More Kreativity

SherryE runs a blog full of the most beautiful gardens you will ever see.  Gone Gardening is visual soul-food as well seriously envy-inducing.  She's been kind enough to bestow another Kreativ Blogger award on me - this time in glorious technicolour, which makes sense given her subject matter.

Pretty, isn't it?

I'm sparing you the seven questions/ten factoids I answered rather badly yesterday, but I am more than happy to try and spread a little more blog love.

These are the new recipients:

Absconditus Creations at Art of the Hidden Heart.  Her drawings entertained me greatly during the A-Z challenge and I used a few of them as wallpaper.  Go take a look.

L G Smith at Bards and Prophets is always well worth reading. Elegant and informed.

Hilary Melton-Butcher at Positive Letters has a light and informative touch.  Her latest offering on the moving of an entire school in an absurdly short space of time is typical.

Alicia C at Saffron Wine caught my eye during the A-Z ramble.  Foodie and stylish writer.

Blacksteel over at Tower of Zenopus deals with RPGs in an even-handed and intelligent manner.  This is not so common.

Black Vulmea runs Really Bad Eggs and if that title doesn't clue you in to the piratey theme, nothing will.  Mike is a gamer with a fondness for swashbucklers and also posts some great art.

Mark K at The DM's Screen is just an all-around nice human being.  Go and tell him he's wonderful.

I place no compulsion on anyone to play along with the whole questions/factoids/pass on deal unless they want to, but the appreciation is very heartfelt.

Blogging Kreativly - or so I'm told

The Death Writer (of whom you have heard much of late and if you haven't, I really urge you to go and check out her necessary blog), has bestowed this on me.   I am extremely honoured.

There's rules, of course.

1. Thank and link back to the awarding blog. Done.
2. Answer the following seven questions. See below.
3. Provide ten random factoids about yourself. See belower.
4. Last but not at all least, hand this on to seven deserving others. See even belower.

(Just to mention in passing, I really want to change the questions and most of them are vague or slightly daft, but tradition is tradition I suppose).

The questions:

1. What's your favorite song?
Don't have one. Sorry. It's very mood dependant.

2. What's your favorite dessert?
Homemade danish pastry with raspberrys. Which I make and is awesome. 
(Note that the original question asked about my favourite desert, in which case the answer is Gobi.)

3. What do you do when you're upset?
Variable. Mostly I just run away from people for a bit and smoke a couple of cigarettes. In extreme cases I embark on major housecleaning, which suggests I should get much more upset much more often. 
 
4. Which is your favorite pet?
We only have one right now. She's 16, jet black, a killer queen and her name's Zuleika.  She's also a cat.
 
5. Which do you prefer? Black or White
Neither. I'm a shades of grey gal.
 
6. What is your biggest fear?
Heights. Changing a lightbulb is a big deal for me. 
 
7. What is your attitude mostly?
Self-conscious but prepared to roll the dice.

10 random factoids

• I regard garment shopping as a form of purgatory.
• I have love walking barefoot (this might have come up before - in which case, I do apologise, but I'm not really that interesting)
• I am a balrog in the morning.
• Whistling freaks me out and makes my spine wobble.
• I have a broken nose from a left-over riding accident.
• I have a horrible effect on technology. Batteries run down in days, computers act funny, stuff does not work as it should. Magnetic field misfire is my theory.
• I adore airports and deeply fear flying.
• I get stagefright before every class I teach.
• I fall asleep reading. Sitting up with a book in my hand.
• I failed my first driving test in spectacular style by backing into a lamp post.

Passing on to the following blogs, all utterly deserving of your time and attention:

Analog Breakfast - Suze is always a great read, stirring up the braincells with intelligence and humour. She's also crazy enough to ask me to GM for her as she works her way towards gamer-dom.
Carol Anne Carr - Carol Anne writes about children's literature in a way which makes me plain envious.
Elise Fallson - Elise - expat living in France. She blogged on insects for A-Z and is a seriously stylish lady.
Elizabeth Twist - self-confessed plague enthusiast. How can you resist?
*Pixies don't have wings - Buffy proves once and for all that fey does not mean feeble.
Rubye Jack - insightful thoughts from Rubye. She writes from the heart.
Servitor Ludi - Cygnus is another who makes me jealous. What I take pages and years to formulate, he puts in two paragraph blog posts.

E is for Expectations and Evolution

E

Funny thing, expectations.  There are certain areas of my life where expectations are, (and forgive the clunky phrasing) expected.  Directing a show or running a class depend on expectations being  understood by both parties.

The cast or students have an expectation that they will learn something.  I have the expectation that they will allow themselves to learn.  Regardless of how that actually works out, there is a contract of sorts in those expectations.

Then there are things like this blog.  Since that is pure self-indulgence, I didn't really have any expectations.  I'm often far more lucid on paper (or screen) than I am in the flesh, so it seemed like a decent idea to write stuff down as I thought of it.  It started as a kind of tracking exercise for myself to follow the cycle of putting together shows - and as a useful reminder of the highs and lows of the process.

My expectations did include finding an audience of some kind.  Few of us blog in a deliberate vacuum after all.  We all want to share our special snowflake status.  With that, comes evolution. 

I love this chart.  All those branching lines and strange developments.  I can look at it for hours.

Where my expectations fell down was the non-predictability of that evolution.  How many A-Zers out there have found their conversation with readers changing as they develop their bloggy voice?

I'm sure this is an ongoing and familiar process to a lot of you, but it's new to me.  It was brought home by a two things in the last few days.

Jeremy at Geeky Tendencies handed me an award for Versatile Blogging - which I'm chuffed to bits about - and I hit 10,000 page views.  Amazing.  That is by far the largest audience I've ever had or would ever expect to have.  Expectations have changed due to evolution. 

See, there was a point to this post :)

For my next trick, evolve gills.

Back to the games and other trivia

Ah Crivelli.  One of my favourite artists.  His fruit obsession is a source of joy.  Anyway, an image of a Mother for the day.  One who bears precisely no resemblence to me.

Shush.

I should be at the theatre and will be in about half an hour.  Overslept.

However, it is Mother's Day.  I am a Mother.  Therefore it is decreed that as a  Mother I can have on this day an hour to do what I want.  Which is update games.  So I did.  So there.

And where are they now, those brave gamers of mine?

Well, it's all fairly exciting.

Tombs I are embarking on the epic fight against their fully-equipped, fully-rested evil selves.  From experience, this is a very tough one.  See here for why. 

Tombs II are busy concocting an elaborate and wondrous plan to raid a Gith pirate ship.  This involves incompetent mercenaries, a small band and a missing otyugh.

Lost City are dealing with Trignotarb succession issues on the one hand and a gigantic spider with nasty young on the other.  In both cases, the tool of choice is violence.  Team Spider are also getting to know the oklu - as strange servitor race with interesting powers.

Den of the Slave Takers have met the Slave Takers and are trying to get far enough into the nasty temple of Torog to rescue the prisoners. 

All normal stuff in fact, but I am happy to be back to more regular updating.

In other news, my Twelfth Night costume does not make me look like a light-fitting.  It is made of upholstery fabric and feels suitably heavy and good although I'm dimly aware that I may resemble a short, fat armchair from the back.

Today I learn to climb stairs in a long, full skirt, up a vertical ladder and down again.   This will be entertaining.  Or not.

Awardage went hilariously awry.  Many of my nominees were also nominated by other nominees leading to a sort of knock out effect.  It doesn't help that Google has taken it upon itself to prune my reading list.  Apologies to all concerned.

Awardage

The wonderfully named Armchair Squid has passed an award on to me.  I'm very honoured.

Naturally there are provisos to the accepting of such awards, which are the following:

Here are the instructions for the lucky recipients:

1. Nominate 15 fellow bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award.

2. In the same post, add the Versatile Blogger Award.

3. In the same post, thank the blogger who nominated you in a post with a link back to their blog.

4. In the same post, share 7 completely random pieces of information about yourself.

5. In the same post, include this set of rules.

6. Inform each nominated blogger of their nomination by posting a comment on each of their blogs.



Points 2, 3 and 5 are now covered.  Now for the rest of it.

I am aware that some of those listed below may already be lucky recipients.  If so, accept both my apologies and the admiration that getting another nomination implies.

The DM's Screen   
The Book Scorpion's Lair
Bladesharp
Midlife Farmwife
Exclamation Point (!)
The Dungeon Dozen
Scribbles From Jenn
The Semi-Retired Gamer
From the Sorcerer's Skull
Quickly, Quietly, Carefully
Based on the Books
Pearson Report

There should be another three on this list, but I've discovered something worrying - my reading list is dissolving.  I know for certain there were many more and they have gone.  I know not where.  I mistrust Google at the moment.  It's doing strange stuff.

Seven random factoids

• I met my husband in Budleigh Salterton.  I was carrying a tray of sausage rolls at the time and walked into a window frame.  He rescued the sausage rolls, decided I was someone he should avoid, and proposed a week later.
• I am accident prone.  I don't usually break anything, but rare is the week I manage to avoid some kind of bruise or abrasion I can't account for.
• I spent a lot of my childhood traveling.  One of my earliest memories is looking up at the underside of an airport table and being fascinated by the many colours of left over gum stuck there.
• I do not do ironing. 
• I am a very fast reader.
• I hate having my feet touched.
• I know many recipes for things to do with beetroots and still can't stand the things.

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.

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.