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Tuesday, May 29th, 2012

willowkitty

7:10p Well, they figured out how to get me to stop coughing. Im drinking lidocaine. Seriously.

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traceroo

11:24a Spazmanian Devil I've got the Math heebie-jeebies. I've got an asinine mental block against math, and I have since I was in 3rd grade. My father used to keep me up late every night working through my math book -- not making fun little math games, or solving interesting puzzles -- just working through the dry book with its examples of things using the Metric system which had no real world examples for me at the time. (2-Litre Cokes hadn't even been invented yet.) I loathe math. I shut off that part of my brain at age 9, and now at age 41, believe me there has been no peaceful reconciliation there. I'm taking a pathetic math class online this summer -- Career Math. It's so woeful, that it doesn't even qualify as the pre-requisite for Pre-Algebra. It's useful as the math component to satisfy what's needed for my AAS degree in Paralegal Studies. I'd need to take more classes, or study independently (ha!) and pass the entrance exam to get into College Algebra to satisfy the AA degree if I go there later. (Yes, I've taken the test, and no I'm not just being modest here -- I failed it miserably, and got places into, "Math for Protozoa," or "Math For Single-Celled Organisms," or something.) Anyway - today is the first day of class for the Summer term, and even the mere act of logging onto the website for my math class has me breathing quickly, and spazzing out. This is stupid. I know this is stupid. If other people were doing this, I'd try to express sympathy, but I'd think - correctly - that the person was acting stupidly. I am an intelligent person. I am a hard worker academically. I like online classes and the opportunity to work independently. I have Ian, and other local math tutors to work with my in-person. Even my school offers resources for free tutoring. All that, and I only have to earn a C to get my degree. I got this. So if the unconscious reaction of Total Spazmania would please pipe down, I'd sure appreciate it. Taos! At the other end of the relaxation spectrum, Ian and I had a wonderful, restfully invigorating weekend away in Taos, New Mexico! We're not vacationing sorts; we just don't go much of anywhere, so even a little 3-day getaway by car was very exciting to me. The drive from our house into Taos is about 5 hours through some really breath-taking scenery -- I'll have a couple of photos for you... someday. I'd never been through Colorado Springs before, even though it's under 2 hours from our house. Wow! What a gorgeous place that is! The city is right at the foot of the mountains, just gorgeous scenery there! Added to that, we found a location of Rudy's BBQ there to which we had been introduced in Austin, TX. Great BBQ and the only creamed corn I have ever had made from scratch in my life. Delish! That was a nice treat toward the end of our journey back on Sunday. You would not believe the luxury of the hotel where we stayed! Neither Ian nor I had ever stayed anywhere so swank in our lives. The website for the El Monte Sagrado makes it look nice, but believe me, it can't hold a candle to the place in reality. We had this gorgeous 1-bedroom suite with a balcony which overlooked a little koi pond with lily pads and weeping willows around it. Every little detail of both the room and the grounds was gorgeous. What a treat! Then for an even greater treat, we spent all day Saturday with artiphant and davetheunicorn, a/k/a Gail & Dave. That was really the impetus for the trip since they were vacationing in northern New Mexico, and I mentioned to Gail that - hey - we don't live too far from there. We spent the day wandering Taos proper, going through little craftsy stores and art galleries, and things, stopping for drinks and eventually dinner in open-air plazas. It was incredibly windy that day, but otherwise the dry, sunny weather was great for that sort of thing. It was so nice to see them again after, I think, about three years since we last met. Ian and I brought home a new friend, whom I'll have to photograph to introduce you. We've named him Diego. Diego is a crafted metal compy, deliberately rusted, who now stands guard next to the front walk of our house. He's about 2-and-a-half feet tall, I'd say. Diego has sharp little teeth, and he's adorable! I always wanted to fill my yard with bizarre and amusing little metal sculptures and things. Diego is leading the vanguard into the yard of Moriarty Manor. He's adorable! Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds... A few nights before our trip, I finally got around to starting The Hunger Games, which has been sitting on my nightstand since March. I enjoyed it from p. 1, and I was anxious to get some relaxing time to read this weekend, which I certainly did -- out on the veranda with the sound of fountains trickling nearby, while "swimming" in the giant bathtub in our hotel room, or just propped up on 10,000 cushy hotel pillows in our room. Wisely, I picked up Book 2, Catching Fire before we departed. I burned through that book in under 24 hours, which is completely unheard of for me, as I physically read very slowly. Just thoroughly enjoyed this series! I'm about 40% through Mockingjay now, just about at the start of its internal Part II. As soon as I hit Post Entry, I'm off to lunch when I get to read read READ, and I can't wait! Trace current mood: cheerful

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Friday, May 25th, 2012

willowkitty

11:22p Looks like i am headed to a pulmonologist. The xray shows that the nodule is smaller, and they want to take another set in six months, but noone seems too worried about that. The issue is that with an inhaled steriod, a nasal steroid and albuterol puffs for the past six months, my asthma is not under control, if it is indeed asthma. I have the coughing and i have the wheezing, but i also keep passing spirometry. I cough myself to sleep at night. I havent found a medication yet that keeps that from happening. Its all so frustrating.

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Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012

tagmeth

7:05p Old Pantheon Revisited I think this is better, although not necessarily the final version. I'm still thinking about the animism aspect. Note that LJ doesn't allow me to italicize. Note also that this scene is preceded and followed by action sequences. Faint music sounded from the back of the cavern and the crowd stilled. It drew nearer, echoing – pipes, flutes, drums, something eldritch that might have been the wind whistling between the worlds. Figures advanced carrying torches. Their shadows preceded them, casting fantastic shapes on the cavern’s fissured walls. The crowd drew back as the procession entered the body of the cave. Jame was reminded of Mother Vedia’s approach on her feast day. There, in fact, she was, again seated like a living statue on an upraised litter, again surrounded by her dancing, snake-wreathed attendants, but this time without bats or followers. Before her went a gross figure looking like a younger version of the Earth Wife but also hugely pregnant, attended by a host of waddling women in a similar state. After them, unaccompanied, came a skinny crone carrying a box. While people cheered the other two, they turned away from this last figure, shielding their children’s eyes. “The Great Mother in her aspects of life-bearer, healer, and hungry tomb,” said Kroaky, raising his voice over the renewed clamor of the crowd as the next god emerged from the shadows. “What’s in the box?” “Death, of course.” Jame regarded the diverse figures and remembered her conversation with Gran Cyd, queen of the Merikit. Showing her a fertility figure and an imu, both representing the Earth Wife, she had said, “These images were ancient long before Mother Ragga was even born.” Jame had wondered at the time if the Earth Wife and the other three of Rathillien’s elemental Four, while each a distinct individual, wore different, older aspects in different cultures and were subject to older stories. Here, perhaps, was the answer. It raised a further question, however: how had the deification of the Four effected the Old Pantheon, which preceded them? There was the Earth Wife, in three of her native aspects. Next came a cauldron seething with river fish. Fingerling trout crept over the edge of the pot and pulled up a figure glittering with scales. Cold round eyes regarded the crowd through a net of green hair and pouting lips parted over needle teeth in a smile meant to entice. The Eaten One, thought Jame, or some variation of her, probably linked to the Amar. Did she also take a human lover? Where was Drie now, still blissfully in his beloved’s arms or deep within her digestive tract? The goddess of love and lost causes walked behind her, backward, gazing into a mirror whose surface rippled like water. Around her feet, threatening to trip her, swarmed a host of green and yellow frogs. “Geep!” they chorused. “Geep, geep, GEEP!” Rain pattered in their wake. Gorgo, thought Jame, happy to see an almost familiar face, or faces. She wondered how he and his priest Loogan were doing in Tai-tastigon. Sooner or later, she would have to find out. More followed. Those clearly aligned with the Four seemed to fare the best. Others passed as phantoms of their former selves, and received little recognition from the crowd. Who now worshipped that dog-faced being or that drifting tatter of silk, that musky orange glow or that thing of clattering bones? A dazzling light entered the cavern. “Ooh!” breathed the crowd, and covered their eyes. Jame peered through her fingers at the Sun in all his glory. She could almost make out a figure at the heart of the blaze, a man stumbling forward supporting a giant, swollen phallus with both hands. The moon circled him, her face alternately that of the maiden, the matron, and the hag, just like the pommel of the Ivory Knife. She looked up with shifting features and saluted Jame. “Sister, join us!” Was this also a mortal who had undergone at least a temporary apotheosis – Like the Guild Lords above? Like Dalis-sar in Tai-tastigon? Like she herself, eventually, if she became That-Which-Destroys? Heat washed through the cavern, worse than when the sun had come among them but without his dazzling light. An old woman carrying a heath-side firepot, a martial figure clanking in the red hot armor of war, and then a stillness. Heat gave way to a sudden, mortal chill. Jame felt the sweat on her brow turn cold. “I won’t look,” said Fang, and hide her face against Kroaky’s shoulder. A cloaked and hooded figure had entered the cavern. He made his way forward slowly, feeling ahead of him with an iron-shod staff. Why should he cause such dread? Perhaps it was the smoke seeping from within his garments. Perhaps it was the stench of burned flesh. Perhaps it was because he came alone, without attendants, and all turned their backs on him. “Nemesis,” said Kroaky, glaring down defiantly although his voice shook. “I had nothing to do with the old man’s death. Ask Tori. He was there.” “Wha …” Jame started to ask him, but memory caught her by the throat. My father, nailed to the keep door with three arrows through his chest, cursing my brother and me as he died …. “It wasn’t our fault,” she said out-loud. “D’you hear me, Burnt Man? Neither one of us was there!” Wind frisked into the cavern. It swirled around the dark figure, teasing apart his robe, releasing streamers of smoke until with a flick it twitched away the garment altogether. For a moment, a black form stood there, exposed. His charred skin was laced with glowing cracks; his eyes and gaping mouth were pits into nothing. Then the wind blew again, harder, and he crumbled from the head down into a shower of cinders. The crowd cheered. “They think he’s gone,” said Kroaky in an oddly husky voice, “but he always comes back. Like guilt. Like sorrow.” The wind remained, now tumbling about the onlookers, snatching off this man’s hat, flinging up that woman’s skirt. Laughter followed its antics, all the louder with relief. A figure appeared whirling like a dervish in a storm of black feathers. “Who …?” asked Jame. “The Old Man,” said Kroaky, almost reverently, holding down his ginger hair with both hands. “The Tishooo. The East Wind.” “In the Riverland, we call him the south wind.” “Well, he would come at you from that direction. In fact, he moves about pretty much as he pleases, the tricky old devil. Some say that he governs the flow of time itself in the Wastes, don’t ask me how. Here we most often get him direct from Nekrien. He keeps away the Shuu and the Ahack from the south and west, from the Barrier across the Wastes and from Urakarn. We don’t honor those here.” “What about the north wind?” “The Anooo? That blows us the Kencyr Host and occasional weirding. Blessing or curse? You tell me. Without the east wind and the mountains, though, Kothifir, Gemma, and the other rim cities would be buried in sand like the other ancient ruins of the Wastes.” The procession wound around the cavern until it reached its center. Here torches were set in holes drilled in the limestone floor and the avatars of the Four joined hands within the circle. They began to rotate slowly sun-wise. Their worshippers formed a withershin ring around them, then another going the opposite way, and so on and on, alternating, to the edges of the cave. Jame grew dizzy watching their gyrations. Everyone was chanting, but not the same thing: “There was an old woman …” “There was an old man …” “There was a maid …” “There was a young man ….” The circle next to the gods slowed, swayed, and reversed itself. One by one, the rest corrected themselves until all were revolving the same way, those innermost going slowly, those outermost running, panting, to keep up. The world seemed to shift on its axis. Torches flared blue, casting shadows across an open space grown impossibly wide, split by fiery sigils. They had opened Sacred Space.

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Monday, May 21st, 2012

tagmeth

2:36p Mediawestcon I've just learned of my first panel at a sf&f convention, Mediawestcon and, wouldn't you know it, the topic is "The Kencyrath: Why Doesn't Anyone Know about This Series?" Still, I'm glad of the mention. Maybe it will get me some new readers. I feel like a "best kept secret" but that, at least, is better than being completely invisible. Excitement at the stable this morning: I took Countess outside for the first time this season and she tried to buck me off. I lost a stirrup just as we left the grass and hit the hard gravel drive. My fault, though: I locked up on her reins due to nervousness. Still, how can a horse spend most of her time outside and still freak when asked to carry a rider there? We'll try again next time. I really do want to trail ride. Next month I'll be out in Portland again, but very briefly before we head out for the Olympic Peninsula. This will be my first road trip with Melinda and her five-year-old twins. Lord knows how it's going to go. PS. My next major convention is Chicon in Chicago at the end of the summer. I hope to see some of you there.

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Sunday, May 20th, 2012

tagmeth

1:18p Old Pantheon Gods Thanks for your feedback. It seems that I left myself fairly free to develop this class of gods, who don't have much of a role in Tai-tastigon. So here's your chance to contribute a god, if you feel so inclined. The rules: Bottom line: I haven’t said enough about the OP to significantly restrict me now. I can set them up more or less as I like a. They are Rathillien’s oldest gods, predating the Four and the Kencyr temples b. Their power initially came from the faith of their followers and from Rathillien directly. Now the latter is funneled through the Four. What change does that make? They are aware, grudgingly, that the Four have been elevated above them, as the Greek gods came to rule over and replace the titans as top dogs. (Did anyone ever worship the titans? Were they perhaps prehistoric deities?) c. They align with the Four. Those that didn’t either died off or are barely hanging on. It wasn’t a battle, just a fundamental shift in power. (?) d. OP Gods can appear in any aspect, human, animal, object, monster e. For most of the crafts and professions, people have turned to their Guild Lords and grandmasters, ie to the New Pantheon in Kothifir. People pray to Mercer for success in business, to Ruso for inspiration, to Shandani for health. They are the major pantheon with King Krothen as their Zeus. f. There’s still some overlap, though, eg. Vedia the healer who lives Undercliff. There may be other reasons for OP deities to exist even though NP gods roughly cover the same territory. I have some 14 OP gods, each linked to one of the Four, but could use more if only in passing. Any ideas?

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Friday, May 18th, 2012

tagmeth

3:27p Gods, etc. The prospect of knitting/crocheting projects has apparently inspired me. Since childhood, I've seen happiness in part as having at least one manual art project in hand and another waiting. Part of the gall in growing up has been wanting to see my efforts find an audience rather than doing them just for fun. When did I get so serious? And is it destructive to creativity? At any rate, I've figured out a number of things about the gods of Kothifir, Old and New Pantheon, which is a relief after banging my head against a wall for weeks. What I can't remember is what I said about the Old Pantheon in God Stalk. Did I only speak of it in terms of Dalis-sar, Gorgo, and Abarraden (sp)? Most of the gods Jame met and subsequently de-templed would seem to have been New Pantheon, since they were powered by the Kencyr temple. At the same time, I remember thinking that NP gods were based on human models while OP gods tended to have an animal or fantastic component. I dunno if that came through. What do you remember?

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willowkitty

11:45a I have this coworker that is driving me insane. Apparently i have been angering her for weeks but rather than telling me about it, she has been holding it in and just getting mad....and actively ignoring me. Since she is one of the people who is supposed to be teaching me my job, this is really annoying. With this new job, i made promises to myself. Create no personal relationship with coworkers and to do the best job that im capable of doing. There is a phone list at work that gets reprinted weekly. This week, i printed it so that every other line was shaded so that it was easier to see. Said coworker told me that if i didnt stop changing things that she would quit. I know i was never good at playing "the game" but what the hell? Is that really what people want? For an office staff who never strives to be more efficient? Or to make their office a smoother place to work? And really? Im accused of coming in and taking over because i want a phone list thats easy to read?

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