Farewell my lovely (October 2011)

October finishes today, and with it NaBloWriMo.

Despite my failure to post every day during the month, I did manage 47 (48 with this) posts overall, so I'm prepared to concede success to some extent.

It's been an interesting month.  I suppose they all are, but this is the first time I've had the opportunity to look back with documentation - which for me at least, has a certain novelty value.

Breaking it down into the relevant bits, here's what we get:

Drama - fairly quiet due to half term, although things are about to hot up again as classes re-start today.  The shows all seem in reasonable shape and the gates of nativity hell are about to swing open.  That alone will keep me busy until early December.  I'll just have to see how the line learning has gone. 

Dice - enforced finger hiatus has slowed all my online games, but they're picking up speed again now and I'm enjoying them a lot.  Whether the players are is another story.  Home gaming saw my first character kill, of which I am slightly proud, although sorry for the character who copped it.  Played some entertaining board games as well and there are a few more in the pipeline.

As well, of course, and near and dear to my heart, the evolution of Mikelmerck.  This has all the signs of a fun on-going project.  When working on this kind of thing, I have a white space approach - i.e. I have no idea what will be where or why until I need it to be there.  The general shape is coming along nicely with some small details.  In any case,  I can see it keeping me amused for a long time to come.

Damsons - for which read general cookery and fruit reduction as well as gardening.  Well, gardening did not happen at all.  We have some early onions and garlic to plant, but luckily they are reslient and patient and as long as they hit the ground before the heavy frosts, should be fine.

Cake played a fairly major part in the month.  Birthday cake for Mr Rev, frankly sublime dark chocolate cake for wedding and "invention" of crumble cake in the last two days.  More cake pending as the days draw in even more and the Christmas stockpile starts.

I also need to mention my own birthday cake - which I did not make.  This was a majestic creation made by a dear friend and shaped like a black dragon.  It was also delicious.  As soon as she sends me the pictures, I'll post them because it was quite simply one of the most awesome birthday cakes I've ever seen or eaten.

NaBloWriMo - the first dip into the communal blogging water.  A very positive experience.  Discovering that despite myself, I do enjoy writing is a great thing.  Discovering that I do this much better online is an amazing one.  The blogging community is extremely supportive - which is just as well as I suspect most of us are fragile in the confidence department.

Other stuff - the car crisis, the strange bug and the finger fracas all featured.  These things count as the roadbumps I think.  The unplanned and unplannable events that just happen.  Speaking of unplanned and unplannable, I've got a hugely busy month ahead of me and 50,000 words to produce by 30 November 2011.  But that's next month's problem.

Goodbye October 2011.

After NaBloWriMo - NaNoWriMo

I've just amazed myself by signing up for NaNoWriMo.  Amazed myself to the point of speechlessness.

No actual plot yet, but hey, I have two and a half days to find one.

Urk.

NaBloWriMo (favourite author/book thing)

A prompt from about three days ago.

Who is your favorite author?  Or What is your favorite book?  Or possibly:  Do you find yourself thinking like the characters in the last book you read talk? 

Can't do a favourite author.  I have several unfailing standbys, depending on mood and inclination:

Actual authors (order is alphabetical rather than preferential)
Jane Austen
Robertson Davis
Georgette Heyer (much under-rated and a fantastic plotter and stylist)
Terry Pratchett
Diana Wynne Jones

Other stuff
Back issues of Timeform
RPG books
Maps and atlases
Butlers Guide to the Saints

Favourite book - nope.  Impossible.  Favourite bookcase, maybe.

I don't find myself thinking like the characters I've just read, which in the case of some of my unfailing standbys is just as well.

Catching up part 1

There is no guarantee of a part 2.

First things first.  Mightily chuffed to receive an award (another one - who knew?) from Judie at Miss Steps and Milestones.  I am properly grateful.

There are rules, I believe - the first of which I have followed.  This is to thank the donor - easily done.  Thank you Judie for thinking of me :)

The second is that this goodie now needs to be passed on and I will get to that, I promise.  I'm still working on the last lot, but it will happen.

NaBloWriMo has been good for me.  I've been enjoying it a lot and although I have failed the post a day requirement, it is not by choice.  I refer you to the tedious finger saga for details.   It's helped crystallise some things for me as well.

Firstly - I really do like writing.  I never think I'm going to, but as it turns out, I'm wrong.  Being wrong on a daily basis will eventually change a person's mind.

Secondly - I knew this one, but it's reinforcement - I need the discipline of deadlines.  In theory, I'll maintain the daily posting rate once NaBloWriMo ends.  That may not happen.  I'm still finding themes here and they don't necessarily all belong in the same place, but we'll see.

Thirdly - I hadn't realised how obsessively sad a person could be until I'd sat for 10 minutes clicking the stats refresh button repeatedly just to see if anyone was reading this thing. 

Which reminds me, a prompt went up a couple of days ago.  I should take a look at it.

NaBloWriMo (Recipe)

Write and report on your favorite fall recipe

A subject near and dear to my heart.  Food.

I don't really have a favourite recipe.  I tend to be seasonal with food if I can - that's one of the points behind getting the garden cleared and starting to grow our own stuff - but it doesn't always work out like that.  I get too tired and grumpy to plan more often than not.  Once around the fridge and hurl it in a pan has been working for us for years.

Although ... now I come to think about it, I do have a sort of mental point in the year when I feel that hot puddings are essential.  About now, in fact, so there you are.  Hot puddings.  This is partly to do with having a freezer packed with fruit with which things must be done.  Since there is no bad about either crumble or danish pastry, both get made a lot.  Even easier if (as I do) you make bulk blocks of the danish dough.  It's no harder to make lots.  Well, it's not hard anyway, just a bit faffy, but it makes me feel vaguely efficient. 

I do have a bit of a guilt factor over danish pastry dough (I'm a Catholic Jew, I am really good at guilt).  It requires a really scary amount of butter.  If I'm going to feel bad about two pats of butter, I might just as well feel bad about four and get it over with. 

Awards go to ...

I'm very new to this whole blogging thing, so I'm going to do this awardage in small steps as I find people.  Hopefully people who don't already have this award.  More to follow, but the first two go to

Geekymommy at Passing for Normal
and
Sithyogini at Very Nearly Hippy

There are many fine and wonderful folks out there and I'm finding more every day.  Liking NaBloWriMo very much.

Gosh ...

Laura, over at the Daily Dodo handed me out an award last night along with some other fine folks.  Thank you so much.  It is very much appreciated.

I'm feeling all British and shy. 

If I've got this right, the acceptance speech is supposed to be seven fun factoids about myself.  I also need to pass this on to other people, which seems only right - although quite how the hardcore gamer types who make up 50% of my reading list will feel about being called "Irresistibly Sweet" is amusing me.  That part may take a little longer, but I shall pass on the sweetness with pleasure.

Bleary eyed as I am, this is what you get for the seven fun factoids.

1. I bake like a demon.  You possibly already guessed this from the recent cake postage.
2. I have a not very secret passion for penguins.
3. Against my expectations, I'm really enjoying Rick Riordan's myth books.
4. I love walking around barefoot and this bewilders my family horribly.
5. Despite my on/off relationship with technology, I am a dab hand at finding things on the internet.  This house, some fine holidays, fake ducks.
6. I love and follow flat racing.
7. Learning to type took ages.  My mother sent me on a "learn at 30wpm in a week or get a free week" course just after I graduated.  Three free weeks later, they chucked me out at 29wpm.

NaBloWriMo 9 (Autumn or not)

Given that Autumn is busting out all over, which is your favorite season and why?  Alternately, which is your LEAST favorite season and, of course, why?

Another prompt (a word I cannot feel the same about since Cruella at Giraffeability of Digressions revealed that it means "fart" in Norwegian - yes, I am that shallow), another post.


I do like autumn.  I'm not amazing at heat.  Or rather, I'm extremely bad at heat.  Every year we have at least one day in the UK when the temperature soars to a majestic 80 degrees and all the newspapers get hysterical and print pictures of people panting in fountains.  I nod sympathetically.  As a basically cold-weather person, autumn heralds my time of year.

It's very beautiful too.  Living as we do in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales, when the trees turn red it looks as if the hills are on fire.  Plus we have a large copper beech in the garden which goes the most amazing shade of lurid pink just before the leaves fall.  It makes me laugh - the colour is so extraordinarily un-tree like.

Secretly, too, I love the closing in of the evenings.  It feels as though the world around me is going into quiet hibernation and my brain seems to tick over more.  Stuff that needs to surface has time to do so.  This is more true of deep winter, but I can feel the process starting in autumn.

One thing I've really noticed since our move north is how distinct the seasons are and I've come to love them all for different reasons.  Living in London, as we did for years, the seasons are not as passionate.  Here, they have a real impact on how we live and what we do.  Our lives move with the rhythm of that and I like it.  Spring and summer are both hectic for us.  The garden demands a lot of time and you can see the growth rate.  It really is a miraculous thing to see the raspberry cane we cut back to the ground in February groaning with fruit in July.  The weeds do the same thing too, of course, which is less joyful, but you can't have everything.

Autumn is preparation time.  Winter is for me, for the family, for letting the things that never had time to be thought about arrive and be assimilated.  That is not always a comfortable thing, but it is just as necessary as the ruthless energy of spring and florid growth of summer.

No favourite then.  Just the need for all of them.  Greedy?

NaBloWriMo 5 (family time)

What is your favorite way to spend time with your family?
Note that due to time zone issues, this post is one day late :)


To the untrained eye, family life chez Rev looks like all the things we're warned about on alarmist tv programmes.  We don't eat together much and we all spend a lot of time on computers.  We don't plan "family time" and we're all balrogs in the morning.  Despite this, we enjoy each others company and wander from room to room sharing information, chatting generally and making plans.


We're all people who need a lot of space and we're are lucky enough to live in a very large house which allows that.  The usual convergeance point is my office, and it is often here that we spin our wilder dreams, plan holidays, run down what's been happening in the day and ask who forgot to buy the toilet paper.

Much as it's fun to go on holiday, my personal favourite times are Sunday afternoons, all doing our own thing, but very much on each others wavelength.  The house hums and feels good.

NaBloWriMo 4 (Advice to 15 year old self)

What advice would you give your fifteen-year-old self?

I'm not sure the fifteen year old me has gone very far, I've just got better at being her.  The following applied then and applies now.

1. Get your hair cut and keep it sorted.  It will make you feel good.  The yak look favours nobody.
2. You can make friends.  You are quite a nice person when you're not so paralysed with shyness that you come off as passive aggressive and snarky.
3. Stop being so damned defensive all the time.  
4. Apologising for being defensive is a hangable offense.
5. Yes, you are allowed to feel depressed.  It's a disease, girl.  Take the drugs.  They're not a sign of weakness.  They are there to help and they do.
6. Feel free to enjoy the things you really enjoy, regardless of the fact that admitting to them may make you feel even more of an outcast.  You could be wrong.  
7. Even if you are right about 6,  you're still enjoying yourself.  Roll those dice, obsess over RPGs, do in depth research into hagiography and racehorse pedigrees and the NASA moon programmes.
8. If clothes are not something that interest you, don't let anyone take you shopping.
9. Chocolate is not evil.
10. It is not the act of a wimpy idiot to be polite to people.  It is the basis of civilisation.

This list could probably be extended, but that will do for now.

NaBloWriMo 3 - (lucky objects)

Specifically - Many people have lucky socks or shirts or stones or pens.  Is there an object you own that you consider lucky?  If so, why?

Not really.  It seems a bit unfair on all the objects not considered lucky.  Mind you,  I still try to alternate which foot gets the shoe or sock on first in case the other gets offended.  Admittedly, this is a hangover from my childhood, but I hate the thought of upsetting my shoes.  Does that even make sense?

Moving right along - I don't have lucky objects, but I do have a sort of proprietorial feel for some mugs.  If there is a choice, I will gravitate to the same three or four.  Choice is not a given.  My family are notorious for taking mugs upstairs and only bringing them down when new lifeforms have evolved inside them.  I think they may be quietly conducting some kind of genetic experiment without telling me.  One morning, I'll wake up and find a nicely made zombie in the kitchen making a cup of coffee with husband and son looking proudly on.  "Surprise!"

NaBloWriMo 2 ("If you could live the life of any heroine or hero from one of your favorite books, which one would it be?")

Paddington.

Has to be.  Supremely self-confident with a killer stare and utter charm.

Two of my favourite authors, whose books I read and re-read endlessly and with pure pleasure are Robertson Davis and Jane Austen.  The thing is, I don't want to be any of their characters. 

NaBloWriMo 1 ("Why do you blog?")

NaBloWriMo seems like an entirely excellent idea. 

Why do I blog?  Because I find the discipline of keeping things going is good for me is the short answer.  Left to my own devices, I am the procrastination queen.  Deadlines work.  There may be a longer answer later today.