Star Crossed Musing

Seriously. A ton of them. The house I'm staying out is out in the woods and there are a lot of ponds and rivers and inlets in the area. The front of the house is quiet, but man, out by the back windows, it's a chorus of basso profundo frogs in fine voice, making with the joyful froggie sounds in earnest. The odd thing, to me, was that when I first heard it, I was suprised and had to think of what it was. I honestly couldn't place it for a sec, and then when I did, I was both happy and sad. Happy to be hearing it again, and sad because at my house, there are no frog sounds from the woods and wetland. The forest floor is silent. Down in the bottom of our yard, you see, it is not anything one would recognize as a pond. There used to be something more pond like on the other side of our property line, on land owned by a church, but they went to a lot of trouble to drain it -- of course, they didn't level it, so it came back, which makes me wonder just what the point w

So back in the day, I ran a Dresden Files RPG game. It was the first game I'd GMed in quite some time and I was really nervous, but it came out well, I think. You can read the write-ups here, if you want.  It ran for 13 sessions and wrapped the first "season" pretty well. (I like to use the TV show metaphor for planning games -- it helps me get a handle on character arcs and such.) That was before my MA exams -- god, back in 2010. But now, here in 2014, most of those players are still in the weekly group, and they're still wanting to play in the next installment of this game. Plus I've got two new people, both of whom are excited. With everyone on board, let slip the corgis of adventure! Ahem. Anyway, so some background: This group has chosen Baltimore as its city, though not the Baltimore writeup in the core book. This Baltimore's problems include it being a last stand of the Black Court, having demons in the driver's seat, and there there's m

I did not finish all my movie reviews, and it's now the night before Oscars, and I have made (in preparation for our Oscar dinner bash) cider syrup, candied black sesame seed "stars" and Guinness chocolate cake -- as well as cleaning a ton of the things. There are still things to clean, mind you, but with the help of a terribly good friend and a remarkably good-natured stepdaughter, great progress was made. So. The last of the Oscar movies that I've seen: Movie: The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013) Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), Best Supporting Actor (Jonah Hill), Best Director (Martin Scorsese), Best Adapted Screenplay (5 nominations total). This is based on the biography of Jordan Belfort, who is really just an odious human being who got rich through have absolutely no sense of ethics or responsibility to himself or others. He's done his time in prison and now we have his book, which is about all the things