I now pronounce you...

Ten years ago at this very moment we were doing this:


Thank you, Lansing my love, for sticking with me over the last decade, for supporting me, for sometimes making my coffee and doing my laundry, for working your tail off so we could have a good home, for holding me when I cry for no reason and being goofy with me and making me laugh until I cry. And also for not smearing the cake all over my face.

I love you.

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Paradigm Shift

Every time I think of the word 'paradigm' I relive the Salad Years skit from my Wheaton days. Salad Years was the student TV show, and one skit was two people imitating the Sesame Street two-headed monster doing a compound word thing. They did 'paradigm', except instead of 'para-dime' they said 'para-diggum'. It was amusing. I think you had to be there.

("para"...."diggum"...."para"...."diggum"...."PARADIGGUM!" "hey, there goes my dignity!")

Looovely.

And also very off-track.

Anyway, yesterday morning the phone woke me up, which is never a good way to start any day. But the weather was nice, and aside from being groggy I was mostly pleasant. The phone call was Frances from the mortgage company calling to verify when would be a good time to schedule closing on our refinance. She said she was spending the day filling out the forms for us and we'd probably close Thursday (today) or Friday afternoon. This was about... 9:30. OK, great, we've been waiting for a closing date for a month now. Fantastic!

I go about the morning, doing my morning things, and get ready to settle into schoolwork after lunch. The phone rings, and Frances tells me that not only can we not close on the refinance, but our home didn't even qualify for that loan in the first place. The loan officer was supposed to have checked our property values in their database, which apparently he didn't; so the only way we could continue is if we have a minimum of 10K out of pocket to bring with us. So not cool. So the refinance is cancelled, we're trying to see if we can get our non-refundable application fee (minus the assessment cost) back because the guy should have known we couldn't apply for it. We haven't heard back yet.

While I was finishing up on the phone with Frances (and trying not to throw my phone through the screen on the porch) our adoption case worker beeped in. She called back when I was off the phone, just to tell us that the homestudy she promised would be done by either last or this Friday hadn't been started yet. I'm not upset, there's good reasons, but I'm disappointed. Check the adoption blog for more details on that call.

So. Two upsetting and potentially life-changing things; but really it was a matter that in both cases we'd spent the last weeks or months anticipating a more comfortable and responsible moving-forward kind of life. I spent the rest of the day making calls and rearranging our financial goals and realigning my mental concepts of the near future. And relaying this all to Lanse, who was none-too-pleased as I was but processes things differently. It was an... interesting... rest of the day. Aside from a discussion reply or two, schoolwork wasn't part of it. But Lanse allowed an attack of Demon Housekeeper and stress-cleaned the main living areas and our bedroom, a quality of his in which I am very pleased. I just wish stress didn't have to be the trigger.

Some positive things happened though too. I wrapped up loose ends on the property tax snafu, and we actually can pay our mortgage and live off our income "comfortably" (in quotes, because we personally don't need much to feel comfortable; others would find our budget restrictive) and I finally got our March-April budget sorted out. We don't need the refinance to afford the house, and that's a huge sigh of relief.

That said, a little bit extra would be a great thing so we can start paying down some loans, so I'm wanting to put a little more focus in the concept of an Etsy shop with my quilting and jewelry stuff. I'm hoping to get the beading ladies at the game store to teach me some cool stuff that I can sell or give with Christmas in mind. Christmas took a big chunk out of our December budget last year, so anything I can do ahead would be good.

And then there's always schoolwork. Sigh. I suppose I should get to it.

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Random thoughts...

Jungle Spook

• I've never understood having to memorize names of people. I talked to someone who took the teacher certification test recently and she said all you really need to know (here in SC) are the people, who defined what theory, and write a bunch of practical application essays. But seriously, how many classroom teachers are going to be in the middle of a situation in which she needs to implement a theory she learned, and finds it absolutely necessary to know whether it was Locke or Plato or Addams? Names of theorists matter squat in the classroom when you're in a position to care about educational theory in a hurry. If you don't know the techniques, you can't apply anything you've learned.
  

• It is December 28, and it's 72 degrees. I'm on the porch with my laptop, sitting on my chaise lounge with Spook, and my right arm is starting to sunburn. I really wish I could get used to this, but I just can't seem to manage yet.
  

• Fireplace logs, of the pressed rectangle clean-burning kind, are fun because they're fast and easy, but is still missing the same elements we find missing in a gas fire: no crackle, no chasing down the embers that spit out onto the carpet, no pile of writhing coals to watch, no wood smoke smell. However, it also doesn't have the release of molds and allergens into the house or the potential to burn down the house quite as easily. I'm trying to decide if it's an acceptable compromise in light of those things.

• I don't know if I ever mentioned, but the corn casserole worked great in the crock pot! I also had to make up my own green bean casserole recipe, since the can of mushroom soup was nasty. I think in the end it tasted great.

• I hate shoes. And jeans. Above all, I hate popular fashion. The one pair of shoes whose shape looked like they really might have worked, I didn't even try on since someone in production had decided that plastering them with plastic Miley Cyrus faces was a good idea.

• No news on the adoption front yet. Still haven't gotten a call for inspection scheduling. I emailed Bert yesterday and we'll see if she can't start making some waves.

• My brother came down with Mono and stayed in bed over Christmas. At the same time, Kaylee got some sort of fungal infection rash all over her body that he calls Jungle Rot, and so far the only thing that's helping her feel better is smearing her with athlete's foot cream. But at least they're both on the mend now.

• Lanse is wonderful. I had a rotten section of the day yesterday (note shoe comments), and he brought me food and built a fire for me and snuggled me and did all kinds of lovely things. I figured he was just concerned about my mood yesterday, but then he brought me coffee this morning. He's apparently just an all-around great guy.

• I had a dream in which we were exploring a house we bought and lived in but somehow hadn't looked at it all yet. That was one really rockin' house. I should try to draw it. I miss my architecture program; it got lost in the move and now the company doesn't make it anymore, and doesn't even make a program that runs the file type, so now I have a couple thousand floor plans I can never look at. *sniff*

• I have a paper and a discussion post to write today. I also have to have read the stuff about which I must discuss. Bah.

• Finally, for your viewing enjoyment, Colin plays with the jingle mouse toy. It's a fuzzy, now really-beat-up toy mouse around whose tail we've tied a blue jingle bell. They all love it in turns. This is a wmv file, I don't know what you need to make it work. It's maybe two minutes long, I'm not sure. I hope you can see it... the back flip at the beginning is rather impressive.
  

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Wonderland Released! and other Cool Lanse news

First:
Lanse has been working (playing) with Kevin L. Anderson in England to develop a role playing game based on Alice in Wonderland.

A bit of explanation for non-gamer people, typically RPGs come with two different kinds of books. First you need the setting book, which explains the rules regarding the environment in which the game is played. For example, in a Star Trek game this would have the rules of space travel and the Federation and the USS Enterprise rules and information about Klingons and Ferengi and all the other races. Then there are any number of adventure or scenario books providing guidelines for the person running the game about the specific place the characters are going today or maybe what they're looking for in a quest, which in our Star Trek example could be some little-known planet on the edge of Klingon space, or an outline for which lovely lady lives on this particular planet who will (again) sweep Captain Kirk off his feet and the ways in which she then takes advantage of him in order to rule the world. That sort of thing. Think of it as Series details versus Episode details.

So Kevin and Lanse have been writing both types of books about Wonderland. It's Kevin's brainchild, and he wrote the Egg of Seven Parts book first (an adventure book), as an adventure for Wonderland No More (the setting book). Lanse did some editing on Eo7P, but didn't write any of it.

The book has now been released and is available for purchase!! I can personally say that this setting is totally cool and you must play it now. I have not played Eo7P but there is a different adventure in the same setting called The Crown of Alice that's available as a free download that our gaming group in New York ran as a playtest before its release, and it was very very cool.

Summary:
Setting book: The rules for the environment of the game; the rules for the TV Series; today's example: Wonderland No More

Adventure book: The rules for the particular adventure or journey the group is on today; the rules for the TV Episode; today's examples: The Crown of Alice (free download), Egg of Seven Parts (Buy yours today!)

Finally:
Fact 1: Lanse has had a lot of fun in the past making Mad Science miniature terrain and figures, which totally rocks. He's rather well known in gaming circles now for his home-brew mad science stuff.

Fact 2: Lanse's user name for a long time on Reaper's message boards was Herr Oberfroschmeister (Mr. Super Frog Man, or something like that).

Recent Cool Thing: New Reaper Mini from Jason Wiebe: Professor L.T. Froschmeister! No, it doesn't look at all like him, but it's a Mad Scientist with his name! THANKS REAPER!!


My man totally rocks. *proud*

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