Haven't posted here much of late. Haven't READ here much of late.

So here's a picture of my Dystopia Rising character as a dog to get you curious about my Zombie!Cation weekends and to remind me to write more.

One by one, the days behind me are darker and darker as I pull myself step by step into a new light.


THere have been a lot of things changing, large and small, and It's been hard to communicate about them.

But I'll get there.


"Never give up! Never Surrender!" - Commander Taggart, Galaxy Quest

So, I just finished reading a Thing, and I need to talk about it a bit.

For, like all Proper Things, it made me think, it made me wonder, it made me grow.

A bit of preface:

Patrick Rothfuss is the type of author that gets into your head spaces, plonks down and armchair, and makes himself comfortable. The first two volumes of his Kingkiller Chronicles get pulled of my shelf at least twice a year. They are that good, read in and read out, and I'm (only somewhat) patiently waiting for the next.

This is only tangentially about those books.

Under the University where Kvothe, the Kingkiller Chronicled so ably, learns Sympathy and Naming, in the deep Lost places, there is a girl. A broken thing, surviving somehow on what she herself learned at the University and the kindness of the musically inclined redhead.

She is broken so deeply she does not remember her name... And one gets the feeling that her healing begins when Kvothe giver her one.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Auri.

A small and shy thing, with a halo of hair to rival the shine of the moon through thin cloud... She is weirdly wise beyond her apparent years, and rich in her own way: the treasures of the Lost places, the Slow Regard of Silent Things.

The best way I can describe this interstitial novella is as a third person look out of her eyes, a vision of how she sees the world. A view of all things on their place, each as she sees their nature and as it fits into the whole of Mantle and Port, Rubric, The Yellow Twelve, Withy, Darkhouse, and the myriad chambers of the Underthing that make up her world.

Auri is broken. She knows she is so, and has made for herself a place where she is needed. Where things make sense, and where she is content.

I cannot help but ramble, because that seems to be a part of keeping this windowed moment of seeing Auri's Underthing alive.

Find the window. Look, see the shapes of the secrets and mysteries that Auri lives beside and among.

Think. Wonder. Grow.

I think I just killed the best thing I have ever had.

If I'm the juckiest little shit ever, It's on life support.

I'm pretty sure I'm not.

To ursulav! YOU HAVE BEEN CHALLENGED! (just noted that you are Con-Bound in Europe... so I WILL BE PATIENT!)

Another year, and another set of changes that I'll have to find contemplation time for.



... it's my birthday, Precious. We wants time to sleep, and many shiny things. We don't thinks we'll get them, do we Precious?

So, Will be hitting Seattle by August 25 at the latest. The roommate and I will be hauling the 16' Uhaul with the Prius C on a trailer almost 2000 miles.


Seattle Folks: I and my moderate truckload of things will be arriving August 24th. The Great Unloading and Rehoming will be the 25th. Any and all assistance is appreciated (and will be repaid in good Iowa beef/pork/omnomonmnom)!

So, I got married just a few weeks ago.

With the impending move to the Pacific NW, we decided to put off a big honeymoon.

Just last night, I had a BRILLIANT idea for our destination:

GENCON!

Well, we've been crunching the numbers and making plans... and we can't quite do it. So we found a way to ask for YOUR help making our trip memorable.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gen-con-honeymoon/x/2113315?c=home

Finally warmed up enough to start running again, and now we have a new season of adventures in Zombies, Run to look forward to. Since we didn't finish the first season due to injury and life schedule shifts, we're starting over.

( We've been here before, haven't we?Collapse )

http://www.nationstates.net/nation=talechaseania



I got there first! I clam this land in the name of... STORY, SILLY, and NELSON LAUGHS!

They're pushing me to run more often, but this time Able has good reason. Sentries spotted a little girl wandering out there on her own. Doesn't seem to be bitten, as kids tend to turn faster than adults. Looks like the sad story we're seeing (thankfully) less and less often. Parent with small child has to protect child from Shambling Hordes, gets bitten in escape. parent does what they can to get child started toward safety, then runs the hell as far away in the other direction as they can. No one wants to think about those who don't run far enough, or soon enough.

Got out there and found poor Molly Moppet (nee Harrison, as it turns out) with some guidance from Our ever-dependable Sam Yao. Just in time for her da, Ed to come gunning up on some imported Ami motorbike... and run out of gas. Bad timing, but Ed knew of an un-emptied petrol pump somewhat nearby. told his story as we trotted. Got caught by a pack of Shamblers while after a bagful of birds for the pot, ended up holed up for most of a week in a stone farmhouse before he could get back. By then, his wife, Bianca, had grabbed what she could carry along with Molly and legged it for Able. Better than New Canton, we both agreed. We know pretty much how that turned out for her...

Load of running, three jerry cans of fuel (two of which we got back to Able, plus the bike), and a diversion later... we're up one mechanic, a really good feeling, and a stuffed rabbit for population. Shame about Bianca, though. I think another family around here, especially with Molly Moppet would really perk up our spirits.

Another thing of interest: Ed says he'd seen some fellows, military-minded sorts in blue uniforms, camping by the fuel depot he knew about. Funny thing, we found a spent rocket launcher while we were cutting through the convenience store to grab the fuel cans...

[33:50 minutes, 3.2 miles, 10:34 min/mile, 12.92 miles total)

Runner 5, checking in again. Think I slept the clock around after that last one.

( You see, they were raising the gates for Runner 2...Collapse )

Whovians forever!

Folks, This.



"We were hunters and foragers, the frontier was everywhere. We were bounded only by the earth and the ocean and the sky. The open road still softly calls our little tarraquest globe is the madhouse of those hundred, thousand, millions of worlds.

We who cannot even put our own planetary home in order, riven with rivalries and hatreds; are we to venture out into space? By the time we are ready to settle even the nearest other planetary systems, we will have changed. The simple passage of so many generations will have changed us.

Necessity will have changed us.

We're an adaptable species. It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars, it will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses. More confident, far seeing, capable, and prudent. For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, We Humans are Capable of Greatness.

What new wonders undreamt of in our time will we have wrought in another generation and another? How far will our nomadic species have wandered by the end of the next century and the next millenium?

Our remote descendants safely stride on many worlds through the solar system and beyond, will be unified. By their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the universe, come from Earth. They will gaze up and strain to find the Blue Dot in their skies. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was.

How perilous our infancy.

How humble our beginnings.

How many rivers we had to cross before we found our way."

- Carl Sagan

“I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

“It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one and another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

“Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not.

“So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.

“What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

“And all music is.”

--Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut, 1973

To all those who heard the voice of God, and all those who serve so that those of us safe and sound in our homes do not have to walk through Hell: Thank You, God Bless... And Come Home Safe.

... and doesn't look like next week is slowing down. Not that this is in ANY way a Bad Thing!

Firstly, over the last few weeks my little Chevy Aveo has been having teensly tiny sittle Transmission slippage. Cassie and I talked it over, and we decided we would see what we could get the bank to help us with on leasing or buying a newer car. I ended up sprinting around like mad on Monday, mostly with Cassie in tow and driving home in a '07 Toyota Yaris.

Her name is Hastur because she's Sea Bisque Green, and Cassie can't pronounce R'lyeh the same way twice.

Monday night while watching WWE over at the Rodriquez's (a place full of our awesome LARP friends), Ray revealed that friends of his were looking for Assistant StoryTellers for GenCon on short notice. Cassie and I were shortlisted by Ray's recommendation, and the two of us will be driving to Indianapolis Tuesday night to be part fo the big Rise of AEster Steampunk LARP event. LAst night and this weekend are be dedicated to frantically gathering costumes, crafting props and getting ready for Cassie's first Big Gaming COnvention. EXITED doesn't begin to cover things!

How can you NOT love that?