Liralen's Adventures Through Life

Sometimes, I think that scientists, early on and at a very early age, get an tremendous education through classic Halloween horror stories on the pitfalls and error of disregarding the opinions or feelings or thoughts of the rest of the human race, especially if they're particularly brilliant. That just because you might think they're stupid or slow or whatever doesn't mean that what they think or feel doesn't matter or that they can't hurt you badly if you treat them badly. Everything from Frankenstein to Dracula to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea all tell the same sort of story. Don't put yourself above or beyond humanity, or the mobs with the pitchforks and torches will be coming for you. Not that we all *get* that lesson, but still... I got it pretty early, and I think my time at Caltech made me VERY aware that I'm not really that smart, and certainly not smart enough to act like some idiots with very high IQs. So I en...

This year, as with every year, Carl and I started planning for the run up to BigBadCon and the convention itself months in advance. It's good to build upon the delicious bones of adventures past to create precise structures for the future with just enough room and juice in it to allow for the wonderful surprises of what's to come. We actually created a wiki for everything, including what we were doing each day, and details of the games and everything. And during BigBadCon's signups, I didn't get into several games I'd wanted to get into, including one of Carl's, and I was pretty disappointed at first, but then I realized that 1) I'd gotten into a lot of stuff I really truly wanted to get into and 2) I had room for something to surprise me in really good ways. There were other surprises, to start, that weren't all so good. One of which was having my temporary crown pop out the weekend before I left, so Monday morning found me in the dentist...

The dentist had noticed that I had some significant bone loss around a few teeth, so he scheduled me for an extra-long session with the hygenist. I was not looking forward to that, either... but went in today to get it done. Lucky for me, the bone loss is mostly from my habit of grinding my teeth. Even with a toothguard, the loss has been pretty significant, but it's not periodontal disease, thank goodness. I don't have the inflammation, nor do I have significant plaque buildup, and my gums are healthy as can be. The hygienist was amazingly thorough, delved into places that she was even surprised she was able to get to, and ended up finishing half an hour early. She also cut the bill to just two-thirds the original quote, simply because I didn't need anything more than what she'd done. She also gave me the usual goodie bag of brush, floss, flossers (for my bridge), and toothpaste. Plus, she gave me the added assurance that my bridge was on solid, and no worries there....

I'm not sure how I forgot about this in that last entry... but I finally finished my Tuscan Sunflower Shawl. Took about four months, and I ripped it out twice to get it to go right. It's a knitpick.com pattern, and I used the Comfy cotton yarn for it. I love the texture. It was pretty much what I wanted it to be, but a little too small for me. Luckily, it's going to be a present for someone who is smaller than I am, and she loves sunflowers. I managed to finish it, wash it, and as you can see, pin it out to dry using my lace wires. There were a few painful points to the pattern itself. One was that the increases weren't regular, they weren't done the same way with each repeat of the pattern, and going with what had gone on before was why I'd had to rip it back once. The other really painful bit was that each and every petal at the edge had to be done with a different piece of yarn. You had to cut the yarn at the end of each petal, which meant that I had to w...

Just been on a kind of recovery schedule... taking it easy, mostly, but trying to get some physical work in to let me sleep at night. Yesterday I spent hours on the rose garden, wedding, watering, and dead-heading in full sun, and it was wonderful. We've had a month of rainier and wetter weather than we're used to, which is nothing compared to what we used to get in Seattle, but here it was pretty unusual, so it's been nice that this week we're back to high-80's during the day and 50's at night, so that it's comfortable to sleep. Today I got to write with Amber a little later than usual. I had a good long walk through the whole neighborhood, too, along with a much needed two hour nap. I'm just wiped and not exactly sure why, but I'm sleeping when my body seems to really need the sleep. So that's all to the good. I also had about fifteen minutes of TF2 gameplay with Jet. We usually play around 7pm mountain time through to about 8, just when ...

I had a crown that had a hole in it and I was NOT looking forward to replacing it. At all. But I went into the dentist this morning and they took off the old crown. There was a small cavity underneath it, which they quickly removed. They built it all up again, and then took an impression of both the inside and the outside, and then made me a temporary crown and put it on. It hurt doing it, for all the doctor did a great job of applying the novocaine, to the point where I couldn't feel my tongue or that side of my mouth; but now it hurts a lot less than I thought it would. They adjusted everything beautifully, and for all that they tore up my gums pretty good getting it in and clearing out all the old stuff, the tooth itself doesn't hurt as much as it used to or nearly as much as it did when the old, badly made crown was put in place. I suspect that the cavity was starting to affect it a little, and having it covered up well, now, makes it happier. There were a lot of small ...

Yesterday I had our monthly Cabinet meeting, and it always takes a lot out of me, but we got through everything on the agenda and got out of the meeting with three minutes to spare. I really am aware of how much people sacrifice to get to these meetings, so I try to make the best use of their time. But it left me pretty flat this morning, but I was up at 6:50 to meet up with Amber, a friend of mine, whom I word war with at 7 am every Thursday morning. She's a lawyer so has to get to work by 9 on that day at least, so we just get the words in before she leaves for work. Right at 9 am, Gina showed up with 10 pounds of white grapes from the vines in her backyard and all the ingredients for jelly. We did two entire batches of grape jelly, five pounds of grapes per, with one package of pectin and a lot of time and a very nice food mill. PickYourOwn.org has a very nice recipe that details the whole process , and the Sure-Jel people have a very solid recipe for the jelly. So solid I...

A friend of mine had a ton of crabapples on her crabapple tree. They were the larger variety, thank goodness, but she and her husband had bagged them up in bags that had nearly seven pounds of the little suckers in 'em. They brought them to church to give away to anyone that would take them. Several people took home bags, including me, since one of my younger friends at church said that crabapple jelly was the best thing ever, and my friend, Mimi, had actually served me some of her crabapple jelly on goat cheese on crackers and it was very tasty indeed. The thing is that every single crabapple had to be cleaned, and the blossom and the stem cut off. I also threw out every one that had a worm in it, and every single one that wasn't quite good anymore. There weren't that many of them, but all of them had to be cut into in order to figure out if they were any good or not. That is probably what took the longest time. The next thing I had to do was just cook 'em in...

I actually ran a tabletop RPG game for Jet and Teddy last week and it's turning into something we can probably do on-going. I ran it with Dungeon World, and found it far easier than I thought it would be. And I've been playing and watching a lot more TF2 in the last week than I thought I'd be watching, and it's turning into a lot more fun than I thought it would be, too. The Dungeon World adventure was really good. Dungeon World really sets things up so that the GM really has to listen to the players throughout and figure out which way to go and explore the game and figure out how it's going to go, together. I set up a pretty simple three-stage adventure, and both Teddy and Jet gave me bits in the first two fights that I was able to use in the third face-to-face with the big Baddy. The interesting thing was that my grasp of the numbers at an intuitive level (I hadn't really sat down to work through all the exact numbers for how strong the last villain was wi...

Finally got past a bit of a barrier about my dental stuff. I'd had a bad experience with a dentist in the spring, and finally got around to finding a new one, and doing all the things that I needed to do to get all my records to a new place that someone I really do trust a great deal recommended. I'd been thinking, nearly all summer about the fact that I should get it done, but it took me months before I actually did it. And the hardest part was just picking up the phone to call the old office to tell them that I wanted them to transfer the records. Especially since their main office manager is a mom that we know well from carpools and the bus stop as she's in the neighborhood. I had all these fears in my head, but when I made the request she was perfectly professional and perfectly helpful, and it was such a relief.

We got up a little earlier than usual because we knew we'd have to go a good number of miles before we got where we had to be that night. I'd also been pretty disappointed by Whisk the previous morning, so I looked through all the food magazines in the hotel and found Brown's Court Bakery . Two words: Sriracha Croissant. It was a classical bakery in one of those classical Charleston floor plan houses, with the narrow front to the street, and the open porches and true front door on the "side" of the house, allowing for outdoor access year-round. The interior was wide open, too, employing the concept of hot air rising, to let all the hotter air in the house rise to the top floor and get vented up there. Tall vaulted ceilings in the top floor helped give more room for the hot air to be away from the people. What I truly loved, though was seeing the flour in a pile right there in the front sales room. Jet got the tangy, buttery, sriracha croissant and a hot choc...