So yeah, I finally made it over the line of my modified slightly cheaty NaBloPoMo, I was aiming for 30 posts in 30 days, which I did … but kiiiinda only by breaking up my holiday memories :)
But still, did it! Now to work out if I can keep it up and get over my worries about writing in front of people and writing stuff that may be disagreed with or is kind of drafts – maybe I need a “drafts” tag :)
The other thing I started reading this weekend was She Who Walks In Shadow, I’m only a few stories into it but it seemed to take a couple of stories to build itself up and find its feet, and now really interesting weird stuff is starting to emerge.
It’s been a while since I’ve read some genuinely creepy weird fiction and not all of it quite hits the mark but some of it is substantially atmosphere and disturbing stuff :) Will try and post more details later :)
Okay okay, I finally broke down and started reading the Kushiel’s Legacy series by Jacqueline Carey. It starts out as some sort of cheap, fun, alt.history romp through the eyes of a cortisan in “I can’t believe it’s not France” then sort of somehow morphs into an extravaganza of politics, assassination, travel, magic, marriage, war, religion, and romance… just, it didn’t feel like someones first book, truly a work of epic proportions.
I know a bunch of people who like Poker, and indeed there was a fixed stakes game going on at the weekend, a small buy in and winner takes all. While I suck at the game I’ve found it more interesting over the years to watch, to sit and watch how people act, react, and interact :)
Also I totally sipped a smoky peaty flavoury whisky and didn’t just totally dislike it straight off the bat… what the hell.
Okay one thing worth talking about this weekend was the peril of driving far into the lakes in November in the dark and wet. And oh my word such wet and awful weather. There was sadly a pretty bad accident on the M6 in the afternoon which snarled everything up, and we kept passing cars stopped at the side of the road, either broken down or drivers taking a break from all the awful beating rain and occasional ground fog (we had one driver report driving through sleet).
I’m mostly just glad that all our part made it with only one car with mechanical troubles, which recovered by the morning, it was a long way on windy thin roads with big trees so I’m glad we all made it.
So yeah, due to waking up late from lie in’s and the lag between consuming pre-food drugs and eating I often was eating breakfast right at the end of the breakfast slot of time, so was eating food while everyone else was just drinking tea and chatting, which meant other people were watching.
This was interesting because my food is a little odd in contrast to the cooked breakfasts (rice cakes, jam, almond butter, chocolate spread) but I was pleased that it seemed to go down well and I introduced at least one person to the existence of nut butters and they were very enthused :)
Also Mish got us all roped into doing Polycule photos today with Ann, some of them were outside on a slope in front of the AMAZING SCENARY (yes thats basically the view out the front of the house) which was cool, if slightly slippy underfoot :) Then there were more sprawling about inside on the amazing furniture and in front of various bits of fireplace and beautiful windows.
Having seen a couple of preview images on the backs of cameras and sent quickly over facebook some of these should be super kick ass :) Although the whole process was a little scary and highly focused on me, which cane be a bit squicky, but we were allowed to clown about which helped, and Ann is good at putting people at ease so that works (the looking up thing is interesting).
So there were two awesome roleplaying games being run this weekend, one of which I was near enough to hear: WIIIITTTTNEEEESSS – the game of theological debate in the form of Mad Max, which was run by Weasel and seemed to feature epic quantities of post apocalyptic death cults.
The other was Mish’s JDT game featuring post rapture animal care charity workers, I wasn’t so close to this one but me and Lee heard it going on, because we were curled up in chairs reading when suddenly there was wolf howling coming out of the room :)
So yeah, I took along the nice chess set that is Mish’s and actually me and Lee on a Saturday night curled up in a couple of chairs and played a game of chess. It was a bit all over the place, neither of us had really played in a decade and neither of us was anything more than very casual players but it was fun. I lost due to my normal issues of being unable to shift from opening to midgame properly and being bad at working out what to sacrifice and how.
But all the same I did enjoy it :) I managed to surprise him a couple of times :)
Okay, so I’ve just returned from a weekend of Wasdale flavoured goodness, where Ni got a bunch of us together to head out into the countryside and in the same way we rent big houses for LARPs then chillout afterwards this was sort of a “do the chillout thing but all weekend” which was pretty cool.
The house itself was just beautiful, people had clearly restored it in an effort to head towards its original feel and while they could have just made it plain, neutral and cheap they seemed to really put the effort in. The lounge and dining room in particular were just stunning, wood panels, tall bookshelves and fireplaces, the whole nine yards.
Anyway, I’m going to cheekily break up things into little rambles to try and hit my 30 posts for #NaBloPoMo :)
