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.

Headphone penguin

In response to a request to see the headphone supporting wooden penguin on my desk, I present a horrible webcam picture.

Penguin clearly visible, headphones less so.

D is for the Dice on my Desk and Deliveries

D

Yes, I have this set of dice.  No, they are not the ones on my desk.  I couldn't find a picture of those.

Ah, the dice on my desk.  There they sit, cluttered up with telephone cables, old post-it notes, pencils, tippex bottles, dead lighters, security passes, the wooden penguin I use to hold my headphones, the exciting geode I like to keep there, the mini-stapler, the funny putty, the copy of Sims 3 Pets that broke my computer, my ashtray and all the other paraphenalia of a computerised life.

These are my GMing dice.  As distinct from my player dice.  Those live downstairs.  They even have a bag.  Lucky them.  The desk dice just sit there waiting for the many moments throughout a day when I'll need to roll them. 

Unlike a lot of gamers, I'm not particularly anal about people touching my dice.  This is not reciprocal in the home group.  My rolling is so universally horrible as a player that everyone does their utmost to keep their dice away from me in case I infect them.  I do see their point.

Everyone knows that a die has a finite number of high rolls in it.  If someone borrows your die and rolls well with it, that's one good roll gone.  Everyone also knows that bad luck is contagious.  Don't let the person who spends entire sessions rolling single digits touch your treasured dice.  Particularly don't let them near your lucky d20.  Logically it would make more sense to pass your lucky dice to the unlucky player and get them to use up the stock of horrible rolls for you, but nobody seems to do this. 

Not my study.  Nor my desk.  It looks good though and I've always loved this picture.  Vittore Carpaccio painted it on the wall of the Scuole degli Schiavoni in Venice. 

The desk belonged originally to my grandfather and then later my father.  It's heavy, Victorian and much loved.  I love the fact that it has seen my grandfather planning out his assault on the Derby fruit and vegetable market and my father think his way through the early days of cybernetics.  I love that it has now come to me and I use it in ways grandfather would have loved and my father predicted.

On a random, but irate note, today I must wait in for a delivery.  Joy of joys.  I swear some delivery firms just wait around the corner in their vans, telescopic lens trained on the house to watch for the one moment you are in the loo and can't answer the door.  That is when they hurry past, dropping a  "Sorry you were out" note through the letter box.  Then they drive away laughing, leaving you to negotiate the minefield of automated phone system hell.

"Hi!  We're so glad you have to call us about the enormous box we couldn't put through the door.  Just tap in the 13 digit number at the top of the card and we'll be right with you."

Tap in 13 digit number.  Wait for inevitable cheery "I didn't quite catch that, would you like to try again?"


"Great!  I have some options for you.  To select a new time for your delivery, press 1.  To collect your delivery from our depot, press 2.  To get your delivery delivered to another address, press 3.  To have your delivery destroyed by our special services team, press 4 ..."  

And so on.  At no point does the option "speak to an actual person" appear in all this.

I cannot possibly be the only person who finds this sort of thing drives them into a tooth-gnashing rage.  Support group anyone?

We interrupt your scheduled posting ...

... to inform you that there is snow falling in Richmond.  Right on schedule, as it happens.

The weathermen got it bang on the button.  The local council appear not to have believed them as there are no gritters visible.  Other non-visible things are the roads.

It will all melt by morning, I'm sure.  Good old Mother Nature - always with the surprises.

C is for Cybernetics, Costuming and the deadly Catoblepas

C

My father was a cybernetician, so I couldn't really let C pass without mentioning it.

My father, doing his imitation of a rogue pixie. 
Photograph (c) Paul Pangaro 1985 (with apologies for not adding that before, but I had no idea who took it)

I admit that I also had a sneaky hope that few others would pick this as their letter C.  It was not to be.  The talented Suze over at Analog Breakfast got the jump on me.  Go over there, read her piece and starting pinging each other.

G (my dad) will get more mentions in due course.

Elsewhere in the in the land of C, we find costuming.  Regulars will know that I have an ongoing fascination and frustration with sewing machines.  An enforced purchase of one back in January and a deep-end plunge into doublet-making has borne fruit.  I no longer assume turkey when an instruction tells me to baste.   I can put in darts and I know the difference between on grain and bias cutting.  It is a whole new arcane world to explore and I am (much to my own surprise) enjoying it.

Long term I will end up with a wardrobe full of costumes ready to dump on unsuspecting cast members.  At the moment, I have a room full of fabric and several doublets and floppy hats in various stages of construction.

C is a rich mine as it turns out.  My final entry is a shout-out for the Catoblepas.  This noble beastie appeared in early bestiarys looking like this -

Early form catoblepas

It seems the original incarnation was a mistaken view of the gnu or wildebeest.  As with many mythical beasts, the creature subsequently found its way into RPGs in a rather more malevolent form.  My first introduction was through D&D when a huge stinking harbinger of doom arrived during one game and killed us all.  You never forget your first catoblepas.

Monstrous catoblepas

Pictures are on the tiny side, but you get the idea.

B is for Budleigh Salterton

B

Last month, I got a blogging award which asked for seven random facts as part of the deal.  The first factoid noted that I met my husband in Budleigh Salterton.  It is a place near and dear to my heart as a result. 

View of Budleigh, not including the vital Feathers pub

What, you may ask, was I doing in a sleepy Devon town?  Apart from the joke name and Noel Coward's rather scathing view of it as a honeymoon resort (see Blithe Spirit  for details), Budleigh Salterton has long been host to Imperial College's Operatic Society.  They descend on it a couple of times a year to take over the village hall and perform shows there.

I am no singer, but I can be a serviceable chorus member if I have to, and that year I was a fairy in Iolanthe.  A stationary fairy, as it happened, as I'd managed to trip over my fairy wand at a late rehearsal and torn a ligament.  Prancing being out of the question, I was adorned in ankle to knee tubigrip and spent most of the show perched on a toadstool.  Accident prone, y'see.

This accident proneness was a continuing theme.  As part of the opening night festivities, cast entertained the audience and local dignitaries with a finger buffet.  As an avid cook, I volunteered to help and constructed a vasty batch of sausage rolls.  Which then had to be delivered to the hall.  Which is when I limped out of the kitchen clutching a tray full of them and walked straight into an open window frame.  Window frame was made of metal and gouged a neat cut in my scalp.  Blood started to cascade.

At this point, an unknown hero in sunglasses put in an appearance, firmly removing the sausage rolls from me.  I was suitably grateful.  Didn't want to waste the sausage rolls after all.  After being swabbed down, I realised who he was.  Not unknown as it turned out.  A flautist in the band.  We had met briefly the previous evening and he had impressed me with his look of utter disdain as I limped to and fro.

Anyway, I set out to find him and thank him for his help.  This lead to some interesting conversation.  I expounded on fresco techniques.  He was fascinating about music and science fiction and generally made me laugh a lot.  We got on astonishingly well for two intensely shy people. 

We established that I failed to qualify as his dream woman on many important issues.  I can't eat fish, I smoke and I don't play a musical instrument.  He failed to fulfil my requirements in a partner by being employed, not undergoing long term treatment for mental illness and not needing me to change his life.  Obvious soulmates.

One week later he proposed.  It was a drunken moment, but we both had a sort of "actually, that's a damn fine idea" twang about it.  A month later, he proposed again and by the time the next Budleigh Salterton rolled around, we were married and have been ever since.

On an unrelated note, I've been getting notifications for comments that aren't appearing on the blog.  If you've posted something and I haven't replied, it's because I can't.  Not sure if this is anything to do with the vaunted new blogger interface or not, but something is awry.

A is for me and asparagus

A

First letter. First post in 2012 A-Z challenge.  Best wishes and good luck to all who participate in it.

It also begins my name.  I'm not the biggest fan of Amanda.  It's an OK name, to be sure, but it always sounds a bit flabby to me and I deeply hate "Mandy" as an abbreviation.  Hate to the point that I simply blank it out as something I don't hear at all.

On the other hand, it could have been a great deal worse.  My father wanted to call me Cybora, in honour of cybernetics.  Mum did not approve, nor did she much like his alternative, Amaryllis.  She felt that naming a baby something that meant "little tinkling stream" was a bad idea.  Since she was around for the birth and he was not (busy having dinner somewhere - a story which is a microcosm of their relationship), she got her way and went with Amanda.

Mind you, I'd probably take Cybora like a shot now, but I'm glad I didn't have to get through school with it.

A is also for asparagus.  Fortuitously, we spent part of this morning planting the crowns.  Hopefully they will produce delectable vegetable spikes of goodness sometime in the next three years.  It's a slow business growing asparagus.  Patience and a deep compost filled pit are required.  We dutifully dug what looked like a narrow grave, filled it with manure.  Planted the crowns, watered them, hoisted the soil back over the top.  Now awaiting results.  Asparagus crowns look like diseased sea urchins at high tide.  Time, we hope, will turn them from this -

to this -