It’s Furious Balancing

As every self-respecting geek knows, Gary Gygax died yesterday. For those of you who aren’t Old School Gamers — you know, back in the days when gaming meant paper, pencils, dice and graph paper, and the most sophisticated piece of technology in the room was a calculator — Mr. Gygax was the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons.

D&D was my first foray into fantasy role-playing games. Many of the gamers I’ve met online, whether in EverQuest, EverQuest 2, Vanguard, or Lord of the Rings Online, have their gaming roots in D&D. It was the ur-game for many of us.

I’m hardly qualified to write a tribute or obituary for Mr. Gygax. To be honest, I didn’t know much detail about his life or background until I started reading the obituaries and blog posts yesterday. There were many.

He was, directly or indirectly, responsible for my love of RPG’s. There probably wouldn’t be a Laiane Wolfsong without him. Oh, the Real Life me would be here, certainly; no argument about that. But my Ranger alter ego? That’s a different story altogether.

I’ve been waxing nostalgic over my D&D days in high school when five of us would squeeze into the 1976 Ford Pinto my brother inherited from Mom and wend our way to our DM’s basement. We’d scarf down Cheetos and Mountain Dew, roll the dice, and have the time of our lives.

Me: Bridget, the elven assassin. Being Chaotic Evil means never having to say you’re sorry.

My twin brother: Graymaus Jamin Eroquil, half-elven Neutral Greedy thief extraordinaire.

And our friends:

Trebos the magic user. He had issues with casting area-of-effect spells on the monsters and killing his party members in the process.

Seymour the fighter, whose intelligence score was in the single digits. He would lose to his war horse when they played checkers.

Ged Lefto, illusionist, and creator of the songs we would sing on our car ride home. We called them D&D carols since many of them were set to the tune of Christmas carols. I had the Orcish Pirate Sea Shanty in my head this morning:

We love to hear the cannons fart
While we blow your ships apart!
Upwind in battle are we!
Our victims run in fear; they smell us coming near!
Victory – We fight to win!
Victory -We smell like sin!
We are the scum of the land and sea
Oh, Orcish Pirates are we…

Did I mention we were really, really nerdy teenagers?

I found this tribute to Mr. Gygax on an online RPG forum. I think it captures what a lot of Old School Gamers (and Not-So-Old-School Gamers) are feeling at the moment:

No matter what the edition, no matter the ruleset, no matter what the genre, all of our differences aside – in the end all that matters is that we play on. Next time you belly up to the table (even if your table is a computer desk) and have a laugh, next time your heart skips a beat on that saving throw, next time you’re down to the last hit point and the dice come up 20, think of E. Gary Gygax and play, play on. It’s the best way to pay tribute to the man that got us all at the table.

Thanks, Gary.

Amen to that.

moar LOLCats

I am going to admit to being in a bit of a rut.

Looking over my blog posts for this month, it seems that I have been dragging myself from LOLCat Friday to LOLCat Friday with some grumbling (and a lot of knitting) thrown in for good measure. I’m not going to confess to being tired of winter — because I would much rather have snow up to my kneecaps than have to deal with a nasty Michigan summer filled with ghastly 90 degree days and 105% humidity — but I am definitely tired of something.

I have been feeling uninspired, and the No Yarn, No Books, and No Meat on Friday Lenten diet is beginning to wear on me.

Thankfully, there are compensations. The first being Easter candy you eat:

and the second being Easter candy you torture:

If you Google peep microwave you’ll uncover the horrors of which I speak. There are many pedestrian versions of “What happens when you put a Marshmallow Peep in a microwave?” For a more erudite treatment of the subject, I highly recommend the scholarly article Fear Response in Peeps. For a less erudite treatment of the subject, The Washington Post sidebar article on Peep Jousting fits the bill.

Actually, tooling around on the Innernets, one can find all sorts of disturbing/hilarious things concerning the ubiquitous Marshmallow Peeps. Unsettling indeed is the “factory tour” at the Official Peeps Web Site (WARNING: Plays obnoxious music!) Actually, most of the Official Peeps Web Site is unsettling, now that I think of it.

If one looks long and hard enough, one can find a Peeps 2008 Wall Calendar; a yellow Peep Costume (adult size); a recipe for Peep Crispy Treats from a blog that had good amount of knitting content and a homemade bookshelf project I would love to emulate; and a March 2007 newspaper article from the Topeka Capital-Journal citing the poll result that if a Marshmallow Peep came to life, the female celebrity it most likely would be — and there’s no surprise here — is Jessica Simpson.

Still, my all-time favorite Peep show is the Flickr photoset collection Peeps for Passover.

Whew.

I’m stopping the blog post right here, right now with my Friday LOLCat. I’ve given myself a remarkable headache with this Perspective of Peeps on the ‘Net, and have found myself well-nigh stunned and overwhelmed (in the best possible way) by a Peep-less candy diorama of The Battle of Helm’s Deep. How in the world did I wind up there? But my, those gummy Urak-Hai look tasty…. Forth Eorlingas!

Dear God, they did the Battle of Pelennor Fields, too.

Where was I? Oh, yes, LOLCat.

Another week has flown by and it’s LOLCat Friday once again.

Enjoy your weekend, cats and kittens. Mine will involve a great deal of knitting — sleeves for the brown Malabrigo raglan sweater, gifts for a baby due to arrive in May, and the project for my appearance on the Kitty Knits Blog Tour coming up on March 4th. There’s going to be some Stash Management thrown in there somewhere, and I need to watch the second tape of The Seven Samurai. Something tells me one of my projects will be dedicated to Akira Kurosawa.

Happy LOLCat Friday! I watched The Lord of the Rings trilogy yet again while The Husband was out of town, so…

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That’s about all I’m good for at the moment.  My sinuses have bugging the hell out of me today (and the past several days).   Yeesh.  Couch sitting, knitting, and a DVD are about all I can handle.

In my opinion, Caturday begins Friday afternoon at 5:00 p.m.

I went to the Innernets to find a definitive definition of Caturday and found myself distracted, as always, by completely unrelated links. It started with reading about LOLCats at the Wall Street Journal, then a LOLCat history that bandied about such words as “metacommunication,” and I woke up when I found myself at Cats Who Look Like Hitler.

I even rediscovered the Viking Kittens Flash animation. I hadn’t seen that in years.

Where was I? Oh, yes, Caturday. The weekend. Thank God.

Time to fire up Squeaker and prowl the ‘Net. I’m at the start of a beautifully quiet three-day weekend with just me, the computer, the kittehs, and a can of aerosol cheese. Oh, and a lot of yarn. A serious amount of yarn. Yarn that is almost to the point of Developing a Life of Its Own and pulling an Anschluss in my living room. It isn’t as bad as all that, but I am at the point where an inventory of The Stash needs must be done. I have to see what’s there and what’s what so I can get my wee head around it all. I need some large, translucent storage bins, methinks. Just knowing the yarn is tucked away in corrugated cardboard boxes – without being able to see it — preys upon my anxiety levels.

Sorry; moving along.

Three days. The Husband is off in the Great State of Texas visiting family and I’m here trying desperately to recover my mental health after another hellacious work week. I like my New Boss and I like my clients and I like my job, but it is extremely busy right now. Not only am I getting the New Boss settled in and acclimatized, I’m dealing with High Season in the Death Care Industry. I read somewhere that more people die in January than any other month. I believe it. Come January, they start dropping like flies. Now, for most of you, if your clients die, your work slows down. Mine doesn’t. My clients Take the Big Dirt Nap and it’s time for me to file seven different forms with the Probate Court, and no, I am not exaggerating the number.

<<deep breath>>

Three days. Computer. Cats. Yarn. Aerosol cheese. Not necessarily concurrently.

This accurately summarizes how I feel about typing at the moment:

I’ve got a serious love-hate thing going on with the computer screen right now.  I need to either (a) have a do-over for the month of January or, (b) decide that the New Year actually starts in February, and not necessarily February 1st, either.

Another twofer for LOLCat Friday!

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I don’t mind the snow and the cold. I’m not out frolicking around in it, no, but I prefer this time of year to those ghastly days in July when it’s 90-gazillion degrees and 110% humidity and the sun rises at 5:30 a.m. /shudder

Tomorrow is the 1,000 Knitters photo shoot in Lansing! This reminds me — I need to make sure my camera batteries are charged. I shall be in the presence of much fibery goodness, fellow knitters, and the one and only Franklin Habit, blogger extraordinaire.

I am so geeked.

I’m suffering from the onset of a carpal tunnel syndrome thing. A real-McCoy carpal tunnel syndrome thing with numbness in my thumbs and forefingers and the inability to hold a pen and write legibly. This is opposed to a faux carpal tunnel syndrome thing with soreness in my wrists from computer gaming too much and overusing the mouse. That’s what I thought CTS was — wrist soreness — but when I was looking up my symptoms on the innernets last night — as a good lil’ innernet addict should — I discovered that CTS is really indicated by a loss of sensation and/or pain in the thumbs and forefingers. That gave me pause, let me tell you. Serious pause. The “I’m causing nerve damage here” pause.

It’s from the knitting. I know it’s from the knitting because it’s in both hands.

I’ve been a heavy computer user for years and years. Not only am I a Gamer Grrrl, I’m a secretary. The vast majority of my job is word processing. Lots of word processing. I’m coming up on fourteen straight years as a probate and estate planning legal assistant, so I know my word processing, cats and kittens. Boy Howdy do I know my word processing.

I have a significant amount of hours of computer use at the office each workday and I have never, ever, for one second had a problem with my hands. There were a few long weekends when I gave myself “mouse elbow” from hours and hours of EverQuest II, but it wasn’t anything like this — nothing even close to this weird “pins and needles” feeling in my thumbs.

I have declared this a No Knitting Weekend. I’m wearing my wrist braces 24/7. I took ibuprofen all day, but that hasn’t really done much (and I can’t take it together with the extra-strength Vicodin that is my bulwark against My Other Pain I deal with all too often). I’m going to try some cold therapy (i.e., ice in a ziploc baggie) in a little bit.

No Knitting. I can, however, type and use a mouse (while wearing the braces) without much discomfort — not exceptionally well, mind you, but it’s certainly doable. My intention is to level up in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion so I can go and tackle the Shivering Isles expansion.

After the ice, though.

Yes, yes, in a perfect world I wouldn’t be on my computer at all. My alternatives? Reading and watching DVD’s. I’ll spend some time with those activities; I can only read so much without getting restless and watching a movie without yarn and needles in my hands makes me twitchy. I know there are millions of people out there who can sit in front of the television, slack-jawed and content, but I am not of that ilk.

It’s going to be a wicked cold weekend, anyway. It’s best to stay inside. There could be dire consequences otherwise.

I’m very thankful it was a short work week. Re-adjusting to a new boss, even though he is a charming and amiable gentleman, isn’t easy for me. I’m feeling more than a little overwhelmed with the changes at the office.

I’ll manage, certainly, but I’ve been having a difficult week with my Never-Ending Chronic Pain. The pain just compounds the stress and wears me out. I’m an introvert; I need a lot of people-free “down time” in order to recharge my batteries — even on my pain-free days. Today it feels that all I truly want to do is take a hot bath and curl up on the sofa with my yarn, a few felines, a Cottage Inn pizza, and a movie; but first, it’s LOLCat Friday!

Feline courtesy of I Can Has Cheezburger.

I also have a new book I want to dive into: Beyond the Body Farm: A Legendary Bone Detective Explores Murders, Mysteries, and the Revolution in Forensic Science. Yes, this is what I read for fun (when I’m not knitting, gaming, surfing the innernets, etc.).

I’m hoping it will inspire me to get Item No. 1 off of my list of twelve things to do in this new year. I’ve downloaded the application, had an email exchange with the University about the form my photographs should be in, and should be good to go for FINISHING THIS TASK. It’s been on the Things To Do list for so long it’s laughable.

I plan on rewarding myself with a University of Tennessee sweatshirt when I done with all my paperwork.

But now, it’s time for bath, felines, yarn, pizza, movie.

Not necessarily in that order.

Well, let me show you one in any event:

I am working on a longer blog post, having noticed my very short entries over the course of this month. Even though I am a devout believer of Blogging Without Obligation, I need to churn out some words and get them out of my head. I’m on my way into a four-day weekend, so there will be words, words, words headed this way.

Enjoy your LOLCat Friday!

I made it through those crazy pre-Christmas-vacation days at work. I wonder at my clients at times; don’t they realize that December comes at the same time every year? In any event, I have four days off.

The Husband and I didn’t do much for Christmas this year, what with losing Gregor and both of us being sick and out of sorts. Just having the time off to rest and recover will be wonderful. I want to knit and read and watch videos and go see I Am Legend and just relax.

I’m planning a rib roast for our holiday dinner, but more about all of that later. It’s Friday — time for a LOLCat!

Happy LOLCat Friday, cats and kittens. I’ve been saving these two for a while. Images courtesy of I Can Has Cheezburger.

And this one as well…

Aaron and Christopher come home us tomorrow. I’m hoping for lots of kitteh pictures.

neologism (nee-ol-uh-jiz-uhm): noun — a new word, meaning, usage or phrase.

I encountered a new object today, a thing definitely outside of my usual realm of experience. No, nothing metaphysical is going on here. It was just one of those a ha! moments when pieces of the universe came together with a resounding click. A new thing — a thing that has been needed for a long, long time — appeared in an Ann Arbor party store.

I don’t have a name for it.

Yes, I know that’s a can of San Pellegrino Limonata soda sparkling beverage. I’m addicted to it. But what does one call the protective aluminum cover on the top of the can? I mean, something besides “protective aluminum cover.” I’m looking for something pithy, folks.

I’m open to suggestions. The only thing my tired brain could produce was candom (a shortened version of can condom).

Ah, but it is LOLCat Friday. I’m limiting myself to just one LOLCat, having overdosed at last week’s LOLCatapalooza, but it’s a good ‘un. Qualification – it’s a “good ‘un” to an excessively verbal, former English major. You know, the literary type.

Enjoy your weekend, cats and kittens.

The Husband and I have returned from over the river and through the woods (i.e., The Other Side of the State, a Republican-invested, latte-less wasteland) with a trunkload and backseat-load of my Gramma’s old knitting and sewing paraphernalia.

Gramma died about 15 years ago, and most of her crafty things have been untouched. The Husband found a bobbin still in the Singer FashionMate 360 sewing machine.

Sorting through all of it is going to be a serious project. Do not fear; I will post photos. There is more yarn than I imagined, but most of it is acrylic intended for baby items. I know I saw a few women’s magazines from 1948. The Husband found fabric scissors, two spool-boxes of sewing thread, and countless buttons, zippers, snaps, etc.

We haven’t unloaded the car yet. I need to vacuum the Cat Room and put it all in there. I’ll invite HunterXan over this weekend to start crawling through it. What we don’t use ourselves can be donated or eBay-ed.

The rest of the weekend will involve knitting, turkey casserole, and the BBC production of Pride & Prejudice. Mr. Darcy is just so hawt…