Atropa Belladonna~ Raven (a.k.a. Nightshade)'s Weblog ~
These are the ARCHIVES of January 2003. For more archives, visit the Archives page. For the current Weblog entries, check the Main page.
Atropa Belladonna| Thurs, Jan 2, 2003 (8:20pm)
Aaaaaah. Had a great party last night - it went from dusk 'til dawn. I didn't get to bed until 8:30am, and there were till people awake watching videos at that point. Many pizzas were consumed. Much pop was drunk. No people were drunk, though - a pleasant change from most New Year's parties, which I why I throw my party on New Years Day. I've been holding these parties for 10 years now, and I came to a horrible realization this morning: I CAN NOT play Twister like I used to. Oh, I hurt... I hurt... I hurt. Accomplishment of the Day: Actually updating the weblog. And making that LRPS redirect for Anna. |
| Fri, Jan 3, 2003 (3:35am)
Well, I just got back from hanging out with friends at BP's. Mmm. It was good. Ya know, I have a lot of friends, and I have a lot of acquaintances, but among the whole bunch of them, there's a certain crowd that I just really click with. Those are the ones I look forward to seeing every Thursday. I wasn't sure I wanted to go to BP's after overdosing on crowds which came to the Wake, but the people I saw were just the ones I was hoping to see. So we kicked back and did some gaming, and Lazarus stayed way past when he should have gone home and I got to storytell a cool scene which has been in the works for the better part of a month.It didn't work out exactly the way I thought it would, but it stayed remarkably close to script. This is astounding considering that my Tierel players normally have no compunctions against kicking my intended plot under the carpet and ignoring it for months on end. I just wish we could have stayed later and done some post-game talking. Well, I know Lazarus had to go to work in the a.m. so I didn't expect him to stay. And Bregon & Don probably would have talked if I'd stayed, but I really had to get home, myself. I was in that state where I could feel my energy level slipping and I knew I had to drive home soon, or I might need to take a cab. I really, really, really hate driving tired - it's as dangerous as driving drunk. But here's a few things I might have said, if we'd stayed around to chat:
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| Fri, Jan 10, 2003 (2:15am)
Hm. It's been a week since I wrote anything here. I don't actually feel like writing right now, but since I made a border-line Resolution to write at least one entry a week, I'm going to bitch about something. I think I'll grumble and complain about my neck. Ya know, I've always taken pretty decent care of my body. And I've taken pride in my over-all flexibility (How many 30+ yr olds can still manage to wrap their foot over & behind their head?). And I lead what I consider to be a relatively stress-free life. So WHY do I get these awful tension-complexes which knot my neck muscles into an unweildy mess? I mean, there are days when I can barely shoulder-check because my neck won't move. I've actually begun to consider visiting a chiropractor to see what can be done. Or maybe an accupuncturist. I don't want to be the sort of person who needs to take Robaxacet just to get to sleep. Until then, I suppose I should be very thankful that I've got several friends who are willing to dole out backrubs and neck massages upon request. It doesn't last for as long as I would like, but it's nice to have someone who can work the knots out so I can actually look over my left shoulder, or raise my right arm above my head. What a pity I can't take these individuals home with me, and chain them to my bed (or maybe to my computer desk?) so they can be at my disposal whenever I want them... |
| Sat, Jan 11, 2003 (11:25pm)
I added a couple more friends to the list of weblogs I read. It was fun skimming their entries... especially since they're a pair of guys I don't see much nowadays. We're all too busy leading lives, and working jobs and stuff. But, through the wonders of the internet, we can now spend more time reading about eachother's lives... and thus have even less time to actually hang out with eachother. (My, that sounds sarcastic, doesn't it? It wasn't meant to be when I started that sentence.) Kay... something else to babble about right now: I should NOT be let loose in any location that sells DVD's. My Significant Other and I got a DVD player on Thursday. We just got it hooked up last night. And in the last 2 days, I have spent more than my entire Christmas Paycheque on DVD's. Bad me. On the plus side, we've now got a very nice selection of material to view on our pretty new DVD player: Babylon 5 (season 1), Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Fushigi Yuugi (Eikogen), Black Adder (seasons 1 and 2), Grave of the Fireflies, Highlander the Series (season 1), Zardoz (I'm still amazed I found that - in Safeway of all places!), Dune, and a couple others... in addition to the Fellowship of the Ring which we owned before even buying the DVD player. Accomplishment of the Day: Getting up in time to go to work, so I can earn another paycheque to replace the one I so frivolously spent. |
| Mon, Jan 13, 2003 (5:50pm)
Yesterday was an interesting day. Not interesting in the sense of the ancient curse, but interesting none the less. First, I managed to run into an old friend at work. I lost contact with her and her sister about 7 years ago (or so) when our Vampire LARP moved to a new location and no one could get a hold of them to tell them about it (they'd moved, or something). Kinda wondered off and on what had become of them, but I trusted that we'd meet again. And yesterday, she walked into the clinic where I worked. That was cool. Second, I managed to encounter something I was allergic to. In Safeway, I think. I sneezed as soon as I entered the store, and a few more times wandering around, and by the time I got to the till, I was rubbing my eyes. When I got to the car, I knew I was reacting to somthing, cuz my eyes were all itchy and puffy-feeling. The reaction stopped getting worse after I was out of the store, but my eyes stayed puffy for hours. They're still puffy right now, in fact. I look like some kind of alien. Third, a couple of my friends came over in the evening. We sat & chatted about the nature of magic and did some gaming, and drank tea, and stuff. And I got a back rub. And a foot rub. (Mmmmmmm... I am such a sucker for foot rubs.) Now, I'll admit that I invited them over with the ulterior motive of a back rub in mind, but I wasn't expecting such a relaxing one. And I wasn't expecting a foot rub at all. Particularly not from someone who I didn't know even gave foot rubs. By the time they were done, I had all the muscular cohesion of a jellyfish. Mmmmmmmmmmmm. So I guess the day went pretty well, all 'round. Even if it turned me into a bug-eyed jellyfish alien. |
| Fri, Jan 17, 2003 (1:30am)
Been gaming too much lately to do much weblogging. I've been talking to Boris about plans to start up a boffer-style LARP in Edmonton. I'm rather interested in it for the chance to get some regular excercise, as well as the prospect of playing in another medeival fantasy LARP just so I can get my fix more often. We'll have to see how it goes. |
| Sat, Jan 18, 2003 (1:30am)
Friday was a very cool day. I got to watch Wally have laser eye surgery. He'd originally asked me just for a ride back from the eye center (since he wasn't sure how much he'd be able to see, and didn't really feel like walking home right after surgery of any kind, anyway). As things turned out, however, his appointment was running late and I arrived before he'd even gone under the laser, So I was there when they did the procedure, and got to watch it on a video monitor. Tres cool. Accomplishment of the Day: Buying bookshelves from IKEA with a blind Walrus in tow. |
| Sun, Jan 19, 2003 (1:10pm)
Kay, I realize no one I work with reads this weblog, but I decided I had to post this, for the betterment of the world: How to load a Dishwasher There are several important principles involved in the loading of a dishwasher. Most stem from the fact that water is used to clean the dishes. Add into the equation complex laws such as gravity and you are faced with a challenge: How do you arrange items so that everything gets clean? Not to mention the aesthetic principles involved, and the considerations for ease of unloading later. Here are a few things to keep in mind: - Plates, particularly tall ones, belong on the bottom level of the dishwasher. Cups, glasses and mugs, belong on the top. (An exception may be made for very tall glasses, which can be placed on the bottom rack if the top rack is full, and short plates or saucers, which may be placed on the top if the bottom is full). - Bowls may be placed either on the top rack or the bottom, but MUST be positioned in a sideways or upsidedown fashion. When placing on the bottom rack, the sideways orientation is preferred, so they don't block the upwards spray of water from reaching items on the top shelf as badly. Placing bowls facing UP is verbotten on ANY level. All this does is collect a bowl full of water and dirty goo. Then, when you open the dishwasher to empty it later, they spill dirty water over all your other clean dishes. Dumb, dumb, dumb. - Cutlery belongs in the cutlery holder. I CAN NOT stress this enough. If you throw loose forks and knives in the rack, THEY FALL THROUGH. Then they get stuck under the bottom rack, where they jam the rotating mechanism which sprays water everywhere. In really bad situations, the metal cutlery can end up touching the heating element and transferring this heat to anything else it's touching... like the bottom of the dishwasher, or the plastic-coated dishwasher racks. In this case, you end up with melted plastic, stinky smoke, and black scrotched bits inside the dishwasher. NOT GOOD, folks. - When putting cutlery in the cutlery rack, it goes in handle-side down. That way the tines of the forks and the bowls of the spoons and the blades of the knives are sticking up. If they all point down, they tend to spoon and water can't get between them to rinse the crud off. In fact, crud tends to collect in these areas, so you have a lump of cutlery glued tgether with dried macaroni if you don't load the dishwasher right. An exception can be made for sharp knives - they may be loaded with the point down, so unwary souls do not stab themselves while unloading the dishwasher in a semi-conscious morning haze. - Loading cups, glasses and mugs: These all go into the dishwasher upsidedown (see note on bowls). Generally speaking, they can be loaded all in a row and don't need to go over the pegs in the racks. Those pegs are there to hold plates and bowls, and occasionally to secure particularly tall glasses. When short mugs or cups are loaded over the pegs, they tend to rock around on the peg, and have a greater chance of smashing into other mugs when being blasted with water. This results in chips and, eventually, broken mugs. - Please, when loading plates and bowls, load them all facing THE SAME DIRECTION. They should face toward the center of the dishwasher, so their dirty side is towards the strongest blast of sprayed water. They should not be loaded thusly: One facing out, one facing in, two facing out, one more facing in, two more facing out. This makes uneven spacing and the plates don't get as clean. Plus, its tougher to unload them if you have to flip them around before stacking. - Load plates next to plates, and bowls next to bowls. Due to their differing shapes, these objects tend to block the flow of water when loaded randomly next to eachother. Plates are tall, and prevent water from reaching the little bowls hidden behind them. Bowls are wide, and tend to touch their rims to the plates, creating an area where water doesn't reach and food will be trapped. - If you are loading pots or pans in the dishwasher, please, for heaven's sake, don't load them OVER the other dishes. Yes, a deep pot might be able to sit right over top of an upsidedown bowl, but when the water comes spraying over and under it, this is what happens: The inside of the bowl gets clean, and the outside of the pot gets clean. However, the inside of the pot merely drips dirty goo onto the outside of the bowl. Then after the heating cyle, you have goo thoroughly cooked onto both items. And once it's cooked on, it's really annoying to get off. Just throwing it in the dishwasher a second time won't do it. ESPECIALLY if you load them the exact same way the second time. - Do not overfill the dishwasher. It just means that you have twice as many dirty dishes to scrape cooked-on-goo off of afterwards. Ya know, I could write another whole diatribe on emptying dishwashers, and on how to check that the dishes coming out are actually clean... but since I know this isn't going to be read by anyone from my work, I don't feel its worth the effort. Maybe some other day, when I really need to vent. I think I'm gonna go take a nap now, so I have the energy to deal with the fools at work again tonight. |
| Fri, Jan 24, 2003 (11:50am)
Since some of my friends are playing Nation States, I figured I'd check it out as well. Feel free to come see the Kingdom I created (follow this link) or go create your own country by going directly to Nation States. Accomplishment of the Day: Not being buried alive in an avalanche while stepping out my front door to get the paper. |
| Sun, Jan 26, 2003 (12:35am)
(Note to Lazarus: I was gonna post this yesterday, but there was a small child sleeping in the computer room when I got home. I am not brave enough to enter a room with a sleeping toddler in it... not even to get at my computer.) So. I went to the Purgatory LARP last night. Gaider and Lazarus had done their usual outstanding job of players' turn sheets before the game, so I was quite eager to mix & mingle, and talk to people about events of the preceeding months, and overhear whatever juicy snippets I could. The game didn't turn out quite as I had expected, though. The big event planned for the night was the trial of Gwendolyn Plantaganet, convicted of murdering her sire (who had been Prince of the city before his disapperance). It took a little while to get things underway (it always does at big events. Its annoying, but a fact of life. You just can't push 40+ people along in the same direction and keep 'em entertained while doing it as you can with a dozen) and then things completely bogged down. A disclaimer here. Two, maybe: 1) No offense is meant to the organizers of the game. I can't really think of anything I would have done differently in the planning stages. And I'll be egotistical enough to say that I usually DO plan very effectively. 2) If you aren't interested in LARP, or have no idea what a Vampire game is (in which case, Who are you, and why are you reading this?) then you might as well abandon this blog entry. It won't make much sense. The trial stumbled over its own feet a few times, getting started. The Prince did try to be a bit dramatic, I think, but since no one had ever been to a Vampire trial, it took a while to figure out who was who, and who got to talk first, and all. Drama only works well when things flow smoothly. And they didn't, here. Oh, well. Then the prosectution started. Castille, who was leading things on that side, did an excellent job of his stagemanship. He had props with him, and he seemed to have practiced his part. He dragged things out a bit longer than they needed to be, but that'll happen when you're trying to make your case (real courtrooms take absolutely forever to get complicated cases laid out properly. This was a very complicated case). The other players, however, were not used to things proceding at a legal snail's pace, and Castilles' showmanship was its only saving grace. Then we had the defense. Ya know, I like Leonius, the guy who played the defense. I would have picked him to play the part myself. He's charismatic, and wily, and all the things you'd want in a lawyer. But he wasn't playing the part of a Vampire Lawyer well at all. And he was simply not well prepared. Where he should have been dramatic, he was longwinded. He was repetitive. He fumbled. He needed to go out of character several times to double-check facts, or bits of information. (This is a royal pain when a whole room full of people is held captive in 'time-out' for 10 minutes watching people whisper to eachother on-stage). In my opinion, he shouldn't have bothered with the defense much at all. He should have been brief, sweet, and to the point. He could have won the room by saying, "People of Londinium: Gwendolyn is on trial for murder. But there is NO CORPSE. The blood bonds to the Prince remain intact. The simple fact is, HE IS NOT DEAD. And who among us here is brave enough to face his wrath if we condemn his favorite childer to death for this heinous act?" as long as he just left it at that. But he tried to refute the prosecution's arguements, cross-examine witnesses who weren't there, question the word of Elder Vampires, call on the favor of a powerful methuselah (who refused him) and various ther tactics which, to be honest, might have worked well in a real human court of law. But this is VAMPIRE politics. It's not about right and wrong. It's about Power, and Status, and putting on a Good Show. This whole trial took hours. It wouldn't have been so bad if there'd been other things to do, little diversions, or soething dramatic to hold people's attention. But any potential diversion (including the ranting malkavian) was squashed in favor of boring legal process. And then, they had a hung jury. To be honest, that's what salvaged the game, for me... 'cuz a hung jury meant it went to trial by combat. The organizers did this part perfectly. They had the mechanics of the fight already done beforehand in anticipation of this possible result. The two champions simply took their places, and acted out the combat while the organizers described the duel. It was cool, it was bloody, and it was SHORT. Kudos to Emmanuel and James for a good job of roleplaying the combat. And to some unknown who said the fight was poorly choreographed, I say this: It kicked butt for something tossed together on the fly, with no time for practice beforehand. The lawyers were given time to practice, and the trial still sucked. The really scary thing is this: In an average vampire game, the trial - longwinded or not - would still have been the best part of the evening. Gaider and Cam, however, have got so much plot and intrigue and depth to their game that it was frustrating to have to sit still and be observers rather than active participants. That all said, I'm looking forward to next month's event. Rant over. Accomplishment of the Day: Sleeping in 'til 1:00 pm. Woohoo for having a spouse who'll get up with the kids in the morning! |
| Wed, Jan 29, 2003 (3:40 pm)
So. I went to my Opa's birthday party today, which was held at a restaurant in the West End. After a good meal, which both my children enjoyed we took advantage of the grocerystore located in the same parking lot to do some shopping. Since it was such a nice day (beautiful weather out - the snow is melting everywhere) I didn't bother to use the car... I just shuttled them back and forth in a grocery cart. When we got back to the car after shopping, I parked the grocery cart on the sidewalk and began loading kids and groceries into the car. I had just managed to get Connor into the car, when Kalen let out a Disconsolate Wail. I shouted over my shoulder, "It's okay Kalen. I'll be there in a minute. Mommy hasn't abandoned you." But she kept up her crying as I finished installing the diaper bag in the car, and locked the car door tight. Then I turned around to face her. She was covered in snow. She was sitting in a snow-filled grocery cart, with snow on her head, snow on her shoulders, snow in her lap, and snow all over every single bag of groceries. Oh my goodness. I looked up. Sure enough, I had parked her just under the edge of one of those overhanging signs - the kind that are supposed to keep rain or sun off the people walking underneath, while advertising the restaurant they decorate. And the sign was covered in snow... except for a large chunk directly above us which had slid off the edge, and avalanched onto my cart. And my child. Kalen was letting out piteous wails by this point. I dashed over and extricated her from the snowpile. I knocked off as much of the damp white stuff as I could, but some went down her neck, and some got into her sleeves. She protested this vocally. I hugged her and consoled her and told her it was okay now. She whimpered a little more, but seemd to be calming down. I loaded her, in her damp and teary splendor, into the car. "Were you scared?" I asked her. "Did the snow falling on your head make you all cold and sad?" "Kalen was scared." she whimpered in reply. "Poor Kalen," I commiserated. "Is it all better now?" "Kalen was scared!" She repeats. This is the first time she has evered used the word 'scared' in conversation, by the way. I think she just learned what it means. I comforted her some more, and then started the car so she could listen to "happy music" on the radio. And then I went to get my groceries. I had a cart full of snow. Wet, drippy snow. I had grocery bags full of snow. And slush. And water. Graaaagh! So I emptied out the snow and water as much as possible, repacked my groceries, and loaded all the damp goods into my car. And then, we went home. Accomplishment of the Day: Not laughing too hard at my poor child's fate. At least, not right there on the parking lot, with people staring at the spectacle. But I might have laughed a little bit, later on, during the drive home. Just a little. |