Off and on the last ten years I have tried learning French and not gotten far - except for this time, when I might have hit upon a winning combination that, if anything else, is working for me.

First, Duolingo is an on-the-go free application that teaches Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and German in a manner quite like Rosette Stone.  It ( Read more... )

Note: I am slowly converting Nephilim, an old Chaosium game, over to Dresden Files FATE. I am just flopping all the posts on my blog because I can tag and collect them all later. This stuff is in no particular order. You can buy Nephilim in PDF from DriveThruRPG for ~$17. You should also buy Dresden Files RPG.

Emotional Aspect-Based Metamorphosis ( Read more... )

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I realized late last night I had called the book “Trails of Cthulhu” with an s instead of “Trail of Cthulhu.”  I chalk this up to my insidious Michigan accent which compels me to pluralize words regardless if they need to be pluralized or not.  Meijers.  Krogers.  Kmarts.  C’mon, Michigan people, you know you have said a sentence construction like ( Read more... )

Trail of Cthulhu by Ken Hite from Pelgrane Press

In middle school I discovered horror fiction.

I cannot remember what was the first book - I suspect Stephen King’s the Shining in used book form - but I do distinctly remember reading anything that had a dismemberment. If it featured splatters of blood, I read it. Good writing, bad writing, ( Read more... )

I sort of have this long-running argument with myself: What, precisely, is nerdier than RPGs? I have used RPGs* as the ANSI Standard for Nerd for a long time. It’s not so much that it’s fantasy or science fiction and people sitting in a basement pretending to do fantasy and science-fiction things as much as the sheer pointless bookkeeping. ( Read more... )

For Christmas I bought a Yamaha Clavinova CLP digital piano from Jordan Kitt’s Music in College Park, MD. It is not the sexiest digital piano ever conceived but it has 88 gravity-weighted touch-sensitive keys, an excellent fully sampled grand piano sound and, most importantly, a headphone jack for silent playing. And while it doesn’t hold up to ( Read more... )

Maryland Ren Fest: We took Katie for the first time since she was very small, and she loved it. She got to run around in a princess dress, get her face painted, get her hair braided, ride a pony, play in bubbles, and eat deep fried macaroni n’ cheese on a stick. I finally bought the boots I had been eying for five years. Unfortunately, it ( Read more... )

We took the Dob out for real this evening because the evening was incredibly clear just as the sun went down. While Katie Rose was antsy while the telescope was positioned we were able to see:

- Some amazing cratering on the moon.
- The rings of Saturn and Titan.

The Dob was able to split the rings. Of course, nothing stayed in the view for very ( Read more... )

I buy yarn and turn it into stuffies!

I have made several things - scarves, mostly - but they haven’t been terribly interesting. Katie really liked the one I made for my Mom but otherwise they’ve just been scarves.

Then I decided to graduate to much more difficult crochet and started making amigurumi! These stuffies are tons of fun to make and ( Read more... )