Items in a bad mood

1) A split in the skin at the spot where my baby toe meets the rest of my foot.

2) Having to get a chair from the dining room to reach the peanut butter, which at some point recently has migrated up one shelf. I discovered why - one package of pasta, rarely used, is taking up the space on the lower shelf, so my six-foot-tall husband simply moved the peanut butter up one shelf, not realizing that I couldn't reach it there. It's not that it's too high. The cupboard is wedged into the corner between the fridge and the wall, and it's set back so far that I can't reach any but the first few items on the lowest shelf without getting myself up higher.

3) Having a toddler who does not yet understand the concept of rewinding, and realizing that someone - I really don't know who - forgot to rewind Max and Ruby the last time it was watched, so as to avoid the screaming.

4) Finding out that, while most of my library books are due today and will be back on time, two AV items were due last week. I got the call from the library yesterday. Even worse, neither of them was actually used.

Favourite Gaming Stories

What follows here is a chapter from my first book. As many of you know, the book was based on the roleplaying campaign where I first learned how to actually portray a character. Captain Salvatore was created and played by wggthegnoll. I was playing Annarisse, and redstorm created and played (and wrote a few scenes for) Baron Treeden.

My character has the flaw of Honourable. It took me a while to figure out why Honourable was considered a flaw, but this scene put it to very good use. Captain Sal's flaws are quite beautifully portrayed in this scene. We played it out, and Captain Sal does actually perform the penance before the end of the campaign. I admit, I daydreamed about the penance for at least a week between sessions before I actually got to play it out. Patrick played along quite nicely. :)

( My favourite scene: the Confession )

The Newborn Connection

Posted for the benefit of curtana. Others amongst you may appreciate it. I've posted it before, I think, but I'm too lazy to search my lj for it when I can pull it up in Word much faster.

( The Newborn Connection )

A trip down memory lane. . .

Or at least, to St. Catharines.

My dad grew up in St. Catharines. I was born there. When I was eleven, the family moved back there for one year - three months living with my grandmother, then nine in a house we rented.

Well, my dad, my sister, Elizabeth and myself went to see my Aunt Jeanne this evening. Since we arrived in the city twenty minutes before Aunt Jeanne got off work, Dad decided to drive around a bit. We saw the house on Woodland Ave. where he lived as a teenager; the spot, now occupied by an extension on the hospital, where his house was when he was a child; Nana's house, that we lived in for one summer, the only place other than the retirement home that we ever remember her living; the house on Albert St. where we lived when I was born; the house on Princeway Dr. where we lived when I was eleven; the place where Foster Wheeler, the boiler factory, used to be; the bridge that the QEW used to go across, before the skyway was built to go over the Welland Canal; the canal itself, with only one midsize ship in it, and no ships at all in the dry dock that used to be the busiest and biggest shipyard on the St. Lawrence Seaway; the school I used to go to, which has apparently been sold to the francophone board, thereby dealing the death blow to my occasional musings about old teachers who would be near retirement by now (in fact, most of them are long since gone, since that was nineteen years ago now) and the rather sad-looking downtown, with its value stores and empty storefronts and a few - a very few - stores from generations past. One such was Dunn's Flower Shop, owned by one of the oldest families to settle on the Twelve Mile Creek, and the family that had the distinction of owning the first real bathtub in town.

We did not, however, drive by the place where the zipper was invented.

It was a nice evening, and interesting to see the changes to a place that was so permanently peripheral to most of my childhood.

Some commentary

On the Arar case. If you're Canadian and you haven't got a feed for these guys yet, correct the oversight pronto. It's well-thought-out political commentary, and it's often hilariously funny.

http://www.pogge.ca/archives/000863.shtml