Eseme's Den

Right, getting sick twice in one month really sucks. I got two throat swabs done yesterday (because the first quick test for strep came back negative), and both elicited the comment os "Wow, oh you poor thing" from the two different nurses.

So, I am once again going to be about a week behind on LJ, and you're gonna get random comments from me on really old stuff at some point. When I feel like sitting up. Thankfully the back pain and muscle spasms are no longer troubling me.

I really hope everyone else has managed to avoid Death Plague, Parts I and II.

Do you like poetry?

If you think you don't, you'd probably like ysabetwordsmith's poetry. I know I was happy to be proved wrong!

Today is the August Poetry Fishbowl - you can leave a comment with a prompt on today's theme, and you'll get a poem written just for you. This month's theme is "corruption and redemption."

http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/1821832.html

Wow people, I had to skip back SIXTY entries on my friends page to get the earliest of the new entries.

I've only been away from LJ since Thursday night!

Now, part of this is the crowdfunding spotlight, which I gave up trying to keep current on last Tuesday. But still, you all have been talkative!

I think I'll be caught up around Thursday... So expect comments from me popping up on old entries.

Well, more at my parents' house from ReaderCon, but that parses oddly.

Yes, it is indeed 12:48 AM.

But since I will be a bit busy tomorrow unpacking and finishing work on a spiffy elven vest, I am posting now, so everyone knows I made the drive safely.

I hope I'll be seeing a bunch of very cool and interesting people wandering through my journal, and I'll be looking in on their journals.

*waves* Welcome!

There are a bunch, although all the major sewing for costumes is done!

Galactic Police costume:

Sew border on badge, and attach pin backing
Find a good font for GP, and stencil onto badge
Construct a casing on the back of the gun holster so it can be worn on the belt
Put grommets in the bracers and find ribbon or cord to lace them with
Add a hook-and-eye to the skirt above the zipper
Tack down the lowed edges of the collar at the seams so it sits better
Possibly apply shoe polish to the stompy boots

Assemble the druid costume again - parts have wandered off and the belt-pouch went to the LARP last weekend

Find all unsigned Sharon Lee and Steve Miller books (also pray that the post office delivers Fledgeling Monday-Wednesday)

Charge the digital camera battery

Go through the con bag, remove old stuff, make sure it has useful things

Pack clothes and costumes!

Make Cornish Pasties


Wow!

Erm, totally doable by Thursday! This weekend I sewed the shirt/tunic, the belt, the holster, and the bracers. This meant I didn't get much cleaning or cooking done, though I did manage laundry from the LARP last weekend.

Yay, con!

djinni is hosting another Free Icon Day!

His art is fun, cartoony, and fabulous! Just look at this great new icon of me in my druid costume!

Wow, that is a lot of exclamation points. But djinni is worth it. He'll sketch an RPG character for you, or anything else I can dream up. Once I sad, "and a steampunk hedgehog, because I can" and I got a totally cool one!

Check out my user pics, I credit all the artists of my icons. It is a sampling of the work he does.

You do not need to donate to get an icon - your icon will be in black and white if you do not donate, but if a certain level of donations is reached, all the icons will be in color. So even if you cant donate you might get a full color icon!

His post is here, http://djinni.livejournal.com/320272.html and it is worth reading all the text - there are a few things he won't draw like copyrighted symbols or characters.

Wow, I've been busy.

So, just after my last post about walking, on Saturday April 16, I did a LOT of walking! I walked into Gardiner for lunch. It's a long walk, about 5.5 miles each way, plus the walking in Gardiner itself. People look at you funny when you reveal how far you have walked for lunch...

But what a lunch! I went to my favorite place to eat, and they had totally amazing food. It was a bit of a chilly day, and rained that evening. So I arrived a bit cold, and was happy to learn that I could order half a panini and a cup of soup. Mmmmmmm, hot cheddar, onion, and tomato panini, and cheddar-beer soup, served with a simple salad of greens and a vinaigrette. So good! I had two cups of hot tea, the second one with their rum chocolate bread pudding. Yum! And you totally don't need to worry about calories when you are walking over ten miles that day.

I did a bit of shopping, and walked back.

Now, this weekend was both productive, and fun. Though with less walking. First, I found out that one of my neighbors is moving, and is selling a couple of storage cabinets. I happen to need a couple, and was planning on buying some this summer. While it did require a bit of last minute juggling of the budget, I will be able to get them on Friday. So I spent yesterday (Sunday) making room for the cabinets in my second bedroom. The craft room is taking shape! Now I just have to get all the stuff on the floor in cabinets!

Saturday was fun (other than the two hour trip into work wherein I fought with Linux and lost). I went to the fundraiser and beginning of the season for the local "extreme roleplaying" group. AKA, boffer LARP. Which I have never done before. But they are much closer than the Cam is, and the costuming should be fun. Fantasy costumes! Also, I won a higher level character in a raffle. There is a new game being playtested this summer, and they want people to play a variety of levels - I won the chance to play a 10th level character (instead of 5th level) by putting most o my raffle tickets in one bag. Yay! The only downside will be if I really like it, next year I have to go back down to 5th level.


Walking Totals

I started at 72.85 miles to Rivendell.

So I walked to Gardiner, which is a little over 5.5 miles each way (I start my walk a bit before the 1.0 mile mark, and the 6.5 mile marker is at the end of the trail). I also walked around Gardiner a bit. So I'm calling that trip 12 miles.

Then last Sunday I walked about 1 mile to AC Moore. This Sunday (yesterday) I walked 2.15 miles, and another 2.15 miles today.

For a new total of... 89.15 miles!

So when we last checked in, I had made it to the Buckleberry Ferry, and across the river. But we saw one of those annoying cloaked riders! Darn.

So now : We take the main road north from the Ferry, Buck Hill is on the left and Buckleberry on the right. We take a lane to the right, and climb up and down into the country, ending up at Crickhollow, where we spend the night. And a Conspiracy is Unmasked! I believe this is where we meet Strider? Not sure.

The next morning we leave Crickhollow soon after 6:00 a.m. It is foggy and we ride the ponies slowly. We enter tunnel under Hedge to reach The Old Forest. The path disappears (ca. 7:15 a.m.). We keep on trying, and eventually reach the Bonfire Glade, which has a clear path beyond. It is now sunny, but we are not yet in a second clearing.

We get a lot done before lunch!

So, when aldersprig posted Harry Potter make-a-character art, I had to join in.

The quiz put me in Hufflepuff. It's them or Ravenclaw, really.

And Hufflepuff needs the love.

As always, click to embiggen (this one is big):

ARGH, gimme a sec. LJ claims my Scrapbook does not exist. I need to go beat things.

Friday was utterly beautiful, and warm. It had to have been in the 50s. So I decided grocery shopping could wait, and went for a walk on the rail trail after work. So nice.

I went for another walk today - I was up very late last night playing board games, and we were eating some rather unhealthy food (though my pasta was pretty excellent).

Friday I just went my usual 2.15 miles, but today I went from a bit before the one mile marker to the three mile marker and back, for about 4.15 miles. So a total of 6.3 miles.

That takes me to a cumulative total of 62.4 miles to Rivendell. I am really hoping I can put beat last year's total. I did some math and I'm thinking I could get close to adding 100 miles by next fall if I really make time to go on walks and to actually record them.

So, at 62.4 miles to Rivendell, the journey is rather dull (other than being chased by mysterious hooded figures). We walk around the edges of fields worked by Farmer Maggot, and after a turnip field there is a stout gate to a rutted lane, edged by hedges.

Still not at the darned Ferry! How will we ever outrun those scary figures?

So, I said I would take the yammering about dragons to a post in my own journal (as opposed to the comments of someone else's journal).

Terry Pratchett has a theory about human mythology, that it is turtles all the way down. There are a lot of how-the-world-was-created myths which involve turtles, and a number of cultures have at one point or another believed that the world is carried on the back of a turtle or tortoise.

For me, it's dragons all the way down. I started reading stories about dragons at some point in grade school. I'm pretty sure one of the earliest things I read was Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles, consisting of Dealing with Dragons, Searching for Dragons, Calling on Dragons, and Talking to Dragons. I still have my battered paperback copies, although I like the covers on the library's hardcover copies better.

Then I read everything my small library had with dragons in the children's section. During middle school, I got access to a new library, and discovered Ann McCaffrey. I'd already read Jane Yolen's Pit Dragon series (it was in the children's/j section for some reason, while McCaffrey was in the YA section).

In sixth grade (middle school started at 7th, so this was before Pern), I wrote what I considered a novel (about 80 typewritten pages, single spaced) about a girl who went through a portal in our world and ended up in a fantasy kingdom which she happened to be the long-lost princess of. Yes, I was twelve. There were dragons, and in order to drive off the evil guy trying to take over the kingdom she had to hike into the mountains and find the dragons and ask for their help. There was a boy living with one of the dragons, in a cave. Again, I was twelve.

I read this out loud to my entire sixth grade class, and to one of the second grade classes, when the teacher heard about it. I thought I was so cool. And of course, I was going to be an author when I grew up.

In eighth grade we had to make a magazine as an English project. We could pick any topic we wanted, but we had to design a cover, write a letter from the editor, a short story, a book review, and an ad. I picked dragons, of course. Then I had the problem that all the dragon books I knew of I had already read. The teacher insisted that we had to read a new book for this. So I went to the library and ran a subject search. I came up with two books I had not read with the subject of dragons. One was Terry Pratchett's Strata, which turned out to barely have dragons in it (which won it a less-than-enthusiastic review from FLAME magazine), and Douglass Adams' Last Chance to See, which is the funniest book I have ever read about endangered species (the dragons were komodo dragons). I wrote a story about a girl finding dragon eggs, which is in an entirely different setting than the first one, an ad for a dragon BBQ service (dragon shows up to BBQ your food, not the other way around), and included both book reviews.

The dragons were dormant for a while, though I continued to read fantasy and the occasional book with more dragons. Then I had this assignment in grad school - write up the mission, goals, and vision statements for a library (real or imaginary). Clearly, this needed to be more fun, so as in eighth grade, I added dragons.

THAT idea stuck around. A couple of years after the assignment, it was still kicking around in my head, and I decided to try to write a novel. I've tried this before - I have the beginnings of two other novels on my hard drive. But this one actually made it past ten chapters. It's not done, even over a year later. But its dragons, which is not a surprise to anyone who knows me.

Dragons. All the way down.