MOOP!

Today was a very good day spent with my girlfriend!

Okay yeah, fine, I also went to work and stuff. That part was boring, whatever. But then I left work right as soon as I was allowed to (this almost never happens, usually I am hanging out and kinda working for hours after last-bell) and read my book on the bus home, and came home to my Tuesday-love!

(sidebar: it has taken quite a lot of time and the weather actually getting somewhat better, but I have finally figured out that while biking is _faster_, the advantages of walking/taking the bus *far* outweigh it, specifically that I can ~do things~ while on my transit instead of just suffering on The Worst Road In The Entire City (which is basically my entire commute))

I have been reading my way through the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, and I have _finally_ made it to a Harriet Vane one --Strong Poison, not Gaudy Nights, no spoilers please, also this one is _so good_. I kept reading bits of the descriptions of artists aloud to Ezri and Tuesday and generally reveling in the prose *so much*. It is delicious! Some of these mysteries I've felt rather indifferent to, like I never need to bother reading again, but others are *quite* of the variety of "yes please, do re-consume" and unless Sayers flubs the landing, this will be _solidly_ in the second category.

Anyways, I did quite a bunch of further reading once I was home, only instead of a bus with dubious students scattered about, this was on a comfy couch pulled up alongside my ladylove while she played the new Zelda game. Heaven! Parallel play at its absolute finest, reading a book but also snuggling? So good!!!

Eventually, Ezri and Rey got very busy with An Elaborate Dinner Plan, which sucked Tuesday in to help. I know better than to try and hang out in the busy kitchen (I will get massive-stressed and then I will snap at people like an ass) so I stayed out of the way¹. Dinner was...pad thai!!! Homemade and _utterly_ delicious, thank you Ezri! And there was mango lassi for dessert (thank you Tuesday!). We all ate until we were round and merry, and that was delightful.

Near the end of it all, somehow Tuesday and I got to talking about the game Blink, which she'd also played at some point in the past. I pulled out my deck and solidly trounced her five rounds in a row² (sorry babe). As we were putting it away, she glanced at the game shelf and asked "what's One Deck Galaxy?".

I managed to entirely not answer her question by instead whipping out my unopened copy of One Deck Dungeon, pausing long enough to show her my name in the playtest credits, and then we sat down and played a really satisfying game of ODD! Sure it was just the dragon, but we beat it together, despite me rolling almost entirely shit the entire game! It was really fun to get to do this little cooperative dungeon crawl together.

Now it is approaching bedtime. I get to come in late tomorrow (I arranged it with my boss since first block is the rotating x-block but it's on the rotation I don't have a class, and then second block is just...not a class I ever have) so I'm quite looking forward to having a slightly later-than-usual wakeup time and the opportunity for bonus cuddles with my girl.

I hope you are well and happy and have people in your life who make you happy!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: In an effort to make myself sound slightly less assholish, I did all the dishes afterwards. It is to everyone's benefit for me to not cook though, it's not fun for me, and it's frequently even less fun when someone else is in charge.

2: I'm good at speed games, and explicitly, I'm good at the _speed_ part of speed games. There are definitely people who can match-or-beat me at Blink (Veronica first among them), but I must be solidly 90th or 95th percentile on it.

Accomplishments!

Terrible day for everything except social. Exceptionally good day for social!

Work:
*The usual, more or less (hint: less).
*Got observed by one of the EDC folks. Seemed to go well! Not as exciting as when my kids staged a coup earlier this week.

Personal:
*Pushing through and doing my damn emails even though it's late and I'm tired. Given that lack-of-sleep tentatively seems to be my biggest problem, this is prolly not the Wisest, but it's also probably not the worst ever decision, also what*ever*. Anyways, doing the emails! Better communications protocols! All this is good!
*Got to play Innovation and won with my two achievements, which beat everyone else's one when the end of the world happened and we entered the eleventh age. Not a single card left to draw! It was very effective.
*I am have doing my words, and there's something special about today: Having officially completed 122 days of words this calendar year, I move 2019 up in the rankings from the seventh best year in terms of total days written, to sixth. I am excited for this milestone! To get to the fifth-best year, I have to write another hundred days¹.

Social:
*So! Much! Good! Social!
*Today was First-Friday, when all the teachers go to the pub! I did that, and was thrilled to talk with some new teachers I'd never really met or gotten to know at all, and also thrilled to talk with some teachers I know better, including affectionate teasing of the physics teacher about how great he is.
*And then after I went to anu3bis and balsamic_dragon's new house, where I ate a lovely dinner, pet the cats, was shown minecraft stuff by the LionCub, played games, and ended it all with lounging on the couch chatting books and comics and music (and then religion and kindness and education and politics) with Anu until after one in the morning. So so so good!

But now it is _very_ late and I am le tired. Goodnight!

1: 2015 is the record, with 361 days total. I don't expect to beat it.

Wayyyy back in 2000, I played in my first LARP.

I mean, okay, I was a prop and a game baby in multiple LARPs in the '89-92ish range, and I remember being at Oscars '96 and Arabian Nights '99 (the latter of which dad scrawled me a little handmade unofficial badge about halfway through the weekend because I kept participating and stuff). But Oscars 2000 was my Very First LARP in terms of being given a character ahead of time and playing the whole weekend and being old enough to actually for realsies participate.

I played actress Mallory Tyrone, who was your standard bratty coming-of-age child actress. Somewhere I have all my notes and everything --I'm pretty sure I never got rid of them. My character packet for the weekend included a list of contacts and some out-of-game mechanics stuff, and a list of goals --things to strive for! I achieved very nearly all of them, because I'm a perfectionist damnit (and also because I was eleven and my daddy was one of the game masters and I probably wasn't given anything too arduous to achieve.)

One of those goals was to get signed with an agent! Now, I-as-person already had an agent (my mom's friend Butler is the agent to all three of us kids, as declared at Oscars '96). But Mallory Tyrone had no such thing! With all the brashness and confidence I could muster, I set forth to finding such a beast! I met a very nice woman (who in real life had a couple of kids within a few years age of me and my sibs) and she agreed to represent me, and by the end of the weekend, we had hashed out a contract and everything.

In my contract, I specified a very important stipulation: While on set, I was to have pasta every night for dinner. By which I pretty much meant "some kind of pasta, possibly filled, with tomato sauce, and ideally shake-cheese on top." The dreams of eleven year olds, amIrite? Forget important things like how much money I'd make or whether I have to do topless scenes, I just wanted to make sure I had access to my favourite dinner every night.

I am now 28 years old. I have very little Mallory Tyrone left in me¹. But you know what? I've eaten chicken tortellini with tomato sauce for lunch every day this week. I am not sick of it. I do not feel like I'm missing out. There's a very good chance I'll make another batch for lunches next week.

I've long since lost track of that agent, but you know what? That's okay. Katarina Whimsy can make their own dreams come true.

And it's awesome.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Although I still collect autographs whenever remotely possible or reasonable. And I'm still willing to be the one to ask people out --one of the goals was to have a date to the Oscars event on Saturday night, and by god if I didn't find the only boy remotely my age and stumble through the most delightfully awkward eleven year old "SO THIS IS TOTALLY JUST IN GAME, BUT WANNA BE MY DATE IN GAME?!" My brain wants to say he gave me a flower, or a kiss on the cheek, or something equally twee when we met up, but that may just be the storyteller in me.

Oh hey! the kickstarter for Flowerfall went live!

What is FlowerFall? It is a clever little card game the involves dropping cards on top of other cards to form a precise layout. If you have never tried to drop cards precisely, let me assure you that it is harder than it seems. It's fun, and has no words (making it accessible to pretty much all people past the age of "eat the cards") and can be played on virtually any terrain (who's up for extreme Flowerfall, where we drop the cards off a balcony?)

More importantly to this egotist, if you go and click on the video link, you get to see me ACTING, very hard. While wearing truly absurd giant orange sunglasses. Yeah, I know I'm awesome.

So go buy a copy if you want a fun little skill game, and want to support Asmadi Games (who do good work).

~Sor
MOOP!

So, here's what my life has been the last n weeks.

*I graduated. This was apparently a big deal or something.

*I took, and as of two days ago, passed my MTELs. Now I can get my teacher's license and get a job or something.

*I am currently in Atlanta. Two days of rest and relaxation with Sparr and the various folks around his living space, and then he and I go up to Columbus, OH on Wednesday for Origins.

*I helped my family move from Columbia MD to Park Ridge (just north of Chicago) IL. This involved driving for about six hours on Tuesday (mom drove the other half.)

*I drove my little sister to and from her college orientation at Hiram college. This involved driving for about six hours on Thursday and Saturday. No mom to help. On the plus side, I own a lot of music, and some of it she likes.

*I spent last weekend in Layfayette Georgia in order to go to my very first burn. Burns are hippie festivals; Burning Man is the best-known example. It was really quite fun, and I enjoyed running around the woods surrounded by hippies, and watching various people perform various arts, and learning things, and posing for photographs and jumping on the trampoline and etc. Also, there was fire, and it was fantastic. Alsoalso, I got to see in passing Amber, who is bright and sunny and really likes me and seems to want me to move to Atlanta almost as badly as Sparr does. She makes me smile a lot.

*I might make a real post about that one.

*Oh, also I went to Balticon a couple weeks ago. I slept in a car, and hung out with old friends and new friends, and again played less werewolf than usual, and broke my JungleSpeed totem (okay, technically Braffy broke it...) and wound up giving kisses to a gorgeous woman with fantastic pink hair, and flirted with the pervy artist, and in general it was all quite good. And like last year, it was a completely significant-other-free con. Which is a little strange, but mostly very freeing --the first time I went to Balticon, I went without my partner, and I kinda really like not being responsible for anyone else's happiness at the con. Not that I don't love being with my partners at cons, you understand --I do love it, very much-- but once a year...I'll gladly take the vacation from feeling responsible for other people's happiness. Because I am responsible, some, no matter how hard I try not to be. At least for my boys.

*Alys graduated high school. Go her!

*This is the first 750words entry I've made in twelve days, and the third this month. Please whine at me to do this. I won't be able to during Origins, but I should at least get my act together the week after, and once I'm back in Boston.

*Looking to get back in Boston somewhere around the fourth. Hoping to spend a night in NYC with...someone. Need to talk to relevant someones and see who has a couch and wants me to sleep on it. (I mean, I also have friends in the city who have couches that I can sleep on, but if I have people who actively want me as houseguest, I'll strive for that first.)

*Week after Origins is Girl Scout Day Camp. This might be my last year, but if you volunteer as an adult for five years, you get a pretty volunteer pin. And next year would be year five. So yeah, MD peeps, I might be looking for crash-space a random week in July or June 2012.

*I dodged the sunburn from camping in the middle of fuckyou Georgia all weekend (I hate the weather here, does it show), but the trade off is that I think I might have some poison ivy on my arm, and I certainly have bugbites everywhere. Still, that doesn't cause cancer, so I'm okay with this. I did my best to keep Sparr and Sarena sunscreened (two of my three campmates --Joe is a redhead and so did a very good job of keeping his pasty self covered) too, and I think it mostly worked.

*Made foodstuff with Sparr earlier --potatos and eggs such to put into breakfast burritos. Was good! Also, I made the mistake of asking Bethany how many people I should cook for (since she is the normal cook hereabouts) and she answered "sixteen".

I did not cook for sixteen people, because Christ, how would I?

That's all for now.

~Sor
MOOP!

(Okay, so, for a very long time now, I've known that MOOP is a burner term meaning Matter Out Of Place --probably learned it less than two years after I coined the term as my own personal word. Holy shit though, people actually use it, like all the time. It's how the burner community refers to trash, or to the action of leaving trash "Yeah, I was MOOPing all over the place last night, I should clean up" or "Jeeze, who left all this MOOP at our campsite."

The weekend was _so weird_ for that alone.)

So, dream last night, which got very complicated toward the end.

I was in a school (I got to say hi to my old kindergarden teacher!) and there was some form of emergency evac going on, meaning that everyone was gathered in the cafeteria. Me and some other folks were running around, trying to get games going --I wound up with a group of pre-sorority bippies, and a deck of Werewolf. So I try to start them on that, but while I'm dealing out the right number of cards, one of my werewolf cards becomes a "Bananas" card.

I am naturally suspicious of my sister.

A bit of frantic searching through every other werewolf deck in the building, all of which are so saturated with other designs (I remember a series of hand-drawn Cthulus with different hats) that they hardly have villagers, much less werewolves. But then I somehow find what I'm looking for, and I'm setting down the deck and explaining Dungeon.

(This sort of thing makes sense in dreams)

At any rate, I tell them each to find some totem to represent themselves, paraphrasing from the instructions to the We Didn't Playtest This Board Game. (Though in waking, I know I was referring to "A note about playing pieces" off the human game board) and then I start to launch into an explanation of how to deal damage and proceed around the board.

I get confused and start flipping through the rulebook, and poof, my entire table of players has scampered off, presumably to gossip and do things more interesting than play games with crazy older girls. And I wake up.

(The dream before *that* was a space mechanic epic, where I had to repair the top of our spaceship with duct tape before it could be considered airtight, and there were also so many stars!)

~Sor
MOOP!

And thereby proving that I really am the least emo person on the planet, once you put some walking outside, listening to music, and distraction into me...

So I walked over to dan4th's, both because he is closer than Marc (I think) and has a regular game night, and seriously Sor, you should be doing this twice weekly or something, and learned how to play Formula De (I came in second! People helped me a lot) and played Cheeky Monkey, AND more importantly, because Dan4th said he had a present for me, and it's more or less proven that the fastest way to get me over to your house (after offering kissies) is to have a present for me.

Unless you're Chris. But that's besides the point.

SO PRESENT!



The temptation to wear this tailcoat to the next Regency event is so fucking high, you have no idea

AND NOW I SLEEP! or write more

~Sor
MOOP!

So, I'm sure I've mentioned or alluded at some point or another that, at anime conventions, I work for my friend xalolo selling copies of his game "We Didn't Playtest This At All". (And some other games, like Wack a Catgirl and Sixis --I love Sixis. It's brilliantfun, and just random enough to not irritate me with how strategerybased it is.)

Certainly I've forced a good number of those of you I know in real life to play Playtest with me at one point or another --it's silly, fun, and small enough that I just carry it with me more or less everywhere.

( Cut for images )

~Sor
MOOP!

So, a proper report of the last few weeks!

On the fourteenth, I got my drivers license, because I am rad.

On the fifteenth, I flew Home and went to ( Arisia )

Nineteenth was Monday of Arisia. While packing, I think to check the internet, find out what time I can move into my dorm. I mean, last year I could doso just post Arisia, it seemed sensible to expect the same out of this year.

...heh.

"Hey mom? It says I can move in at noon. On the twenty-fifth."

Luckily, I had a handy dandy Magus who I could beg into giving me crash space for a week, so I did that.

Twentieth through the twenty fourth, I hung out with Magus, caught almost all the way up on Doctor Who (just need to watch the Christmas Special!), had a grand old time of things, and did a few other things, like harassing j7y more (it is a hobby! Also, we watched Mighty Boosh!!) and babysitting. And maybe I had a teeny tiny breakdown somewhere in the middle of All That, and had to spend a little bit of time righting my brain.

Twenty third was Friday of ( Vericon )

The twenty-fifth I skipped Vericon completely, moved in eventually, hugged my roommates, and got dragged to a lesbians house to watch a movie called "Wristcutters: A love story". I kinda want to write fanfic about that setting, though I think I'm not emo enough. Good movie though, very light and fun and reasonably fluffy. And romantic, of course.

The twenty sixth was today, and I'll report on all my classes once I've had the other two. Can I just say EEEE, CALCULUS! though?

And now food and dance. Ta!

~Sor
MOOP!


1: Conner? Connor? *shrugs*

Bytheway, happy new years and I am still alive, as are Kat and Swing. The jury is still out on Magus, who may have the plague¹.

Things that have been happening:

Watching some Black Books
Watching the entire internet at the party
Playing Agricola²
Watching the end of season two of Titus
Watching almost all the rest of Middleman⁴
Me working on a general "these were the resolutions of 2008 that I ignored, and here, have some resolutions for 2009 that I will ignore.

Annnnnndyeah. Now it is time for me to go to work. This is incredibly lame, though at least there are lovely people who ought to be around when I get home. Unless they die. Which would really really suck. So, uh, dearhearts, don't die, it will make me a sadKat.

In other news, yay, it's been a year for me and that pretty girl who I snog on occasion. Good for us!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: No, he does not really have the plague. I tend to be wildly exaggeratey about things like that.

2: Dan4th, Dan4th, Dan4th, if you are reading this, get this game. *Totally* get this game. Get this game, and Magus³ and I will totally come over and play with you. Because ohmgods, it is a strategery game that I actually enjoy.

3: Once he recovers from the plague

4: (Middleman!)