Tylorva

2011 has very easily won the award for the worst year of my life.  I've had some stinkers in the past, but this one sweeps past them all to claim the prize.  I don't want to talk about the shit though.  Going to focus on the handful of positives instead.

In no particular order:

- Being reunited with my kitties.  OMG I had missed them so much.  I don't ever want to lose them again.

- DuD winning the UK Larp Award for 'best medium-sized larp'.  Whatever issues there may have been with how the awards were organised, the fact that enough people thought of us to nominate us made me beyond proud.

- Maelstrom.  Was always terrified to attend, and as it turned out with good reason.  But I discovered crewing Maelstrom is absolutely awesome and made of win.  Am very much looking forward to next year's events and being involved in the 'closure'.

- Odyssey - I also discovered that there is a big fest larp that I can enjoy playing!

- Visible improvements in my writing ability.  2011's Black Library submission was significantly better than 2010's, and 2012's, which I have already started working on, is another level of improvement over 2011.  They say that if you keep writing you WILL get better.  Actually being able to see that for myself is really rather inspiring.

- Going to see Ghost the Musical.  One of my all time favourite movies brought to life on stage?  There was no way I was going to miss that.

- Being diagnosed with Asperger's.  I think on the whole it is a positive thing.  I'm feeling like I can understand myself and the problems I have had all my life with context now and start to move forward in a way I have never been able to before.

- Rift MMO and the lovely guild I am in.  It's kept me sane when things have really turned to dirt.

- Being reunited with old friends from a decade or more past.  Evil Gary, Rob Leigh and the people of Elephant MUD. 


Things neglected in 2011 due to sickness and lack of funds:  Legion of Dreams and Re-enactment.  I hope I can pick up on these again in 2012.

For various reasons that I won't go into here, I feel the urge to lose a load of weight before October.  So for the first time in my life I am contemplating some kind of diet.  However, I am clueless on such things.

Can anyone help me?

I'm looking for some kind of structured programme, preferably one that is healthy and involves exercise as well.  I'd like to drop down from a bulgy size 14 to a slightly less bulgy size 12 by October 21st,  Is this even doable?  I have no idea. ;)  I'll settle for just less bulgy though.

If anyone has any recommendations for three month diet plans, I would love to hear about them.

Ta!

The new tyre arrived early at the  fitting place, so they agreed to bring my appointment forward to this afternoon.  So I can go to re-enactment this weekend.  Yay! :)

I really want to go to re-enactment this weekend.

I can't because my car has a flat tyre, and getting a new one at an affordable rate means it can't be fitted until Saturday.

But I really want to go.

This sucks. :(

Finished the PhD report that has been stressing me out completely for the last few weeks.  I suddenly feel a million times better!  Yay! :D

The Maelstrom story team with help from others had made an Awesome Thing for the event.  I won't say what the Awesome Thing was, it's not important to this comment and I don't want to spoil it for anyone.  However, Awesome Thing would be perfect to use for DuD.  I saw it and drooled.  They have said we may be able to use it.  This is good!

However, the really amazing thing about this for me is how this conversation took place.  Instead of the usual:  Alex:  "Wow, Awesome Thing is awesome, is there any chance we'd be able to use that for DuD?", the conversation actually went something like this:

Them:  "Have you seen Awesome Thing?"
Alex: "Nope?"
Them:  "Come and see it!  When we were making it we wondered if you would be interested in using it for DuD!"

The fact that they actually thought of us just blew my mind. :)

Happy days!

Well, I just got home from Maelstrom.  On the whole it was a very positive experience, although it didn't turn out in any way that I had expected.

It started off very badly.  I'd had two panic attacks on the Friday before it was even Time-In and felt progressively worse as the evening drew on.  By Saturday morning I was having such a bad panic/stress/anxiety attack that I ended up in First Aid.  So I gave up on playing and asked if I could NPC crew instead - they were very nice and agreed straight away.  Crewing turned out to be an absolute blast and I thoroughly enjoyed myself and they seemed very happy with what I was doing as well.  The end result is that they invited me to join the NPC/Plot team as a permanent member - quite an honour as apparantly they are very selective about who they invite!

So I'm now eagerly looking forward to the next game, to which I will be returning as crew!  Yay! :)

So after many years of being utterly terrified of the concept, I'm finally going to try Maelstrom this weekend.  Scary. 

I've arranged for someone to feed the kitties.  I've made travel arrangements.  I've nearly finished designing my character. 

Only one question remains.

Which of my many sets of awesome armour should I take...?

Oh decisions decision...

I just ordered a Kindle from Amazon.

The reason I did this is because tonight in the pub in London, someone showed me how to download the free Kindle app onto my Android phone.  I then spent the entire trip home on the coach reading stuff - just under an hour's journey.

Why is this special?

I'm 34.  I've travelled all over the place by various means and I have -never- been able to read anything on a coach or in a car before without turning green within 30 seconds and puking within 5 minutes.

I managed 45 mins of e-book without feeling the slightest bit sick.

This is perhaps one of the most awesome things ever for me.  Be amazed!

So yeah, have splashed out for a Kindle.  Hopefully, here's to less boring road trips as a passenger for the foreseeable future. :D

Death Unto Darkness got nominated for an award!

http://infinite-gateway.com/uk-lar…

How neat is that? :)