[eliza's scrapbook] three rules.

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The player scrapbooks forum is literally a place for writers to warm-up, brainstorm, keep little scraps of notes, or just post things to encourage themselves and each other. Each player can feel free to create their own thread - one per account - and use them accordingly.

[eliza's scrapbook] three rules.

Postby Eliza on July 9th, 2013, 11:19 pm

]There are three rules for writing.

Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

- W. Somerset Maugham.




Hi! I'm Katie.

I have a lot of given names, but most call me Katie. I like it when you call me Katie versus the name of my character. I played in Mizahar for several years before taking a break about a year ago. I've been lurking around for a couple of weeks now attempting reacclimate. Eliza is a shiny new PC of mine whom I am learning and am excited to write for. I don't know many of you anymore, or if I do I'm unaware of it due to seeing you under new PC names.

Free time seems to be more of a thing in my life of late, so with any luck my dabbling in Mizahar will grow into less lurking and more actively doing things. Writing and creating. Et cetera. It's a great place and there appear to be a couple of great additions and alterations as well.

Below are a few things you might care to know.

  • I drink lots of wine. Lots.
  • I love to write. I love to plot even more.
  • I'm from Georgia and the Southern comes out sometimes.
  • I curse and I'm not terribly sorry about it. This scrapbook will have cursing in it and if cursing mortally offends you then I suggest you fuck off this thread in the nicest possible way.
  • I dislike capitalizing my titles properly. I know it's annoying. I'm only a little bit sorry about it. It is a horrible habit and I should be ashamed.

Finally, I want to get to know you. I want to write and plot and create amazing things with you. I hope you decide the same. Only in reverse. ;)

- k.

post script: This is awesome. I've posted it before and feel it's worthy of doing so again. You copy/paste something you've written into the text field and the website robots tell you what famous author they think you write like.
and I know their choices color all I've done.

- Mumford.
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[eliza's scrapbook] three rules.

Postby Eliza on July 10th, 2013, 8:34 pm

I found this thing on the interwebs and have spent an hour at minimum trying to trip it up. It is distinctly possible I’m the last geek to the game and this is old news, but just in case I’m not this is seriously entertaining.

It is a “Akinator, the Web Genie!” Akinator claims the ability to guess what literary (or television, or graphic novel, or silver screen, or…) character you are thinking of by asking yes or no questions. Of course I set out to break him, but he broke me. I wracked my brain for the most little known side characters in the most obscure piece of drivel I’ve ever read and, still, Akinator figured it out.

Maybe they just weren’t that obscure. (I admit I feel like an aged out hipster just typing that.) On a few I racked up a seriously high number of queries, but eventually Akinator nailed it. Twice he guessed wrong on the first go, but made it around by the end.

That is all. Now you can go waste your time trying to beat a computer like I did.

- k.
and I know their choices color all I've done.

- Mumford.
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[eliza's scrapbook] three rules.

Postby Celie on July 10th, 2013, 8:56 pm

I tried the Akinator, and I actually managed to trip him up - at least, with his first guess. I was thinking of Claudia from Warehouse 13, and he guessed Myka. The second time he guessed Claudia, but still.

I only played for a few minutes before I got bored. Still, it was interesting.
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[eliza's scrapbook] three rules.

Postby Draven on July 10th, 2013, 9:54 pm


At your own risk ;) :
ლಠ益ಠ)ლ What have you done! (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ
*calms down*
m(_ _)m ... m(._.)m Not really your fault though...
I just went to that Analyze-me-writing-site... and used it 3 times:
1) Shakespeare (。⌒∇⌒)。
2) J D Weirdname ( ?´_ゝ`)
3) Stephanie Meyer 。・゚゚・(>д<)・゚゚・。
...
Then I went to that Akinator-site:
1) Otonashi - Yuzuru -> Angel Beats: CORRECT
2) Ciel Phantomhive -> Kuroshitsuji: CORRECT
3) Livak -> Tales of the Einarin: WRONG *muahuahuahua*
...
As a result I will spend the rest of my life, trying to further trick Akinator!
...
Oh, and welcome back!!!
Here, have this pic:
Image
Because,
Image

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gonna keep reading your scrapbook from now on ;)
... and please don't mind the mess I made :(
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[eliza's scrapbook] three rules.

Postby Eliza on July 13th, 2013, 9:55 pm

Apres moi, le deluge.

My office sits west of historic Savannah city proper in the middle of nothing and train tracks that go to defunct stations either preserved as museums or left to gracefully decay beneath the title of "event venue". My house waits on one of the barrier islands locked in by the Savannah river, its creeks and tributaries, and the endless stretch of salt water marshes. There are two bridges off my island to the mainland and one heading in the opposite direction for the last island in the line. The fastest way to and from work is to take the drawbridge (assuming it is down) because the Wilmington River bridge drops you off on the wrong side of the city. What this means is that the best route for my daily travel requires me to go through the historic district.

Savannah's historic district was planned by Gen. James Oglethorpe in the eighteenth century. It is a famous fact, earning it's own title "the Oglethorpe Plan" and winning Savannah the nickname of "the First City". It consists of squares, somewhere in the upper twenties originally and a few shy modernly, and all of the roads wind out in a grid -- north, south, east, and west -- along the banks of the Savannah river just east of the big shipping ports and cranes. Or, rather, it is now just east. At the time of founding, when ships still ran off of nothing but wind, slaves, and steam, it was exactly it.

The sewer system in downtown Savannah (we call historic Savannah proper downtown Savannah as well) is just over a century old. It has been updated, slowly, over the course of the years; but quite frankly it is proving to be incapable of keeping up with the deluge now that all streets are paved in more than dirt, ballast stones, and oyster shells. The result is that when our semi-tropical weather erupts in hurricane season and dumps storms on our heads daily, downtown floods.

Typically what happens is that a street here or there will get a lot of standing water. Once in a spring tide (versus a blue moon), we get seriously hammered and everyone in the city is immobilized unless they want to hop into a boat to get anywhere. More common is what happened last night when I was driving through downtown on my way home from work. (Yes, I actually have a point!)

Sheets of rain were blasting the sentinel oaks which, in turn, dumped acorn and leaf logged buckets of water on my windshield. I was at a standstill on, ironically, Oglethorpe Street, observing some incredibly insane tourist run madly down the sidewalk with what appeared to be a magazine over his head. The magazine was no worthy shield against the storm, but I guess he was just that concerned about his hair. Lighting cracked close enough to my car to shake it and at the moment my phone beeped. Seeing as how I wasn't going anywhere until the five cars attempting to negotiate right-of-way in an intersection where the power outtage had killed the traffic lights, I figured it was safe to look at my phone.

I did. It was Google Now, frantically attempting to inform me that there was a Flash Flood Warning in my area!

No way, Google. No. Way.

Better late than never? I put my head on the steering will and just sighed.

Finally, it was my turn to negotiate right-of-way. I did so by using a complicated series of hand gestures that started out amazingly polite and degraded to outrage when an F 150 pick-up swooped a corner, caught the curb hidden beneath the water, and forced me to nearly hit one of those old, pretty oaks I love so much.

The next intersection was a river.

Not the river, but a river. It was a road once, not so long ago that it couldn't recall being one, and in fact so soon that it probably still thought it was. Alas, no. When there is a good three feet of water rushing swiftly down you and carrying with it all manner of disregarded things, you are a river. Period. And therefore only the brave and the well equipped can cross you without ending up flooding their engine and turning into one of those idiots standing on top of their cars waiting for Superman to come rescue them.

I crossed it. I'm more stupid than I am brave, but I was well equipped with my SUV and a lifetime of experience handling Savannah flood waters.

You would think that at this juncture the story would end with "and I got home and opened the first of six bottles of wine". No, because the very next thing with which I was forced to contend was a nineteen foot Grady White upside down in the middle of the Islands Expressway. If you have never seen a boat not only out of water, but also out of its trailer and upside bloody down in the middle of the road then you don't understand the sheer degree of puzzlement that overcame me when it all came together.

I stopped, worried largely about people in the surrounding crush of cars being injured, and got soaking wet while ascertaining that there were no serious injuries and the cops/ambulance/maybe the damn Coast Guard were already on the way.

I crossed the drawbridge and finally, finally, got home whereupon I promptly changed into dry clothes, grabbed my bottle of gin, and took off for my neighbor's to spend the night drinking gimlets and jumping up in down in the puddles with our wellies on to deliver her sweet old dog a proper wake.

- k.
and I know their choices color all I've done.

- Mumford.
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[eliza's scrapbook] three rules.

Postby Celie on July 13th, 2013, 11:38 pm

Personally, I've never been farther south than Tennessee, and most of my experience with flooding is that one time it rained so much the creek by my house overflowed. At least you're okay and didn't get stuck in the new river. :) If I were there, I'd be standing on top of a car waiting to be saved by Superman or Spiderman or whatever comic book hero decided to be there at the time, haha.
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[eliza's scrapbook] three rules.

Postby Eliza on July 15th, 2013, 11:41 pm

Celie -- It would be completely worth it if a superhero show up. Just sayin'.

On a personal note.

Disclaimer: What I'm about to talk about is deeply personal. If reading about deeply personal issues of a stranger whom you all the same actually could smack into in chat or one day consider threading with makes you a bit ill, stop now. For the rest of you, read on.


Since my marriage began half a decade ago, my parents have been on the baby bandwagon. This is layered with ironies I have discussed at length with friends in similar life circumstances. The first is the largely expected fact of my parents being strongly against their daughter having a child prior to getting married, but the list thereafter extends so far as my parents essentially having manipulated not only me but my then fiancé out of living together while engaged. Yes, we were both full grown, financially independent adults and my parents’ opinion, no matter how firm or outdated, should not have altered our choices. And we really should not have allowed it to.

But you clearly don’t know my mother.

Raised in the deep South as Presbyterian, converted to Catholicism as a young mother married to a staunch Irish yankee, and the middle daughter of a true southern matriarch, Mama would rather be hanged than let society say her baby girl was shackin’ up before the priest said his words. Yes, her concern was largely that of social opinion and had next to nothing to do with a perceived moral high ground against premarital sex. Frankly, she could give a damn if I stayed all my night’s at my fiancé’s flat insolong as everyone could say with the angels my place of residence was elsewhere. In the same way that pearls go with anything and you bring your own knife to an oyster roast, girls who were raised right don’t “play house” with their beaus in the public eye.

The fact of the matter is children did not enter Dan and I’s play plans for several years. While we were interested in having them eventually, it was ever in an amorphous and distant future. Then came the day they found cancerous cells on my cervix gearing up to decimate all chances I had of conceiving and bearing children of my own – or so I envisioned. A few simple surgical procedures took care of the cancer, but it scared my husband and I enough that we got serious about starting a family.

And by “serious” I mean we stopped using contraceptives. It was awesome, but no baby. Then we started having more sex in general. It was a blast, but no baby. Then we moved on to having sex around that week in my cycle. It was still super fun, but no baby. Finally we started having sex on those days the ovulation test kit strips told us to after I peed on them. Good times, but – you guessed it – no baby.

Suddenly! There was a baby. The problem was that I learned about this baby because I was in the process of losing it. The emotional sharknado of that beat me up for a good long while. (Yes, I just used the word sharknado. You did not imagine it.) I've come out the other side of that storm and had a minor breakthrough regarding it this morning. Ironically, the details of that breakthrough are still too personal to share. It likely has to do with being so fresh.

Bottom line, I wanted to state this somewhere. Spin around beneath the clear sky after the storm so to speak. This is part of my way of doing that because words mean a great deal to me and things often feel truer than true once written down.

Or typed up.

Whatever.

Write on,
- k.
and I know their choices color all I've done.

- Mumford.
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[eliza's scrapbook] three rules.

Postby Gossamer on July 16th, 2013, 5:48 am

Congrats!
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[eliza's scrapbook] three rules.

Postby Eliza on August 9th, 2013, 8:54 pm

A dirty, ill-lit place.

A few months ago I determined to slap the first coat of paint on my dinky little plant stand. My intention was to get it started so that I could finish the project Saturday morning and finally know whether or not I truly, deeply, seriously wanted to paint my hulking ugly dining table the same way.

Disclaimer: this is less of a “how-to” and more of a “learn from misguided shit I do and take only the sober and/or victorious parts away”.

It needs to be said that acquiring chalk paint is not easy. It is not sold at the standard hardware stores such as Ace or Home Depot, but rather out of specialty shops. After scouring the internet to learn that the only shop in my city that sold it was not one on which I was on good terms (that is a story for another time), I finally located one in Vermont that was willing to ship the paint to me. I admit to having discovered a handful of make-your-own-chalk-paint recipes online, but considering that I am a newbie at updating furniture I thought perhaps I should save the home made tools aspect for my DIY Mastery badge.

Armed at last with my chalk paint, a red Solo cup of cheap wine and a screwdriver (nothing like the Doctor’s screwdriver, I’m afraid), I marched into my dirty, ill lit garage to face this.

Image


This plant stand is the epitome of crappy, hand me down furniture gifted by parents to their broke children who just need a place to put a bloody fern. Does it matter that I have a brown thumb? Or that I will be placing a fake plant on it? No. It spent the last few years of its life functioning as a bedside table, holding up a lamp so that I could go from ticking off my husband to only kind of annoying him when I fell asleep while reading in bed. (Notably, my mother is ALL FOR anything she thinks will keep me happily married. I’ve never seen my parents happier than the day after my wedding when my father was able to say I wasn’t his problem anymore.)

I started by setting down my wine and taking out my phone to google whether or not you’re supposed to sand the furniture before painting. This was about the seventh time I’d done this because I was having a difficult time believing that I did not have to. Suspend your disbelief, DIY newbies and veterans alike, you sure as hell don’t have to sand before using chalk paint.

Reassured, I wiped down the plant stand to remove any dust and pried open the can of French Linen paint. I decided on French Linen because it is a lovely, old world gray darker than their Country Gray which looked far too pale for what I wanted. I used a regular paint brush, brand new out of the package. It was a brush of average size and if you want to know more than that I’ll have to post a picture because I certainly didn’t pay attention to things such as exact brush size, bristle type, et cetera.

Starting from the top, I painted my way down. My technique consisted of putting the paint on the plant stand. Hand to God. Nothing more complicated than that. It took me all of ten minutes on the outside to complete, so I poured myself another Solo cup of wine and stood around chit chatting with my girlfriend who came by to have some quality venting about our work day. The color turned out perfect even by the poor garage lighting and I counted myself accomplished for the night.

The next day, I trooped out to the garage in my pajamas and with a cup of coffee to complete the project. I had clear wax and dark wax from the same vendor and, just like with the no-sanding, I googled how to use the wax about a dozen times. Clear wax went on first and less was better than more. I started out using a sturdy paper towel only discover that was a bad idea. Once I switched to a soft cloth for the wax application things went smoothly. The clear wax I applied all over and then I dabbed at the plant stand with the dark wax in an attempt to enhance the coveted antique-y (is that even a word?) look.

Voila! I was done.

Image


I’m rather happy with the finished product, though my husband told me it looked like a dirty, gray table to him. Whatever. The man doesn’t have a decorating bone in his body. I think sandpapering the corners to reveal the layers of paint might be what’s needed. What do ya’ll think? I ended up turning my dining table room table from monstrosity to fashionably ugly using around this same technique.

Fast forward a few months, I’ve now overhauled a club chair, hand built a coffee table, and are mid way through building a headboard. It’s like a sickness.

Seriously.

- k.
and I know their choices color all I've done.

- Mumford.
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[eliza's scrapbook] three rules.

Postby Eliza on August 11th, 2013, 1:45 am

People be crazy, ya'll.

This morning I co-hosted a yard sale. If any of you ever start thinking a yard sale is an awesome idea, turn to the person standing next to you and tell them to punch you in the face.

I did have Captain Adorable to play with, however.

Image


In an attempt to recover from the yard sale debacle, I'm having a glass of wine and realigning both my writing project list and my home project list. Below are a few pictures of the dining room table I mentioned earlier, the before and after shots.

Image

Image

Image
and I know their choices color all I've done.

- Mumford.
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