[Gossamer's Scrapbook] The Ethereal Canyon I

[Khida]

Speaking of which I've been gutting my possessions and paring down my life. My husband and I have a dream of moving out of the country in the next ten years and that dream will start with a trip to where we want to move in August. We hope to buy property on the beach and spend the remainder of our days sipping rum infused fruit drinks and not having a care in the world. I hear you there! I've gotten really tired of putting other things before my life and my own well-being, and especially tired of spending MY time on someone else's goals. Too many "I need to" and "I have to" and "I should" things stretching out ahead of me, and not enough "I just want to" on the agenda anymore. And one thing I've had over the past few months is a hard lesson in where my priorities ought to be. "Not having a care in the world" is definitely up there! (You can keep the beaches, though. I prefer mountains.) I want to work on Syka a bit more. Syka has me excited. Yay, Syka! I'm glad to hear it's moving forward again. I shall keep an eye out for developments!

[Gossamer]

Response

I'm not one for crowded overdeveloped beaches either. I live in the mountains currently, or at least in their shadow. And I've had enough of the evergreen state and its constant cold rain or boiling temps. When I say beach I mean a place time forgot in a primitive warm place on the edge of a rainforest. We're heading to this place in a little while for ten blissful days this summer and that's where we hope to buy property to move too.

Yea. I'll take that any day. We're staying in the bungalow on stilts pictured below overlooking the little pool. Its right on the beach. It's a five guest room eco resort with a five star ten seat restaurant that is only open if they know people are coming. There are no roads, only little trails for roads. And everyone gets around by water taxi for around a dollar a trip.

*sigh* I want to be there now.

Our Escape :

I hope you are finding your own space Khida and putting yourself first.

[Net]

Goss that is gorgeous.

[Amunet]

this really hits home with taking care of so many other things and people before one's own self.

I hope i can get to that point one day.

Glad one of us is getting to that point. Soon, very soon things will be headed in the right direction.

[Khida]

That sounds like a fantastic getaway! And a fantastic place to live. I might just have to change my opinion! I'm heading back to southern Oregon at the end of August -- which I'm very excited for -- and my next venture is going to be running my own little business. That's a complete 180 in that I'll be making use of all the pursuits I enjoyed which got set aside over the last seven years: namely writing, programming, and beadwork. (I pulled out my beads last weekend for the first time in two and a half years, which was pretty disheartening to realize.) So yes. The agenda going forward is all about me.

[Khida]

Oh! I just remembered, I saw an article a month ago or so that made me think of you. Namely, it's on honeybees. In case you haven't seen it already, it's the results from a ~5-year study of (some) colony pests and diseases and apparently the first epidemiological baseline study for honeybees. Open access article here. Some quick snippets (quoted from press release): "Our biggest surprise was the high level of varroa, especially in fall, and in well-managed colonies cared for by beekeepers who have taken steps to control the mites," said study co-author Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an assistant professor of entomology at UMD. "We knew that varroa was a problem, but it seems to be an even bigger problem than we first thought. Moreover, varroa's ability to spread viruses presents a more dire situation than we suspected." Some viruses do not appear to be associated with varroa or nosema at all. One example is Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus, which causes loss of motor control and can kill individual bees within days. This virus was first detected by the survey in the U.S. in 2010. At that time, less than 1 percent of all samples submitted for study tested positive for the virus. Since then, the virus' prevalence roughly doubled every year, reaching 16 percent in 2014.

[Kaie]

I'm glad you've found the time for self discovery as that is, in my opinion, one of the most valuable ways anyone can and should spend their time. I only hope that in the future I too am afforded the same luxury. I'm very excited about your plans for Syka, and though I'd love there to be a reason to plop my Myrian in that setting to explore, I'm also happy you plan on sticking to the logic that settlements generally don't welcome the belligerent indigenous on the outside. Anyways, I'll bet I'm not the only one on the site that's super jealous of that beautiful getaway! Oh, and tell us all about it after your trip so we can live vicariously through your fun.

[Gossamer]

Syka

I should probably post this in the Syka Discussion Thread but I honestly wanted to get my thoughts all straight on it. Sometimes a Scrap is good for that kind of exercise. I'm trying to ease back into Mizahar, which is somewhat hard because I have been so behind on HD tickets and PMs its not any funny. If you've ever tackled something like hiring contractors for something you might realize how impossibly complex it is. You have to schedule time to be home to get estimates. You have to take these estimates or bids, research companies, read reviews, and then make a decision. And since we're doing roofs, gutters, a heat pump, and redoing a bathroom its completely insane. Delays. Decisions on Materials. Its never as easy as HGTV makes it seem, trust me.

Syka's been my happy place.

As you all know, the way we've written Mizahar is that before the Valterrian there was a lot more 'tech' than there is now. A lot was lost when the world was destroyed, but some of that has remained either in artifacts or basic skill knowledge like Glyphing or Djed wire. If there was so much Djed Wire, what was it all used for? I have a big plotline that took place in the past about Marcus Kelvic and his twin sister Myrna. Myrna was lost offworld... so that means we used to travel, as Mizaharians, from world to world. Marcus developed the Kelvic race in his 'recovery' stage while he was convalescing to help assist the daunting task of 'finding' her. Kelvics were better set up in a lot of ways than humans to survive potentially hostile worlds.. and even if they did he didn't exactly consider them 'human' or even on par with non-created races. To him they were tools. That didn't exactly make him an asshole. He just had a driving need and need breeds invention and invention causes evolution. The Kelvics of now are not the kelvics of years past. They've grown, evolved, and the mimic has more firmly established itself.

I want Syka to be a sort of bridge in time. There's more past in Syka than present even if the present settlers don't seem to realize it. Syka, for example, is going to have the only potentially working World Gate on the planet. World Gates are tech dependent, not Divine Djed Dependent. So the whole Aq and Sag plotline won't be effected. Syka will have the means to use it buried in and around the tiny settlement. Syka is going to be a holding place for hands on learning of the past. In many ways it will be an archaeologist's dream. Yet the reality of it will be ever evolving from a place with six huts, a general store, and perhaps a few other locations... we get to see where it evolves too.

Pavena is Myrna's Ironrock version - a massive technological fortress dedicated to research offworld. Not much is left of it, of course, but enough to count in my mind so that some good sleuthing PCs can learn a lot and maybe restart her facility. It was tropical in her day and still so much so today. That brings in Wilderness Survival. Syka will be a place of survival with very few creature comforts. I'm trying to bring together two opposite sides of a scale and see if low tech meeting high tech can interact and what kind of creature will be borne from it. And ironically kelvics are going to help me jumpstart the city plotlines and get it going.

And in doing so I'm not going to ignore Riverfall. Riverfall will have its share of the action too. I just need to get caught up enough to get on it. First things first. Some interesting quest writing will get that going. I want RF's Hatching Quest caught up before I get the new Syka one started. And if you happen to be a kelvic and want in on the quest action, let me know. I might have one or two more roles to hand out.

[Gossamer]

Still People

There's a lot of bullshit going on in the world today. You can't read the paper, listen to the news on the TV and Radio, or even just talk to people in general without the bullshit coming up. There's a huge blame game going on. People hating others for something those others had nothing to do with. One example is blacks in Amercia blaming whites for their troubles even though those whites had nothing to do with their issues. Radical religions are killing in the name of their religious laws. Parents are abusing their children. Strangers are killing strangers because of the uniform they wear or the job they do. It's like the whole world has gone bat shit crazy. So I heard this the other day and thought... that's absolutely shareworthy.

Stay Away From Still People

Those who are:

• Still Broke
• Still Complaining
• Still Borrowing
• Still Hating
• Still Childish
• Still Insecure
• Still Stupid
  and...
• Still Not Making A Change In Their Lives.

Yup.. that's worthy advice. I thought I'd pass it on.

[Prophet]

I *heart* this.