Current mood:

hopeful

January wrap-up
I haven't yet written a summary post for January, which is embarrassing. Better now than never, though.  Part of the problem is that I don't remember everything notable that happened during the month.  I haven't been updating my diary much, and only a few things are on my calendar.

Oh well, anyway, my birthday was the second day of the month, and as it happened, the small game party turned into a little celebration for me.  There were still a number of presents left to distribute from Christmas to and from various guests.  We all got to show them off.  And I got a bunch of games as gifts myself, so we had to try out a couple of them (Amuse Amaze and Sixteen).  It was cozy and friendly.

I went out the next night with my godmother Barb to Vilification Tennis, a show at the Bryant Lake Bowl (and imported from the Renaissance Festival, I gather) in which contestants insulted each other back and forth for teh_lulz.  It featured the ebullient mplspunky .

I didn't do much writing all month.  I did hammer together the rest of my interactive book's challenge system, which included some amusing time mulling over things like, 'What is the logical consequence of a star crossed with a buzzard?'  I formatted the book and wrote rules for it, and sent copies to some of my friends, and found that the rules are too hard to follow and will have to be revised.  Oh well.  Since the end of January, I've resumed fleshing out the branches that need it.

I also entered a 24-hour short story contest put on by WritersWeekly.com.  I was sent a topic and word length at noon on Saturday the 24th, and had until noon Sunday to finish.  I was expecting to write a 5000-word story, but the length limit was a surprisingly trim 950 words.  The big challenge, then, was being very concise but still entertaining.  I'm happy with my entry; I'll find out whether I placed in the top three out of up to 500 entrants in a week or two.

I worked through a book of tricky maze-like puzzles by Robert Abbott, Mad Mazes, that I was sent as a Christmas present. :)  I eventually solved them all.  They took a surprising variety of different methods to solve.

I ran my game Magnet Maze twice more, and it went more smoothly this time than before.  The kids were more cooperative and the process was more fun.  Rounds 3 & 4 were called Neptune's Run (fish magnets swimming back and forth) and The Junk Heap (deadly brass tacks encroaching from above like Space Invaders).

Unfortunately, it's not clear whether I'll be able to keep running it.  At the end of the month, my coworker Nancy B. resigned suddenly.  She said that she would no longer qualify for health care so long as she worked at the library as well as getting paid as a personal care assistant for her ailing mother.  So she had to quit.  So sad :-(  She said she would try to return as a volunteer, but she hasn't yet.  WIthout her help, and with the Homework Hub system short on money, we're struggling to find volunteers to help, which means I may not be able to leave the Learning Center where the tutoring goes on for long enough to run my games on Thursdays.  We'll see what happens.

On a related note, I attended an Advisory Board meeting concerning what to do about the program's shortfall.  It was pretty sad.  The first half of the meeting was all about all the cool things we could do if we had more money to expand, and the successes at a location that's probably going to get cut.  The second half was about how none of that is possible and how we can save money by cutting weeks or hours or locations from the program.  Stop faleing, economy.

I watched Obama's inauguration as it happened, which was a nice way to spend a noontime.  I especially liked the classical piece, Air on Simple Gifts.

Another old friend from Lion King MUCKing got back in touch with me that evening.  I hope she joins Chimaera, though I've only seen her once since then.  I spent hours telling her and another MUCKing friend about the whole Endless Round saga.

The long-running internet Diplomacy game I was in finally came to an end.  I had at one point had the most units on the board, but immediately got betrayed by eveyone and knocked down very quickly to just two units.  Oddly, the position was such that my two units were unassailable, so they survived until the end of the game.  It ended as a draw between Germany, Italy, Turkey and myself (Austria), although I thought there was plenty of play left to be had between Germany (who had numerical superiority and the possibility of advancing in the western seas) and Italy (who had the potential to take Turkey out with careful play).  I sent out one last letter in character, but I don't think t went through since the game was over.  I've saved all my correspondence from the game, including the results sent out by the computerized judge, so I could, I don't know, put it on the web at some point or something. :)

Matt K., who played Germany in that game, is now going to grad school in Wisconsin while his wife teaches at the university, but he made the time for a visit to the Twin Cities between semesters in mid-January.  It was great fun spending a weekend with him.  We visited the Como conservatory, and played various games, and he read a draft of my novel, and we used coupons from Cub to have an 'Italian evening', and so forth.  His wife Emily stopped by for a couple hours and gave me a fake book for hiding secrets in, and I gave her and Matt a copy of Dark Crystal and a couple of humorous Victorian era spoof books from Wondermark.com.  (I read them first; they're fascinating!)

And that's January 2009.