Rowan Tree and Red Thread

Courtesy of irishkate, sammywol and a_d_medievalist.


The Rules
1. You can ONLY answer 'Yes' or 'No'.

2. You are NOT ALLOWED to explain ANYTHING unless someone messages or comments you and asks—and, believe me, the temptation to explain some of these will be overwhelming. Nothing is exactly as it seems.
( Me, me, meme... )

brianrogers here asks us to reminisce about our first encounters with role-playing and/or D&D, in tribute to the late Gary Gygax.

Unlike many gamers of my vintage I suspect, I didn't find gaming through D&D, at least not at first. We'd just moved over to Paris from Dublin as my father's job took him to the Irish Embassy there after a spell at home (1978-82 in Dublin). This meant I was taken out of secondary school at home after the 1st year and ended up in an American-style high school 9th grade in St. Cloud, outside Paris. It was all a bit confusing and all I really remember of my first year at school was loneliness, reading books at lot during breaks and finally discovering friends through gaming either late in '82 or early in '83.

My very first exposure to role-playing games, I think, was in a games shop in a shopping arcade (remember them?) off the Champs Elysees in Paris sometime in late 1982, where I saw, and wheedled my parents into buying, SPI's Dragonquest. Shortly afterwards I also bought Universe, also from SPI, and was hooked. Basic D&D followed within the month, and through that I met the friends who saw me through high school: Sean Crowell, Phil and Sean O'Connor and later Phil and Matt Shedlick.

We played D&D and Runequest, dipping our toes in lots of other games in the glorious mid-80s explosion of games, but always coming back to our two old favourites. I was GM for the most part, and don't really have any 'favourite PC' stories of my own to relate, though I remember the exploits of many of the PCs with fondness. It's something like 25 years since those early games, and I don't know if I'll ever capture the thrill and excitement of them in role-playing again. I've discovered other aspects of the hobby that appeal to me, and other ways of role-playing that never occurred to me all those years ago, but those early experiences set me on a path I've happily trod ever since.

Like brianrogers said: "My job is what pays me. Gaming is what I do."

sammywol gave me 1999 as the year for my 'Where Was I' year in this meme. Free association and other ramblings follow. Feel free to request a year of your very own in comments if you like.

( all about my 1999 )

And, I have to admit, like the old fogey I am, at no point in the year did I actually party like it was 1999. Ah well.

though that's not as much fun as it sounds.

Comment and I'll give you a letter; then you have to list 10 things
you love that begin with that letter. Afterwards, post this in your
journal and give out some letters of your own.

I got a 'D' from sammywol.

( Saving you from the memery )

Lifted from pompe, a book meme that's a little more content-full than the usual.

Are you careful with the spines? Or do you crack your books open to make them lay flat?

My mother is a librarian, though she came to that career late in life. She must always have had the urge however, as I'm genetically incapable of cracking the spine of a book and feel physically unwell when I see someone, on the bus for example, with the cover of their book folded right around. We hates it, we does.

Do you use bookmarks? Or do you dog-ear the corners? If you do use bookmarks, do you use those fashionable metal ones? Or paper?

I use a bookmark, usually a piece of paper, sometimes a more fancy purpose-made bookmark. I don't like the metal bookmarks.

Do you write in your books? Ever? If you do, do you make small marks, or write in as much blank space as you can find? Pen or pencil? Highlighter? Your name on the front page?

I don't write in books as a rule. With reference books I do sometimes add annotations, and there are books I deliberately buy a second copy of to have one I can annotate. I never use highlighter in books. sammywol has a nightmarish tale of a undergraduate in the Early Printed Books section of the Trinity College library from her college days. Get her to tell you it sometime if you're a book lover with a strong stomach.

Do you toss your books on the floor? Into book bags? Or do you treat them tenderly, with respect?

Not on the floor. I do sometimes carry paperbacks in my backpack, and then worry when they get a bit bashed.

Do you ever lay your book facedown, to save your place?

NO! In fact I sometimes insert a bookmark into books I find like this and save them from their uncaring readers.

Um--water? Do you bathe with your books? Hold them with wet hands? Read out in the rain? Anything of that sort?

Nope. We don't have a bath in our house so I'm not about to read in the shower. I don't read in the rain unless caught out by surprise.

Are your books lined up on a bookshelf? Or crammed in any which way? Stacked on the floor?

In common with many on my friends list I suspect, we have more books than shelf space. Most of our books are on shelves, double-shelved in some cases, and in piles on the floor elsewhere.

Do you make a distinction--as regards book care--between hardcovers and paperbacks?

It's irrational, but I do generally take better care of hardbacks.

Prompted by sammywol's recent post wherein she has a personality type even rarer than mine. Potted summary: goofy, imaginative, relaxed, and brilliant. [polishes fingernails]

( Cut, fold, spindle, mutilate... )

Nicked from artw. Quiz meme with a singular twist.

You.
Can.
Only.
Type.
One.
Word.

( Snip, snip. )

Lifted from Queenie (on her Sad Percy blog).

"Welcome to the new edition of getting to know your friends. Okay here's what you're supposed to do, and try not to be lame and spoil the fun! Just copy (do not forward) this entire e-mail and paste into a new e-mail that you can send. Change all the answers so that they apply to you Then send this to a whole bunch of people you know, INCLUDING the person that sent it to you."

I don't generally condone wanton e-mailing, but in blog land you can always ( cut for length )

Arr my hearties, 'tis the 19th day of September, a day dear to my heart and tripes. For 'tis the day when I, eight years back now, did splice my lanyard to that of my goodly wife, sammywol. We've been sailing the seas ever since, sometimes before the mast, sometimes below decks in the Capt'n's cabin (ay, saucy, I know), but always with a laugh, a song and a barrelful of some reasonably priced caribbean rum.

Arrrr, etc.

Lifted from nhw. He said

"Look at your LJ userpics list....

If you have fewer than 50 icons, pick every fifth one.
If you have between fifty and seventy-five icons, pick every seventh one.
If you have over seventy-five icons, pick every tenth one.
If you have fewer than ten, pick all of 'em.

List them on your LJ, and tell everyone exactly why you have it, why it's interesting to you, what significance does it have."

( And here they are...  )

You Are a Centaur

In general, you are a very cautious and reserved person. However, you are also warm hearted, and you enjoy helping others in practical ways. You are a great teacher, and you are really good at helping people get their lives in order. You are very intuitive, and you go with your gut. You make good decisions easily.

Just be careful not to accept any blood-stained cloaks from me for Christmas.

The one in greatest demand at the time, I guess.

( Behind the curtain... )

This one is silly but persuasive.

(Click here to post your own answers for this meme.)

✓ I miss somebody right now.	✓ I don't watch much TV these days.	✓ I own lots of books.
✓ I wear glasses or contact lenses.	× I love to play video games.	× I've tried marijuana.
✓ I've watched porn movies.	× I have been the psycho-ex in a past relationship.	× I believe honesty is usually the best policy.
✓ I curse sometimes.  (If by sometimes you mean most of the time.)	× I have changed a lot mentally over the last year.	× I carry my knife/razor everywhere with me.

( it goes on... )

It's back again. Courtesy this time of wwhyte who indulged my blatant begging for another letter. Today I am 'M'.

( courtesy cut )

Four of a kind. Fill in your own answers if you like.

( courtesy cut )

Prompted by agrumer, here's a meme.

"How it works: Comment on this entry and I’ll assign you a letter at random. Write ten words beginning with that letter, and an explanation of what the word means to you and why."

agrumer gave me a 'V'. Anyone who wants a letter from me, ask in a comment.

( cut for length )

I just did my Nohari profile to compliment the Johari profile I did a couple of days ago.

Add to the Johari one here and the Nohari one here. See the current Johari results here and Nohari results here.

See the flipside of the intelligent, knowledgeable mylescorcoran. Marvel at his insecurities and self-delusions.

Lifted from nhw and seen in several other places (again).

Name a CD you own that no one else on your friends list does.

Hmm. I wonder if anyone else on my friends list has a copy of Stone Age by Stone Age, a Breton fusion band?

Name a book you own that no one else on your friends list does.

Difficult, as sammywol has a legitimate claim to all the books I own, and she's definitely on my friends list. Excepting her, I'll offer Karl Sigmund's Games of Life, a review of statistics and numerical modelling in biology. Anyone else got a copy?

Name a movie you own on DVD/VHS/whatever that no one else on your friends list does.

Another difficult one, for the reason above and because I have few DVDs and fewer still that are unlikely to be duplicated in my friends list. I'll offer The Way Things Go by Peter Fischli and David Weiss.

Name a place that you have visited that no one else on your friends list has.

Easy, if you allow sufficiently small places. The car breakers where we got rid of our last car, one of several out of the way game or comic shops in Paris, etc. Bigger places are harder to claim. I'm guessing that none of the friends list have been to Saint Maxime in the south of France, a coastal town we spent a couple of family holidays in the 80s.

Name a piece of technology or any sort of tool you own that you think no-one else on your friendslist has.

nhw missed this one out, but I recovered it from marykaykare's original entry. I've got crooked dice, as suits my gaming background, but I'm sorry to say I suspect some of my friends list will have them too. I'm going to say a miniature camera tripod, only about 8 inches high when fully extended.

Twelve months of me: the first line of the first post of each month of 2005. Lifted from nhw.

( Twelve disjoint sentences )

Stolen from absolutely everyone:

Reply to this post, and I'll tell you one or a lot of reasons why I like/love/adore you. I mean, everyone needs an ego boost around this time of year, right?

Fail to reply to this post and I'll think bad things about you. Possibly.

The glamorous leedy asked me the following questions.

( Come out from behind the curtain! )

Holy halloween, readers, but there have been bucket-loads of questions asked on my friends list of people doing a new round of a questions/interview type meme. I, of course, am above such things. Or at least until someone comments to this asking me [pleading tone]anything[/pleading tone].

I'm not proud.

Lifted from agrumer the "needs" meme. Plug "your_first_name needs" into Google and grab the first ten results. Post and wonder.

1. Myles needs a blood transfusion


2. Myles needs a Turkey to set a precedent.


3. Myles needs "t*ts and ass" in his film. ...


4. Myles needs a little work on his technique, but most of all, he needs to become meaner.


5. Myles needs now is a cast and some advice.


6. Myles needs Sally, but Sally is dubious


7. Myles needs a bodyguard to protect himself from us rage-filled belly-achers, right?


8. [What] Myles needs to work on begins in his own mind.


9. Myles needs to be more involved, Matta said.


10. Myles needs to start telling the truth.

I wonder how you set a precedent with a Turkey?

Once again the drunken antics that pass for local colour round these parts have pressed themselves to the front of the crowd of cultural events here in Cork during our year as European Capital of Culture. Quite literally pressed forward, in fact, as a couple of nights ago some assholes bashed in our front door as they loped down the street looking for things to vandalise.

sammywol and I were shocked speechless for a moment. I never realised that was more than figure of speech but I was briefly stunned into both silence and immobility. When I got up to check the door the lad who had done it were off down the road. I suppose I should be grateful that they just bashed the door and moved on. I don't imagine for a second that I (or my wife) would put up more than a token resistance to anyone who actually decided to break into the house and attack or rob us.

I'm unsettled, to say the least. I like the house we're living in. I like our immediate neighbours. I love that I can walk to work from here. But I hate that I'm made to feel uncomfortable where we live and I hate that we can't afford to move. I think the worst of it is that I can feel myself becoming more conservative.

To cap it all, only a couple of days before the business with the door we discovered that someone had vandalised our car, shattering the passenger side wing mirror with a thrown apple. I have to admire their accuracy, whoever they were, if not their civic-mindedness. What did the early agriculturalists, when founding the first cities, think they were doing moving a bunch of contrary, easily bored primates into close proximity with strangers (and northsiders)?

I'm out of work this week doing a first aid course (on the university's dollar) so apologies if I don't comment or post as frequently. Net access at home is still dial-up and I'm likely not to be checking in every day.

I've just been dancing. I'm home alone at the moment. sammywol and our daughter are visiting my parents-in-law, and the dance just took hold of me. I was listening to Frou Frou, the band Imogen Heap used to sing with. The song was "Must Be Dreaming" from the album Details. Its beat was infectious and without thinking I cleared a space in the living room, turned the volume up as high as it would go (pretty damn high) and started a frenzied dancing.

Now dancing and fat, white 30-somethings don't always go together. Who cares? The song was on a loop and I danced for about 12 minutes I'd guess, at my discoordinated, frenzied, white-boy best. I'm exhausted and euphoric. Nothing proves Descartes more wrong than this: mind and body functioning together, each influencing the other, and together making ... me.

( lyrics )

Okay, all my gaming group have to try this one!

You scored as Storyteller. You're more inclined toward the role playing side of the equation and less interested in numbers or experience points. You're quick to compromise if you can help move the story forward, and get bored when the game slows down for a long planning session. You want to play out a story that moves like it's orchestrated by a skilled novelist or film director. </td> Storyteller 75% Tactician 67% Method Actor 67% Butt-Kicker 50% Power Gamer 50% Specialist 50% Casual Gamer 42% Law's Game Style created with QuizFarm.com

1. Go here.
2. Pass it on.
( my answers )

More memeage, gratifyingly ego-boosting this time.


( Look behind the curtain )

Back in work today after a couple of days out sick with some viral GI infection. A classic 24 hour virus with lots of sitting down in the smallest room in the house. In my absence life continued. Funny that.

I've been informed of a long-time spelling mistake in my LJ bio entry. Oh, the shame. As amends I've decided to let you lot write a new one for me. Anyone who wants can contribute a line or two in a comment, and I'll tot them all up and add them to the bio.

I reserve the right to arbitrarily ignore boring or libelous contributions, but I'll try and take all-comers.

Inspiration taken from nhw. I'm glad to see the Brussels life hasn't ground down the real Nicholas we know and love.

This is a hard one. I dont often think of fictional characters in a sexual fashion, but I'm sure I can give it a go. Unlike Nicholas I'm not particularly bothered by the "availability" or happily ever after relationships these characters may or may not end up with in the various sources. I'm a traditional primate at heart and probably a bonobo at that.

( So in the traditional reverse order of preference: )

Does it sound weird to also mention the three devious and delicious fictional babes Rhiannon, Morgan and Christiania from long-dead and greatly missed Amber role-playing campaign of my college years? And that one of those women was played (ably) by a man?

No one has tagged me, but I don't care. You know the deal. Write down five of your own personal idiosyncrasies. Then, if you wish, tag five people from your friends list to do the same in their journal.

1. Before going to bed I like to prepare a cup of tea ready to be made in the morning. I am, shamed as I am to admit, one of those teabag in a cup types.


2. I sometimes deliberately let my fingernails grow long, and then let them grow for another week or so. No, I don't know why either.


3. I'll eat all of a thing I don't like off plate before starting into the things I really like. I'm looking at you, cauliflower.


4. Like leedy I'm polite to magpies, blowing a kiss whenever I see a solitary bird. Oddly, I only started doing this by mimicking my wife, who got it from Joan Aitken, I think. It's certainly not a childhood tic.


5. Also like leedy I sing to myself while working alone. Unlike her, I can't carry a tune in a bucket. I usually do a sort of skat-singing, or improvise lyrics round whatever pop tune is stuck in my head at the minute.