Tuesday, April 28, 2009

New userpics!

I have never cared much for LiveJournal userpics, but suddenly I was overcome with the desire to turn the small number of pictures of myself that I like into some lovely icons. Most of them, interestingly, are of myself as the Fool. Not only do I like the way I look in an unusally large amount of the Fool pictures, but I have a wide range of expressions that I can use to reflect the mood of the entry I apply them to. I shall have to remember to actually use them now, as I'm quite pleased with my selections.

I give you the Cool Fool, as that's how I'm feeling right now. :-)

Busy Bee

Ah, goodness, so much to do. Particularly in preparation for this Friday. First there are my two papers, one of which is due that Friday, and the other due the following Tuesday. They're both long final papers, too, ten to twelve pages in length, so I have a lot of writing ahead of me. Also, I have been invited to participate in a three-sessions-over-a-weekend tabletop game run by Zachariah Lieberman, the fun and interesting guy I met at Festival, along with Marissa, Ryan, and Kindness. I think there's one other person as well, but I can't remember who it is. I am excited to be gaming with them; I think we'll make a good group. I have to make a character for this, and I told him I'd call him today to talk out my ideas. I feel quite silly working on a character when I have so much schoolwork to do, but I don't want to trip up the rest of the group by not being prepared early enough. So I will ponder that this morning.


Also, it seems I unthinkingly scheduled a dinner that some people have been after me to have for this Friday as well. I was initially irritated with myself, but on second thought I don't think it will cause a problem. Steph Karol and linearequation are people I've wanted to do a dinner with for a while, so I will have them over early on Friday to shop and cook. I also asked Zachariah how he'd feel about my making dinner for the campaign, and he responded favorably, so we can all eat dinner together, and then begin the game afterward. I think that actually would be quite nice. I'm a little concerned about having non-gamers over for the evening, and then the evening getting eventually taken over by gaming, but I'm hoping I can pay all the necessary social debts so that everyone has a good time and feels comfortable.

I also found out early this morning that I must go to Framingham for an interview today. I must confess, I'm not certain of the nature of the work-- I got the lead off a poster saying nothing more than "summer positions at $18 an hour" --but for that amount of money I think I'm willing to be flexible, and if I don't find any decent permanent position right away, this might be a nice option to have.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Sore feet

I'm starting to get concerned about how often my feet have been hurting lately. I know I tend to have trouble with my feet in general; they're always the first to wear out when I'm tired, and they need good arch support in order to stay comfortable. But it seems even when I'm wearing new shoes and have given them time to rest lately, they've been sore unsually frequently. I'm starting to worry there's something wrong with them, as they've never been so slow to recover nor so easy to hurt. Jared has suggested I go to a doctor and have them examined, but I'm not certain what they could do. I think I may soak them tonight in this stuff I have; that usually helps for the moment, even if it doesn't solve the underlying problem, whatever that may be.

Nice day!

Oh, lovely weather, how full of glee you make me. I love when I don't have to layer on the clothing like makeshift bear blubber just to survive the winter and can actually exist in my preferred state, just on the proper side of decency. It's been a while since I saw my legs in the light of day. Oh, but they are so very, very white. :-) I feel like this is going to be a very nice day, despite the enormous amount of work ahead of me. Two papers must be completed this week, and then a final must be studied for in the next week, but I am approaching things with a positive attitude. I really want to get back into the habit of working out, so I'm starting today. I went early for a nice workout, and now I am comfortably waiting for the time to go to my next class. I feel pretty good about it, so maybe this will be future incentive for me to continue dragging my ass out of bed.

Holmes binge

After seeing the Speckled Band, I have been struck with a desire to read Sherlock Holmes. I've plowed my way through fifteen or so stories since last night, and it's been long enough since I last read them that I'd forgotten how thoroughly I enjoy them. I also came across another story, Silver Blaze, about a missing racehorse and a murdered trainer, that I sort of half-solved-- I figured out who killed teh trainer, but not the rest of the plot. I've read all these at one point or other, but as I mentioned I was quite young for most of them, and it's been a long time since I last went through a good number of them.

I really like the character of Holmes. I love his detachment from the human race, his immunity to many foibles and weaknesses so that he can be a creature of purer logic. There's this fantastic dichotomy in the Sign of the Four, where they make a point of talking about how when Holmes is bored by the lack of a suitable problem against which to pit his intellect, he turns to cocaine to stimulate his brain. The mystery at the center of hte story occupies him for a time, but after he solves it of course it ends. By this point, Watson has made an enormous step forward in his life and is about to be married. For Homes, however, he is only back to where he began, and all that is left for him is to return to the cocaine bottle. There isn't relation to other people, or passion beyond the pursuit of solving the puzzle and bringing the criminal to justice.

I'm also amused by how the hardcore Holmes fans try to make sense of the sotries as if they actually happened. The trouble is that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was not very careful about the details of things like chronology, or making clear the course of Watson's personal life. For example there is a story where Watson's wife calls him James-- which is strange because we know his name to be John. The Holmes scholars say that this is because Watson's middle initial, H., actually stands for Hamish, and since this is the Scottish version of James his wife could reasonably call him this. I like their passion, especially since the casebooks as "recorded" by Watson are so rich and full of material. I think I'll go read some more!

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Cthulhu daily

It occurs to me that my life is such that discussions of Cthulhu and related monstrosities occur for me daily.

:-)

HTP parties

Well, this has been a full weekend of parties so far. Attended the Midsummer cast party on Friday night, and had a much better time than I expected to, and then had to put together the general Hold Thy Peace party that was to be held in honor of the day Shakespeare is believed to have both been born and died on. We held it at Elsinore, appropriately enough, and I was quite pleased to see that it went very well. Unfortunately the Hamlet DVD had some issues-- the audio track was extremely out of sync with the picture --so I was disappointed that it could not be shown, but even so people seemed to have a nice time. So nice a time, in fact, that a number of guests ended up staying way past the time the party was supposed to end. I'm glad they were enjoying themselves enough to want to keep sticking around, but I kind of wanted a little bit of not-the-host-anymore time between the end of the party and eight o'clock, when Jared and I were going to the BORG play.

I liked the BORG play, it was "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a nice change from the typical children's plays they normally do, so props to Ryan and the rest of the cast. I'm also a big Sherlock Holmes fan, I've read every one of his stories, and the one in particular from which this play was adapted has the distinction of being the only one I managed to solve myself during the course of my reading it. (If it makes any difference, I was less than fifteen when I first got in to them, so perhaps I was no quite as sharp or observant as I might have been if I'd first read them when I was older.)

Today will be for work and low-keyness. Though I wouldn't mind being with people in a casual way today, I don't think I up for any extensive social demands, and I certainly don't want to play hostess again for a little while. Just hanging out a bit would be okay.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Hamlet DVD!

Thanks to the lovely Marissa, I now at long last have a DVD of Hamlet in my possession. I haven't seen it yet, so I don't know how well it came out or how much editing it may require, but I do in fact have it. I'd like to be able to have it to show at the Hold Thy Peace party that is happening this Saturday at Elsinore, so hopefully today and tomorrow I'll have a chance to go over it, maybe fix it up if it needs it. I'm so excited; I was so incredibly proud of this play, and it meant a lot to me to have a copy of the performance. Here's hoping it comes out well. I owe lots of people copies, so I'd better get on that as well.

In addition to preparing the disk, I have to get things ready for the party itself. Jared and I will be shopping for snackies (if anyone has points they want to get rid of before they lose them at the end of the year, you're more than welcome to contribute) and I should probably clean. I'm not certain how many people will be coming, but I hope we get a good turnout. If only to have a larger audience for the showing of the DVD. ;-)

Mini pie excursion

Today Constantine goes into the shop to get serviced. It's just a routine thing, so he's okay, but he needs his tires rotated, I think. It occurs to me that I actually don't know how long he'll have to stay there, but I hope it's just for a couple of hours and then I can take him home again.

While my car is being worked on, I will be making my monthly Target run. I'm thinking of taking a look around there for any possible vessel options for making my mini-pies. Target has lots of interesting crockery pieces for relatively cheap, but I'm concerned that to get as many as I'd like will come to a little more than I'm interested in paying. So I will probably prefer to go with the disposable aluminum stuff. Still, it will be fun to look. I do love crockery so, even the junky stuff. :-) I looked up a couple of recipes for mini pies, just for the baking time; I plan on using my own recipe for the actual pie, but I didn't know how the size would affect the temperature and time in the oven. It looks like for four-inch tins, bake for twenty minutes at 375 degrees. That is a lot quicker than a full-sized pie. It also suggested serving with a melon baller scoop's worth of ice cream on top; I like the idea of using a melon baller to make tiny garnish for a tiny pie.

I also want to get my suede jacket dry cleaned. It's a really nice jacket, but it's looking pretty grungy right now. Maybe I can get that done as well. I should make a to do list, to keep all my chores and assignments in order.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Individual apple pies

Grrr, why must all the chefs on TV torment me by making adorable little individually-sized dishes in adorable little individually-sized vessels? I love this idea and kind of have been fixated on it lately, partially because I find it a charming way to serve things and partially because of my love of crockery-- I just adore those neat little pieces of dishware! I like the idea for any number of dishes, but in particular I have been dreaming of making individual apple pies for people, just because of how fun they would be to make and eat and look at. Unfortunately I don't own any crockery that would work for this purpose, but I wonder if I could find those disposable aluminum baking pans in the appropriate size. I would also have to find how cooking time would differ for a lot of tiny individual pies as opposed to one big pie. But I think they would be a lot of fun to make and serve. I may have to investigate how I might do this...

Necklace clasp?

Over break I bought myself two strands of freshwater pearls with holes bored in them for stringing on wire, and I made myself a necklace. I'm quite pleased with it, it's close-fitting and made of gray and white irregular pearls in the pattern of two pearls of one color, then one of the other, then two more of the first, alternated with the same pattern with the colors reversed. I'm not sure what to do about a clasp, however. I just strung them on a bit of wire and made loose knots at either end to keep them on the strand, but I'm not sure what to do about opening and closing it on my neck. I haven't worn it much yet, but so far I've just been tucking the long end of the wire into the knot on the other end and bending it, but it's not terribly elegant, and I'm worried it isn't secure enough. I should probably just try to get a clasp from an art store or something and see if I can attach it. I'd like to be able to start wearing it without worrying it's going to come apart.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Ninja of tinyness!

Today I must go into the city to meet with a headhunter who might be able to help me find a job for this coming year. I've very carefully planned my trip using the T, which seems easy enough, but I'm a bit nervous as I'm going alone and I don't use the lines very often. Wish me luck.

Also, I must brag about something stupid. Last night I went to the tech rehearsal for the BORG play to hang out and be an extra pair of hands. It turns out that the circuit breakers that must suffice as a light board were in a little booth in the back of the Schwartz Auditorium which was locked. It did, however, have little open windows with bars over them. I wiggled through one of the openings in the windows and unlocked the door. I am a ninja of tinyness! I am ridiculously pleased with myself. I must try very hard every time I'm around that booth not to point at the little gap in the windows and tell people, "I fit through there."

*runs off to make herself a sign that says "ninja of tinyness."*

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Weekend report

My goodness, this was quite a busy weekend for me. I spent most of Friday doing chores, cleaning and running errands. In the evening Jared and I attended the birthday party of the lovely rigel, which was one of the most pleasant social gatherings I've been at in quite some time. I had some really nice conversations, particularly those with natbudin and usernamenumber, people whose company I always enjoy but just haven't seemed to have a chance to chat with in a while. Jared and I hada really nice time, thanks to all the good company we hung out with. So, happy birthday to Rigel, and thanks to her for throwing a really great party.

Saturday was spent doing homework, and planning a dinner for the evening. I made chicken marbella, which is an elegant chicken dish that must marinate overnight in the fridge in a mixture of prunes, Spanish olives, garlic, redwine vinegar, olive oil, and capers, then is baked in white wine and brown sugar. I was very pleased with how it came out. I also mde a complicated, kind of sophisticated rice dish of wild rice, mint, orange, scallion, pecan, and sunshine raisins. I don't really eat rice so I've never cooked it before, and I overdid it so that it was mushier than it was supposed to be, but the flavor combination was still nice. At night we went out to Rocky Horror in Cambridge. I gotta say, I was kind of disappointed. It wasn't a fantastic show, even though it had the highest production values of any Rocky I'd ever been to, and the techies were obtrusive and obnoxious. We didn't get back till extremely late, and we ended up getting up extremely late the next today, which I wasn't terribly pleased about.

Today we spent doing homework. I finished the assignment I needed to for tomorrow, and now may relax a little. We're going to go to campus for dinner, and then Jared has some more stuff to try and get through. I believe I will take a shower and make a plan for handling things for the rest of the week. I've got a pretty decent amount of work to get through, and making a schedule helps me a lot.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Home at Elsinore again

I am now back at Elsinore, and it's nice to be home. I unpacked my things, threw in a load of laundry, and cleaned the house. It really needed it, and I feel a lot more comfortable with everything neat and clean. Now the whole house smells like lilac; it's very pleasant and relaxing. Also, I finally got my au gratin pan in the mail! When my parents bought me all that All-Clad, they got a certificate you could mail in and get a free au gratin pan, and now it finally arrived! It's very nice, and I look forward to using it. My domesticity instincts are quite well satisfied.

In a couple of hours I will be going to pick up Jared and Elana at the airport. They're both from the Chicago area-- Jared from the city proper and Elana from Skokie --and they happened to book the same flight back, so I will be grabbing them both together and bringing them here. I'm looking forward to seeing my boy and my friend. I ordered Jared's favorite pizza from Upper Crust for him to have to break the Pesach fast; I think he'll enjoy that. Later tongiht I will be going back out to the airport to bring Bernie back; I'm not thrilled to be going out into the city so late and for the second time in a day, but I'll be glad to have him back as well.

So, overall, it's good to be back.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

REFUSE.

The most frustrating thing about my new iPhone is that it doesn't have a function that will let it vibrate for a few rings before the ringtone kicks in. My old phone could do that, and I loved it. Why doesn't the iPhone have this? Why?

I thought of a way around it, though. Apparently there's a way on GarageBand, if you have a Mac, to cut any song you want into a ringtone. I could design a file that had several seconds of silence in the beginning before it launched into the actual song so that it would buzz silently for a bit before it actually started making sound. That would be a reasonable facsimile of that function.

But no. I refuse. I refuse to do this.

I REFUSE.

Why do I refuse? It's the principle of the thing. I should NOT have to be a COMPUTER PROGRAMMER playing TRICKS on a PIECE OF PERIPHERAL MACHINERY to make my STATE OF THE ART BRAND-NEW PHONE that I paid HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS for perform an OBVIOUS FUNCTION that my EIGHT-YEAR-OLD PIECE OF JUNK PHONE could do.

That this is the state of affairs, Apple should be ASHAMED of themselves.

ASHAMED, I say.

Way to go, Susan Boyle

I read something really cool today. Apparently on "Britain's Got Talent," a TV show where British people show off their performative talents, there was an unlikely woman named Susan Boyle. She's a forty-eight-year-old woman from a tiny village in Scotland, as unworldly and old-fashioned as they come. She's kind of homely and she wore very dated clothes. To say the judges and everyone in the audience didn't take her seriously when she first came out is an understatement-- they rolled their eyes, they sneered, Simon Cowell spoke to her with exquisite condescenion. But she sang with the voice of an angel, and by the end of her song, everyone was crying and cheering for how beautiful her song was. She wowed the judges and now the public, everyone is so impressed with what this unlikely little lady could do. I'll bet she's going to get a recording deal now, and realize her dream of being a singer.

You really can't judge a book by it's cover.

This makes me so happy. God bless her.

Random stuff

I wish there was a way to just import my Google calendar onto my iPhone. It supports iCal, which I never uesd because I have a PC, but I don't see any way to make it recognize the data on the calendar I already have. It's so complicated that I kind of don't want to have to redo it manually, but it would be nice to be able to access my schedule wherever I was.

My parents got me some beautiful All-Clad cookware for this past Christmas, and I'm so in love with it that whenever anybody on Food Network, which I watch a lot of when I'm at home, uses the stuff I recognize it immediately and am pleased. :-) Apparently a lot of TV chefs use it, including the lovely Giada di Laurentiis, whom I love because she's tiny and gorgeous and Italian. Oh, and she cooks yummy stuff. Yeah, that too. :-)

I made an artichoke pie for my parents last night. It came out very nicely, except I used marinated artichoke hearts instead of plain ones by mistake, and the flavor of that marinade kind of overpowered everything else. Ah, well. It was still pretty good.

Today is my last day at home. I didn't use the free time nearly as well as I'd hoped I would, but i think my last week of work was so intense that I was just too blasted to really focus much. At least I feel recharged a little, so I can go back to working for real again.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Stressed but going on

Though my time at home has largely been pleasant, I end up having to deal with certain stressors more when I'm here than when I'm up at school. Without getting into too much detail, the past year has not been a good one for my loved ones, and the various troubles press on me a good deal more when I'm physically with the family and seeing the effects of things with my own eyes. But we're a close family and we love each other, so we're still pretty happy, thank God. I just feel a little bit more stressed out by things now than I do when I'm not in the thick of them.

I need to get to work now. I just took a nice shower-- love that shower at home! --and I'm having a hard time getting myself to put on clothes and buckle down already. I need to write a paper on a book I love, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, so probably once I overcome the difficulty in getting started, things will go pretty smoothly. Maybe I'll make myself some tea, and then reread the last chapter of that book which will be the subject of my paper and see if I can't make some real progress. I have not been as efficient as I'd hope I'd be since I'd been home, so it's important that I don't waste today.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

My poor shoes

I am so hard on shoes. In the last couple of months, I think I have rendered two pairs completely unwearable. I'm not sure what I do to them, but they just get stomped flat before very long at all. I got a pair of expensive sneakers that I really liked for Christmas and by Intercon weekend, just two months later, all the arch support in them was completely gone and I was aching. I've been informed that I have slightly flat feet, and I get in a lot of pain if I wear shoes with no arch support. Honestly, that never really made sense to me-- wouldn't flat feet, which press closer into the ground, need less support than a high arch? I don't know. I just know I'm supposed to have flat feet but I need the support. Whatever, maybe I've been misinformed. I'm just pissed that these shoes I really liked are ruined with only two months of wear. I'm wondering if there's any way to save them, like maybe putting arch-supporting insoles in them or something, but I probably should just throw them out and open up the space in my closet.

Recently I've discovered that my ballet flats also seem to be shot. This is a little bit more troublesome, as I don't have any other pair that can easily fill in for them. They aren't new, at least, I've had them for two, maybe three years now. They've been my standby shoe when I need something a little dressier but have two much walking to do to wear heels. I had to dress up today because we went out to a fancy brunch, and because we'd be walking around the city I brought home my ballet flats of saving my feet. I wore them onstage in both Lear and Midsummer, and it was starting to become clear that they were wearing out then, but now I'm certain. It's frustrating because now I'm going to have to get new flat dress shoes, which I wish to spend neither money nor time on right now. I'm also wondering if it's worth it to keep these old ones; they've proven themselves useful for plays, even if they're no longer particularly comfortable, but I've put up with worse for the sake of a show. And it would save having to destroy new ones for a role.

I don't usually enjoy shoe shopping. I mean, it's fun to get new fun shoes, but with my pain issues it's rare that I wear anything but sneakers except for dressy occasions, and I have so few of those I feel a little guilty for spending money on shoes I'm not going to wear often. But if I don't spend real money on it, they're not any good and they wear out too quickly. I should probably just set aside a little time and cash and get a good pair of pretty ballet flats that I could wear with nicer clothes. Especially if I'm going to be working full time soon, and will probably need to look professional. Nothing bugs me more than when people are dressed to the nines, except for the stupid incongruous sneakers they're wearing. If I have a little free time, I should set it aside and just get it done.

Happy Easter

Since good fortune would have it that bronzite is in my hometown area on business this week, I had a very nice evening last night meeting him for dinner and a movie. Normally when I'm at home lately I'm quite bored when I'm not specifically doing something with my parents (whose desire to have me home is really the only reason I'm willing to come), so this was a lovely stroke of luck and I had a really nice time. Thanks, Bronzite, you made my night.

Today is Easter Sunday, which means Christ is risen, my family goes out to brunch, and I don't have to keep kosher anymore. I think I did a decent job, if I may say so myself. My final verdict on the experience is that it really isn't so bad, and I wouldn't suffer too badly if I had to always do it, but given the choice, I'd rather avoid the pain of having to watch out for things, and I missed the trayf things I couldn't eat. We had a really nice brunch on a sailing-ship-turned-restaurant in Philadelphia, then spent a few hours wandering around the city before going home again. A lovely day all around. I didn't get anything productive done, but I've promised myself to be more focused tomorrow. I hope Easter was just as nice for all of you, and enjoy the rest of Pesach.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Must not bite...

I've been so fixated on my fingernails lately that my parents have even begun to notice it. I've been an inveterate nailbiter for most of my life; I can remember doing it as young as age four. But it's a yucky habit with unattractive results and I've been trying to break it. I haven't been doing so badly lately, much better than usual, but it requires a lot of focus that makes me seem obsessed with my nails. I'm trying to grow them out to a point where I can get them shaped so that they don't look so ragged and a little prettier, but there's got to be something for the manicurist to work with before that can happen. *Sigh* I'm so oral, I just really get a lot of satisfaction from the sensation of biting through my nails. It's gross, I know, but what can I say, I just love to chew on things.

Friday, April 10, 2009

New... iPhone?

So... my parents got me a new phone for my birthday.

It's an iPhone.

I was kind of surprised. I never expressed any particular desire for one. It's a bit overcomplicated for my tastes; I liked the eight-year-old basic clamshell I'd been using, and would have continued to if it hadn't started failing to ring and rebooting itself randomly. But it is pretty cool, and I'm very grateful that they got it for me. I'm still learning all the features on it, and setting all the preferences the way I want them. I wish it fit in my left front pocket the way my old one did. And I hope it survives the million times I'm guaranteed to drop it. I'm not certain what I'll do with it all, bu perhaps I'll grow to utilize it to its full potential.

In the meantime... wow.

"Who cares? Jesus died."

Apparently a lot of people think it's kind of strange that I don't care to make a big deal out of my birthday. Maybe it's because of how given the timing it tends to fall so close to Easter time.

I mean, hey, this year it's the same day as Good Friday. Compared to that, what's my birthday? It's like, "Hey, I was born today." "Who cares? Jesus died." Way to make a girl feel insignificant.

;-)

My 22nd

Recently it was speculated that, based solely off the way I looked, my age was fifteen. Yeah, yeah, I know, Phoeb, let it go already. I have, actually, I just find it funny to bring up now. Because today I turned twenty-two. Twenty-two is quite a ways away from fifteen-- seven whole years, in fact.

I suppose I should be pleased with this, especially if this trend holds as I get older. I imagine it could be nice to be continually mistaken for seven years younger than I actually am. It probably has more to do with my flat hips and the fact that I don't wear makeup than any real youthful glow, but I can hope, can't I?

I'm not really big into celebrating birthdays once you pass a certain age, and I passed that age a long time ago. So I'm not making a big deal of this one. I'm planning on making dinner tonight, 'cause cooking is fun for me and I've missed it. My parents got me a couple nice gifts of things I actually wanted and have use for. They're going to get me a new phone today because I actually need one. The loving text message Jared sent me is the sort of thing I really want. A little bit of genuine love and gladness that I happened to be born is more than enough.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

FOTL Report - Oz

I'll be honest, I cast Oz mostly by feel; I checked the casting questionnaires mostly to make sure I wouldn't stick someone in a part they'd hate, and then went with my instincts. I think by and large it worked, at least with people I got a chance to talk to afterward. I took particular care with captainecchi, seeing as I screwed up casting her for Alice in the first run and gave her a character she couldn't play. Fortunately, Oz had somebody absolutely perfect for her, and I was very pleased with the way she played it. She had a tough job in game, and came very close to getting it done.

One thing I found and will have to modify for the next run is that there is such a thing as too much gamespace. As with Alice, I had the entire building of Golding, but unlike Alice, fifteen players do not fill space in the same way that twenty-seven do. The place felt strangely empty, and I was worried it meant that people weren't busy enough. It turned out that most people felt they did have enough to do; it was just that they were so spread out that not as much appeared to be going on. That will have to be remedied; I like the feeling of bustle.

The one thing I did find useful about the space was that there was an ampitheater classroom with a projector screen in it. I made this the window of the viewing deck on the Emerald Station and had a series of slides depicting space just outside. I liked it very much and thought it added a lot to things. The game, as was pointed out to me by the lovely v_cat, who was by the way excellent in her role, turned out to be very GM-heavy, which was not my intention, but she's right, that needs to be corrected. The trouble with most things in that vein was that while I did a good job hammering out the plot stuff, I ran out of time when it came to mechanics. The first editing job required will be the fix all the stuff that was in my head but I never managed to get on paper. I'm very grateful to Bernie, not only for helping me GM, but for helping as well as he did when I didn't have time to get him as well up to speed as I should have. Another mechanic that I borrowed from Lise and electric_d_monk-- who was, by the way, exactly what I pictured for his role-- I need to hammer out a little better as well, but I liked it very much in theory and think I can get it where it needs to be. The role that had the most to do with that mechanic was played by in_water_writ, for whom the personality is just amazingly perfect.

By and large, I am pleased. Some editing I believe is all that is required to smooth out the mechanical issues. Also, there is the matter of all the people who didn't get in and would like the play. I would love to run this again as soon as possible, if there is some time and space before the end of the year.

Next-- Saturday afternoon run of Paranoia

FOTL Report - Alice

This casting wasn't easy. It took several hours to get through, and there were a bunch of people we really weren't sure about. I was pleased to see how much our hard work paid off. Many of you have Jared to thank. He took a lot care with this, and fought for a lot of castings that ended up working really well, such as Zachariah and Kevin. As in many such situations, we balanced each other fairly well-- he made sure I considered all the possibilities before making a choice, and I made sure we started nailing some possibilities down so we could move forward.

This is a fairly easy to run game. There isn't a huge amount that has to be adjudicated by GMs, so mostly jared and I got to run around and watch the awesome stuff you guys do as players. That's always a lot of fun. I apologize for the errors and typos in the sheets. I printed them over the last break when I was at home, and the Google doc versions were the only ones I had access to, and they were not the most up-to-date and perfect. What I need to do is check over the real versions and then copy them into every place I store them so they're all the same. Mostly this was just annoying; I worry it may have caused some trouble for twilighttremolo, and if so I profusely apologize, especially since I really liked how she acted that character.

As for the run itself, it was unlike either of the previous two in many ways. First of all, two of the major bodies making up significant parts of the Good and Evil sides (or, at least Less Evil and Evil sides) identified each other from very early on. In all previous, they seemed to guard their secret identities for much, much longer, until the last hour of the game. This makes a lot of difference, as it is to either of these two sides that the rest of the game is supposed to gravitate, which results in a huge polarization by the end of the game. This polarization both occurred earlier than expected and didn't coalesce as completely, so there were lots of clashes that couldn't exactly resolve since the killing mechanic kicked in after the two sides had identified each other. There have never been so many mass combats in one run as there were in this one. It resulted in the highest death toll we've ever had at nine characters, fully one third of the game. The good/less bad side seemed to have had the upper hand very early, but then swung in the bad guy's favor for nearly the rest of the game. Simultaneously, it seemed that the elements that would have finished things did not get together until extremely late. It didn't get really pulled out by Good until literally two minutes until I was going to call game wrap.

This run also highlighted how it common it is for it not to occur to players to interact with their environment. A number of pieces of information can only be gleaned by examining the particular features of Wonderland, and unfortunately not many of the characters who needed to gather information that way thought to do so. I've learned in my experience that if a GM takes the time to indicate the places in the world of the game, those places have some significance to them. The one player who really investigated things to his advantage was Zachariah Lieberman. I really enjoyed this guy, both as a larper and as a person; he really got into character and he was extremely friendly and enthusiastic about everything. I hope he comes around to events more often.

Just some random observations follow. Thus far bronzite has played the big bad who came the closest to winning in the end. I gave him the role because the bad guys have yet to come out on top in this game, and I figured if anybody could do it, he could. I was really impressed with him, both his strategizing and his acting of the part. As he said, he and teenyweenyowen are war gamers by default, so in that respect it was quite the clash of the strategic titans. I was quite pleased with the characterization of elenuial, who very much nailed the spirit of the personality. Adina and Marissa did an amazing job was their characters, who have possibly the most difficult job in the game. Ryan played the main character, who we cast on a hunch that he'd be good at it and like it, since nobody else was really jumping out at us, and we really really glad. Other gamers who did cool, interesting things were Thorin, Shannon, Randy, and, well, pretty much everyone in the whole shebang.

By and large, Jared and I were incredibly happy with how the game ran. We're also very interested in hearing the story and opinions of the players, so don't hestitate to let us know how things were for you. This game is really my baby, and I'm so glad that it was enjoyed.

Next up: the Saturday morning run of Oz

Monday, April 6, 2009

Festival 2009 Report - Intro

My Festival this year has been so enormous and I have so much so say about it that I'm going to do this report in installments. Today I'm taking it easy, just chilling out at home not doing much of anything, except maybe writing a little bit about how things went for me.

First of all, this is the biggest larp event I've ever had. Normally I like to be in no more than three events in one larping weekend; it gives me time to really savor the games I'm in, and leeway to rest at times as well as chat with all the cool people who are there as well. This weekend that rule got chucked out the window. I ran no fewer than three of my own games, two of them newly written. Immediately after, I played in one more. And, because of a GM having to drop out at the last second, I agreed to help run something on Sunday as well. So this is the very first time I've ever had something in every slot. I got only five or six hours of sleep all weekend, but the adrenaline of all the excitement I was carried through.

So many things happened, and there were so many noteworthy things in each game, I want to take my time and address as many of them as possible. So here goes. FestEvil '09-- my biggest larp weekend ever.
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