I am, in fact, still keep­ing up with Thing-a-Day! I need to go post over there, though. I do wish I could auto­mat­i­cal­ly cross-post, but if wish­es were fish­es and all that.

I stitched tonight while Sam and I gamed. I also wrote for a while, ear­li­er. Sam and I have recent­ly begun par­tic­i­pat­ing in a forum that does a great job of encour­ag­ing intro­spec­tion, and being a safe place in which to express one­self. It’s a pow­er­ful thing, and I’m in awe of the peo­ple who cre­at­ed and run it.

This after­noon, I opened the blinds on the win­dows behind my chair, think­ing it would draw Kioshi off the mon­i­tor (his tail kept obscur­ing the screen) to look out the win­dows. Nope. He turned around, so at least his tail was­n’t in the way, but he was inor­di­nate­ly pleased with him­self because he could then sur­vey his world from his nice, warm perch.

I down­load a ridicu­lous num­ber of pod­casts, then for­get to lis­ten to them. I can’t find my MP3 play­er, and it’s tiny any­way (512k), so it does­n’t hold much. Sam has the same kind, and he gets by, but he’s more moti­vat­ed: it keeps him sane while he’s “out there” every day. I nor­mal­ly take the lazy way out and lis­ten to Pan­do­ra or Last.FM.

Utter insan­i­ty. All of it. My fall class­es just start­ed. I’m in a flare (when am I not? but seri­ous­ly, I am).

But hey! I hate my birth­day, and three insane new things for the month should, at least, be dis­tract­ing!

So, yes, this would be my sec­ond NaBloPo­Mo post. I’m hav­ing a lit­tle tech­ni­cal trou­ble actu­al­ly post­ing the NaPod­Po­Mo part, but I’m doing them. And fine, might as well top it off with NaNoW­riMo.

It’s Hope’s fault. And Sam’s. And, um, right. Kioshi’s. All of you. Dread­ful.

Don’t mind me. By the end of Novem­ber, at least, I won’t have any hair left, so I won’t be spend­ing any more time wor­ry­ing over whether or not to get it cut, or col­or it, or what­ev­er!

In the Podos­phere 6 degrees of sep­a­ra­tion I’m sure every­one is linked back to Joe Mur­phy of the Kick­Ass Mys­tic Nin­jas, Wingin’ It, Slice Of Sci­Fi, etc, Pod­casts. While today is April Fools day, no one that was ever touched by Joe will find humor today. This com­ic was writ­ten on the same day of Joes pass­ing — its per­fect. Good­bye Joe, you mat­tered!

Joe touched many lives. My thoughts are with his fam­i­ly and friends tonight.

read more | digg sto­ry

We were tick­led to be part of the (how manyth?) annu­al Scar­let­talia last night! For those who have nev­er been blessed by par­tic­i­pa­tion, it hon­ors the arrival of Scar­lett Ross open our plan­et.

This year’s theme was Poly­ne­sian Poi, so we got to see fire-spin­ners up close and in per­son for the first time, and we prop­er­ly lei’d by God­dess Scar­lett her­self. Dis­trac­tion Darts and oth­er fun were quite mem­o­rable.

I know that a mar­velous pho­tog­ra­ph­er was tak­ing pic­tures of the firespin­ners, and will post a point­er if I see them released pub­licly. My lit­tle cam­era was­n’t up to the task of cap­tur­ing their beau­ty.

For now, my hair is renewed­ly red, my nails are pur­ple, and we are min­utes away from record­ing anoth­er ses­sion of Out in the Black. I had an aller­gy attack or some­thing ear­li­er today, and don’t real­ly have much of a voice. I’m try­ing to regain it, and hop­ing to join the game, though Jez may sound a bit butch­er than usu­al.

Sam has start­ed anoth­er pod­cast in cahoots with Bill Wal­ton. This one, Square One, is for com­plete­ly new gamers. Check it out — they’ve done a good job. I’m in one episode, though I don’t think that one’s up yet.

Sam and I are part of a group play­ing Out in the Black, a Seren­i­ty RPG mod­ule, that’s being record­ed for the After Seren­i­ty pod­cast. The first episode has already been put out on the feed, and the sec­ond episode should be out soon (we’ve already record­ed it).

At home we’re still play­ing Raven­flight togeth­er. Silken Moon­light is on hold ’til Son­ji can join us again. She’s always too busy to play from about Sep­tem­ber to Jan­u­ary each year. Sam recon­nect­ed with some­one we gamed with in the past recent­ly, and we have hopes of gam­ing with a group he’s part of before too long.

We (Sam and Katie and I) have been watch­ing the first sea­son of Veron­i­ca Mars on DVD. It’s a good show, with a bit of a non-super­nat­ur­al Buffy feel. We’re also watch­ing the last episodes of Alias. The con­trast is inter­est­ing, to say the least. Since we get around to watch­ing maybe one episode of one or the oth­er a week, it’s slow going.

I final­ly fin­ished watch­ing Rent, too. Sam and I have both found that movie to be a dread­ful ear­worm gen­er­a­tor. I picked up the sound­track CD at the library this week­end, and will try lis­ten­ing to it ’til I’m sick of it. Maybe that will help.

Sam has a small TV in the kitchen, and he always has some oth­er series going in the DVD play­er there to keep him com­pa­ny while cook­ing if some­one isn’t in the kitchen with him. The cur­rent one is Penn & Teller — Bullsh*t! The Com­plete Sec­ond Sea­son. I thought I’d watched that, but appar­ent­ly I mis­re­mem­bered. Penn is awful­ly atten­tion-get­ting, even with­out a visu­al.

I gave myself a gift today: a head­set with my very own micro­phone for the pod­cast.

It isn’t as fan­cy as the one that I was using, which is my part­ner’s Very Nice (read: intim­i­dat­ing) micro­phone. That one, though, sits on the desk­top on its own stand. I know this sounds piti­ful, but I have trou­ble stay­ing with­in prop­er range of it, because my voice is soft. I have to lean over and up from the chair I’m in, and even then I end up feel­ing as if I’ve had to near­ly shout to record a pod­cast, which takes far more ener­gy than sim­ply speak­ing nor­mal­ly and is very stress­ful, to boot!

That removes one of the main bar­ri­ers to get­ting pod­casts out on a reg­u­lar basis. The next is that Sam pro­duces the show for me, but he has a full-time job and is much busier than I am out­side the home. Do I dare release the show unedit­ed, brain fog effects and all? What do y’all think?

There are times when hav­ing so many inter­ests is, well, of ques­tion­able val­ue. (Not that I’m about to give any of them up.)

When I’m stitch­ing I feel guilty because I haven’t done a pod­cast in a while. Sam is hav­ing a fit with some sort of weird noise just appear­ing in the record­ings, though, and I don’t have the patience he has for re-record­ing over and over again to get a full pod­cast done accept­ably.

So I stitch, but I should also be doing some web work or blog­ging, or house work. And I know I must owe some­one cor­re­spon­dence. At least most of those peo­ple know why I’m tak­ing a bit of a break.

Luck­i­ly, gam­ing and stitch­ing go well togeth­er, although some­how, very lit­tle work gets done dur­ing the very intense ses­sions.

Then there are the cats. Shel­ley has decid­ed that she does­n’t care what her past train­ing has been. She wants to be held when she wants to be held, and at 17 years old, she takes prece­dence over any WIP. The kit­ten is still learning—no, I’m still try­ing vain­ly to teach the kit­ten not to chase my thread. It’s up to me to always remem­ber to put WIPs away so that he can’t nest on them.

At least it’s a full life, rather than an emp­ty one.

I’ve just post­ed the sec­ond episode of the Fibrant Liv­ing pod­cast, with much help from Sam.

You are cor­dial­ly invit­ed to vis­it the grand open­ing of Fibrant Liv­ing, the only pod­cast to focus on liv­ing a full, joy­ous life despite fibromyal­gia, chron­ic fatigue, or oth­er chron­ic ill­ness­es.

You can find Fibrant Liv­ing and its com­pan­ion blog at http://fibrantliving.com/ . The feed is at http://feeds.feedburner.com/FibrantLiving , or avail­able on LJ as fibrantliv­ing.

Fibrant Liv­ing is pro­duced by Sam Chupp of the Bear’s Grove, Drag­onKin and Bardic Cir­cle pod­casts.

Namaste,
Cyn