Posts made by Raemira

@Macha said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@Derp That's what I keep telling myself. But I still keep thinking "Shit, I need to take Logan out." Or think I see him from the corner of my eye. I know this is all completely normal, when the mainstay of 9+ years is suddenly gone, but.. ouch.

I lost my boy on October 30, 2020. I didn't plan on getting a new dog right away after he died. I also did not anticipate all of the routines that I would miss that were a part of my life for the 9 years and some change I had him. After a couple of weeks, I couldn't take not having those routines and so in my grief I over compensated and got 2 dogs instead of 1 almost immediately.

Your grief is real. Just be kind to yourself and allow yourself to process it and figure out what your new normal is without him in your life.

Right then. If this is not a community, then it doesn't need repairing. There's nothing that can be repaired.

@Ghost As someone who has been an impartial observer since the schism, calling people fucking punks in a post that is trying to discuss being respectful and civil and repairing a community is neither genuinely respectful nor civil. Better word choices could have been used to get the point across and maintain respectful civility. Or, just reiterating the point:

People could create a topic on another forum where they don't have to be respectful or civil to one another.

Word choices matter, especially in a discussion about trying to repair a community.

I am FB friends with a lot of the authors I love; Tamoria Pierce, Mindy Klasky, Kelley Armostrong, Robin Hobb (aka Megan Lindhom), Kate Quinn, Lea Nolan, Kristen Britain, and several others. That's because at some point I used be part of the Maryland Romance Writers group, which was part of the Romance Writers of America. I attended monthly meetings with them because I had aspirations of writing at some point and then life got mired down in a big bog. From that attendance, I know some of them personally, and have either beta read their books or helped them with some research (Kate Quinn - The Rose Code - my husband gave her a tour of the car barn of Henry Petronis so she could see his his antique European Car collection and have Mr. Henry answer some of her car questions. Henry invented the screw on oil filter for cars.)

So, I follow them. See what they are reading, what they are releasing, learn about other places where they promote their books, or where sales might be going on, like Book Bub: https://www.bookbub.com/welcome -- where you can get titles either for free or for a cheaper price than the big box stores (or because the big box stores are using Book Bub to promote those sales). It's easy to try a new author through Book Bub with a lower risk of investment.

They will often recommend other authors because a lot of promoting your own books is also promoting the sales of others.

@arkandel said in Great TV:

The trailer for The Sandman is very good.

This is such a difficult piece of work though. Even though I'm happy to complain about other adaptations of my favorite works into TV series, but I'm not going to blame the producers in this case even if it doesn't translate well.

The original series uses amazing prose, inspired lettering, great - often moody - art... subtleties and wordplay that I have no idea how they can pull off on a TV screen. My hat's off to these folks if they do succeed, but I wouldn't hold it against them if it falls short.

Authors don't generally get a say in how things go, even when they are hired as 'consultants'. Usually, It's to shut them up. However, in this case, everything I've read seems to suggest that Neil Gaiman is heavily involved in this adaptation, so that might be promising considering he penned the prose.

Gaiman also co-wrote the script and is producing the show.

You may also want to look into Care Credit, if you have not already. See if your vet will take it. It is one of those credit card programs that you can use for both veterinary costs and regular personal medical costs. If your vet takes it, they have programs where you have something like 6 months to a year to pay off the debt with 0% interest. If you default paying it off, you accrue all of the interest, but if you pay within the terms - it's entirely interest free. Or, they'll offer a lower percentage rate. I signed up for this when my I took my dog to a neurologist in 2020 and it was really a lifesaver for me to help him get the care I felt he needed.

https://www.carecredit.com

I am so, so very sorry your dog is going through things. I ended up losing my guy in the end; the tumors were aggressively eating his spinal bones and crushing his spine, and had broken his back.

@kk

I kinda bombard folk in the MUSH with my gardening enthusiasm. It's a great way to take my mind off of other things. I had such pretty, pretty seedlings this year that died because my kitty got sick and died. I was taking care of her, so I've had to source some plants and some are being started from seed directly in the garden.

@misterboring They make grow bags that are fairly inexpensive that do the same thing as the raised beds! The grow bag is only $19-$20 on Amazon. The one I got this year is this model:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CYMWQFJ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It is 4 ft round, which means you're not really missing a lot of space out of the grow box that was in my earlier pictures. I wanted more boxes, but my brother-in-law who made it for me passed away last year. It would have only cost me the materials, but the bag makes up for it, kind of.

I grew tomatoes in grow bags last year, and they did very well. You can find the 10 gallon bags for pretty cheaply too. This is my garden from last year which show beans and tomatoes grown in bags.

https://imgur.com/gallery/wnD9q7x

This is my garden so far for this year:

https://imgur.com/gallery/C89ETo4

LOL. Also deleted my other post because I saw you were already doing my recommendations!!

@kk

I had to skim through Eye of the World for reminders. It's been a long time since I read the books.

***=Book Spoilers***

I think there's something to be said for the fact that both Harriet and Brandon are also very heavily involved as consultants. The show /doesn't/ have to use them. Once a contract is signed giving up your rights, producers usually pay authors (or their representatives) a stipend as consultant, and just don't consult them. They essentially pay them hush money and tell them to go away; every author ever will tell you this.

These two are the rare elite, like Diana Gabaldon with Outlander, where they have people willing to listen to them and allow them both to sign off on all the scripts and give notes that might be heeded. This is largely why I'm sitting back and comfortably watching things play out as they are. I think if they are as willing as they are to heed Jordan's wife and the person chosen to finish out the story, the major plot points will still be hit somewhere, even if the getting there is different than in the books.

@Wizz

***= ** Book Spoiler Reply to Your Spoiler *****

@runescryer said in The Wheel of Time:

@arkandel said in The Wheel of Time:

@dvoraen said in The Wheel of Time:

This thread makes me want WoT MU*s to be a fad again.

The problem with WoT MU*s is that we as fans disagree on just about everything about how they should be done.

Yeah, I think the best way to go with a WoT game would be to sell it as 'a different Turning of the Wheel'; which is basically what the show is doing. Have a lot of the basics (The One Power, the Dark One, the Dragon, the Forsaken, etc.), but also make some changes for the game to be more playable (men can be Aes Sedai; both men and women can be corrupted by using the One Power, just not as severely as in the books...)

I played on AngrealMOO II, Tales of Ta'veren and eventually became staff there, and I ran Cuendillar. I was very young when I ran Cuendillar. I made a lot of mistakes. There's so much I would change in how I approached things now that I have more experience GMing and running a game in general.

However, the major theme all three games had in common is that they always approached playing them as a different setting than the books, not so much turning of the Wheel, because that was a possibility with the Portal Stones taking you to different dimensions that allowed for a different weaving of the same timeline. Even Tales of Ta'veren II, which took Rhonda's and Tabbifli's existing game setting and code base, did the same thing - but in their case they were a Portal of the original Tales of Ta'veren. We didn't want to follow the roadmap already presented in the books.

This allowed us to still have male channelers and even the Forsaken, and allowed us to create our own Heroes and/or manifest them to become the Dragon should we wish, without needing the major book characters as the main characters in our setting.

There's a whole LOT a person can do with a Portal Stone setting, where anything is possible and the events that happened on one 'dimension' may not necessarily be the same as the 'other dimensions' through the stones; and the same people might not even be alive.

@rucket

Reason tucked away below.

***=*** Major Book Spoilers ******

@wildbaboons said in The Wheel of Time:

@arkandel said in The Wheel of Time:

Me, after watching that. To be fair I don't think the axe broke the shield. It exploding and hitting everyone did. But that the shield was a physical thing for the axe to pass through was weird.

They said they were using air weaves to stuff his ears, so likely they were also using air weaves to keep him in place too. They don't really explain much about splitting weaves, they just show things being done and its all white wispy stuff and poof there's flame and poof there's a shield and poof that block of earth just came at your head.

My Mom's Chicken Chow Mein Recipe

Chicken Chow Mein

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts – cut into bite sized pieces
3 eggs
pinch of pepper
pinch of sugar
1 tsp light soy sauce
3-5 tbsp corn starch
Sesame oil
1 medium onion, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 lb egg noodles
3 cups water

Advance Preparation:

Combine egg, pepper, sugar, soy sauce and chicken breast, let sit 30 minutes. For better taste/results, let sit overnight and cook next day in marinade.

Preparation:

Use sesame oil to lightly coat pan or wok. Cook onion and garlic together until done. Add contents of marinade and chicken to onions and garlic, and add a splash of soy sauce to mixture as cooking. Cook chicken until done. To create the gravy, add 3 cups of water and 3 tbsp – 5 tbsp of cornstarch, depending on desired thickness, and additional soy sauce to taste. Continue to stir mixture, adding any additional soy sauce as needed, until desired gravy thickness is achieved. Serve over egg noodles.

If desired, add watercress and/or sprouts for more variety.

Online friends can absolutely be or become RL friends.

I've traveled cross country to go to the wedding of another, and on another occasion to the same place to visit with a different set of friends for a weekend of fun.

Five came to my wedding. One of them caught the garter, another caught the bouquet.

(I mean, we might have orchestrated part of that, since they were dating. My husband threw the garter at the other after we saw their SO caught the bouquet.)

But, yes. Many of my online friendships are some of my most cherished, as we were also able to meet in RL in safe circumstances and create more memorable memories together.

We're still spread out across the states, but I cherish each and every one of them.

In fact, that same couple just sent me a rather unexpected, but appreciated, gift and we haven't seen each other since they came to my husband's funeral a couple of years ago.

It's all about what you put out into the world and the connections you forge.

I've tried Ares and it's just not for me. I'm not very big on web based products to begin with. If I can't have a client for something, anything, I really don't want it. I'd prefer to manage things on my computer.

As for my specific experience, Ares is a whole OTHER mindset of playing. Almost all of the scenes that were open were ones that were private and not open for anyone to joining them. That's very exclusionary. While they had a policy of just ask for RP, I don't want to have to ask for RP every time I want to go out onto a grid and play. I just want the opportunities to be there and have the chance to decide if I want to join or not with folk already out there. For someone who is introverted and has problems asking people to do things in the first place, it's also exceptionally intimidating.

I'm also very bad at async RP. If I'm not there in the moment, I lose sight of what the scene is even about and then lose interest. However, I recognize that it is a great tool to loop in others who can't match timezones and maybe want to RP with each other.

As a dinosaur to the MUing community, ultimately, change is hard.

For those of you looking to get these framed, Michaels is having 70% off sale on frames:

https://www.michaels.com/shop-categories/frames/809188411?pmid=onclearance