In no particular order:
- Being reunited with my kitties. OMG I had missed them so much. I don't ever want to lose them again.
- DuD winning the UK Larp Award for 'best medium-sized larp'. Whatever issues there may have been with how the awards were organised, the fact that enough people thought of us to nominate us made me beyond proud.
- Maelstrom. Was always terrified to attend, and as it turned out with good reason. But I discovered crewing Maelstrom is absolutely awesome and made of win. Am very much looking forward to next year's events and being involved in the 'closure'.
- Odyssey - I also discovered that there is a big fest larp that I can enjoy playing!
- Visible improvements in my writing ability. 2011's Black Library submission was significantly better than 2010's, and 2012's, which I have already started working on, is another level of improvement over 2011. They say that if you keep writing you WILL get better. Actually being able to see that for myself is really rather inspiring.
- Going to see Ghost the Musical. One of my all time favourite movies brought to life on stage? There was no way I was going to miss that.
- Being diagnosed with Asperger's. I think on the whole it is a positive thing. I'm feeling like I can understand myself and the problems I have had all my life with context now and start to move forward in a way I have never been able to before.
- Rift MMO and the lovely guild I am in. It's kept me sane when things have really turned to dirt.
- Being reunited with old friends from a decade or more past. Evil Gary, Rob Leigh and the people of Elephant MUD.
Things neglected in 2011 due to sickness and lack of funds: Legion of Dreams and Re-enactment. I hope I can pick up on these again in 2012.
Can anyone help me?
I'm looking for some kind of structured programme, preferably one that is healthy and involves exercise as well. I'd like to drop down from a bulgy size 14 to a slightly less bulgy size 12 by October 21st, Is this even doable? I have no idea. ;) I'll settle for just less bulgy though.
If anyone has any recommendations for three month diet plans, I would love to hear about them.
Ta!
I can't because my car has a flat tyre, and getting a new one at an affordable rate means it can't be fitted until Saturday.
But I really want to go.
This sucks. :(
The Maelstrom story team with help from others had made an Awesome Thing for the event. I won't say what the Awesome Thing was, it's not important to this comment and I don't want to spoil it for anyone. However, Awesome Thing would be perfect to use for DuD. I saw it and drooled. They have said we may be able to use it. This is good!
However, the really amazing thing about this for me is how this conversation took place. Instead of the usual: Alex: "Wow, Awesome Thing is awesome, is there any chance we'd be able to use that for DuD?", the conversation actually went something like this:
Them: "Have you seen Awesome Thing?"
Alex: "Nope?"
Them: "Come and see it! When we were making it we wondered if you would be interested in using it for DuD!"
The fact that they actually thought of us just blew my mind. :)
Happy days!
Well, I just got home from Maelstrom. On the whole it was a very positive experience, although it didn't turn out in any way that I had expected.
It started off very badly. I'd had two panic attacks on the Friday before it was even Time-In and felt progressively worse as the evening drew on. By Saturday morning I was having such a bad panic/stress/anxiety attack that I ended up in First Aid. So I gave up on playing and asked if I could NPC crew instead - they were very nice and agreed straight away. Crewing turned out to be an absolute blast and I thoroughly enjoyed myself and they seemed very happy with what I was doing as well. The end result is that they invited me to join the NPC/Plot team as a permanent member - quite an honour as apparantly they are very selective about who they invite!
So I'm now eagerly looking forward to the next game, to which I will be returning as crew! Yay! :)
So after many years of being utterly terrified of the concept, I'm finally going to try Maelstrom this weekend. Scary.
I've arranged for someone to feed the kitties. I've made travel arrangements. I've nearly finished designing my character.
Only one question remains.
Which of my many sets of awesome armour should I take...?
Oh decisions decision...
The reason I did this is because tonight in the pub in London, someone showed me how to download the free Kindle app onto my Android phone. I then spent the entire trip home on the coach reading stuff - just under an hour's journey.
Why is this special?
I'm 34. I've travelled all over the place by various means and I have -never- been able to read anything on a coach or in a car before without turning green within 30 seconds and puking within 5 minutes.
I managed 45 mins of e-book without feeling the slightest bit sick.
This is perhaps one of the most awesome things ever for me. Be amazed!
So yeah, have splashed out for a Kindle. Hopefully, here's to less boring road trips as a passenger for the foreseeable future. :D
Death Unto Darkness got nominated for an award!
http://infinite-gateway.com/uk-larp-awareness-party-awards-nominations/
How neat is that? :)
For which I won a £200 (!!!!) voucher for LRPstore.
Now to decide what to get. So many shinies!
So on one hand, I'm running a game that sold out in under four minutes... But I feel more crappy about all the people who are missing out.
This sucks.
*sigh*
- A new belt.
- A proper holster for my bolt pistol.
- A much bigger belt pouch - large enough to hold spare clips, ammo, excruciator kit, and all the odd junk I get asked to carry around (rather than have to tuck highly sensitive remote explosives detonators inside my belt where it fell onto the floor multiple times).
- Something to phys-rep excruciator set (roll up bag of syringes and vials? Hmmm...)
- Paint body armour blue (instead of the horrible clashing camo pattern it currently has).
I have realised that I really really need a vacation.
A proper vacation. A sitting on the beach in the sun drinking cocktails, reading 40K fic and doing absolutely nothing productive whatsoever type of vacation.
Last time I did that was in 2003.
Anyone fancy going with me? (serious question)
This small event made a big impression on my 7 year old self. For the first time ever, I believed that I was quite good at something. Before then, writing stories was just one of those things we did in class and I hadn't given it a second thought. After that, it became a passion, something that I ploughed into with great enthusiasm. Something I did for fun. I soon realised that when released from the confines of 'write about what your family did at the weekend', I could be very creative.
I've been writing for 26 years now. During that time, I've won more prizes, I've been to classes and I've refined my style. I've had material published in various places and even started a short-lived meme on WoW as a result of a website article I wrote when I worked for them. Over all those years and projects, I've improved and improved. It's now at the stage where even I (Miss Uber-Low Self Confidence) can step back and go 'I'm damn good at this'.
Other people seem to agree. My Warhammer 40K interactive on RPGnet is now getting comments along the lines of 'why haven't you submitted something to Black Library yet?'. (I'm like 'I did already. They never got back to me. Next year though....'). It's nice to see the comments though. :)
I don't think they are allowed to give prizes in schools any more. I think this is sad. That one little thing really did change my life.
Oh I just love it when someone doing casting gets it absolutely perfectly spot on for me. Happy days. :)
I get to stomp around in armour AND I get to do the 'Inquisitor' thing. Awesome!
You are the Captain of the Bishop's guard and have been journeying through
blighted lands, towards the castle of Thibaut de Beaumont where Arnulph, the
Bishop of Poitiers, will be holding a betrothal ceremony for the Dukes daughter,
Eleonore and Count Foulques IV of Anjou. With the apparent presence of Dark
Forces at work, the Bishop has added the task of searching out practitioners of
witchcraft to your normal tasks of managing his troops.
So to get some writing practice in (particularly when it comes to descriptive stuff which is my weak spot), I started an interactive 'choose-your-own-adventure- style story thread on RPGnet. It's coming out really well, so here's a link for anyone who's bored and wants something to read. :)
It's about an Imperial Inquisitor (surprised? Really? Nooooo...) hunting heresy across the sector.
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=544768
The guy sitting at the desk next to me just made a phone call. I overheard. I gawped and laughed. Some quotes from his side of the phone call:
"Excuse me, I'd like to purchase some muscle cells."
"Human muscle cells."
"Yes, coronary."
"How much would that cost?"
"You don't have any immortalised?"
"I'm having real problems getting immortalised cells, do you know why?"
"Do they come with a guarantee?"
I can't remember what triggered this off, but it resulted in a competition for downtimes submitted in the most bizarre and crazy way. And the number and standard of entries was fantastic, ranging from one writing in icing on top of a chocolate cake, one slipped in as a IC prop into another game, one sung in karaoke...
The memory just made me sit back and smile for a good long while. Good stuff!
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