hotel. I think this may be the first time we’ve chosen the hotel… ever.

Ahem. Alton Brown.

The show was awesome. I hadn’t done a lot of research about it, so I didn’t go in expecting anything in particular – but it was everything I could have wanted. He ranted about food, he did wild food tricks, he sang. It was two hours of pure Alton.

My only sad point? He took audience questions via twitter w/ selfie. Awesome… except for the 1% of us (me) that came sans smart phone.

But all in all – awesome show. I don’t think we learned anything about cooking, but we had a lot of fun. (Also, in his song about EZ Bake ovens, I got to examine how lucky we are to live in a sub-sub-culture where the fact that my husband does 9/10 of the cooking is entirely acceptable.)

Back to the hotel. So, I was a little hesitant about staying in a Howard Johnson (hotel snob), but it was the only one on the main drag that was a) well-reviewed and b) had a king-sized bed. So.

Turns out, it has a phenomenal restaurant underneath, and an absolutely tasty brunch place right next door. So not only did we get to listen to our favorite TV-food-personality, we got to eat delicious food, too!

All in all, a very good vacation, & back home in time to feed the kitties.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/847683.html. You can comment here or there.

Look, not a #Nano post! Things Learned about Gardening This Week/end

Nov9

Gardening – well, anything really, but today I’m talking about gardening – is a learning experience. Even harvesting.

This weekend, we learned:

Hot Peppers: The very tip of a hot pepper isn’t indicative of the rest of the pepper.

T. cut off the tip for me to taste, to gauge hotness so we knew how much to put in our enchiladas. Nothing. So he sliced off another tiny slice.

Burning, so much burning. Drinking milk, drinking cider, crying. Well, not quite crying. So much burning.

Turns out those were the ghost peppers. Whoops!

Hot Peppers, part II: When drying hot peppers in the oven, check the oven before turning it on to make cookies.

Then again, it’s not the first time we’ve learned that. You could smell the capsaicin all the way in the other end of the house.

Carrots: Can overwinter just fine in the garden, just mulched over a bit. Also, given a raised bed with fresh compost + peat, they go wild. These things are huge!

(Also purple. But that was on purpose).

Kale: a fitted queen bedsheet works great as a row cover on frosty mornings, esp. for a 4×6 foot raised bed. On the other hand, kale doesn’t give a shit about frost and the bed we didn’t cover was just fine.

Tomatillos: aren’t supposed to get ripe. Also, if you plant a tiny free tomatillo plant and let it go, it will take over a whole bed.

Broccoli: get huge! if you let it flower.

And, considering the tomato blight and the ridiculously sad squash harvest, we’re really glad we don’t depend on our garden for our food.

All in all, an educational week!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/845650.html. You can comment here or there.

Preparing for NaNoWriMo 2014

Oct22

It’s that time of year again. The time when I start doing everything to prep for NaNoWriMo except actually outline my story (or, in this case, stories). I’ve downloaded calendars. Lots of calendars. All the calendars, some of them from 2009. (For wallpapers, you see). I’ve figured out how to do my wordcount, what wordcount I want to do, and what days I’m going to assume I won’t get any writing done. I downloaded a new wordcount spreadsheet, took it apart into its component parts, and reintegrated parts into my own.

All of this is very fun, and most of it – the part that isn’t the wallpapers, at least – is rather useful. I have a plan for my numbers. But now what?

And that’s the question, isn’t it? What do you do before November, to make NaNoWriMo flow smoother?

Among my list of things (other than “play on the forums and put all sorts of lovely calendars in rotation for my wallpaper”) I can/will/should do to prepare:

* Set up a wordcount spreadsheet (See these; they’re lovely!) – this is definitely a YMMV situation, but I find having a tracker helps.

* Clean up other writing queue as much as possible. This is *cough* not the time to have a wildly successful prompt call. That being said, I’m going to get as much of said prompt call done before Nov 1., then pick up on Dec. 1. Or 2.

* Know what you’re doing. This can take a number of forms, but I can’t imagine stepping into Nov. 1st with no idea at all what my project was going to be.

For me in previous years, this involved notecards, outlines, scribbles – this year, it’s a bit more complicated. Step one is pick four projects, since I’m doing a series of stories for submission. Step two is coming up with an idea for, and then outlining, each story. And I’ve discovered, thanks to @Inventrix, beat sheets (here), so now I have a whole new thing to do.

* Make a work space. I have a workspace, but I’ve been working on making it more comfortable, more tidy, and more mine. If I’m going to spend an hour a night there for a month, I want it to be nice.

I even, thanks to a suggestion from @cluudle, have candles. Pretty flame & a nice vanilla scent! And I’ve been working on making the area as ergonomic as possible.

* Plan for the inevitable; plan for the family; plan for life. Last year, I wrote 84,000+ words – and nearly forgot Christmas. So this year, I’ve set a smaller goal, and am working hard at remembering important things like husband, cats… and Christmas.

What about you? What do you do to prepare for NaNoWriMo, or for any large project?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/832801.html. You can comment here or there.