[Gossamer's Scrapbook] The Ethereal Canyon I

[Gossamer]

. Two Mini Rants Missing/Orphaned/Dead/In-Need-Of-Rescuing Children (and their helpless Mothers) If there are stray kids running around on Miza one of two things happens to them immediately. First and foremost they get eaten or die of exposure. Seriously. Secondly if they are super duper lucky/cool/unique/god-marked/inhuman/or otherwise special and do manage to survive, they don't need you to rescue them. Honest. Stop submitting stories to us in the help desk of you folks rescuing random lost/missing/stranded/helpless children and their mothers too. It's cliche and ridiculous and I'm not going to approve anything anymore that remotely looks like this - especially for gnosis marks. I'll see '(fill in the blank) kids' and stop reading. I swear it. That Other Game Out There If you'd put half the energy you spend in hating Mizahar and/or rewriting the stuff the Mizahar Founders graciously wrote for you while we spent time on your site and funneled that energy back into your own game in terms of new development, you might actually have something cool going on. Think about it. It's not rocket science. Oh, and when I say development, I mean ORIGINAL development, not concepts you rip off from us. You're starting to look like special flowers to the online community of gamers as a whole and I kinda thought you might need a heads up that your reputation is taking all kinds of blows over it. .

[Irriari]

I don't see why people would want to adopt kids in Miz. Not only are they a liability in a DANGEROUS post apocalyptic world, but they also take up precious mizas. Personally, not my thing at all and I would love if someone could explain why in a world like Mizahar, (unless your character is a bleeding heart and HAS to help poor orphans when they see them), this would be a good idea.

[Gossamer]

Thank you. Exactly.

[Onyx Maelstrom]

First off Goss,

Just because the mothers of all my bastards are not keeping a close enough eye on them doesn't mean they aren't lost! Secondly, I am a big idealist in Supply and Demand. So what you just said is I need to have more mating experiences to increase the population of lost bastard children of Onyx. *Stretches* Just give me a moment, got to warm up!

[Gossamer]

. The Harvest . Some of you might remember a past blog post where I talked about aquatic gardening through the winter in my beta tank. Some of you weren't around for it. Well, today, beings that its near the end of Spring and Summer is just next week, I thought I'd show you all how much I had to trim out after fertilizing, trimming, grooming, fussing all winter inside in my aquascape. Sorry its so pink, but its dark and the camera phone isn't liking my salmon colored room with the black furniture. I had to thin the pile down because the plants beneath these were not getting any light to grow with. I guess all that CO2 I added to the water really helped. Anyhow, here's the 'before' blog when I first planted the babies. On and I threw a prismacolor pen on top of the pile to give it some scale. It's really about the size of my head. Oh, and for those of you who are curious, I just have a single male beta in this tank along with half a dozen female fancy betas that really look like sport males. Everyone gets along well and has a good time together. The male is a real gentleman and has raised several batches of babies. before images : Habits and Aquascapes Can they possibly be related? Sure they can. A habit is defined as an involuntary pattern of behavior or practice, usually acquired by frequent repetition. We are all creatures of habit. Most of us want to break habits such as snacking after a certain time in the evening or make new ones like saving money. In many ways, habits define us. I have learned through past experience that creating new habits is as hard as breaking old ones. You make new ones by repetition. You break old ones by old fashioned hard work and vigilance. The real key to both is to make the habit you want easy and the habit you don't want harder. Don't want to use your credit card? Freeze it in a block of ice in the freezer. Want to get up on time? Move the alarm clock halfway across the room so you can't hit snooze a zillion times and be late because its not an easy handslap away. Over the past two months I've broken the habit of getting up and writing. I've been getting up fussing about contractors (more drama there btw!), painting, hammering, putting in my own flooring, redecorating, sorting boxes, etc. All sorts of things. I haven't actually been doing any writing. Why? No time. And when I mean no time, I mean a crazy lack of time. Now, involuntarily, the habit of Mizahar has been broken. It needs to be reestablished. These blogs are going to help. If I get up, blog as a warmup, then start posting it has helped. My fingers, for heavens sake, are even sluggish on the keys. That's not right. So, starting this week, I'm going to wake up to blog about anything and everything - probably mostly nonsense - and then at least kick out mod posts Tues, Thurs, and Saturday. Mon, Weds, Friday, and Sun are going to be my PC times. I have to get organized. I have to get my act together. I have to form new habits and new loves. Speaking of habits. I love to garden. I can't indoor container garden because I have an army of felines that live with me so houseplants don't last that long. They are, after all, glorified cat toys and snacks right? So I wanted to keep involved in my habit of gardening and I thought of a perfect way. So, for over the last two months I've been slowly setting up two tanks to aquascape. My goals simple. All natural items inside said tanks... from substrate to decorations to plants. Everything must be living besides rocks and bogwood. I think they are coming along great. The first tank is technically my husbands. Its a 45 gallon one that's looking a little empty since all his plants are babies. But once they start growing and blooming, I just know it will look amazing. The second tank is my own. Its a 20 gallon that has plant friendly substrate and a couple of huge chunks of bogwood in it. I'm in the habit of checking water quality daily and fussing with fertilizer, CO2, and a ton of other things to keep my plants happy. They are still babies too, but most will be thriving for a long time to come. In terms of fish, they are simply stocked with glowlight minnows just to keep the water cycling and have some finned friends with no desire to graze on the vegetation. I wanted to keep the 'gardening' habit going so I'm stoked to have something to fiddle with while I'm watching the snow fall. Its almost the same anal retentive water checking that I've been doing for the hot tub. But I think I have the chemicals for that down pat too. Anyhow, here's some pictures. It isn't anything fancy, but I thought I'd share. So far my favorite plants are the java fern, the sword grass, moss balls, and the foxtail. They all look so lush. Many of you perhaps have no clue about my love of plants. But I'm the type of person that loves trying new varieties. Some day I'll post some pictures of my gardening idea book with all its stickers and labels and notes. I get down on my hands and knees and talk to little things that are growing. My car generally has a bit of dirt in the back seat where I've stolen (*clears throat*) borrowed cuttings or clippings here and there. There's nothing I won't try gardening. Many people wander through life claiming they love nature, but they sometimes miss whole aspects of nature in terms of the rewards of growing things. There's something incredibly charming about watching something sprout from seed and go all the way to fruit. I'm the nut that will plant lemon seeds just to have the lush trees growing out on the porch in pots. I have a green thumb through and through. My gardens outside include kitchen herbs, flowers for cutting, old fashioned roses and wysteria, and magical gardens just for doing things in the moonlight. Plants have power. A great deal of power. I think my respect for them came from rubbing shoulders with great herbalists and striking up conversations about how plants make us feel with friends. And while I'm not saying I'm an expert, I'm not, I do however know a heck of a lot about herbs from making tinctures to hand creams to soaps that foam and don't foam and creating all sorts of infusions and essential oils. I didn't learn from books either. I learned from real people using real plants - growing and experiencing them first hand. I don't pull a text from a bookshelf, thumb through it and go..'oh... thats what I need for a cough.' If you don't have a garden and aren't a gardener... this is really hard to do. I honestly and truthfully have very little respect for the so-called experts that don't grow their own. Mail order is out the window, folks. Not only is it not safe, but its not fresh and you don't know whats been put on plants to keep them growing. I pull out my own notes and dig out my recipe for say poison oak relief rather than grabbing the calamine lotion. Plants are my life. I love them. I love them as much as I love animals. That's why forming new habits, growing an aquascape, and writing on Mizahar is all related. And I look forward to the first week in December. That's when we officially hit our slow period at work, and that means all my vast writeups - herbalism being one of the biggest - will get put in and I can start on my goal of having my gnosis writeups completed at the tune of one or two a week. .

[Mizuriel]

Why all the hate for improvised foster care?

[Cayenne]

I don't think it's hate for the foster care, per se, as much as it is the lost children in the wilderness thing.

[Mizuriel]

Still guilty.

[Irriari]

I don't hate the idea, I just really REALLY do not get it. At all. To me, Mizahar is dangerous, and I can't think of single 50 foot by 50 patch of dirt that didn't have some inherent danger involved. It's hard enough for PC's to fend off danger when they only have one body to look after- add another to the mix and it gets even crazier. I hate to keep calling them liabilities, but here, that's how I see kids, especially if you are traveling in the wilderness. (Cities may be a bit different). What happens if a slaver holds the orphan at knife point, to steal your mizas? Let's say that you love the kid. You fork over 100 gms. You get the kid back (which probably wouldn't happen) and then you have to support yourself and said orphan with no mizas. You both get hungry and then... what happens?

Or, imagine that somehow a creature attacks them? You lunge to save them, as they are bleeding and screaming, and you get mauled, because, once again, your attention is elsewhere. I could see adopting kids (maybe) if you had a few master level skills. I just don't think most PCs have the mizas, lifestyle or skills to provide a realistic, safe environment for these orphans. Even if they had a steady income and expert/master level skills, it would still be iffy, in my opinion.

Don't get me wrong- I have nothing against kids, I have something against kids that shouldn't exist, and could potentially be killed/maimed by a PCs lack of ability to care for an orphan in the way way they should be cared for.

I'll step off my soapbox now. Thanks for reading.

[Gossamer]

. I Have Zero Posting Motivation No Matter How Much I Try So how about a story instead? I think this story is pretty indicative of who I am and what kind of world I live in. You guys know me fairly well here, know how reactive I can be, and how opinionated I am. Well, I got a 'talking too' from my boss last night. Yes. Me. I rarely get in trouble, but my boss has been on this kick lately. Now, as a bit of background - I do respect my boss. I even like him. But sometimes I have to sit back and get a reality check on the fact that he doesn't know me at all. And when I say that, I really mean it. There's this guy that always comes into the yard. He's foreign - some asian race maybe Laotian - this isn't an important fact other than no one can understand him and hes like four feet tall and squirrely which is unsettling to me to begin with. I keep thinking someone is going to run over him much like the yapping little lap dogs some drivers come into the yard with. Anyhow, he talks out of the front of his mouth and kinda spits. He's pushy, a huge jerk, laughs after every sentence, and I have no idea 99% of the time what hes saying. And he'll say something, you'll try to process it, then he'll laugh manically and wait for you to respond. I usually yell at him. He always wants an empty trailer, having brought up a load from a bigger southern city. I always tell him to take a certain type - a rail can - which everyone hates pullin. Well night before last he refused. His excuse was he would get into trouble. I didn't care. But again, I was in a great mood and didn't want to fight. We didn't have the empties to give him, truth be told, but we had one of the type he wanted left in the yard... so I just caved and gave it to him. Normally I don't do this, but I didn't want to deal with him at all. So back to the boss. My partner told my boss about the dude, and my boss blew his stack. So when I came into work, I had to have a talk with the boss. He says I'm not assertive enough and need to be more of an enforcer of what we want drivers to do. He mimicked sharpening a stick and said he was giving me a big stick, a really big one, and he expected me to use it. He also said he was sharpening it for me and everything... and that he worried I was letting people push me around sometimes. I know his heart is in the right place. I understand how skewed this looked to him - letting the dweeb go and not wanting to deal with him. We all have off days. I know he thinks I'm female and thinks I'm scared of everyone... but he doesn't know the Swift Drivers have warnings on their qualcoms about not inciting my wrath. And when I repeated this story to my relief, he burst out laughing and and said "Jen, I honestly thought you were going somewhere else with this story... getting a talking too. I thought you'd finally bitched at the wrong person and they complained and you'd get the 'tone it down' lecture." Yea. Me too. Go figure. So now, if anyone argues with me I'm supposed to give them the 'my way or the highway' option and throw them out of the yard with a writeup if they even blink wrong. Uh... go me? And you guys wonder why I'm so outspoken and decisive. . .