The Raven's Roost

This post is mostly me talking to myself about writing/world building, so feel free to skip if you're not interested.

I think I can upcycle most of what I wrote for my first playthrough of Over The Mountain into stuff for St. Felix. While I have some locations and things mapped out, the list of locations in OTM will really help flesh the entire county out and I may just reuse names and stuff.

One brainstorm during weight lifting - the main character's secret talent or skill. Many years ago I read this interesting idea for making an iPod tarot deck. It would have required someone to remember which song was for which card for an entire deck, which seems like it would tax almost anyone's memory. But what if someone were to use a digital music library and the shuffle function, but they have the ability to influence which songs come up so as to create an oracle? The character is a DJ (here I can use my Void AM playlists) with an extensive knowledge of music (here is where she can collect old records or CDs, etc) and can use that ability to try to help people or solve problems/mysteries/etc.

Locating the story in St Felix also allows me to fully embrace Florida Gothic.

I wish this storm would pass on through so I can take a shower. I just don't want to be trying to wash off when the power goes out and I lose hot water. I'm ready to map out the first few days of my tale. But we also just had a couple of lightning strikes not even two miles south of here.

File Under: This never happens

I received a used book in the mail today and popped that bad boy open to find a bunch of hand-written (in pencil) notes, along with a name in the front. I was enjoying the tone of the notes, and I was looking forward to reading this book with my anonymous "new friend."

I just did a quick search and she's a published author. ROFL. I'm about to drop her an email about her used book, and probably pick up a copy of her own published work.

This never usually happens. I'll search a name inside a cover and get nothing at all, or obituaries, or a Facebook page that's been inactive since 2017.

Update: SHE EMAILED ME BACK
This is so cool. She's very nice, too. I'll be getting a copy of her book probably Monday (it shipped from Hilton Head) and I'm looking forward to it! She said she DNF'd the book - it had good ideas but got pretty dense after a while, and she donated it, assuming that if she needed it, "it would come back to her." And it did.

Today I learned that Serendipity isn't just an adorable story about a baby sea monster.

I haven't updated Over The Mountain in a few weeks because I not only hit a busy time in life, but I was also up against a species of writer's block. The same character shows up twice in one day, and she has items both times, AND one of the encounters is a side quest to find a lost item.

Just playing the game straight through is fun, but I may go back and rewrite some entries later to make the story make more sense. I may end up with Chekhov's Entire Armory. I rewrote my character's profile, making her special ability "finding lost things," though using that power is exhausting and I'm self-imposing an interaction penalty on the next day's rolls. The game suggests you have a collection that you can occasionally show off to get positive interactions, and I've made mine jewelry.

While trying to think up some of these items, I came up with some silly items, just for fun, that are more at home in a traditional fantasy RPG setting, but I'm sharing them here for laughs.

• Boots of Blistering Speed - doubles the wearer's movement speed when the wearer is on fire.
• Bag of Bobcats - looks like a normal traveler's bag but can be used to unleash a swarm of bobcats. Also not useful for storing anything, because whatever you take out of the bag is a bobcat. If you're the kind of person who likes precision, roll a d100 for how many bobcats, or two d6 for 11 - 66 cats.
• Potion of Insect Controlling - allows you to speak to and command one (1) insect, which could actually be pretty useful in the right circumstances.
• Potion of Uncomfortable Wakefulness - it's a Jolt Cola - increased movement speed and perception but roll a 1d6 for how many health points you'll lose.
• Potion Helmet - holds two potions and allows you to consume them without using an action, +1 armor but also -5 charisma because you look like a dork.

It rained off and on all night, a welcome sound. The road has been getting really badly rutted out in places, and without rain to help pack the sand down, the churned up sand just gets soft and fluffy. The dickhole who rides around on an ATV at night isn't helping, either. The digital weather station says .13" since midnight and I haven't looked at the standard gauge yet, my reading time is eight a.m.

While we're away at Marathon Weekend it's supposed to get freezing cold here, so now I have to try to figure out what to do about my citrus trees. I don't think I can leave them covered the entire time we're gone, but I also don't want to impose on Jamie's good will by asking her to cover them. And the younger trees may not withstand the cold as well. The yuzu is finally starting to come back healthy, and the key lime is actually giving some fruit, and I'd hate to lose all the money and work.

Yesterday, my virtual half marathon went pretty well. I knew dehydration was going to be an issue, so I drove into town and stashed a water bottle under some bushes right at about the turnaround point, and that helped immensely. I still got dehydrated and crashed out, but this time at mile 11, rather than mile 7. So I didn't quite finish in the time I'd hoped for, but I was not honestly expecting to. 2:17:43 is pretty good, though.

Fox talked me into getting a hydration vest similar to his. Well, exactly like his, except smaller, for me. So that will allow me to haul along two 20 ounce bottles of water or electrolyte drink, and it has pockets for your phone, gels, and all kinds of other shit. They're UltrAspire vests, and designed more for trail/ultra runners, but they came highly recommended on r/running for people who need to carry water. In my case it was definitely dehydration rather than glycogen depletion - I've been running fasted and working on my fat adaptation all spring and summer. Yesterday, what I was feeling was increased heart rate, no saliva, and brain fog. My legs and everything felt fine. I just needed salts. I bought some packets of "Liquid IV" powder to mix up, and a couple of Gatorade Zeros, since I'm not sure what I'll like and what will work best for me. I'm trying to avoid too much sugar, though I think a little won't hurt.

I get to try it out this coming Sunday, since I have a two-hour run scheduled. I'll probably continue driving to the state park and leaving the truck there, then running up the sidewalk towards town. The military reservation is great, but while we're still in the rainy season, the first half of the trail is a total slog through a bunch of sandy mud. Plus, doing some of my running on pavement gets me ready to race on pavement.

I received my Pilot Metropolitan pen and I love it. The balance is nice and it should write very smoothly once I change the ink cartridge. I forgot that you shouldn't bother using the ink that the pen comes with, because it's often old and gunky. I've spent most of 2021 being very careful about my spending and saving, so of course I've blown it out this past week. I bought a couple of Leuchttrum 1917 journals, one in metallic copper that will be my daily commonplace book, and another in "sagebrush," which will be my new reading journal. The notebook I've been keeping my reading journal in is some unknown quantity from Target that I bought back in maybe 2002. It's okay, but as I think I mentioned before, I'm ready to start having nice notebooks and good writing supplies. It will take a while to copy all the entries, but it will be worth it to have a reading journal I wouldn't mind other people seeing. And then to top it off, I found a website out of Brooklyn that has the LAMY Safari pen I've been after, and they were running a sale, so I just ordered that pen, plus a box of ink.

I think I'm done for now, but I just wanted to have both a fine nib and medium nib pen, and I figured with the new notebooks, I should be content for a while. Unless Leuchttrum comes out with some limited edition color I simply must have, I can probably wait around and just order a couple of notebooks from them every three or four months. I got into a bad habit when Kitty was alive of buying any and every notebook that caught my eye. She was pretty indiscriminate about them - which is perfectly fine, everyone has their preferences. But I've found that if I'm writing in something with shitty paper and a terrible binding, it doesn't matter how pretty the cover is, I hate it.

I've got about seven more weeks until the Wine & Dine half marathon, so here's hoping that I can actually hit my goal there. That's over a month of additional training, plus working out my hydration and nutrition strategy.

I keep coming back here and apologizing for not posting as much. Now that I realize I'm doing it I feel a bit foolish. But, here I am!

I mentioned that I was writing more lately, basically developing stories for my comic, Muna. That's actually going quite well, but the story that's more ready to go isn't the one I expected to make so much progress with, where Feather & Bone is coming along more slowly. The story I think I'm going to go ahead and start has no name yet, and since I'm terrible at giving things names and titles I guess I'll just find something to crib from Bob Dylan. I mean, if you need something that makes you sound smart, you steal it from either Dylan or Shakespeare.

We canceled an upcoming Disney trip for August. We don't really believe it's a good idea for us or anyone else to go, and since we're still somewhat convinced we've both had Covid 19 already and can't be sure we wouldn't be spreading it, it feels very dishonest and uncaring to go gallivanting around at a theme park. Since it'll be my birthday, I'll probably make cake here at home. I'm kind of leaning to a vanilla cake with orange frosting for a Dream Bar or Push-Pop type flavor, or the matcha butter-cream frosting I already know is amazing but make a lemon or yuzu flavored cake.

We have also been discussing it off an on for a few months, but today I went ahead and ordered myself a Japanese floor futon. I have a cover I can use, so I just bought the mattress itself, and will probably put it on top of a memory foam pad I already own. I'm just tired of my regular Western mattress. It squeaks when it rubs against the wall, and it was never particularly comfortable since it was like a guest room mattress that Fox and Kitty bought at BJ's. There's a reason I have the thickest foam pad on the market.

I'm also just having one of my phases where I want to get rid of things. I feel like I have too much STUFF. So I may take another pass through the house and look at discarding/donating again, if donation centers will take things right now. I found myself sort of resisting the idea beacuse, "Well, I LIKE this stuff." Oh yeah? When was the last time you took it out and looked at it, or did anything with it? Probably the last time you tidied up. If that's the case then I strongly suggest (to myself) that you consider letting it go.

I don't want to just embrace minimalism for its own sake, or as an ego stroking thing of "look how much stuff I don't need." I think it becomes a real trap for some people, and they wind up living with just a backpack's worth of items not because they travel a lot, but because they're invested in this image of themselves as Minimalists. But as I mentioned in the above paragraph ... if I haven't used it or even looked at it since this time last year, I probably don't really need it.