Day in the Life of an Idiot

 I'm sitting on my front porch trying to be very quiet so as to not scare away the very light rain that seems to actually be falling from the sky. 

While I'm trying not to make any sudden moves, I thought I should catch you up on my life. First of all, there is a new interview with me up on Salon Futura. https://www.salonfutura.net/2024/09/lyda-morehouse-interview/ which you should feel free to listen to if you are curious about the upcoming re-release of Resurrection Code. There are no spoilers, even though the book is over 20 years old, but we do talk some of what it is about, my influences, and all the standard sorts of things one does in interviews like this. I am inordinately fond of Cheryl Morgan, so I think you should just listen to everything she has up on Salon Futura. 

I also posted another unboxing video on all the various socials. I'm pretty sure unboxing videos are passe, which is why I've done so many of them this year. 

Well, crap. I think I scared the rain away.  It looked possible there for a hot minute. Ah, well. I will keep my sprinkler on, in hopes that I can fool the sky into giving the whole thing a try.  It's been too long. Shawn sent me a whole article about how this is stressing out the trees, that threw me into an existential funk this afternoon. 

The countdown to surgery continues. We are at T-8 days. Thanks to everyone who chimed in with some last minute things Shawn could consider preparing, especially j00j and abracanabra for the clothing-related thoughts. Shawn had been thinking of relying on me for all her dressing needs, but she might be happier with some tools to help her do some for herself. The things you suggested are in the Amazon chart!

I'm also about four days out from running my first stab at "Solidarity: Drunk Girls* in the Bathroom." Earlier today, I was complaining to fellow GM tallgeese about the so-called "module" for this game. BACK IN MY DAY, a Dungeons & Dragons module contained more than vibes. It provided a game runner with literally everything they would need to run the campaign, outside of actual dice (although I'm sure some of them somewhere did come with a baggie of dice!) As enamored as I am of the concept of this game, it will be interesting to see how it functions in practice. The good news is that I have assembled a crack team of players who are ready to focus on roleplay over combat, so maybe none of it will matter as much as I worry it might. Regardless, I have spent a shocking amount of time preparing for any number of possibilities.  Some of you experienced game runners out there might be arching an eyebrow a the amount of time I have devoted to fleshing out a world around the scenario that The Drunk Girl* (lcohen ) and I are creating. Let me tell you a little story about the first time I thought I might try GMing a game....

Cast your mind back to the early 1990s. Cyberpunk was the hot thing and a bunch of different gaming companies were capitalizing on that fact. I somehow missed the popular cyberpunk game, but instead had a copy of GURPS Cyberpunk. GURPS is notorious for a number of reasons, but I wasn't actually all that fussed about the rules. Like, I figured that if I had a basic grasp of how the game went an an active imagination, I should be FINE. Except.... turns out, I, personally, need some processing time. I used to do improv theater, but GMing is actually slightly different. People expect a GM to have a generally cohesive sense of the world. They expect a semblance of a storyline. They llke.... maps. Mostly, I discovered, what players do not want is for their GM to freeze up in abject terror and not have a single thought come into their heads. I ended up doing that last bit more than once. It was BAD. A disaster, even.

Luckily, I was 21 and as I told my friend, entirely made out of ego (which was obviously a large part of the problem, but also what saved me from dying on the spot and then spending the rest of my life hiding in shame.) 

Let's see... other things I've been up to. I finished listening to Someone You Can Build a Nest In (I keep getting the title of this wrong, but this is the correct one.) I have Frankenstein cued up because I think we are doing it as a deep-dive on our cyberpunk podcast. How is Frankenstein cyberpunk? HOW IS IT NOT? Artificial life! Questions of what it means to be human! SCIENCE!

Did I ever tell you all that I actually met a Dr. Frankenstein? She was a dentist. I happened to be standing in line at the vet back in the day (so long ago back in the day that I was still seeing Dr. Holly out in St. Louis Park because we were living in Uptown.) The woman in front of me said, "I'm here for [Fluffy.] It's under Frankenstein," and I laughed and said, "Well, you should really get a PhD so you can be a doctor with a name like that!" and that's when she told me she was, in fact, a doctor--a dentist. We had a very short conversation about her name and what a hassle she must find it, the details of which I no longer remember. I was trying to be polite, but I really wanted to know what it was like to walk around with such a famous name. But I was also aware that her name probably meant she must spend 80% of her time having conversations just like the one she was having with me. 

Like Shawn being 6'1"--it used to be that not a day would go by without someone asking her if she played basketball. Or ask what "the weather was like up there."

It's still looking dark. Should I dare hope?

Eh, I just looked at the extended weather forecast. The short answer is: there is no hope for rain this entire week. In fact the humidity is supposed to drop really low for some reason... 

JFC.

So, do you remember that I told you all that I've been feeling a weird nostalgia for crunchy granola food from the 1970s. Well, Shawn ended up having a huge lunch via a food truck at work today so we agreed we were "yoyo"-ing (you're on your own). So, I decided to make myself the most amazing tempeh parmesan. It's supposed to be like chicken parmesan, only with tempeh. And some of you are screwing up your faces right now in disgust, but you are WRONG. This was delicious! And I am inordinately excited that there are three servings leftover so that I can have this for lunch for the next several days.

hmmm, there are probably far more interesting things to catch you all up on, but that's all that's crossing my mind at the moment. 

 It's been a day. 

I started by working on Unjust Cause, something I've pledged to do every morning before Mason wakes up. I got words in and am weaving things back into some semblance of a story, but I was very stymied by a profound lack of good pictures of downtown Pierre, South Dakota. 

The Loft contacted me for another manuscript critique job, which is perfect timing as, just last night, I had my meeting with the previous client at Quixotic Coffee. As part of the deal, you get a detailed critique from me as well as one hour of my time for follow-up questions, comments, (or, with luck, squee) via in-person meeting, web or phone chat. I usually hang out with the author much longer than strictly an hour, but this client was very, "Whelp, that's my time!" which was fine. 

When Mason woke up this morning, I gave up on Pierre and the "fun" began. We are doing a lot of DIY projects around the house this summer. The first thing we decided to tackle was to put in a stone pathway for the mail carrier on the side of our house where the pine tree was before the storm took it down. We dug the trench on Monday and today I foolishly thought we could finish everything. Ha!  Menards took FOREVER, and, of course, once we FINALLY got home, we discovered that we'd underestimated how much gravel we were going to need. We _might_ go back tomorrow.  Or, we'll take a day off and tackle everything Thursday. Mason works at the Science Museum tomorrow at 1 pm, and I work at White Bear Lake Library at 4 pm. So, we might just decide to let everything "settle," as it were. 

It's a nice enough evening that we could have pushed through and tried to get more done on it tonight, but I just dropped Mason off at his first Minnesota Environmental Quality Board meeting. I'm anxious to hear how it goes. I noticed a number of teens headed into the building as I was leaving, so there must be a strong contingent of what they call the EEL program (Emerging Environmental Leaders). 

Mason also got himself an appointment to take the CLEP test for Calc I. That'll be next Monday at noon.

The rest of this week is crazy-busy again--again, for reasons unknown, Shawn and I have decided to be social this year. So, tomorrow night, I work, but Thursday we are having our across the street neighbors over for dessert and coffee. Cheryl Lynn and Jonas (I may be misspelling her name.) We've been over to theirs a number of times; we even house sat their cat when they were in Sweden (where Jonas is from.) But, this will be their first time at ours. I would panic about all the cleaning, but I guess I've decided that if they judge us, I don't care? The food will be delicious, so they can put up with a few dust bunnies.

Then, Friday is Summer Solstice. Summer Solstice is not typically a big holiday for Shawn and me, but, again, in a kind of weirdly spontaneously social move, Shawn invited her friend Maria (who is Pagan curious) over for something casual in the backyard. We will eat dessert and read a poem, likely. Big Magic, for sure.

I was supposed to game with bcholmes and jiawen on Saturday, but our GM had to cancel. It's a bummer. I've been really enjoying our sessions, and we might not be able to play again until August. 

Oh, the other thing that seems to be happening is that I'm going to be doing a podcast with an online friend about yaoi. Currently we're calling it: "Boys' Love Power Hour," which kind of makes me happy. We're in the planning stages, but when I get back from our road trip, we're going to start recording in earnest. I will let you know what (if anything) comes of all that. 

Man, there's a lot going on right now....