Atropa Belladonna~ Raven (a.k.a. Nightshade)'s Weblog ~
These are the ARCHIVES of June 2007. For more archives, visit the Archives page. For the current Weblog entries, check the Main page.
Atropa Belladonna| Fri, June 1, 2007 (10:00pm) The bread lands butter-side up. Today has been a wonderful day. I wasn't sure it would be. Last night, Lady Myke and I got 3 more cloaks finished - an excellent end to our month of cloaking (13 cloaks!) - but we stayed up much later than was wise. I'd really hoped to get myself to bed on time for a change, and maybe the extra sleep would help me shake this cold that's been dragging on. But it was nearly 1am before I made it to bed. And this morning I was stuck with both boys at home. Jasen doesn't have school on alternate Fridays. Connor was getting a day off, in lieu of an all-day field trip earlier in the week. So instead of a quiet morning at home, followed by an afternoon of Jasen napping and Connor working with his therapist (did I mention we have no therapist? Again?!) I needed to come up with something to keep both boys occupied, and give Connor the opportunity to work on his therapy goals. And it was hot out. I decided to take the boys on a Community Outing, to the nice air-conditioned Mall! We went to Kingsway, and practiced staying close to eachother, and not getting lost in crowds. We practiced "Wait" and "Come here" as I browsed various racks of clothes, looking for decent summer outfits. Now - that last sentance might look like a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that I shopped and tried to keep the boys from wandering off, but no. I was doing therapy. Really. It went like this: So yeah. Therapy. And as a bonus, I did actually find a couple pairs of shorts for each kid, new swimsuits for Kale and Jase, and some cute sleeveless shirts for the hot weather. I also managed to find some nice towels on sale at Sears! Good thing, because some of ours are starting to look a little shabby after a decade of use. I celebrated by going into an adult clothing store, to see if I could find a nice sleeveless shirt for myself. Parked the stroller. Gave Connor the bottle of juice to drink while I quickly flipped through shirts on a rack. Found one in record time, and brought it (and the boys) to the cashier. She asked me if I wanted to pick another shirt, because they were on sale, 2 for $20. Sale??? Oooooh! So I left the boys parked by the till, dashed back to that clothing rack, and snagged a second shirt in a different color. Oops. Wrong size. Flip, flip, flip. Okay - got it. Less than 20 seconds elapsed. Quickly scoot back to the cashier. And discover that Connor is missing. Leave Jasen in the stroller, and the shirts on the counter for the lady to ring up, and go hunt for Connor. Find him giggling and bouncing around by the mirrors in front of the change rooms. But... his juice is missing. And it's still open - I know, because I'm holding the cap in my hand. Okay... what did he do with it? A quick survey of the vicinity reveals that he did not dump it on the floor, or splatter it on any expensive garments... at least, not that I can see. Maybe he put it down somewhere. Look in & around change rooms - Nope. Look by the counter (and pass my debit card to the lady while I'm there) - Nope. Look under clothing racks - Nope. I can't find the open bottle of juice. Think, think, think. Punch my code into the PINpad while I'm standing around. Hmmm. Uh, oh. Would Connor have thrown an open juice bottle into the bags I have strapped over the back of the stroller? The bags with all those brand new clothes in them? A quick check releavels that yes, yes he did throw an open juice bottle into the bags strapped over the stroller back. He threw it into the one with the towels! Whew. And what's more, the bottle slid into a little groove between two rolled towels, and was held there, right-side-up, with no spillage whatsoever. And the lady handed me my purchases, told me I had very well-behaved kids, and I was on my way out the door. We had lunch on the mall, and got home in time to put Jasen down for a nap. Not bad for a day's work. And when I got home, there was a note waiting for me about a package to be picked up at the Post Office. Yay! My tokens! ('Course, once I got my hands on the tokens, I was pretty much useless for the rest of the week. :) Thanks for bearing with this extra-long post-tokens weblog special. I'll leave you with quick pics of the cloaks as a reward for reading (or scrolling down) this whole way.     
We have: Myke's black wool bog coat with stunning red celtic knotwork trim, my black full circle cloak, Delilah (one of our Ladies of Hack) modelling the cloak we made for her in turquoise cotton twill with gold/silver/black celtic knotwork trim, the grey & gold cloak I didn't get a photo of last week, and my black cloak with red and gold metallic trim. |
| Thurs, June 7, 2007 (10:55am) And then there were tokens... Last week I had all these things to share - the cloaks Myke and I got done, the cool things Connor did, observations on our Ladies of Hack game, adventures in landscaping... but it all faded every time I sat down at the computer. Why? Because I had to check the True Dungeon forums! I got my big box o' tokens on Friday, and there were trades to make and deals to be arranged, and PMs to answer. It's finally slowing down a bit now (or maybe I've OD'd on it, and need to take a step back to regain my sanity) so I hope I can get back to updating my weblog regularly again. There's not a lot going on worthy of posting about, though. Myke and I are taking a break from Cloaking for the month, so the weekly sewing updates will die down a bit. (Unless, of course, we decide to sew some garb for ourselves, and post pics of that.) I've also been finding that without a therapist for Connor, I'm much busier again, and have less energy for things like weblog updates, or even phone-calls with friends. At the end of the day, I just want to kick back and watch DVDs. Shades has been very good about indulging me & my lazy DVD habit. We even watched Dr. Who (season 2) together on our date night, while chopping up ingredients for salsa. 'Cuz our relationship? It's all about the hot and spicy. (And the cheesy Sci-Fi.) Anyway, I'm going to pretend that I wrote an entry last week. You can read it in the 'previous entries' section (below the project status bar), and pretend it's been there all along. (Hey Iodi - See? I'm using your "Time Machine" trick!) |
| Fri, June 8, 2007 (10:00am, with edits, for more names.) The Death of LRPS Last night, members of Edmonton's Live Role Playing Society voted unanimously to disband the society. After almost 20 years of LARPing, it was decided that the Society had met its mandate, and no longer needed to exist as a bureauctratic entity, bogged down in red tape and petty dramas. That sounds a bit spiteful, but really there was very little discord at the Thursday meeting... more an appreciation for all the work which the club's many volunteers had done over the years to bring us these games we love, and acknowledgement that the red tape was no longer serving a functional purpose. Or, as Tom Cantine pointed out, LRPS achieved a 'withering away of the state'. I wish I could have gone out afterwards, to toast the Death of LRPS, celebrate it with a Wake or somesuch... but that will have to wait for a later time. Still, LRPS brought a lot of wonderful people into my life, and it would be a shame to let the society pass away without mentioning the effect it had on my life. I met, through LRPS, the most fantastic roomates I have ever had: Myke, Cori, Karen, and Tanya. Through them, and/or through LRPS, I met pretty much every guy I dated from 1990 to 1998. I met James, who I eventually married, and we added 3 kids to the next generation of gamers. Myke met Jeff, who she eventually married, and they've now had 2 kids, with a 3rd on the way. Karen met Quinn, and they eventually had a son. Tanya and I played with other LARPers online, and made friends in Portland Maine who we decided to visit. We drove across the country in the middle of February, on the worst winter highways in Canada, to visit Cori (studying in Kingston at that time) and meet our gamer friends in Real Life, on a trip we dubbed, "The Tour of Insanity." A couple years later, we decided to embark on a second "Tour of Insanity" and drove down to GenCon with a van-full of gamers. It was on that trip we met Star, who was living in Winnipeg at the time. Years later, Star was engaged to one of our local gamer crew. She and Eric are responsible for more additions to the next generation of gamers. Through LRPS, I met way too many cool people to list. I'll try to mention some of them here (forgive me if it's not an exhaustive list): Adam, Reevan, Quinn, Mike (aka Captain), Dayvd, Eric, Dave & Jim, Jeff, Mike (aka Other), Mike (aka phone Mike), Mike (aka Lang), Else, Fox, Sanchez, Steph, Gorra, Liz, Jody, April, Angel, Janice, Dan, Jeanne-Marie, Ian, Tom, and so many more. Through LRPS, Adam met Shelly. Quinn met Trish. Janice met Nolan and the two of them made their own contribution to the next generation. Davyd met Jody - and while their engagement didn't last, they learned a lot about who they were, and I think it made a difference in who they eventually chose to marry. (And as a note, Davyd was one of the brave ones who went outside of the LRPS gene pool to bring us the fabulous babe we know now as Myrna!). Jeanne-Marie met Cory. Liz met Dave, and also Dan. Liz brought two more gamer children into the fold. Ian met Jenn, and they have one beautiful gamer girl, with another one on the way any day now. Fox met Behr. Gorra met Steph - they're getting married next week. Who knows whether they'll be responsible for more gamers unleashed upon an unsuspecting society? James and I have made repeated trips to GenCon, based partly on the fun we had back in '96. For us, it's become an annual vacation away from the kids, and a chance to hang out with both LRPS friends, and new friends we've made through the Con. James has found a new interest in game design, supported by local gamers and the GenCon & forge crew. I've found a community of friends in True Dungeon, and spend a lot of time plotting and planning online for the next event. For both of us, it's a stress release, and makes a big difference in our ability to cope with the challenges we face day-to-day. That means LRPS has had an impact on our ability to raise our kids, and do our jobs, too. So much of who we are, the people we hang around with, the activities we do, and the success we've had in life, has been influenced by LRPS - directly or tangentially. It has been a wonderful 15(?) years, and I hope everyone involved has as many fabulous memories of the club as I do. Rest in Peace, LRPS. |
| Mon, June 11, 2007 (10:00am) On Sunday we made a day trip to Calgary, to visit our nephew Alex and take our kids to the Calgary Zoo!       
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| Fri, June 15, 2007 (10:00am) Happy Birthday to Shades, and to my niece Jillian! Last night, Myke and I experienced some one-of-a-kind entertainment, when we went swimming at Millenium Place. We'd finished our laps and were lounging around the hot tub when whistles started blowing, emergency lights began flashing, and Life Guards began directing people to evacuate the pool. Some people complied without any fuss, others whispered and muttered about what could be going on, and one jerk in the main pool refused to get out. While life guards tried to deal with this uncooperative patron, Myke and I saw emergency workers walk past, wearing rubber suits and breathing apparatus. We overheard someone saying, "Chlorine leak". More emergency responders arrived on the scene, and started directing people to rally points outside the pool. Everyone involved was wearing little cards around their necks, so we didn't panic too much. They were all part of a planned emergency drill, and the life guards told us we could stay and watch if we wanted. We'd pretty much finished swimming, though, so we 'evacuated' with everyone else. It was cool, leaving the building, to see all the emergency vehicles lined up outside - everything from fire trucks and ambulances to the police chief and county mobile rescue unit. I hope they had fun, and smoothed out as many wrinkles as possible in their emerency drills. |
| Mon, June 18, 2007 (4:50pm) Internet connection was sucky this past week. I couldn't connect to my web host, or upload recent weblog entries. It's better now, so I'm doing Iodi's time traveller trick, and adjusting the timestamps to look like I uploaded all this much earlier. Please read down for "recent" entries. |
| Wed, June 20, 2007 (7:20pm) I got my drive back! My CD-Rom drive, that is. It stopped working last year, when Connor decided to see if a knife would fit into the thin slot at the front of my Mac Mini. I thought he'd broken something (go figure). But today, I caught him trying to stick more stuff into the drive - a postcard, to be precise. When I pulled the postcard out, I saw something else almost emerge from the drive. After a bit of poking around, I caught the edge of a thin piece of paper, and pulled out... a business card! It was one I'd lost over a year ago (shortly before the knife incident) and I had searched for it high and low, because it had a friend's email addy scribbled on the back of it. Now I know where it's been for the past year. And now that it's been retrieved, my drive works again. Yay! I guess it wasn't the knife which did it in after all, but the card. Still, I think I'll discourage Connor from shoving any further knives (or cards) into the drive. |
| Fri, June 22, 2007 (11:20am) Enjoying an electric ride Went out to Boston Pizza last night after swimming, to hang out with the usual suspects and talk about gaming, religion, life, the universe, and everything. I had an ulterior motive for meeting up with people though: I was on a mission. Specifically, a mission to dispose of the parachute which was jammed into the back of my van (it takes up a lot of room when it's open. And we haven't yet figured out how to fold it up properly, possibly due to lack of paratrooper training). Anyway, Tom had agreed to take the old LRPS parachute - the one which was used at various points as a tent, the roof of a dungeon, and the interior of a carrion crawler's lair - so that it wasn't sitting in our garage taking up tons of room for another year. I had parked my vehicle down the block right next to his, for ease of transfer. But that meant we would need to leave the restaurant at the same time (approximately) and things were being really slow with the bill payments and all. BP's is (like many other local restaurants) understaffed these days. So rather than sit there, waiting for our cute waitress, I wandered over the the touchscreen computer (which doubles as an order tracker and a till) and started punching buttons. Didn't get very far, tho, 'cuz it's password locked. Bah - passwords have rarely stopped me from accessing things I shouldn't be messing with! So I asked Julie what her employee number was (restaurants almost always use that kind of thing for their password) and punched it in. Voila! Access to the terminal. But then I was stuck. I had no clue what kind of bill tracking system they use, and I really didn't want to pay someone else's bill. I begged Julie for technical assistance. She laughed, and showed me how to pull up our bill, and select payment, and when to swipe the card, and all that. So I paid my bill (and Lady Myke's, which was pretty cheap 'cuz pregnant chicks get free non-alcoholic beverages. Woohoo!) and got ready to go. But then Gorra showed up to pay his bill. So I decided to run his through, too - except he needed to have his bill split. So I needed Julie to show me how to split items off a bill. Other than that, it went pretty smoothly. Got the bills done for the rest of the table (except Tom, who'd had the foresight to bring cash) and Julie looked it over to make sure it was all done properly, and we were off! Myke and I followed Tom to his car, and discussed kids (the table conversation had been remarkably kid-free) and LARPs and the sorts of stuff we talk about.... when we rounded the corner, and I remembered that Tom's car was a Prius! Shades and I have been talking about getting a hybrid car. I don't know much about 'em, other than that it would be geeky-cool to have a stealth car which runs on electricity and makes almost no noise... so if the city was overun by enemy troops, you could sneak around behind enemy lines in your super-silent car, performing all sorts of clandestine activities. So, after we'd finished loading the parachute into the back of the Prius (it took up a lot of room) Tom offerd to show us his car. Myke and I climbed in, and he took us for a ride around the block. We got to see the touch-screen controls for the car's computer, the gearshift which is really just a joystick, the cool i/o power button to start the car, the way the vehicle switches from running on electicity to gas to electicity again, depending on the demands put on the engine. Tom says the newer cars even have a camera mounted at the back, which will display to the main computer screen, so you can see the road behind you when you're backing up. (Yeah, a rearview mirror does the same, but cameras and screens do it with style! And less blind spots, too. Important when you don't want to run over your kids.) Very cool vehicle. I won't object too strenuously if Shades pursues his idea to buy a Prius in the Fall. As long as I get to drive it sometimes, too. |
| Sat, June 23, 2007 (1:30pm) Shades just called from Seattle, to say he's enjoying the Con (Go Play) very much. I'm glad to hear that. Hopefully he'll come home with lots of stories of geeky-goodness, and perhaps a few new games to try out before GenCon. Meanwhile, Kale is almost ready to go to Aria's Pirate-themed birthday party. She's really getting into charater for it. While other people's kids may be fantasizing about being Cinderella, or Sleeping Beauty, mine has decided to be Mary Reade. She's even read the Jane Yolen book, The Pirate Queens, and learned about Mary, and Anne Bonney, and 'Calico' Jack. She knows the name of her ship (the Vanity), and is telling me about how pirates liked their rum. I really try not to talk too much about 'work' when I'm posting, but how can I resist when my job looks like this:  |
| Tues, June 26, 2007 (2:30pm) Summer Survival Tactics Tomorrow is the last day of School. After that, I've got to find things to do, to keep me sane (and the kids occupied) for the rest of the Summer. Good news: We have a therapist for Connor again!!! Bad news: Our hours were cut by the MDT review, so we'll only have the new therapist for 2 hours a day, four afternoons per week. That means I have 5 mornings and one afternoon per week free (not counting weekends). I can probably handle a couple unscheduled mornings per week, but I'm going to need to start planning for the rest. I think I'll try to set up a Summer Schedule which has us doing activities on Mon and Wed mornings, and then full-day activities on Friday. One of those days can be "library day" since S'cona County has a pretty good Library program. Another could be used for playdates at local (or less local) playgrounds. Fridays adventures could be stuff like picnic & water-play-park, or a trip the Ukrainian Village, or Fort Edmonton Park, or indoor fun at West Edmonton Mall, or whatever. Depends a bit on weather, I guess. And on how many other people would be interested in doing play dates or adventures. Anyone out there interested in regular Friday get-togethers with screaming hordes of children? Or screamng hordes of parents? |