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December 4th, 2008
01:43 pm
We took an impromptu weekend trip to Chicago. What a lot there is to do in The Windy City! We planned our trip around Chi-TAG (http://www.chitag.com/index.htm) at Navy Pier. It's like a smaller, more family-oriented GenCon. I'd say it has the potential to develop into something really great. We were able to demo several games. Standards like Yahtzee and Sorry! have been updated. We played Yahtzee. The new innovations involve a deck of cards, which tell you what you need to collect on your roll, and a box for the game that has a felt bottom and can be used for rolling dice. Changes to the mechanics have players collecting the cards, which have different point values, either by matching dice rolls to three cards on the board or to a card held in another player's "bank" (thereby stealing someone's points). The winner is the person who has the highest number of points at the end of the game, so this adds a bit of tension and makes you have to strategize a little bit.
Out of the Box (http://www.otb-games.com/showcase/party.html) was well-represented. We picked up a few of their "quick" games at GenCon a couple years ago -- My Word!, Qwitch, Blink -- and really enjoy them. At Chi-TAG, we demo'ed The Chain Game with the game inventor and decided to purchase it. Each player gets a "chain" of links. One player starts the game by drawing a card that has a compound word on it and reads the word aloud. The next player has to use one part of the compound word to make a new word, and turns go around the group with each player building off the word the previous player came up with until someone gets stumped. So "snowball" might lead to "snowman" which might lead to "postman" which might lead to "fireman" which might lead to "campfire," and so on. If you break the chain, you lose one of your links, and the last person with a link wins. Each new round is started by the next player, and the leader of each round gets a horn to blow if s/he feels a player is taking too long to come up with a new link and has become stumped. Not crazy about the horn, but the game was fun.
We had lunch at one of the Navy Pier (http://www.navypier.com/) restaurants. Had the Ferris wheel been running, I would've been game for taking a spin. But it was a bit on the cold side, and the outdoor activities were closed for the season. Heading from Navy Pier to our hotel (a great find made using Hotwire.com), we encountered an excessive number of pedestrians and lots of traffice. It turns out there was some kind of holiday parade about to start in the area. Well, who knew? It wasn't something we'd though to check for on the event calendar. As navigator, I also found it challenging to point Ed in the right direction as our map and reality sometimes didn't mesh. Why? Because Chicago has multi-layered roads, and the inset map of Chicago in our road atlas didn't take this into consideration at all. Contending with the crowds, closed roads, stupid multi-layered roads, and our general unfamiliarity with the city wore us out. I think it took nearly an hour to get from Navy Pier to the hotel, and they're less than 2 miles apart. Ed was a champion driver.
He also found a Russian restaurant not far from where we were staying, so knowing my fondness for things Russian, he made a reservation. We had a nice walk up Michigan Avenue, where we found the Russian Tea Time (http://www.russianteatime.com/) not far from the Art Institute. The service was excellent, the food was delicious, and the peach vodka was wonderful. I wish we had had more time to chat with the waiter. He had a great sense of humor and seemed to take a real pride in the restaurant, and we conversed a little in Russian. Unlike most other Russian restaurants we have dined in, this place had a large selection of vegetarian-friendly appetizers and entrees, so Ed had choices to make! We had latkes with applesauce to start -- really tasty. I had golubtsi (stuffed cabbage, Russian-style), and Ed had an Uzbek chickpea stew that was nicely flavored. My entree came with a carrot salad, and Ed's with the carrot salad and a beet salad... so very Russian, beets. *smile* We shared a bread pudding for dessert; it reminded me a little of the babka recipe that one of my friends taught me to make while I was in Moscow. I had the most flavorful cup of hot tea that I've ever had in my life with dessert. Our waiter said it was from Russia, but it was so fruity and delightful that I have to wonder at that. I mean, it just didn't seem like a fruit-flavored black tea. Perhaps we'll be able to visit whenever we get back to Chicago.
After dinner we walked over to an art installation not far from the Art Institute. Lights and faces. Not sure what it was about. It was even colder, so we didn't tarry over-long. Walking back to the hotel, we checked out some of the more traditional sculptures in the park and briefly warmed ourselves under the canopy of lights at a hotel along our path.
Sunday morning we had breakfast at Artists' Cafe (http://www.artists-cafe.com/). The coffee was excellent, breakfast delish. Ed rhapsodized about his omelette. The diner was a nice little bit of fun. We left the cafe for the Art Institute (http://www.artic.edu/aic/). So many beautiful, interesting things. I really enjoyed walking around the museum with my husband, comparing notes on what we liked and didn't like about different pieces. This was a new and different conversation for us -- although it's really similar to what we do in bookstores when checking out the covers of the new arrivals -- and learning about each other's likes and dislikes was as entertaining as the art. Unfortunately, the mini-vacation had to come to an end. We left the museum (without even visiting the museum shop, which I consider to be a really big sacrifice on my part... *hah*), walking back to pick up our car at the hotel in the bright sunshine. The air still had a chill, but everything was beautiful, the kind of urban wonderfulness that makes you understand a little more the attraction of living in a major metropolitan area. We thought we might walk more if we were to live in a large city, and I wondered how often we would take advantage of places like the Art Institute, Field Museum, or Shedd Aquarium if they were just right there. There are a lot of things to do that we rarely take advantage of where we live now, though lately we have been making more of an effort.
The drive out of Chicago, like the drive into the city, was hampered by some road construction and an amazing lack of a well-marked detour on the highway. I suppose it's fitting that getting in and getting out, as the activities that bookended the trip, were so exasperating. It was as if a barrier separated the mundane world of the workweek from the magic world of the vacation, making the latter all the more magickal. Appropriate for a couple who read and write fantasy fiction, no? *grin*
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September 23rd, 2008
01:46 pm - Blame Ginko
She started it. Post your responses in comments, please.
01) Are you currently in a serious relationship?
02) What was your dream growing up?
03) What talent do you wish you had?
04) If I bought you a drink what would it be?
05) Favorite vegetable?
06) What was the last book you read?
07) What zodiac sign are you?
08) Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? Explain where.
09) Worst Habit?
10) If you saw me walking down the street would you offer me a ride?
11) What is your favorite sport?
12) Do you have a Pessimistic or Optimistic attitude?
13) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?
14) Worst thing to ever happen to you?
15) Tell me one weird fact about you.
16) Do you have any pets?
17) What if I showed up at your house unexpectedly?
18) What was your first impression of me?
19) Do you think clowns are cute or scary?
20) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?
21) Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?
22) What color eyes do you have?
23) Ever been arrested?
24) Bottle or can soda?
25) If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?
27) What's your favorite place to hang out at?
28) Do you believe in ghosts?
29) Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
30) Do you swear a lot?
31) Biggest pet peeve?
32) In one word, how would you describe yourself?
33) Do you believe/appreciate romance?
34) Favourite and least favourite food?
35) Do you believe in God?
36) Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?
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September 9th, 2008
02:33 pm - Well, it's been a long while....
I'm teaching as adjunct faculty at Ivy Tech Community College this semester. It's exciting to be back in the classroom, and I really enjoy working with these students. So many of them are at major turning points in their lives, whether the turning point is graduating high school, being laid off work, or returning to school after many years simply because it's time to do so. I have been warned that the attrition rate can be quite high. (Last semester someone started the semester with twenty students and ended it with fewer than five.) That will be tough to deal with.
My short story "The L.I.L.I.T.H. System" appears in the anthology, Lilith Unbound, edited by Elaine Cunningham. EC is posting excerpts of different pieces in the antho on her website. My story hasn't been showcased yet (and may not be), but its characterization of Lilith is referred to in the blurb. *heh*
Work has kept both Ed and me busy throughout the summer. Nonetheless, we found time to do some painting in the house: willow green in the master bath, Caribbean blue in the guest bath, apricot in the half-bath; sunshine yellow in my office; lime green in his office. And we've chosen the colors for the master bedroom -- orange poppy -- and the LR/DR/kitchen "great room" on the main floor -- ripe mango on two walls and vanilla sugar on two walls. The stairwell and upstairs hallway will also probably be done in the vanilla sugar.
At my day job, we welcomed new students from Burma, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Liberia, the Netherlands, Poland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam to start the fall semester. I think it will be an interesting year and look forward to getting to know them. That is the best part of my job.
Congrats to my brother Chris and his new wife Kristin. Their wedding took place at the end of August and necessitated a quick trip to lovely Rochester, NY. Ed and I were honored to serve as readers during the ceremony, and I think my new favorite poem is one of the readings -- Walt Whitman's "I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing." It doesn't hurt that it reminds me of one of my favorite Russian folk songs, "Tonkaya Ryabina" (lyrics -- scroll a bit; YouTube performance).
That week also saw the death and funeral of someone whom I will miss very much and would have liked to know longer.
We have been putting together a website for me to try to drum up some freelance editing work. It's a slow process. We keep getting distracted by other things. And I have failed miserably at coming up with good content -- because I am writing with too much self-consciousness, I think.
The best movies I saw this summer were superhero flicks -- Iron Man and Dark Knight. The best TV we watch via Netflix; it's a toss-up between Weeds and Big Love, I think. (We need to catch up on Battlestar Galactica, which, admittedly, might win out over all of the rest.) The last book I read was Covenant by Mel Odom, the final installment in the trilogy based on the Hellgate: London game. To shake things up a bit, I've got Twenty Letters to a Friend, a memoir by Josef Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, on the bedside table next. Best music? Well, we were able to see Feist earlier this year, and that was fun.
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March 17th, 2008
10:51 am - A Worthy Cause
My brother Kevin and his friends are a tight-knit group of folks. By virtue of being Kevin's sister and brother-in-law, Ed and I have met some really wonderful people and have been welcomed warmly at their get-togethers. Nearly two years ago, when Carrie died shortly after giving birth to twins, we were stunned and saddened. We had just seen Carrie and Lawrence at Kevin and Amy's wedding. We knew her as a lively, warm, caring person. (I think she first met Ed on an evening when we were playing Mafia, and she astutely called his bluff. It made me laugh.) There was just so much wrong about her death. We felt it, though we weren't part of that inner circle of friends.
There are a couple news stories online about Carrie's life and death.
The gist: She had Turner Syndrome. There were some medical problems. But the pregnancy wasn't expected to cause complications.
Lawrence and the twins are getting along, helped by family and friends.
And on June 7th, there will be a silent auction/walkathon sponsored by a foundation that they've set up. To honor Carrie's memory. To raise money for families affected by Turner Syndrome. If you'd like more information, please let me know. If you would like to donate something for the silent auction, you can contact me or Patrick and Ellen Holifield (give them my name). Also, I plan to walk and would welcome sponsors.
Short of that, how about giving someone a hug and telling them how much they mean to you today?
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09:32 am - The Roof Over Our Heads
It's been a buyer's market here for a while, and we had been idly talking about looking for a house. Idle talk turned to window shopping online at homefinder.org, which resulted in driving around town checking out places that had piqued our interest online. And that resulted in contacting a realtor. It wasn't long before we'd checked out a handful of different places with her and found two that we really, really liked. Then two became one that we liked more than any other place. After thinking about it a bit, we realized it wasn't just that we liked it more than the other places we'd seen; actually, we liked it a whole lot on its own merits, and we could see ourselves living in it. So we called the realtor and made an offer. Now, with counteroffers, the mortgage, inspections, assessments, appliance-purchasing, and movers arranged, we're counting down the days until we move into our new home: a 3BR, 2.5BA townhouse with a wonderfully open layout, a spacious deck, solid construction, excellent location... It's just so lovely!
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/niaha/kitty/ankhyper.gif) bouncy
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December 17th, 2007
11:23 am - Spread the word -- FreeRice
Heard about this on NPR this morning... FreeRice.com, where you can test your vocabulary and help raise donations. Nifty!
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/niaha/kitty/ankhappy.gif) happy
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November 27th, 2007
01:33 pm - Finally
Although the distributors don't seem to have succeeded in getting it to this part of the Midwest in a timely fashion, today is the day that Ed's novel, Neversfall, should be hitting shelves in the sf& f section of bookstores across the United States! (Yep, right there next to that other Ed G. *wink*)
If you're so inclined, please drop us a note in the comments to let us know you've seen it at your local bookstore.
Current Mood: bouncy
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November 7th, 2007
11:06 am - How Things Are
Contracts are signed and in the mail, final edits done, brief bio still on the to-do list, so I reckon it's OK to say that I sold a story titled "The L.I.L.I.T.H. System" to EC's anthology, Bound is the Bewitching Lilith. It's a fun piece, and EC pretty much made the whole process painless. Look for the antho at Popcorn Press, and expect to see renewed commitment on my part to completing writing projects and sending them out into the world to find an audience by way of a publisher. (Encouragement on that last part always welcome, of course.)
I was at a work-related conference last week, and I had the opportunity to attend a luncheon where the keynote speaker was Dr. Robert Einterz, who introduced us to the work of the Academic Model for Prevention and Treatment of HIV/AIDS (AMPATH), under the umbrella of the Indiana-Kenya Partnership. There's some incredible work being done here, building on the foundation of medically treating HIV/AIDS with prevention, education, empowerment, employment. I feel very lucky to have been present to learn about this program and the people whose lives have been touched by it. Determining how to act on this new-found knowledge is at the top of my to-do list. Letting others - even just the few people who read this - know about it is a start.
The cats have had a difficult few months, Gracie in particular. We learned that she is diabetic and tried to correct that through diet (a special crunchy cat food with a high-protein, low-carb formula, which is apparently modeled on the nutritional intake a cat would get from eating mice, a fact that always makes me think of Farley Mowat). Her glucose levels were still too high, so we had to learn how to give her shots and she's getting the tiniest bit of insulin twice daily now. We won't know until she's tested again, but she does act like a different cat now. Unfortunately, not long after she started the insulin, she picked up a cold from George the Plaguebearer. He shook it off, but not before she got sick -- to the point where she'd started becoming dehydrated by the time we got her to the vet. For about ten days, we had to pill her, give her nose drops, and do the insulin shots. Let me just say that I'd so much rather give her a shot than a pill: Ed and I are less likely to walk away wounded and bleeding when giving her a shot.
Ed's book, Neversfall, comes out at the end of the month! I'm really looking forward to seeing it on shelves. The cover art is gorgeous, and the novel's a fun read -- and I'm not saying that just because he's my husband! :-) (I'd love to tantalize you with teasers about action and intrigue, strategizing and fighting, characters who struggle to uphold their convictions, and enemies who are truly of a different ken, but there's a whole department full of people who are paid by WotC to do that sort of thing and I'd hate to, you know, step on their toes...) He's also given WotC a story featuring a character from the novel, and I assume it will appear here at some point in the not-too-distant future.
So that's how things are. (And this is an experiment -- posting to LJ and the blog.)
Current Location: Indiana
Current Mood: content
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November 22nd, 2005
08:49 am - Welcome and redirect...
Per Lynnette's suggestion (and because Blogger doesn't seem to support this "open ID" thing Piglet suggested trying), here's an LJ page. My regular blog, Lost in Fallen Leaves, is still at http://www.lifl.blogspot.com. I believe there should be a link to it somewhere on this LJ page.
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enna_aral's journal