Katkt's Journal

Skin Game

katkt — Fri, 21 Feb 2014 21:51:16 GMT

I just looked up info on the next book in the Dresden Files series (http://www.jim-butcher.com/books/dresden/skin-game-15).
I suspect it will be fine (there are some ways in which it could be pretty awesome, actually), but the premise sounds vaguely like it came out of a tabletop game...

Frozen

katkt — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 04:31:39 GMT

Two things Frozen:
First, I went to Tyrone, GA over the weekend to visit family. The local schools were closed Monday and Tuesday because of the cold. It was mid twenties and gorgeous out both days. In fairness, it was single-digits overnight, and that can cause problems if you're not prepared for it - and there's not really much cause for them to do that prep there...

Second, we saw "Frozen" while we were down there. I agree with siderea's estimation of the movie.. I think I liked it more than her, but it definitely suffered from too many different ideas going on in a way that seemed to interfere with it having a continuous emotional narrative. It was good. I really enjoyed it. It feels like there was a spectacular movie buried in there, but they piled extra random stuff in to make it mushy. It's nice to see Disney getting pulled away from their love-mythology.

Related to Frozen: I bought the soundtrack. In addition to the version from the movie, there's a pop-single version of "Let it Go" by Demi Lovato. I haven't heard her before but I was very disappointed. How do you manage to take the line "...a kingdom of isolation/and it looks like I'm the queen..." and sing it completely emotionally flat and empty? Bah! Pop-divas today.
Also, you kids get off my lawn.

LARP?

katkt — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 12:16:12 GMT

Is there anything happening next weekend? I remember there being a LARP or something, but when I look at the schedule, everything is the following weekend...
Maybe there's an SCA event I'm forgetting?

I had a good time with my family last weekend. Sad I missed the play up here, though.

Mythologies?

katkt — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 03:06:44 GMT

I have just finished re-reading "Cold Days", and I have a question.

Early in the book, when Dresden is talking to Santa Claus, there is indication that Santa Claus was something/someone else before. Near the end of the book, there is this bit that is clearly supposed to hint at who/what that was:

And for the briefest fraction of a second, the shadows falling from the tower and cottage in the gathering morning behind us seemed to flow together. The eye he winked with vanished behind a stripe of shadow and what looked like a wide scar. His face seemed leaner, and for that instant I saw Vadderung's wolfish features lurking inside Kringle's.

"He" in this passage is Santa Claus. Vadderung is Odin.

So ... who would have a family resemblance to Odin and an eye-scar, enjoy battle, and could plausibly re-tool themselves as Santa Claus? There are hints earlier of him having facility with manipulating time. My Norse mythology is not so awesome, and comes up blank. Anyone have any ideas?

Mom

katkt — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 02:22:41 GMT

Since Caitlin's party, I have been intending to write down a "this is what happened with my mother" reference -- the actual things that happened with her health as well as my reactions to them and my emotional journey since and some of my thoughts about how it has affected my life and blah blah blah. (summary : she died of cancer when I was 19. I did not cope gracefully)

But I fail at the actual writing. I've had time, but when I sit down to write, I veer away and do other things like play civ or write meta posts about how I'm failing to write. Which means that while it's been a long time for me and I really have internalized the whole thing so it's just who I am, and not something that hurts in the present -- I've been spending the last week and a half rummaging through the memories and emotions of a time when it *did* hurt.

Which kind of sucks. I mean even if it's just the way things are, there's still a lot of sad associated with it, and sad isn't really awesome fun. I either need to stop avoiding and write, or decide that I'm not ready to yet and try again in 5-10 years. Or maybe just have a long rambly conversation with someone about it. But I think I'm done thinking about it on a daily basis.

I had a great time at fencing practice today. The car ride home, not so much. But I am reminded that I might be the only person in the world for whom Terminator 2 is a seriously traumatic movie.

Trying to start running again

katkt — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 15:45:09 GMT

I started trying to run again. That's my goal this summer. I started on Thursday, so today was my second run. We'll see if I can keep it up. Todays run ended in a pretty spirally light show indicating that I'd probably didn't want to push any harder.

I'm not sure if my hamstring or my overall cardiovascular health (or lack thereof) will be the limiting factor. So far, they both seem to be getting tired at about the same rate -- but I'm guessing my hamstring will recover slower. I think Monday will be fine - we'll see how next Thursday is when I try to increase the run/walk ratio...

Well, that was a first

katkt — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 13:18:46 GMT

I don't often have to wait in line very long to vote, and today was no exception in that regard. But today, not only did I have no waiting whatsoever - there was no one else there voting at all. The half-dozen volunteers who run the place were there as usual, but nobody else. It was kind of surreal.

katkt — Fri, 31 May 2013 17:07:17 GMT

In a discussion on the philosophy of Bullshit (no, really), I see this commentary:

Frankfurt asks us to consider an anecdote told about Ludwig Wittgenstein wherein the great philosopher phones a friend named Fania Pascal who's just had her tonsils removed. How are you, Wittgenstein asks. Like a dog that's been run over, Pascal answers. Wittgenstein then replies testily, "You don't know what a dog that has been run over feels like." In effect, Frankfurt argues, Wittgenstein is suggesting that Pascal is spouting bullshit. (A more reasonable person, Frankfurt concedes, would reach the charitable conclusion that Wittgenstein's friend is merely expressing herself through the use of allusive or at worst hyperbolic language.) Wittgenstein's grumpy outburst seems so absurd that very possibly the real bullshit here is the anecdote itself.

Except from everything I've read, Wittgenstein really does seem like that kind of grumpy bastard. :-)

PT

katkt — Sun, 26 May 2013 15:56:02 GMT

Physical Therapy is going well. This weekend I switched from biking to running. Or, really, walking interspersed with 30 second bits of running, since after about 30 seconds my hamstring is pretty much overwhelmed. But it's much stronger today than yesterday, so that's encouraging. My PT goal is to be able to fight at Endgame next weekend. It's looking like it will be close. I think this evening there will be some shadow-sparring. And if that goes well, I might try to drum up some actual sparring tomorrow evening.

Leg update

katkt — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:45:17 GMT

It gave me three or four more days of uncertainty, but my leg now seems to be healing well. I can go for short walks and I can walk up a single flight of stairs normally now. This week I will start with stretching and seeing what I can do at the gym and maybe trying to do some light yoga.

Owie

katkt — Wed, 08 May 2013 02:02:29 GMT

Endgame last weekend was awesome. The plan for the weekend was that two big villains I play would be permanently* dealt with, and in that regard everything went according to plan. And the weekend was an awesome wonderful experience for me.

However.
I went into the weekend with a strained hamstring from the week before. Friday night and the first part of Saturday were fine. And then Saturday mid-afternoonish, I played a crunchy in a field fight. The bulk of my combat training is fencing, and I fight from my legs. I re-injured my hamstring Saturday. But the two big character deaths were still to come, and I've been setting this up for a year, and it wasn't just *my* fun, it was lots of other people's fun too, and no simple impediment like "pain" was going to stop me. So I played the rest of the weekend on my re-injured hamstring. I limited myself to the stuff I absolutely had to do, and I got extra sleep Saturday night, which was good. And we re-statted the big fight Sunday where they dealt with villain number 2 to account for the fact that I couldn't move very well. And I sucked it up and everything went awesome. Not flawlessly, retrospect being what it is, but definitely awesome. Thank you, everyone involved.

And I stayed home from work yesterday and today because my hamstring is a single massive bruise, and there's so much swelling in it that it's too painful to drive. The bruise is steadily "improving" (spreading out over a larger area and getting less-dense in color) But the swelling is frustratingly slow to change.

If I haven't permanently injured myself, the weekend was totally worth it. And I'm _pretty_ sure that I haven't permanently injured myself, given the behavior of my prior hamstring injuries. In most ways, this is substantially less bad than what I did to my (other) hamstring at Endgame 5ish years ago (for example, I can clench my hamstring without pain). But the swelling this time is worse -- it seems to be stable at "just slightly less than would have me alarmed and would have had me see a doctor on Monday, if not Sunday night". But I think if the swelling doesn't at least feel a tiny bit better tomorrow, I will go visit my PCP anyway.

Anyway, just a mix of triumphant glee in a project long underway coming to fruition. And some whining that my body is getting old and I'm a little slow at learning how to take care of it properly. It's doing a bang-up job of teaching me, though!

* - seemingly permanently, at least. No definitive plot statements are included in this post! :-)

Happy Hogswatch

katkt — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 06:45:00 GMT

I'm late, but it was a late day for me. It appears that watching "Hogfather" is a new seasonal tradition for me. [ a TV adaptation of the Discworld novel by the same name ] I think three years in a row qualifies, and it's been at least that. I like it - it's both a good send-up of some Christmas excesses, and an entertaining celebration of some of the good things about people. Hopefully it will act as a buffer against my occasional bouts of misanthropy.

Happy Hogswatch

katkt — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 20:56:51 GMT

Hogswatch seems to have settled in as my new mid-winter holiday of choice. And so, a bit of dialogue from Hogfather, slightly mangled for brevity.

S- All right. I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need fantasies to make life bearable.
D- No. Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
S- Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little-
D- Yes. As practice. You have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
S- So we can believe the big ones?
D- Yes. Justice, mercy, duty, that sort of thing.
S- They're not the same at all!
D- You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet you act as if there is some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.
S- Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point?
D- My point exactly. You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?

Wings?

katkt — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 14:41:49 GMT

I've considered this before, but I wonder how the guys from Wings (other than Paul McCartney) feel about the whole experience. Did any of them do anything else? Did Wings even tour, or just do studio stuff?

No reason or import, just random musing. I realize that Google will tell me the answer to these questions, but this is more pondering the experience than wanting to inspect the reality.

New phrase

katkt — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 13:22:45 GMT

I just used the phrase, "rabid bacon afficianado".

I imagine it's one that will remain in use at least through this coming weekend.

Make-up

katkt — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 16:38:50 GMT

I'm bad at the whole planning and ordering ahead thing, so when I realized yesterday that I didn't like the look of the makeup I'd acquired, it was stressful - since it's late enough that standard shipping will "probably" reach me in time.

But! It's October.
So I found a theater supply company with extended availability hit them up today. I have now acquired black makeup in which I have much more faith, as well as a couple other odds and ends.

October is an awesome time to be designing a new larp character. Even aside from the whole issue of finding make-up that will last the weekend at the last minute, it's very freeing to be able to respond "it's for a costume" when people are trying to figure out why I'm buying, for example, black lipstick

katkt — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 01:15:30 GMT

I am tremendously pleased with my Mirror Mirror costume, and really enthusiastic about playing the original Katkt again. Many thanks to nomadmwe for help with the costume concept and with the character translation, and to greylady for help with the costume execution.

There may have to be pictures next weekend.

katkt — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 02:15:41 GMT

Endgame was this weekend. It was full of awesome for me. There were a couple big scenes that finally happened that we've been working toward for a while. One horrible mechanics snafu aside (which fortunately caused no lasting harm), I felt like they went pretty well. I was massively stoked at the end of game.

But then I spent the whole drive home thinking of even cooler things I could have said or done but didn't think of at the time and kicking myself. I think this is going to be even more of a hazard while LARPing than it was while "being a teenager". Le sigh.

Eventually, I will settle down from the second guessing and be massively pleased again.

I might need a Story Cop icon.

On the plus side

katkt — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 13:05:55 GMT

Today's XKCD, particularly the alt text, helped (fix) my grumpiness a little.

katkt — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 12:06:06 GMT

Over the weekend, I heard a number of mentions of how various political candidates are courting the "women vote". The idea of "women" as a voting block is nothing new, of course, but I think I've finally reached saturation on it. If we MUST segment the population into artificial groups for purposes of making gross generalizations about attitudes, can we at LEAST have the groups be less than half the voting-age population, please?

Also, waking up at 4am doesn't do much for my usual start of the week crankiness. It must be a Tuesday. I could never get the hang of Tuesdays.

Just a Spoonful of Sugar

katkt — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 18:59:40 GMT

An update on my knee:
It now seems to be fine. It felt usable on Sunday, actually, but I mostly stayed off it until today. I went to the gym this morning and it was fine. I'm filing it under "weird muscle stuff" and have resolved to habitually stretch and foam-roller my legs more to make everything that connects into my knees happier and more flexible.

But if it happens again right before the next Endgame, I'm just going to start running non-combat plot.

[ you're welcome for the earworm in the subject. Just be glad I didn't inflict Dick van Dyke's English accent on you. Oh ... nevermind. ]

katkt — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 00:35:34 GMT

Endgame is now.
I am at home posting on LJ because my knee gave out 5 minutes before game start. While I was putting on make-up.

WTF? Who gets make-up injuries? It isn't even like a real injury - I didn't notice any event of any kind, it was fine all day, then I'm standing at the sink and I shift my weight and my leg says "NO!"

I did some RP and I figured out how to salvage the plot that needed me. But mostly I was tired and grumpy and tremendously out of it - so I came home to be grumpy in a comfy bed instead.

I'm hoping to be better - from both the grumpy and the knee - by the middle of the week.

katkt — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 12:27:36 GMT

I listened to George Michael's album "Listen Without Prejudice" in the car for my commute home from work yesterday and to work this morning, and it's stuck in my damn head. Not even The Greatest American Hero can chase it away! Mother's Pride, indeed.

katkt — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 16:50:02 GMT

I spent a chunk of the weekend doing historical research to write background for a character in a LARP. Fun research; it almost makes me want to be SCAish again.

katkt — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 13:21:52 GMT

I'm fond of quoting Wittgenstein as saying, "That which cannot be said must be passed over in silence." It occurs to me today that, frequently, that which cannot be said can be said with a hug.

I'm fine. Just feeling a particularly strong bit of empathy. But my day tomorrow is set aside for a funeral, and that's _not_ what brought this to mind.